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PRIDE REVISED — LINES AND CURVES, DRAWN AND MOVING: THE WATERMELON WOMAN

Cheryl Dunye wrote, directed, edited, and stars in The Watermelon Woman

THE WATERMELON WOMAN (Cheryl Dunye, 1996)
Quad Cinema
34 West 13th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Wednesday, June 14, 5:30 & 7:30
Series continues through
212-255-224
quadcinema.com

“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, which underwent a twentieth-anniversary 2K HD restoration in 2016. 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 as well as 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. In addition, the film 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, less than thirty 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. The Watermelon Woman is screening June 14 at the Quad as part of the series “Pride Revived: Lines and Curves, Drawn and Moving”; the 7:30 show will be introduced by film critic, comedian, and podcaster Jourdain Searles. Also on the schedule are Shirley Clarke’s Portrait of Jason on June 12, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema on June 13, and Jack Sholder’s A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge on June 14.

THE SHYLOCK AND THE SHAKESPEAREANS

Jacob (Jeremy Kareken, center) negotiates a deal with Antonio (Eric Oleson) and Bassanio (Chapman Hyatt) in The Shylock and the Shakespeareans (photo by Richard Termine)

THE SHYLOCK AND THE SHAKESPEAREANS
New Ohio Theatre
154 Christopher St.
Wednesday – Sunday through June 17, $20 streaming, $30 in person
www.untitledtheater.com
newohiotheatre.org

The premise for Edward Einhorn’s The Shylock and the Shakespeareans is filled with intriguing possibilities: a reimagining of William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice in which the Bard is the hero of a ragtag mob of racists and anti-Semites. Unfortunately, the execution doesn’t quite live up to the promise.

As the audience enters the New Ohio Theatre (for what will be the venue’s final full-length presentation before it closes), musician and composer Richard Philbin is in a corner, playing wonderful Klezmer/medieval-tinged tunes on flute, clarinet, and bassoon, which he continues doing throughout the show. Mike Mroch’s set is a dark alley with graffiti on concrete walls — “The Jews Will Not Replase Us,” misspelled to immediately establish the ignorance of the bigots — along with dozens and dozens of pictures of Shakespeare, many with his eyes ripped out, evoking one of the playwright’s most famous and controversial soliloquies, which begins, “Hath not a Jew eyes?”

What Einhorn calls “A Comedy with Tragic Elements” starts with a prologue in Venice in which the Jewish Jessica (Yael Haskal) and the Asian Christian Lorenzo (Chase Lee) are spotted together making out by Salarino (Ethan Fox) and Salarina (Janine Hagerty), who are wearing white hoods that we soon learn are the mark of the Ku Klux Klan–like Shakespeareans. “They have witchcraft in their lips,” Salarina says about the couple. “Lorenzo loves not wisely.”

The central plot of The Shylock and the Shakespeareans is similar to that of The Merchant of Venice. Bassanio (Chapman Hyatt) is in love with heiress Portia (Nina Mann) and wants to flaunt his love by gifting her diamonds that cost three thousand ducats. Bassanio has no money, so he asks his older cousin Antonio (Eric Oleson), a rich merchant, to loan him the cash, but Antonio explains that his wealth is all tied up in ships that are out at sea. Instead, Bassanio convinces Antonio to meet with Jacob (Jeremy Kareken), a Jewish jeweler, to make a deal.

“How many times have I told you? Never trust a Jew,” Antonio tells his cousin. “They are sneaks. They are liars. And they are cannibals.” When Bassanio questions Antonio’s belief that Jews are flesh-eating devils, Antonio explains that it all comes from Shakespeare, that the Bard “opened my eyes about a lot of things.” Bassanio responds, “I don’t know, Antonio. Some of the people at his rallies, they seem a little crazy. That Gobbo guy, he scares me.” A disappointed Antonio complains, “You always have to put him down. I don’t know why you have to do that.” The scene brings to mind Donald Trump’s defense of the people involved in the 2017 Unite the Right march in Charlottesville and the January 6 insurrectionists, with Gobbo (Craig Anderson) a kind of QAnon Shaman or Proud Boy leader. In addition, Gobbo has no love lost for Terach (Kingsley Nwaogu), a Black Jew who is Jacob’s only friend. Defending his hate, Gobbo, formerly Jacob’s servant, says, “I just say in public the things that most people say in private.”

Antonio refuses to call Jacob by his real name, instead referring to him by the derogatory term “shylock,” which he tells Bassanio means, according to Shakespeare, “don’t trust them.” Their initial meeting features the best exchange in the play.

