twi-ny recommended events

HARDEST MEN IN TOWN: YAKUZA CHRONICLES OF SIN, SEX & VIOLENCE

Robert Mitchum film kicks off Japan Society Yakuza series

THE YAKUZA (Sidney Pollack, 1975)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Wednesday, March 9, $12, 7:30
Series runs March 9-19
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

One of Hollywood’s first forays into the Japanese underworld has quite a pedigree — directed by Sydney Pollack (coming off his success with The Way We Were) and written by Robert Towne (who had just scribed Chinatown and Shampoo) and Paul Schrader (his first writing credit, to be followed by Taxi Driver). The great Robert Mitchum stars as Harry Kilmer, a WWII vet who returns to Japan thirty years later to help his friend George Tanner (Brian Family Affair Keith), whose daughter has been kidnapped. Kilmer thinks he can just walk in and walk out, but things quickly get complicated, and he ends up having to take care of some unfinished business involving the great Keiko Kishi (The Twilight Samurai). Kilmer and his trigger-happy young cohort, Dusty (Richard Logan’s Run Jordan), hole up at Oliver’s (Herb “Murray the Cop” Edelman), where they are joined by Tanaka (Ken Takakura) in their battle against Toshiro Tono (Eiji Hiroshima Mon Amour Okada) and Goro (James Flower Drum Song Shigeta) while searching for a man with a spider tattoo on his head. There are lots of shootouts and sword fights, discussions of honor and betrayal, and, in the grand Yakuza tradition, the ritual cutting off of the pinkie. The Yakuza kicks off the Globus Film Series “Hardest Men in Town: Yakuza Chronicles of Sin, Sex & Violence” on March 9 and will be followed by a Q&A with Schrader.

Takashi Miike will be at Japan Society on March 15 to introduce his 1999 Yakuza film, DEAD OR ALIVE

The series continues March 10 with the U.S. premiere of Onibi: The Fire Within (Rokuro Mochizuki, 1997), which will feature an introduction and lecture by Jake Adelstein, author of Tokyo Vice. On March 11, the screening of The Wolves (Hideo Gosha, 1971) will be followed by a Gangsta Party with High Teen Boogie. March 12 is “Honor Amongst Ruffians Saturday or: The Films You’ll Never Ever Find on DVD . . . Ever,” including the international premieres of The Walls of Abashiri Prison (Pt 3): Longing for Home (Teruo Ishii, 1965) and Brutal Tales of Chivalry (Kiyoshi Saeki, 1965), while March 13 is “A Dog-Eat-Dog World Sunday,” with screenings of three films, including Youth of the Beast (Seijun Suzuki, 1963). On March 15, the great one himself, Takashi Miike, in town for a five-day retrospective at Lincoln Center, will introduce his apocalyptic Dead or Alive (1999).The series concludes on March 19 with the New York premiere of Takeshi Kitano’s 2010 Yakuza thriller, Outrage: The Way of the Modern Yakuza. If you’ve never seen a Yakuza movie, you’re in for a treat. No mere ripoff of American gangster pictures, Yakuza films focus on a whole different level of honor and betrayal, violence and revenge.

AN EVENING WITH CINEMA 16

Psychic Ills will play commissioned scores live to avant-garde films on Tuesday night at Cinema 16 show at the Kitchen

The Kitchen
512 West 19th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday, March 8, 410, 7:00
212-255-5793 ext11
www.thekitchen.org
www.cinemasixteen.com

Named after the seminal collective run by Amos and Marcia Vogel from 1947 to 1963, Cinema 16 keeps alive avant-garde films through special programs that have spread from New York City now to Austin, Chicago, Los Angeles, Portland, and Mexico City. Curated by Molly Surno, Cinema 16 heads into the Kitchen on Tuesday, presenting five short experimental silent films with specially commissioned scores by Psychic Ills. The New York-based trance band, which has released such records as Astral Occurrence, Catoptric, Telesthetic Tape, and the twelve-inch Frkwys Vol. 4, will play live to Raymonde Carasco’s Gradiva Sketch I (1978), Lichter Peter’s Light Sleep (2009), Ron Rice’s Chumlum (1964), John E Schmitz’s The Voices (1953), and Beryl Sokoloff and Crita Grauer’s Necromancia (late 1950s).

