Eight things to see at New Horizons International… | Little White Lies

Festivals

Eight things to see at New Hori­zons Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val 2016

05 Jul 2016

Words by Matt Thrift

A young girl with a serious expression, wearing a dark-coloured jacket, resting her chin on her hands while seated at a table.
A young girl with a serious expression, wearing a dark-coloured jacket, resting her chin on her hands while seated at a table.
A David Lynch clas­sic and Pedro Almodóvar’s favourite film are among the high­lights of this year’s programme.

Some film fes­ti­vals just get it all right. From its expan­sive, con­sid­ered pro­gram­ming to the effort­less tick­et­ing sys­tem; from the insis­tence on cel­lu­loid pro­jec­tion to the post-screen­ing evening enter­tain­ment, New Hori­zons does just that. This year, the festival’s home city of Wrocław, Poland has the added ben­e­fit of being award­ed the Euro­pean Cap­i­tal of Cul­ture. It only takes a quick scan through the pro­gramme to see why it might be deserv­ing of such an accolade.

There’s still time to make plans to vis­it what’s swift­ly becom­ing one of our favourite film fes­ti­vals, with the many bud­get air­line options and demo­c­ra­t­ic access to screen­ings mak­ing it an inex­pen­sive des­ti­na­tion for a dose of the best in world cin­e­ma. We’ll be there for the dura­tion bring­ing you the best of this year’s fest. Before then, here are eight high­lights we’re espe­cial­ly look­ing for­ward to.

A psy­che­del­ic jour­ney into the depths of the human psy­che,” is promised for New Hori­zons’ open­ing night, as the fes­ti­val presents the pre-pre­mière of Pol­ish direc­tor Natalia Korczakowska’s oper­at­ic rein­ven­tion of David Lynch’s Lost High­way. Tak­ing over a new space at the Nation­al Music Forum, the event looks set to blur lines between cin­e­ma and per­for­mance art with an immer­sive elec­tron­ic sound­scape cour­tesy of Nobel Prize win­ner Elfriede Jelinek’s libret­to and Olgi Neuwirth’s new­ly com­mis­sioned score. The film itself is already one of Lynch’s dark­est head-trips, so we’re brac­ing our­selves for some weird dreams that first night in Wrocław.

For those of us who didn’t make it to Europe’s pre­mier film fes­ti­val this year, New Hori­zons always pro­vides the best catch-up oppor­tu­ni­ty this side of the BFI Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val. The lat­est edi­tion proves no excep­tion, with high-pro­file fea­tures from the likes of Woody Allen, Park Chan-wook, Ken Loach, Asghar Farha­di, Bruno Dumont and Albert Ser­ra among many. If we had to pick one that we’re most excit­ed about, it has to be Maren Ade’s uni­ver­sal­ly acclaimed Toni Erd­mann. Read our first look review to find out why…

New Hori­zons have invit­ed 10 Mas­ters of Euro­pean Cin­e­ma’ to the fes­ti­val this year to take part in mas­ter­class­es and present screen­ings of their past work, along with a Euro­pean film they con­sid­er to be of sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence. Jes­si­ca Hauser, Cris­t­ian Mungiu, Agniesz­ka Hol­land and Andrei Kon­chalovsky are among the guests, but it’s the inclu­sion of Claire Denis that has real­ly piqued our inter­est. Not only will she be pre­sent­ing screen­ings of two of her best films (Beau Tra­vail and 35 Shots of Rum), but her mas­ter­class promis­es a dis­course on France’s post­colo­nial sins.”

Also includ­ed in the above line-up is Ger­man film­mak­er Ulrike Ottinger. Her films are noto­ri­ous­ly dif­fi­cult to see out­side of the fes­ti­val cir­cuit, so an oppor­tu­ni­ty to catch her most famous work (1981’s Freak Orlan­do) on the big screen is one not to be missed. Of her 23 direct­ing cred­its, we’ve only seen two so far: the incred­i­ble Tick­et of No Return and her 8 hour ethno­graph­ic study of Mon­go­lian nomads, Taiga. Her lat­est film – which she’s bring­ing to the fes­ti­val – is Chamisso’s Shad­ow, a doc­u­men­tary por­trait of even greater scale. It’ll be inter­est­ing to see how many make it through it’s aston­ish­ing 12-hour runtime.

New Hori­zons is famous for its excel­lent ret­ro­spec­tives. One of the high­lights of last year’s fest was the rare oppor­tu­ni­ty to see the com­plete works of Philippe Gar­rel pro­ject­ed from beau­ti­ful prints on the cin­e­ma complex’s vast screens. This year, Ital­ian mae­stro Nan­ni Moret­ti takes cen­tre stage. While his most famous (Dear Diary) and more recent work (The Son’s Room; Mia Madre) is read­i­ly avail­able over here, his ear­ly fea­tures have nev­er been released for home view­ing with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles. The chance to see the likes of Ecce Bom­bo, Bian­ca and I Am Self Suf­fi­cient is one not to be slept on.

Also get­ting the full ret­ro­spec­tive treat­ment is Span­ish mas­ter, Vic­tor Erice. With numer­ous shorts to his name – all play­ing at the fes­ti­val – he’s made only three fea­tures in over 40 years. Three mas­ter­pieces, that is. His 1973 film, The Spir­it of the Bee­hive reg­u­lar­ly fea­tures in lists of the great­est films ever made, while Pedro Almod­ó­var con­sid­ers his unfin­ished 1983 film, El Sur to be, the best film in Span­ish cin­e­ma his­to­ry.” Erice will be on hand for rare screen talks, and we’ll be first in line for the screen­ing of his mon­u­men­tal 1992 doc­u­men­tary, The Quince Tree Sun.

Giv­en that Wrocław is shar­ing its title of Euro­pean Cap­i­tal of Cul­ture this year with the Basque city of San Sebastián, New Hori­zons is show­ing its love for its cul­tur­al twin with a strand focussing on three gen­er­a­tions of Basque film­mak­ers. Along­side Vic­tor Erice, the great Car­los Saura will be mak­ing an appear­ance (pre­sent­ing his incred­i­ble Cria Cuer­vos) along with Julio Médem. We’ve seen very lit­tle of this strand, which is always the most excit­ing way to jump in, espe­cial­ly when a lit­tle research on, say, Iván Zulueta’s 1979 film Arreba­to offers the pres­ence of Cecil­ia Roth and this kind of write-up: A hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry, claus­tro­pho­bic exam­i­na­tion of the secret poten­cy of film itself, it enters the dis­ori­ent­ing world of a young film­mak­er who dis­cov­ers his cam­era has a fea­ture he’d nev­er imag­ined.” Count us in.

Not only will the fes­ti­val be see­ing out its run with two screen­ings of cine-artist Matthew Barney’s six-hour lat­est, Riv­er of Fun­da­ment, there’s also the oppor­tu­ni­ty to catch his vast Cre­mas­ter Cycle in its entire­ty. The new film is a decon­struc­tive cin­e­mat­ic opera – in the loos­est sense of the term – based on Nor­man Mailer’s epic 1983 folie de grandeur, Ancient Evenings. Any­thing that promis­es an undead Mail­er emerg­ing from a riv­er of fae­ces that runs beneath his Brook­lyn Heights apart­ment to enter his own wake” has us first in line to see if it lives up to either its var­i­ous raves or its one-star porno­graph­ic avant-garde scat” put-downs.

The T‑Mobile New Hori­zons Film Fes­ti­val runs from 21 – 31 July in Wrocław, Poland. Check out full pro­gramme at nowe​ho​ry​zon​ty​.pl

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