twi-ny recommended events

ST. PATRICK’S DAY PARADE 2011

The New York City Saint Patrick’s Day Parade celebrates its 250th anniversary this year with its annual march up Fifth Ave. (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Fifth Ave. from 44th to 86th Sts.
Thursday, March 17, free, 11:00 am – 5:00 pm
www.nycstpatricksparade.org
www.saintpatricksdayparade.com

The New York City Saint Patrick’s Day Parade turns 250 this year, having marched down the streets of the Big Apple since 1762. This year’s grand marshal is bestselling author Mary Higgins Clark, who will be escorted by fifteen aides, including Eugene McCarthy, Francis J. McDonough, John Mahoney, Joseph McManus, and Mary Fee. As always, the parade will pay tribute to the Fighting 69th, who will be at the front of the line of march, to be followed by Mayor Bloomberg, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, the NYC Holy Name Society and Emerald Society of the NYPD, the U.S. Army Marching Platoon, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and such groups as the Cork Pipers Band, the Leatherneck Pipes and Drums, the U.S. Navy Ceremonial Guard, the Manhattan College Gaelic Society, the Niall O’Leary School of Irish Dancing, the Roisin Dubh Irish Pipe Band, the Maine Twirlers, and dozens more.

KAFFNY 2011

Peter Bo Rappmund’s PSYCHOHYDROGRAPHY is one of the highlights of KAFFNY 2011

KOREAN AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL NEW YORK
Clearview Chelsea Cinemas, 260 West 23rd St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
White Box, 329 Broome St. between Bowery & Chrystie St.
Big Screen Project, Sixth Ave. between 29th & 30th Sts.
March 17-20
212-691-5519
www.kaffny.com

The fifth annual Korean American Film Festival New York gets under way Thursday night in a big way with a reception, a live performance by Eugene Park and DJ Spooky, a screening of Han Hyung-mo’s 1956 film, Madame Freedom, with a live rescore by Spooky played by cellist Okkyung Lee and violinist Sean Lee, and Peter Bo Rappmund’s Psychohydrography. Rappmund’s digital journey is one of the centerpieces of the festival; it will also be shown for free, along with works by So Young Yang, at the Big Screen Project in the public plaza on Sixth Ave. between 29th & 30th Sts. and at White Box from 6:00 to 9:00 on Friday night. (On Saturday night, White Box will show So Young Yang films at 6:00 and Jane Jin Kaisen and Guston Sondin-kung’s The Woman, the Orphan, and the Tiger at 7:30, also free.) Among the other feature films at the festival, whose home base is the Clearview Chelsea Cinemas, are Kim Young-nam’s The Boat, Iris K. Shim’s The House of Suh, Mads Brugger’s Red Chapel, In-Soo Radstake’s Made in Korea: A One Way Ticket, and a digitally remastered version of Pak Chong Song’s 1978 soccer film Centre Forward. In addition, KAFFNY will hold a free screening of Blue & White Concert: Book of Changes, on Thursday at 3:30. A retrospective of the career of Dai Sil Kim-Gibson will include such films as Motherland: Korean Cubans (2006), A Forgotten People: The Sakhalin Koreans (1995), Silence Broken: Korean Comfort Women (1999), and other works by the pioneering Korean American writer-director, who will participate in the panel discussion “LA Riots 19 Years Later” with Charles Burnett and Jung Hui Lee following screenings of her films Sa-I-Gu: From Korean Women’s Perspectives (1993) and Wet Sand: Voices from LA (2004) and Burnett’s Olivia’s Story (1999), which she wrote. There will be several programs of shorts, with films by Greg Pak, Dou Xing, Janice Ahn, Edward Kim, Brent Anbe, Christine Yoo, and others, as well as the KAFFNY Talks: Filmmakers Panel of Kim-Gibson, Soopum Sohn, Rappmund, and Ahn on Saturday at 12 noon.

CAROLINE BOTTARO AND KEVIN KLINE PRESENT QUEEN TO PLAY

Star Kevin Kline will join director Caroline Bottaro at FIAF on Saturday night for a sneak preview of their new film, QUEEN TO PLAY

SNEAK PREVIEW! MEET THE DIRECTOR & ACTOR
French Institute Alliance Française
Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Saturday, March 19, $10, 7:00
212-355-6160
www.fiaf.org
www.zeitgeistfilms.com

After screening at film festivals around the world since 2009, Caroline Bottaro’s Queen to Play (Joueuse), about an American expatriate and a French chambermaid who connect over the game of of chess and their dual midlife crises, will finally get its theatrical release on April 1 at the Angelika and Lincoln Plaza. But the French Institute Alliance Française is offering a sneak peak at this drama, which is based on Bertina Henrichs’s novel The Chess Player and pairs Kevin Kline (A Fish Called Wanda) in his first French-speaking role with the great Sandrine Bonnaire (Vagabond), with a special showing Saturday night in Florence Gould Hall. The screening, which costs only ten bucks, a bargain for a movie these days, will be followed by a Q&A with star Kline and first-time director Bottaro.