Antonio: This is the shylock?
Jacob: Jacob is my name.
Antonio: I know who you are.
Jacob: I know who you are too. You and a gang of Shakespeareans vandalized our synagogue. You were one of the ring leaders.
Antonio: The synagogue, Bassanio, is where shylocks do their business.
Jacob: It’s where we pray.
Antonio: You prey upon us there and everywhere.
Jacob: I mean prayers. Like in a church.
Antonio: The devil can cite scripture for his purpose.
Bassanio: Wait, I think I’ve heard that before. Who said that?
Jacob & Antonio: Shakespeare.

Portia’s (Nina Mann) suitors must choose from three boxes in reimagining of The Merchant of Venice (photo by Richard Termine)

Whereas in The Merchant of Venice it is Shylock who demands a pound of flesh if Antonio defaults on the loan, a troublesome plot point that to this day does no favors for Jews, painting them as vicious businessmen, Einhorn instead has Bassanio suggest it, offering, “If you are not paid, you can take a bite out of my Christian flesh. From wherever you like.” Antonio demands, “Not his flesh! Mine. You can eat mine. Or cook it into matzo.” Jacob argues, “Matzo is just flour and water.” Antonio cries out, “And Christian children.” They eventually arrive at an agreement in which Jacob will charge Bassanio three thousand ducats — the actual cost — for a diamond necklace, and Antonio will pay for it once his ships arrive back home. In lieu of interest, Antonio will have to tell his fellow Shakespeareans that Jews do not eat Christians, convincing them that the blood libel is a lie.

Meanwhile, Morocco (Nwaogu) and Aragon (Fox) join Bassanio as suitors for Portia’s hand, having to choose the correct box out of three: a gold one that says, “Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire,” a silver one that says, “Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves,” and a lead one that says, “Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath.” Portia, who also is an unscrupulous cross-dressing judge, is assisted by her servant, Nerissa (Stephanie Lichtfield), who sleeps in the stables and lusts after Gratiano (Thomas Shuman), who works for Antonio.

There’s much to admire in the first half of the play, with solid character development, strong dialogue, and terrific music. Kareken, who cowrote the Broadway play The Lifespan of a Fact, is stalwart as Jacob, portraying him as a bold and brave man with high principles who is not about to let others get the best of him, a stand-in for the Jewish people around the world, particularly today, when the rise of anti-Semitism is everywhere. Oleson gives Antonio just the right edge, an intelligent man who should know better but has fallen under the spell of the Shakespeareans. Ramona Ponce’s costumes, which meld medieval with modern, are highlighted by the Elizabethan ruffs worn by the bigots around their necks and the yellow circles on the lapels of the Jews, a reference to the rotas that Jews had to wear in Europe beginning in 1217 and which became the Star of David under the Nazis.

The play — a follow-up to Einhorn’s 1997 A Shylock, the first full play from his troupe, Untitled Theater Company No. 61 — loses steam as Einhorn (Alma Baya, City of Glass) turns the focus on Jessica, who has converted to Christianity and eloped with Lorenzo. She is disappointed that Lorenzo is friends with Antonio even though Antonio believes that “Venice is for the Venetians. Not for foreigners and certainly not for Jews.” Not only are the Shakespeareans — the Middle Ages version of the America First movement — anti-Semitic and racist but they also despise immigrants while controlling the narrative. “Your friends spread hate,” Lorenzo tells Antonio, who replies in classic bigot projection, “We are the victims of hate. No one is hated more unfairly than the Shakespeareans.”

Although Einhorn calls attention to critical matters that are still relevant today, the tale grows ever more choppy, with overblown and repetitive slapstick competing with poignant drama. Jessica’s interaction with Portia feels forced, and what happens after Jacob speaks the famous words “I am content” is confounding in multiple ways as Einhorn attacks the current scourge of white supremacy, perhaps born in part from the legacy of Shakespeare’s play. The work also raises important questions about the future of Jewish culture amid so much hatred and intermarriage, lamenting what Shakespeare and others have wrought over the centuries, but those discussions seem squeezed in.

“We know a threat when we see it,” Antonio warns Jacob. “You want us to be blind, but Shakespeare has opened our eyes.” After all these years, it’s a tragedy that so many still need their eyes opened to the truth.

THE RETURN OF THE RISE AND FALL, THEN BRIEF AND MODEST RISE FOLLOWED BY A RELATIVE FALL OF . . . JEAN CLAUDE VAN DAMME

Joe Cordaro and John Harlacher star in Timothy Haskell’s semibiographical play about Jean Claude Van Damme (photo by Nathaniel Nowak)

THE RISE AND FALL, THEN BRIEF AND MODEST RISE FOLLOWED BY A RELATIVE FALL OF . . . JEAN CLAUDE VAN DAMME AS GLEANED BY A SINGLE READING OF HIS WIKIPEDIA PAGE MONTHS EARLIER
Brooklyn Art Haus
24 Marcy Ave., Brooklyn
Sundays, June 11 – July 16, $25 (opening night $20 with code FACEKICK23), 7:00
www.bkarthaus.com

Last June, I saw — well, experienced might be a better word — Timothy Haskell’s spectacularly titled The Rise and Fall, Then Brief and Modest Rise Followed by a Relative Fall of . . . Jean Claude Van Damme as Gleaned by a Single Reading of His Wikipedia Page Months Earlier at the Pit Loft. It’s now back for an encore run on Sunday nights at the Brooklyn Art Haus, from June 11 through July 16. Below is my original review, but you don’t need to read it if the name of the show already has you hooked. Just go, especially with tickets only twenty-five bucks (plus, you can save a fin on opening night with code FACEKICK23). But do tell Mr. Haskell that twi-ny sent you.

