I’ve been thinking about sheep. Ever since I saw the documentary SWEETGRASS over the weekend, I’ve been replaying the images in my mind. Newborn lambs thrown on top of each other, their bodies bouncing like rubber with no obvious damage done. A sheep chews cud and then pauses to give the camera a penetrating stare. A sheep herder’s frustrated and extended cussing diatribe at the herd he’s trying to control as the camera pulls back further and further to show the majestic expanse of wilderness that surrounds him. The sheep, their bodies flowing like water through the streets of a small town. SWEETGRASS (directed by Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor) is a documentary about the last sheep drive up the Beartooth Mountains in Montana, a kind of elegy to the west and a meditation on existence dictated by nature and man’s limited control. A film so out of place and yet exactly the kind of unusual film you expect to see as part of the New York Film Festival.

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The NY Film Festival needs little introduction. Every year much anticipated films from well respected and brand new directors are screened alongside a timeless classic or two. With categories that range from Religious Interest (Lars Von Trier’s ANTICHRIST) to Women’s Interest (Bong Joon-ho’s MOTHER) to French (Jacques Rivette’s AROUND A SMALL MOUNTAIN) to American Independents (Todd Solondz’s LIFE DURING WARTIME and Harmony Korine’s TRASH HUMPERS) there is an exciting amount of talent.

For the past 13 years, NYFF has also included Views From the Avant-Garde in their line up. This year features 61 works beginning with a reconstruction of Pier Paolo Passolini’s 1963 RAGE, and includes a never before seen film shot and edited by the late Norman Mailer, “an untitled, experimental psychodrama” made in Brooklyn in 1947.

And to lighten things up there will be a one time only screening of the newly restored and remastered (”with six times higher resolution than standard DVD”) WIZARD OF OZ.

The New York Film Festival runs Sept. 25 – Oct. 11. See guide for screening times and locations.

Courtney Hunt shooting FROZEN RIVER

Courtney Hunt first heard the story of Native Americans smuggling merchandise over the frozen St. Lawrence river – an anecdote that would become the basis for her 2008 Sundance Film Festival Dramatic Grand Jury Prize FROZEN RIVER [frozenriverthemovie.com] – more than ten years ago. She had just graduated from Columbia’s MFA program and her 20-minute short ALTHEA FAUGHT had been picked up by PBS’s “American Playhouse.” Hunt had traveled to the New York/Canadian border, talked to the local Mohawk tribe about the conditions they lived in and the reality of smuggling cigarettes, and then wrote her screenplay. But as Hunt remembers, “no one in the mid 90s was interested in stories of women on the Canadian Border.”

After 9/11, when the vulnerability of American borders was reaching a national crisis, Hunt did believe her film might be worth revisiting. However the conditions were different. Not only was there increased border surveillance, but the smuggling had changed – it was no longer cigarettes, but illegal immigrants, primarily Chinese men and women, trying to get across the border. Hunt reworked the story, and then discovered her lead Melissa Leo, when the actress showed up for a screening of 21 GRAMS at the Columbia County film festival in upstate New York. By 2004, Hunt had a 15-minute short that premiered at the New York Film Festival. But it would still take another two years of hunting down funds before Hunt would start production under sub-zero conditions by the Mohawk Indian reservation. After 24 very cold days, working with many non-professional and native actors, Hunt had the film that would win a Sundance Grand Jury Prize in the can.

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Peter Bowen

Editor, FilmInFocus.com