twi-ny recommended events

NYAFF 2011: SELL OUT!

The manic Malaysian romp SELL OUT! kicks off the New York Asian Film Festival on July 1 at Lincoln Center

SELL OUT! ($e11.0u7!) (Yoshimasa Ishibashi, 2011)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Friday, July 1, $13, 6:00, and Monday, July 4, $13, 3:30
Series runs July 1-14, ten-film pass $99
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com
www.subwaycinemanews.com
www.amokfilms.com


Yeo Joon Han’s Sell Out! is precisely the kind of movie the New York Asian Film Festival has become justly celebrated for. A madcap mash-up of Airplane! and Network, the Malaysian absurdist romp is a riotously funny, bitingly sarcastic, and hysterically cynical spoof of reality television, corporate greed, independent cinema, romantic musical comedies, love and death, and whatever else falls in its path. Rafflesia Pong (Jerrica Lai), host of a low-rated arts program (and named for the Southeast Asian parasitic flowering plant that Swedish scientist Eric Georg Mjöberg wrote in 1928 had “a penetrating smell more repulsive than any buffalo carcass in an advanced stage of decomposition”), gets all in a tizzy after her FONY bosses (Kee Thuan Chye and Lim Teik Long, a sort of bizarre version of Muppet opera lovers Statler and Waldorf crossed with the Duke brothers from Trading Places) threaten to replace her program with a reality show featuring a rather vain rising star. Meanwhile, Eric Tan (Peter Davis) has designed a long-lasting soy machine that has so angered the CEO duo — they’re furious there’s no device to make it break down the day after the warranty expires — that they send him to an exorcist to have the dreamer half of him removed from his body, leaving only the practical side. Characters occasionally break out into song as Rafflesia contemplates just how far she will go to keep herself on television. And watch out for the word “but,” not one of Lim Teik Long’s favorites; “Don’t but me. I hate people who but me,” he shouts over and over again at unsuspecting underlings. Winner of the NETPAC Award at the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival and the Young Cinema Award for Alternative Vision at the Venice Film Festival, Sell Out! is an absolute blast, a manic movie that skewers everything in sight, including the filmmaker himself; in the first scene, Rafflesia is interviewing a director named Yeo Joon Han who tears apart indie cinema when not giving abrupt one-word answers. Sell Out! kicks off the 2011 New York Asian Film Festival on July 1 at 6:00, with Yeo and Davis attending; it will also screen July 4 at 3:30. Keep watching twi-ny for more reviews from our favorite festival of the year.

BREAKING THE WAVES — THE FILMS OF ZERO CHOU: CORNER’S

Zero Chou’s CORNER’S looks at gay subculture in Taipei

CORNER’S (Zero Chou, 2001)
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, Bruno Walter Auditorium
40 Lincoln Center Plaza (111 Amsterdam Ave. & 66th St.)
Thursday, June 30, free, 6:30
www.nypl.org

“Breaking the Waves: The Films of Zero Chou,” the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts’ month-long tribute to Taiwan’s only openly lesbian filmmaker, Zero Chou, concludes June 30 at 6:30 with the intimate and deeply personal Corner’s.. Named Best Documentary at the 2002 Taipei Film Festival, Corner’s centers on a gay bar in Taipei where closeted homosexuals come to be free, revealing a side of themselves they are forced to hide in the outside world. Chou focuses on such characters as Simon, a financial manager who turns into the elegant Sophia, and a man known as the Empress, who hosts a major gay party at a five-star hotel, as she explores the hopes and dreams of a group of people who just want their own little piece of happiness. Chou takes her camera inside a public rest room as one gay man describes what goes on inside; she also occasionally cuts to a naked lesbian couple in the midst of heated erotic passion. The sixty-minute work is narrated by Chou’s longtime partner, photographer and producer Liu Hoho, who recites poetic text in French that poignantly relates to the difficulties of being gay in Taiwanese society but avoids becoming pedantic or overtly political. Like many of her fiction films and other documentaries, Corner’s celebrates the repressed gay subculture of Taiwan, showing the good with the bad but filled with an infectious spirit and love of life.

CELEBRATE BROOKLYN! JUSTIN TOWNES EARLE

Justin Townes Earle will headline a terrific triple bill at free Celebrate Brooklyn! festival on June 30

Prospect Park Bandshell
Prospect Park West & Ninth St.
Thursday, June 30, free (suggested donation $3), 7:00
www.justintownesearle.com
www.bricartsmedia.org

