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THEATRE FOR ONE: HERE IS FUTURE

Here Is Future takes place in a mobile container for one actor and one audience member at a time (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

HERE IS FUTURE
Manhattan West Plaza
395 Ninth Ave. between 31st & 33rd Sts.
Thursday – Sunday through August 22, 1:00 – 7:00; free tickets available Monday mornings at 10:00
theatreforone.com

During the pandemic lockdown, Theatre for One’s Here We Are was my lifeline to live theater. On Thursday nights in October, TFO presented eight free online microplays written, directed, and performed by BIPOC women (with one exception), short works in which the solo actor and solo audience member both have their camera and audio on, able to see and hear one another. There was even a virtual lobby where people could type in their thoughts as they waited for shows to begin.

In the “before time,” pre-Covid 19, TFO performed its intimate works in a mobile four-by-eight-foot repurposed equipment container. Now TFO artistic director Christine Jones has gone back to the setting they originally used for the project to bring us Here Is Future, six new microplays between five and ten minutes each in which one actor performs for one audience member, seated on either side of the container, separated by a plexiglass sheet. Free tickets become available Monday mornings at 10:00 for that week’s performances, so you need to book them quick.

Several Here We Are creators are back for this follow-up, which takes place in the Manhattan West plaza on Ninth Ave. past the new Penn Station and is focused on where we go from here. The program consists of Jaclyn Backhaus’s The Curse, directed by Rebecca Martinez and starring Angel Desai; Lydia R. Diamond’s Turtle Turtle and That Which We Keep Telling Ourselves Is Over Now, directed by Tiffany Nichole Greene and starring Gillian Glasco; DeLanna Studi’s The Golda Project, directed by Martinez and starring Tanis Pareneau; korde arrington tuttle’s the love vibration, directed by SRĐA and starring Denise Manning; Stacey Rose’s Gravita 4 Para 0, directed by Greene and starring Joanie Anderson or Myxy Tyler; and Regina Taylor’s The Transformed Returns, directed by Taylor and starring Lizan Mitchell. The costumes are by Hahnji Jang, with lighting and sound by Josh Higgason.

I’ve seen four of the plays so far, and they were all poignant and moving. In The Transformed Returns, Mitchell portrays a grandmother dealing with the coronavirus crisis, desperate to squeeze the cheeks of her new grandchild, whom she cannot visit in person, while dealing with relatives who refuse to get vaccinated. The play begins with Mitchell sanitizing her side of the container, reminding us of what we’re still going through. (The insides of the container are thoroughly cleaned after each performance.)

Anderson is spectacular in Gravita 4 Para 0, in which the container is set up like a waiting room in a clinic, actor and audience member sitting side-by-side (separated by the glass), facing the same direction. She plays a woman from a large family who engages you in conversation, nervously talking about her history with parents, siblings, lovers, and abortions. She is so convincing that you’ll feel like you know her, and care about her, when it’s over.

In Turtle Turtle and That Which We Keep Telling Ourselves Is Over Now, you’re sitting at a table opposite a frenetic recent divorcée (superbly portrayed by an intoxicating Glasco) who is both anxious and excited to be finally going on an in-person date during the pandemic. Glasco positively glows as her character worries about allergies and Covid-19.

And in The Curse, Desai is engaging as a woman who believes terrible things have been happening to her and everyone around her because she is cursed — and she’s concerned for you too.

Produced by Octopus Theatricals and presented by Arts Brookfield, Here Is Future runs through August 22; walk-up slots are available on a first-come, first-served basis if there are no-shows. Masks are required of the audience, but the performers will be unmasked. Even in this rather small venue, it’s great to be experiencing live theater again, especially at this high quality, and for free. Sign up and see as many of the plays as you can, a terrific prelude to the upcoming fall theater season.

PUPPET WEEK NYC

THE INTERNATIONAL PUPPET FRINGE FESTIVAL
The Clemente Center, 107 Suffolk St.
Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Ave.at 104th St.
August 11-15 live, August 16-31 online, most events free
puppetfringenyc.com
www.theclementecenter.org

“I could never be on stage on my own. But puppets can say things that humans can’t say,” British comedian, actress, and ventriloquist Nina Conti once explained. You can see a bevy of puppets this month at the International Puppet Fringe Festival, running August 11-15 in person at the Clemente on the Lower East Side, with a few special programs at the Museum of the City of New York, then moving online August 16-31. The fest, hosted by Teatro SEA and the Clemente, is part of the inaugural Puppet Week NYC and features a wide range of programming involving puppets, including live presentations, book readings, workshops, panel discussions, exhibition openings, and panel discussions, most of which are free. “The Clemente is a fitting home for the festival’s events, as puppetry found an early home here in the 1990s and we continue to foster diverse puppet performances in our theater spaces,” Clemente executive director Libertad Guerra said in a statement. “Our hope is that Puppet Week NYC draws attention to this thriving and evolving art form uniting theater with all the visual arts and attracting people of all ages, backgrounds, and cultural identities.”

