Bruno Isaković and Nataša Rajković’s Yira, yira (Cruising, cruising) is part of QNYIAF (photo by Silvija Dogan)
QUEER NEW YORK INTERNATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL
NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts
566 La Guardia Pl. between Third & Fourth Sts.
February 7 – 17, $25
212-945-2600 nyuskirball.org
After a six-year break, the Queer New York International Arts Festival returns to the city, taking place February 7-17 at NYU Skirball. Started by Queer Zagreb founder Zvonimir Dobrović in 2012 at Abrons Arts Center, the fest consists of works that address queerness in today’s society, this year with presentations from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, and Germany, including live performances, installations, and public talks.
The 2024 QNYIAF kicks off February 7 with Croatian artist Arijana Lekić Fridrih’s From5to95, a hybrid video installation and online project in which Croatian women from the ages of five to ninety-five share their personal stories about gender inequality. On February 7 and 8, Croatian artists Bruno Isaković and Nataša Rajković’s Yira, yira (Cruising, cruising), which premiered in Argentina in 2019, is performed by sex workers Juan Ejemplo, Leandra Atenea Levine Hidalgo, Pichón Reyna, and Sofía Tramazaygues, exploring the relationship between client and sex worker.
Bruno Isaković and Mia Zalukar’s Kill B. reimagines the Bride from Quentin Tarantino films (photo by Hrvoje Zalukar)
Isaković collaborates with fellow choreographer and dancer Mia Zalukar on Kill B., inspired by Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill. Playing February 9 and 10, the piece focuses on the character of the Bride as well as artistic hierarchical structures and their own professional partnership. On February 13, Toronto-based performance artist Clayton Lee goes through his sexual history in The Goldberg Variations, which mashes up Johann Sebastian Bach with WCW and WWE wrestler and actor Bill Goldberg, host of the 2018-19 competition series Forged in Fire: Knife or Death and a contestant on The Celebrity Apprentice. Some iterations have included smells and live snakes, so be ready.
On February 15, Argentinian interdisciplinary artist Tiziano Cruz will deliver the autobiographical performance lecture Conference, followed by a discussion. His piece Soliloquy — I woke up and hit my head against the wall was about his mother; in Conference he turns his attention to his ancestors and his late sister. On February 16, Brazilian artist Wagner Schwartz’s performance lecture La Bête is an interactive solo in which he activates a plastic replica of one of Lygia Clark’s rearrangeable hinged metal sculptures known as bichos, or “beasts,” and then the audience does the same, except with Schwartz’s naked body.
QNYIAF concludes February 17 with Raimund Hoghe Company members Emmanuel Eggermont and Luca Giacomo Schulte’s An Evening with Raimund, a tribute to German choreographer, dancer, and journalist Raimund Hoghe, who died in 2021 at the age of seventy-two; excerpts from his works will be performed by seven dancers. “To see bodies on stage that do not comply with the norm is important — not only with regard to history but also with regard to present developments, which are leading humans to the status of design objects,” Hoghe said. “On the question of success: It is important to be able to work and to go your own way — with or without success. I simply do what I have to do.”
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Joan Crawford stars in Nicholas Ray’s Johnny Guitar, part of sapphic Film Forum series
SAPPH-O-RAMA
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
February 2-13
212-727-8110 filmforum.org
Film Forum is celebrating lesbian cinema with the twelve-day, thirty-flick series “Sapph-O-Rama,” consisting of famous and obscure works by, about, and/or featuring women in love and fighting for freedom. Programmed by Andrea Torres and Emily Greenberg, the entries range from Jamie Babbit’s But I’m a Cheerleader, David Butler’s Calamity Jane, and Donna Deitch’s Desert Hearts to Leontine Sagan’s Mädchen in Uniform, Pedro Almodóvar’s Dark Habits (Entre Tinieblas), and Chantal Akerman’s Je Tu Il Elle. Among the stars of the movies, which go back more than a hundred years, are Clara Bow, Fredric March, Agnes Moorehead, Alla Nazimova, Doris Day, Howard Keel, Natasha Lyonne, RuPaul Charles, Kathryn Bigelow, Eric Bogosian, Delphine Seyrig, Mink Stole, Sterling Hayden, and Joan Crawford.
