Yesterday, the New York Film Festival made another 2020 announcement, this one looking back on the past a bit. Yes, longtime festival goers know that NYFF each year has a robust Revivals lineup, and this year will be no exception. The 58th incarnation of the fest will include a ton of diverse selections, celebrating the history of cinema. At a time when the present and future of the industry is somewhat up in the air, screenings of this sort can be even more powerful, as a reminder of what has been, and what eventually can be again. Read on for more about what NYFF is cooking up here, which includes a recent classic like In the Mood for Love, among many other movies… This is the New York Film Festival press release: Film at Lincoln Center announces Revivals for the 58th New York Film Festival (September 17 – October 11). “We are thrilled with our selections for Revivals, a section reshaped for the 2020 edition of NYFF to showcase the relevance, the vitality, and the beauty of yesterday’s cinema,” said Florence Almozini, FLC Senior Programmer at Large. “The program covers the ’70s to the ’90s, from Europe to Asia to the U.S., and features seminal works by Wong Kar Wai, Joyce Chopra, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Marie-Claude Treilhou, William Klein, Jia Zhangke and more, in outstanding restorations. Together, these films reveal an enduring influence on our collective sense of cinema, culturally and politically, for filmmakers as well as audience members.” The Revivals section connects cinema’s rich past to its dynamic present through an eclectic assortment of new restorations, titles selected by the festival’s filmmakers, rarities, and more. Highlights include a major rediscovery of Iranian cinema, Mohammad Reza Aslani’s The Chess Game of the Wind, and another NYFF58 appearance by Main Slate filmmaker Jia Zhangke, with his rarely screened Xiao Wu—both made possible by the dedicated work of The Film Foundation, celebrating its 30th anniversary this year; the sumptuous visual pleasures of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Flowers of Shanghai and Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love, featuring two of Tony Leung’s most memorable roles; portraits of iconic American figures that resonate today in William Klein’s Muhammad Ali, the Greatest and Terence Dixon’s Meeting the Man: James Baldwin in Paris, shot by Jack Hazan; Joyce Chopra’s 1986 Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner, Smooth Talk, which boasts a breakout performance by a young Laura Dern; […]