The Film Society of LINCOLN Center to host In Case of No Emergency: The Films of Ruben Östlund, January 14-22, 2015, a retrospective of the director's works from the first 10 YEARS of his feature-filmmaking career. In conjunction with the series, the Film Society will open Östlund's Involuntary and Play for a one-week theatrical run on January 14. Tickets will be available for purchase on Thursday, December 18. For more information, visit filmlinc.com.
A sly, trenchant observer of human behavior under duress, the Swedish director Ruben Östlund is quickly emerging as one of world cinema's most distinctive voices, equal parts satirist and sociologist. Östlund, who began his career in the 1990s directing skiing films, has for THE PAST decade been collecting prizes at major festivals, including Cannes, where his latest, the widely acclaimed Force Majeure, took the Grand Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard competition. Two of his four features have been chosen as the Official Swedish Oscar® entry: 2008'sInvoluntary and now FORCE MAJEURE this year.
This first American retrospective of Östlund's work will include all his previous features, The Guitar Mongoloid (2004), Involuntary (2008), Play (2011, NYFF), and
FORCE MAJEURE (2014), as well as several ski films and shorts, among them the award-winning Incident by a Bank (2009). Östlund will be in attendance to present the retrospective, which will also travel to Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Maryland and additional cities throughout North America over a three-month period. The touring retrospective is produced by Comeback Company, in partnership with the Swedish Film Institute and Plattform Produktion, with additional support from the Embassy of Sweden in the U.S. and the Consulate General of Sweden in New York. The complete lineup and schedule for In Case of No Emergency: The Films of Ruben Östlund will be announced in November. Visit filmlinc.com for all up-to-date information.
Ruben Östlund was born in 1974 in Styrsö, a small island off the West Coast of Sweden. He studied graphic design before enrolling at the University of Gothenburg, where he met producer Erik Hemmendorff, with whom he later founded Plattform Produktion. An avid skier, Östlund directed three ski films that demonstrated his taste for long takes-a technique that remains an important trademark of his work. Östlund has become known for his accurate portrayal of human social behavior, as well as his use of Photoshop and other forms of image-processing software in his films.
His feature debut, The Guitar Mongoloid, produced by Hemmendorff, won the FIPRESCI Award at Moscow in 2005, and was the first feature film in Sweden shot on video. Involuntarypremiered at Cannes' Un Certain Regard in 2008 and was then distributed in more than 20 countries and shown at numerous festivals, garnering Östlund international recognition. Two years later, he won the Golden Bear in Berlin for Incident by a Bank, a short film in which every camera movement was computer-generated in post-production. The premiere of his third feature Play (2011) took place at Cannes' Directors' Fortnight, where he was awarded the Coup de Coeur award. Following Cannes, Play was shown in Venice, Toronto, and New York, as well as numerous other festivals where it was awarded additional prices and distinctions, including being nominated for the prestigious European Parliament LUX prize and winning the Nordic Prize, the highest distinction in Scandinavia.
Over the last decade Ruben Östlund's approach to staging has influenced many Scandinavian directors and paved the way for experimentation in the usage of HD cameras and computers. In association with Erik Hemmendorff, he has created a collective with other innovative filmmakers called 'The School of Gothenburg.'
In Östlund's bracing, darkly funny movies, modern life takes shape as a series of simultaneously devastating and absurd crises, no less real for being imagined, and the civilized veneer of Western bourgeois society barely conceals all manner of foibles and prejudices. His deconstructions of ego and privilege are elegant provocations, designed to defy easy identification and, in his words, 'make the audience take a moral stand on its own.'
FILM SOCIETY OF
LINCOLN CENTER:
Founded in 1969 to celebrate American and international cinema, the Film Society of
LINCOLN Center works to recognize established and emerging filmmakers, support important new work, and to enhance the awareness, accessibility, and understanding of the moving image. The Film Society produces the renowned New York Film Festival, a curated selection of the year's most significant new film work, and presents or collaborates on other annual New York City festivals including Dance on Camera, Film Comment Selects, Human Rights Watch Film Festival, New Directors/New Films, NewFest, New York African Film Festival, New York Asian Film Festival, New York Jewish Film Festival, Open Roads: New Italian Cinema and Rendez-Vous with French Cinema. In addition to publishing the award-winning Film Comment magazine, the Film Society recognizes an artist's unique achievement in film with the prestigious Chaplin Award, whose 2015 recipient is Robert Redford. The Film Society's state-of-the-art Walter Reade Theater and the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, located at
LINCOLN Center, provide a home for year-round programs and the New York City film community.
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