New York's NEW DIRECTORS/NEW FILMS 2010

Why on earth would a New York culturette want to start blogging for of all things a London newspaper? Having many London escapee friends - who though well aware of our fair city's many faults prefer such nuisances to their home-grown gremlins - I regularly scour the British press for intelligent signs of life that said friends appear to possess in spades and bemoan BBC America for being only a pale imitation of the cornucopia available on BBC 4. The strange thing about foreign films in New York is that we are more likely to get screenings of the most obscure (e.g director Pedro Costa) while London appears to release most other 'art house' way ahead of us (e.g Claire Denis' White Material, Haneke's The White Ribbon). Having been originally introduced (by my now poverty stricken latte-rationing ex-boyfriend banker) to the quite frequent NYC arts coverage in a well-known financial newspaper, perhaps, just perhaps, the UK media world could also benefit from a little upstart comme moi.

Thus this first posting is born with a healthy foetal preview of MOMA's/Film Society of Lincoln Center's annual New Directors/ New Films festival. Premiering this Wednesday with a doco by first timer Richard Press following the 80 year old-timer New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham, the film proves to be far more than simply a feel-good crowd pleasing opener. For decades Mr. Cunningham has been dialectically snapping the rich and famous and the not such so. Having lived in a tiny artist studio in the Carnegie Hall building for 50 years (a mattress upon piles of books and boxes, and a kitchen whose cuisine is second to none in town with its piled top to bottom filing cabinets of his work). His only sustenance apart from picking at pastrami in local delis. He refuses to accept any food nor beverage from the hosts of his daily round of galas, benefit dinners and parties. One of the few remaining Carnegie tenants, he's replaced by admin office space, forced to move out but luckily ends up overlooking Central Park - replacing the pied en l'air's kitchen units with, you guessed it, filing cabinets. Habitually dressed in a blue bin man's jacket (the breast of normal jackets ripped by the cameras around his neck) that he even wears to accept his la Legion d'Honneur award in Paris: "He who sees beauty will find it," he grins ear to ear. In his youth Cunningham fell foul of Women's Wear Daily when he refused to accept their "in/out-ness" and "value [for] one image over another". And to this day he still wrestles with his colleagues at The New York Times (his weekly On the Street page) -it was years before they'd allow him to publish photos of gender transter Kenny Kenny - and "I even wore workmens' boots" according to an amazed Kenny. Bill's colleagues also revere him dearly though, while the rest of New York celebrity know that, in the words of one designer who takes him by the hand out of a Paris fashion show queue past the PR, "he's the most important person on earth!". Dapper author Tom Wolfe admits that NYC isn't the nicest place in the world based as it is solely "on status". And Cunningham says himself in the doco's final moments, "to be honest and stay in New York is like Don Quixote fighting windmills".

Bill Cunningham New York proves such an apt opening film because Cunningham's photos ask us to question what our reality really is? We think that nowhere in the world is the dichotomy between money and poverty more apparent than in this city of New York. Yet the most engaging of the many world-wide films on offer in the New Directors festival (many having played in other festivals such as Sundance and Toronto) succeed in eeking into our conscious because they eschew political affiliations in favour of people and their basic human needs - the most prevalent of course being one's dreams and therefore the inherent darkness. Not a statement that gets one very far if not in America then certainly NYC where the mask of conformity to a particular group is so often considered more paramount than individuation.

Northless, the first feature of Rigoberto Perezcano would be just another fairly well-made run of the mill crossing the Mexican border story if it weren't for one cliched striking element - using Debussy piano music as its top and tail. Based on a true news story, the film's about a youngster wrapping himself in padding and disguised in an arm-chair to be transported across the US border in the back of a pick-up truck. Real life defeated that illegal immigrant but in the movie it's left to Debussy to decide. Music that would normally remain a cliché returns the word to its origins. Humans will always dream of mountains even if in reality they're not that different to the ones that seem real in their own backyard.

