Beyond the Multiplex

Sept. 28, 2006 | Lincoln Center, the sprawling and sinister LBJ-era arts complex on the West Side of Manhattan, houses several of the nation's most august cultural institutions: the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, New York City Ballet, the Juilliard School. That high-culture pedigree also infuses the New York Film Festival, a defiantly old-school event that stands like a grand gateway to the fall movie season. Last among the year's major festivals -- after hardcore film-biz insiders have already racked up the frequent-flier miles traveling to Sundance, Berlin, Tribeca, Cannes, Venice, Toronto and elsewhere -- the NYFF, more than any of those, still evokes a world where Great Films are made by Great Directors and everyone who is anyone must see them.

NYFF programmers are notoriously selective -- there are 25 new features on this year's slate, a typical number -- which is a significant part of the festival's identity. ("We're a festival that says 'no' a lot," says program director Richard Peña, with evident pride.) They strongly favor narrative features over documentaries, in an independent-film market that now tilts sharply in the other direction. Other major festivals insist on exclusivity, and guard world premieres jealously, but the NYFF (partly because of its calendar position) doesn't seem to care. This year's big titles have all played elsewhere, and most have already opened to ordinary paying audiences in other countries.

Clearly, the ideal NYFF film is one that combines artistic ambition, social relevance and some degree of sexy marketplace sizzle (last year's centerpiece, George Clooney's "Good Night, and Good Luck," being a perfect example). So this year's festival opens with Stephen Frears' dishy "The Queen," which stars Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II, coping with the royal family's turmoil in the aftermath of Princess Diana's death. It continues with such surefire art-house hits as David Lynch's reportedly indescribable three-hour opus "Inland Empire," Sofia Coppola's lavish biopic "Marie Antoinette," Pedro Almodóvar's all-female Cannes smash "Volver" and Guillermo del Toro's Spanish Civil War-era fantasy "Pan's Labyrinth," the closing-night film. (Salon will review these NYFF films, and more, as they premiere.)

But as well as showcasing those pictures most likely to seduce upscale audiences during the cold-weather months, the NYFF also has a nobler, and more old-fashioned, mission. It programs several films each year with near-zero commercial appeal, hoping to focus the attention of New York's perennially distracted culture vultures, if only for an instant, on unexpected and unpredictable works with no bold-type names attached. It's a charming and paradoxical notion, but I'm delighted to play along.

So for the next couple of weeks you'll read here about some movies that may never play anywhere near you, and may take their sweet time to show up on Netflix. (One of the sensations of the 2005 NYFF, Argentine director Pablo Trapero's road comedy "Rolling Family," has finally made it to DVD a full year later.) Consider the example of West African director Abderrahmane Sissako's confrontational docudrama "Bamako." I think it's one of the most exciting films I've seen all year, but it bears little relationship to the recognizable conventions of dramatic cinema. How would you try to market a movie whose central action involves a Brechtian show trial, staged in the courtyard of an ordinary African house, in which the opposing parties are African civil society and the international financial institutions? The NYFF is this film's one and only chance to get noticed by Americans.

Along the same lines, the '06 festival brings us Chinese director Tian Zhuangzhuang's meticulous biopic "The Go Master"; Korean director Hong Sang-soo's wry, Fellini-style romantic comedy "Woman on the Beach"; "Belle Toujours," a semi-sequel to Luis Buñuel's risqué 1969 classic "Belle de Jour," made by 97-year-old Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira; "Climates," a mournful exposition on love's decay from Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan; and "The Journals of Knud Rasmussen," another blinding-white, wide-screen exploration of Inuit life from the makers of "The Fast Runner."

There's plenty to see outside the prison-like facade of Lincoln Center as well. Agitprop provocateur Robert Greenwald ("Wal-Mart," "Outfoxed," etc.) is back with "Iraq for Sale," an exposé of the remarkable levels of greed and corruption that accompany our partly privatized overseas war. Memoirist-turned-filmmaker Dito Montiel captures an engaging slice of Scorsese-style New York adolescence, circa 1986, in "A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints." And for political junkies, "So Goes the Nation," a dissection of the 2004 presidential campaign in Ohio, is a must-see. (Stolen-election conspiracy buffs should skip it, unless you enjoy howling with rage.)

Next page: The big bonanza in Iraq