featured

SPEER GOES TO HOLLYWOOD

Nazi leader Albert Speer tries to whitewash history in Speer Goes to Hollywood

SPEER GOES TO HOLLYWOOD (Vanessa Lapa, 2021)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Opens Friday, October 29
212-727-8110
filmforum.org
speergoestohollywood.com

In 2014, Belgium-born, Israel-based documentarian Vanessa Lapa made her feature-length debut with The Decent One, in which she painted a frightening portrait of Heinrich Himmler, using the private diary of the Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel (Himmler’s official title). She has now followed that film with Speer Goes to Hollywood, which incorporates archival footage from the Nuremberg trials and clips from propaganda films accompanying forty hours of recordings made in 1971 by up-and-coming British screenwriter Andrew Birkin as he worked with convicted Nazi leader Albert Speer, known as Hitler’s Architect, collaborating on a screenplay for Paramount Pictures based on the former Reichsminister of Munitions’ bestselling memoir, Inside the Third Reich.

Birkin, the brother of model and actress Jane Birkin and whose mentors include Stanley Kubrick and Carol Reed, met with Speer in the latter’s country home in Heidelberg in the winter of 1971. Birkin kept the tape rolling as he and Speer carefully reviewed every scene in the screenplay, as Speer tries to whitewash many of the more outrageous and gruesome details regarding his culpability in the Nazis’ reign of terror while Birkin tries to not let him off the hook.

“I would be careful,” Reed (The Third Man, Oliver!) warns Birkin over the phone after reviewing the first draft of the script. “You can’t build without him knowing. The man holds his mind blank to that. This is not a sweet man.”

Tall and elegant, Speer seizes control of the narrative again and again, claiming to be a dreamer and making sure he is seen with his dog, as if he’s just a normal guy. “I want a private life too,” he opines. He considers war “an adventure” and the Nazi regime “just good fun” to downplay the piles of murdered bodies the Third Reich left in its wake. He refers to the tortured prisoners of war in factories and the concentration camps as workmen and laborers, making excuses that argue that the negative aspects of what the Nazis did have been exaggerated. “I did not know what crimes I’m committing,” he claims. He explains that the “camps were necessary” and blames his Labor Department head, Fritz Sauckel, for the mistreatment of the Jews and other captives under his watch. “I was not responsible for those things. It was him,” he points out.

All the while, Birkin attempts to convince himself that he is doing the right thing by sharing Speer’s story on film. “I’ve been saying all along that I find it easy to identify myself with you,” he tells Speer. “The only point where I think I would have opted out would have been if I had been present or if I witnessed a scene that involved children being carted off. Can you ever remember a situation where you either read about, or more probably heard about, children being separated up or families being torn apart? Anything. Can you ever remember anything that happened? Even if, at the time, you were able to rationalize it?” Speer says no, “But . . . Yes, well, but you know, small things are now seen as the center of a thing. But I’m sorry. It would be wrong to say now I had a sentimental reaction or so. Your idea of the film and of my person that I had any reaction is wrong.”

Speer talks about Himmler, Hermann Göring, and Joseph Goebbels and admits to being one of Hitler’s best friends — and still claims he did not know what was going on despite his heavy involvement with the Mathausen camp and his visit to Auschwitz. “Indirectly, I knew from Hitler that he was planning to annihilate the Jewish people. He said it quite often. But I had no direct knowledge until ’44.” Seeking to garner some sympathy, he says, “If ever I can get rid of the guilt, and quite often I was thinking that I never shall get rid of it, that this burden will ever last with me.”

Albert Speer is profiled in new documentary built around revelatory footage

Birkin might want to give Speer the benefit of the doubt to some degree, but it’s hard for viewers to see anything but a twisted man who lacks empathy and compassion for his fellow human being, lording his sense of superiority over all others, trying to skirt his responsibilities during the war and rewrite history — a project that cannot help but make one reflect on the way America is these days when it comes to slavery, remembering the Holocaust, removing public statues of the founding fathers, tearing apart immigrant families at the border, and changing textbooks to present partisan views of the nation’s past.

