nyff

The Fiftieth Anniversary of the New York Film Festival

Fifty years ago, the New York Film Festival (which runs Sept. 27-Oct. 13) was launched at Lincoln Center as a noncompetitive “festival of festivals.” It was a time when the medium was still struggling to be taken seriously as an art form. Lincoln Center’s own chairman, John D. Rockefeller III, thought the event had no business being there, protesting, “Movies are like baseball.”