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I’ve seen so many meticulously researched plays about real-life figures and situations, wondering what is actually true and what has been tweaked — or just plain made up — for dramatic effect, that Timothy Haskell’s new work is a breath of fresh air. The title explains exactly what you’re in for: The Rise and Fall, Then Brief and Modest Rise Followed by a Relative Fall of . . . Jean Claude Van Damme as Gleaned by a Single Reading of His Wikipedia Page Months Earlier. Haskell checked out Jean Claude Van Damme’s relatively lengthy Wikipedia entry, then, a few months later, wrote a play based only on what he could remember, without doing any further reading or fact checking. “Absolutely no research was put into learning anything about the subject at hand,” we are told early on. “It was all gleaned from one cursory glance at his Wikipedia page, and just general knowledge of the man based on tabloid headlines.”

The result is a breezy, extremely funny look at fame, ambition, gossip, and celebrity, gleefully codirected by Haskell, set designer Paul Smithyman, and puppet master Aaron Haskell (Timothy’s brother). For about an hour, John Harlacher and Joe Cordaro, standing behind makeshift podiums, share the not-necessarily-true story of the Muscles from Brussels. Between them is an angled table with slots where they place cardboard cutouts on Popsicle sticks of Van Damme and people who have been part of his personal life and professional career — or have nothing to do with him. Behind them is a small “screen” on which they project photos and a few choice film clips, including a fantastic moment from 1984’s Breakin’ with Van Damme as an uncredited background extra.

Both actors play multiple roles, but the hirsute Harlacher (Bum Phillips, Dog Day Afternoon) is mainly the narrator, meandering through his overstuffed, disorganized notebook, while Cordaro (The Foreigner, The Tiny Mustache) is mostly the former Jean-Claude Camille François Van Varenberg, reacting to what the narrator says and occasionally taking center stage to act out various scenes, including JCVD’s infamous barfight with Chuck Zito.

Timothy Haskell and the narrator make no bones about what went into the scattershot though chronological show, which has a proudly middle school DIY aesthetic. Introducing the Breakin’ clip, the narrator explains, “There’s a pretty fun YouTube remix our author was lucky enough to stumble upon while limply researching another play about the movie Breakin’ that some guy did that looks like this.” The two actors dance along with JCVD, after which the narrator rhetorically asks, “Isn’t that fun?” Yes it is!

Repurposed action figures play a pivotal role in JCVD show at Brooklyn Art Haus (photo courtesy Aaron Haskell)

Commenting on JCVD’s battle with drugs, the narrator admits, “As for Jean Claude, he did that stupid thing in Breakin’ and then toiled away some more and did a ton of bullshit and got all kinds of high. Not on life either, brother. The man was a straight up smack head if smack head means you did lots of cocaine which the author is now not sure it does. Fed up and high as a Romanian glue-huffer he decided to make some bold moves. He decided to case Joel Silver’s office. Joel Silver was the producer of Road House starring Patrick Swayze that was later turned into a hit play by Timothy Haskell who thought after that he could do serious work but was wrong.”

As JCVD’s career rises and falls and rises and falls and so on, we (sort of) learn about his siblings, his wives, his martial arts mentors and heroes, his perhaps partially fabricated tournament record, and his hotly anticipated confrontation with Steven Seagal. We go behind the scenes of such films as Bloodsport, Kickboxer, Universal Soldier, and Timecop. Oh, and there is plenty of fighting, carried out by Cordaro and Harlacher with repurposed action figures, designed by Aaron Haskell, battling it out on a long, narrow fencing piste at the front of the stage. It’s like watching two young friends playing in the basement with their GI Joe dolls — the ones with kung fu grip, of course.

As a founding member of Psycho Clan, Haskell has presented such immersive horror experiences as This Is Real, Santastical, and I Can’t See. He has also directed James and the Giant Peach, Fatal Attraction: A Greek Tragedy, Road House: The Stage Play, and the upcoming graffiti drama Hit the Wall.

In an April 2014 twi-ny talk about his interactive Easter-themed eggstravaganza, Full Bunny Contact, I asked him, “What happened to you as a child? Based on the kinds of shows and events you write, produce, direct, and create, there had to be some kind of major trauma involved.” He replied, “Nothing unusual. My mother says she dropped a toy Ferris wheel on my head, and anytime I do something unusual she blames herself for dropping a heavy toy on my noggin.” That could explain this new work as well.

