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Above: Poster by Frank Stella for the 9th New York Film Festival.Compared to the 32 films in the main slate of this year’s New York Film Festival, not to mention the seemingly hundreds of others playing in sidebars, the 1971 edition of the NYFF, half a century ago, was a lean affair. With only 18 films, down from 78 just four years earlier, the ninth edition of the NYFF was, according to its director Richard Roud, a “belt-tightening festival, a year of consolidation.” In fact, the financially strapped festival almost didn’t take place that year. A New York Times article published midway through the event mentions that “outside the 984-seat Vivian Beaumont Theater, there is only one poster announcing the festival [one assumes it was the beautiful Frank Stella poster above] that is quietly and modestly taking place inside.” A far cry from the glorious phalanx of digital billboards currently beaming outside Alice Tully Hall and the Elinor Bunin Center.The...

Russian production and distribution powerhouse Central Partnership has unveiled a slate of upcoming releases at the Toronto International Film Festival, which Variety can reveal exclusively.

Among the films they’ll be introducing to foreign buyers are the latest blockbuster from Sergey Mokritskiy, whose 2015 WWII epic “Battle of Sevastopol” sold worldwide after conquering the Russian box office; an actioner based on a true story of heroism during the Syrian War; and a trilogy following the exploits of the beloved fictional character Ostap Bender.

“In Russia we are the major producer and distributor of local titles, and we will continue strengthening this position by working with our filmmakers on creating truly international content that suits the widest audience not only locally but in the world,” says Central Partnership CEO Vadim Vereschagin. “Our slate has become more diverse as we continue our efforts in bringing the best of Russian cinematography to international audiences.

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Julia Ducournau at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. (Photo by Stephane Cardinale / Getty Images)Cannes has come to a close with the Palme d'Or win of Titane, making Julia Ducournau only the second woman to win the prize in the festival's history. Check out the rest of this year's winners here. Following Cannes, we're looking ahead to fall festival season: San Sebastian's lineup includes the latest by Lucile Hadzihalilovic and Terence Davies; and Locarno has added films by Charlotte Colbert and Russian Gleb Panfilov to its now-complete roster. The Museum of the Moving Image's First Look Fest has also announced its full program, which will showcase films by Claire Simon, Lina Rodriguez, James Benning, and more, as well as the world premiere of Ken Jacob's 3D film, Double Wow. The much-anticipated lineup for this...

Appointment

Former Disney, DreamWorks and Twentieth Century Fox executive Tim Erickson has been named executive VP of brand Peanuts Worldwide, reporting into Eric Ellenbogen, CEO of WildBrain, the majority owner of Peanuts. Working together with the family of Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz, WildBrain’s content and management teams and brand co-owners Sony Music Entertainment (Japan), Erickson will be responsible for sustaining a strategy supporting brand marketing and leveraging new content launches to expand the global presence of the Peanuts brand and build momentum towards its 75th anniversary in 2025. Erickson will be based in New York.

Erickson most recently held the position of COO at the media company GoldieBlox, and prior to that as senior VP of global licensing and operations at Twentieth Century Fox, preceded by the position of global head of licensing and operations at DreamWorks. He also spent several years driving consumer products and sales strategies at Disney and Lego.

Swiss festival is gearing up for its first physical edition in two years, running August 4-14.

The Locarno Film Festival has added another two titles to the line-up of its 74th edition, which is due to unfold August 4-14 in its Swiss lakeside home.

French-British Director Charlotte Colbert’s psychological thriller She Will has been invited for an out of competition gala screening in the festival’s La Sala venue, followed by a Q&a.

It marks the first feature for filmmaker and multi-media artist Colbert. Alice Krige stars as a woman recovering from a double mastectomy who heads to...

The Locarno Film Festival added two more movies to its lineup on Wednesday, completing the program for its 74th edition.

The Swiss festival added a gala premiere of psychological thriller She Will by Franco-British director Charlotte Colbert to its Fuori Concorso section and a Piazza Grande world premiere of Sto minut iz zhizni Ivana Denisovicha (100 Minutes) by Russian director Gleb Panfilov, who won the fest’s Golden Leopard in 1969 for No Path Through Fire.

She Will explores the story of Veronica Ghent (Alice Krige) who, after a double mastectomy, goes on a retreat in rural Scotland with her nurse (Kota Eberhardt). The film comes ...

The Locarno Film Festival added two more movies to its lineup on Wednesday, completing the program for its 74th edition.

The Swiss festival added a gala premiere of psychological thriller She Will by Franco-British director Charlotte Colbert to its Fuori Concorso section and a Piazza Grande world premiere of Sto minut iz zhizni Ivana Denisovicha (100 Minutes) by Russian director Gleb Panfilov, who won the fest’s Golden Leopard in 1969 for No Path Through Fire.

She Will explores the story of Veronica Ghent (Alice Krige) who, after a double mastectomy, goes on a retreat in rural Scotland with her nurse (Kota Eberhardt). The film comes ...

The Film Society of Lincoln Center has set the Yorgos Lanthimos-directed The Favourite as the Opening Night selection for the 56th New York Film Festival. Deadline revealed last week that the film will make its world premiere at Venice, so this will be its New York premiere. That indicates it likely gets a showing at Telluride before the Nyff gala at Alice Tully Hall on Friday, September 28, 2018. Fox Searchlight Pictures releases it November 23. This becomes the second pic announced by Nyff, which recently set Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma to be the centerpiece selection. That film also will have its world premiere in Venice.

