Eleanor Friedberger will preview songs from her upcoming solo album tonight at Europa as part of the Northside Festival (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Northside Festival
Multiple venues in Greenpoint and Williamsburg
June 16-19
www.northsidefestival.com
The Northside Festival is back June 16-19 following an outstanding launch last year. The festival features four days of indie music at venues all over Greenpoint and Williamsburg, in addition to film screenings and open art studios. There are hundreds of bands, so don’t get too frustrated if one of the shows you wanted to see is already sold out; festival badges are gone as well, but there’s still lots to choose from. We’ll be featuring highlights and recommendations every day of the festival; here are today’s:
East River Ferry, East 34th St. and the East River to North Eighth St. in North Williamsburg, approximately every twenty minutes from 9:00 am to 8:30 pm, free through June 24
The Whatever Blog presents Small Mountain Path (3:00), Hooray for Goodbye (4:00), Little Wolf (5:00), the Senors of Marseille (6:00), and Nico Blues (7:00), with DJ Jesse Elliott of These United States, Red Star Bar, 37 Greenpoint Ave., $8
Smorgasburg, Brooklyn Flea food vendors including Queen’s Dahn Tu, Shorty Tang & Sons, La Buena, King’s Crumb, Nana’s, Tin Mustard, Speedy Romeo, and more, 27 North Sixth St., free admission, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm
Ground Control presents the Babies (4:00), Surfer Blood (5:00), Wavves (6:00), Guided by Voices (7:00), McCarren Park, the Steve Madden Stage, $35
Sundance Selects presents Tabloid (Errol Morris, 2010), IndieScreen, 289 Kent Ave., $10, 8:00
Tell All Your Friends presents Emil & Friends, the Yellow Dows, Thee Oh Sees album release show for Castlemania, plus surprise special guest, $10, doors at 6:00
Northside Open Studios Launch, with Crest Fest and Brooklyn Street Art, featuring Snowmine, Balún, Merrickans, DJ Liam Andrew, Walrus Ghost, Home Land installation by Sara Sun, Honesty Box Facebook confessional by Eva Navon, Metaforeign screening series curated by Sasha Summer, Rooftop Bikini Reading Series by Boomslang, and more, the End, 13 Greenpoint Ave., $7, 7:00 – 12 midnight
POP Montreal presents Spectre Folk (7:00), Rebecca Gates (7:40), Ida (8:20), special secret guest (9:00), Eleanor Friedberger (9:40), Europa, 98 Meserole Ave., $17
Setting out to make a film about Mexican corn farmers, Aaron Schock was captivated by a traveling circus and instead decided to tell the fascinating story of the Ponce family. For more than a hundred years, seven generations of Ponces have operated a small circus that makes its way through rural Mexico, delivering such old-fashioned spectacles as contortionism, tightrope walkers, clowns, tiger taming, aerial acts, and the Globe of Death, primarily performed by members of the Ponce clan, including five children. They do everything themselves, from hammering in stakes to put the big top up to driving through local villages announcing their arrival, handing out free tickets to youngsters in the hopes that their parents will buy tickets in order to take them to the show. But what Schock reveals is that the Ponces’ Gran Circo Mexico is not a feel-good, DIY tale of a happy family living and working together in harmony; instead, Tino and his wife, Ivonne, are clashing over their very future. Whereas Tino is dedicated to keeping the family tradition alive, Ivonne wants to have a more normal life, with the kids going to school and making friends. While Tino has passed down the tricks of the trade, most of the Ponces cannot read or write and have received no formal education. And when his brother considers leaving the circus to be with a settled woman, Tino feels the strain of his responsibility even further, forced to decide between the family legacy or starting a whole new life. In his debut feature-length documentary, Schock, serving as director, producer, camera operator, cowriter, and sound man, portrays the difficult lives the Ponces lead, with little money and dwindling audiences, allowing the various family members to tell their moving stories while they prepare for the next performance. Just as Schock doesn’t take sides, audiences will understand Tino’s and Ivonne’s conflicting positions and will feel for both of them in this compelling study of a family in flux. Named Best Documentary at the 2010 Hamptons International Film Festival, Circo, which had a limited engagement earlier this year, will be screening on June 19 & 26 as part of Symphony Space’s Thalia Film Sundays series.
The opening-night selection of the twenty-second Human Rights Watch Film Festival, Granito: How to Nail a Dictator is an illuminating, if at times overly self-referential, examination of the power of documentary filmmaking. In 1982, Pamela Yates and Newton Thomas Sigel made When the Mountains Tremble, which told the inside story of civilian massacres of the indigenous Maya people as government forces and guerrilla revolutionaries fought in the jungles of Guatemala; one of the film’s subjects, Rigoberta Menchú, became an international figure and went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize. “When I made that film, I had no idea I was filming in the middle of a genocide,” Yates says at the beginning of Granito. A quarter-century after When the Mountains Tremble, Yates was contacted by lawyer Almudena Bernabeu, who asked Yates to comb through her reels and reels of footage to find evidence of the Guatemalan genocide and help bring charges again dictator Ríos Montt, whom Yates had met with back in 1982. In researching the case, Yates speaks with Menchú, forensic archivist Kate Doyle, journalist liaison Naomi Roht-Arriaza, forensic anthropologist Fredy Peccerelli, Spanish national court judge Santiago Pedraz, victims’ rights leader and genocide survivor Antonio Caba Caba, and Gustavo Meoño, a founding member of the Guerrilla Army of the Poor, each of whom sheds light on the proceedings from various different angles, from digging up bones in mass graves to discussing redacted documents that reveal U.S. involvement in Guatemala. Several of them are risking their lives by both continuing to fight the government and appearing on camera. Part of the “Truth, Justice, and Accountability” section of the Human Rights Watch Festival, which also includes “Times of Conflict and Responses to Terrorism,” “Human Dignity, Discrimination, and Resources,” and “Migrants’ and Women’s Rights,” Granito, which Yates directed with Peter Kinoy and Paco de Onís and is her sixth film to be shown at the festival, is a compelling look at how individuals can make a difference. The music is often overly melodramatic, and Yates does seem to like to show herself both in outtakes from her first film and in serious poses in the new film, but its ultimate point overrides those tendencies. Granito will be shown June 17 at 7:00 and June 18 at 1:00; both screenings will be followed by a discussion with the filmmakers as well as subjects Kate Doyle, Alejandra Garcia, and Fredy Peccerelli. The June 17 screening will also be followed by a reception, while the June 18 screening will be followed by a special presentation of When the Mountains Tremble (1982). The festival, which runs June 16-30, features nineteen films from twelve countries that deal with human rights issues around the world. Keep watching twi-ny for further select reviews.