Film Society of Lincoln Center Announces Free Weekly Podcasts THE CLOSE UP

The Film Society of LINCOLN Center announced today the launch of a new free weekly podcast, The Close-Up. Every Wednesday a new episode will be made available via SoundCloud, iTunes, and Stitcher, and will present in-depth conversations between a member of the Film Society programming team and up-and-coming filmmakers as well as returning masters and seasoned industry and critics. The Close-Up will allow audiences locally and globally, who are not able to attend Film Society events, to continue to broaden their knowledge and deepen their PASSION for film through conversation. Additional information on upcoming podcasts will be available at filmlinc.com/podcast.

Founded in 1969, the Film Society has a long history of working with some of the world's best filmmakers and the conversations that have taken place here will now be revisited and shared with a new generation. The Close-Up will dig into this treasure trove of film history and present some highlights, along with the latest conversations from recent and upcoming events, throughout the year.

Deputy Director of the Film Society of LINCOLN Center Eugene Hernandez said: "One of the goals we've been pursuing is making our programs and events more accessible to a wider audience. With the launch of our new podcast series, The Close-Up, we aim to deliver smart conversations to discerning moviegoers: cinephiles, students, fanatics worldwide. For this new stream of content we'll capture talks and Q&As happening each week at LINCOLN Center and also dig deep into our archive for conversations from the past.

Excerpts from the first podcasts:

On Cinema: Paul Thomas Anderson's hour-long conversation with
NYFF Director Kent Jones
Saturday, October 4 - 52nd New York Film Festival

On hippies:
"There's a passage in Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice between Bigfoot (this straightlaced cop) and Doc (our hippie hero) where they discuss what happened with Manson, how it fed everything up for these hippies. The straight world used to look at the hippies like 'look how cute they are, kind of like monkeys in a zoo,' then Manson came along and it was like, stay away, they may mass murder us."

On North by Northwest and its relationship to Inherent Vice:
"I never remember plots of movies. I remember how they make me feel and the visuals... I feel that way about North by Northwest. That was a huge help in getting ready for Inherent Vice, as there was so much ground to cover and it was a bit episodic... It was a helpful reminder to go back to this film and feel that energy."

On shooting with film:
"There is genuine concern about film not even being an option. There is a movement around filmmakers right now to encourage filmmakers that are coming up that if they have a choice, please shoot film. There is no financial incentive to shooting digitally."

HBO® Directors Dialogues: Laura Poitras, director of CITIZENFOUR,
in discussion with FSLC Director of Programming Dennis Lim
Saturday, October 11 - 52nd New York Film Festival

On how the trilogy began:
"The first film was about the occupation of Iraq. I was here at 9/11 and there was a moment of compassion. Then with the build up for the Iraq War it changed to a feeling of despair... We also had the opening of Guantanamo where people were being sent without charge. As a documentarian the very least I could do was to make a historical record."

On micro and macro perspectives:
"My work falls into the tradition of cinema verité... I'm interested in being there when things are unfolding in real time. That process involves being around in the field and going on a journey."

On relationships with protagonists and how it affects decision making in the piece
"In My Country, My Country I go to Baghdad and I realized the U.S. military were not interacting with the Iraqi populous. I filmed an inspection at Abu Ghraib prison and met a doctor who invited me into his family... shuttling between there and the Green Zone... In CITIZENFOUR the relationship was different. I was contacted by an anonymous source who was risking his life... I had an obligation as a journalist to protect him as a source and had to be sensitive to the risk."

HBO® Directors Dialogues: Bennett Miller, director of Foxcatcher,
in discussion with NYFF Director Kent Jones
Tuesday, October 7 - 52nd New York Film Festival

On Steve Carell who plays John du Pont in Foxcatcher:
"The character that he plays does some horrible things, and he does some unexpected things. I wanted to cast somebody who would be unexpected but could pull it off. It seemed like it needed to be somebody who defies our imagination of who this person can be."

On discovering a new "language of film":
"I definitely have moments in my life where I've discovered a film and the language of the film itself spoke to me in a way as if someone came up to you and started speaking in a language you have never heard. But you understand it [and are able] to express things the language you know could not."

On being overly prepared for a scripted film:
"As much as you may understand it or think you understand it, when you get there, if it's been preconceived too well it doesn't work. It's nice to mix it up and keep the actors on their heels and do whatever it takes to get to that feeling, so that when it happens, you're shooting something that is happening and it's alive, and is not going to happen again."

On looking for those perfect moments:
"I'm looking for THE MOMENT of discovery when something actually occurs for THE FIRST TIME and will only ever occur for the first time."

NYFF Live: Discussing Godard, with The New Yorker's Richard Brody,
Goodbye to Language star Héloise Godet, author Laurence Kardish,
and journalist Max Nelson
Sunday, September 28 - 52nd New York Film Festival

Laurence Kardish:
"Godard is a brilliant artist... My experience of Godard is betrayal. He is one, in an economic way, not to be trusted."

Héloïse Godet on being directed by Godard:
"He was very precise about everything, like music sheets."

Richard Brody:
"He wanted actors to be engaged in ideation, the intellectual creation of the film... He detests characters... He has particular ideas about what constitutes the cinema. He doesn't like classical narrative paradigms... It's hello to seeing-seeing with a painterly eye. Still Godard's eye, though."

Max Nelson:
"Like an elegy, he is always announcing the death of something and I think in his films it's the death of civilization itself. He's announcing an end and then making a resurrection of cinema and cinematic technique. This begins in the title itself.... Godard is saying goodbye to humanity."

Film Society of LINCOLN Center
Founded in 1969 to celebrate American and international cinema, the Film Society of LINCOLN Center works to recognize established and emerging filmmakers, support important new work, and to enhance the awareness, accessibility, and understanding of the moving image. The Film Society produces the renowned New York Film Festival, a curated selection of the year's most significant new film work, and presents or collaborates on other annual New York City festivals including Dance on Camera, Film Comment Selects, Human Rights Watch Film Festival, New Directors/New Films, NewFest, New York African Film Festival, New York Asian Film Festival, New York Jewish Film Festival, Open Roads: New Italian Cinema and Rendez-Vous with French Cinema. In addition to publishing the award-winning Film Comment magazine, the Film Society recognizes an artist's unique achievement in film with the prestigious Chaplin Award, whose 2015 recipient is Robert Redford. The Film Society's state-of-the-art Walter Reade Theater and the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, located at LINCOLN Center, provide a home for year-round programs and the New York City film community.

The Film Society receives generous, year-round support from Royal Bank of Canada, Jaeger-LeCoultre, American Airlines, The New York Times, HBO, Stella Artois, The Kobal Collection, Variety, Trump International Hotel and Tower, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts.

For more information, visit www.filmlinc.com, follow @filmlinc on Twitter, and download the FREE Film Society app, now available for iOS (iPhone and iPad) and Android devices.