The world premiere of "My Week with Marilyn," the Weinstein Company film starring Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe and Kenneth Branagh as Laurence Olivier, will serve as the centerpiece gala of the 2011 New York Film Festival, the Film Society of Lincoln Center announced on Thursday.
The film will screen at Alice Tully Hall on Sunday, October 9, as part of the 49th NYFF, which runs from September 30 through October 16.
Based on the diaries of a young production assistant, Colin Clark (played by Eddie Redmayne), the film deals with a week on the set of the 1956 film "The Prince and the Showgirl," which starred Monroe and Olivier. Dougray Scott plays Monroe's husband, playwright Arthur Miller; the film was directed by Simon Curtis, and also stars Dominic Cooper, Judi Dench, Julia Ormond and Emma Watson.
The festival also announced its lineup of Masterworks presentations, which consist of a digitally-restored version of William Wyler's 1959 epic "Ben-Hur," a screening of Nicholas Ray's experimental "We Can't Go Home Again" from 1973, and a 36-film retrospective covering the 100 years of Japan's Nikkatsu Films, which will include "The Burmese Harp" (1956), "Cold Fish" (2010), "Singing Love Birds" (1936), "Pigs and Battleships" (1961), "Tokyo Drifter" (1966) and some of the soft-core "Roman Porno" films Nikkatsu released in the 1970s.
NYFF announced last week that the festival will open with the North American premiere of Roman Polanski's "Carnage," featuring Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, Christoph Waltz and Kate Winslet.
Additional information, and the full list of films in the Nikkatsu tribute, is available at www.filmlinc.com.
