New York Film Festival parent Film at Lincoln Center has set the slate for its Currents strand at the 62nd edition – 12 features and 28 shorts meant to complement the Main Slate with an emphasis on new, innovative voices.
Currents’ Centerpiece selection is the world premiere of Jem Cohen’s Little, Big, and Far, a tale of catastrophes through the travels of an astronomer in search of a sky dark enough to study the stars.
Other portraits include Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich’s The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire, a fragmented recomposition of the Martiniquan writer and activist’s legacy; Pierre Creton and Vincent Barré’s 7 Walks With Mark Brown, following the path of a paleobotanist in search of native plants; Yashaddai Owens’s debut feature, Jimmy, which imagines a young James Baldwin as he arrives in Paris from New York; and Lilith Kraxner and Milena Czernovsky’s bluish (winner of the Grand Prix at FIDMarseille), portraying the day-to-day life of two young women recently transplanted to a big city as their early adulthood unfolds.
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Films tackle sociopolitical issues as in Guillaume Cailleau and Ben Russell’s DIRECT ACTION (winner of the Best Film award in the Berlinale’s Encounters section), which traces the actions of a French political eco-activist group, and Dimitris Athiridis’s exergue – on documenta 14, where politics and art collide in a 14-part serial looking behind the scenes of the making of the global contemporary art showcase Documenta 14 and how it signaled major impending political shifts in Europe.
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Other features include Nicolás Pereda’s Lázaro at Night, an awkward love triangle among actors auditioning for the same film; Matthew Rankin’s Universal Language (winner of the Audience Award at Cannes’ Directors Fortnight), which grasps at connection among relocated Iranians in Canada and Marta Mateus’s Fire of Wind, which mingles past and present traditions through a small community during the harvest season.
The short films in Currents reflect similar stylistic and thematic concerns and are grouped into six programs, see below.
NYFF runs September 27–October 14 at Lincoln Center and venues in Staten Island (Alamo Drafthouse Cinema), Brooklyn (BAM), Bronx (The Bronx Museum, and Queens (Museum of the Moving Image).
CURRENTS FEATURES
Currents Centerpiece: Little, Big, and Far, Jem Cohen, World Premiere
7 Walks with Mark Brown, Pierre Creton and Vincent Barré
The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire, Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich
Bluish, Lilith Kraxner, Milena Czernovsky
DIRECT ACTION, Guillaume Cailleau, Ben Russell
exergue – on documenta 14, Dimitris Athiridis,
Fire of Wind, Marta Mateus
Jimmy, Yashaddai Owens,
Lázaro at Night, Nicolás Pereda
The Suit, Heinz Emigholz
Universal Language, Matthew Rankin
You Burn Me / Tú me abrasas, Matías Piñeiro
CURRENTS SHORT FILMS
Currents Program 1: The Will to Change
Black Glass, Adam Piron
Man number 4, Miranda Pennell,
An All-Around Feel Good, Jordan Lord,
The Deep West Assembly, Cauleen Smith,
Currents Program 2: Identification Marks
Track_ing, Chanyeol Lee, Hanna Cho, Samgar Rakym, Ali Tynybekov,
I Remember (depth of flatten cruelty), James Richards, Tolia Astakhishvili
Efforts of Nature, Morgan Quaintance,
Being John Smith, John Smith
Currents Program 3: Signal to Noise
Grandmamauntsistercat, Zuza Banasińska,
Jizai, Maiko Endo,
Like an Outburst, Sebastián Schjaer
Hemel, Danielle Dean,
Currents Program 4: Space Is the Place
Revolving Rounds, Christina Jauernik,
ESP, Laura Kraning,
re-engraved, Lei Lei,
A Black Screen Too, Rhayne Vermette
The Land at Night, Richard Tuohy,
Archipelago of Earthen Bones — To Bunya, Malena Szlam
Currents Program 5: Material Worlds
Vibrant Matter, Pablo Marín,
Towards the Sun, Far from the Center, Pascal Viveros, Luciana Merino,
No Spank, Jordan Strafer,
Sinking Feeling, Zachary Epcar
The Invisible Worm, Rosalind Nashashibi,
Currents Program 6: Poetry Is Not a Luxury
Refuse Room, Simon Liu,
Machine Boys, Karimah Ashadu,
Razeh-del, Maryam Tafakory,
Practice, Practice, Practice, Kevin Jerome Everson,
October Noon, Francisco Rodríguez Teare