NEW YORK INTERNATIONAL LATINO FILM FESTIVAL
Michelle Rodriguez stars in Juan Delancer’s TROPICO DE SANGRE, which will have its world premiere at the Latino Film Festival
Clearview Chelsea Cinemas, 260 West 23rd St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
SVA Theater, 333 West 23rd St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
July 27 – August 1, $12 per screening
Festival Badge: $100
www.nylatinofilm.com
The twelfth annual New York International Latino Film Festival, showcasing shorts, feature-length narratives, and documentaries made by Latino filmmakers in the United States and Latin America, opens tonight with the New York premiere of Ryan Piers Williams’s THE DRY LAND, about an Iraq War veteran returning to his small-town Texas community. The cast includes Ryan O’Nan, America Ferrera, Melissa Leo, Jason Ritter, and Wilmer Valderrama, and the screening will be followed by an after-party. Other highlights of the festival, which runs through August 1, are Keith Aumont’s BOYS OF SUMMER, which looks at the successful Curaçao Little League team; Ric Dupont’s ILEGALES, which follows the travails of a migrant Mexican day laborer; Kareem Mortimer’s CHILDREN OF GOD, which tells the story of a gay British artist fighting for his rights; Ernesto Díaz Espinoza’s MANDRILL, about a Chilean hit man; and Carlos Moreno and Gerardo Muyshondt’s UNO, LA HISTORIA DE UN GOL, which examines the power of soccer during El Salvador’s civil war in the early 1980s. There are also such free panels as “Show Me the Money!” and “Rethinking Film Distribution: Doing It Yourself.”
MULTIPLE PLEASURES
A multitude of well-known artists offer “Multiple Pleasures” at Tanya Bonakdar in Chelsea (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
FUNCTIONAL OBJECTS IN CONTEMPORARY ART
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery
521 West 21st St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Monday - Friday through July 30
Admission: free
212-414-4144
www.tanyabonakdargallery.com
A few months back, Sabrina Blaichman, Caroline Copley, and Genevieve Hudson-Price, of 7Eleven Gallery, put together “Make Yourself at Home,” in which they turned a Chelsea garage into a sort of home showcase, featuring works by a multitude of artists arranged in different “rooms,” with nearly every chair, table, lamp, tire swing, and fake shower available for sale, sitting, and touching. Curator Nathalie Karg, the founder of Cumulus Studios, has now organized “Multiple Pleasures: Functional Objects in Contemporary Art,” a two-floor exhibit of reimagined useful household items by such artists as Doug Aitken, Ross Bleckner, Olaf Breuning, Peter Doig, Sarah Sze, William Kentridge, Douglas Gordon, Barbara Kruger, Yoshitomo Nara, Andrea Zittel, Ernesto Nara, and Richard Prince, among more than eighty others, one big name after another. As opposed to the 7Eleven show, you can’t touch most of the pieces here, which tend to be somewhat more expensive on the whole. But at the front counter, Tanya Bonakdar is selling a number of far more affordable items, including magnets, T-shirts, salt-and-pepper shakers, and towels by the likes of Kenny Scharf, Ed Ruscha, and Damien Hirst. In addition, you can obtain a unique digital screensaver by Olafur Eliasson by making a small donation to Maternity Worldwide, a nonprofit organization seeking to reduce the maternal mortality rate in Ethiopia and around the world.
WE GIVE OURSELVES AWAY AT EVERY MOMENT
The legacy of Merce Cunningham will be honored with one-of-a-kind tribute in Rockefeller Park
AN EVENT FOR MERCE
Rockefeller Park, Battery Park City
Esplanade Plaza, West St. at Liberty St.
Monday, July 26, free, 6:00
www.artsworldfinancialcenter.com
In honor of the first anniversary of legendary choreographer Merce Cunningham’s passing, Annie B Parson and William Knapp are curating a unique program tonight in Battery Park City, at the same location where Cunningham posthumously held his final Event, last August 1-2 in Rockefeller Park. Choreographers Lucinda Childs, Bill T. Jones, Susan Marshall, Jon Kinzell, and Faye Driscoll will present both new pieces and excerpts from their repertoire that have been adapted to meet Cunningham’s site-specific, event-driven criteria. In addition, cellist David Eggar, experimental guitarist Geoff Gersh, and laptop specialist Kotchy will perform live music based on the chance compositions of John Cage, Cunningham’s longtime collaborator and partner. The production will take place in the round, further testing both the choreographers and the audience in this don’t-miss tribute.