TWI-NY TALK: EIKO & KOMA

Eiko & Koma will be in New York City this month presenting three very different projects

Tuesday, March 8, Art Work: An Evening with Eiko Otake, the New School, Wollman Hall, 65 West 11th St., free, 6:00
Tuesday, March 15, and Wednesday, March 16, Delicious Movement Workshop, Baryshnikov Arts Center, 450 West 37th St., $65 with preregistration, 7:00
March 29 – April 9, Baryshnikov Arts Center, free with advance RSVP, Tuesday – Friday 6:00 – 10:00 pm, Saturday 3:00 – 9:00 pm
www.eikoandkoma.org

Shortly after meeting as students in Japan in 1971 at the Tatsumi Hijikata dance studio, Eiko Otake and Takashi Koma Otake formed a partnership that is now in its fifth decade. Based in New York City since 1976, Eiko & Koma have presented experimental modern dance and installation indoors and outdoors all over the world, including such highly praised works as White Dance (1976), Grain (1983), Memory (1989), River (1995), The Caravan Project (1999), and Hunger (2008). Having studied with such innovative choreographers as Kazuo Ohno, Lucas Hoving, and Anna Halprin, their own pieces, for which they generally design all elements, including sets, sound scores, and costumes, have earned them NEA, Guggenheim, and MacArthur Foundation Fellowships, two Bessies, and other prestigious awards.

On March 8, Eiko & Koma will give a free illustrated lecture at the New School on their Retrospective Project (2009-12), in which they are looking back over the course of their storied career. On March 15-16, they’ll be holding two Delicious Movement Workshops at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, inviting participants to “move/dance to actively forget the clutter of our lives so to fully ‘taste’ body and mind.” And from March 29 through April 9 they will present the two-week performance piece Naked at BAC, a movement/visual art installation that explores time, desire, and nakedness that was created during a three-month residency at the Park Avenue Armory and first presented at the Walker Art Center last year. Part of Carnegie Hall’s JapanNYC Festival, Naked is free with advance tickets that allow the audience to come and go as they please during specific time periods, watching Eiko & Koma in an organic environment that will be accompanied by a video retrospective. As they prepare for their New York blitz, Eiko discussed the audience-performer dynamic, nakedness, and more in our latest twi-ny talk.

twi-ny: You will be giving an Art Work talk at the New School on March 8, focusing on the Retrospective Project. What has the experience been like looking back at your long career while you’re still creating fascinating works for the future?

Eiko: We can remember what we were thinking of, about and how. We are sometimes surprised to find so much of what we do now has started long ago. We did not become wiser or better with age. That is a sort of myth. Instead we see more continuity in what we have done and what we are doing now.

twi-ny: That will be followed March 15-16 with your Delicious Movement Workshop at BAC, targeted not at professional dancers but everyone and anyone. What would you tell someone who knows very little, if anything, about dance about the program? Essentially, why should a dance novice not be scared of taking part in the workshop?

Eiko: Of course they should not be scared, because we have developed a way to make the workshop very inclusive and tasty. It is not so much about dance. it is more about moving in a way that is not too difficult and find a pleasure in it.

Eiko & Koma will perform NAKED at the Baryshnikov Arts Center (photo by Anna Lee Campbell)

twi-ny: Your living installation, Naked, will be presented March 29 – April 9 at BAC, where audiences will come and go as they please. You previously performed the piece at the Walker Art Center. How did the unusual staging affect the performer-audience dynamic?

Eiko: We were very close to people, which created the sense of intimacy. There was no beginning or end but purely entries and exits of people, which audience decided themselves. So there was more of an individual act of seeing and feeling on their own accord.

twi-ny: How did the audience react to the piece, which was not staged like a regular dance performance?

