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Like the rest of the film industry, Film at Lincoln Center’s New York Film Festival, one of the cornerstones of awards season, has been rocked by drastic changes caused by COVID-19. Among them comes an unprecedented collaboration between NYFF, Venice, Toronto, and Telluride, all of which will be treating their festivals as a world cinema united front.
Eugene Hernandez and Dennis Lim, respectively the director and director of programming for NYFF, are ready to adapt the historic fest to a new reality. “Because so much is changing so quickly around festivals and the role of festivals and what festivals are, there are a lot of questions from filmmakers, from the industry, from the professionals in New York and [the people] who attend our festival, about how navigating it and experiencing it will be different,” says Hernandez.
A Running List of How 2020 Film Festivals Are Handling COVID-19 NYFF 2020 will take place from Sept. 17–Oct. 11 with virtual and drive-in screenings, launching its new partnership with Rooftop Films’ Queens Drive-In at Flushing Meadows Corona Park and Brooklyn Drive-In at the Brooklyn Army Terminal. Per a release, the partnerships are “intended to act as a cooperative effort to bring films safely back to New Yorkers and to highlight the power of cinema to build community and camaraderie among our fellow citizens.”
What has it been like adding virtual and outdoor screenings?
Eugene Hernandez: We know the festival in a very specific way, much like our audience. It’s a tradition. It has these traditional moments and this traditional structure that is very much rooted in the place. All of that said, we’re this almost 58-year-old festival, but in a lot of ways, this year is the first year.
We are mindful of the fact that the city we live in is undergoing a tremendous challenge. Film culture is really struggling in many ways because of what’s happened in the last few months. And it’s with that kind of mindfulness that we’ve reimagined how to connect our audience and, frankly, how to connect new audiences, how to connect folks throughout the city with our festival. It’s an opportunity for us to engage new audiences. From the ground up, in every aspect of the festival, we’ve had to look at it differently.
Speak about the unprecedented collaboration that was announced between four of the major film festivals of awards season: NYFF, Venice, TIFF, and Telluride.
Dennis Lim: I think the festivals have a pretty collegial relationship. But this year, I think there were more reasons than ever to check in with one another, given the uncertainty that we were all facing. I think it just seemed like a logical thing to do, to just formalize this gesture of cooperation among the four festivals. What it meant in practice was just comparing notes in terms of various contingency plans that we were all engaged in. We’re all in very different places, and we all have very different audiences. But obviously this question of what it means to show films is one that we were all wrestling with, so that was the thinking behind the festivals coming together.
What it means in practice, I don’t actually know.... There was never a formalized decision or strategy to say we’re all going to invite a certain number of films, because first of all, there’s always overlap among the festivals, if you look at pretty much any year. We didn’t really consult one another before we went ahead and invited films. We all have very distinct programming teams, and I think we all agreed that it was important for us to retain our programmatic identity. It was just about, I think, this spirit of collaboration and cooperation [and] sharing information.
And it just so happened that we all did invite one film pretty early on, the film that went out with the announcement, which was Chloé Zhao’s “Nomadland.”
How are you thinking about networking and fostering connections virtually this year?
EH: Just the fundamental business of making, producing, and exhibiting film right now is undergoing dramatic changes. So, as a festival, we’re responding to that by presenting films to our audience in different ways and working with filmmakers in different ways and engaging our filmmakers with our audience in different ways. At the same time, we’re thinking about how we can facilitate a different kind of engagement with our festival that is still meaningful.
We know the experience of, even before we worked at Lincoln Center, coming to the festival, attending the screenings with the other industry and press that are there, and having the opportunity to engage with folks before and after screenings and seeing movies, and sitting and listening to a Q&A with a filmmaker—none of that is possible in a physical context. So much of that is going to happen in a virtual platform this year. So we have to rethink how we engage with [the] industry, how we connect with filmmakers, and how we connect with each other at a time when we can’t be physically in the same place.
What’s your No. 1 piece of wisdom for early-career filmmakers looking to submit a project?
DL: I don’t know that there’s one piece of advice that applies to all filmmakers. It depends on the kind of cinema you’re interested in. I actually think, as somebody who’s encountered film students a lot, watching films is increasingly underrated. I feel like people don’t do enough of it. One way to learn is to immerse yourself in as much cinema as possible, and also to encounter different forms of filmmaking, which might actually be entirely different forms of expression, but also entirely different economic models of filmmaking. That’s a useful thing for a young filmmaker to think about.
But on a more practical level, because filmmaking is, more than so many other art forms, such an intensely collaborative endeavor, having a support system is important in the forms of collaborators [and] people you trust. It’s not like you can go to your desk and write or paint or whatever. You need people, which is why I think a support network of those colleagues and collaborators is important to have early in your career.
What’s the best film you’ve seen recently?
DL: I’m not just trying to plug our programming, but I’ve been watching submissions, and the film we announced as opening night I feel very, very strongly about. I know Eugene does, too. Steve McQueen’s “Lovers Rock”... It’s a film in which the politics are sort of woven into everyday life in a way that I find incredibly powerful and moving.
EH: My own personal screening has been focused on a lot of films that are being considered for this festival. And one that has stuck with me, personally, and that we’ve announced as our centerpiece screening is the film “Nomadland” by Chloé Zhao, which features this really astonishing performance by Frances McDormand. There’s clearly such a great collaboration happening between the two of them, and the film just really resonated with me. I’m a fan of Chloé’s work, and her previous film, “The Rider,” was at the festival a couple of years ago. There’s clearly just such a kinship and a way that these two women work together to create this film that explores ideas and topics that are kind of relevant to this moment in an unexpected way.
This story originally appeared in the Sept. 3 issue of Backstage Magazine. Subscribe here.
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