MUBI and the Film Society of Lincoln Center are once again partnering to show highlights from the New York Film Festival's Projections online.
The New York Film Festival’s Projections section presents an international selection of film and video work that expands upon our notions of what the moving image can do and be. Drawing on a broad range of innovative modes and techniques, including experimental narratives, avant-garde poetics, crossovers into documentary and ethnographic realms, and contemporary art practices, Projections brings together a diverse offering of short, medium, and feature-length work by some of today’s most vital and groundbreaking filmmakers and artists.
Projections runs October 7 - 8 in New York, and before this weekend event MUBI will be exclusively showing two features and three shorts that are among our favorites from the festival's past two years. The films will be streaming in almost all countries around the world, for a 30 day run each. At the close of the New York Film Festival, we will show a new set of selections, this time fresh from the 2016 event—stay tuned for that additional lineup! Here is the first selection:
The Sky Trembles and the Earth Is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers (Ben Rivers, United Kingdom), October 2
Shooting against the staggering beauty of the Moroccan landscape, a director abandons his own film set, descending into a hallucinatory adventure of cruelty, madness and malevolence. A Paul Bowles story combined with observational footage forms a multi-layered excavation into the illusion of cinema.
Something Between Us (Jodie Mack, USA), October 3
A choreographed motion study for twinkling trinkets, beaming baubles, and glaring glimmers. A bow ballet ablaze (for bedazzled buoyant bijoux brought up to boil).
Fe26 (Kevin Jerome Everson, USA), October 4
Fe26 follows two gentlemen around the East Side of Cleveland, Ohio and examines the tensions between illegal work—in this case, the stealing of manhole covers and copper piping—and the basic survival tactics that exist in areas of high unemployment.
Mad Ladders (Michael Robinson, USA), October 5
A modern prophet’s visions of mythical destruction and transformation are recounted across a turbulent geometric ceremony of rising curtains, swirling setpieces, and unveiled idols from music television’s past.
Minotaur (Nicolás Pereda, Mexico), October 6
A wraithlike fantasy that observes three thirtysomethings as they sleep, dream, read and receive visitors in a Mexico City apartment.
Regal (Karissa Hahn, USA), October 14
An old Regal Cinemas pre-show animation is further degraded as it’s run through a ringer of format transfers, each layer representing a different viewing space.
Now: End of Season (Ayman Nahle, Lebanon), October 15
While US President Ronald Reagan is out horse riding, the Syrian President Hafiz al-Assad tries in vain to reach him by phone.
Cilaos (Camilo Restrepo, France), October 16
To keep a promise made to her dying mother, a young woman goes off in search of her father, a womanizer she has never met. Along the way, she soon learns that he is dead. But that doesn’t change her plans, she still intends to find him.
Foyer (Ismaïl Bahri, France/Tunisia), October 17
A piece of blank white paper placed and pulsating before a camera’s lens attracts a crowd of passers-by in Tunis, the simplicity of the conceit slowly opening up to a profound reflection on the nature of cinema itself (both its creation and its collective viewing).
Indefinite Pitch (James N. Kienitz Wilkins, USA), October 18
A pathetic movie pitch set in Berlin slips into the murkiness of memory and into histories best forgotten or purposely ignored.