Fresh Festival Voices

At a time when it seems that film festivals are more commercialized
than ever, New Directors/New Films serves as a sharp rejoinder from
March 23–April 3. The annual festival co-hosted by the Museum of Modern
Art and Film Society at Lincoln Center, now in its 40th year, holds true
to the promise of its title: no big names, no familiar titles;
everything is new.

The programming strategy is simple: overlooked festival favorites
with audience appeal. So while a few irritating works from the dregs of
Sundance slip into the selection, you also have the chance to sit in the
dark with challenging works from the most promising names in world
cinema.

This year, excitingly, the program seems dominated by woman:
directing, acting in leading roles or coming to life with a new
resonance through archival footage.

The surreal odyssey that frames At Ellen’s Age provides one the most
interesting and provoking viewing experience of ND/NF. Director Pia
Marais constructs a sublimely odd world around Ellen (played with
spider-like intensity by Jeanne Balibar), who, after a breakdown, drifts
among various groups like a ghost. The film manages to hold its
hypnotic grip on the viewer while not falling too far into the obscure.

Two documentaries, El Velador and The Black Power Mixtape, provide
chilling accounts of their subjects that are matched by a refreshing
vitality. Mixtape is the story of the Black Power Movement told through
unseen footage—shot for Swedish Television—which went missing for over
30 years. What we see now is in many ways incredible; the most striking
scene is a prison interview with Angela Davis, pale and ready to
crumble, holding back tears as she unloads on a reporter. In El Velador,
director Natalia Almada takes the viewer inside a cemetery in the
middle of a neighborhood embroiled in a drug war, a place of death that
is filled with human life. As the cemetery grows in size, a spooky
atmosphere invades the scene, turning the area into something more
resembling an abandoned amusement park.

Death also permeates the exquisite Curling, a story of a father
embracing life in a world filled with tragedy. The film is subtle and
elegant in striking ways, building slowly toward a climax that is
remarkable for its deeply felt brevity as much as its lack of judgement.
Life bursts through the formal rigor and emotional bleakness of Curling
in a non-aggressive way, and it’s the chance to see this type of film
that makes New Directors/New Films worth keeping around.