In addition to select reviews below, here are the special events that Film Forum will be hosting:
Sunday, February 4, 1:10 She Must Be Seeing Things (Sheila McLaughlin, 1987), prerecorded introduction by filmmaker Sheila McLaughlin
Sunday, February 4, 4:50 Murder and Murder (Yvonne Rainer, 1996), Q&A with filmmaker Yvonne Rainer and Amy Taubin
Tuesday, February 6, 8:15 Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same (Madeleine Olnek, 2011), introduced by Río Sofia of Queer | Art, followed by a Q&A with filmmaker Madeleine Olnek and stars Lisa Haas and Rae C. Wright, moderated by Jude Dry
Friday, February 9, 5:20 The Wild Party (Dorothy Arzner, 1929), introduced by David Stenn, author of Clara Bow: Running Wild
Saturday, February 10, 4:15 The Killing of Sister Georgie (Robert Aldrich, 1968), introduced by editor and critic Melissa Anderson
Saturday, February 10, 7:10 Daughters of Darkness (Harry Kümel, 1971), introduced by vampire expert Laura Westengard
Tuesday, February 13, 6:00 The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love (Maria Maggenti, 1995), introduced by filmmaker Maria Maggenti
Tuesday, February 13, 8:05 She Must Be Seeing Things (Sheila McLaughlin, 1987), prerecorded introduction by filmmaker Sheila McLaughlin
Cheryl Dunye wrote, directed, edited, and stars in The Watermelon Woman
THE WATERMELON WOMAN (Cheryl Dunye, 1996)
Friday, February 2, 4:00
Tuesday, February 6, 6:10
Monday, February 12, 9:20 filmforum.org
“The idea came from the real lack of information about the lesbian and film history of African American women. Since it wasn’t happening, I invented it,” Cheryl Dunye says about her 1996 debut, The Watermelon Woman. In the film, the first feature by a black lesbian, Dunye plays herself, a twenty-five-year-old black lesbian working at a video store with her goofy best friend, Tamara (Valerie Walker). Searching for a topic to make a movie on, Cheryl becomes obsessed with an actress who played a mammy in Plantation Memories and other 1930s films. The actress was listed in the credits as the Watermelon Woman; Cheryl decides to find out more about her, going on a journey in and around her hometown of Philadelphia, discovering more and more about the actress, also known as Fae Richards, and the battle black lesbians had to fight in the early-to-mid-twentieth century. In the meantime, Cheryl begins a relationship with Diana (Guinevere Turner), a privileged white woman who has just moved into the area, mimicking what Cheryl has found out about Richards, who had an affair with white director Martha Page.
Diana (Guinevere Turner) and Cheryl Dunye (as herself) stars a relationship in The Watermelon Woman
The Watermelon Woman suffers from amateurish filmmaking techniques (Michelle Crenshaw was the cinematographer, while Dunye served as editor in addition to writer, director, and star), but its central issue is a compelling one, and Dunye is engaging as her onscreen alter ego. Richards (Lisa Marie Bronson) and Page (producer Alexandra Juhasz) are seen only in photographs and archival footage shot by white lesbian artist Zoe Leonard (her photography assistant was Kimberly Peirce, who went on to make Boys Don’t Cry), while Doug McKeown (The Deadly Spawn) directed the scenes from fake movies Plantation Memories and Soul of Deceit. (The photographs became an art project of its own, touring museums around the world.) The film features numerous cameos by writers, musicians, and activists, including Camille Paglia as herself, V. S. Brodie as a karaoke singer, Sarah Schulman as the CLIT archivist, David Rakoff as a librarian, and Toshi Reagon as a street singer.
