BROOKLYN MUSEUM FIRST SATURDAY: BEYOND BORDERS
Kathleen Foster’s PROFILED will screen at the Brooklyn Museum for free Saturday night, followed by a panel discussion
Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, October 1, free, 5:00 - 11:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org
The Brooklyn Museum breaks out for its free October First Saturday program, “Beyond Borders.” There will be live performances by Maria Usbeck, Sol Nova, and M.A.K.U. Soundsystem; a screening of Kathleen Foster’s Profiled, followed by a talkback with Foster, Natasha Duncan, Joseph L. Graves Jr., Kristine Anderson Welch, Jill Bloomberg, and Joël Díaz; a salsa party with Balmir Latin Dance Company; pop-up gallery talks and a curator tour of the refreshed American Art galleries with Nancy Rosoff; a hands-on workshop in which participants will use the Mexican folk art technique of repujado; and a book club reading and talk by Gabby Rivera, author of Juliet Takes a Breath. In addition, you can check out such long-term installations as “Connecting Cultures: A World in Brooklyn,” “Double Take: African Innovations,” and “The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago.” Entry to the new exhibition “Who Shot Sports: A Photographic History, 1843 to the Present” requires a discounted admission fee of $10.
CHILE PEPPER FESTIVAL 2016
Brooklyn Botanic Garden
900 Washington Ave.
Saturday, October 1, $15-$20 (children under twelve free), 10:00 am - 6:00 pm
718-623-7200
www.bbg.org
The weather might be cooling a bit, but it’s going to remain hot, hot, hot this weekend at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s twenty-fourth annual Chile Pepper Festival. On Saturday, October 1, the BBG will celebrate all things spicy with a full slate of activities, highlighted by tastings from more than five dozen food purveyors divided into Hot Sauce Sorcery (Bacchanal Sauce, Beast Feast Maine, Black Irish Hot Sauce, Guyank Sweet-Hot Pepper Sauce, Poor Devil Pepper Co., Queen Majesty Hot Sauce, more), Chile-Chocolate Debauchery (Hernán Mexican Mole, Little Bird Chocolates, Lululosophy Artisan Chocolates, MarieBelle, Raaka Chocolate, Whimsy & Spice, others), Combustible Condiments (Anarchy in a Jar, Calcutta Kitchens, Elvio’s Chimichurri, Josephine’s Feast, Mama Margarita’s Salsa, Nafi’s Hot Pepper Condiments, Pierre’s Spicy, etc.), Hi-Scoville Sweets (Brooklyn Soda Works, Bushwick Kitchen, Culture: An American Yogurt Company, La Newyorkina, Mike’s Hot Honey, OddFellows Ice Cream Co,. Spoonable), and Piquant Pickles & Such (Divine Brine, Holy Schmitt’s Homemade Horseradish, Mama O’s Premium Kimchi, Mother-in-Law’s Kimchi, North Brooklyn Farms, Pure Mountain Olive Oil, Rick’s Picks, Zia Green Chile Company). The live-music lineup begins at 10:00 with Pilette’s Ghost and continues with Dahka Band (10:45), Élage Diouf (12:15), Hazmat Modine (1:45), Aurelio (3:15), and the Lost Bayou Ramblers (4:45). Robbins & Ringold, consisting of Todd Robbins and Stephen Ringold, will serve as masters of ceremonies. There will also be a Chile Chat with Gregory Seaton at 10:30, a Hot Chiles for Cool Kids workshop in which kids can take a pepper plant home, Sahadi’s Souk, and a booth featuring Archestratus Books + Foods.
NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL REVIVALS: THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS (4K RESTORATION)
Members of the FLN hide from French paratroops in Gillo Pontecorvo’s neo-Realist classic THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS
THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Francesca Beale Theater
144 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Saturday, October 1, $15, 7:30
Festival runs September 30 - October 16
Theatrical run opens October 7 at Film Forum
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.org
In Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo’s gripping neo-Realist war thriller The Battle of Algiers, a reporter asks French paratroop commander Lt. Col. Mathieu (Jean Martin), who has been sent to the Casbah to derail the Algerian insurgency, about an article Jean-Paul Sartre had just written for a Paris paper. “Why are the Sartres always born on the other side?” Mathieu says. “Then you like Sartre?” the reporter responds. “No, but I like him even less as a foe,” Mathieu coolly answers. In 1961, French existentialist Sartre wrote in the preface to Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth, the seminal tome on colonialism and decolonialism, “In Algeria and Angola, Europeans are massacred at sight. It is the moment of the boomerang; it is the third phase of violence; it comes back on us, it strikes us, and we do not realize any more than we did the other times that it’s we that have launched it,” referring to European colonization. “There are those among [the oppressed creatures] who assert themselves by throwing themselves barehanded against the guns; these are their heroes. Others make men of themselves by murdering Europeans, and these are shot down; brigands or martyrs, their agony exalts the terrified masses. Yes, terrified; at this fresh stage, colonial aggression turns inward in a current of terror among the natives. By this I do not only mean the fear that they experience when faced with our inexhaustible means of repression but also that which their own fury produces in them. They are cornered between our guns pointed at them and those terrifying compulsions, those desires for murder which spring from the depth of their spirits and which they do not always recognize; for at first it is not their violence, it is ours, which turns back on itself and rends them; and the first action of these oppressed creatures is to bury deep down that hidden anger which their and our moralities condemn and which is however only the last refuge of their humanity. Read Fanon: you will learn how, in the period of their helplessness, their mad impulse to murder is the expression of the natives’ collective unconscious.” Sartre’s brutally honest depiction of colonialism serves as a perfect introduction to Pontecorvo’s film, made five years later and then, unsurprisingly, banned in France. (In 1953, the Martinique-born Fanon, who fought for France in WWII, moved to Algeria, where he became a member of the National Liberation Front; French authorities expelled him from the country in 1957, but he kept working for the FLN and Algeria up to his death in 1961. For more on The Wretched of the Earth, see the documentary Concerning Violence: Nine Scenes from the Anti-Imperialistic Self-Defense.)
Terrorism and counterinsurgency take to the streets in Oscar-nominated THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS
In The Battle of Algiers, Pontecorvo (Kapò, Burn!) and screenwriter Franco Solinas follow a small group of FLN rebels, focusing on the young, unpredictable Ali la Pointe (Brahim Haggiag) and the more calm and experienced commander, El-hadi Jafar (Saadi Yacef, playing a character based on himself; the story was also inspired by his book Souvenirs de la Bataille d’Alger). Told in flashback, the film takes viewers from 1954 to 1957 as Mathieu hunts down the FLN leaders while the revolutionaries stage strikes, bomb public places, and assassinate French police. Shot in a black-and-white cinema-vérité style on location by Marcello Gatti — Pontecorvo primarily was a documentarian — The Battle of Algiers is a tense, powerful work that plays out like a thrilling procedural, touching on themes that are still relevant fifty years later, including torture, cultural racism, media manipulation, terrorism, and counterterrorism. It seems so much like a documentary — the only professional actor in the cast is Martin — that it’s hardly shocking that the film has been used as a primer for the IRA, the Black Panthers, the Pentagon, and military and paramilitary organizations on both sides of the colonialism issue, although Pontecorvo is clearly on the side of the Algerian rebels. However, it does come as a surprise that the original conception was a melodrama starring Paul Newman as a Western journalist. All these years later, The Battle of Algiers, which earned three Oscar nominations (for Best Foreign Language Film in 1967 and Best Director and Best Original Screenplay in 1969), still has a torn-from-the-headlines urgency that makes it as potent as ever. And now it will look better than ever, as a 4K restoration in honor of the film’s fiftieth anniversary is being shown October 1 at 7:30 in the Revivals section of the New York Film Festival, prior to the October 7 North American theatrical release at Film Forum.
