New York Film Festival celebrates 50 years
The New York Film Festival will celebrate its 50th anniversary this year when it runs from Sept. 28 to Oct. 14. The line-up hasn't been announced yet, but a press release from the festival contained a list of the last 49 years of opening-night films, which makes for fun reading (at least for film-geeks).
It's a pretty impressive roster. Imagine being among the first to see Jean-Luc Godard's revolutionary "Alphaville" in 1965, Gillo Pontecorvo's merciless "The Battle of Algiers" in 1967, Bernardo Bertolucci's transgressive "Luna" in 1979 or Jim Jarmusch's genre-defining "Down By Law" in 1986.
Recent years have been pretty good, too, with Alexander Payne's "About Schmidt," Stephen Frears' "The Queen" and David Fincher's "The Social Network."
Here's the full list:
1. 1963 The Exterminating Angel (Luis Buñuel, Mexico)
2. 1964 Hamlet (Grigori Kozintsev, USSR)
3. 1965 Alphaville (Jean-Luc Godard, France)
4. 1966 Loves of a Blonde (Milos Forman, Czechoslovakia)
5. 1967 The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, Italy/Algeria)
6. 1968 Capricious Summer (Jiri Menzel, Czechoslovakia)
7. 1969 Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (Paul Mazursky, US)
8. 1970 The Wild Child (François Truffaut, France)
9. 1971 The Debut (Gleb Panfilov, Soviet Union)
10. 1972 Chloe in the Afternoon (Eric Rohmer, France)
11. 1973 Day for Night (François Truffaut, France)
12. 1974 Don't Cry With Your Mouth Full (Pascal Thomas, France)
13. 1975 Conversation Piece (Luchino Visconti, Italy)
14. 1976 Small Change (François Truffaut, France)
15. 1977 One Sings, The Other Doesn't (Agnès Varda, France)
16. 1978 A Wedding (Robert Altman, US)
17. 1979 Luna (Bernardo Bertolucci, Italy/US)
18. 1980 Melvin and Howard (Jonathan Demme, US)
19. 1981 Chariots of Fire (Hugh Hudson, UK)
20. 1982 Veronika Voss (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, West Germany)
21. 1983 The Big Chill (Lawrence Kasdan, US)
22. 1984 Country (Richard Pearce, US)
23. 1985 Ran (Akira Kurosawa, Japan)
24. 1986 Down By Law (Jim Jarmusch, US)
25. 1987 Dark Eyes (Nikita Mikhalkov, Soviet Union)
26. 1988 Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Pedro Almodóvar, Spain)
27. 1989 Too Beautiful For You (Bertrand Blier, France)
28. 1990 Miller's Crossing (Joel Coen, US)
29. 1991 The Double Life of Veronique (Krysztof Kieslowski, Poland/France)
30. 1992 Olivier Olivier (Agnieszka Holland, France)
31. 1993 Short Cuts (Robert Altman, US)
32. 1994 Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, US)
33. 1995 Shanghai Triad (Zhang Yimou, China)
34. 1996 Secrets & Lies (Mike Leigh, UK)
35. 1997 The Ice Storm (Ang Lee, US)
36. 1998 Celebrity (Woody Allen, US)
37. 1999 All About My Mother (Pedro Almodóvar, Spain)
38. 2000 Dancer in the Dark (Lars von Trier, Denmark)
39. 2001 Va Savoir (Jacques Rivette, France)
40. 2002 About Schmidt (Alexander Payne, US)
41. 2003 Mystic River (Clint Eastwood, US)
42. 2004 Look At Me (Agnès Jaoui, France)
43. 2005 Good Night, and Good Luck. (George Clooney, US)
44. 2006 The Queen (Stephen Frears, UK)
45. 2007 The Darjeeling Limited (Wes Anderson, US)
46. 2008 The Class (Laurent Cantet, France)
47. 2009 Wild Grass (Alain Resnais, France)
48. 2010 The Social Network (David Fincher, US)
49. 2011 Carnage (Roman Polanski, France/Poland)
