Film Society of Lincoln Center Announces NYFF CONVERGENCE Presentation, 9/29 & 30

The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced today the first presentation of NYFF Convergence on September 29 and 30 in the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center as part of the historic 50th edition of NYFF. FSLC also announced three films as part of its first Midnight Movies presentation.

Serving as the crowning event for the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s year round programming commitment to transmedia, NYFF Convergence will be presented on Saturday, September 29 and Sunday, September 30 at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center with two full days of panels, workshops and “immersive experiences” designed to be an intimate gathering for creators, designers, thinkers and fans.

Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Director of Digital Strategy, Eugene Hernandez, said, “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.”

The inaugural event will include a Keynote Conversation between visionary storyteller Tommy Pallota (A SCANNER DARKLY, ”Collapsus”) and Hernandez. Pallotta was most recently responsible for the Emmy-Nominated transmedia thriller ‘Collapsus’. He first connected Richard Linklater with animation when he produced the award-winning feature film WAKING LIFE. He followed up with Philip K. Dick’s A SCANNER DARKLY, starring Keanu Reeves and Robert Downey Jr. Pallotta is currently directing a hybrid documentary about Somali pirates and survival in a failed state called, THE LAST HIJACK.

Other special guests 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, Pamela Vitale, and many more.

Highlights of the two-day event include immersive experiences for the attendees. The premiere of the film component of indie transmedia project MCCARREN PARK features an educational, multiplatform experience that pits Brooklyn hipsters against raging dinosaurs. RENGA, a feature length film in which the audience completely controls the Space Invaders-like action, surviving or perishing together.

TEDxUpperWestSide BREAK will be an exploration of what story means in the 21st Century all done in the signature TED style. TRANSMEDIA TEST KITCHEN will put the audience in the middle of a first-of-its-kind exhibition-style transmedia showdown between two competing storytelling teams, and WHISPERS IN THE DARK is an immersive fiction experience that plunges a non-actor participant into a ghost story that plays out over 24 hours in settings throughout New York City.

Panels announced will feature discussions with transmedia content innovators and a look at how the explosion of digital technologies have helped and hindered storytelling. Other topics that will be explored will include showing and sharing the similarities and differences in producing for multiple platforms, dynamic new opportunities for non-profits, and looking at how transmedia can provide different forms of artistic expression outside of the traditional record release format for musicians, among other topics.

Transmedia workshops will offer attendees a guide to producing cross-platform projects on a budget, offer pitching strategies, and instruction on developing story and structure for the aspiring transmedia producer in a world where the audiences can become the main characters.

Another “first” for the New York Film Festival will be the inclusion of a Midnight Movies sidebar section. Following the successful addition of a Midnight Movies series to the Film Society’s regular programming, NYFF will offer a trio of anticipated films for the genre and thriller audience. In THE BAY, Barry Levinson teams with PARANOMAL ACTIVITY’S Oren Peli to combine elements of the old-fashioned giant insect movie with the use of found-footage style storytelling. Peter Strickland’s BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO stars Toby Jones as a sound recording engineer that finds that cinema and reality have blurred and the sound effects he is helping create for a horror film may actually be real. Takeshi Kitano’s OUTRAGE BEYOND is a follow up to the director’s yakuza thriller OUTRAGE (2010), about a renegade cop coming between an inter-clan battle royale.

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 17-day New York Film Festival highlights the best in world cinema, featuring top films from celebrated filmmakers as well as fresh new talent. The selection committee, chaired by Peña also includes: Melissa Anderson, Contributor, Village Voice; Scott Foundas, Associate Program Director, The Film Society of Lincoln Center; Todd McCarthy, Chief Film Critic, The Hollywood Reporter; and Amy Taubin, Contributing Editor, Film Comment and Sight and Sound.

The New York Film Festival is generously sponsored by Royal Bank of Canada, American Airlines, The New York Times, Stella Artois, illy, HBO, Trump International Hotel and Tower, WABC, WNET, the National Endowment for the Arts and New York State Council on the Arts.

General Public tickets will be available September 9th. There will be an advance ticketing opportunity for Film Society of Lincoln Center Patrons and Members prior to that date. For more information visit www.Filmlinc.com/NYFF or call 212 875 5601.