NYFF 64: Beatrice Gibson's "At Night" is a dreamy exploration of womanhood

by Joanna Sodeman-Taylor

There’s nothing like writing about the premier selections of the New York Film Festival... at night. Speaking of, let’s talk about Beatrice Gibson’s debut feature At Night, a delicate, hypnotic city symphony that premiered to great reviews at this year’s Locarno Film Festival, where she won the Best Emerging Director Award, before being programmed into NYFF's Currents program. At Night stars Gibson as a filmmaker named B who’s scouting locations in Paris for an upcoming project. Being so far from her partner and her child has made her melancholic.

These explorations lead her to encountering former friend and artistic collaborator Didi (Diocuda Diaoune), a Black immigrant and single mother trying to make ends meet while living in social housing. Rather than dichotomizing their experiences, At Night frames their duet as part of a larger, porous pursuit for commonality among women, especially those who make up the city’s night life. The film’s attention sprawls to encompass six other figures of different backgrounds and occupations to be its stewards, artists and poets and sex workers and laborers...

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NYFF 64: "Once Upon a Time in Harlem," William Greaves threw a party like no other

by Cláudio Alves

Here at The Film Experience, we love to celebrate centennials, and yesterday marked a big one. On October 8th, 1926, William Greaves was born in Harlem, and would go on to become one of the most important figures in 20th-century American non-fiction filmmaking. More specifically, his legacy rests on documenting African-American life, spanning from avant-garde exercises like the Symbiopsychotaxiplasm duology to more conventional fare like his Ida B. Wells profile for the American Experience series. And though he died in 2014, Greaves’ cinema lives on in ways that defy convention. Through the efforts of his son, director David Greaves, and granddaughter, producer Liani Greaves, the great cineaste is gifting us a new film from beyond the grave. 

Indeed, he is inviting you, the viewer, to a most exclusive cocktail party at the home of the one and only Duke Ellington. It’ll be a gathering of artists and intellectuals, the living luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance of the 20s and 30s. Or it was, for this happened already, in August 1972, when said party took place and the director recorded it all. From that wealth of footage comes Once Upon a Time in Harlem, left unfinished for half a century before it was completed and premiered at Sundance earlier this year. Neon bought the rights then and will release it theatrically next week, on October 16. In the meantime, this ghostly party from a bygone era, remembering an even older day, has been doing the festival circuit, spellbinding audiences wherever it goes, including TIFF and the NYFF…

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NYFF 64: Currents Program #4 - "The Real World" Confronts Reality Head-On

by Joanna Sodeman-Taylor

We’re coming to you live from the 64th New York Film Festival with the hottest ticket of the whole event: The Currents short film programs! Program #4 is cheekily subtitled “The Real World”, bringing to you four films with unique narrative and stylistic understanding to one very fair question: How many realities does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Especially at a moment in time where “reality” has become so easy to manufacture, and memories created and destroyed at a moment’s notice for no reason other than capitalist convenience, that’s an important question to ask, whether the goal is to speculate on the future or reclaim a past. There’s no easy answer, but the human creativity and inventiveness these directors bring show how rewarding it can be to wrestle with such topics...

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