New York Film Festival Unveils New Midnight Movies Sidebar

The New York Film Festival will introduce a Midnight Movies sidebar for the first time this year, screening Barry Levinson’s The Bay, Peter Strickland’s Berberian Sound Studio and Takeshi Kitano’s Outrage Beyond (Autoreiji: Biyondo).

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The Film Society of Lincoln Center, which presents the festival, which runs from Sept. 28 to Oct. 14, also announced Friday that its first-ever NYFF Convergence, a two-day program of panels, workshops and “immersive experiences,” will be held at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center on Sept. 29 and 30. The program devoted to transmedia will include a keynote conversation with Tommy Pallota, producer of A Scanner Darkly, and Eugene Hernandez, the Film Society’s director of digital strategy.

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“The way stories are being told is changing, or rather expanding, thanks to new tools and technologies that allow storytellers to engage and involve an audience in new ways. With NYFF Convergence we're focusing expressly on those artists and filmmakers rather than the technology,” Hernandez said.

Other guests who will take part in the program include Bill Plympton, Andrew Evans, Nick Bernadone, Andrea Phillips, Mark Harris, Caitlin Burns, Jeff Wirth, George Strayton, Amy Neswald, Steve Schultz, Laura Steritt, Jason DeMarco, Brian Fountain, Blaine Graboyes, Jamin Warren, Barry Alexander Brown, Michael Knowlton, Nina Lassam, Amanda Harvard, James Carter, Daniel Laikind, Lindsay Ellis, Jeremy Redleaf, Scott Newman, Garry Delfiner, Lina Srivistava and Pamela Vitale.

The event will include the premiere of the film component of the independent transmedia project McCarren Park, an educational, multiplatform experience that pits Brooklyn hipsters against raging dinosaurs.

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Announcing the Midnight Movies sidebar, associate director of programming Scott Foundas said, “While there have been occasional midnight screenings in past editions of NYFF, we’re thrilled to build on the momentum of our ongoing Midnight Movies series and its devoted audience by adding this official sidebar of witching-hour premieres.”

The Bay, from Roadside Attrctions, teams Levinson with Paranormal Activity producer Oren Peli, and tells the story of what happens when parasites invite the groundwater supply in a small town in Maryland over the July Fourth weekend. Strickland’s Berberian Sound Studio, which has just been acquired by IFC Midnight, is a horror tale set in a sleazy Italian sound studio in 1976. Kitano’s Outrage Beyond plunges into the world of Tokyo’s yakuza as various factions battle for control.