Film at Lincoln Center (FLC) announces titles for its Winter/Spring 2021 Virtual Cinema slate. FLC’s Virtual Cinema was introduced in March of 2020 in response to the coronavirus crisis and showcases a wide-ranging mix of new releases, recent festival favorites, and repertory titles that movie lovers can enjoy from the safety and comfort of their homes.
Upcoming releases include New Directors/New Films selection Identifying Features; new restorations of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mirror and Olivier Assayas’s Demonlover; Lili Horvát’s Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time, a mysterious love story inspired by a Sylvia Plath poem; a program of Sam Pollard’s urgent and essential work timed to the release of MLK/FBI (NYFF58); and three beloved annual festivals: the New York Jewish Film Festival, the New York African Film Festival, and Rendez-Vous with French Cinema. All Virtual Cinema rentals support Film at Lincoln Center, helping to ensure that it remains a vibrant center for the cinema community. Film descriptions and additional details are listed below and on filmlinc.org. New releases and revival runs are organized by Florence Almozini, Dennis Lim, and Tyler Wilson.
FILMS & DESCRIPTIONSJanuary 13-26
New York Jewish Film Festival
Among the oldest and most influential Jewish film festivals worldwide, NYJFF each year presents the finest documentary, narrative, and short films from around the world that explore the Jewish experience. Co-presented with the Jewish Museum, the festival’s 2021 virtual lineup showcases 17 features and seven shorts, including the latest works by dynamic voices in international cinema and a brand-new restoration of Edgar G. Ulmer’s 1939 classic The Light Ahead.January 15-22
Tribute to Sam Pollard
Veteran editor, producer, and director Sam Pollard is among cinema’s most dedicated chroniclers of the Black experience in America, moving freely across film and long-form television as well as narrative and documentary for the past four decades. From his collaborations with St. Clair Bourne, Henry Hampton, and Spike Lee to his own documentaries, his works explore complicated American figures and the extended aftershocks of racial inequality with clear-eyed resolve, inspired in their historical and moral urgency and notable for their journalistic thoroughness and cogent structure. This January, Film at Lincoln Center is pleased to celebrate Pollard’s ever-deepening body of work, occasioned by the release of his latest, the virtuosic documentary MLK/FBI (an NYFF58 selection).Opens January 22
Identifying Features
Fernanda Valadez, 2020, Mexico/Spain, 94m
Spanish with English subtitles
Middle-aged Magdalena (Mercedes Hernández) has lost contact with her son after he took off with a friend from their city of Guanajuato to cross the border into the U.S., hopeful to find work. Desperate to find out what happened to him—and to know whether or not he’s even alive—she embarks on an ever-expanding and increasingly dangerous journey to discover the truth. At the same time, a young man named Miguel (David Illescas) has returned to Mexico after being deported from the U.S., and eventually his path converges with Magdalena’s. From this simple but urgent premise, director Fernanda Valadez has crafted a lyrical, suspenseful slow burn, constructed equally of moments of beauty and horror, and which leads to a startling, shattering conclusion. Winner of the World Cinema Dramatic Audience and Screenplay Awards at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. A New Directors/New Films 2020 selection. A Kino Lorber release.
Rental is $12 with a special 20% discount for Film at Lincoln Center Members. Opens January 22
Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time
Lili Horvát, 2020, Hungary, 95m
Hungarian and English with English subtitles
Taking the final stanza of Sylvia Plath’s “Mad Girl’s Love Song” as its starting point, Lili Horvát’s second feature finds its mysterious love story in Budapest’s male-driven field of neurosurgery. Márta Vizy (played with magnetic aplomb by Natasa Stork) is a brilliant brain surgeon who returns to Hungary after spending some time in America and discovers that a doctor with whom she once shared a passionate affair claims never to have seen her before—and that her grip on reality might be compromised. Deftly pivoting between noir, romance, and cool realism, Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time is at once a clever reworking of genre tropes and an enigmatic meditation on the psychological unmooring of romantic yearning. A Greenwich Entertainment release.
