New Directors/New Movies is one of the most venerable film festivals in the United States. For more than half a century, it has drawn attention to new cinematic talent from around the world. This year’s edition is no exception, and while its slate is a bit lighter on the non-fiction front than in the past, some hugely promising documentaries are still in the mix, with plenty of feature films on African and/or indigenous environments.
In Coconut head generation, Alain Kassanda follows students from the University of Ibadan, the oldest operational school in Nigeria. In a metatouch, it is also a film about cinema, as the characters are part of a film club, where they watch classics from anti-imperialist directors and discuss how they can apply the lessons of these films. to their own efforts to decolonize their university. . A dialectical work, it entangles its audience with committed young people, undermining the titular insult that is often hurled at them.
Milisuthando Bongela Milisuthando is a memorial essay about growing up in apartheid South Africa, in a unique circumstance: his family was based in the quasi-separatist Xhosa enclave of Transkei. Period film footage of the time and places she lived is heavily recontextualized – an ethnographic documentary becomes both a look at her home and an implicit critique of the lens through which she and her community were views. The film is an avant-garde cinematic photo album and collage, a search for identity filtered through found materials.
Other features in the range are not simple documents, but contain intriguing mixes of real and constructed elements. Hyperallergic previously highlighted Fox Maxy’s feature debut Jet when it debuted earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival, and now New Yorkers will get a chance to see it in theaters. In it, filmmaker Ipai Kumeyaay and Payómkawichum assembles an almost overwhelming collage of multimedia sources, blending 10 years of home movies with everything from Instagram videos to homemade CG animation, ruminating on the daily lives of Native Americans in the United States.
Ariadine Zampaulo takes a similar approach with Maputo Nakuzandza, a kind of return to the city’s symphonic films of the old. One day he walks Maputo, capital of Mozambique. Zampaulo freely combines real incidents seen around town with fictionalized scenes, such as a story about an abandoned bride winding through the streets in her wedding dress, which is used to frame and link the other vignettes.
Several noteworthy non-narratives are part of the festival’s two short film programs. In the first programThere is Aqueronte of Spain, in which Manuel Muñoz Rivas captures a hazy ferry trip through accumulated impressionist detail, and that of Mateo Vega center, ring, mall, which intercuts images of three different symbols of capitalist logistics: a data center, a highway around a city, and a shopping mall. In the second programby Maria Silvia Esteve The spiral stands out, weaving animations and WhatsApp messages into a fascinating portrait of anxiety. Works like this exemplify ND/NF’s unconventional programming philosophy, which continues to make it a must-visit festival.
New Directors/New Movies 2023 takes place at the Museum of Modern Art and Film at Lincoln Center from March 29 through April 9. Check the website for the program schedule.
