Tag Archives: new york city

BARBARA G. MENSCH: A FALLING-OFF PLACE

Barbara Mensch’s “The Nobility of Work” is a site-specific installation in the Tin Building (photo © Barbara Mensch)

A FALLING-OFF PLACE: THE TRANSFORMATION OF LOWER MANHATTAN
The powerHouse Arena, POWERHOUSE @ the Archway
28 Adams St. at Water St. @ the Archway
Wednesday, September 6, $7.18 includes $5 gift certificate, $47.73 includes copy of book, 7:00
Untapped Cities tour: Saturday, October 7, free with insider membership, 1:00
powerhousearena.com
menschphoto.com

“There is no longer any scent of what was. Thankfully, though, there is Barbara G. Mensch, whose images are like the conjuring rain,” journalist and author Dan Barry writes in the foreword to Barbara Mensch’s latest photography book, A Falling-Off Place (Fordham University Press, September 5, $39.95). “She is the Brooklyn Bridge of the New York imagination, linking the now and the then. She sees the incremental turns in the city’s inexorable evolution, the obliteration of the past by gentrification, the irreversible dominion of profit over preservation.”

The Brooklyn-born Mensch initially took up drawing and worked as an illustrator at Ms. magazine after graduating from Hunter College. She soon found that photography was her calling, documenting a changing New York City. She has spent nearly fifty years using a Polaroid SX70, a Rolleiflex, and now an iPhone, focusing primarily on Lower Manhattan. During the pandemic, she looked through her archive of unlabeled boxes of photos and gathered together black-and-white shots of the Fulton Fish Market, Chinatown, Peck Slip, and the Bowery, of demolition and decay, of a different era. She added shots of 9/11 and Hurricane Sandy to construct a powerful narrative.

“They became my personal visual timeline,” she writes in the introduction to the book, a follow-up to 2007’s South Street and 2018’s In the Shadow of Genius: The Brooklyn Bridge and Its Creators. “What did the passages of decades reveal to me? What dynamics were at play in my images of the same streets that I walked repeatedly for years? What fell off as the old was swept away by the new?”

“Vinny, an unloader, Fulton Fish Market, 1982” (photo © Barbara Mensch)

A Falling-Off Place is divided into three chronological sections: “the 1980s: making a living on the waterfront,” “the 1990s: setting the stage for a real estate boom / fires, floods, and neglect,” and “the new millennium: managing change / anxiety, optimism, and the uncertainty of historic preservation.” There are photos of the old Paris Bar, a dilapidated section of the FDR Drive, the Beekman Dock icehouse, and Pier 17 being torn down, along with portraits of such characters as Mikey the Watchman, Mombo, Vinny, and Bobby G., supplemented with quotes from Jane Jacobs, fishmongers, a retired boxer, and Robert Moses.

Many of the photos can also be seen in Mensch’s site-specific permanent installation, “The Nobility of Work,” in the restored and rehabilitated Tin Building on South St., which was originally built in 1907 on the space where the Fulton Fish Market began in 1835. The market moved to Hunts Point in the Bronx in 2005; the new Tin Building, which is celebrating its one-year anniversary in September, was commissioned by the Howard Hughes Corporation and features a 53,000-square-foot high-end food court and marketplace run by chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten.

On September 6, Mensch will be at the powerHouse Arena, in conversation with culinary documentarian Daniel Milder (Chef’s Table, Street Food Asia); she will also be leading an Untapped Cities tour on October 7. Below she discusses living downtown, being a woman in what was a man’s world, upcoming projects, and more.

twi-ny: When you first began photographing at the Fulton Fish Market, the men there were suspicious that you might be a government plant. What was that like?

barbara mensch: Well, what can I say? When I first began taking photos in the early 1980s, it was horrible. I would be taking photos and lo and behold, sharp (and I mean very sharp) pieces of ice would repeatedly be hurled at me. The fishmongers would use ice to preserve the seafood as it was stored in crates, and later in the early hours of the morning in coolers. I remember that the sharp pieces of ice could really hurt if thrown with tremendous velocity. Also, in the beginning there were many threats to my life, which were at the time palpable. Although the origins of this project were challenging, where I photographed the Fulton Market and the East River waterfront below the Brooklyn Bridge, I was intrigued and kept going forward.