THE MASTER — PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN: BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE DEAD
Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke star as brothers playing a dangerous game in Sidney Lumet thriller
BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE DEAD (Sidney Lumet, 2007)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Saturday, October 1, $12, 2:30
Series continues through October 2
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us
Sidney Lumet spins an intriguing web of mystery and severe family dysfunction in Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead. Andy (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Hank (Ethan Hawke) are very different brothers who are both in desperate financial straits. Andy, a real estate exec, has a serious drug problem and a fading marriage to his sexy but bored young wife (Marisa Tomei), while ne’er-do-well Hank can’t afford the monthly child-support payments to his ex-wife (Aleksa Palladino) and daughter (Amy Ryan). Andy convinces Hank to knock off their parents’ (Albert Finney and Rosemary Harris) jewelry store, but when things go horribly wrong, everyone involved is forced to face some very difficult situations, leading to a harrowing climax. Seymour and Hawke are both excellent, the former cool, calm, and collected, the latter scattershot and impulsive. Tomei gives one of her finest performances as the woman sleeping with both brothers. Lumet tells the story through a series of flashbacks from various characters’ point of view, with fascinating overlaps — although a bit overused — that offer different perspectives on critical scenes. Hoffman chose the role of Andy over Hank, which leads to several surprises, including an opening scene you will never forget. Adapted from a script by playwright Kelly Masterson — whom Lumet had never met or even spoken with — Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (the title comes from an Irish toast that begins, “May you be in heaven half and hour…”) is a thrilling modern noir from one of the masters of melodrama. The underrated film is screening on October 1 at 2:30 in the Museum of the Moving Image series “Philip Seymour Hoffman: The Master,” a sixteen-film tribute to Hoffman, a native New Yorker who left us well before his time. The series continues through October 2 with such other Hoffman films as Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia, Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley, and Anton Corbjin’s A Most Wanted Man.
CONSCIOUSNESS HACKING — MIND-EXPANDING FILM EXPERIENCES: THE CONGRESS
Robin Wright gets scanned for Hollywood posterity in Are Folman’s underseen gem, THE CONGRESS
CABARET CINEMA: THE CONGRESS (Ari Folman, 2013)
Rubin Museum of Art
150 West 17th St. at Seventh Ave.
Friday, September 30, $10, 9:30
212-620-5000
rubinmuseum.org
Writer-director Ari Folman imagines a sad but visually dazzling future in the spectacular fantasy The Congress. Inspired by Stanislaw Lem’s 1971 short novel The Futurological Congress, the film follows Robin Wright playing a fictionalized version of herself, an idealistic actress about to turn forty-five who has let her career come second to raising her two children, daughter Sarah (Sami Gayle) and, primarily, son Aaron (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who is slowly losing the ability to see and hear. Wright’s longtime agent, Al (Harvey Keitel), has a last-chance opportunity for her: Jeff Green (Danny Huston), the head of Miramount, wants to scan her body and emotions so the studio can manipulate her digital likeness into any role while keeping her ageless. They don’t want the modern-day Robin Wright but the young, beautiful star of The Princess Bride, State of Grace, and Forrest Gump. The only catch is that in exchange for a substantial lump-sum payment, the real Wright will never be allowed to act again, in any capacity. With no other options, she reluctantly takes the deal. Twenty years later, invited to speak at the Futurological Congress, she enters a whole new realm, a fully animated world where men, women, and children live out their entertainment fantasies. Shocked by what she is experiencing, Wright meets up with Dylan Truliner (Jon Hamm), who has been animating her digital version for years, as a revolution threatens; meanwhile, Green has another offer for her, even more frightening than the first.
