New York Film Festival Press Conference for: VOLVER Series: The 44th New York Film Festival [Sept 29 - Oct 15 2006] Director: Pedro Almodóvar, Country: Spain, Release: 2006, Runtime: 120 Centerpiece Over the last twenty years, the name Pedro Almodóvar has become virtually synonymous with cinematic pleasure. This latest movie (his seventh to screen at the NYFF) is sheer bliss, a supernatural tale of murder, adultery and family happiness.

Press Conference New York Film Festival for: THE JOURNALS OF KNUD RASMUSSEN Series: The 44th New York Film Festival [Sept 29 - Oct 15 2006] Director: Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn, Country: Canada, Release: 2006, Runtime: 112 Between 1920 and 1924, the Danish/Inuit explorer and scientist Knud Rasmussen led five expeditions through Arctic North America from his trade station in Thule, Greenland. Along the way, he and his team befriended the great shaman Aua and his family, and documented what was in the end a pivotal moment in Igloolik culture: Slowly encroaching foreign trade, the impending murder investigation of a white man, and the unstoppable spread of Christianity converged to alter customs and shatter taboos that had been in place for centuries.

Press Conference New York Film Festival for: LITTLE CHILDREN Series: The 44th New York Film Festival [Sept 29 - Oct 15 2006] Director: Todd Field , Country: USA, Release: 2006, Runtime: 136 First with In the Bedroom and now with his haunting, sensual adaptation of Tom Perrotta’s novel, Todd Field proves himself to be one of the most perceptive and provocative filmmakers on the American scene. The restless adults in this unnervingly sexy, faintly menacing, and coolly wise drama who look after their kids (in settings of deceptive innocence), turn out to be children themselves, all too apt to stray off the playground path in their hunger for love, sex, and a temporary freedom from responsibilities.

New York Film Festival Press Conference for: MAFIOSO Series: The 44th New York Film Festival [Sept 29 - Oct 15 2006] Director: Alberto Lattuada, Country: Italy, Release: 1962, Runtime: 99 A long-lost comic classic from the Golden Age of Italian cinema, lovingly restored to its original glory. The incomparable Alberto Sordi gives one of his finest performances as Antonio Badalamenti, a punctilious factory supervisor in Northern Italy who takes his blonde wife (Norma Bengell) and their two adorable children to meet his family in Sicily. As vast meals are consumed and suspicious looks exchanged, Antonio sinks back into the rhythms and customs familiar from childhood. But then local bigwig Don Vincenzo (Ugo Attanasio) and his “people

Press conference for the New York Film Festival film: WOMAN ON THE BEACH Series: The 44th New York Film Festival [Sept 29 - Oct 15 2006] Director: Hong Sang-soo, Country: South Korea, Release: 2006, Runtime: 127 Even for those who already recognize Hong Sang-soo (Tale of Cinema NYFF ’05) as a filmmaker of great psychological sensitivity and refinement, his latest offering comes as an unexpected delight: It is the most sheerly enjoyable and satisfying film of his career. Chang-wook won (Seung-woo kim) is a film director trying to complete his script who stumbles into relationships with two women he meets at an off-season seaside resort. In the process, he lays bare the destructive patterns of his behavior and generates material for his new film.

New York FF Press Conference for : THE QUEEN Series: The 44th New York Film Festival [Sept 29 - Oct 15 2006] Director: Stephen Frears , Country: United Kingdom, Release: 2006, Runtime: 103 Opening Night There will always be an England. But the England that poured out its grief and condolence at the shocking loss of Princess Diana in the waning summer of 1997 was a nation that had become unfamiliar to the monarch who, at the time of her ex-daughter-in-law’s tragedy, had held the British throne for 45 years: Here was a people mourning its princess, awaiting royal public acknowledgment of what Elizabeth II preferred to treat as a private family affair.