As a side note, I was always very competitive with men and wanted to prove my worth. As a result, in the male-dominated world of the waterfront, the challenge was provoking. In order to create this project, a sense of gradual time had to be taken into consideration. Convincing men, who were hardened and determined to make a living within a certain number of hours in the harshest of conditions and had no room for me or my pictures. Working in this environment was a daunting task that was only achieved with a gradual, mutual feeling of trust. That came with years of interaction.

twi-ny: You have a permanent, site-specific exhibition at the Tin Building; how did that come about?

bm: After the Howard Hughes Corporation, which operates the new Tin Building, considered several different major artists for the space, they determined that I had the best understanding of the area and the strongest commitment in my pictures to the historical record.

twi-ny: The photos there and in your new book are both quintessentially New York and at the same time universal. Which photographers inspired you? Do you seek that dichotomy when you peer through the lens?

bm: My influences as an artist are vast and consequential. Although I am a photographer and have worked hard to perfect the art of printing and creating images, there are truly so many “heroes” that I have come to know over the years and try to follow their practices. One of my mentors was my friend Bruce Davidson, a legendary photographer who influenced me with his extraordinary wisdom into the creative process.

And I have also been influenced by countless other artists, primarily filmmakers, including Ingmar Bergman, Luchino Visconti, Roberto Rossellini, and more. Each artist, in his or her masterful way, chose to depict humanity in a raw and gritty reality. Rudy Burkhardt also comes to mind as a painter, photographer, and filmmaker whose images evoke a sense of New York as it passed into a new era. Many of these artists continue to resonate with me.

twi-ny: It’s hard to believe some of those pictures go back only forty years; things now seem so different from then. I can’t get the 1999 photograph of a security guard on Schermerhorn Row out of my head; it looks like it’s from a 1940s British noir. What kind of image instantly catches your eye?

bm: To answer your question, I always shoot “reflexively.” When I saw the security guard walking back and forth, blanketed in smoke and fog, I believe my unconscious was at work. Cinematic art has deeply influenced my work, so Frank Capra’s film Lost Horizon and Michael Powell’s captivating films where mystery is created in light and shadow impacted me greatly and often influence my work.

twi-ny: At the end of the book, instead of you being interviewed, you interview someone who tracked you down because of your photographs. What made you want to reverse the tables?

bm: Well, just to be clear, she found me. I thought that interviewing an individual who had some inside perspective on mob activities during the Giuliani investigations against organized crime during the 1980s would be provocative.

twi-ny: It certainly is that. In that interview, the two of you discuss gentrification and land grabs as well as Rudy. At one point, your subject says, “Men’s egos and thirst for power drove us off a cliff. That is the real ‘falling-off place.’” Do you see us ever climbing back from that? You spend much more time photographing deconstruction than reconstruction. Are you worried about the future character of the city itself?

bm: Photographing “deconstruction” for me was unconscious. I was merely trying to capture the beauty inherent in many of the images that I made of the places that we lost.

“Proud Lower East Side boy on a dumpster of shoes, 1982” (photo © Barbara Mensch)

twi-ny: You’ve lived downtown for forty years. How have the myriad changes affected your daily life in the neighborhood, outside of your work?

bm: Well, New York is . . . New York! It is the quintessential experience of life in a great metropolis. As one walks down the street, we have a blending of cultures, of aspirations, and of course the “zeal” in which new commerce replaces the old.

twi-ny: Can we ever have another Fulton Fish Market in New York the way it was, with the same kind of fishmongers and overall feeling, or has the time for that passed?

bm: Unfortunately, I think that time has passed. Sorry if I sound cynical.

twi-ny: You’re a lifelong New Yorker. Your previous book was about the Brooklyn Bridge. So many people leave New York; what are some of the things that keep you here, besides your photography?