Explaining one of Kubrick’s arguments, Birkin (The Name of the Rose, The Cement Garden) says the director told him, “I would find it very difficult to do the film if your character, the Speer in the film, you still made out that he didn’t know what was going on.” Speer just wanted a normal life, reveling in his being called “the good Nazi,” but as Lapa’s film shows, there is not a whole lot of good in him.

Winner of the Israeli Oscar for Best Documentary, Speer Goes to Hollywood is a chilling work that gets into the mind of one of the twentieth century’s most terrifying figures. Lapa and producer Tomer Eliav will be at Film Forum for the 7:00 shows on October 29 and 30 for Q&As that will dig even deeper into this extraordinary story.

DANCING FUTURES: MAY I DANCE ON YOUR SCREEN? LIVE Q&A

Who: Rourou Ye, Wendy Perron
What: Virtual Q&A about online exhibition
Where: digitaldance.space
When: Thursday, October 28, free with RSVP, 7:30
Why: “When I returned to the dance studio again in April 2021, I felt weird,” multidisciplinary artist Rourou Ye said about working during the pandemic. “The studio was empty. Not only because there was no one else there but because it also lacked the characteristics and stories inherent to one’s surroundings. What can I do with this space? There was nothing I could play with, and it made me the center of attention. I was motionless. So I went back home to create dances through video.” On October 28 at 7:30, the Chinese-born, US-based artist, who incorporates dance, shadow puppetry, everyday objects, and multimedia technology into works that defy reality, will discuss her process with teacher, writer, dancer, choreographer, and Dance magazine editor at large Wendy Perron over Zoom.

They will be delving into Ye’s online exhibition, “May I Dance on Your Screen?,” which continues through December 31 with such dance films as Daydreaming (“How can I duplicate myself so I can have a dance companion?”), Dis/Placed, (“How can I appear in my collaborator’s space even though I’m physically in another location?”), and I Followed the Moon to the River, My Far-Flung Home (“It’s been so long since I’ve been home . . .”). The program is part of the seventh annual Dancing Futures: Artist and Mentor Collaborative Residency, which “offers emerging Bronx-based and/or dance artists of color with resources, performance opportunities, mentorship, and documentation to strengthen and shine a spotlight on the Bronx as a creative incubator of new dance and performance work.”

THIS IS ME EATING___

Et Alia Theater’s This Is Me Eating___ has been turned into an immersive, in-person experience (photo courtesy Et Alia Theater)

THIS IS ME EATING___
The Alchemical Studios
104 West 14th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Saturday, October 30, free with advance RSVP, 4:00 – 9:00
www.etaliatheater.com

“I like my body,” Maria Müller says at the beginning of her video This Is Me Eating Those Stupid Comments. “Or at least I’ve grown to like it.” The short is one of five made by members of the two-year-old New York City–based Et Alia Theater as part of This Is Me Eating___, in which women share their personal thoughts about food and body image.

In This Is Me Eating My Taste Buddies, Ana Moioli explains, “Life can get pretty shitty. You can’t trust anyone. People betray you. But you can trust food. Even in the darkest times, food will always be there for you. Now, what if, suddenly, you weren’t there for food anymore?” The online project, which was an official selection of the NYC Indie Theatre Film Festival, also features Giorgia Valenti’s This Is Me Eating My Eating Disorder, Luísa Galatti’s This Is Me Eating My Weight, and Deniz Bulat’s This Is Me Eating Alone Thinking About Eating Together in addition to public submissions from around the world, which you can watch here.