COKE WISDOM O’NEAL: BLUE NUDE

Coke Wisdom O’Neal’s “Blue Nude” traps its subjects in a Plexiglas box

Mixed Greens
531 West 26th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Through Saturday, March 19, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-331-8888
www.mixedgreens.com
www.cokewisdomoneal.com

Since 2005, New York City-based artist Coke Wisdom O’Neal has been filling Mixed Greens with enchanting photos of men, women, and children standing in a twenty-two-foot-tall unpainted wooden box. Although the photographs appear to be digitally manipulated, they are not; the subjects are encouraged to dress however they want and bring objects with them, but their identity gets lost inside the mammoth specimen box, making them look minuscule and unreal until visitors get up close and spend time with them. For his fifth solo exhibition at the gallery, O’Neal has turned things around with “Blue Nude,” a series of striking photographs of naked men and women who have squeezed into a small, transparent Plexiglas box, folding and twisting their bodies to desperately try to fit in the cramped space. From a distance, it appears as if the people are trapped in the white walls of the gallery itself, trying to burst free, but up close their contorted bodies are both beautiful and painful to look at. While O’Neal’s previous shows offered his subjects several layers of freedom, these claustrophobic photos snatch that away from them, robbing the anonymous men and women of any identity whatsoever, making the viewer both awestruck and uncomfortable — and wondering if they would be able to fit in the box themselves. As with O’Neal’s earlier work, many of the photos seem unreal, primarily the ones in which the bodies push up against the box, at times looking more like paintings. “Blue Nude” is another fascinating show from this inventive photographer.

THE AIPAD PHOTOGRAPHY SHOW 2011

Denis Darzacq, “Hyper no. 10,” chromogenic print, 2008 (courtesy Laurence Miller Gallery)

Park Avenue Armory
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
March 17-20, $25 per day, $40 run of show
www.aipad.com

The thirty-first annual Association of International Photography Art Dealers Photography Show New York will feature more than eighty galleries from around the world in the Park Avenue Armory, running March 17-20. (A gala benefit preview is being held in conjunction with MoMA on March 16, with tickets ranging from $100 to $5,000.) Comprising early, contemporary, and modern photography, the event will highlight work by such artists as Mark Seliger at Steven Kasher, Abelardo Morell at Bonni Benrubi, Naomi Leshem at Andrea Meislin, Alec Soth at Weinstein, John Baldessari at Barry Singer, Alex Prager at Yancey Richardson, Denis Darzacq at Laurence Miller, Arkady Shaikhet at Nailya Alexander, and Harry Callahan, Robert Frank, Eugene Atget, and Thomas Eakins at Alan Klotz. Among the other participating galleries are New Orleans’s a Gallery for Fine Photography, La Jolla’s Joseph Bellows, Toronto’s Stephen Bulger, Munich’s Galerie f5,6, London’s Eric Franck Fine Art, Beijing’s Jade Jar Fine Art, Cologne’s Galerie Priska Pasquer, and such New York favorites as Howard Greenberg, Edwynn Houk, Robert Mann, Yossi Milo, Julie Saul, Bruce Silverstein, and Bryce Wolkowitz. AIPAD will also host a series of panel discussions ($10 each) with a bevy of prestigious guests on Saturday, including “Photography Now: How Artists Are Thinking Today,” with Larry Fink, Shirin Neshat, and Alec Soth, moderated by Julie Saul (10:00 am), “Pictures into Pages: Photography Book Publishing Now,” with Abrams’s Eric Himmel, Aperture’s Lesley Martin, Rizzoli’s Anthony Petrilose, and Steidl’s Gerhard Steidl, moderated by Steven Kasher (12 noon), “New Curators / New Directions,” with the Tate’s Simon Baker, MoMA’s Roxana Marcoci, LACMA’s Britt Salvesen, ICP’s Brian Wallis, and the Art Institute of Chicago’s Matthew S. Witkovsky, moderated by Rick Wester (2:00), “The Voice of Experience: Behind the Scenes at AIPAD Galleries, with Howard Greenberg, Peter MacGill, Yancey Richardson, and Martin Weinstein, moderated by Jill Arnold (4:00), and “AIPAD and the iPad: New Technology and Photography,” with Jen Bekman, Bill Charles, and Scott Dadich, moderated by Barbara Pollack (6:00).