bm: Honestly, I love my loft, which is situated in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge. I have gained so much inspiration by exploring the bridge’s origins. But as it has been said, “All things must pass.” That means I, too, think about the future and wonder what’s next. Looking out at the Brooklyn Bridge, however, keeps me forever engaged.

twi-ny: You are so inextricably tied to New York City. When you travel, what kinds of places do you like to go to? Do you take color photos like a tourist, or is it always a busman’s holiday?

bm: If you are a serious artist, every place you go on the globe warrants an intense “staring contest” between you and your vast subject matter. I find stories everywhere I go. The problem is finding the time to put them all together. Art and photography are a serious business, and each project one does merits intense thought and consideration, and of course the consequences of making it available to the public.

Recently I have been making trips to South America, to Colombia. It is a country struggling to emerge from years of violence and corruption. I traveled to Chocó province on the Pacific, where rainforests and jungles remain uninhabited and many of the locals are among the poorest in the country.

I have embraced the iPhone, and once I am away from New York, shooting in color seems natural!

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor who used to live near the Fulton Fish Market and shares a birthday with the Brooklyn Bridge; you can follow him on Substack here.]

THE PARIS THEATER GRAND REOPENING

Radha Blank’s Netflix hit The 40-Year-Old Version opens the renovated Paris Theater

THE PARIS THEATER
4 West Fifty-Eighth St. at Fifth Ave.
Reopens August 6
www.paristheaternyc.com

To slightly misquote Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) in Casablanca, “We’ll always have the Paris.” Following the pandemic lockdown and a major renovation, the Paris Theater, New York City’s historic single-screen cinema, is officially reopening on August 6 with special programming. The longest-running arthouse in the Big Apple has been presenting films since 1948, when it showed Jean Delannoy’s La Symphonie pastorale; over the years it has screened classic works by such international auteurs as Jean Renoir, Roberto Rossellini, Marcel Pagnol, Orson Welles, Ingmar Bergman, Louis Malle, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Demy, Agnieszka Holland, and Bernardo Bertolucci.

The Arte Moderne theater was purchased by Netflix in November 2019 to keep it from closing; to celebrate its reopening, the Paris will be hosting the New York City theatrical premiere of Radha Blank’s Netflix hit, The Forty-Year-Old Version, the Williamsburg native’s breakthrough autobiographical film about a struggling playwright that she wrote, directed, produced, and stars in, accompanied by a selection of hip-hop videos.

“I made Forty-Year-Old Version in 35mm black and white in the spirit of the many great films that informed my love of cinema” Blank said in a statement. “I’m excited to show the film in 35mm as intended and alongside potent films by fearless filmmakers who inspired my development as a storyteller and expanded my vision of what’s possible in the landscape of cinema. That Forty-Year-Old Version gets to screen alongside them at the Paris Theater, a New York beacon for cinema, makes it all the more special.”

Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon will help open the doors of the renovated Paris Theater

In conjunction with the August 6-12 run of her film, Blank, who will be on hand to talk about the movie at the 8:00 screening on opening night, has selected nine repertory works that have had an impact on her, a stellar collection that ranges from John Cassavetes’s Shadows, Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon, Billy Wilder’s The Apartment, and Christopher Guest’s Waiting for Guffman to Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank, Nick Castle’s Tap, and Hal Ashby’s The Last Detail. A screening of the late Kathleen Collins’s Losing Ground will be followed by a discussion with Collins’s daughter, Nina Collins, while there will be a video conversation with Robert Townsend after a showing of his 1987 smash, Hollywood Shuffle.

But that is only the beginning. Also on the 545-seat theater’s agenda is “The Paris Is for Lovers,” a two-week retrospective of thirty-one films chosen by master programmer David Schwartz that premiered at the Paris, reaching deep into the venue’s history. It’s a veritable crash course in cinema studies, consisting of such seminal films as Claude Lelouch’s A Man and a Woman, Bertrand Blier’s Get Out Your Handkerchiefs, Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan (with Stillman in person), the Maysles brothers’ Grey Gardens, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amélie, Alfred Hitchcock’s The Trouble with Harry, Ira Deutchman’s Searching for Mr. Rugoff (with Deutchman in person), Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear, Todd Haynes’s Carol (with cinematographer Ed Lachman in person), and Just Jaeckin’s Emmanuelle.

