this week in lectures, signings, panel discussions, workshops, and Q&As

FIRST LOOK 2024: SOLARIS MON AMOUR / HANDFUL OF DIRT

Kuba Mikurda’s Solaris mon amour explores inner and outer space using found footage

SOLARIS MON AMOUR (Kuba Mikurda, 2023) / HANDFUL OF DIRT (GARSTKA ZIEMI) (Izabela Zubrycka, 2023)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Friday, March 15, $15, 6:30
Series runs March 13-17, individual screenings $15, Weekend Pass $60, All-Festival Pass $120
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us

Despite its tantalizing title, Kuba Mikurda’s Solaris Mon Amour is not an experimental film lover’s fantasy mashup of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris and Alain Resnais’s Hiroshima mon amour. Instead, it’s a fascinating journey into grief and trauma, dreams and memory, using found scientific footage to create a compelling and haunting cinematic experience.

Mikurda goes back to Stanisław Lem’s novel Solaris, which the Polish writer and philosopher began writing in 1959, the year that Hiroshima mon amour was released. The latter is about an actress and an architect who have a torrid affair in one of the two cities that the United States dropped the atomic bomb on in 1945; the former imagines a planet where an astronaut encounters what appears to be his dead wife, among other strange things.

Mikurda and editor Laura Pawela piece together their forty-seven-minute black-and-white story out of excerpts from more than seventy films in the WFO archives at the Educational Film Studio in Lodz made between 1952 and 1982, including Earth Our Planet, Life of the Stars, Radiographic Study of Metals, The World of Mold, Injections, Jellyfish, Plasma Torch, ABC of Cosmonautics, and She Put Down Foots Filled the Ground, accompanied by Marcin Lenarczyk’s sci-fi soundtrack. The images range from the sun, moon, and stars to technical equipment, brain tissue, blood molecules, microorganisms, astronaut training, flames, random numbers, and extreme close-ups of unidentified people, along with audio clips from Jozef Grotowski’s 1962 and 1970 radio adaptations of Solaris.

“It was the first and only totally incomprehensible case in my life,” Kris Kelvin says. “I’m flying to Solaris because I think this is about ourselves, about the limits of human cognition.”

The director was inspired by Agnieszka Gajewska’s books Holocaust and the Stars: The Past in the Prose of Stanisław Lem and Stanislaw Lem: Exiled from the High Castle, in addition to such films as Chris Marker’s La Jetée, Guy Maddin’s The Green Fog, and György Palfi’s Final Cut: Ladies and Gentlemen; it also made me think of Bill Morrison’s Decasia, with its decaying film stock.

Solaris Mon Amour opens with a shot of a camera lens facing slightly off center, tracking a man checking the grassy ground in a field and digging into the earth. “How exhausting. Need to wake up,” a voiceover says. Mikurda then cuts to a view of the universe and, later, microscopic images, equating the camera and the microscope, two instruments humans employ to learn more about the world and our place in the universe. Mikurda (Love Express: The Disappearance of Walerian Borowczyk, Escape to the Silver Globe) crafts it all into a hypnotic audiovisual mystery that will keep echoing in your mind long after it’s over.

Izabela Zubrycka’s Handful of Dirt follows a rural Polish funeral singer and her gravedigger son

Solaris Mon Amour is being shown March 15 at 6:30 as part of the Museum of the Moving Image’s thirteenth annual First Look festival, running March 13–17, comprising more than two dozen events, from North American film premieres to screenplay readings, workshops, and an art reception. Mikurda’s film will be preceded by Izabela Zubrycka’s student documentary Handful of Dirt (Garstka Ziemi), which also explores such themes as grief and loss. Zubrycka focuses on Halina Waszkiewicz, one of the last funeral singers in Podlasie, Poland, and her son, gravedigger Andrzej Wójcik. The thirteen-minute short echoes Solaris Mon Amour in its own way, with shots of the sun, sky, and moon, Wójcik digging into the earth, moments of silence, extreme close-ups, and talk of time, dreams, sleep, and death.

Writer-director Zubrycka, cinematographer Stefan Żółtowski, editor Anna Adamowicz, and sound recordist Maciej Tobera follow Andrzej as he prepares the graves and Halina joins a group of singers in black who will help the deceased cross over through song. “I wasn’t afraid and I’m not afraid of the dead,” Halina says. “What is death?”

