| A Short Sweet Interview About Programming The NY Film Festival |
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| Written by Brad Balfour | |
 Film Director Julian Schnabel with Richard Peña 1) Were you or the selection committee aware of how New York-oriented the festival had become this year? RP: Yes. But a year is just a year. 2) What determines the choice and range of sidebars--you always have interesting and sometimes surprising selections. RP: [They are] things that need to be shown and things that become available. 3) Some years there seems to be a fascination with a particular country or region--this year doesn't seem to be that much the case--do you agree with this thought and why or why not? RP: My sense is that Eastern and Central Europe are gaining momentum as places from which we can expect challenging cinema such as "Alexandra," "The Man From London," and "4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days." 4) One enduring element of the festival is the revisiting of certain directors; do you consider your picks of those directors' films as reflecting on a benchmark in their career and which repeat directors would say that this is more or less so? RP: Hard to say. In the case of Sidney Lumet, there were certainly many wonderful films between "Fail Safe" and "Before The Devil Knows Your're Dead," but I'm not sure how many of them were available to the NYFF during that time. Was "Serpico" offered to the Festival? I don't know, but I would doubt it. Seeing new work of directors we've championed is always a bit scary--saying no can be difficult. But say no we must if we don't think it's up to the high standards they themselves have set. 5) This year there seems to be a few more films than some other years--how did you decide on the number--what determines that, how is it determined? RP: I think we slightly upped the number of screenings to make up for the loss of revenue caused by Rose Hall being significantly smaller than Tully. |