The show concludes with an extended monologue by JCVD, who begins by warning, “I know what happened. I am me. I don’t need to read a Wikipedia page to know who I am. I did, however. Thoroughly. Ya know, for safety.”

There’s nothing safe about The Rise and Fall, Then Brief and Modest Rise Followed by a Relative Fall of . . . Jean Claude Van Damme as Gleaned by a Single Reading of His Wikipedia Page Months Earlier. But there is a whole lot that is hilariously entertaining. And that person sitting behind you, laughing even harder than you, just might be Timothy Haskell himself.

OZU 120 — A COMPLETE RETROSPECTIVE

Film Forum is hosting a complete retrospective of the work of Yasujirō Ozu in honor of the 120th anniversary of his birth and 60th anniversary of his death

OZU 120: A COMPLETE RETROSPECTIVE
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
June 9-29
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

While it is never a bad time to celebrate the genius of Japanese auteur Yasujirō Ozu, now seems a particularly potent moment, with partisan politics and social media tearing friends and families apart, corporations gaining more and more power and wealth, and education under attack across America. From June 9 to 29, Film Forum is hosting “Ozu 120: A Complete Retrospective,” consisting of all three dozen of his extant works, in honor of the 120th anniversary of his birth, on December 12, 1903, and the 60th anniversary of his death on his birthday in 1963. It is no coincidence that six of the films have references to family members in their titles and another dozen involve youth and the passing of time over the course of a day and the seasons of the year.

The Tokyo-born writer, cameraman, and director made poignant “common people’s dramas,” known as shomin-geki, that penetrated deeply into the relationships among husbands and wives, children and parents, and bosses and employees, presenting honest portraits with care and intelligence. Interestingly, Ozu never married and never had kids of his own. His magnificent, meditative films feature long interior takes, little action, and few camera movements, letting the story unfold at its own pace, often photographed from low camera angles that came to be called tatami shots, from the point of view of someone kneeling on a tatami mat.

On June 19, the screenings of I Was Born, But . . . and a fragment of the short film A Straightforward Boy will be accompanied by live music by pianist and composer Makia Matsumura and a performance by master benshi Ichiro Kataoka. The June 20 showing of Tokyo Twilight will be introduced by Asian-American International Film Festival programming manager Kris Montello. Keep watching this space for more reviews of films from this must-see retrospective.

Father (Chishu Ryu) and daughter (Setsuko Hara) contemplate their future in Yasujirō Ozu masterpiece

LATE SPRING (BANSHUN) (Yasujirō Ozu, 1949)
Film Forum
June 9, 10, 11, 13, 28
filmforum.org

A masterpiece from start to finish, Yasujirō Ozu’s Late Spring marked a late spring of sorts in the Japanese auteur’s career as he moved into a new, post-WWII phase of his long exploration of Japanese family life and the middle class. Based on Kazuo Hirotsu’s novel Father and Daughter, the black-and-white film, written by Ozu with longtime collaborator Kogo Noda, tells the story of twenty-seven-year-old Noriko (Setsuko Hara), who lives at home with her widower father, Shukichi Somiya (Chishu Ryu), a university professor who has carved out a very simple existence for himself. Her aunt, Masa (Haruko Sugimura), thinks Noriko should get married, but she prefers caring for her father, who she believes would be lost without her. But when Somiya starts dropping hints that he might remarry, like his friend and colleague Jo Onodera (Masao Mishima) did — a deed that Noriko finds unbecoming and “filthy” — Noriko has to take another look at her future.

Late Spring is a monument of simplicity and economy while also being a complex, multilayered tale whose every moment offers unlimited rewards. From the placement and minimal movement of the camera to the design of the set to the carefully choreographed acting, Ozu infuses the work with meaning, examining not only the on-screen relationship between father and daughter but the intimate relationship between the film and the viewer. Ozu has a firm grasp on the state of the Japanese family as some of the characters try to hold on to old-fashioned culture and tradition while recovering from the war’s devastation and facing the modernism that is taking over.

Late Spring is part of month-long festival at Film Forum celebrating the work of director Yasujirō Ozu

Hara, who also starred as a character named Noriko in Ozu’s Early Summer and Tokyo Story, is magnificent as a young woman averse to change, forced to reconsider her supposed happy existence. And Ryu, who appeared in more than fifty Ozu films, is once again a model of restraint as the father, who only wants what is best for his daughter. Working within the censorship code of the Allied occupation and playing with narrative cinematic conventions of time and space, Ozu examines such dichotomies as marriage and divorce, the town and the city, parents and children, the changing roles of men and women in Japanese society, and the old and the young as postwar capitalism enters the picture, themes that are evident through much of his remarkable and unique oeuvre.