Mikurda and Zubrycka will be at the screening at MoMI’s Redstone Theater to discuss their work. First Look kicks off March 13 with Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez’s Sujo and Charlie Shackleton’s short Lateral and continues with such films as Mariam Chachia and Nik Voigt’s Magic Mountain, Robert Kolodny’s The Featherweight, and Lois Patiño’s Samsara.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

CASTING

CASTING
Gymnopedie
1139 Bushwick Ave.
March 15-17, $23.18
castinginnyc.eventbrite.com
gymnopedie.nyc

Winner of the Los Angeles Immersive Invitational Grand Prize, Koryn Wicks’s Casting is making its New York City debut March 15-17 at Gymnopedie in Bushwick. Most performers dread the audition process, but in this case up to twelve audience members at a time will participate, trying to land a big role. The thirty-minute work was created by Wicks (I love you so much, SQUEEZE ME TO DEATH; To Die in the Valley I’ve Loved) and a team of collaborators that includes writer Sam Alper, singer-songwriter Hanah Davenport, lighting and video designer and dancer Morgan Embry, sound designer and composer Alex Lough, and actors Audrey Rachelle and Jonathan Gordon. Tickets are $23.18 for your chance to be the star of the show.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

GrahamDeconstructed: THE RITE OF SPRING

Xin Ying and Lorenzo Pagano in Martha Graham’s The Rite of Spring (photo © Hubbard Nash Photography)

Who: Martha Graham Dance Company
What: Graham Studio Series: “GrahamDeconstructed”
Where: Martha Graham Studio Theater, 55 Bethune St., eleventh floor
When: Wednesday, March 13, and Thursday, March 14, $20-$30, 7:00
Why: Martha Graham’s ongoing Studio Series “GrahamDeconstructed” continues March 13 and 14 with a behind-the-scenes look at The Rite of Spring, which the company debuted in 1984. Graham had performed in the first American production of the work, by choreographer Léonide Massine and composer Igor Stravinsky, conducted by Leopold Stokowski, in 1930. More than fifty years later, she revisited the thirty-five-minute piece, and, for its fortieth anniversary, it will be part of the troupe’s upcoming season at City Center next month, along with Graham’s Appalachian Spring, Agnes de Mille’s Rodeo, and a world premiere by Jamar Roberts and Rhiannon Giddens. For “GrahamDeconstructed,” there will be a full rehearsal run-through of The Rite of Spring, which features two soloists (the Chosen One and the Shaman) and an ensemble of eighteen, with commentary from Graham experts and original cast members.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

2024 MOVEMENT RESEARCH FESTIVAL

Salma AbdelSalam and Noura Seif Hassanein (nasa4nasa) are part of 2024 Movement Research Festival (photo by Rachel Keane)

MOVEMENT RESEARCH FESTIVAL: PRACTICES OF EMBODIED SOLIDARITY IN MOVEMENT(S)
122CC, 150 First Ave.
Judson Church, 55 Washington Square South
Danspace Project, 131 East Tenth St.
February 28 – March 9, free with advance RSVP
movementresearch.org

The theme of the 2024 Movement Research Festival is “Practices of Embodied Solidarity in Movement(s),” consisting of nine days of live performances, workshops, and talks at three downtown locations: 122CC, Judson Church, and Danspace Project. Curated by Marýa Wethers, director of the GPS/Global Practice Sharing Program at Movement Research, the program features dance artists who are part of GPS MENA, the Middle East and North Africa Exchange Program: Salma AbdelSalam and Noura Seif Hassanein (nasa4nasa) from Egypt, Sahar Damoni from Palestine, Lori Kharpoutlian and Charlie Prince from Lebanon, and F. M. Sayna from Iran; the festival will explore sociopolitical issues that reflect the state of the world today.

Below is the full schedule; all events are free with advance RSVP.

Wednesday, February 28, 6:30 pm
“GPS Chats: Solidarity, Displacement, and Inverted Process in Contemporary Practice,” with F. M. Sayna, Lori Kharpoutlian, and Charlie Prince, 122CC

Thursday, February 29, 10:00 am
“Workshop: back2back,” with nasa4nasa (Salma AbdelSalam and Noura Seif Hassanein), 122CC

Friday, March 1, 10:00 am
“Workshop: the body symphonic,” with Charlie Prince, 122CC

Saturday, March 2, 10:00 am
“Workshop: Lemon Water ma’a Nana (Moving in your own space, and out of it),” with Sahar Damoni, 122CC

Monday, March 4, 7:00 pm
“Performance: Movement Research at the Judson Church,” with solos and group improvisation by Lori Kharpoutlian, F. M. Sayna, Sahar Damoni, and Charlie Prince, Judson Church

