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HBO FILMS® Directors Dialogues
These close encounters with filmmakers in the festival allow an in-depth look at each director’s filmmaking process and the story behind their work. Each conversation is followed by a Q&A. Afterward, Illy coffee and light refreshments will be served in the Furman Gallery. [We Card: Presentation of valid ID will be required to be served alcoholic beverages at the reception.]
DAVID FINCHER
In conversation with Todd McCarthy
Raised in the Bay Area, where he got his start doing special effects work for George Lucas’s Industrial Light and Magic, David Fincher has spent the last 25 years rapidly ascending through the industry ranks, directing a series of award-winning and influential commercials and music videos before moving on to the stylish, provocative feature films that have established him as a modern Hollywood master. From the paranoid thrills of The Game to the simmering social anarchy of Fight Club and the sweeping romanticism of the Oscar-winning The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Fincher moves effortlessly between genres and subjects, always with a keen intelligence and a perfectionist’s touch. As he brings the world premiere of The Social Network to NYFF, Fincher will discuss his wide-ranging career, and the challenge of making unconventional films in a highly conventional industry.
NYFF selection committee member Todd McCarthy writes the blog Todd McCarthy’s Deep Focus at Indiewire. For more than 30 years, he was the chief film critic for Variety. He is also the author of several books and the director of the documentary films Visions of Light and Pierre Rissient: Man of Cinema.
Sat Sep 25: 11:00am (WRT) Ticket Info >>
IMPORTANT: This event has been re-scheduled from 1pm to 11am.
KELLY REICHARDT
In conversation with Melissa Anderson
From the swamps of the Florida Everglades to the wilds of the Pacific Northwest, Kelly Reichardt (Wendy and Lucy, NYFF 2008) has turned her camera upon the byways of a vanishing America for a series of lyrical, handcrafted portraits of misfits and wanderers that has established her as one of the foremost storytellers in independent film today. Her latest, the ravishing period western Meek’s Cutoff, is no exception, finding in its deceptively simple tale of three families traversing the Oregon Trail a complex consideration of manifest destiny and the myths of the Old West. In this career-spanning conversation, Reichardt will talk about her outsider cinema, her ongoing creative partnership with the novelist Jon Raymond, and much more.
NYFF selection committee member Melissa Anderson is a regular contributor to The Village Voice, in addition to which her work has appeared in Film Comment, Time Out, and other publications.
Sat Oct 9: 3:30pm (WRT) Ticket Info >>
JULIE TAYMOR
In conversation with James Shapiro
A creative force whose talent seems to know no bounds, Julie Taymor has made her indelible mark on the worlds of theater, opera, and now the cinema. A two-time Tony winner for her work (as both director and designer) on Broadway’s The Lion King, Taymor has more recently brought her all-encompassing vision to bear on a series of film projects, including the Oscar-winning Frida, that are as opulent as they are intimate, as form-shattering as they are indebted to classical narrative traditions. On the occasion of her second Shakespearean adaptation, NYFF2010 centerpiece The Tempest, this visionary artist will talk about her influences, her multidisciplinary career and the process of adapting Shakespeare for a contemporary audience.
Columbia University professor James Shapiro is the author of Rival Playwrights: Marlowe, Jonson, Shakespeare; Shakespeare and the Jews, which was awarded the Bainton Prize for best book on 16th-century literature; and 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare (2005), winner of the Theatre Book Prize as well as the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize. His most recent book is Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? He is currently at work on another book, The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606.
Sun Oct 3: 5:00pm (KP) Ticket Info >>
APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL
In conversation with Dennis Lim
When Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives won the Palme d’Or from a Tim Burton–led jury at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, it merely confirmed what adventurous cinephiles (and NYFF regulars) have known for a decade now: that filmmaker and multimedia artist Apichatpong “Joe” Weerasethakul is making some of the most excitingly original and singularly beautiful moving images in the world today. Although he studied filmmaking at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, it is Weerasethakul’s native Thailand that has served as his cinematic canvas—specifically, the lushly enveloping tropical jungle where past and present, man and beast seem to exist in a dreamlike continuum. In this intimate dialogue, Weerasethakul will offer a personal account of his development as a visual artist and the formation of his unique aesthetic.
NYFF selection committee member Dennis Lim is the editor of Moving Image Source, the online magazine of the Museum of the Moving Image. His writing on film also appears regularly in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and other publications.
Sun Sep 26: 1:00pm (WRT) Ticket Info >>