International Puppet Fringe Festival founder and producer Dr. Manuel Morán added, “During the pandemic, when our curtains couldn’t go up, our roster of puppet makers and puppeteers were eagerly preparing to enthrall audiences with their creative talents, and we can’t wait to finally share their work with you.” This year’s honoree is Vincent Anthony, founder of the Center for Puppetry Arts. Below is the full schedule. Oh, and don’t forget what writer and illustrator Guy Davenport once warned: “I’ve carved the puppet, and I manipulate the strings, but while it’s on stage, the show belongs to the puppet.”

Wednesday, August 11
“Dream Puppet” Making Workshop with Marina Tsaplina, El jardín del paraíso Community Garden, noon – 8:00
Papier-Maché in a Two-Day Workshop, part 1, $50, 2:00
“Puppets of New York: Downtown at the Clemente” exhibition opening, 5:00
Puppet Celebrity Red Carpet, 5:30
Opening Remarks and festival’s dedication to Vincent Anthony, 6:00
The Triple Zhongkui Pageant by Chinese Theatre Works, 6:30
Los Grises/The Gray Ones by SEA, 7:00
The Shari Lewis Legacy Show by Mallory Lewis and Lamb Chop, 8:00

Thursday, August 12
Construction and Hybrid Puppets Manipulation Workshop by Carolina Pimentel, $50, 10:00 am
“Dream Puppet” Making Workshop with Marina Tsaplina, El jardín del paraíso Community Garden, noon – 8:00
Títeres en el Caribe Hispano: Episode 1: Cuba, Episode 2: Dominican Republic, Episode 3: Puerto Rico, 1:00
Papier-Maché in a Two-Day Workshop, part 1, $50, 2:00
Puppet Celebrity Red Carpet, hosted by Mallory Lewis and Lamb Chop, 6:00
“Puppets of New York” Opening Celebration, Museum of the City of New York, 7:00
Los Grises/The Gray Ones by SEA, 7:00
Muppets Take Manhattan (Frank Oz, 1984), $15, 8:00

Friday, August 13
Construction and Hybrid Puppets Manipulation Workshop by Carolina Pimentel, $50, 10:00 am
“Dream Puppet” Making Workshop with Marina Tsaplina, El jardín del paraíso Community Garden, noon – 8:00
Out of the Shadows Panel: A Conversation about the Henson Festivals, with Leslee Asch, Cheryl Henson, Dan Hurlin, Manuel Moran, and Michael Romanyshyn, 4:00
Karagoz by U.S. Karagoz Theatre Company, 4:00
Salt Over Gold and other Czech & Slovak fairy tales with strings by Czechoslovak American Marionette Theatre, 5:00
Handmade Puppet Dreams: Dreamscapes, short films for adults, 5:00
La Macanuda by Deborah Hunt, 6:00
The Triple Zhongkui Pageant by Chinese Theatre Works, 6:30
Los Grises/The Gray Ones by SEA, 7:00
Puppet Slam / Cabaret: Great Small Works Spaghetti Dinner, with Bruce Cannon, Piedmont Bluz, and Valerie and Benedict Turner, 8:00