Wednesday, March 6, 7:00 pm
“Studies Project: The Political Body in Solo and Collaborative Performance,” with Salma AbdelSalam, Sahar Damoni, and Noura Seif Hassanein, 122CC

Thursday, March 7, 7:30 pm
No Mercy, by nasa4nasa (Salma AbdelSalam and Noura Seif Hassanein), Danspace Project

Friday, March 8, 7:30 pm
Eat Banana and Drink Pills, by Sahar Damoni, Danspace Project

Saturday, March 9, 7:30 pm
Cosmic A*, by Charlie Prince, Danspace Project

DAEL ORLANDERSMITH: SPIRITUS/VIRGIL’S DANCE

Dael Orlandersmith’s Spiritus/Virgil’s Dance is a multimedia journey into fate and destiny (photo © HanJie Chow)

SPIRITUS/VIRGIL’S DANCE
Rattlestick Playwrights Theater
224 Waverly Pl.
Through March 9, $50, 7:00
www.rattlestick.org

In Dante Alighieri’s fourteenth-century epic The Divine Comedy, Publius Virgilius Maro, better known simply as Virgil, shepherds the Italian poet through the “Inferno” and “Purgatory,” two of the three realms of the dead. “Thou follow me, and I will be thy guide, / And lead thee hence through the eternal place, / Where thou shalt hear the desperate lamentations, / Shalt see the ancient spirits disconsolate, / Who cry out each one for the second death,” Virgil, who represents human reason, says to Dante. Virgil (70–19 BCE) was the author of The Aeneid, which tells the story of Trojan War hero and refugee Aeneas’s journey toward his fate and destiny.

In Spiritus/Virgil’s Dance, solo show master Dael Orlandersmith portrays a fictional character named Virgil who takes the audience at the Rattlestick Theater on a sixty-minute multimedia odyssey into death and destiny, fate and fulfillment.

The mood is set early, with such songs as Johnny Cash’s Nine Inch Nails cover “Hurt” and Mavis Staples’s “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean” playing as the crowd enters the space, giving it a holy feel. Takeshi Kata’s set features six floor-to-ceiling string-curtained cylinders containing furniture: a chair, a table, a lamp on a stand. We soon learn that each one symbolizes a chapter in Virgil’s own epic narrative as they try to find their place in a world complicated by loss and loneliness.

“Have I done it right?” Virgil asks. “Have I used time — my time — right?” Have any of us?

Virgil wanders from cylinder to cylinder, sharing moments from their past. They grew up in the Bronx, hanging out at Woodlawn Cemetery and going to St. Barnabas. Their parents’ love of music led Virgil to become a deejay at a pirate radio station in the East Village. As the years pass, Virgil realizes they need something more. “I make a decision to make more money / Move to another part of downtown / Because / That must be the answer / Me / Thinking the money / Another place / Has got to be the answer,” they explain, but it takes their mother’s unexpected death and their father’s sudden illness for Virgil to take a long look at their life, significantly influenced by their friendship with funeral director Jimmy McHugh and hospice nurse Peggy Callahan.

Dael Orlandersmith looks at her past and future in beautiful one-person show at Rattlestick (photo © HanJie Chow)

Born in East Harlem, Orlandersmith has been staging one-person dramas, some semiautobiographical, most featuring the playwright performing multiple characters, since 1995’s Beauty’s Daughter, which earned her an Obie. She won the prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn Prize in 2003 for Yellowman. More recently, Forever was a deeply intimate show about the severely dysfunctional relationship between a daughter and her alcoholic mother, while Until the Flood explored the tragic story of the killing of Michael Brown at the hands of police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, on August 9, 2014.

Orlandersmith is masterful in Spiritus/Virgil’s Dance, a beautifully rendered production lovingly directed by Neel Keller, who has been working with Orlandersmith for four decades. As Orlandersmith says at one point in the play, it’s a “celebration of life and death.” She doesn’t make major shifts in tone or body as she switches among the characters, always wearing the same all-black outfit (the costume is by Kaye Voyce) as she walks slowly around the cylinders, which have a heavenly glow (the sensitive lighting is by Mary Louise Geiger), the people they represent prepared for the great beyond. Nicholas Hussong’s projections include leaves blowing in the wind and the subway speeding by, accompanied by Lindsay Jones’s tender original music and sound.

As Virgil discovers their true vocation, it’s like they have been given a giant hug from the universe, something we all seek — and something we all receive from Orlandersmith in this gently, enveloping experience. You’ll leave the theater thinking of the words Peggy shared with Virgil: “Live your life / Live it fully / Do not leave here regretfully.”

