NYC Film Festivals

Festival Round-Up: NewFest Expands, High Line en EspaƱol

By S.T. VanAirsdale

A few updates on some of New York's forthcoming fests:

--The 19th annual New York Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Film Festival (you can call it NewFest) sent over word Monday of a fairly massive program for early June: more than 250 shorts and features, including 32 NYC premieres, 23 US premieres and eight world premieres. Festival director Basil Tsiokos mentioned the grouping of many NewFest selections in four general "focus themes," including how dynamics of family, religion, aging and activism affect perspectives on LGBT life in 2007. Other additions include the NewFest LateNight category and a staged reading of Todd Stephens' sequel screenplay Another Gay Movie 2: Gays Gone Wild. The opening night film, Duncan Roy's AIDS-era updating of The Picture of Dorian Gray, screens May 31; Robert Cary's Save Me will close the festival June 10.


Art house: Caravaggio star Alessio Boni, who will join cinematographer Vittorio Storaro at the film's screening during the upcoming Open Roads series of new Italian cinema

--The High Line Festival has been publicized within an inch of its life, but not for its Spanish-language repertory film program, which no doubt leaves room to be impressed. That said, it's always a treat to have a look at Victor Erice's Spirit of the Beehive, which screens tonight, and Andres Wood's strong Chilean revolution/coming-of-age drama Machuca closes things out Thursday night. Both films screen at the Quad.

--The Human Rights Watch International Film Festival is coming up as well, featuring 24 titles from June 15-28 at the Walter Reade Theater. The selections include a surprising number of Sundance selections and alums, including '07 films like Banished, Hot House, White Light/Black Rain, Enemies of Happiness, Everything's Cool, The Devil Came on Horseback and Manufactured Landscapes; '06 prize-winner James Longley (Iraq in Fragments) director returns with the doc Sari's Mother, about an Iraqi woman struggling to raise her child, who has AIDS, during the US occupation.

--Finally, the Film Society of Lincoln Center just announced its line-up for its annual Open Roads series of new Italian cinema, including 12 features and a handful of shorts. Among the highlights: the soon-to-be-slashed 150-minute cut of Angelo Longoni's biopic Caravaggio, shot by Vittorio Storaro and starring Alessio Boni as the pseudonymous 17th-century painter and troublemaker (Boni and Storaro will be in attendance); and a visit from 92-year-old filmmaker Mario Monicelli, who will screen his own latest, Desert Roses. The program also features new work by Giuseppe Tornatore (The Unknown Woman) and New Directors/New Films alum Saverio Costanzo (In Memory of Me).

Visit the fests' respective Web sites for more program, schedule and ticketing information.

Posted at May 15, 2007 1:04 PM

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