Takeshi Sakamato makes the first of many appearances as Kihachi in Yasujirō Ozu’s Passing Fancy

PASSING FANCY (DEKIGOKORO) (出来ごころ) (Yasujirō Ozu, 1933)
Film Forum
Sunday, June 11, 4:40
filmforum.org

Yasujirō Ozu might not have been keen on the latest technology — he made silent films until 1936, and his first color film was in 1958, near the end of his career — but there’s nothing old-fashioned about his mastery of camera and storytelling, as evidenced by one of his lesser-known comedy-dramas, Passing Fancy. Takeshi Sakamato stars as Kihachi, a character that would go on to appear in such other Ozu works as A Story of Floating Weeds, An Inn in Tokyo, and Record of a Tenement Gentleman. The film opens at a rōkyoku performance, where the audience is sitting on the floor on a hot day, mopping their brows and fanning themselves; Kihachi has an ever-present cloth on his head, looking clownish, a small boy with an injured eye who turns out to be his son, Tomio (Tokkankozo), sleeping by him. Foreshadowing Bresson-ian precision, Ozu and cinematographers Hideo Shigehara and Shojiro Sugimoto follow a small, lost change purse as several men inspect it, hoping to find money in it, then toss it away when it comes up empty. The scene establishes the pace and tone of the film, identifies Kihachi as the protagonist, and shows that there will be limited translated text and dialogue; in fact, Ozu never reveals what happened to Tomio’s eye. After the performance, Kihachi and his friend and coworker at the local brewery, Jiro (Den Obinata), meet a destitute young woman named Harue (Nobuko Fushimi). An intertitle explains, “Everyone years for love. Love sets our thoughts in flight.” Kihachi, a poor, single father, helps Harue get a place to stay and a job with restaurant owner Otome (Chouko Iida), hoping that Harue will become interested in him, but she instead takes a liking to the younger Jiro, who wants nothing to do with the whole situation, believing that Harue is using them.

The relationship between father (Takeshi Sakamato) and son (Tokkankozo) is at the heart of Passing Fancy

Ozu follows them all through their daily trials and tribulations — with hysterical comic bits, including how Tomio wakes up Kihachi and Jiro to make sure they’re not late for work — but things take a serious turn when the boy becomes seriously ill and Kihachi cannot afford to pay for the care he requires. Winner of the 1934 Japanese Kinema Junpo Award for Best Film — Ozu also won in 1933 for I Was Born, But . . . and 1935 for A Story of Floating Weeds — Passing Fancy is filled with gorgeous touches, as Ozu reveals the stark poverty in prewar Japan, focuses on class difference and illiteracy, and displays tender family relationships, all built around Kihachi’s impossible, very funny courtship of Harue and his bonding with Tomio, since love trumps all. And yes, that man on the boat is Chishū Ryū, who appeared in all but two of Ozu’s fifty-four films.

Wataru Hirayama (Shin Saburi) is a conflicted father-matchmaker in Yasujirō Ozu’s first color film, Equinox Flower

EQUINOX FLOWER (HIGANBANA) (Yasujirō Ozu, 1958)
Film Forum
June 14, 17, 18
filmforum.org

Yasujirō Ozu’s first film in color, at the studio’s request, is another engagingly told exploration of the changing relationship between parents and children, the traditional and the modern, in postwar Japan. Both funny and elegiac, Equinox Flower opens with businessman Wataru Hirayama (Shin Saburi) giving a surprisingly personal speech at a friend’s daughter’s wedding, explaining that he is envious that the newlyweds are truly in love, as opposed to his marriage, which was arranged for him and his wife, Kiyoko (Kinuyo Tanaka). Hirayama is later approached by an old middle school friend, Mikami (Ozu regular Chishu Ryu), who wants him to speak with his daughter, Fumiko (Yoshiko Kuga), who has left home to be with a man against her father’s will. Meanwhile, Yukiko (Fujiko Yamamoto), a friend of Hirayama’s elder daughter, Setsuko (Ineko Arima), is constantly being set up by her gossipy mother, Hatsu (Chieko Naniwa). Hirayama does not seem to be instantly against what Fumiko and Yukiko want for themselves, but when a young salaryman named Taniguchi (Keiji Sada) asks Hirayama for permission to marry his older daughter, Setsuko (Ineko Arima), Hirayama stands firmly against their wedding, claiming that he will decide Setsuko’s future. “Can’t I find my own happiness?” Setsuko cries out.

