Now a days there are so many festivals and each one is fighting for its own niche. New York Film Festival kind of locked in the same category of Venice and Toronto and Telluride. How do you think NYFF separates itself from some of those?

Well, there’s no market. Unlike Venice, Toronto, and Sundance for sure. There’s also no award. There are no separate sections. It is all about the movies and they are selected from other festivals. You go to [the other festivals] and you have this cache to get films by the major filmmakers. New York Film Festival has always been about what are the 24 to 26 best movies decided by a group, and I happen to be a member of that group.

Just of a question of curiosity—how does the selection committee work? Do the five of you sit down and argue the merits or what?

We all go the Cannes and take in as much as we can. In the beginning of August we sit down for a couple weeks and just screen mostly in the Walter Reade in the mornings. We cut the schedule so we can watch from 9:30 in the morning to 4. Also, starting around April, we convene every once and a while and pick film, such as Mike Leigh’s movie [Happy-Go-Lucky].

Now its 2008 and everyone’s favorite comparison has been of course to make 2008 into the “new 1968.” And of course I think in a way that reflects a lot on the dominance of French films this year. After May 68, cashier du cinema became very political and you see that of course in the evolution of Godard. This year, many of the French films are once again very politically charged, starting with the opening night selection of Laurent Canet’s The Class. Do you think that this year brings another very politically charged year of cinema?

People always look for themes, but there is no such thing, because there can’t be, because there are certain things in the air that affect the entire world. And you see patterns that run through the separate years. It’s because of chance, and things not dealing with cinema. The films from France this year I wouldn’t characterize as particularly political. I’m not so sure The Class is a politically charged film. It’s a movie that looks at French society through the lens of a high school…it features questions that have been going on that French filmmakers have dealing with for years. They’ve been dealing with the appearance of immigrants in the country, and the influx, and that’s changed the make up of the country since you can’t…If you are making a movie now, where you are dealing with what certain people call Le France Profonde, then that would be akin to making a movie where you make a movie in Ohio where the people are all white, waving flags, and going to Church ministers on Sundays. It’s an ideal more than a reality. The Class is kind of looking it through the lens of a classroom, which isn’t to say that it is a good film, but not necessarily politically charged. There isn’t anything in French cinema that suggests that is more political than anywhere else in the world. 

Besides France then, the other country once again represented very well in the United States, and there are a lot of returning filmmakers—Clint Eastwood, Darren Aronofsky, and Kelly Reichart. Looking at these directors and the challenges they are taking, you have to wonder what they are thinking. How would you characterize the slate of American films this year?

The question of connections, There are always connections, and if your intent on looking for them, you will always find them. If Clint Eastwood and Kelly Reichart are making movies at roughly the same time, and shot in 2007, and they are both are responsive artists, working on different ends of the economic spectrum. Eastwood is working in the commercial apparatus, and she’s not. His has many characters, and the story is spread over a vast period of time, and is working with one of the most famous people in the world right now. Her film is very small, tiny cast and set, and while Eastwood’s is a period piece, hers is set now. The way these two films cross paths, is in the presentation of an unforgiving social landscape where you really have to throw up your hands and start screaming for help before anybody is really going to help you. In Eastwood’s movie, the issue of blatant authoritarianism, and the misuse of authoritarianism and its use by men over women is accented. Reichart’s movie is something else—the way in which the society she’s working in is structured, there is no forgiveness. It comes from individuals, and it comes pathologically, and there is no forgiveness from the top. It’s the harshness of the world she inhabits, which is the world we inhabit. If you are in NYC, its different but it comes through because it’s such a minimal films and because her plight is so basic.

I think what might be the festival’s most talked about film—or at least it sold out the quickest this year, is Steven Soderbergh’s Che. Now people since Cannes are arguing, is it a failure? Is it a masterpiece? Should is be broken into two parts or played as a whole? When the five of you decided to put Che in the format as one single screening, what was the debate on that like, and why do you think this film is getting the kind of responses it gets?