CELEBRITY AUTOBIOGRAPHY: IN THEIR OWN WORDS
Rachel Dratch and others are back for more poignant celebrity readings at the Triad Theatre
Triad Theatre
158 West 72nd St. at Broadway
Monday, July 26, 7:30 & 9:30
Tickets: $35-$60 (two-drink minimum, cash only)
www.celebrityautobiography.com
America loves its celebrities, even more so after they share their very personal stories in poignant, moving, emotional memoirs in which they talk about their painful childhood and how hard a life they have despite the fame and fortune, the glitz and glamour. Well, a few years ago, Eugene Pack had the brilliant idea to honor the confessional tomes of superstar celebrities by reading their powerful stories onstage, with a diverse cast of performers in CELEBRITY AUTOBIOGRAPHY: IN THEIR OWN WORDS. No writer’s embellishment is needed as the likes of Ryan Reynolds, Brooke Shields, Matthew Broderick, Sally Struthers, George Wendt, Julie Chen, Mario Cantone, Jennifer Coolidge, Dick Cavett, Lesley Ann Warren, Alan Cumming, Joy Behar, and many more pay homage to such celebs as the Jonas Brothers, Vanna White, Sylvester Stallone, Mr. T, Elizabeth Taylor, Tommy Lee, Suzanne Somers, David Cassidy, Joan Lunden, and any other poor celebrity who has chosen to open up to their adoring public. The Drama Desk Award-winning show returns to the Triad Theatre on July 26 with Rachel Dratch, Kristen Johnston, Carol Kane, Michael McGlone, Pack, Dayle Reyfel, Mo Rocca, Sherri Shepherd, and Alan Zweibel at the 7:30 show, which is already sold out, but tickets for the 9:30 show are still available (with Annie Golden replacing Kane). You can also buy advance tickets for the next three shows, September 20, October 18, and November 22, although the roster of readers has yet to be announced. But does it really matter who is reading whom? It’s hard to go wrong when a bunch of actors and comedians get together to read the intimate stories of their peers.
CHUI CHAI
Pichet Klunchun mixes the traditional with the contemporary in beautiful production at Lincoln Center Festival
Lincoln Center Festival
Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College
899 Tenth Ave. between 58th & 59th Sts.
Saturday, July 24, 8:00, and Sunday, July 25, 3:00
Tickets: $30-$50
www.lincolncenter.org
The Lincoln Center Festival ends today with the second and final performance of the Pichet Klunchun Dance Company’s gorgeous CHUI CHAI (“Transformation”). Nine dancers tell the Nang Loi story from the Ramayana, in which the demon king Thodsakarn attempts to stop the war with Rama by kidnapping his rival’s wife, Sita, and having demon maiden Benyakai turn into the famed beauty and fake her death. The first half of the show features masked dancers in glittering costumes with elaborate headdresses, moving slowly in the Khon style as an accompanying song relates the tale. At one point Thodsakarn is sitting atop his throne, the back of his outfit casting stars onto a screen behind him as if he is in control of the entire universe. (The screen is also used to project several photographs of old and new Thailand.) After a brief interlude in which, through street interviews, offstage voices discuss the legend of Sita and how it translates to modern society, a bare-chested Klunchun appears as Rama, dressed only in jeans, interacting with the costumed dancers, melding the past and the present, the traditional and the contemporary, centered by a breathtaking duet that brings everything together. At first Klunchun moves in the traditional style, eliciting a different emotion from the costumed dancers moving in the same way, but as he incorporates more contemporary movements, the transformation takes over. CHUI CHAI is a dazzling, evocative production that is representative of the breadth and scope of Lincoln Center’s outstanding summer festival.
STANTON STREET SUMMER SUNDAYS
Lower East Side Summer Sundays finale is chock-full of free family-friendly activities
Stanton St. between Allen & Ludlow Sts.
Sunday, July 25, 12 noon – 5:00 pm
Admission: free
www.lowereastsideny.com
The Lower East Side Summer Sundays series comes to a conclusion today with another afternoon of free family-friendly activities. The festivities include tastings from Meatball Shop, Boubouki, and La Newyorkina, face painting, skateboarding lessons, belly dancing, canine nutrition tips, palm readings, live performances by Jessica Delfino, Lily Sparks, and Jamie Bendell, booths sponsored by the NY Fire Department, the Museum at Eldridge St., the Educational Alliance, the LES Ecology Center, and Green Mountain Energy, and much more.
HI-DEF HITCH
Paul Newman and Julie Andrews can now be seen in Hitchcock’s TORN CURTAIN in high-definition at Symphony Space
Symphony Space, Leonard Nimoy Thalia
2537 Broadway at 95th St.
Saturday, July 24 – Sunday, September 5, $12
212-864-5400
www.symphonyspace.org
Symphony Space is presenting a very different kind of Alfred Hitchcock festival this summer, a rather odd grouping of seven of the suspense master’s films that includes four of his lesser-seen later works alongside a trio of classics. What’s the catch? All seven of the films are being shown, for the first time ever, in high-definition on the big screen. On Saturdays and Sundays through September 5, you can experience such Hitchcock faves as REAR WINDOW (1954), VERTIGO (1958), and THE BIRDS (1963) like you never have before; meanwhile, you will also be able to check out TOPAZ (1969), THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY (1955), FRENZY (1972), and TORN CURTAIN (1966) very likely for the first time. The seven films, which are among the final fourteen Hitch made (between 1954 and 1976), offer an unusual look at the British director, known for his onscreen appearances and offscreen obsessions that often made their way onto celluloid.
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