The Happiest Girl in the World is the feature debut (shot on DV) of Romanian director Radu Jude. Teenage student Delia (Andrea Bosneag) from the provinces wins a trip to Bucharest to star in a fruit drink commercial. One's immediately grabbed by the opening moments of her mother changing her father's shirt and tie in the petrol station and spraying deodorant under his arms. It's a simple film full of tiny engaging observations. Delia's family cares deeply but a father obsessed with investing the car that she's won almost drives her crazy. New York isn't alone in its aspirational status grabbing.

The Man Next Door (El hombre de al lado) by directors Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat is possibly the most 'commercial' of the festival's art house offerings - an existential black comedy about a used car salesman Victor (Daniel Aráoz). This nuisance neighbour is hammering ahead a new window overlooking that of designer next door Leonardo (Rafael Spregelburd) - his house is actually Casa Curutchet in Buenos Aires, the only home that Le Corbusier built in the Americas. Victor has all the charm of a rattling python doing magic tricks - he even performs lewd finger puppet shows. Justly winning the cinematography award at Sundance this film's observations of domestic obstacles could see wider than normal appeal in the art house.

Winner of this year's Cannes Un Certain Regard prize (shot strangely in wide-screen anamorphic) Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos' Dogtooth (Kynodontas) had some critics walking out in disgust. UK released on April 23 the film is what a festival such as New Directors strives for in innovation and provocation. Echoes of Pier Paolo Pasolini in its violent bourgeoisie critique of a family whose parents have never allowed the kids outside the high fence surrounding the house. An eerie comic semiotics critique also comes into play where zombies = small yellow flowers and airplanes=toys. You may not enjoy this film but one thing impossible to do is ignore it.

Danish journalist-director Mads Brügger cuts to the bone marrow with The Red Chapel (recently seen on BBC in an hour-long version under the Storyville strand title Kim Jong-il’s Comedy Club). Documenting a comedy duo (one of whom is spastic) who arrive to perform in North Korea's capital Pyongyang, the documentary is a funny, poignant and ironic look at this country's Communist machinations. The show is deemed unfunny by a jovial local director so is re-directed by him. Meanwhile their amenable guide Mrs Pak adheres to the party line and is genuinely devastated when she learns that the troupe's Red Chapel name takes after a Communist spy cell in Nazi Germany. There've been a couple of revealing docos the last few years on the North Korean state - Dear Pyongyang about a father and daughter and Brit director Daniel Gordon's State of Mind (2004) in which two child performers are in tears when they learn that their beloved leader hadn't attended the Mass Games stadium extravaganza they'd trained years for. Ordinary people caught in the eternal trap of politics.

The Father of My Children (Le père de mes enfants) also proves to be a hit of the festival (recently UK released by Artificial Eye). Third feature of director/writer and ex-actress Mia Hansen-Løve explores how the family of a French art house film producer move on from the past after he shoots himself after crippled with debt. Never a false note here and like many of the festival's other films there's a black humour dancing within the struggle and grief.

An assistant costume designer on several Woody Allen films, it's the European sensibility of writer/director Eric Mendelsohn's 3 Backyards that's immediately striking. Michael Nicholas's music of Ravel-ian flute and harp allures like an Alain Resnais film as the sumptuous camera leers over Long Island. "What do you see?" asks the child. Perhaps too 'arty' a film for some tastes Eric Mendelsohn is undeniably a striking authorial voice who can consummately direct actors in portraying his vision - Edie Falco (Nurse Jackie) star of Mendelsohn's previous Judy Berlin. The real story of 3 Backyards is the one we conjure in our heads.

Luca Guadagnino had a couple of features under his belt before directing his 'social melodrama' I am Love (Io sono l'amore) (UK distributed by Metrodome, April 9). Yorick Le Saux his cinematographer shot Erik Zonca's Julia, and films of Olivier Assayas and Francois Ozon - so as you'd expect it all looks exquisite with a feel of Visconti and Sirk (there's even Jill Sander couture for Tilda Swinton). There's also more than a hint of Paolo Sorrentino's (Il Divo) 'operatic' style that no doubt had its artistic DNA in the 'reality' of Visconti's original stage productions - Tennessee Williams and the like. There's much to admire in I am Love but those familiar with those just cited directors mayn't enthuse as much as noviciates.