Et Alia, which “strives to foster an accepting community that provides a safe space where people can take risks, push themselves outside of their comfort zones, and collide with an array of international voices which may be culturally unfamiliar,” is now presenting a live version of This Is Me Eating___, taking place October 30 at the Alchemical Studios on West Fourteenth St. There will be four forty-five-minute cycles, starting at 4:00, followed by an open discussion at 8:00. The immersive sessions, directed by Debora Balardini, designed by Dave Morrissey, and conceived by Valenti after Moioli received a City Artist Corps Grant, combine projection, sound, and movement that expand off the videos but are wholly new. Admission is limited to twenty to twenty-five audience members per cycle as people are encouraged to consider how they would fill in the blank in the title; among the virtual submissions were Thais Fernandes’s This Is Me Eating My Anxiety, Ana Carolina’s This Is Me Eating the Time We (Don’t) Have, Bianca Waechter’s This Is Me Eating My Anger, Kendall DuPre’s This Is Me Eating My Words, and Bruna da Matta’s This Is Me Eating and Being Eaten.

“Come ready to be part of these women’s inner and outer explorations of their eating habits, traditions, and mental reflections,” co-artistic director Valenti said in a statement. “Come ready to feel part of a creative process and absorb this global process. You might just discover you are not so alone.”

Et Alia has previously staged Hasnain Shaikh’s Running in Place at Dixon Place, Müller’s On How to Be a Monster at Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò and the Tank, and None of the Above at Rattlestick’s Global Forms Theater Festival. “Do you eat for pleasure or survival?” Galatti asks in This Is Me Eating My Weight. The same can be asked about live theater, especially as we come out of a pandemic lockdown.

GODLIS MIAMI BOOK LAUNCH WITH DAVID GODLIS AND LUCY SANTE

Who: David Godlis, Lucy Sante
What: Book launch with live discussion
Where: Rizzoli Bookstore, 1133 Broadway between 25th & 26th Sts.
When: Thursday, October 28, free with advance RSVP, 6:00
Why: When last we saw photographer David Godlis, he was taking part in a November 2020 Rizzoli Zoom discussion with writer Luc Sante, Blondie cofounder and guitarist Chris Stein, and Reel Art Press music editor Dave Brolan, talking about Godlis Streets (Reel Art Press, $39.95), which features Godlis’s New York City and Boston street photography from the 1970s and ’80s. Some of us have also caught him in Lewie and Noah Kloster’s brand-new seven-minute documentary Shots in the Dark with David Godlis, in which the longtime official photographer of the New York Film Festival goes back to his CBGB days.

On October 28, Godlis will be at Rizzoli in person, joined by the recently transitioned Lucy Sante (Low Life, Kill All Your Darlings), for the launch of his newest book, Godlis Miami (Real Art Press, $39.95), comprising photos Godlis shot down south, capturing a part of South Beach that no longer exists.

David Godlis, Ladies in the Sun, Lummus Park (© GODLIS)

“I first went to Miami Beach when I was a kid in the 1950s,” he writes. “There are black and white snapshots of me sitting on the beach, wearing my Davy Crockett T-shirt, squinting under palm trees. My grandparents had retired there. For Jewish Eastern European immigrants, who had lived out their working life on the streets of New York City, retiring to sunshine, warm weather, beaches, and palm trees was a slice of heaven. For a kid visiting in the 1950s and early 1960s, it was like going to Jewish Disneyland. Goodbye, snow. Hello, coconuts. And so, when I returned to Miami Beach in 1974, with a camera, all these memories of Florida came flowing back to me. As I tripped the shutter over and over, taking pictures on those beaches I had walked upon as a little kid, everything clicked. Pun intended.”

Admission to the event is free with advance RSVP.

THE ROOF GARDEN COMMISSION: AS LONG AS THE SUN LASTS by ALEX DA CORTE

Big Bird rides on a crescent moon on Met roof (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Who: Alex Da Corte, Shanay Jhaveri
What: In-person discussion of Alex Da Corte’s Roof Garden Commission
Where: The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, the Met Fifth Avenue
When: Friday, October 29, free with museum admission and advance RSVP, 5:30 (installation on view through October 31)
Why: In previous works, Camden-born, Philadelphia-based artist Alex Da Corte has embodied such famous real and fictional figures as Eminem, Mr. Rogers, and the Wicked Witch of the West. For his commission on the Met’s Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden, As Long as the Sun Lasts, Da Corte took on the persona of Jim Henson in creating a work that melds childhood memories with visions of the endless sky, inspired by Alexander Calder’s mobiles and sculpture, Little Tikes plastic outdoor activity gyms, Donna Summer’s Four Seasons of Love album cover, the blue Garibaldo character from the Brazilian version of Sesame Street that he watched as a kid in Venezuela, the song from the 1985 movie Follow That Bird in which Big Bird gets painted blue, and the Italo Calvino titular short story.