Eiko: Unlike a theater event, people in the museum did not know who we are or what we do. So there was a lot of surprise in seeing human naked bodies moving in a gallery. Some people, of course, did not get into it but surprisingly many people stayed longer than we or they expected. Many people also came back to see it again or bring friends. Some people cried. Some people said it was hard for them to leave us since we did not end anything but we just went on.

twi-ny: What was it like performing to an ever-changing, moving audience, with you and Koma on view as maybe more of a spectacle?

Eiko: I did not feel it was a spectacle. We really enjoyed performing for just a few people since we feel their emotions. It was a special experience for both sides. But when there was no one in the room, it was hard to continue with the same intensity. At the same time we could not stop or rest since at any time people might come in.

twi-ny: You’ve appeared naked in previous productions, but this one you even title Naked. What is it that draws you to the nakedness you reveal in your work?

Eiko: Nakedness is a bottom line . . . nothing to lose, nothing to protect us, where we become both more human and more like any other creatures.

MONDAY NIGHTS WITH OSCAR: WHITE HEAT

James Cagney isn’t about to let anything stop him from reaching the top of the world in film noir classic

WHITE HEAT (Raoul Walsh, 1949)
Academy Theater at Lighthouse
111 East 59th St.
Monday, March 7, $5, 7:00
www.oscars.org

Raoul Walsh’s film noir classic White Heat might have been nominated for a mere single Oscar, losing for Best Motion Picture Story (losing to The Stratton Story), but it quickly came to be considered one of the greatest gangster pictures ever made. The 1949 film stars James Cagney as Cody Jarrett, a devout criminal married to the beautiful moll Verna (Viriginia Mayo) but still deeply (and unhealthily) attached to his mother (Margaret Wycherly). While doing time for a train robbery gone wrong, Jarrett finds out that his gang has been taken over by his former flunkie Big Ed Somers (Steve Cochran), who also seems to have taken over Verna as well. Jarrett decides he must break out of jail, setting the stage for an unforgettable climax. Walsh (High Sierra, They Died with Their Boots On) doesn’t concentrate just on the action, of which there is plenty, instead focusing on Jarrett’s troubled psyche as he blindly seeks revenge. White Heat will be showing March 7 as part of the Academy’s monthly Mondays with Oscar series, even though Oscar was not very kind to it; the nominees for Best Picture that year were All the King’s Men, Battleground, The Heiress, A Letter to Three Wives, and Twelve O’Clock High, while the Best Actor nominees were winner Broderick Crawford (All the King’s Men), Kirk Douglas (Champion), Gregory Peck (Twelve O’Clock High), Richard Todd (The Hasty Heart), and John Wayne (Sands of Iwo Jima). The screening will be introduced by screenwriter Richard LaGravenese (The Fisher King, The Horse Whisperer).

DOC WATCHERS PRESENTS 12th & DELAWARE

Documentary looks at battle between prolife center and abortion clinic on a Florida street corner

12th & DELAWARE (Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady, 2010)
Maysles Cinema
343 Malcolm X Blvd. between 127th & 128th Sts.
Monday, March 7, $10, 7:00
212-582-6050
www.mayslesinstitute.org
www.hbo.com/documentaries

Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, who have teamed up for such documentaries as The Boys of Baraka (2005), the Oscar-nominated Jesus Camp (2006), and one segment of Freakonomics (2010), spent a year on the rather indistinct corner of 12th St. & Delaware Ave. in the small community of Fort Pierce, Florida, where an intense battle is waging. On one side of the street sits an abortion clinic, while on the other side is the prolife Pregnancy Care Center. Ewing and Grady are able to get the primarily young, poor pregnant women considering abortion to open up and share their stories as they face one of the most difficult decisions anybody will ever have to make. The women are met by a constant handful of protesters outside the abortion clinic, who try to get them to change their mind and go across the street. Several of the women go to the Pregnancy Care Center by accident, believing it to be the abortion clinic — which is precisely why the center set up shop there — where they are not told of their mistake and are offered money and clothing to not go through with the termination of their pregnancies. They become pawns in a religious and moral battle that Ewing and Grady show can be as infuriating as it is heartbreaking, although the filmmakers do an excellent job of remaining neutral, not casting judgment. Interestingly, while the workers at the prolife center have a lot to say on the issue, the people at the abortion clinic are far more cautious and reserved, with the owner-doctor never being seen on camera but only pulling up in his car (perhaps at least partly for safety reasons, as Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller was murdered during the time the film was being made). This special screening of 12th & Delaware, which will be followed by a Q&A with one of the filmmakers, is part of the Maysles Institute’s monthly Doc Watchers Presents series, curated by Hellura Lyle.