The widening gap between father and daughter represents the modernization Japan is experiencing, but the past is always close at hand; Ozu and longtime cowriter Kōgo Noda even have Taniguchi being transferred to Hiroshima, the scene of such tragedy and devastation. Yet there is still a lighthearted aspect to Equinox Flower, and Ozu and cinematographer Yuharu Atsuta embrace the use of color, including beautiful outdoor scenes of Hirayama and Kiyoko looking out across a river and mountain, a train station sign warning of dangerous winds, the flashing neon RCA Victor building, and laundry floating against a cloudy blue sky. The interiors are carefully designed as well, with objects of various colors arranged like still-life paintings, particularly a red teapot that shows up in numerous shots. And Kiyoko’s seemingly offhanded adjustment of a broom hanging on the wall is unforgettable. But at the center of it all is Saburi’s marvelously gentle performance as a proud man caught between the past, the present, and the future.

Ganjirō Nakamura is a sheer delight as the unpredictable patriarch of the Kohayagawa family in The End of Summer

THE END OF SUMMER (KOHAYAGAWA-KE NO AKI) (Yasujirō Ozu, 1961)
Film Forum
June 23, 24, 27
www.filmforum.org

Yasujirō Ozu’s next-to-last film, 1961’s The End of Summer, is a poignant examination of growing old in a changing Japan; Ozu would make only one more film, 1962’s An Autumn Afternoon, before passing away on his sixtieth birthday in December 1963. Ganjirō Nakamura is absolutely endearing as Manbei Kohayagawa, the family patriarch who heads a small sake brewery. The aging grandfather has been mysteriously disappearing for periods of time, secretly visiting his old girlfriend, Sasaki (Chieko Naniwa), and her daughter, Yuriko (Reiko Dan), who might or might not be his. In the meantime, Manbei’s brother-in-law, Kitagawa (Daisuke Katō), is trying to set up Manbei’s widowed daughter-in-law, Akiko (Setsuko Hara), with businessman Isomura Eiichirou (Hisaya Morishige), while also attempting to find a proper suitor for Manbei’s youngest daughter, Noriko (Yoko Tsukasa), a typist with strong feelings for a coworker who has moved to Sapporo. Manbei’s other daughter, Fumiko (Michiyo Aratama), is married to Hisao (Keiju Kobayashi), who works at the brewery and is concerned about Manbei’s suddenly unpredictable behavior. When Manbei suffers a heart attack, everyone is forced to look at their own lives, both personal and professional, as the single women consider their suitors and the men contemplate the future of the business, which might involve selling out to a larger company. “The Kohayagawa family is complicated indeed,” Hisao’s colleague tells him when trying to figure out who’s who, an inside joke about the complex relationships developed by Ozu and longtime cowriter Kôgo Noda in the film as well as in the casting.

Akiko (Setsuko Hara) and Noriko (Yoko Tsukasa) represent old and new Japan in Ozu’s penultimate film

The End of Summer tells a far more serious story than Late Spring and many other Ozu films that deal with matchmaking and middle-class Japanese life, both pre- and postwar. The perpetually smiling Hara, who played unrelated women named Noriko in three previous Ozu films, once again plays a young widow named Akiko here, as she did in Late Autumn, while Tsukasa, who played Hara’s daughter in Late Autumn, now takes over the name of Noriko as Akiko’s sister. Late Autumn also featured a character named Yuriko Sasaki, played by Mariko Okada, who went on to play a woman named Akiko in Ozu’s final film, An Autumn Afternoon. Got that? Ozu’s fifth film in color, The End of Summer uses several beautiful establishing shots that incorporate flashing light and bold hues — including a neon sign that declares “New Japan” — photographed by Asakazu Nakai (Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, Ran), as well as numerous carefully designed set pieces that place the old and the new in direct contrast, primarily when Akiko and Noriko are alone, the former in a kimono, the latter in more modern dress. But at the center of it all is Nakamura, who plays Manbei with a childlike glee, as if Ozu is equating birth and death, the beginning and the end.

Nobuo Nakamura, Ryuji Kita, and Shin Saburi play a trio of matchmaking yentas in Ozu’s Late Autumn

LATE AUTUMN (AKIBIYORI) (Yasujirō Ozu, 1960)
Film Forum
June 23, 24, 28
filmforum.org

Yasujirō Ozu revisits one of his greatest triumphs, 1949’s Late Spring, in the 1960 drama Late Autumn, the Japanese auteur’s fourth color film and his third-to-last work. Whereas the black-and-white Late Spring is about a widowed father (Chishu Ryu) and his unmarried adult daughter (Setsuko Hara) contemplating their futures, Late Autumn deals with young widow Akiko Miwa (Hara again) and her daughter, Ayako (Yoku Tsukasa). At a ceremony honoring the seventh anniversary of Mr. Miwa’s death, several of his old friends gather together and are soon plotting to marry off both the younger Akiko, whom they all had crushes on, and twenty-four-year-old Ayako. The three businessmen — Soichi Mamiya (Shin Saburi), Shuzo Taguchi (Nobuo Nakamura), and Seiichiro Hirayama (Ryuji Kita) — serve as a kind of comedic Greek chorus, matchmaking and arguing like a trio of yentas, while Akiko and Ayako maintain creepy smiles as the men lay out their misguided, unwelcome plans.