SHINJUKU OUTLAW: THE GREAT YOKAI WAR

Takashi Miike’s fantasy for families is only five bucks at Lincoln Center matinee

13 FROM TAKASHI MIIKE: THE GREAT YOKAI WAR (YÔKAI DAISENSÔ) (Takashi Miike, 2005)

Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St.
Sunday, March 20, $5, 2:00
Series runs March 16-20
212-875-5610
www.filmlinc.com
www.yokai-movie.com

Mixing in a liberal amount of Time Bandits with The Wizard of Oz, throwing in a little Hayao Miyazaki, and adding dashes of Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Lord of the Rings, Gremlins, Return of the Jedi, Labyrinth, and even Kill Bill, Takashi Miike has wound up with an entertaining fantasy film for both kids and adults. Known more for such ultraviolent, hard-to-watch frightfests as Audition and Ichi the Killer, Miike reveals his softer side in this genre film based on yokai manga by Shigeru Mizuki (who also plays the Demon King). Ryunosuke Kamiki is splendid as Tadashi, a young city boy taking care of his grandfather (Hiroyuki Miyasako) in a country village, where he is chosen at a local festival as the mythical Kirin Rider, the guardian of peace and friend of justice. Soon he finds himself in a real battle between good and evil, taking him from the heights of the Great Goblin’s mountain cave to the depths of a seedy underworld run by the very white Agi (Chiaki Kuriyama) and powerful mastermind Katou Yasunori (Etsushi Toyokawa). Joined by yokai spirits Kawahime (Mai Takahashi), Kawatarou (Sadao Abe), and the oh-so-cute Sunekosuri (we’d buy one of these in a second if they ever hit the market), Tadashi fights to save the human world, wielding his special sword against a phalanx of mechanical robots and other villainous creatures. At more than two hours, The Great Yokai War is at least twenty minutes too long and would have greatly benefited by the excision of one very silly subplot. But it is still a charming tale from the reigning master of horror. The Great Yokai War is screening for only $5 as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center series “Shinjuku Outlaw: 13 from Takashi Miike,” being held March 16-20 in conjunction with Subway Cinema and also including such Miike films as Fudoh: The New Generation (1996), The Bird People in China (1998), Shangri-la (2002), and the awesome new 13 Assassins (2010). Miike was originally scheduled to appear at the Walter Reade Theater to introduce several screenings but has had to cancel because of the catastrophic events occurring in Japan.

STORY LEADS TO ACTION: BUDRUS

Documentary shows Palestinians and Israelis coming together in nonviolent protest

BUDRUS (Julia Bacha, 2009)
92YTribeca
200 Hudson St. at Canal St.
Thursday, March 17, $12, 7:30
212-415-5500
www.92YTribeca.org/film
www.justvision.org/budrus

Written, directed, and edited by Julia Bacha, who also served as one of the producers, Budrus has been having an impact at film festivals around the world, including Sydney, Dubai, San Francisco, London, Berlin, Jerusalem, and Tribeca. The documentary follows a small group of protesters in the village of Budrus, population 1,500, as they battle the Israeli military, which has been charged with protecting construction workers who are bulldozing the people’s lifeblood, hundreds of acres of olive trees, in order to put up the wall known as the separation barrier, isolating the Palestinians in the West Bank; the “red line” also goes right through the village’s cemetery. But local leader Ayed Morrar decides to try something relatively different for the Middle East, emphasizing nonviolence and even permitting women, including his fifteen-year-old daughter, to participate in their dangerous movement. The Popular Committee Against the Wall’s mission appears destined to fail until they are joined by Jews who believe that the Israeli government needs to reconsider where they are putting up the fence and allow the Palestinians to keep their land and preserve their history. Bacha talks to people on both sides of the struggle, including the Morrars as well as Israeli soldiers Doron Spielman and Yasmine Levi, who all speak honestly about their complex situation. Made by a team of Jews and Palestinians who have formed Just Vision, an organization dedicated to bringing to light nonviolent peacebuilding efforts in the Middle East, Budrus could have easily turned into propaganda, but in the end its agenda is something difficult to argue with. The film is screening March 17 as part of the 92YTribeca monthly series “Story Leads to Action,” hosted by Peabody Award winner Judith Helfand of Chicken & Egg Pictures and Working Films, who leads postscreening discussion with filmmakers, activists, and experts examining how individuals can engage with such politically and socially sensitive films as Budrus, Susan Beraza’s Bag It (April 21), and Alexandra Codina’s Monica & David (May 19).