Film at Lincoln Center Announces “DENIS VILLENEUVE” Feb. 16–28
The 22-film series includes eight features by Villeneuve and 14 influential works selected by the director on the occasion of the release of Dune: Part Two.
Titles in the series include Villeneuve’s Arrival, Blade Runner 2049, and Dune and handpicked classic films by Francis Ford Coppola, Wong Kar-wai, Claire Denis, Ingmar Bergman, Alain Resnais, Ridley Scott, John Cassavetes, and more.
[New York, NY — February 1, 2024] Film at Lincoln Center announces “Denis Villeneuve,” a celebration of critically lauded films by the Canadian filmmaker alongside a selection of works he has cited as inspiring and influential in his own filmmaking. Running from February 16 through 28, the series’ titles range from Villeneuve’s early films Polytechnique (2009) and Incendies (2010) to Arrival (2016) and Blade Runner 2049 (2017) and Dune (NYFF59). Villeneuve himself has curated a selection of 14 films that have fueled his creativity, among them Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear (1953), Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le fou (NYFF4), and Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together (NYFF35).
Denis Villeneuve has distinguished himself as one of the 21st century’s great film directors. From his harrowingly absorbing thriller Prisoners (2013) to his more recent forays into an especially refined, magisterially atmospheric and unapologetically philosophical take on science fiction, namely Arrival (2016), Blade Runner 2049 (2017), and Dune, Villeneuve’s work is marked by the feeling of a great artist operating with intelligence and confidence amid the highest possible stakes in moviemaking. On the occasion of the release of Dune: Part Two, FLC presents a mid-career retrospective dedicated to this visionary artist and his continued project of crafting an intellectually and aesthetically rich variant of commercial cinema.
“For different reasons, each of these films, among others, significantly influenced me as a young aspiring filmmaker,” said Villeneuve. “Today, I’m still trying to free myself of their initial impact. It is an illusory attempt to regain my creative freedom, to hush other voices in order to achieve total and complete authenticity, which is of course impossible. I’m the sum of many influences. These films will forever haunt me, as I walk toward the camera.”
Exceptional selections curated by Villeneuve for the series include and are not limited to: Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979), the now-iconic tale of an interstellar mining crew en route back to Earth; Claire Denis’s Beau Travail(NYFF37), a retelling of Melville’s Billy Budd, set among a troop of Foreign Legionnaires; Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together, his raw, lushly stylized portrait of the life cycle of a love affair starring Hong Kong superstars Tony Leung and Leslie Cheung; and Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai (1954), among the most referenced and influential works in all of world cinema.
Organized by Florence Almozini, Dan Sullivan, and Denis Villeneuve.
The series will include eight films directed by Villeneuve: Arrival, Blade Runner 2049, Dune, Enemy, Incendies, Polytechnique, Prisoners, and Sicario and over a dozen films curated by Villeneuve including classics like: Apocalypse Now, Blade Runner, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. For a full list of films, schedule and ticket information, visit the Film at Lincoln Center website.
Originally published at http://behindtherabbitproductions.wordpress.com on February 1, 2024.