The Watermelon Woman is a heartfelt tribute to black lesbians by a black lesbian who is restoring one woman’s true identity as a microcosm for all black women who have had theirs taken away. The film also became part of an attempt by certain congressmen to defund the National Endowment for the Arts, which supplied a $31,500 grant to Dunye; Michigan Republican Peter Hoekstra, head of the House Education and Workforce Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, singled the film out as offensive. The Watermelon Woman is also a reminder of what research was like pre-Google, a mere twenty years ago. Dunye has gone on to make such films as Stranger Inside, Black Is Blue, Mommy Is Coming, and My Baby’s Daddy, continuing her exploration of multiracial, gay, and trans culture.
Alice Wu’s Saving Face breaks the chains of conventions in LGBTQ love story
SAVING FACE (Alice Wu, 2004)
Monday, February 5, 12:30
Wednesday, February 7, 4:10
Sunday, February 11, 1:00 filmforum.org
While much of writer-director Alice Wu’s independent first feature, Saving Face, is entertaining enough, the last scenes are so much fun, so heartbreaking, and so charming that the film leaps to the next level, so stay with it. The captivating Michelle Krusiec (One World, Knife Fight) stars as Wilhelmina, a twenty-eight-year-old doctor trying to balance her career with her family in Flushing. Every Friday night she goes to the community dance, where her mother (Joan Chen) and the other Chinese yentas try to fix her up with a guy. Little do they know that she’s gay and strongly attracted to the boss’s daughter, Vivian (Lynn Chen), a ballerina dabbling in modern dance. Things get a little wacky when it turns out that Wil’s mother is pregnant and won’t tell anyone who the father is, leading to her banishment from her parents’ home and her friends’ inner circle. Suddenly Wil finds herself struggling to take care of her mother while also exploring a blossoming relationship that she hides from nearly everyone except her best friend, Jay (Ato Essandoh). Tradition battles modern life, generation battles generation, sexual preference battles gossip and scandal, and conventional roles get turned upside down and inside out in this film-festival favorite that will leave you smiling.
Peggy Gravel’s quaint suburban life is about to go to hell in John Waters’s Desperate Living
DESPERATE LIVING (John Waters, 1977)
Thursday, February 8, 8:30 filmforum.org
A turning point in his career, John Waters’s Desperate Living is an off-the-charts bizarre, fetishistic fairy tale, the ultimate suburban nightmare. Mink Stole stars as Peggy Gravel, a wealthy housewife suffering yet another of her mental breakdowns. In the heat of the moment, she and the family maid, four-hundred-pound Grizelda Brown (Jean Hill), kill Peggy’s mild-mannered husband, Bosley (George Stover), and the two women end up finding refuge in one of the weirdest towns ever put on celluloid, Mortville, where MGM’s The Wizard of Oz and Babes in Toyland meet Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (with some Kenneth Anger, Jack Smith, and Douglas Sirk thrown into the mix as well). “I ain’t your maid anymore, bitch! I’m your sister in crime!” Grizelda declares. Peggy and Grizelda move into the “guest house” of manly Mole McHenry (Susan Lowe) and her blonde bombshell lover, Muffy St. Jacques (Liz Renay). Mortville is run as a kind of fascist state by the cruel and unusual despot Queen Carlotta (Edith Massey), an evil shrew who enjoys being serviced by her men-in-leather attendants, issues psychotic proclamations, and is determined that her daughter, Princess Coo-Coo (Mary Vivian Pearce), stop dating her garbage-man boyfriend, Herbert (George Figgs). (Wait, Mortville has a sanitation department?) Camp and trash combine like nuclear fission as things get only crazier from there, devolving into gorgeous low-budget madness and completely over-the-top ridiculousness, a mélange of sex, violence, and impossible-to-describe lunacy that Waters himself claimed was a movie “for fucked-up children.”
