Under the agile leadership of Rose Kuo, the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s annual New York Film Festival, New Directors/New Films, Rendezvous with French Cinema, and its many smaller programs in between provide platforms for gifted filmmakers and give NYC cinephiles viewing opportunities unequaled at local multiplexes.
Rose Kuo.
Kuo, who joined the Society in 2010 after heading Los Angeles’ AFI Fest and the Santa Fe Film Festival, led this year’s NYFF’s impressive lineup and debuted two cinemas, a coffee bar and an amphitheater for video art and panel discussions, all housed in the new Elinor Bunin Munroe Center. Kuo brings to the Society a lifetime of experience advocating for art cinema, a filmmaker’s knack for shepherding diverse, sometimes conflicting talents toward harmonious collaboration, and perhaps even a few welcome rays of sunny Californian perspective. [Elena Oumano]
It’s as if you’re a heroine who rescues beleaguered film organizations and restores them to greater glory. What is your recipe for success?
My background as a filmmaker, where teamwork in everything is helpful. And I originally attended film festivals bringing films. That helps me understand what the experience should be and the possible pitfalls.
All film festivals and organizations are trying to do the same thing—advance art cinema, lay the groundwork for future filmmakers and provide a forum for audiences and filmmakers to exchange ideas. That helps me remember the priorities of what we’re trying to do in support of filmmakers. Most of these organizations have very talented people on staff. Not-for-profit film exhibition attracts people who are passionate about films and cinephiles who want to be here and preserve this art form.
It’s not so much recreating anything here as much as helping people do their best work. The art cinema world is one of very slim margins, and the people in this part of filmmaking are doing it out of passion for the art form. The people here love what they do and they want to do it well. So it’s about giving them the tools and providing support. It’s as simple as that.
You also advocate for the film viewer with the free programs the Society provides. Do you plan to expand that?
This year, all our amphitheater talks were free. Growing up in the Midwest, in Kansas, I didn’t have much access to foreign films. I moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and David Kimball ran the Williams Center Theater in a mall, which, in those days, was a way station where a film in transit to another theater was held for 24 hours, not shown but shipped back out. So he would get these prints and call a dozen friends: “OK, I’ve got so-and-so.” The theater would be shut down, and we’d pop popcorn and watch films from midnight until 3 a.m. In the late ’80s, I lived in Paris and went to the MK2 Theaters at the Georges Pompidou Center every weekend—so often that the theater staff recognized me and, after a few months, I didn’t have to pay. I remember their benevolence. That was part of my film education, as well as the Film Center at the Art Institute of Chicago (now the Gene Siskel Film Center), when Richard Peña ran it. I still remember a Romanian film series he put on and a black-and-white film called Chained Justice [dir. Dan Pita]. People understood that I loved seeing films when I couldn’t afford to see everything but they shared these roots with me. I want to do that for someone else.
Do you want to liaise with schools?
We started collaborating with the Bronx’s Ghetto Film School. We’re reaching out to another school. Rather than starting from scratch building a new program, programs have been started by people who are much better and more knowledgeable about film education and a lot of great ones are in place. We thought that along with our mission we could offer support. Richard Peña [who ends 23 years as the Society’s program director at the conclusion of 2012’s 50th NYFF] is going to head our new educational initiative.
During NYFF this year, we introduced new programs for younger audiences, including a restoration of Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush with the New York Philharmonic live, performing Timothy Brock’s adaptation of Chaplin’s 1942 sound version. Even if you’d seen that film a dozen times, viewing it on a big screen in Alice Tully Hall was stunning, and several hundred kids were laughing, practically falling out of their chairs. We’re really talking about developing visual literacy, especially for silent and foreign films because audiences are now resistant to subtitles. We partnered with Gkids, which produced the Children’s International Film Festival here. They insisted we show a subtitled film, and we found younger audiences surrender to the film image, even not understanding every detail.
Can we talk about the differences between New York and Los Angeles?
What I love about Los Angeles is everybody loves movies—from the dry cleaning person to the gas station attendant. Everybody dreams and wishes they were working in the industry. It’s a city of dreamers, so everybody is open to the possibility of something unimaginable happening to them. I love that energy.
New York embraces international cinema, and for what we do there is no other town, except maybe Paris, another city of film watchers and lovers. Everybody here doesn’t want to work in the industry, but they love watching movies. They love the performing arts; they embrace them and are extremely knowledgeable. New Yorkers want to be the first to know about something and embrace it. There is no other place in the U.S. quite like New York for art cinema, for showing the most obscure works and introducing brand new talent.