Alex Da Corte’s As Long as the Sun Lasts continues through Halloween (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The result is a playful and colorful kinetic sculpture that moves with the wind as Big Bird, covered in more than seven thousand handmade feathers, rides around on a crescent moon, holding on to a ladder of hope. Referring to his transformation into Henson, Da Corte says in a Met interview with curator Shanay Jhaveri, “It stems from thinking about characters I loved or didn’t understand and wanted to understand more. And I see Jim as quite a thoughtful maker.” For those who want to understand more about the installation, which is on view through October 31, Da Corte — likely in costume as Henson — and Jhaveri will sit down for another talk, in the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium at the Met on October 29 at 5:30.

GHOSTFOLK

River L. Ramirez will discuss their latest project, GhostFolk, in a live BAC Zoom talk

Who: River L. Ramirez, Lou Tides, Sarah Galdes, Morgan Bassichis
What: Streaming performance and live virtual discussion
Where: Baryshnikov Arts Center online
When: Live Zoom discussion October 26, free with RSVP, 7:00; performance available on demand through November 1 at 5:00, free
Why: “This is a piece about life and living and celebrating the innate ability that we all have here on Earth to love, even if there’s nothing to love sometimes, even if it’s just for you, even if it’s, you know, a feeling that’s kind of cavernous and feels so lonely,” River L. Ramirez says in their introduction to the virtual piece GhostFolk, streaming for free from the Baryshnikov Arts Center through November 1. In the forty-minute work, the Queens-based musician and comedian plays guitar and tells stories in a contemporary song cycle that explores everyday life, joined by Teeny Lieberson/Lou Tides on bass and background vocals and Sarah Galdes on drums, looking like a hip Halloween trio, with costumes by Peter Smith, makeup by Angelo Balassone, and spooky lighting by Devin Cameron. “A new day begins,” Ramirez declares in the first tune.

Over the course of forty minutes, they explore quarantine, read personal poems, find the face of Jesus in a plantain, call for babies to help us out of the mess we’re in, search for what’s next, explain that trolls are real, scream and screech, and listen to an animated frog as, occasionally, a figure in a sheet with holes dances in solitude. GhostFolk was filmed and edited by Tatyana Tenenbaum at BAC’s Jerome Robbins Theater; Tenenbaum, a star of the pandemic lockdown, has also shot such BAC works as Landrover and Holland Andrews’s Museum of Calm. On October 26 at 7:00, Ramirez, whose social media name is Pile of Tears and who used to do standup as Lorelei Ramirez, will discuss GhostFolk and more with comedian Morgan Bassichis in a live Zoom Q&A.

KUSAMA: COSMIC NATURE

Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirrored Room — Illusion Inside the Heart sits like a UFO in a grassy field at NYBG (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

KUSAMA: COSMIC NATURE
The New York Botanical Garden
2900 Southern Blvd., Bronx
April 10 – October 31, $15 children two to twelve, $35 adults, $10 for Infinity Room, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
718-817-8700
www.nybg.org
online slideshow

“How vast and boundless the provisions of nature!” Yayoi Kusama has declared. The ninety-two-year-old Japanese artist has been attracted to the natural world since she was a little girl, when her grandmother ran a plant nursery in Nagano, and she later studied the nihonga style of painting, dating back to the Meiji Period, which depicts scenes from nature through a contemporary artistic lens. Kusama’s fascination with living things is on display in the endlessly fun exhibition “Kusama: Cosmic Nature,” which continues at the New York Botanical Garden through October 31.

