One of the things that is most satisfying about the New York Film Festival is its loyalty to certain filmmakers and its interest ien rediscovering the films of cinema masters. This year, the Festival will screen a Max Ophuls romantic melodrama classic (Lola Montes, 1955), an Albert Lewin cult film (Pandora And The Flying Dutchman, 1951) and a Pakistani realist drama (The Day Shall Dawn, 1959). But its major retrospective program sidebar is devoted to the Japanese director Nagisa Oshima.

The Festival is launching the North American tour of In the Realm of Oshima, a historical, in-depth look at one of modern cinema’s essential figure. The sidebar is a near-complete retrospective of Japanese director, presenting 26 titles spanning five decades. The sidebar presents several key works in both Oshima’s career and Japanese film history, including his rarely screened first feature “A Town of Love and Hope;” the Shochiku Studios film that launched the Japanese New Wave of the 1960s, “Cruel Story of Youth; the highly controversial exploration of sexual ecstasy, In the Realm of the Senses; and his most recent effort, “Taboo.” For more information on the series and the entire New York Film Festival program, log on to: www.filmlinc.com

Sandy Mandelberger, New York FF Dailies Editor