Spiritus/Virgil’s Dance continues at Rattlestick through March 9; the March 6 performance will be followed by the discussion “Music Lives On” with Javier Arau, Felice Rosser, Elliot Sharp, and Matt Stapleton.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

VESELKA: THE RAINBOW ON THE CORNER AT THE CENTER OF THE WORLD

Documentary traces multigenerational history of Veselka, including father and son Tom and Jason Birchard

VESELKA: THE RAINBOW ON THE CORNER AT THE CENTER OF THE WORLD (Michael Fiore, 2023)
Village East by Angelika
181-189 Second Ave. at 12th St.
Opens Friday, February 23
veselka.com
www.angelikafilmcenter.com/villageeast

Watching Veselka: The Rainbow on the Corner at the Center of the World is like having two meals, the first a solid lunch, the second a complex, emotional dinner.

Michael Fiore wrote, directed, produced, and edited the film, which starts by telling the fascinating history of the beloved restaurant, opened by Ukraine immigrants Wolodymyr and Olha Darmochwal as a candy store on the southeast corner of Second Ave. and Ninth St. in 1954. It expanded over the years to a full-service restaurant as it was handed down to Wolodymyr’s son-in-law, Tom Birchard, and then Tom’s son, Jason. Cinematographer Bill Winters follows Jason and his employees greeting customers and working in the back office and kitchen, where they make five thousand varenyky (pierogi) a day, three thousand latkes (potato pancakes) a week, and fifty-two hundred gallons of borscht a year.

“Jason Birchard has a hunger to feed people like his father and grandfather before him,” narrator David Duchovny explains. “But the feeding goes beyond food itself. Food should unite us, and it can transport us.” Duchovny grew up in the area; his paternal grandfather was from Ukraine, his paternal grandmother from Poland.

Jason initially was not interested in following in his father’s footsteps, but stuff happened. “I’ve worn many hats here as the proprietor of Veselka,” Jason, who has worked at the eatery since he was thirteen, says. “I never really envisioned a long-term future here in the business. And with the onset of the war, some days I need to give a little extra love to my Ukrainian staff, who have been unsure of what the future holds.”

In the first half of the film, we are introduced to Mrs. Slava, who fries the latkes; grillmen Dima Prach and Ivan; Jason’s nephew Justin, who oversees business development; pastry chef Lisa; potager chef Arturo; short order cook Max; operations manager Vitalii Desiatnychenko; muralist Arnie Charnick; and the pierogi ladies. Everyone is considered family at Veselka, from the employees to the customers. “The way that they treat people personally is a direct reflection about what makes this place so special,” Lisa says.

During the pandemic, Veselka, which means “rainbow” in Ukrainian, turned to outdoor dining; in one poignant scene, Jason and Ukrainian consul general to New York Oleksii Holubov can only shrug as Mayor Adams, eating borscht, pays more attention to the cameras outside than to Jason’s pleas for Hizzoner to support the restaurant industry.

But everything got more complicated on February 24, 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine; the second half of the film focuses on Jason’s efforts to help his staff, most of whom have relatives in Ukraine, some of whom are determined to stay, others considering coming to America. Several male employees feel guilty for not returning to Ukraine to join the fight. For every person who shares their personal story, another chooses not to because it’s too painful. Veselka collects donations of clothing and other goods and raises money through borscht sales and its World Central Kitchen Ukraine Bowl.

Dima wants to bring his mother and aunt, who are twins, and his father and uncle to the United States. Vitalii is trying to get his mother out of Ukraine but agonizes when he cannot get in touch with her for days. The Ukrainian national baseball team comes to Coney Island to play charity games against the NYPD and FDNY. Charnick designs a new mural celebrating Ukrainian strength. Jason puts off expansion plans in order to help the community. Employees gather to watch news reports and speeches by Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. New York governor Kathy Hochul stops by to find out what she can do.

Veselka began life as a neighborhood candy store opened by Ukrainian immigrants

Veselka: The Rainbow on the Corner at the Center of the World is a testament to the human spirit, a vivid depiction of a community in action, showing how individuals can make a difference in difficult times. Jason is an inspiration, a mensch who doesn’t believe in the word no; he has an inner drive to do what’s right for others. He feeds people’s souls and their stomachs.

Ryan Shore’s score can get treacly, but David Sanborn’s sax solos lift the music. Fiore (Floyd Norman: An Animated Life) captures the essence of Veselka, which is the heart of the Ukrainian community in New York City and a vital part of the East Village. The film is especially poignant as the war enters its second year and the US Congress is taking its time deciding whether to send more funding to Ukraine.

