Rewind & Play

Alain Gomis, 2022, France/Germany, 66min

English and French with English subtitles

Rewind & Play is screening in the cinema for $17 ($12 for students, MDC Members, and Film at Lincoln Center Members) on Wednesday 10/12 at 6pm as part of the 60th New York Film Festival.

In December 1969, Thelonious Monk arrived in Paris for a concert at the tail end of a European tour. While there, the legendary jazz pianist was invited to appear on a television interview program, where he would perform and answer questions in an intimate, one-on-one studio stage. Using newly discovered footage from the recording of the interview, versatile French-Senegalese filmmaker Alain Gomis (whose dazzling music-tinged drama Félicité played in NYFF’s Main Slate in 2017) reveals the troubling dynamic between Monk and his white interviewer, Henri Renaud, and how Monk stands his ground despite being antagonized by Renaud’s trivializing approach. Gomis’s gripping film is a fascinating behind-the-scenes documentary; a subtle yet searing exposé of casual racism; and, above all, a chance to see one of the monumental geniuses of 20th-century music at work.

Preceded by: 

Maria Schneider, 1983

Elisabeth Subrin, 2022, France, 25m

English and French with English and French subtitles

North American Premiere

Actresses Manal Issa, Aïssa Maïga and Isabel Sandoval recreate a 1983 French TV interview with Maria Schneider, which takes a turn when she’s asked about the traumatic filming of Last Tango in Paris with Bernardo Bertolucci and Marlon Brando a decade before. Taken together, they not only perform Schneider’s words and gestures, but inhabit them through their own identities—along with all those silenced, before and after, in this new film by festival alum Elisabeth Subrin (Shulie, NYFF36; The Caretakers, NYFF44).