Lyonel Feininger, “In a Village Near Paris (Street in Paris, Pink Sky),” oil on canvas, 1909 (© Lyonel Feininger Family, LLC/Artists Rights Society, New York)
Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Ave. at 75th St.
Last chance: Sunday, October 16, $12-$18, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-570-3600
www.whitney.org
The Whitney’s outstanding career retrospective of cartoonist, illustrator, and painter Lyonel Feininger ends today, so this is your last chance to see the fabulous progression of this adventurous artist who was born in New York and spent much of his formative time in Germany. The father of photographer Andreas Feininger, Lyonel experimented with many different forms and styles, including creating miniatures for family, throughout his long life. (He was born in 1871 and died in 1956.) There will be free tours of this wonderful exhibit today at 12:30 and 3:30. Also currently on view at the Whitney is “David Smith: Cubes and Anarchy,” “Real/Surreal,” “Three Landscapes: A Film Installation by Roy Lichtenstein,” “Singular Visions,” and “Designing the Whitney of the Future.”
Much like the end of the silent film era itself, the last horse-drawn trolley is doomed in Harold Lloyd’s final silent film. Big business is playing dirty trying to get rid of the trolley and classic old-timer Pop Dillon. Meanwhile, Harold “Speedy” Swift, a dreamer who wanders from menial job to menial job (he makes a great soda-jerk with a unique way of announcing the Yankees score), cares only about the joy and wonder life brings. But he’s in love with Pop’s granddaughter, Jane, so he vows to save the day. Along the way, he gets to meet Babe Ruth. Ted Wilde was nominated for an Oscar for Best Director, Comedy, for this thrilling nonstop ride through beautiful Coney Island and the pre-depression streets of New York City. A restored 35mm print of Speedy is being shown October 16 at 3:00 at the Museum of the Moving Image with live accompaniment by pianist Donald Sosin, preceded by an illustrated lecture about the making of the movie by film historian John Bengtson, author of Silent Visions: Discovering Early Hollywood and New York Through the Films of Harold Lloyd (Santa Monica Press, May 2011, $27.95), and will be followed by a book signing.
After working for two years on a film about global interdependence and connectedness in the internet age, award-winning documentarian Tiffany Shlain (Yelp: With Apologies to Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, The Tribe, Less Is Moore) realized that she did not feel connected to her material. So she turned inward, deciding to instead focus her camera on her close relationship with her father, Leonard Shlain, a successful surgeon and author of such books as The Alphabet vs. the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image and Art & Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time, and Light. In an ironic twist of fate, Dr. Shlain, whose writings examined the different functions of the left and right brain in humans, was diagnosed with brain cancer. At the same time, his daughter, after five miscarriages, was desperately trying to make one final attempt to get pregnant as her forties approached. (She already had a daughter with her husband, Ken Goldberg.) This life-and-death dichotomy lies at the heart of Tiffany Shlain’s moving, deeply personal story, exactingly told in her feature-length debut, Connected. Shlain includes scenes from her original concept, highly illustrative and scientific examinations of the human species’ growing addiction to computers and cell phones, narrated by Peter Coyote, alongside animation, archival footage, lots of Harold Lloyd clips, and home movies, holding nothing back as she shares intensely personal details about her family and herself. While the idea that technology has given humans the ability to become more connected around the world is nothing new, Shlain’s intimate exploration is affecting nonetheless. Founder of the Webby Awards, Shlain, who currently observes a technology Shabbat, turning off all electronic equipment every Saturday, has organized a series of special events at the Angelika, where Connected is scheduled to run October 14-20, with Q&As following select screenings nearly every day. Among the participants who will be looking at various aspects of technology and culture are Todd Oldham and Anna Deavere Smith (October 14, 7:15), Jennie Livingston (October 15, 4:40), Reboot, Jumpstart, Natan, and Heeb magazine (October 15, 7:15), Rachel Sklar (October 16, 7:15), Peter Crosby (October 17, 4:40), Ted Hope (October 19, 4:40), Paul Levinson (October 19, 7:15), and Benjamin Barber (October 20, 7:15).
Following last weekend’s screenings of the first part of Aki Kaurismäki’s Proletariat Trilogy, 1986’s Shadows in Paradise, the IFC Center will be showing the second part, 1988’s Ariel, Friday through Sunday at 11:00 am. More of a conceptual sequel than a continuing narrative, Ariel stars Turo Pajala as Taisto Kasurinen, a Finnish miner who has just lost his job because the mine has closed. Sitting at a diner with his father/coworker, Taisto barely flinches as the elder Kasurinen tells him that there is nothing for him here, gives him the keys to his white Cadillac convertible, and goes into the bathroom and shoots himself. Taisto, with ever-changing facial hair in the beginning, quickly gets mugged, his meager life savings stolen from him. He seeks day work on the docks and sort of starts dating single mother Irmeli Pihlaja (Susanna Haavisto), who has never met a job she couldn’t quit that day. Taisto soon finds himself in prison for a ridiculous reason — and one he doesn’t really fight, as he generally just sits back and lets things happen to him — and meets fellow inmate Mikkonen (Shadows in Paradise’s Matti Pellonpää), and the two decide it’s time to take action and break out. A very dark, very black comedy that mixes in elements of romance and noir, Ariel is an absurdist existential feast, following Taisto and his compatriots as they make their very strange way through a very bizarre world. The third part of the trilogy, The Match Factory Girl (1990), will screen October 28-30, taking a week off as Kaurismäki’s latest, the wonderful Le Havre, opens at the IFC on October 21.