Robin Wright enters the animated, hallucinogenic fantasy world of the future in THE CONGRESS
The Congress is a stunning look at America’s obsession with celebrity culture and pharmaceutical release amid continuing technological advancements in which avatars can replace real people and computers can do all the work. The animated scenes, consisting of sixty thousand drawings made in eight countries, are mind-blowing, referencing the history of cartoons, from early Max Fleischer gems through Warner Bros. classics as well as nods to Disney, Pixar, Who’s Afraid of Roger Rabbit, and even Richard Linklater’s rotoscoped Waking Life; Folman also pays homage, directly and indirectly, to James Cameron and Stanley Kubrick. (The central part of the cartoon scenes were actually filmed live first, then animated based on the footage; be on the lookout for cameos by Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Frida Kahlo, and dozens of other familiar faces.) Wright gives one of her best performances playing a modified version of herself, maintaining a calm, cool demeanor even as things threaten to completely break down around her. Paul Giamatti does a fine turn as her son’s concerned doctor, and Huston has a ball chewing the colorful scenery as the greedy, nasty studio head (as well as numerous other authority figures). The film also plays off itself in wonderful ways; the fictionalized Wright is at first against being scanned and used in science-fiction films, but the real Wright, of course, has agreed to be turned into a cartoon character in a science-fiction film. The story does get confusing in the second half, threatening to lose its thread as it goes all over the place, but Folman, whose previous film was the Oscar-nominated Waltz with Bashir, manages to bring it all together by the end, led by the stalwart Wright. Named Best European Animated Feature at the European Film Awards, The Congress is an eye-popping, soul-searching, hallucinogenic warning of what just might be awaiting all of us. It’s screening September 30 at 9:30 at the Rubin Museum, concluding the three-part Cabaret Cinema series “Consciousness Hacking: Mind-Expanding Film Experiences,” in which Consciousness Hacking founder Mikey Siegel and Consciousness Hacking NYC cofounder Dr. Christopher Kelley investigate “the three principal dimensions of consciousness hacking: 1) Contemplation, 2) Psychedelic Journey, and 3) Technological Innovation.” Dr. Kelley will host the screening, joined by special guests.
A TASTE OF HONEY
Helen (Rachel Botchan) and Jo (Rebekah Brockman) hold nothing back in Pearl revival of A TASTE OF HONEY (photo by Russ Rowland)
The Pearl Theatre
555 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday - Sunday through October 30, $59-$79
212-563-9261
www.pearltheatre.org
The Pearl Theatre revival of Shelagh Delaney’s first play, A Taste of Honey, a British breakthrough written when she was eighteen, is a thoroughly engaging, bittersweet coming-of-age tale about a working-class mother and her peculiar daughter in dank, depressing postwar Britain — late-1950s Manchester, to be precise. Single mom Helen (Rachel Botchan) and her teenage daughter, Jo (Rebekah Brockman), are on the move again, settling into their new flat in a factory town. It’s a dreary, bleak apartment with a bathroom down the hall and a fine view of the gasworks. The two constantly bicker over just about everything, from money to men, furniture to booze. At one point Jo, who calls her mother “Helen,” notes, “You should prepare my meals like a proper mother,” to which Helen responds, “Have I ever laid claim to being a proper mother?” When one of Helen’s many male friends, Peter (Bradford Cover), a one-eyed playboy, starts talking marriage, Jo quickly falls for Jimmy (Ade Otukoya), a black male nurse and sailor who is about to ship out. In the second act, Jo finds herself in trouble and turns to the effeminate Geoffrey (John Evans Reese), creating a strange simulacrum of family after her mother has taken off with Peter. Through it all, the trio of trumpeter Max Boiko, guitarist Phil Faconti, and bassist Walter Stinson plays jazz and music-hall numbers, wandering around the set and even sitting on the couch with the actors, each acknowledging the others’ presence. Helen and Jo are also both aware of the audience, addressing them directly several times, trying to get the crowd on their side. “She’d lose her head if it was loose,” Jo says early on, while Helen asks, “Wouldn’t she get on your nerves?”
