Forget the multiplex, look to the art houses for some of this year's best cinematic bets

Despite the locality implied by its title, the New York Film Festival is essentially an arbitrary creature. Culled together by a handful of critics with their particular idiosyncratic tastes, the annual Lincoln Center gathering doesn’t so much reflect New York film culture as much as a New York state of mind: Cinema from outside the immediate mainstream, with a few detours down obscurity lane. With the exception of the avant-garde sidebar, many of the films in the NYFF program will become available in theaters not so far down the road. But a number of screening opportunities taking place throughout the city this fall offer more rarefied experiences. (Sorry, Giuliani, if the following choices seem too metropolitan.)

Hollywood often steals the spotlight, but there’s little doubt that cinema first succeeded at the beginning of the 20th century in NYC. There is the less acknowledged fact that even after the studio moguls came to roost out West, the city continued to thrive as a Mecca for filmmakers of all sorts: And this idea gets revived with the “Hollywood on the Hudson” series at the Museum of Modern Art. Running September 17 through October 19, the extensive retrospective presents a peek at the city-based filmmaking that took place between the two World Wars, when cost-cutting artisans realized they could take advantage of the naturalistic settings and ethnic diversity to develop a versatility of creative expression. (Those seeking respite from urban chaos might want to check out Carlos Reygadas’ gorgeous study in big screen tranquility, Silent Light, screening at MoMA September 24-29.)

Productions like D.W. Griffith’s The Struggle (1931), the innovative montage master’s final feature, used the city’s gritty nature to reflect the theme (in this case, alcoholism and despair). African-American cinema flourished in New York, as seen in the MoMA series with Joseph Seiden’s Paradise in Harlem (1939) and the great Oscar Micheaux’s Murder in Harlem (1935), while Carlos Gardel introduced the delights of tango to a larger audience in El Tango en Broadway (1934) and others. Then, of course, there’s the Yiddish cinema, including the surprisingly potent Tevye (1939), a Sholom Aleichem adaptation that looks like neorealism compared to Fiddler on the Roof.

October is presidential debate month, and several movies screening at that time touch on a number of hot-button issues that simply won’t go away. Director David Zucker (Airplane!) reveals his true colors with the conservative spoof, An American Carol (October 3), which features Chris Farley’s brother Kevin as a Michael Moore type getting slapped around by the likes of Bill O’Reilly and a couple ethereal GOP angels. If you prefer political parables with some semblance of realism, there’s always Oliver Stone’s W. (October 17). But a more enterprising look at bureaucratic corruption, on a smaller scale, lies with Luke Eberl’s Choose Connor (October 10), a thoughtful, occasionally frightening and mostly heartbreaking story of a small town teenager’s civic ambitions clashing hard with the corruption of a slimy local U.S. Senate Candidate (Steven Weber at his assertive best). With religion sure to come up as a divisive aspect when America chooses its national leader, Abel Ferrara’s Mary (at Anthology Film Archives October 24-30) and Bill Maher’s unremitting satiric documentary Religulous expose certain extremist tendencies, while the Israeli Film Festival (October 29-November 13 at Clearview Cinema) introduces the details of a much-disputed culture in its own voice. 

Nevertheless, you don’t have to aim for blatant topicality when programming a cinematic evening in the city. Anthology’s Robert Frank retrospective, which runs November 7-16, provides a detailed collection of film and video work by the seminal 20th-century photographer (perhaps most famous for his coffee-table book of national faces, The Americans). Frank’s cinematic work includes the 1959 underground hit Pull My Daisy, which features narration by Jack Kerouac and gives a starring role to Allen Ginsberg. Should you seek epicurean delights before experimentalism, BAMcinematek’s series, “Sexy, Scary, and Often Naked: Asia Argento (November 1-9) puts forth a naughty fix. The daughter of horror master Dario, this voluptuous entertainer puts on show-stopping displays of ferocious femininity in her own directorial achievements (The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things), her father’s (Mother of Tears) and numerous other accomplished filmmakers, such as Olivier Assayas (Boarding Gate) and Abel Ferrara (New Rose Hotel and Go Go Tales, the latter of which isn’t included in the series).

Nonfiction buffs will surely seek out Stranded at Film Forum (Oct. 22) to see how a bunch of South American plane-crash survivors resorted to cannibalism and managed to say trim, but they should also seek out Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, which plays at BAM and Anthology in late October. Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno have crafted a detailed portrait of soccer icon Zinédine Zidane, which in turn has inspired a quintessential New York filmmaker—Spike Lee—to apply their concept to a forthcoming documentary about Kobe Bryant. From high-art concepts to the fierce struggles of athleticism, New Yorkers don’t fuck around with their cinematic ambitions. For everyone else, there’s always Max Payne.