New restoration of HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR at NY Film Festival tomorrow

A Rialto Pictures release

Hiroshima Mon Amour

Directed by Alain Resnais

Screenplay and Dialogue by Marguerite Duras

Starring Emmanuelle Riva and Eiji Okada

France/Japan, 1959, 92 minutes

Language: French, Japanese, and English with English subtitles

When: Friday, October 10, 2014 at 6:00 PM

Where: The Film Society of Lincoln Center's

Walter Reade Theater, 165 W 65th Street, NYC 

Ticket Info

A new 4K restoration of Hiroshima Mon Amour, the 1959 film that marked director Alan Resnais' feature film debut, will have its U.S. premiere tomorrow, Friday, October 10th as part of the NYFF52 Revivals section of the 52nd New York Film Festival. The film opens in theaters next Friday, October 17th.

I saw the restoration at a press screening yesterday. While I just don't have the time right now to write a full review (that will have to wait until next week), let me say that it looked wonderful as projected in the DCP (Digital Cinema Package) format. I never saw the original, so I can't make any comparison, but here the tonal range is slightly clipped. By that I mean the whites are not brilliantly white, even in direct sunlight, and the blacks are not a pure, dark black. For me this look was just right for the moody, mysterious and poetic nature of the film.

I think this new restoration is a "must-see" regardless of whether or not you've previously seen Hiroshima Mon Amour.

Here's what the Film Society of Lincoln Center says about this classic film:

"This modernist masterwork began as a documentary commission from Daiei Studios, secured for Alain Resnais by producer Anatole Dauman. Resnais decided that the bombing of Hiroshima and its impact needed fiction, brought Marguerite Duras onto the project, and worked with her to create a story—of a French film actress (Amour Oscar-nominated Emmanuelle Riva) who goes to Hiroshima to make a film and has an affair with a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada)—that would exist “in two tenses… the present and the past coexist.” Few films have had such a lasting, wide-ranging impact. Hiroshima, mon amour [sic] is a devastating experience on every level: visually, sonically, emotionally, intellectually."

The restoration was realized by Argos Films, Fondation Groupama Gan, Fondation Technicolor, and Cineteca Bologna, with support from the CNC.

Korean documentary NON-FICTION DIARY to screen twice at NYFF52

Non-fiction Diary

Direc ted by JUNG Yoon-suk
South Korea, 2013, 93 minutes

Korean with English subtitles

Showtimes: Tuesday, September 30 at 6:00pm at the Francesca Beale Theater

and

Wednesday, October 1 at 3:00pm at the Howard Gilman Theater

Ticket Info

U.S. Premiere

Chronicling a history of violence and death from society’s lower depths to its corridors of power, Jung Yoon-suk’s gripping documentary is a quietly devastating indictment of pervasive injustice nested within the post–military dictatorship economic breakout of South Korea in the 1990s.

The film begins by recounting the case of the “Jijon Clan” (“Supreme Gangsters”), a group of youths from a backwoods province arrested in 1994 for committing a series of horrific murders, enacting a savage and warped form of class warfare in the face of growing social inequity. Jung provocatively compares and contrasts their case with two other notorious episodes of the era—the 1994 Seongsu Bridge disaster and the death of 502 people in the Sampoong Department Store collapse of 1995.

Resisting the temptation to sensationalize, this cool and methodical cinematic essay uses these ostensibly unrelated incidents to demonstrate that the punishments did not fit the crimes, and also to draw a series of uncomfortable conclusions about South Korean society.

These two screenings of Non-fiction Diary are part of the Spotlight on Documentary section of the 52nd New York Film Festival which runs September 26 – October 12, 2014.

Artifacts of Fukushima: Selections from Unknown Spring at NYFF52

Artifacts of Fukushima: Selections from Unknown Spring

Directed by Jake Price, Visakh Menon, 2014

USA, 2014, 60 minutes

Showtime: Sunday, September 28 at 12:00pm at the Howard Gilman Theater

Ticket Info

On March 11, 2011, an earthquake off the coast of Tohoku spawned a tsunami that would destroy swaths of the Japanese coast and initiate a nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant power plant.

Nearly four years after the reactors at the Fukushima began melting down, nature has reclaimed every vestige of civilization and transformed the landscape, blurring the lines between once refined humanity and unrestrained nature. In the middle of this borderland are the survivors who cannot abandon their homes, ornate temples, and ancient Buddhist carvings from time immemorial.

Artifacts of Fukushima will present fragments of what was left behind and still remains—where memory and abandonment, unrestrained nature and humanity intersect. Combining projected video, audio, and photography, Artifacts will immerse viewers in the cityscapes of the abandoned towns, guided by the voices of those who fled their homes but can never leave in their hearts.

This screening of Artifacts of Fukushima: Selections from Unknown Spring is part of the NYFF52 Convergence series of the 52nd New York Film Festival. 

ACF 691: Masahiro Shinoda film sidebar at New York Film Festival 2010

(c) Mineko Orisaku

The 48th New York Film Festival will be featuring a sidebar series entitled "NYFF MASTERWORKS: Elegant Elegies: The Films of Masahiro Shinoda." The series will run from Saturday, September 25th through Sunday, October 10th, 2010. Here's a brief statement from The Film Society of Lincoln Center:

Gamblers betting it all in games they can’t win, samurais heading into their final battles, lovers realizing their bonds are no match for an uncaring destiny: Welcome to the remarkable universe of Masahiro Shinoda. A spectacular filmmaker key to the Japanese New Wave, Shinoda was fascinated by both traditional Japanese aesthetics and the modernity of cinema. We’re honored to welcome Mr. Shinoda to this year’s festival for this special tribute, presented as part of the 150th Anniversary Celebration of Japan-NYC Friendship.

For info about the series, including descriptions of all the films to be screened, showtimes & dates, and to purchase tickets online, click here. Among those thirteen movies that will be shown, I have seen Double Suicide and Samurai Spy. Both are great movies, and are available on typically outstanding Criterion DVDs for those who can't make it to Lincoln Center.