Veselka: The Rainbow on the Corner at the Center of the World opens February 23 at Village East, just a few blocks from the restaurant, making your choice of where to eat before or after the movie that much easier. The 7:05 screenings on Friday and Saturday will be followed by Q&As with Fiore and Tom and Jason Birchard.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

FIRE OVER WATER — FILMS OF TRANSCENDENCE: ONLOOKERS

Kimi Takesue’s Onlookers is a uniquely visual film that looks at tourists and locals in Laos

ONLOOKERS (Kimi Takesue, 2023)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
Opens Friday, February 16
212-660-0312
metrograph.com
www.onlookersfilm.com

“Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak,” John Berger writes in the seminal text Ways of Seeing. “But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.”

In documentary filmmaker Kimi Takesue’s Onlookers, which opens theatrically February 16 at Metrograph as part of the series “Fire Over Water: Films of Transcendence,” there are no words, no dialogue — just seventy-two minutes of stunning visuals exploring what we see and what we know, what we are present for and what we are absent for.

The film takes place in various parts of Laos as director, producer, cinematographer, sound recordist, and editor Takesue sets up her camera and leaves it there as scenes unfold in real time and with natural sound, from a breathtaking fourteen-second sunset to five and a half minutes of six women sitting by the side of the road, preparing to fill begging bowls for a long line of Buddhist monks. Animals graze in a temple courtyard as bells chime. Women sell goods at an open-air market. Rivers flow, wind rustles trees, roosters crow, birds chirp, a cat rests on a step, a man relaxes in a hammock, all taking their time, no one in a hurry.

Then the tourists arrive; a few run up to take pictures of a monk beating a drum, then walk away, not actually stopping to watch and listen. A woman snaps a photo of three fellow sightseers standing atop a small, raging waterfall as a man fishes below. A local worker waits as a woman checks her cell phone, as if he isn’t there, standing next to her. A group of backpackers gets a prime view at a boat racing festival while locals observe from the shore. On a mountain, six tourists search for the best angle to take selfies. Visitors at a guest house sit in an outdoor lounge and watch Friends.

Born in Colorado and raised in Hawai’i and Massachusetts, Takesue has previously made Where Are You Taking Me? in Uganda, Heaven’s Crossroad in Vietnam, and 95 and 6 to Go in Hawai’i, about reconnecting with her grandfather. In Onlookers, she is not necessarily criticizing the tourists or celebrating the Laotian locals; she’s merely showing how people witness and experience the world, particularly when it comes to travelers and residents. (95 and 6 to Go and Where Are You Taking Me? will both be available to stream on Metrograph at Home beginning February 16.)

Takesue beautifully captures this relationship in a short but captivating scene that begins with a static shot of an old religious shrine that looks like it hasn’t been in operation for years. A young woman enters the frame, sits down, poses for a selfie, stands up, snaps a photo of the shrine, then saunters off, never once stopping to just look at the shrine itself. The camera lingers on the building for several seconds, with nobody around, just the decaying structure set against a blue sky and between lush greenery.

We see what we want to see, when we want to see it, not always recognizing what is right in front of us, whether we’re at home or on vacation. It reminded me of people who go to a museum and take pictures of classic artworks but only see them through the lens of their phone rather than experiencing them with their own eyes. In fact, each frame of Onlookers is composed like a painting that slowly comes to life.

“The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe,” Berger writes in his book. “Yet this seeing which comes before words, and can never be quite covered by them, is not a question of mechanically reacting to stimuli. (It can only be thought of in this way if one isolates the small part of the process which concerns the eye’s retina.) We only see what we look at. To look is an act of choice. As a result of this act, what we see is brought within our reach — though not necessarily within arm’s reach. To touch something is to situate oneself in relation to it. . . . We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves. Our vision is continually active, continually moving, continually holding things in a circle around itself, constituting what is present to us as we are. Soon after we can see, we are aware that we can also be seen.”

In all films, the audience might not have a choice of what they’re looking at, but they can decide for themselves what they’re seeing. And in the case of Onlookers, what they’re seeing is a gorgeous portrait of ourselves that no selfie can catch.

Kimi Takesue’s Where Are You Taking Me? will stream on Metrograph at Home

Takesue will be at Metrograph for introductions and Q&As before and after four screenings: February 16 with Inney Prakesh, February 17 with Dessane Lopez Cassell, February 18 with Lynne Sachs, and February 21 with Ari-Duong Nguyen.

“Fire Over Water” also features Michaël Dudok de Wit’s The Red Turtle, Phạm Thiên Ân’s Caméra d’Or winner Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Cemetery of Splendour.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]