Film at Lincoln Center presentsArt of the RealNovember 13-26, 2020
"If you are curious about the possibilities of cinema as an art form, and hungry for something new and thought-provoking as well as entertaining, Art of the Real is the place to be."– ScreenAnarchy
Film at Lincoln Center's annual showcase for the most vital and innovative voices in nonfiction and hybrid filmmaking returns this November, rescheduled from its original dates in April. Featuring more than 25 films from around the world, the boundary-pushing slate highlights new works by internationally acclaimed filmmakers, as well as inventive, award-winning debuts.
The lineup features a number of films that examine the intimate and sometimes fragile relationships between people and their communities: Hassen Ferhani’s 143 Sahara Street, about the proprietor of a tiny Saharan café who is awaiting a seismic change in the local landscape; Ignacio Agüero’s I Never Climbed the Provincia, which collects the forgotten microhistories of the filmmaker’s neighborhood in Santiago, Chile; Luísa Homem’s Suzanne Daveau, a moving personal history of a mid-century geographer; Lisa Marie Malloy and J.P. Sniadecki’s A Shape of Things to Come, a portrait of life on the margins in the Arizona desert; and Andrea Luka Zimmerman and Adrian Jackson’s Here for Life, a synthesis of doc interviews and experimental theater capturing the effects of gentrification on a group of Londoners.
Several films connect humanity to the flora and fauna that surround us, such as Sérgio da Costa and Maya Kosa’s Bressonian doc-fiction hybrid Bird Island, about the delicate bond between birds and their human caretakers at a Genevan sanctuary; Jessica Sarah Rinland’s elliptical examination of original versus copy through an array of animals and artifacts in Those That, at a Distance, Resemble Another; Ezequiel Yanco’s La vida en común, about an indigenous community’s allegorical battle with a quasi-mythical beast; and Kaori Oda’s Cenote and Joshua Bonnetta’s The Two Sights, which explore the mystical energies of natural formations on the Yucatan Peninsula and the Outer Hebrides.
Art of the Real also features films that explore the fraught dynamics of labor and capitalism, from Jonathan Perel’s Corporate Accountability, which looks back at companies’ roles in brutally quashing worker organization during Argentina’s military dictatorship, to Elisa Cepedal’s Work, or to Whom Does the World Belong, which recounts Spain’s history of violently suppressing labor uprisings alongside images of the contemporary working class. Additional highlights include Pacho Velez and Courtney Stephens’s The American Sector, which traces the peculiar scattering of Berlin Wall fragments across the U.S.; Ernst Karel and Veronika Kusumaryati’s anthropological soundscape Expedition Content; and two feature debuts: Eloisa Soláas’s The Faculties, which reflects on the state of education in Argentina through the experiences of 12 students preparing for final exams; and NYFF alumnus Sky Hopinka’s małni—towards the ocean, towards the shore, a meditative, multisensory journey through the Pacific Northwest.
Finally, the festival will also showcase a shorts program with exciting new work from around the world, which will be made available to audiences for free.