To slightly misquote a key conversation from Wilder’s Sabrina, the title character, portrayed by Audrey Hepburn, says to Linus (Bogart), “Maybe you should go to the Paris, Linus.” He replies, “To the Paris?” She explains, “It helped me a lot. . . . It’s for changing your outlook, for . . . for throwing open the windows and letting in . . . letting in la vie en rose.”

PUBLIC ART FUND VIRTUAL TALKS: AWOL ERIZKU

Who: Awol Erizku, Daniel S. Palmer
What: Public Art Fund talk
Where: The Cooper Union on Zoom
When: Monday, May 10, free with RSVP, 5:00
Why: For his first public solo exhibition, Bronx-raised Cooper Union alum Awol Erizku has created New Visions for Iris, consisting of thirteen photographs taken during the pandemic and installed at 350 JCDecaux bus shelters around New York City and Chicago. “Certain images just need to be made, for them to be out in the world,” Erizku says in a video about the Public Art Fund project. “It’s an offering, sort of a dismantling and reconstruction of certain visual language I have seen and want to see. I think of these as like intellectual snapshots, ideas that I’m processing at that particular moment, and these things manifest in the image.” The snapshots are meant to begin dialogues, initially between the artist and his daughter but now among everyone. The exhibit continues through June 10; on May 10 at 5:00, Erizku will take part in a live conversation with Public Art Fund curator Daniel S. Palmer, presented in partnership with the Cooper Union.

THIS IS WHO I AM

Ramsey Faragallah and Yousof Sultani play a father and son who are separated by more than just distance in This Is Who I Am (photo courtesy PlayCo and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company)

WOOLLY ON DEMAND: THIS IS WHO I AM
Through January 3, $15.99 single, $30.99 household
www.woollymammoth.net
playco.org

Woolly Mammoth and PlayCo’s This Is Who I Am is the best play created during the pandemic that is not specifically about the pandemic. Presented in association with American Repertory Theater, Guthrie Theater, and Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Amir Nizar Zuabi’s poignant, exquisitely told seventy-minute Zoom work is a treat for all five senses while exploring such issues as love, loss, loneliness, grief, memory, and distance, so much a part of our life amid the ongoing coronavirus crisis.

Zuabi, who was raised in Palestine, was the associate director of Young Vic London for eight years, and is now artistic director of the ShiberHur theater in Haifa, set his 2013 site-specific show, Oh My Sweet Land, in kitchens in real apartments, where small audiences would cram in and watch a woman cook while telling stories about Syrian refugees; everyone was handed a delicacy she made on the way out. This Is Who I Am also takes place in real kitchens, but in this case belonging to two actors portraying an estranged father and son reconnecting over Zoom; you might not get a bite of the spinach-and-onion-stuffed dumpling-like peasant dish known as fteer that they make together, but you will feel as if you can touch, smell, and taste it, in addition to watching and listening to their intimate, heart-tugging conversation. (However, you will get the recipe so you can prepare it yourself in your own kitchen.)

The father (Ramsey Faragallah) is Zooming in from his home in Ramallah, while the son (Yousof Sultani) is in New York, having left the West Bank city years ago to become an art curator, a job his manly, hardworking father fails to understand. As they go step-by-step through the recipe of their late wife/mother’s favorite dish, they talk about the past and delve deep into their relationship, which changed drastically during her prolonged illness. “She used to make such incredible food. Why this, why fteer?” the son asks. “It was the first thing she prepared for me,” the father replies. “She said to me, ‘This is who I am. I am a pocketful of surprises.’”

