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September-October 2002

Todd Haynes and Far from Heaven, Winona Ryder, Yasazu Masumura, Jia Zhangke, Paul Greengrass’s Bloody Sunday, Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark, 40th New York Film Festival, Shabana Azmi, Russ Meyer

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FEATURES

TODD HAYNES
By Amy Taubin
Channeling Fifties melodrama, Far from Heaven, starring Julianne Moore and Dennis Quaid, takes the woman’s weepie to another level

WINONA RYDER
By Alissa Quart
She’s been breathtaking onscreen; she’s been busted on the street. Whatever, we’re watching her every move

YASAZU MASUMURA
By Jonathan Rosenbaum
During a 30-year career in the Japanese mainstream, he made 57 films. At the core of his work is a fascination with individualists pursuing their obsessions to the point of insanity. Six new DVDs give U.S. viewers a taste of his radical sensibility

THE NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL TURNS FORTY
Check out four decades of photographic memories

JIA ZHANGKE
By Kent Jones
Unknown Pleasures, a study in alienated Chinese youth, confirms this director as the leading filmmaker of his generation

PAUL GREENGRASS
By Graham Fuller
Ballsy British realism is back with a vengeance. Bloody Sunday, the latest of this director’s studies of injustice and masculine pathology, tackles Northern Ireland’s Troubles, which reached flashpoint in the early Seventies with the deaths of unarmed civil rights protesters at the hands of the British Army.

ALEXANDER SOKUROV
By Tony Pipolo
Fantastic imagist and great Russian humanist, he switches easily between film and video, creating a vast body of work that readily borrows from the likes of Flaubert, Dostoyevsky, and his own inner vision. Plus J. Hoberman on Sokurov’s Russian Ark

SHABANA AZMI
By Maithili Rao
This Indian superstar is also one of the continent’s leading feminist spokespeople. A Hindi Jane Fonda, her choice of roles reflects both her artisitic ambition and her political ideals.

HORROR REDISCOVERED
By Maitland McDonagh
Film preservation has taken tremendous steps to protect the masterpieces of film history. Working on a different front, a few hardcore fanatics have dedicated themselves to rescuing their beloved shocksploitation genre from oblivion.

DEPARTMENTS

EDITOR’S LETTER

OPENING SHOTS
News, Guilty Pleasures by Guillermo Del Toro, Discovery: Eija-Liisa Ahtila by Amy Taubin, Journal: Bangkok by Kong Rithdee, Distributor Wanted: The Inner Tour by Alice Lovejoy, Off the Shelf by David Chute, Letters

FIRST LOOK
Harmony Korine’s Ken Park by Chris Chang

SOUND & VISION
Tribute by Chuck Klosterman & Russ Meyer by Chris Chang

CRITICS CHOICE
Eight critics rate 25 new releases

STORYBOARD
“Théâtre Optique”: New Fiction by Carole Maso

REVIEWS
All or Nothing by Chris Chang, The Rules of Attraction by Mark Olsen, Naqoyqatsi by Raul Arthur, Blackboards by Richard Combs, Reviews in Brief: The Trials of Henry Kissinger, Alias Betty, Secretary, How I Killed My Father, Love Liza by Chris Chang

VIDI VIDI VIDI
The latest DVD releases

FSLC SEEN
Who’s who at recent Film Society events