We didn’t have a debate; we were going to show it how Steven Soderbergh wants to show it. The polarizing views come because Che is a polarizing figure. The figure has meant a lot to people all over the world, and then there are some who really despise him. I think the cries of failure at Cannes came up, first of all at Cannes because people are ready to cry at the drop of a hat “masterpiece” or “failure”—it’s ridiculous. The buzzing beehive of judgment at Cannes is loud and consistent, from beginning to end. In the case of that film, is because people saw a movie called Che starring Benicio De Toro with Che Guvera, and discovered that it was no one but two movies, and those two movies were not really about Che Guvara. It’s really in the first movie about the circumstances of a successful revolution is conducted, and in the second movie, the circumstances in which a failed revolution is conducted. The first movie is about when everything goes right, and the second about when everything goes wrong. It’s very squarely in those parameters. There’s some biographical material of Che on the outskirts, particularly in the first movie there are some flashforwards to New York, speaking at the UN. But really, the framework of the movie is not biographical at all, and very restricted, in an interesting sense. It reminded me of the fact that revolutionary campaigns have luck. So they were lucky in Cuba and not so lucky in Bolivia.

As it always seems these days, most of the films are very depressing—Gommorah, Hunger, Wendy and Lucy—which is why I find the contrast with the new Mike Leigh film Happy-Go-Lucky so interesting. Was there any deliberation that maybe you needed a happy movie like this to contrast with all the depressing material surrounding it?

If we started thinking that way, we’d be lost. If we had 100 films to choose, that would be different. But we’ve got 24 and 26 films. The point is that we can’t start. It’s not like cooking a meal; It doesn’t have to be balanced. We have to do our jobs and its very simple—we pick the best movies we see. I don’t believe in the idea that we should mix things up and vary our choices. That seems dishonest to me. We always choose the best ones we see. The way the films are scheduled is based on when a filmmaker is going to be available. Happy-Go-Lucky may have a title that indicates that it is a laugh around film, but it’s a petty serious film. Maybe Saturday will be a day where people will go and reflect on stress and strains and difficulty, but I think Stanley Kubrick once said “if a work of art is a masterpiece, then it can’t be depressing.” And he’s right. I’m not saying these films are masterpieces, but they are great works of art, and not just depressing.

I think what might be the most exciting feature of the festival this year is actually the new Technicolor print of Pandora and the Flying Dutchmen, which is being introduced by director Martin Scorsese. Can you explain how the film came to be on the slate on how Scorsese became involved?

We’ve done stuff with Marty before, and I have my own relationship with him. I collaborate. We as an institution, have worked a lot with Marty and the film foundation and the . This is a film foundation restoration, and we were hoping to show it last year but it wasn’t quite ready. So we went for Drums Along the Mohawk. Marty is always willing, but happy, to come and introduce, not just for us, but all over the world, introduce films that have been restored. As you know, film restoration has been a campaign for him. And its not just restoration but exhibition. And this film is a particular favorite of his. There is no other film quite like it. It’s been paid tribute to in other movies, such as Ira Sach’s Married Life…It has a special charge and its beautifully shot. restoration.

Now one of the special events that crossed my eye was the of course aptly titled “Film Criticism in Crisis.” I think many of us have watched this year about many of our favorite film critics being laid off, fired, etc. As editor-at-large of Film Comment, how do you see the state of film criticism developing today in light of bad economic times and the rise of the internet.

Now it’s true there’s been a lot of people let go. Nathan Lee, Gene Seymour, John Anderson, all over the place. There was recently a symposium where they asked a bunch of us to reflect on film criticism in the age of the internet. What you are seeing is a lot of spontaneously generated criticism. Well not spontaneous. Criticism that is being practiced by cinephiles that don’t have a birth anywhere but love films so much they are making websites, and taking the time to reflect on cinema on other people’s blogs. From the standpoint of newspapers and magazines, they might be thinking well, that’s taking the place of film critics, we don’t need to pay them, and lighten their load financially as much as they can. The fact that those two things are happening concurrently is interesting. I do think there is a strange thing that happens on the internet where you get a lot of time an elevated connoisseurship, for the simple reason there is a lot of reacting. There is a lot of passionate reacting and intelligent reacting; there is not a lot of writing. It doesn’t matter if you are reading a book, a magazine, a newspaper, or your computer screen; when something is written instead of generated, there is a difference. There’s a difference in which the dialogue is made with the reader and a difference in the thoughts the writer is putting into the piece. There is a lot confusion between facts and opinions on the internet. And that’s because there is an ambiguity expressing your personal opinion and writing a critical reflection on something. Between having a dialogue with somebody and having a soapbox to stand on. It comes up in my experience, again and again, and I find it…it troubles me when it affects me but it also troubles me when it affects others. It is interesting that people have to work out that question, it’s interesting that the question of writing could occur. A lot of the criticism out there is done by people who don’t do the job of writing; there are very few who actually do. A lot of people don’t take the work of criticism seriously as writing. That’s the reality—you are writing something that you have to pay enough attention as a novelist. But I think people think of themselves as playing in the sandbox sometimes so in a way. It is economics as well. These topics will come up when we are on the panel. Jonathan Rosenbaum will come up with the statement “when people ask me where I live I live on the internet.” I certainly like to talk to him about that.