As they add the ingredients, the differences between them are revealed not only through the dialogue but by how they are making the dish. While the son uses modern utensils and measures everything precisely, the father uses his fingers and judgment with the salt and the sumac, the onions and the yeast. “You were always a horrible cook,” the son says, as if referring to his role as a father as well. The father declares that his lentil soup is to die for, which leads the son to quip, “Death is definitely one of the consequences that can occur as a result of your lentil soup.”

Making fteer together leads them to “fill the gaps” of their lives. When they brush on the olive oil, they remember the olive trees of Ramallah; where the father waxes poetic about the beauty, culture, tradition, and sustenance they represent, the son recalls that the “trees are drenched in blood. They live in a land that had so many people claim it, so many people die for it. You walk around those trees and you feel the reverence of history; I walk around those trees and I hear the shouts of slaughtered men that had to sacrifice themselves to keep it.” When the son insists that water has to be lukewarm, considering it a “safe” temperature, the father interprets that as his son yet again taking the easy way out, not going for the extremes of hot and cold. As they reach the end of the preparation and get ready to place the food in the oven, their topics grow ever-more-serious, with accusations and condemnations being squeezed out like the juice of a lemon, tart and bitter.

Turkish immigrant Evren Odcikin (When My Mama Was a Hittite, Nine Parts of Desire), the associate artistic director at OSF, directs the show with a natural, realistic grace, keeping the actors onscreen the entire time, next to each other in static boxes without camera movement, close-ups, or cuts; we’ve all been part of so many Zoom calls with friends and family and watched a multitude of live, online cooking programs that it’s easy to forget that this is a play and that the two men are fictional constructions. Instead, you’re likely to feel that you’re eavesdropping on an intensely private moment between two complex individuals as they intimately discuss trust, fear, memory, choice, disappointment, and what makes a person a hero.

Ramsey Faragallah and Yousof Sultani rehearse Amir Nizar Zuabi’s This Is Who I Am (photo courtesy PlayCo and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company)

LA-born actor, writer, and teacher Faragallah (The Profane, Homeland) and Northern Virginia native Sultani (Heartland, Photograph 51) are marvelous as father and son, fully embodying their characters just as the dish they are making brings their wife/mother to life. Faragallah portrays the strong and stalwart father with a tender vulnerability that is deeply affecting, while the handsome, hirsute Sultani is sensitive and authentic as the seemingly intractable, unyielding son who is harboring a critical secret. Just follow the movement of their eyes; they might not be in the same room, but their innate attachment is palpable.

In October, Woolly Mammoth’s Woolly on Demand season kicked off with Telephonic Literary Union’s fun Human Resources, which took place completely over the phone as a “choose your own adventure” series of prerecorded messages. This Is Who I Am comes to us live, in real time, via cameras in the actors’ homes in an honest, intrinsically human story that captures who we are and what we are facing without ever mentioning the pandemic we are suffering through; it’s a timeless story whose time is now, for people everywhere.

(This Is Who I Am continues through January 3; tickets are $15.99 for one and $30.99 for a household. On January 2, you can take part in a postshow community meetup hosted by A.R.T. with the Boston Palestine Film Festival by registering here. It’s also worth checking out the archived December 20 virtual panel discussion “Story as Resistance: The Joys, the Heartbreak, and the Food.”)

3-D AUTEURS: THE GREAT GATSBY

Nick (Tobey Maguire), Jay (Leonardo DiCaprio), Daisy (Carey Mulligan), and Tom (Joel Edgerton) are caught up in matters of the heart in THE GREAT GATSBY

THE GREAT GATSBY (Baz Luhrmann, 2013)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Wednesday, November 16, 4:10; Saturday, November 19, 5:10; Monday, November 21, 12:30
Series runs November 11-29
212-727-8110
filmforum.org
www.thegreatgatsby.warnerbros.com