Hymn of Life — Tulips emerge out of the Conservatory Courtyard Hardy Pool (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The show, comprising drawing, painting, sculpture, video, and installation, opened in April, but it has taken a distinct turn this fall, adapting its focus to pumpkins and chrysanthemums. “My pumpkins, beloved of all the plants in the world,” Kusama said. “When I see pumpkins, I cannot efface the joy of them being my everything, nor the awe I hold them in.” For the final month, the garden has brought in hundreds of real gourds, lining the flights of steps leading to the LuEsther T. Mertz Library Building and the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory; in addition, three enormous real pumpkins are on plinths outside the conservatory, each weighing more than a ton.

Starry Pumpkin occupies the place of honor in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Several of Kusama’s small and large-scale pumpkins are scattered throughout the 250-acre Bronx oasis. Starry Pumpkin (2015) has the place of honor in the center of the conservatory, a glittering object surrounded by red, white, and yellow chrysanthemums in arrangements based on Kusama’s 2014 painting Alone, Buried in a Flower Garden (which is on view in the library), along with sections inspired by the Kengai (Cascade) style that resembles flowers hanging over a cliff, and the kiku method of Shino-tsukuri (Driving Rain) that gives the plants a windblown appearance. Inside the library are also the acrylic and felt pen on canvas Pumpkin TWOTOEL (2004) and soft sculptures of pumpkins from 2016 entitled The Sun Has Gone Down, I Am Scared as Much as Being Alone and Suppressing the Burning Desire for Death, which give an indication of Kusama’s longtime exploration of life and death and the often unusual names she gives her works.

Visitors are allowed to walk under Kusama’s Dancing Pumpkin (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Near the conservatory is the monumental Dancing Pumpkin (2020), a black and yellow creature you can walk under that resembles one of Louise Bourgeois’s spiders, while Pumpkins Screaming About Love Beyond Infinity (2017) lights up and creates mirrored views that seem to go on forever in the Visitor Center Gallery. “What appealed to me most was the pumpkin’s generous unpretentiousness,” Kusama has explained. “That and its solid spiritual balance . . . its fat belly and unadorned features . . . its burly, psychological power.”

My Soul Blooms Forever welcome people inside the conservatory (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

But “Kusama: Cosmic Nature” is a lot more than just pumpkins. The longest line is for Infinity Mirrored Room — Illusion Inside the Heart (2020), which sits in the middle of a field of tall grass and in between two small gardens, like a UFO landing in the country; holes in the exterior change the inside lighting and allow you to peer inside, where you will see your own face on the other side. I Want to Fly to the Universe (2020) is a smiling red, white, and blue star residing in the reflecting pool outside the Visitor Center. For Narcissus Garden (1966/2021), Kusama has placed 1,400 stainless-steel shiny balls bobbing atop a pond in the Native Plant Garden. Ascension of Polka Dots on the Trees (2002/2021) consists of trees wrapped in red polyester covered in white polka dots. Hymn of Life — Tulips (2007) features three large, colorful, childlike flowers in the Conservatory Courtyard Hardy Pool. The five waterbound urethane-painted stainless-steel flowers of My Soul Blooms Forever welcome people inside the conservatory. The exhibit also includes the obliteration greenhouse Flower Obsession (2017/2021), complete with household items and plastic stickers. Inside the Ross Gallery is a timeline and the multiscreen Walking Piece (1966/2021) composed of stills from one of Kusama’s most well known performances, wandering through New York City in a kimono and under an umbrella.

Chrysanthemum arrangements are inspired by the Kengai (Cascade) style that resembles flowers hanging over a cliff (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

“I am happy that I have painted flowers. . . . There are no objects more interesting,” Kusama, who has voluntarily lived in a Tokyo psychological institute since 1977 and still works every day in her nearby studio, has stated. As “Kusama: Cosmic Nature” reveals, Kusama has created a lot of other parts of the living world, all pieces of an endless universe that exists beyond death, in her deeply personal futuristic environment that is filled with abounding wonder.