Saturday, August 14
Little Red’s Hood by Swedish Cottage Marionette Theatre, 11:00 am
Penguin in My Pocket by Kurt Hunter, 11:00 am
Handmade Puppet Dreams: Kidscapes, short films for children, noon
NIMA-USA Symposium: Conversations on Puppetry, Social Justice, and Diversity: Part 1, with Jacqueline Wade, Kuang-Yu Fong, and Ginew Benton, moderated by Claudia Orenstein, noon
2-D Puppet Workshop for kids by Junktown Duende, 1:00
Los Colores de Frida / The Colors of Frida by SEA, 1:00
The Marzipan Bunny by A Couple of Puppets, 1:00
Chicken Soup, Chicken Soup by WonderSpark Puppets, 1:00
Títeres en el Caribe Hispano: Episode 1: Cuba y Episode 3: Puerto Rico, 2:00
Teatro SEA’s Theatre Book Series Presentation, 2:30
Beautiful Blackbird: An African Folktale by Lovely Day Creative Arts, 3:00
Once Upon a Time in the Lower East Side . . . by JunkTown Duende, 4:00
Karagoz by U.S. Karagoz Theatre Company, 4:00
Puppet States by Paulette Richards, 5:00
Salt Over Gold and other Czech & Slovak fairy tales with strings by Czechoslovak American Marionette Theatre, 5:00
La Macanuda by Deborah Hunt, 6:00
The Triple Zhongkui Pageant by Chinese Theatre Works, 6:30
Los Grises/The Gray Ones by SEA, 7:00
The Puppetry Guild of Greater NY presents . . . The Bawdy Naughty Puppet Cabaret, 8:00

Sunday, August 15
Little Red’s Hood by Swedish Cottage Marionette Theatre, 11:00 am
Beautiful Blackbird: An African Folktale by Lovely Day Creative Arts, 11:00 am
The Marzipan Bunny by A Couple of Puppets, 11:00 am
Giant Puppet Encounter & Mascot Encounter, 11:30 am
Handmade Puppet Dreams: Kidscapes, short films for children, noon
Chicken Soup, Chicken Soup by WonderSpark Puppets, 1:00
2-D Puppet Workshop for kids by Junktown Duende, 1:00
Penguin in My Pocket by Kurt Hunter, 1:00
Títeres en el Caribe Hispano: Episode 2: República Dominicana and Episode 3: Puerto Rico, 2:00
The Pura Belpré Project by SEA, 3:00
Harlem River Drive by Bruce Cannon, 3:00
Karagoz by U.S. Karagoz Theatre Company, 4:00
Once Upon a time in the Lower East Side . . . by JunkTown Duende, 5:00
Salt Over Gold and other Czech & Slovak fairy tales with strings by Czechoslovak American Marionette Theatre, 5:00
La Macanuda by Deborah Hunt, 6:00
The Triple Zhongkui Pageant by Chinese Theatre Works, 6:30
Los Grises/The Gray Ones by SEA, 7:00
Puppet Dance Party, 8:00

Tuesday, August 17
A Conversation with Vincent Anthony, hosted by Dr. Manuel Morán and John Ludwig, 7:00

Thursday, August 19
Puppetry 101 with Aretta Baumgartner, 7:00

Friday, August 20
Handmade Puppet Dreams: Kidscapes, short films for children, noon
Handmade Puppet Dreams: Dreamscapes, short films for adults, 5:00

Saturday, August 21
Puppetry Museums around the World Panel, noon

Tuesday, August 24
Puppetry and Its Healing Properties in Therapy, hosted by Erica Scandoval and Karen Ciego, 7:00

Thursday, August 26
UNIMA-USA Symposium: Conversations on Puppetry, Social Justice, and Diversity: Part 2, with Monxo Lopez, Paulette Richards, Jungmin Song, and Edna Bland, moderated by Claudia Orenstein, 7:00

Friday, August 27
Handmade Puppet Dreams: Dreamscapes, short films for adults, 8:00

Saturday, August 28
Conversations with Puppet Fringe Artists and Troupes in English, noon

Tuesday, August 31
“Glocal” Rethinking, American Puppetry: Opening Eyes Wider by UNIMA-USA’s World Encyclopedia Puppetry Arts, with Karen Smith and Kathy Foley, 7:00

SPRINGSTEEN ON BROADWAY

Bruce Springsteen helps reopen Broadway with revival of Tony-winning one-man show (photo by Rob DeMartin)

SPRINGSTEEN ON BROADWAY
St. James Theatre
246 West 44th Street between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Friday/Saturday through September 4, $75-$850 (Lucky Seat lottery four days before each show)
www.jujamcyn.com
brucespringsteen.net/broadway

On the afternoon of September 11, 2001, Bruce Springsteen was driving in Sea Bright, New Jersey, smoke from the fallen Twin Towers visible in the distance, when an unidentified man pulled up alongside him and called out, “We need you, Bruce.” He responded with The Rising, a 2002 record that intelligently explored personal and communal loss, celebrated heroes, and looked to a brighter future. This spring, amid debates about how and when Broadway would reopen following the long pandemic lockdown, Jujamycyn president and Boss fan Jordan Roth contacted Bruce and asked if he would revive his intimate one-man show, Springsteen on Broadway, for a limited run over the summer. Broadway needed him. The musician and author responded with a slightly reconfigured update of the show, which had been awarded a special Tony for a “once-in-a-lifetime theatergoing experience”; in his acceptance speech, Springsteen said, “This is deeply appreciated. Thank you for making me feel so welcome on the block. Being part of the Broadway community has been a great thrill and an honor and one of the most exciting things I have ever experienced.”