Baz Luhrmann’s sumptuous version of The Great Gatsby is a dazzling reimagining of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel of old and new money and the American dream. The Australian director and his wife, costume and production designer extraordinaire Catherine Martin, have turned the classic tale into a lush spectacle without losing focus on the main story of life and love during the Roaring Twenties. Leonardo DiCaprio, who played the male lead in Lurhmann’s contemporary take on Romeo + Juliet, is superb as Jay Gatsby, the mystery man previously portrayed by Warner Baxter in 1926, Alan Ladd in 1949, Robert Redford in 1974, and Toby Stephens in 2000, adding a compelling level of vulnerability to the character. Gatsby has built a magnificent palace for himself on Long Island, hosting wild parties that he doesn’t care about; all he truly wants is Daisy (Carey Mulligan), a former love who has married successful businessman Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton) and lives in a mansion right across the bay. The villainous Tom is having an affair with the lower-class Myrtle Wilson (Isla Fisher), whose unaware husband, George (Jason Clarke), runs a gas station and garage in the Valley of Ashes. Although a loner, Gatsby befriends his neighbor, Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire), a young, innocent bond trader who rents a modest home at the base of Gatsby’s enormous estate and whose cousin just happens to be Daisy. As Carraway is sucked into this glamorous, debauched society, which also includes wild and elegant golf champion Jordan Baker (Elizabeth Debicki), he is forced to reexamine his own hopes and dreams as he tries to find his place in the world.

Baz Luhrmann throws one helluva party in his reimagining of THE GREAT GATSBY

Luhrmann and cowriter Craig Pearce have framed the tale by putting Carraway, the narrator of the book and film, in a sanitarium, where a doctor (Jack Thompson) convinces him that writing down what happened with Gatsby will help him overcome his alcoholism and depression; the device, which is not part of the novel, is based on Fitzgerald’s own time spent in a sanitarium. Luhrmann and Pearce, who did extensive research for the project, also include elements from Fitzgerald’s Trimalchio, the first draft of The Great Gatsby, which will certainly anger purists. Purists are also likely to be furious at the soundtrack, which features songs by Jay Z (one of the film’s producers), his wife, Beyoncé, André 3000, will.i.am, Lana Del Rey, Gotye, and the xx alongside Jazz Age re-creations by the Bryan Ferry Orchestra of Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love” and Roxy Music’s “Love Is the Drug.” But this is not your high school English teacher’s Gatsby; instead, it’s F. Scott Fitzgerald for the twenty-first century, not meant to be seen through the billboard spectacles of oculist Dr. T. J. Eckleburg but through 3-D glasses that invite viewers into the oh-so-fashionable goings-on in eye-popping ways. “Is all this made entirely from your own imagination?” Daisy asks Gatsby at one point. In this case, it’s made from the minds of two wildly inventive men, Luhrmann and Fitzgerald, who together throw one helluva party. Winner of two Academy Awards, for Best Costume Design (Catherine Martin) and Best Production Design (Martin and Beverley Dunn), The Great Gatsby is screening November 16, 19, and 21 in “3-D Auteurs,” which runs November 11-29 at Film Forum and consists of approximately three dozen 3-D feature films and shorts, including Jean-Luc Godard’s Goodbye to Language, Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Takashi Miike’s Hara Kiri: Death of a Samurai, Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder, Jack Arnold’s Creature from the Black Lagoon, Three Stooges and Méliès shorts, and the wacky double feature of Johnnie To’s Office and George Sidney’s Kiss Me Kate.

CHANTAL AKERMAN — IMAGES BETWEEN THE IMAGES: NEWS FROM HOME

Chantal Akerman combines footage of 1970s New York with letters from her mother in NEWS FROM HOME

NEWS FROM HOME (Chantal Akerman, 1977)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Saturday, April 16, 7:00 & 9:00
Series continues through May 1
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