Rental is $12with a special 20% discount for Film at Lincoln Center Members. Opens January 29
Mirror – New Restoration!
Andrei Tarkovsky, 1974, Russia, 106m
Russian and Spanish with English subtitles
Andrei Tarkovsky’s fourth feature is perhaps the great director’s most personal and evocative work. It traverses three generations of a poet’s family in 20th-century Russia; his relationships with his wife, mother, and children and the society around him coalesce through events connected only by the interior logic of the poetic subconscious, yielding associations that both mystify and enthrall. Unified by Georgi Rerberg’s delicate lensing, Mirror employs radical shifts in both texture and color, abstracting the elemental minutiae of everyday life (like waves of air spreading across a field or spilled milk pooling on a table) to conjure the nostalgic sensations of memory and an enigmatic feeling of being outside space and time. A Janus Films release.
Rental is $12with a special 20% discount for Film at Lincoln Center Members. February 4-14
New York African Film Festival
Film at Lincoln Center and African Film Festival, Inc. will present the 28th New York African Film Festival under the banner “Notes From Home: Recurring Dreams & Women’s Voices.” The programs in this edition showcase the many different “types” of Africa, reflecting the dynamism of Africanness. The selected works explore the ways in which we are all connected in cyclical dreams of hope and change, and also highlight the voices of the women who have been strong catalysts in sparking transformation.Opens February 12
Demonlover – New Restoration!
Olivier Assayas, 2002, France, 122m
French, English, and Japanese with English subtitles
Assayas’s radical, thought-provoking cyber-thriller depicts the international aristocracies of capitalism in the early 2000s and their amoral double agents. Connie Nielsen stars as a ruthless executive at an internet company, where her insatiable ambition situates her in a bloody corporate conflict for illicit 3D manga pornography. Featuring a deranged ambient score by Sonic Youth and an international cast including Gina Gershon, Chloë Sevigny, and Charles Berling, Demonlover twists the conventions of the espionage thriller into a perceptive indictment of cyber culture and the entrepreneurs who exploit it. A 2003 Film Comment Selects selection. New 2K restoration of the unrated director’s cut supervised by Olivier Assayas. A Janus Films release.
Rental is $12with a special 20% discount for Film at Lincoln Center Members. March 4-14
Rendez-Vous with French Cinema
Rendez-Vous with French Cinema returns in March with another edition that exemplifies the variety and vitality of contemporary French filmmaking. The films on display, by emerging talents and established masters, raise ideas both topical and eternal, and many take audiences to entirely unexpected places. Highlights from recent Rendez-Vous with French Cinema editions include Bertrand Bonello’s Nocturama, Julia Ducournau’s Raw, Maïmouna Doucouré’s Cuties, Justine Triet’s Victoria, and Mathieu Amalric’s Barbara. Co-presented with UniFrance Films, the 26th edition of Rendez-Vous will demonstrate that the landscape of French cinema is as fertile, inspiring, and distinct as ever.FILM AT LINCOLN CENTER
Film at Lincoln Center is dedicated to supporting the art and elevating the craft of cinema and enriching film culture.Film at Lincoln Center fulfills its mission through the programming of festivals, series, retrospectives, and new releases; the publication of Film Comment; the presentation of podcasts, talks, and special events; the creation and implementation of Artist Initiatives; and our Film in Education curriculum and screenings. Since its founding in 1969, this nonprofit organization has brought the celebration of American and international film to the world-renowned Lincoln Center arts complex, making the discussion and appreciation of cinema accessible to a broad audience and ensuring that it remains an essential art form for years to come. Film at Lincoln Center receives generous, year-round support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. American Airlines is the Official Airline of Film at Lincoln Center. For more information, visit www.filmlinc.org and follow @filmlinc on Twitter and Instagram.