John Waters’s Desperate Living is a celebration of camp and trash, an extremely adult and bizarre fairy tale
The opening scenes of Peggy’s meltdown are utterly hysterical. When a neighbor hits a baseball through her bedroom window and offers to pay for it with his allowance, she screams, “How about my life? Do you get enough allowance to pay for that? I know you were trying to kill me! What’s the matter with the courts? Do they allow this lawlessness and malicious destruction of property to run rampant? I hate the Supreme Court! Oh, God. God. God. Go home to your mother! Doesn’t she ever watch you? Tell her this isn’t some communist day-care center! Tell your mother I hate her! Tell your mother I hate you!” The sets and costumes are deranged — and perhaps influenced Pee-wee’s Playhouse — the relatively spare score is fun, and the acting is, well, appropriate. The first half of the film is better than the second half, but it’s still a delight to watch Waters, who wrote, directed, and produced the film, which was shot in a kind of lurid Technicolor by Charles Ruggero, take on authority figures (beware of Sheriff Shitface), gender identity, class structure, hero worship, beauty, race, crime, nudity, and, of course, at its very heart, love and romance.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
SOHO’S GOT SEOUL
Park West Gallery
411 West Broadway between Prince & Spring Sts.
February 1 – March 4, free www.parkwestgallery.com
On February 1 at 6:00, Park West Gallery is opening its latest show, “SoHo’s Got Seoul,” highlighting five Korean artists hailing from different disciplines. The K-Pop auction and exhibition features paintings by contemporary conceptual sculptor Yongjae Choi, photographer and music video director Jun Shim (aka Negativ), singer and television personality Kwon Jian (aka SolBi), actor and director Jun Ko, and Lee Min-woo (aka M) from the South Korean boy band Shinhwa.
“These artists have devoted decades to perfecting their original art form, such as acting or performing,” exhibition curator Dr. Stephanie Seungmin Kim said in a statement. “These paintings allowed the artists to express something more intimate. The maturity and commitment to the art and brilliance deeply moved me to tell their stories.”
Several of the artists, known in Korea as artainers, have been painting since they were children, while others only picked it up a few years ago.
“I’m not a painter — just beginner!” Jun Ko declares in the above video. “I still can’t think of myself as an artist.”
Negativ adds, “Sometimes you get tired of working with a bunch of staff. When I paint, I can focus on myself.”
And SolBi explains, “Initially, I started drawing for the purpose of psychological therapy. Drawing not only brings healing but also allows me to convey the stories and messages I want to share through art.”
Uncle George (Colin Lane) goes for a stroll in Irish Rep revival of Brian Friel’s Aristocrats (photo by Jeremy Daniel)
ARISTOCRATS
Irish Repertory Theatre, Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage
132 West Twenty-Second St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Wednesday – Sunday through March 3, $60-$125
212-727-2737 irishrep.org
The Irish Rep continues its 2023–24 Friel Project with what it does best, an exquisite revival of a superb Irish drama, in this case Brian Friel’s 1979 Aristocrats.
In 2005, when the company was in danger of losing the lease on its home on West Twenty-Second St., Friel, a native of Northern Ireland, praised the Irish Rep’s excellence, writing about cofounders Charlotte Moore and Ciarán O’Reilly, “The ground they occupy has now been made sacred by them. They have made their space hallowed. It would be unthinkable if 132 West Twenty-Second St. were to slip from them and become secularized. It must remain under their wonderful guardianship.”
Friel passed away in 2015 at the age of eighty-six, coincidentally during a major renovation of the Irish Rep’s hallowed space.
Since its beginnings in 1988, the Irish Rep has staged ten of Friel’s works, including Making History,Molly Sweeney,Dancing at Lughnasa,The Freedom of the City,Afterplay, and The Home Place. The Friel Project kicked off with Translations last fall and continues in March with Philadelphia, Here I Come!, which the troupe previously presented in 1990 and 2005, before concluding with Molly Sweeney, seen at the Irish Rep in 2011 and online in 2020.
Moore first directed Aristocrats in 2009; fifteen years later, she is helming another exemplary production. The story, partially inspired by such classic Chekhov family tales as The Cherry Orchard,Three Sisters,Uncle Vanya, and The Seagull, takes place in Ballybeg Hall in County Donegal in the mid-1970s, as the fortunes of a Catholic family have turned. (Friel wrote adaptations of Three Sisters and Uncle Vanya and set several other plays in the fictional Ballybeg, which means “small town.”)