The 140-minute show has moved from the 975-seat Walter Kerr to the St. James, which has nearly double the capacity at 1,710. I caught Springsteen on Broadway twice in its original form, each show somewhat different, with Bruce’s wife, Patti Scialfa, appearing at one of them, which alters the setlist. For this revival, Springsteen has made several key changes, from one of the songs he sings with Patti, which he had hoped Elvis Presley would record (the King died before hearing it), to the finale, a tune from his latest album, Letter to You, a bittersweet eulogy to lost friends, relatives, and E Street Band members that feels even more appropriate given the suffering of the last sixteen months.

Bruce Springsteen shifts between guitar and piano in slightly revamped revival (photo by Rob DeMartin)

Inspired by the Black Lives Matter protests over racial injustice, Springsteen has also added “American Skin (41 Shots),” his 2001 song about the police killing of unarmed Guinean immigrant Amadou Diallo in New York City in 1999. When I saw Bruce and the E Street Band perform the song at Shea Stadium in October 2003, numerous people in the crowd, as well as police officers and some security staff, stood and turned their back to the stage. There were no such protests at the St. James (although there were a handful of anti-vaxxers outside the theater on opening night calling the show discriminatory because all attendees had to be vaccinated).

This time around, Springsteen on Broadway, which is adapted from his bestselling 2016 memoir, Born to Run, is a much more emotional affair. The night I saw it, July 6, Bruce had to pause and wipe away tears at least four times; there was weeping throughout the theater as well. Springsteen spoke poignantly about Walter and Raymond Cichon from the 1960s Jersey Shore band the Motifs, Walter going to Vietnam and never coming home; his working-class father, who struggled with mental illness and often hid behind alcohol; late E Streeters Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici; and, most heartrending, his beloved mother, Adele, who is now ten years into dementia but, Bruce shared, still recognizes him when he sees her and perks up when she hears music. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house when Bruce, at the piano, sang, “If Pa’s eyes were windows into a world so deadly and true / You couldn’t stop me from looking but you kept me from crawlin’ through / It’s a funny old world, Ma, where a little boy’s wishes come true / Well, I got a few in my pocket and a special one just for you.” The story evoked the heartbreak of so many who were unable to visit their elderly parents in nursing homes during the crisis, saying farewell via cellphone if at all.

As tender and stirring as those moments were, Bruce also injects plenty of humor, mostly of the self-deprecating type, particularly about his November 2020 arrest for drunken and reckless driving. “I had to go to Zoom court,” he says. “My case was the United States of America vs. Bruce Springsteen. That’s always comforting to hear, that the entire nation is aligned against you.” The charges were later dismissed, but the police theme is a playful new thread in the narrative.

Once again, in New York City’s time of need, Springsteen has responded, helping us deal with a devastating health crisis that has so far claimed more than 610,000 American lives, even as a deadly variant makes its way through the country at this very moment. It’s the right show at the right time, with only two cast members, no set changes, and Bruce’s trusted guitar tech (Kevin Buell). All ticket holders must provide proof of vaccination in order to enter the theater. When I saw the show, masks were optional, and very few wore them, but masks are now required for everyone. Springsteen has taken a few weeks off while his daughter, Jessica, competes in equestrian jumping at the Tokyo Olympics (winning a team silver medal), but he and Patti will be back August 17 for the last run of performances, lighting up what has been a dark, empty Broadway. Bruce has responded yet again when New York City called.

