Andrew Moore, “Room 348, Hermitage Museum,” from the series “Russia,” 2003 (courtesy Yancey Richardson Gallery)
Park Avenue Armory
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
March 29 – April 1, $25 for one day, $40 for all four days
202-367-1158
www.aipad.com
www.armoryonpark.org
These days everyone seems to think they’re a photographer, taking picture after picture after picture with their digital phones and other electronic devices, then posting the results all over social media and blogs. So we always like when the AIPAD Photography Show New York comes to town, reminding us that there’s actually a whole lotta skill that goes with capturing images of the world at large. The thirty-second gathering sponsored by the Association of International Photography Art Dealers takes place March 29 through April 1 at the Park Avenue Armory, featuring exhibits from seventy-five galleries as well as a series of special events, beginning March 28 with the gala kickoff benefiting inMotion, an organization that provides “justice for all women.” Exhibitors from Beijing, Munich, Toronto, Osaka, Paris, Buenos Aires, and London will join American galleries from across the country at the show, including such New York faves as Howard Greenberg, Nailya Alexander, Bonni Benrubi (which will be displaying photographs by Linda McCartney), Steven Kasher (Weegee, Vivian Meier), Danziger (Karen Knorr), Sasha Wolf (Elinor Carucci), Laurence Miller, Julie Saul (Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao), Bryce Wolkowitz, Yancey Richardson (Laura Letinsky, Rachel Perry Welty), Yossi Milo (Alejandro Chaskielberg), and David Zwirner (Philip-Lorca diCorcia). As you wind your way through the armory, you’ll also find works by Ansel Adams, Man Ray, André Kertész, Flip Schulke, and many others. The panel discussions ($10 in advance) will take place Saturday at Hunter College’s Hunter West Building, beginning at 10:00 am with “A Conversation with Rineke Dijkstra,” who will be interviewed by Guggenheim curator Jennifer Blessing, and will continue at 12 noon with “Curator’s Choice: Emerging Artists in Photography,” with Sarah Meister, Christopher Phillips, and Joshua Chuang, moderated by Lindsay Pollock; “How to Collect Photographs: What Collectors Need to Know Now” at 2:00, with Kenneth Montague and Joseph Baio, moderated by Steven Kasher; “A Celebration of Francesca Woodman” at 4:00 with Julia Bryan-Wilson, Sloan Keck, and Elisabeth Subrin, moderated by Robert Klein; and “Italian Contemporary Photography” at 6:00, with Maria Antonella Pelizzari, Yancey Richardson, Julie Saul, and Olivo Barbieri, moderated by Sandra Phillips.
Giulietta Masina was named Best Actress at Cannes for her unforgettable portrayal of a far-too-trusting street prostitute in Nights of Cabiria. Directed by her husband, Federico Fellini, produced by Dino De Laurentiis, and written in collaboration with Pier Paolo Pasolini, the film opens with Cabiria taking a romantic stroll by the river with her boyfriend, Giorgio (Franco Fabrizi), who suddenly snatches her purse and pushes her into the water, running off as she nearly drowns. Such is life for Cabiria, whose sweet, naive nature can turn foul tempered in an instant. Over the course of the next few days, she gets picked up by movie star Alberto Lazzari (Amedeo Nazzari), goes on a religious pilgrimage with fellow prostitutes Wanda (Franca Marzi) and Rosy (Loretta Capitoli), gets hypnotized by a magician (Ennio Girolami), and falls in love with a tender stranger named Oscar (François Périer). But nothing ever goes quite as expected for Cabiria, who continues to search for the bright side even in the direst of circumstances. Masina is a delight in the film, whether yelling at a neighbor, dancing the mambo with Alberto, or looking to confess her sins, her facial expressions a work of art in themselves, ranging from sly smiles and innocent glances to nasty smirks and angry stares. Fellini’s second film to win the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film (after La Strada), Nights of Cabiria is screening March 28 as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s “15 for 15: Celebrating Rialto Pictures” series honoring the fifteenth anniversary of the art-house distributor founded by Film Forum programmer extraordinaire Bruce Goldstein, who also worked on the updated translation for the 1998 restoration of this Fellini masterpiece.
A box-office blockbuster in South Korea, Shin Tae-ra’s My Girlfriend Is an Agent is a goofy but fun mosh-up of Mr. and Mrs. Smith and the television shows Get Smart and Mission: Impossible. As the movie opens, the weak-kneed Jae-joon (Kang Ji-hwan) is threatening to leave Soo-ji (Kim Ha-neul), tired of her many lies. What he doesn’t know is that she is actually a secret agent working undercover for the government, but she is not allowed to tell anyone, instead claiming she is a travel agent to explain all the time she spends away from him. Three years later, they accidentally meet up again — Soo-ji recognizes his, um, member in a men’s room while he is relieving himself at a urinal and she is pretending to be a cleaning lady — but now Jae-joon is a secret agent for a different department, working the same case but from another angle while telling her he is an accountant. Crazy hijinks ensue, including plenty of mistaken identity, a wacky car chase, and a shootout in an amusement park, with Soo-ji and Jae-joon continually bumping into each other as they get closer and closer to the international terrorists seeking to gain control of a lethal virus that could wipe out much of the country. My Girlfriend Is an Agent, which is getting the Bollywood treatment in a remake directed by Bosco, is screening on March 27 at 7:00 at Tribeca Cinemas as the second installment of the free Korean Movie Night series “It’s a Fine Romance,” which concludes on April 10 with Kim Jeong-hoon’s 2010 chick flick, Petty Romance.