Mamiya makes numerous attempts to fix Ayako up with one of his employees, Shotaru Goto (Keiji Sada), but Ayako wants none of it, preferring the freedom and independence displayed by her best friend, Yoko (Yuriko Tashiro), who represents the new generation in Japan. At the same time, their matchmaking for Akiko borders on the slapstick. Based on a story by Ton Satomi, Late Autumn, written by Ozu with longtime collaborator Kôgo Noda, is a relatively lighthearted film from the master, with sly jokes and playful references while examining a Japan that is in the midst of significant societal change in the postwar era. Kojun Saitô’s Hollywood-esque score is often bombastically melodramatic, but Yuuharu Atsuta’s cinematography keeps things well grounded with Ozu’s trademark low-angle, unmoving shots amid carefully designed interior sets.

EXTINCTION RITUALS

Akane Little is one of the performers in LEIMAY’s Extinction Rituals at Japan Society (photo by Takaaki Ando)

EXTINCTION RITUALS
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Friday, June 9, and Saturday, June 10, $20, 7:30
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org
www.leimay.org

Since 2001, Colombian dancer, director, and choreographer Ximena Garnica and Japanese video and installation artist Shige Moriya have been presenting mesmerizing, meditative multimedia productions that incorporate movement, light, music, and song. In such works as Becoming – Corpus, Floating Point Waves, and Furnace, they explore the relationship between humanity and the natural environment. During the pandemic, Garnica and Moriya, cofounders of the Brooklyn-based LEIMAY Ensemble, staged Correspondences in Astor Plaza, a sculptural performance art installation in which dancers wearing only gas masks were trapped in vertical transparent chambers partly filled with sand.

On June 9 and 10 at 7:30, LEIMAY, which is the Japanese term for a moment of change or transition, brings the work-in-progress dance-opera Extinction Rituals to Japan Society. In the below promotional video, Garnica describes it as “a multiyear, multidimensional project that will result in a series of performances and visual artworks.” They recently asked an AI, “What does ‘extinction’ mean to you?” and “What does ‘ritual’ mean to you?” The AI defined extinction as the “silent demise of vibrant stories, echoes silenced forever” and ritual as “sacred dance, rhythmic harmony, timeless connection, soul’s embrace.”

Garnica and Moriya directed, choreographed, and designed the piece, which deals with life and loss, celebration and remembrance, focusing on Japan, Colombia, and New York; it will be performed by dancers Masanori Asahara, Akane Little, Damontae Hack, Peggy Gould, and Yusuke Mori, with live music by composer and instrumentalist Kaoru Watanabe and Colombian composer and singer Carolina Oliveros. Each show will be followed by a Q&A with Garnica and Moriya; Shinnecock and Montauk elder and recovery coach Jennifer E. Cuffee-Wilson will moderate the opening-night discussion, “Extinction: Beyond Flora and Fauna.”

YYDC: NOWHERE

YYDC presents world premiere of Nowhere at Chelsea Factory this week (photo by Michael Waldrop)

NOWHERE
Chelsea Factory
547 West Twenty-Sixth St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
June 8-10, $35
www.chelseafactory.org
yydc.org

Chinese American choreographer Yue Yin and her YYDC troupe brings her original movement vocabulary, the FOCO Technique, to Chelsea Factory June 8-10 in the world premiere of Nowhere. The seventy-five-minute work unfolds in an unknown time and place, exploring uncertainty and disconnectedness. It will be performed by Liane Aung, Joan Dwiartanto, Alexsander Swader, Kristalyn Gill, Grace Whitworth, Nat Wilson, Corinne Lohner, and DaMond LeMonte Garner, with live music by composer and percussionist Alexandre Dai Castaing featuring Julia Kent on cello and prerecorded vocals by Brussels-based mezzo-soprano Emilie Tack. The set is by Andrew Boyce, with lighting by Solomon Weisbard and costumes by Christine Darch. YYDC’s previous work includes The Disappearing Element of Existing, Through the Fracture of Light, Vanishing Point, Stones and Kisses, and Ripple, a gorgeous piece created during the pandemic and presented at the 92nd St. Y and online.

TRIBECA FESTIVAL: RULE OF TWO WALLS

David Gutnik’s Rule of Two Walls celebrates the resilience of brave Ukrainian artists during a brutal war

RULE OF TWO WALLS (David Gutnik, 2023)
Thursday, June 8, SVA 2, 6:30
Saturday, June 10, Village East, Cinema 3, 2:45
Friday, June 16, AMC 19th St. East 6, Cinema 1, 5:15
Sunday, June 18, Village East by Angelika, 8:30
tribecafilm.com

Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2023, the ProEnglish Theatre of Ukraine converted its black box space into a shelter for members of the theatrical profession and neighbors, began collecting food and medicine for the elderly, and continued to make art. On March 27, 2023, the Kyiv-based company teamed with Boston’s Arlekin Players Theatre to livestream a production of Harold Pinter’s The New World Order, a ten-minute play that deals with imperialism, totalitarianism, and hegemony, as a fundraiser as well as a bold statement about the resilience of the Ukrainian people and the power of art.