JOHN AND THE HOLE

Charlie Shotwell stars as a disenchanted teen with an unusual plan in John and the Hole

JOHN AND THE HOLE (Pascual Sisto, 2020)
Quad Cinema
34 West 13th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Opens Friday, August 6
212-255-2243
quadcinema.com

You can add the thirteen-year-old title character of John and the Hole (Charlie Shotwell) to the cinematic list of creepy kids who do bad things, populated by such children on the edge as eight-year-old Rhoda Penmark (Patty McCormack) in The Bad Seed, Holland Perry (Martin Udvarnoky) in The Other, Ronald Wilby (Scott Jacoby) in Bad Ronald, and Rynn Jacobs (Jodie Foster) in The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane.

Adapted and expanded by Oscar-winning Argentinian writer Nicolás Giacobone from his 2010 short story “El Pozo” (“The Well”) and directed by Spanish visual artist Pascual Sisto, who previously teamed up on the 2003 short Océano, John and the Hole is a tense coming-of-age psychological thriller about a boy from a good family who commits a horrific act for no clear, apparent reason.

John lives in a lovely glass house in the woods with his successful parents, Brad (Michael C. Hall) and Anna (Jennifer Ehle), and his older sister, Laurie (Taissa Farmiga). When we first see them, it’s from outside their home, as they eat their dinner in silence, each off in their own world. It soon becomes clear that there’s something not quite right about John; he has trouble answering a math question at school, he lies about losing a drone, he kicks his skateboard down an incline and doesn’t go after it, and he drugs the sweet-natured gardener, Charles (Lucien Spellman).

The family seems to love him but understands that he’s different. It’s more than just teen angst or ennui, a spoiled child disenchanted with his privileged life. That becomes evident when, one night, he devises a plot involving his parents and sister and a mysterious underground bunker that was meant to be a safe place when it was constructed five years ago for an unrealized property. John goes on with his life, playing video games with his best friend, Peter (Ben O’Brien), continuing his tennis lessons, and trying to act like an adult, but he has a lot to learn. He remains distant even as his family suffers, growing more feral by the day.

Sisto (Steps) and Giacobone (Biutiful, Birdman) play with horror-movie tropes throughout the film. Early on, Brad says good night to John, suggesting he check under his bed, which is rarely a good thing. There’s a framing story between a mother, Lily (Samantha LeBretton), and her young daughter, Paula (Tamara Hickey), which reveals that the tale of John and his family might be a local legend while reenforcing the tenuous relationship between parents and children and who is responsible for whom. “Last month, John asked me something. It was a weird question,” Anna tells Brad. “He wanted to know what it’s like to be an adult. When do you stop being a kid?”

Brad (Michael C. Hall), Laurie (Taissa Farmiga), and Anna (Jennifer Ehle) play three characters in search of an exit in John and the Hole

Cinematographer Paul Özgür makes terrific use of Jacqueline Abrahams’s splendid production designer, topped off by composer Caterina Barbieri’s ominous electronic score. Sisto and Giacobone have referred to the film as Michael Haneke’s version of Home Alone; to that I would add Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Exit and Hiroshi Teshigahara’s Woman in the Dunes, in which people are trapped in utterly prosaic situations that are at the same time terrifyingly inexplicable.

Shotwell (All the Money in the World, Eli) is mesmerizing as John, fully embodying the enigma of a teenager creating his own self-imposed isolation, although he’s been lost in his mind for years. Six-time Emmy nominee Hall (Dexter, Lazarus), two-time Tony winner Ehle (The Real Thing, Saint Maude), and Farmiga (The Nun, The Bling Ring) are excellent as his confused family, wanting to help John but not knowing exactly what he wants and what to do. Like the best scary movies, there’s a constant undercurrent of fear about just how far John might go in his personal quest, right up to the very end.

THE MACALUSO SISTERS

Five siblings face a tragedy they cannot recover from in The Macaluso Sisters

THE MACALUSO SISTERS (Emma Dante, 2020)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Opens Friday, August 6
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

Emma Dante’s The Macaluso Sisters is a heart-wrenching tale that follows seventy years in the lives of five sisters in Palermo, Sicily, after they endure a horrific tragedy. The film begins in 1985, as the orphaned siblings prepare for a day at the beach, which they have to sneak onto because they can’t afford the admission fee. It is a chance for them to enjoy themselves and be free of their problems for an afternoon, much like the pastel-painted pigeons they raise and rent out for special occasions, from weddings to funerals. The oldest, eighteen-year-old Maria (played first by Eleonora De Luca, then Simona Malato), uses the escape to secretly share kisses with a young woman she is in love with as they set up an outdoor screening of Back to the Future.