In The Favourite, the Duchess of Marlborough (Rachel Weisz) and her servant Abigail Hill (Emma Stone) engage in a sexually charged fight to the death for the body and soul of Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) at the height of the War of the Spanish Succession.

Said...

The Film Society of Lincoln Center announces Ava DuVernay’s documentary The 13th as the Opening Night selection of the 54th New York Film Festival (September 30 – October 16), making its world premiere at Alice Tully Hall. The 13th is the first-ever nonfiction work to open the festival, and will debut on Netflix and open in a limited theatrical run on October 7.

Chronicling the history of racial inequality in the United States, The 13th examines how our country has produced the highest rate of incarceration in the world, with the majority of those imprisoned being African-American. The title of DuVernay’s extraordinary and galvanizing film refers to the 13th Amendment to the Constitution—“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States . . . ” The progression from that second qualifying clause to the horrors of mass incarceration and...

If the languid summer tentpole season has you down, fear not, as the promising fall slate is around the corner and today brings the first news of what we’ll see at the 2016 New York Film Festival. For the first time ever, a non-fiction film will open The Film Society of Lincoln Center’s festival: Ava DuVernay‘s The 13th. Her timely follow-up to Selma chronicles the history of racial inequality in the United States and will arrive on Netflix and in limited theaters shortly after its premiere at Nyff, on October 7.

“It is a true honor for me and my collaborators to premiere The 13th as the opening night selection of the New York Film Festival,” Ava DuVernay says. “This film was made as an answer to my own questions about how and why we have become the most incarcerated nation in the world, how and why we regard...

Japan was the big winner at this year’s Moscow International Film Festival which ended on Saturday evening with the Golden St. George trophy for best film going to Kazuyoshi Kumakiri’s My Man (Watashi-No Otoko) [pictured].The film, which also received the Silver St. George best actor honours for Tadanobu Asano, had its international premiere in Moscow and was the first Japanese film to win the grand prix since Kaneto Shindo’s Will To Live received the honour

Japan was the big winner at this year’s Moscow International Film Festival which ended on Saturday evening with the Golden St. George trophy for best film going to Kazuyoshi Kumakiri’s My Man (Watashi-No Otoko) [pictured].

The film, which also received the Silver St. George best actor honours for Tadanobu Asano, had its international premiere in Moscow and was the first Japanese film to win the grand prix since Kaneto Shindo’s Will To Live received the honour in 1999.

Kumakiri...

Leading Russian actor-director-producer Fyodor Bondarchuk has indicated that he is prepared to bleep out the obscenities in Valeria Gai Germanika’s new film Yes And Yes (Da I Da) to ensure its Russian theatrical release.

Speaking at a press conference at the Moscow International Film Festival (Miff) this morning (June 25) ahead of the European premiere of Yes And Yes in the Main Competition, Bondarchuk said that he ¨hoped¨ to get a distribution certificate for the film tomorrow.

“I don’t know about the cursing, but we have agreed to put in bleeps if there is no other way [for the film to be released] if the new obscenity law applies to this film,” said Bondarchuk.

“We are still waiting for clarification about the situation for films made before when the law comes into effect on July 1. I will know more on Thursday.”

With extensive use of swearwords - especially in the opening scenes in the apartment of Bohemian artists - and bottles of vodka...

35th edition of the festival runs June 19-28.

The Us documentary Red Army about the Soviet Red Army hockey team will open the 36th edition of the Moscow International Film Festival (Miff), which runs from June 19-28.

Directed by Gabe Polsky, the film was first shown at last month’s Cannes Film Festival and will be released in the Us by Sony Pictures.

Speaking at this week’s press conference, programme director Kirill Razlogov exxplained that documentaries have always played “a special role” at the festival - “documentaries are practically in all of the programmes” - and said that it was “symbolic” to open with a documentary.

The festival will be rounded off on June 28 at the Pushkinsky Cinema with a screening of Matt Reeves’ Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

Veteran Russian actor-director Gleb Panfilov (Vassa) will head the international jury for the main competition and will be joined by the German actress Franziska Petri, Georgian...

The Film Society of Lincoln Center is hailing the pending 50th anniversary of its New York Film Festival in 2012 with a series of classics of the big screen, many introduced at Nyff. With the current lineup continuing through February, Fslc has been delighting the devoted with a film from each year of the festival, bringing to the screen some of cinema's rarest holy grails, like Jacques Rivette's four-plus-hour "L'Amour Fou" and Gleb Panfilov's "The Debut." Highlights of the retrospective's January-February line-up include two of Jonathan Demme's earlier films as well as the classic children's film "The Black Stallion" and Andrzej Wajda's controversial "Man of Iron." The schedule of screenings set for the rest of the series in 2012 will be announced at a later date. Full film schedule follows with descriptions and credits provided by the Film Society of Lincoln Center: Ali: Fear...

MOSCOW -- Russia's first screen treatment of the work of the country's most famous living dissident, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, drew the majority of Moscow television viewers Sunday night as Gulag drama The First Circle screened on state channel Rossiya. Director Gleb Panfilov's version of Solzhenitsyn's 1968 novel about the tortured world of imprisoned Soviet scientists -- scripted by the 87-year-old Solzhenitsyn himself -- garnered a 39.7% share and 19.1 rating according to early numbers for the nation's capital, Rossiya said. Solzhenitsyn, famous for his fictional accounts of life in Stalin's prison camps in The Gulag Archipelago and "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" provides the voiceover for the 10-part series that is running nightly in Rossiya's primetime 9 p.m. slot.