Festival Closing Night Gala

Saturday, October 14---The 44th edition of the New York Film Festival is drawing to a close, but not without one more weekend of film excitement and diversity. Saturday sees repeat screenings of two of the Festival's most anticipated and debated films, Sofia Coppola's post-modern take on the French Revolution, MARIE ANTOINETTE, and Emmanuel Bordieu's homo-erotic POISON FRIENDS.

Another film having its final screening on Saturday is the Turkish drama CLIMATES by director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, whose earlier film DISTANT was an international arthouse hit. In this latest analysis of interpersonal relations, a man and his wife drift apart as the film shifts from oppressive heat to wintry snow, as climate modifies the behavior of its two antagonists (or is it the other way around). The director plays the male lead, with his wife playing opposite him, in this unbearably intimate exploration of the death of love and intimacy. CLIMATES screens today at 6:00pm.

Filipino director Lino Brocka was the film laureate of his native The Phillipines, bringing uncommon delicacy to his tales of common people struggling for their piece of the world. In honor of this special filmmaker and to celebrate the 30th anniversary of his masterpiece INSIANG, the New York Film Festival presents a rare screening of this much praised classic. The first Filipino film to show at the Cannes Film Festival is set in the slums of Manila, where a beautiful girl gets raped by her mother's lover, and then learns how to exact revenge. The film screens today at 12 noon.

Canadian director Guy Maddin has carved out a unique niche with his expressionistic tales of human suffering that draw upon the influences of silent cinema and the Brechtian stage. For his latest film BRAND UPON THE BRAIN, the director turns to his own story as a restless young man growing up on a remote island under the watchful eye of a Crazed Mother. The special event screening will be presented on Sunday at 4pm and then again at 8pm, with live orchestral accompaniment and live narration by Maddin muse Isabella Rossellini. Unmissable.

Brand Upon The Brain

Closing out the Festival is the US Premiere of Mexican director Guillermo Del Toro's feverishly inventive supernatural tale, PAN'S LABYRINTH. The surrealistic fantasy drama tells the story of a young girl who travels with her mother and adoptive father to a rural area in northern Spain in the early days of World War II. The girl lives in an imaginary world and sublimates her fear and anxiety of the repressive Franco regime through a highly stylized universe of her own creation. The film has been praised at film festivals internationally and will open in theaters later this year.

Pan's Labyrinth

The film screens on Sunday evening at 8:30pm as the Closing Night Gala at Avery Fisher Hall. Fans of the director will undoubtedly not want to miss his participation in the last of the HBO Films Directors Dialogues, taking place this afternoon at the Kaplan Penthouse.

Guillermo Del Toro

Sandy Mandelberger
Festivals Editor