Pinuccia (Anita Pomario, Donatella Finocchiaro, Ileana Rigano) spends much of her time in front of mirrors, putting on makeup and getting ready to attract men. Lia (Susanna Piraino, Serena Barone, Maria Rosaria Alati) is the most passionate and impulsive member of the family. Katia (Alissa Maria Orlando, Laura Giordani, Rosalba Bologna) is the chubby, imaginative one who embraces fantasy. And Antonella (Viola Pusateri) is the beloved baby of the close-knit group, cute and adorable, whom the rest dote over. Following a terrible accident, the four remaining sisters try to go on with their lives, but they are haunted by loss, literally and figuratively, some damaged beyond repair as the decades pass.

Written by Dante, Elena Stancanelli, and Giorgio Vasta based on Dante’s play Le sorelle Macaluso, the award-winning film is centered around the sisters’ home, which grows more ramshackle over time, representing their deteriorating psychological state. Dante (Via Castellana Bandiera, mPalermu) often trains the camera on the building’s yellowing facade, four floors with many windows, tiny terraces, and a rooftop extension where the pigeons live. Just like the birds always return, so do the surviving sisters, the sadness enveloping them, pain evident in their vacant eyes and aging bodies.

Dante has described the five siblings as parts of the same being, with Maria the brain, Pinuccia the skin, Lia the heart, Katia the stomach, and Antonella the lungs, each one necessary to maintain the whole; take away any single aspect and the body is in danger of failing. It is no coincidence that the middle-aged Maria works in a veterinary lab where she has to cut open animals and dispose of their internal organs, saving the heart in a plastic bag. Meanwhile, whenever the older Katia, the only one who develops some sort of life of her own and is in favor of selling the place, tries to go inside, her key won’t open the door, as if she is no longer welcome, the house aware of her intentions.

Antonella (Viola Pusateri) is the beloved youngest of the Macaluso sisters in elegiac film

The elegiac film is gorgeously photographed by Gherardo Gossi, capturing the beauty of the bright outdoors, filled with life and excitement, offset against the darkness of the family home, shadows everywhere. Occasionally one of the sisters looks through a hole in the wall they made as children, allowing them to see a sunny world that has eluded them. Throughout the film, Dante focuses on water, from the ocean to the bathtub where the young Antonella likes to play and the older Maria seeks respite.

Dante lingers on Maria more than the others; as a teenager, she dreams of becoming a dancer, her lithe, naked body alive with promise. But decades later, her once-wide eyes are tired, deep, dark circles dominating her face; as she soaks in a tub, we again see her naked body, but it lacks the vitality she previously reveled in, doomed to a different fate, not simply because of age but because she, like her sisters, have never been able to get over their loss. It’s like the fancy plate Antonella uses to feed the pigeons; when it breaks years later, Maria tries to glue it back together, but she cannot fill in all the cracks.

THE VIEWING BOOTH

Maia Levy is the unexpected subject of Ra’anan Alexandrowicz’s The Viewing Booth

THE VIEWING BOOTH (Ra’anan Alexandrowicz, 2020)
Museum of the Moving Image, Bartos Screening Room
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
August 6-15
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us

“There’s a lot for me to learn from your viewing,” Israeli filmmaker Ra’anan Alexandrowicz tells Jewish American college student Maia Levy before turning the camera on us in the ingenious documentary The Viewing Booth, running August 6-15 at the Museum of the Moving Image. The seventy-one-minute work developed out of an experiment Alexandrowicz was doing at Temple University in Philadelphia, individually filming a small group of young men and women watching internet video clips of interactions between Israelis and Palestinians in the occupied territories of the Gaza Strip; in previous films such as The Law in These Parts and The Inner Tour — both of which will also be shown at MoMI — the Jerusalem-born Alexandrowicz has made clear his support of the Palestinians in this conflict. But along the way, his focus switched specifically to Levy, whose thoughtful, careful evaluations of the scenes and acknowledgment of her pro-Israel bias are mesmerizing. We end up seeing far more of Levy’s captivating face and exploring eyes than the videos themselves as the film challenges the viewer to rethink how they experience politically charged videos.