A Taste of Honey has quite a history. It debuted in London in 1958, where it caused a stir as a reaction to the Angry Young Men movement led by John Osborne and Kingsley Amis. (“I don’t like a too-knowledgeable woman,” Osborne said at the time. “I feel it is against her sex.”) The show moved to Broadway two years later, with Angela Lansbury as Helen, Joan Plowright as Jo, Nigel Davenport as Peter, Billy Dee Williams as Jimmy, and Andrew Ray as Geoffrey; a 1981 Great White Way revival featured Valerie French as Helen and Amanda Plummer as Jo. The story was also made into a 1961 movie by Tony Richardson, written by Delaney and starring Rita Tushingham in her first film. (The famous title song was written for the movie and is played at the start of this revival; Williams recorded his own take for a 1961 album.) The faithful Pearl version is directed by Austin Pendleton, whose fine A Day by the Sea has been extended at the Mint. Harry Feiner’s cluttered set captures the feel of a dingy working-class flat, while the large background charcoal drawing of the company town is a reminder of what might be Jo’s only real skill. “I thought you said you weren’t good at anything,” Helen says after finding Jo’s sketchbook. Jo answers, “It’s only a drawing.” Helen adds, “I didn’t realize I had such a talented daughter,” to which Jo boasts, “I’m not just talented, I’m geniused.” Pearl veteran Botchan and Brockman are naturals as Helen and Jo, fighting the way only mothers and daughters can; it’s a thrill watching them go for each other’s throats even as a little care and love trickle through.
Jo (Rebekah Brockman) seeks solace from Geoffrey (John Evans Reese) in Shelagh Delaney’s A TASTE OF HONEY (photo by Russ Rowland)
There’s a timeless quality about Delaney’s writing that keeps A Taste of Honey fresh and poignantly funny, dealing with such issues as the economy, race, homosexuality, and broken families, led by two strong female characters who speak their mind. Delaney, who was immortalized on the covers of the Smiths’ Louder than Bombs compilation and “Girlfriend in a Coma” single — in 1986, Smiths leader Morrissey told NME, “I’ve never made any secret of the fact that at least fifty percent of my reason for writing can be blamed on Shelagh Delaney”; Morrissey also incorporated two lines from the play into the song “Reel around the Fountain” — went on to write several other plays and screenplays but never again achieved the critical success her debut work brought her; she passed away in 2011 at the age of seventy-two. But as the working class in America continues its own decline amid hard-fought struggles for economic equality for women, gay rights, increases in the minimum wage, an end to racism, and affordable housing, A Taste of Honey feels as relevant as ever.
BAM NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL: BATTLEFIELD
Peter Brook revisits THE MAHABHARATA with BATTLEFIELD at the BAM Harvey (photo by Caroline Moreau)
Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St.
September 28 - October 9, $30-$110
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.bouffesdunord.com
In 1985, BAM president and executive director Harvey Lichtenstein was looking for a special space where he could present Peter Brook’s extraordinary nine-hour epic, The Mahabharata, in Brooklyn. Two days after giving up, he suddenly saw the abandoned Majestic movie house, which he passed by on his way to BAM every day, and immediately summoned Brook. The two men climbed a ladder and got inside through a window, and they instantly knew they had found a home for the epic theater piece, which ran at what would become the BAM Harvey as part of the 1987 Next Wave Festival. Brook, who has also staged such works as The Cherry Orchard, The Man Who, and The Suit at BAM, will be back at the Harvey with Battlefield, a seventy-minute exploration of the central story of The Mahabharata. The collaboration with Marie-Hélène Estienne for their C.I.C.T. — Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord troupe runs September 28 through October 9, featuring music by Toshi Tsuchitori, lighting by Philippe Vialatte, and costumes by Oria Puppo. The ninety-one-year-old Brook will participate in a discussion following the October 6 performance. Based on the ancient Sanskrit text and the 1989 play written by Jean-Claude Carrière, the production is also part of the Paris-New York Tandem cultural initiative that highlights film, music, theater, dance, education, and more in the two cities.
