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September-October 2019

57th NYFF Special Section, including Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite, Pain and Glory and Pedro Almodóvar on his literary inspirations, Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story, Angela Schanelec’s I Was at Home, But..., and Corneliu Porumboiu’s The Whistlers; Plus: film education, Piotr Szulkin, fake movies, and much more.

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SPECIAL SECTION: The 57th New York Film Festival

Parasite
By Amy Taubin and Ari Aster
The darkly madcap Palme d’Or–winner from Bong Joon Ho—fiendishly talented master of the scream into the void—sends chills through a critic and a filmmaker

Pain and Glory
By Michael Koresky
Pedro Almodóvar plumbs the depths of his own past and looks to possible futures in his wonderfully queer testament to the creative urge. Plus: Almodóvar writes about his reading habits

I Was at Home, But...
By Jonathan Romney
The oblique films of German director Angela Schanelec contain multitudes of riches and pent-up emotion if you peek beneath the static surface­—her latest included

Marriage Story
By Nicolas Rapold and Sheila O’Malley
Noah Baumbach spares no painful detail in his intimate account of a divorce and the hapless pair trying to navigate it. Plus: a career-spanning look at Baumbach’s genius for neurotic regret

The Whistlers
By José Teodoro
Romanian director Corneliu Porumboiu tries a different tune in his latest, which finds him jaunting off to the Canary Islands for a delightfully convoluted neo-noir

FEATURES

School of Film
By Chris Wisniewski
The landscape of film art education has shifted drastically in the last decade, paving new roads for future generations of young people who dream of wielding a camera

Piotr Szulkin
by Olaf Möller
The idiosyncratic Polish filmmaker used dystopias and doomsday scenarios to comment on the state of his nation and the world

Fake Movies
By Mark Asch
From F. Scott Fitzgerald to Joan Didion to David Foster Wallace, novelists have playfully invented fictional films that imagine doubly alternate realities

DEPARTMENTS & COLUMNS

THE PRE-SHOW | News, views, conversations, and other things to get worked up about
News, Inspired: Rodrigo Prieto on The Irishman, Release Me: Justine Triet's Sibyl by Nicolas Rapold, Directions: Diao Yinan by Wang Muyan, Restoration Row: Ula Stöckl’s The Cat Has Nine Lives by Max Nelson

CRITICS’ CHOICE
Critics rate and comment on new releases

MAKE IT REAL | The wide, wide world of cinematic nonfiction
Eric Hynes on Julia Reichert and American Factory

ART AND CRAFT | Filmmaking according to the makers
On managing your digital image after death, by Daniel Witkin

PLAYING ALONG | Music and the movies
Babyface and Waiting to Exhale by Andrew Chan

OFF THE PAGE | The art of getting from book to screen
Bernice Bobs Her Hair and F. Scott Fitzgerald by Justin Stewart

SCARE TACTICS | The pleasures of cinematic horror
Blumhouse and black filmmakers by Soraya Nadia McDonald

CURRENTS | New and important work plucked from festivals and elsewhere
Minh Quý Trương's The Tree House, Bas Devos's Ghost Tropic, and Tyler Taormina's Ham on Rye by Jordan Cronk, Josephine Mackerras's Alice by Ela Bittencourt, Nadège Trebal's Twelve Thousand by Nicolas Rapold, Priya Sen's This Freedom Life by Abby Sun

IN MEMORIAM | Remembering the cinéastes who have passed on
John Singleton by Craigh Barboza, Rip Torn by Nick Pinkerton

THE BIG SCREEN | Reviews of notable new films opening in theaters (hopefully near you)
The Lighthouse by José Teodoro, Monos by Devika Girish, Genesis by Abby Sun, Tigers Are Not Afraid by Chloe Lizotte

Short Takes: The Laundromat by Nicolas Rapold, Loro by Christina Newland, Midnight Traveler by Kelli Weston, Mister America by Nicolas Rapold, The Current War by Steven Mears

HOME MOVIES | Cinema spun, streamed, and beamed
American Film Theatre Series: 14 Films by Steven Mears, Akio Jissôji: The Buddhist Trilogy by Michael Joshua Rowin, Vice Squad by Maitland McDonagh, The Harder They Come by Ina Diane Archer, The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice by Farran Smith Nehme, Sword of Trust by Phoebe Chen, Razzia sur la chnouf by Imogen Sara Smith, Umbango by R. Emmet Sweeney, Wish List: The Last Woman by C. Mason Wells

READINGS | Books about all aspects of filmmaking and film culture
Luis Buñuel: A Life in Letters edited by Jo Evans and Breixo Viejo, reviewed by Manu Yáñez Murillo; The Art and Craft of TV Directing: Conversations with Episodic Television Directors by Jim Hemphill, reviewed by Bruce Bennett; Chromatic Modernity: Color, Cinema, and Media of the 1920s by Sarah Street and Joshua Yumibe, reviewed by Oya Haznedar

GRAPHIC DETAIL | The art of the movie poster
The poster art of Juan Gatti by Adrian Curry