NO MORE LOVE

Art, music, and more come together at all-night Brooklyn warehouse party

63 Woodward Ave. between Metropolitan and Flushing Aves., Brooklyn
Saturday, March 5, 6:30 – 3:30
Admission: $5 with RSVP to www.mememovement.com
www.facebook.com/event

As Saturday nights go, this is a big one in the art world, with more than a dozen fairs in town, many with special programs scheduled for tonight. But a very different kind of event is taking place in a large warehouse in Brooklyn, where the nonprofit arts collective the Meme Movement has curated an exciting evening of art and music. While beer from the Brooklyn Brewery flows all night long ($2 6:30 – 8:00, $4 8:00 – 3:30), Loren Alliston, Lindsay Wynn, D. Oscar Horner, and Taylor Marie Prendergast will display their photography and installation art. The band lineup, beginning at 8:30, includes the Nelsonvillains, Evan Shinners & the SUITS! (who are planning a special fog-filled multimedia set, with the opening song played in complete darkness), Shapes, Ghost Pal, Flowers for Reagan, and Sitting Ducks, with DJs Earl, Big Time DK’s, and BullwInkle filling in the gaps. In addition, there will be tattoos by Aris, a photobooth, body painting, video projections, and more. Admission is five bucks with RSVP to www.mememovement.com. It should all make for a pretty wild night.

SITE Fest and IonSound Music Festival

You never know what you’ll walk into at Bushwick’s Site Fest (photo: Sidewalk Dances)

Multiple venues in Bushwick
March 5-6, suggested donation $5 per event, $10 day pass, $15 weekend pass
www.artsinbushwick.org

Celebrating the burgeoning art, music, dance, and film scene in Bushwick, the third annual Site Fest will feature a bevy of performances Saturday and Sunday in conjunction with Armory Arts Week. Held at Chez Bushwick, Grace Exhibition Space, the Bushwick Starr, 3rd Ward, and numerous satellite venues, the festival will feature such participatory events at 3rd Ward as Gavin Campbell’s “Documentation of Flag,” which deals with his growing up on the Irish border; Hoyun Son’s “Social Shredding,” centered on a garment made of Korean funereal fiber; Stefan Adamski’s “Induction,” involving audience hypnosis; and Michael Freeman’s “Part 3: The Mnemonic Fool Series,” in which he interacts with the public while naked. The Bushwick Starr will host a series of text-based performances and installations (Jeremy Finch’s “Sketchbook,” Ari and Friends’ “Shake,” “vvitalny shares her thoughts w/ birds”), while Chez Bushwick will concentrate on experimental dance, including Laurel and Aya’s “Hand in Glove,” CJ Holm/Creature Theater’s “The Salad of the Bad Café,” and Michele Torino Hower’s “Merengue, as in Pie.” At Grace, Dr. Lisa will offer “Psychotherapy Live!,” Polaroica will be tattooing in “Tiempofaga,” and Meatspace will stage an interactive multimedia “Frankenstein Sweater Party,” where sewers can join in. Goodbye Blue Monday will be home to the IonSound Music Festival, with performances by Aimee Norwich, Bombs Making Bombs, Dear Comrade, Pezzettino, the Controversy, Rarefaction, Emilyis, and other music groups. The suggested donation for all hub space events and performances is a mere five bucks, with proceeds benefiting the nonprofit organization Arts in Bushwick. Our choice for best title: Kate Berlant’s “An Illustrative Colonoscopy into an Epistemological Kitty Cat.”