h. nazan ışık—
19 March 2014—
New Directors/New Films festival (ND/NF), organized by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art is celebrating its 43rd year with the 27 features and 13 shorts from 29 countries. Festival introduces New York audiences to the work of emerging filmmakers or exciting new discoveries from around the world.
Girl (Sheila Vand) in “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night” (Film Society of Lincoln Center)
The 2014 ND/NF festival opens today, on 19 March with a screening of debut feature director Ana Lily Amirpour’s “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night”, an Iranian vampire film.
This year’s program is very rich and offers quality.
Film poster
Romanian director Tudor Cristian Jurgiu’s debut film “The Japanese Dog” is very heartwarming with limited dialogues. The film sets in northeastern countryside from the 2010 floods that destroyed hundreds of homes and killed dozens. Retiree Costache (Victor Rebengiuc) is one of the survivors who lost his house and his wife during the flood. The mayor urges him to sell his property for development, but he doesn’t want to, he is attached to what is left. One day his engineer son Ticu (Serban Pavlu), comes home for the belated funeral for the first time in more than a decade from Japan. He has his Japanese wife and young son who speak no Romanian. And Ticu wants to take his father to Japan with him. The communication between his daughter-in-law and grandchild is very difficult. But the boy’s toy, a robo-dog, builds a bridge between grandfather and grandchild. Is he going to Japan with them or stay there is a key to the story.
Film poster
Robert Minervini’s “ Stop the Pounding Heart”, a documentary-style portrait of the Carlson Family’s, a goat farmer, focuses on and their 14-year-old daughter Sara. Sara takes care of her siblings, and goats. She and her siblings are the students of their parents who believe in Bible-based home schooling. Her only outside life is attending farmer’s market, and a neighbor, 14 year-old boy bull rider, Colby (Colby Trichell).
Film Poster
“Of Horses and Men” written and directed by Benedikt Erlingsson is one of the most beautiful films in the festival program. Vignettes bring us life in the remote Icelandic valley; where there is not much to do other than observe the horses, the neighbors, and the neighbors’ horses, very closely, with binoculars.
But ‘Love’ is always in the air, courtship is there, and you are a person or a horse, calls of hormones there, too. Can a horse humiliate his owner in front of everyone?
Even thought ND/NF focuses on introducing new talents, this year’s lineup also welcomes back Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani “The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears”, whose “Amer” screened in the ND/NF 2010 festival, and Hubert Sauper with “We Come As Friends” about modern colonialism. His, an Oscar-nominated movie “Darvin’s Nightmare” was screened in the ND/NF 2005 edition.
ND/NF closes on 30 March with Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard’s “ 20,000 Days on Earth”, a film about musician Nick Cave.
For more information visit: http://www.newdirectors.org/
© h. nazan ışık