Dorothea (Tyne Daly) and Greta (Elisabeth Henry) fight to save their community arts center in A Bread Factory: For the Sake of Gold
A BREAD FACTORY — PART ONE: FOR THE SAKE OF GOLD (Patrick Wang, 2018)
Village East Cinema
181-189 Second Ave. at 12th St.
Opens Friday, October 26
212-529-6799
abreadfactory.com/the-films
www.villageeastcinema.com
All politics are local, and so it is with Patrick Wang’s A Bread Factory: For the Sake of Gold, the first of a two-part epic about a small town’s battle over arts funding. Forty years ago, Dorothea (Tyne Daly, often in pigtails) and Greta (Elisabeth Henry) moved to Checkford in Upstate New York and turned a shuttered bread factory into an arts venue for the local community. They are now being challenged by businessman Karl (Trevor St. John) and the avant-garde performance art duo of May (Janet Hsieh) and Ray (George Young), who have constructed their own modern arts building, the FEEL Institute, and want the financial allocation that otherwise would have gone to the Bread Factory. Joined by Elsa (Nana Visitor), journalist Jan (Glynnis O’Connor), Sir Walter (Brian Murray, in his final film), and others, they have to convince the sketchy board — including Joel (Joe Felece), the ornery Alec (Joe Paparone), Darren (Eugene Brell), Pat (Kit Flanagan), Mavis (Nan-Lynn Nelson), and Laura (Julia Rock) — that it is more important to the town that the Bread Factory remains open, providing art, theater, film, music, and more to children and adults. Meanwhile, the shy Max has started dating Julie (Erica Durham), Mavis’s daughter, who wants to be an actress; Dorothea and Pat have a deeply personal feud; the rather unusual projectionist, Simon (Keaton Nigel Cooke), gets to meet one of his cinematic heroes, Jordan (Janeane Garofalo), who teaches an odd class to a group of youngsters; teacher Jason (James Marsters) demands administrative accountability; Dorothea is staging a version of Euripides’s Hecuba; Hollywood star Trooper Jaymes (Chris Conroy) unexpectedly arrives in town; and Sandra (opera soprano Martina Arroyo), who seems to live in a seat in the Bread Factory theater, shows a surprising aptitude for singing (and serves as a kind of Greek chorus).
Cinematographer Frank Barrera and writer-director Patrick Wang discuss a scene in first of two-part epic, A Bread Factory
The film takes on numerous contemporary issues, such as art against commerce, tradition versus the future, corruption, governmental conflict of interest, illegal immigration, Chinese influence, and even child labor laws. Wang (In the Family, The Grief of Others), who was partially inspired to make the film after visiting an old theater in Hudson, New York, adds plenty of absurdist humor to the proceedings, preventing things from getting too didactic; Daly is particularly adept at walking that fine line. Cinematographer Frank Barrera tends to keep his camera steady, preferring long shots with slow movement, giving the audience time to digest the wide-ranging, twisting plot. Be sure to pay attention to Chip Taylor’s self-referential, tongue-in-cheek song over the closing credits, which explains, “But is it over yet? Is it really over yet? Looking back, we all could use a little more story.” And more there is; A Bread Factory, Part Two: Walk with Me a While continues the tale, combining for more than four hours of Checkford intrigue at Village East, in addition to several postscreening Q&As, concluding at the 9:30 show on October 28, with critic Godfrey Cheshire, producer Daryl Freimark, and actors Zachard Sayle and Jonathan Iglesias. A Bread Factory will then be joined November 2 by Wang’s 2015 drama, The Grief of Others, with Q&As on Friday and Saturday after the 6:45 screenings.