Alice (Sarah Street) is suspicious as Casimir (Tom Holcomb) shares more information with Tom (Roger Dominic Casey) in Aristocrats (photo by Jeremy Daniel)
Charlie Corcoran, one of New York City’s finest scenic designers, has created a lovely indoor-outdoor set that features a flowered trellis and (fake) grass by an unseen tennis court, a porch swing, a desk in an old, dusty study raised a few steps, and a rear hallway with no front wall, so the audience can see people coming and going. The open set hints at the many secrets that will soon be revealed.
The decaying estate is run by Judith (Danielle Ryan), who lives there with her youngest sister, Claire (Meg Hennessy), who is getting married to a middle-aged widower with four young children; their father, former District Justice O’Donnell (Colin Lane), who has dementia; and their uncle George (Lane), a dapper old gent who rarely speaks. Their brother, Casimir (Tom Holcomb), has traveled from Hamburg for the wedding festivities, arriving without his wife, Helga, and their two children. The fourth sibling, the cynical Alice (Sarah Street), and her husband, the brash bully Eamon (Tim Ruddy), have also come, but it seems that they would prefer to be anywhere else.
As the play opens, family friend and handyman Willie Diver (Shane McNaughton) is installing a baby alarm on the top of a bookcase so the family can hear any noises coming from their father’s room, alerting them if there are any problems. An American scholar, Tom Hoffnung (Roger Dominic Casey), is at the estate researching a book he’s writing on “the life and the life-style of the Roman Catholic big house — by no means as thick on the ground but still there; what we might call a Roman Catholic aristocracy — for want of a better term. . . . And the task I’ve set myself is to explore its political, cultural, and economic influence both on the ascendancy ruling class and on the native peasant tradition.”
Casimir is only too happy to share the estate’s history with Tom, telling stories about such regular literary visitors as Sean O’Casey, G. K. Chesterton, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and W. B. Yeats. But Eamon has a different perspective, advising Tom that the book should be “a great big blockbuster of a gothic novel called Ballybeg Hall — From Supreme Court to Sausage Factory.”
Casimir, who can’t get through on the phone to his wife in Germany, continually plays a game with Claire, a trained classical pianist who suffers from anxiety, guessing the pieces she is playing from an offstage room; they also challenge each other to an invisible game of croquet, representing their vanishing lifestyle. Alice, who has a suspiciously bruised face, drinks too much. Judith, who participated in the Battle of the Bogside, smokes too much. The O’Donnells are a family on the decline, existing in their own world, refusing, or unable, to confront the reality that’s staring down at them.
Judith (Danielle Ryan) and Eamon (Tim Ruddy) can’t forget the past in Friel revival at Irish Rep (photo by Jeremy Daniel)
Moore has a firm grasp on the proceedings, having previously directed five other Friel plays at the Irish Rep; the narrative flows smoothly, then hits hard when revelations come. The sound and original music by Ryan Rumery and M. Florian Staab immerse the audience in the elegiac world the O’Donnells are trying to hold on to, representative of an evolving Ireland as the Troubles pit the Catholics against the Protestants. Birds chirp and Claire’s piano emits beautiful melodies, but that is just background noise that can’t hide the truth. David Toser’s costumes range from casual to elegant to old-fashioned, further evoking the family’s loose relationship with time and change.
The expert cast is highlighted by Holcomb, who portrayed Chekhovian dreamer Conrad Arkadina in Woolly Mammoth’s adaptation of Aaron Posner’s reimagining of The Seagull, the fabulous Stupid Fucking Bird. The tall, thin Holcomb glides through the play, an unreliable narrator who is lost in a snow-globe fantasy.