The film takes place in a small studio at Temple, where Levy sits in a closed-off room with a large window; Alexandrowicz mans a table with two monitors and editing equipment that he adjusts as Levy observes the videos. The director cuts between shots of Levy’s face, the videos themselves, and him watching Levy on his monitors, occasionally speaking with her. Six months later, he invites Levy back so she can watch herself watching the videos and comment on that as well. It’s absolutely gripping studying Levy as she interprets and reinterprets the videos, some of which were posted by B’Tselem, the Jerusalem-based Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, whose mission is to end the occupation; others are from unidentified sources. Alexandrowicz does not give Levy any additional details about the clips, even though he knows more about some of them, instead letting her navigate the images as if she were home by herself, surfing the internet.

In one scene, a Palestinian boy hugs an Israeli soldier who gives him food. In another, a group of young men throw rocks at someone recording them from an apartment, unclear at first who is who. In a third, an Israeli soldier snatches a young Palestinian boy and a second soldier kicks the child. The majority of the film concentrates on a longer video of a masked Israeli military unit searching the home of a Palestinian family in the middle of the night, forcing the parents to wake up the children as rifles are pointed at them. Levy scrutinizes every detail of the video, wondering if it was staged, considering what was happening just off camera, thinking the boy might be lying when he gives a wrong name that his father quickly corrects.

Levy innately understands that she brings her own personal bias and mistrust of B’Tselem to her interpretation. “I view it from an objective point,” she says. “I don’t really get my information from it. The point is, these things do happen; whether they skew the filming and everything, it still does happen, it’s still there. Yeah, they probably play a lot with it, and there is a lot of bias and things and they don’t show you the whole picture, but, I guess it’s true to some extent. That’s what it seems like.” This questioning of what is real and what isn’t is intriguing to Alexandrowicz, a documentarian whose career has been spent making nonfiction films; Levy even notes that Alexandrowicz makes choices — subjects, edits, camera angles — that impact what people see and don’t see in his work.

In his 2018 essay “50 Years of Documentation: A Brief History of the Documentation of the Israeli Occupation,” Alexandrowicz writes, “After viewing hundreds of news reports, films, and online videos about this subject, I found myself asking: What has all this documentation achieved? What has been the documentation’s role in this tragic piece of history? Visual culture scholars have long argued that images do not merely depict reality; they also perform and create reality. Then what is the relationship between the audiovisual documentation of the Israeli Occupation and the reality it claims to portray? These questions have led me to a wider inquiry about the role that documentation practices play in shaping historical, political, and social issues.” The Viewing Booth might ostensibly be about Israelis and Palestinians, but it also illuminates the great divide in America as political affiliation appears to affect how we evaluate actual footage; it seems impossible to escape from the diametrically opposed analyses of the murder of George Floyd, the BLM protests, the January 6 insurrection, and a Catholic high school student’s interaction with a Native American man at a MAGA rally.

Recognizing that many people won’t even watch videos that they presuppose will contradict their belief system, Levy offers, “I think people are scared, that they don’t watch them because they’re scared that they’re going to change their minds about it. They’re going to be, like, Wow, this is bad, and maybe I’m not so pro-Israel as I thought I would be. I think if you accept reality, then these things don’t really make or break your viewpoints. I don’t think that this can really, like . . . they can be informative to some extent, but you have to be careful.”

Alexandrowicz was inspired to make the film by Virginia Woolf’s book Three Guineas One, which grew out of a letter she was responding to about how to prevent war; she begins by discussing the visual depiction of war in newspapers and magazines. “But besides these pictures of other people’s lives and minds — these biographies and histories — there are also other pictures — pictures of actual facts; photographs. Photographs, of course, are not arguments addressed to the reason; they are simply statements of fact addressed to the eye. But in that very simplicity there may be some help. Let us see then whether when we look at the same photographs we feel the same things.” As we’ve learned over these last few years, we most often see and feel what we want to see and feel despite watching the same exact nonfiction footage.

The Israeli title of The Viewing Booth is The Mirror, a much more apt name, as we put ourselves in Levy’s position, with all our inherent biases and fears, and hopefully look at ourselves to reflect on how we watch such videos, which generally come to us through social media algorithms that keep us in our preferred bubbles or from friends who think as we do, reinforcing our beliefs. “You are the viewer that I’ve been making these films for,” Alexandrowicz tells Levy. In the case of The Viewing Booth, that is not quite true; we are all the viewers he has made this film for.

Alexandrowicz will be at MoMI for a live conversation with film critic Alissa Wilkinson following the 7:00 screening on August 6, and he will be back for the 5:00 screening on August 8 with Levy. The Viewing Booth might not change your belief system, but it will change the way you experience online nonfiction video.

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.”