Justin Townes Earle has some good advice for this Thursday. “Tired of laying in bed, listening to the water run / Ceiling’s falling in, Baby’s dress is covered in dust / So I don’t care what it costs, Baby, dust that old thing off / It’s one more night in Brooklyn, Baby, we’re getting lost,” he declares on his most recent album, Harlem River Blues (Bloodshot, September 2010). The follow-up to 2009’s outstanding Midnight at the Movies, the latest disc is another fine collection of country bluegrass folk blues, cut from the tradition of his namesake, Townes Van Zandt, his hero, Woody Guthrie, and his father, Steve Earle. Born in Nashville and currently residing in Lower Manhattan, JTE has inherited more than just his father’s songwriting skill; like his activist pop, he has also battled drug abuse and the law. But the future is still bright for Earle, who was named Best New/Emerging Artist at the 2009 Americana Music Awards. “I’m the son of a railroad man,” he sings on “Working for the MTA,” adding, “This ain’t my daddy’s train.” Justin Townes Earle will be playing Celebrate Brooklyn! on June 30 on a terrific triple bill that also includes the Punch Brothers and the Hackensaw Boys; look for Earle to dedicate his acoustic cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “Racing in the Street” to Clarence Clemons.

ICE FACTORY FESTIVAL

Downtown festival of independent theater seeks to cool off the summer heat

3LD Art + Technology Center
80 Greenwich St. at Rector St.
Ice Factory: Wednesday – Saturday, $18, 7:00
Ice Cubes: Thursday – Friday, $15, 9:00
212-645-0374
www.sohothinktank.org
www.3ldnyc.org

Soho Think Tank’s eighteenth annual Ice Factory Festival, held at 3LD Art + Technology Center, is under way, featuring a half dozen independent productions running through July 30. Next up is Vladimir Moravek’s adaptation of The Pig, Or, Vaclav Havel’s Hunt for a Pig (June 29 – July 2), a multimedia political and gastronomic piece with live music, pulled pork, and Czech beer presented by Untitled Theater Company #61, followed by Aztec Economy’s Pontiac Firebird Variations (July 6-9), a tragicomic crime family saga. The Subjective Theatre Company’s An Impending Sense of Doom (July 13-16) examines the end of days, while Three Graces (July 20-23), from the Café Antarsia Ensemble & Immigrants’ Theatre Project, transports The Iliad to modern-day Greece. The festival concludes with Joshua William Gelb and Stephanie Johnstone’s Sometimes in Prague (July 27-30), a multimedia musical set in a Czech pub. In addition, the Ice Factory Festival includes the Ice Cubes Studio Series, including the Inverse Theater’s Be Story Free (June 30 – July 1), Jonathan Solari’s The Love Letter You’ve Been Meaning to Write to New York (July 7-8), Everywhere Theatre Group’s Dead People (July 14-15), Sponsored by Nobody and het GEIT’s Americans ‘N’ Indians (July 21-22), and Ma-Yi Theater Co.’s Will Sing (July 28-29).

403 PRESENTS: THE BEAUTY IN DECAY

Ian Ference will talk about his images of urban decay and negative space at tonight’s 403 cultural salon (photo © Ian Ference)

Private building in downtown Manhattan (given upon RSVP)
Monday, June 27, $60 with RSVP , 7:00 – 11:00 pm
www.facebook.com/event
www.ianferencephoto.com

Lelaine Lau, who was recently honored as the May Woman of the Month by Thierry Mugler’s Womanity Project, will be hosting her latest 403 cultural salon with special guest Ian Ference. The Rochester-born, Brooklyn-based photographer focuses much of his work on architectural interiors, including a continuing project on abandoned buildings, particularly insane asylums. As Lau explains, “Ian Ference’s photography of urban decay is both transporting and beautiful. The histories that he writes are meticulously researched. They are a peek at a bygone era, a slice of history. From his haunting images of Admiral’s Row, North Brother Island, or Hart Island, to the images of abandoned hotels and theatres along the Eastern seaboard, the stories behind the buildings touch on issues of architectural heritage, societal mores and attitudes of the time, demolition-by-neglect, development, zoning, and landmarking. Other photos conjure up thoughts on a more human scale.” In his artist statement, Ference explains, “The primary purpose of my work is to create a living record of these structures, many of them architecturally rich, and most of them in danger of demolition, whether by neglect or by wrecking ball. Every building has stories — the stories of the people who worked, lived, and died within its walls. Vacant now, the walls can still tell some of these stories, and it is in that direction that I aim my camera.” Ference will discuss and present images of the vast breadth of his work at tonight’s gathering, with a light dinner and wine catered by Vance Brooking and Mey Bun.