Street, Hennessy, and Ryan are lovely as the three very different sisters; one of the most tender moments is when Alice and Claire are entwined on the swing, the former more mother than sibling to the latter. McNaughton is warm and friendly as Willie, Casey is stalwart as the observant Tom, and Lane makes the most of his short appearances as Uncle George and the father. Ruddy is strong as Eamon, a tough man who sees through much of the charade. “Between ourselves, it’s a very dangerous house, professor,” he tells Tom. He also refers to the lack of discussion of his mother-in-law as “the great silence.”
In addition to the four plays, the Irish Rep will also be paying tribute to Friel with several special events. On February 26, violinist Gregory Harrington, joined by pianist Simon Mulligan, will perform “Melodies for Friel: Echoing through the Landscape of Ballyweg,” and the Friel Project Reading Series continues through May 2 with readings of eleven Friel plays, anchored around a March 26 benefit presentation of the Tony-winning Dancing at Lughnasa.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Documentary explores life and career of twentieth-century photographer Roman Vishniac
VISHNIAC (Laura Bialis)
Quad Cinema
34 West Thirteenth St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Opens Friday, January 19 quadcinema.com vishniacfilm.com
After screening at the New York Jewish Film Festival at Lincoln Center, Laura Bialis’s Vishniac is opening January 19 at the Quad for a one-week run. The documentary tells the story of Russian-American photographer Roman Vishniac, who captured Jewish life in shtetls and ghettos in the 1930s while also pioneering photomicroscopy. Vishniac was born in St. Petersburg in 1897, moved to Berlin in his early twenties, and eventually settled with his family in 1940 in New York City.
“He had enormous chutzpah,” his daughter Mara Vishniac Kohn says in the film. “He regarded himself as a mixture of Moses and Superman.”
Bialis first met Kohn at an Elie Wiesel lecture more than two decades ago. “The encounter made a deep impact,” she noted while making the film. “It’s a story that feels more important to me now than ever, in the face of rising antisemitism and fading ties to the Holocaust. As more survivors pass away, we’re losing those who experienced it firsthand. However, one thing we’ll never lose are the faces portrayed in Vishniac’s photographs, faces that could be those of our grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. They speak to us across time and space and compel us never to forget.”
Vishniac was written and coproduced by Sophie Sartain and edited by Chris Callister; it combines archival footage and new interviews with many of Vishniac’s sixteen thousand photos and reenactments of scenes from his life.
“Despite Vishniac’s monumental contributions to Jewish history and culture, a full-length, retrospective film about his life and work has never been produced. Our film will be the first,” Bialis said.
Bialis (Rock in the Red Zone,Refusenik) will be at the Quad for Q&As at the 7:15 show on January 19 and, joined by executive producer Nancy Spielberg, the 7:15 screening on January 20 and the 2:45 show on January 21.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Isabelle Cottenceau immerses viewers into the life and career of designer Gaby Aghion in Looking for Chloé
LOOKING FOR CHLOÉ (GABY, THE WOMAN BEHIND MAISON CHLOÉ) (Isabelle Cottenceau, 2023)
Walter Reade Theater, Film at Lincoln Center
165 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Aves.
Saturday, January 20, 7:00 www.filmlinc.org thejewishmuseum.org
“Gaby was not a typical fashion designer who simply made clothes. She was someone who really wanted, in a way, to revolutionize society,” Chloé archive director Géraldine-Julie Sommier says about Jewish Egyptian designer Gaby Aghion in Isabelle Cottenceau’s Looking for Chloé. “There’s a quote I love: ‘She wanted to create an attitude through her clothes.’”
Screening January 20 at 7:00 at the Walter Reade Theater as part of the thirty-third annual New York Jewish Film Festival — copresented by Film at Lincoln Center and the Jewish Museum — the documentary tells the little-known story of the underrecognized Chloé founder, born Gabrielle Hanoka in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1921. In 1940 she married communist intellectual Raymond Aghion, they moved to Paris five years later, then she started Chloé in 1952, unhappy with the state of women’s clothing.