In 1971, twenty-year-old Chantal Akerman moved to New York City from her native Belgium, determined to become a filmmaker. Teaming up with cinematographer Babette Mangolte, she made several experimental films, including Hotel Monterey and La Chambre, before moving back to Belgium in 1973. But in 1976 she returned to New York City to make News from Home, a mesmerizing work about family and dislocation, themes that would be prevalent throughout her career. The film consists of long, mostly static shots, using natural sound and light, depicting a gray, dismal New York City as cars move slowly down narrow, seemingly abandoned streets, people ride the graffiti-laden subway, workers and tourists pack Fifth Ave., and the Staten Island Ferry leaves Lower Manhattan. The only spoken words occur when Akerman, in voice-over, reads letters from her mother, Natalia (Nelly) Akerman, sent during Chantal’s previous time in New York, concerned about her daughter’s welfare and safety. “I’m glad you don’t have that job anymore and that you’re liking New York,” Akerman reads in one letter. “People here are surprised. They say New York is terrible, inhuman. Perhaps they don’t really know it and are too quick to judge.” Her mother’s missives often chastise her for not writing back more often while also filling her in on the details of her family’s life, including her mother, father, and sister, Sylviane, as well as local gossip. Although it was not meant to be a straightforward documentary, News from Home now stands as a mesmerizing time capsule of downtrodden 1970s New York, sometimes nearly unrecognizable when compared to the city of today. The film also casts another light on the relationship between mother and daughter, which was recently highlighted in Akerman’s final film, No Home Movie, in which Chantal attempts to get her mother, a Holocaust survivor, to open up about her experiences in Auschwitz. Nelly died shortly after filming, and Akerman committed suicide the following year, only a few months after No Home Movie played at several film festivals (and was booed at Locarno). News from Home takes on new meaning in light of Akerman’s end, a unique love letter to city and family and to how we maintained connections in a pre-internet world. News from Home is screening April 16 at BAM Rose Cinemas as part of the BAMcinématek series “Chantal Akerman: Images between the Images,” which continues through May 1 with such other films by Akerman as Golden Eighties, Histoires d’Amerique, From the Other Side, and her masterpiece, Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. In addition, Anthology Film Archives will host “Chantal Akerman x 2,” showing No Home Movie and Là-Bas April 15-21.

SUMMER ON THE HUDSON PICTURE SHOW: THE GREAT GATSBY

Nick (Tobey Maguire), Jay (Leonardo DiCaprio), Daisy (Carey Mulligan), and Tom (Joel Edgerton) are caught up in matters of the heart in THE GREAT GATSBY

THE GREAT GATSBY (Baz Luhrmann, 2013)
Pier I, Riverside Park South at 70th St.
Wednesday, July 22, free, 8:00
www.thegreatgatsby.warnerbros.com
www.nycgovparks.org

Baz Luhrmann throws one helluva party in his reimagining of THE GREAT GATSBY

Luhrmann and cowriter Craig Pearce have framed the tale by putting Carraway, the narrator of the book and film, in a sanitarium, where a doctor (Jack Thompson) convinces him that writing down what happened with Gatsby will help him overcome his alcoholism and depression; the device, which is not part of the novel, is based on Fitzgerald’s own time spent in a sanitarium. Luhrmann and Pearce, who did extensive research for the project, also include elements from Fitzgerald’s Trimalchio, the first draft of The Great Gatsby, which will certainly anger purists. Purists are also likely to be furious at the soundtrack, which features songs by Jay Z (one of the film’s producers), his wife, Beyoncé, André 3000, will.i.am, Lana Del Rey, Gotye, and the xx alongside Jazz Age re-creations by the Bryan Ferry Orchestra of Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love” and Roxy Music’s “Love Is the Drug.” But this is not your high school English teacher’s Gatsby; instead, it’s F. Scott Fitzgerald for the twenty-first century, not meant to be seen through the billboard spectacles of oculist Dr. T. J. Eckleburg but through 3-D glasses that invite viewers into the oh-so-fashionable goings-on in eye-popping ways. “Is all this made entirely from your own imagination?” Daisy asks Gatsby at one point. In this case, it’s made from the minds of two wildly inventive men, Luhrmann and Fitzgerald, who together throw one helluva party. Nominated for two Academy Awards (for costume and production design), The Great Gatsby is screening July 22 as part of the free Summer on the Hudson Picture Show series in Riverside Park, which continues Wednesday nights through August 12 with Beasts of the Southern Wild on July 29, Moonrise Kingdom on August 5, and Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax on August 12 before concluding with The Fantastic Mr. Fox on August 13.