Now there are simply so many movies to choose from at this festival. What are one or two of your favorites here that you really want people to get out to see?

Back in 1996, I was in Vienna film festival and met Philipe Gröning and we were talking about other films. And he said there’s this great guy from Kazakstahn and he wrote Darezhan Omirbahev. Olivier Assyass once called Omirbahev the Philipe Gröning of Kazakstahn, and not unjustly. We’ve never shown a film by Omirbahev, but we are this year. His film Chouga is 85 minutes long, and its an adaptation of [Tolstoy’s] Anna Karenina. When I met Omirbahev in Kazakstahn in 2004, he said I’m writing a new movie, and it’s the first movie I’ve ever written about a woman, instead of a man. But the fact he was basing it on Anna Kerinina never came up. What he does is the whole story is really there, the basic arc. He uses the story as a way of looking at modern Kazakstahn, because it’s a country in a state of transition with all this oil money flooding the country. It’s kind of converting it from a quiet place to a busy one. And I have no reason to argue with him a country where pretty basic ideas of civility and tradition are being thrown out the window. He goes to be a piercing, poetic kind of filmmaker and precise. And his style bears some resemblance to Bresson. It’s like a shot in one of his movies is poetic and more motivated and achieves. There are certain shots that look like ideograms. So potent and colorful. People are going to look at the description and think “Oh, 85 minute adaptation of Anna Kerinana from Kazakhstan, and immediately go away, but I think people should really pay attention to.

I also really love Night and Day by Hong sang-soo. It’s a film people might stay away from for different reasons because it’s very long. The idea of movie length, the pace, these are all big subjects. These are consumer categories. It has nothing to do with what’s really valuable. It’s about a guy who gets caught smoking pot in Korea, and he has to go to exile in Paris with very little money. He spends all hi9s time around the Korean community so you don’t really see French people except in the background of a shot now and then. Like most of his movies, it is devilishly intelligent, working out moral quandaries, or moral delusions I should say. The hero thinks he’s being nice and fair and imagines himself as looking out for the best in everyone. But as he’s doing that he’s actually doing damage. I find that really interesting. Hong sang-soo is one of the most interesting minds of any filmmaker working today, and is really daring. Every time he makes a new film he builds on the last one, its like an ongoing conversation. I think he’s absolutely unique and his film language is unique. It’s very simple and very spare. It’s a reminder that notable or arresting form, but it only goes so far; what a really good filmmaker is trying to do convey their story. That’s something that’s kind of lost in criticism these days.

One film that really moved me is Olivier Assayass’ Summer Hours. Over the years, I’ve written a lot about his films and he and I have become close friends. We’ve seen each other through a lot of our lives. I know how much the death of his mother affected him. I’m not sure he could of made the film before the death of his mother. He probably wouldn’t of. The way it addresses the mortality of a parent, the way that it looks at the question of what happens to the house of a parent after they die, and it becomes no longer a house but a property. That’s something very few people are able to look at a question like that. It seems like a simple question, and it seems like a subject that turns up a lot. But it doesn’t. Most of the time when a question like that shows up in an American movie like that it’s kind of the crocodile tears of the person who’s gone, the spirit. But this is about the cold heart reality of what happens when the house becomes a property. At times I found it unbearably moving.

When I was in Cannes a lot of people were commenting on A Christmas Tale, saying they had enough of sick mothers in movies, and family gatherings at Christmas.  Yes, there are a lot of movies. It’s not like in The Family Stone where it’s displaying all the quirks and anger that go on in a movie, treating the idea of disfunctionality like its some sort of an insight. In the film, there is no such thing as that as an insight, it would be laughed out of the house. In fact, for him, that’s where everything happens. What we can disfunctionality, is what we call all these different personalities fighting, kicking, screaming, and clawing, and actually that’s life. That’s where life begins and ends. Inside and through the door of the house. I think both of those films are incredible achievements.

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