Aghion was not really a hands-on designer, not making any sketches or drawings, but she knew what she liked; she surrounded herself with talented individuals as she developed the brand, changing the industry with luxury prêt-à-porter. Among the designers she hired were Gérard Pipart, Phoebe Philo, Stella McCartney, and, most famously and successfully, Karl Lagerfeld, who helped put the fashion house on the map. “They understood each other. And it was Karl Lagerfeld who crystallized Chloé’s identity,” researcher Camille Kovalevsky says. However, Aghion points out, “We created Karl. It is not Karl that created Chloé.”
Cottenceau combines archival footage, family photographs, and old news reports with new interviews in the film, which features spoken text by Israeli-Dutch singer-songwriter and composer Keren Ann taken from a rare interview Aghion did in 2012.
“People have never understood how a fashion house called Chloé, a house that had no past, no name, could become so inventive,” Keren Ann narrates as Aghion. “We just opened the door to inventors. I love invention; I love people who stand up and take action.”
Longtime Chloé model Pat Cleveland explains, “Chloé is the essence of freedom, an air of elegance, but freedom at the same time . . . like a vacation for your body.”
Cottenceau (Sous les pavés, la jupe; Éloge de la laideur) paints a wide-ranging portrait by talking with Aghion’s economist son, Philippe, who shares touching remembrances with stark honesty; former creative director Clare Waight Keller; painter and photographer Peter Knapp; fashion exhibition curator Judith Clark; machinist Bayram Kaya; seamstresses Anita Briey and Virginia Da Silva Santos; celebrities atelier assistant manager Nicolas Imberty; personal friend Anita Saada; and FIT Museum curator Dr. Valerie Steele, who will participate in a postscreening discussion with producer Sophie Jeaneau.
Together they emphasize Aghion’s dedication to the freedom of movement, offering women literal and figurative liberation, helping them break out of boredom and social convention. She didn’t take herself too seriously, preferring to have fun and joke around as she remained in the background, her company making clothing that was adventurous, imbued with a spirit of fluidity, simplicity, and optimism for a new open-minded generation.
“She got into fashion with a determination to democratize it,” Aghion’s granddaughter, brand sustainability and development consultant Mikhaela Aghion, says. But Philippe admits her clothing was not inexpensive.
The film is being screened in conjunction with the excellent Jewish Museum exhibition “Mood of the moment: Gaby Aghion and the house of Chloé,” which continues through February 18 and consists of photographs, sketches, personal and professional documents, nearly 150 garments, and other paraphernalia celebrating the life and career of an extraordinary woman, who passed away in 2014 at the age of ninety-three but whose legacy lives on.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Liev Schreiber will speak about Ukraine at Shabbat services at Temple Emanu-El
Who:Liev Schreiber, Michael Goldfarb What: Shabbat services with special discussion Where:Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center, One East 65th St. at Fifth Ave., and online When: Friday, January 19, free with advance RSVP (in-person and virtual), 6:00 Why: In the 2005 film Everything Is Illuminated, which marked the directorial and screenwriting debut of actor and activist Liev Schreiber, Elijah Wood stars as Jonathan Safran Foer (the author of the novel the film is based on), who travels to Ukraine to find the woman who saved his grandfather’s life during the Holocaust. In March 2022, a month after Russia invaded Ukraine, Schreiber, whose maternal grandfather was a Jewish Ukrainian immigrant, cofounded BlueCheck Ukraine, “a collective of humanitarian crisis response experts, entrepreneurs, and filmmakers with decades of experience addressing the needs of conflict-affected populations and documenting solidarity movements countering oppression.” Schreiber has traveled to Ukraine several times and has been outspoken in his support of the nation.
On January 19, the three-time Emmy nominee and Tony winner will attend Shabbat services at the Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center, joined by fellow BlueCheck cofounder and board member Michael Goldfarb, who previously worked with Doctors without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières in such countries as Afghanistan, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Iraq, Jordan, Kenya, Lebanon, Niger, South Sudan, Uganda, and Yemen. Schreiber and Goldfarb will discuss American and Jewish values, particularly as they relate to the war in Ukraine. Admission is free both in-person and virtually online with advance RSVP.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