In April, Ukrainian American filmmaker David Gutnik went to Warsaw with his camera to interview Ukrainians who had been displaced by the war. Instead, he spent the next seven months in Ukraine, following artists who had chosen to stay. The result is the terrifying but life-affirming Rule of Two Walls, making its world premiere at the Tribeca Festival, where Gutnik screened his feature film debut, Materna, in 2020.

The film, which mixes narrative with documentary, begins with the sounds of war — guns, bombs, sirens — and a couple in bed in Lviv, just waking up, seen in shadows and silhouettes. “My gallbladder hurts,” the man, Stepan Burban, says, as if oblivious to what is happening in his country. They both laugh, and the woman, Lyana Mytsko, says, “Why would it do that? Little Stepanko, ninety-five years old.” As an air raid alarm wails outside, Lyana gets up and opens the shades, revealing windows taped with large Xs, centered by Jewish stars, to protect it from explosions. “Set some tea,” Stepan suggests. On the window, they have written in black marker, “Sad Stupid World or No?” with a drawing of the sun peeking out from behind clouds. As news reports detail attacks and deaths, Stepan walks out onto his balcony and watches men playing soccer below.

Lyana is the director of the Lviv Municipal Art Center, where artists depict the war through painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, photography, video, and installation; the exhibition they are working on is called “Shelter,” which includes the work of Diana Berg, who explains that she made her pictures of a destroyed theater “to regain some control over all this crazy shit.”

Writer, director, editor, and cinematographer (with Volodymyr Ivanov) Gutnik takes viewers through a dangerous, still-burning recently bombed area with downed electrical wires and charred bodies; a recording session where Stepan is making a new song in which he defiantly declares, “Didn’t get to love enough, to live long enough, and I’m not sorry”; a basement where men and women prepare Molotov cocktails; the studios of radical artist and “convinced materialist” Bob Basset, who poses in postapocalyptic hardcore masks, and Kinder Album, whose stylistic watercolor visions of the fighting have such titles as Russian attacks on civilian targets in Ukraine could be a war crime and Dozens of civilians were killed by metal darts from Russian artillery; a group of locals working to safeguard a tall historical monument; and artist Bohdana Davydiuk pasting political posters out on the street and explaining, “There is a war, and there is a war for truth.”

Along the way, several members of the crew share their painful personal experiences of how the war has directly impacted their families.

Named after the advice that Ukrainians should seek shelter between two walls during attacks — one to stop projectiles, the other to block shell splinters — Rule of Two Walls is a harrowing look at the bravery of Ukrainians who refuse to give up to the Russians, instead defending their home and their culture against seemingly impossible odds. With death all around them — Gutnik includes several frightening scenes of mutilated, bloody, burning bodies — a group of brave creators forges ahead, fighting the only way they know how, through their art. It’s a devastating film with a gorgeously symbolic ending.

Rule of Two Walls is screening June 8, 10, 16, and 18 in the Tribeca Festival’s Documentary Competition; the first three shows will be followed by a Q&A with Gutnik, joined on June 8 and 10 by film participants and, on June 8, by executive producer Liev Schreiber, who cofounded BlueCheck Ukraine, a nonprofit that “identifies, vets, and fast-tracks urgent financial support to Ukrainian NGOs and aid initiatives providing life-saving and other critical humanitarian work on the front lines of Russia’s war on Ukraine.” In a statement, Tony winner and Emmy nominee Schreiber said, “In David’s film, I saw the embodiment of the resilience I observed during my time in Ukraine: the profound spirit, sense of nation and history emboldened by an existential war. As an artist in my own right trying to do all that I can to help Ukraine, I responded to the film’s focus on Ukrainian artists processing the brutality of the war while using their art to fight back. This honest and intimate portrait of the first months of the war resonates deeply with me.”

Meanwhile, Arlekin Players Theatre is livestreaming The Gaaga from a converted Boston restaurant June 8-18, a site-specific phantasmagoria written and directed by Ukrainian playwright Sasha Denisova, who has been living in Poland as a refugee. “In the first days of the war, I fled from Moscow, where the police came for me. Russia bombed Kyiv and my mother, Olga Denisova, who was born under the bombing of Kyiv on July 7, 1941. She refuses to leave and awaits victory in her home. During these months, I thought about what would give hope to me and those who fled the war. A trial of Putin and his government was the biggest expectation,” Denisova said in a statement.

As Album proclaims in the film, “No war can deprive us of our cultural heritage and traditions.”