NYAFF 2011 / JAPAN CUTS — MILOCRORZE: A LOVE STORY

Yoshimasa Ishibashi’s wild and wacky MILOCRORZE will open the tenth annual New York Asian Film Festival on July 1 and screen at Japan Cuts on July 10

MILOCRORZE: A LOVE STORY (Yoshimasa Ishibashi, 2011)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Friday, July 1, $13, 9:00
Series runs July 1-14, ten-film pass $99
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Sunday, July 10, $12, 8:00
Series runs July 7-22, five-film pass $50
212-875-5601 / 212-715-1258
www.filmlinc.com
www.subwaycinemanews.com
www.japansociety.org/japancuts

The North American premiere of the wild and wacky, genre-iffic Milocrorze: A Love Story kicks off the tenth anniversary of New York City’s most exciting annual film series, the New York Asian Film Festival, running July 1-14 at Lincoln Center. Melding Michel Gondry with Quentin Tarantino and Takashi Miike filtered through Max Ophüls’s La Ronde and Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amélie, longtime commercial, video, and television director Yoshimasa Ishibashi makes his feature-film cinematic debut with this highly stylized three-part tale of love and romance. In the first section, seven-year-old salaryman Ovreneli Vreneligare, wearing one of the most charming costumes and hairstyles ever put on celluloid, falls in love with the beautiful, and adult, Milocrorze (Maiko) in a candy-coated fantasyland of lush colors and dreamlike sets. That bittersweet tale leads into the second part, in which bizarre youth counselor Besson Kumagi (Takayuki Yamada) abusively screams relationship advice to lonely boys over the phone, then breaks out into self-celebratory dance numbers with a couple of hot babes, a sort of Japanese version of Andy Kaufman’s Tony Clifton character. That story segues into the violent, vengeful mini-epic of rogue samurai Tamon (Yamada again), who starts out as a simple man who falls in love with Yuri the flower girl (Ann Ishibashi) but is soon trying to rescue her from a high-priced gambling and prostitution ring. Ishibashi then circles back to Milocrorze and Ovreneli Vreneligare (Yamada yet again, in his third role) years later for the tender finale. Milocrorze is a vastly entertaining, wonderfully absurd, and utterly ridiculous (and we mean that in a good way) exercise in multiple genres from the endlessly inventive Ishibashi. The samurai section goes on way too long, but otherwise this is a rousing success from start to finish, even when it is making absolutely no sense, which is very often. Milocrorze is the opening-night selection of NYAFF 2011, and both Ishibashi and Yamada will be at Lincoln Center on July 1 to participate in a postscreening Q&A; prior to the screening, Yamada will receive the Star Asia Rising Star Award. The film is being presented in conjunction with Japan Cuts: The New York Festival of Contemporary Japanese Cinema, screening at Japan Society on July 10, followed by a Q&A with Ishibashi. Keep watching twi-ny for more reviews of select films from our two favorite film festivals of the year.

AI WEIWEI: CIRCLE OF ANIMALS / ZODIAC HEADS

Ai Weiwei’s intricate “Zodiac Heads” are on view in the Pulitzer Fountain through July 15 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Pulitzer Fountain
Grand Army Plaza at Central Park
Fifth Ave. at West 58th St.
Through July 15, free
www.zodiacheads.com
online slideshow

On April 3, artist Ai Weiwei was arrested by the Chinese government, with little information about his whereabouts. An international Free Ai Weiwei campaign began, and on June 22 he was finally released on bail, having been charged with tax evasion, but that is far from the end of the story. “Despite the relief that Ai Weiwei is back with his family,” German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle said, “it remains a fact that his freedom is subject to oppressive restrictions.” As German politicians meet with Chinese officials to discuss human rights concerns, Ai Weiwei will remain in Beijing, where he has been ordered to stay for a period of one year. You can honor the onetime New Yorker, who lived here from 1981 to 1993, by visiting his first public installation in a major U.S. city, “Circle of Animals / Zodiac Heads,” which is on view in the Pulitzer Fountain in front of the Plaza through July 15. Based on a dozen sculptures designed by Giuseppe Castiglione as part of a water-clock fountain for the Garden of Perfect Brightness (Yanming Yuan) for the Qing dynasty in the mid-eighteenth century — and was looted and burned by British and French troops at the conclusion of the Second Opium War in 1860 — the large-scale work features twelve bronze animal heads, each relating to a sign of the zodiac. The intricately detailed heads range from the rat, the ox, and the tiger to the rabbit, the snake, and the horse, from the ram, the rooster, and the monkey to the dog, the boar, and the most fanciful, the dragon.

Ai Weiwei is not seeking to make any grand statements with the fun display, which incorporates history, war, memory, folklore, and astrology. “I think it’s something that everyone can have some understanding of, including children and people who are not in the art world. I think it’s important to show your work to the public. That’s what I really care about,” Ai Weiwei explains in the exhibition catalog, which includes a photo of each head and a description of that zodiac sign, along with an essay by Susan Delson and excerpts of interviews with the artist about the project. “Anybody can make a set of zodiac figures,” he continues. “We never change the subject, we always change the interpretation. . . . I am always concerned with how we make judgments. And in questioning others’ judgment, and also questioning my judgment. And always saying art is not the end but the beginning. Art is not the end. The product is never the end but should be the beginning. Otherwise art has no life.” Thus, just as with Ai Weiwei’s personal freedom, “Circle of Animals / Zodiac Heads” should not be seen as the end of the story.