twi-ny recommended events

LATE-NIGHT FAVORITES: ERASERHEAD

ERASERHEAD is back where it belongs, screenings on weekend midnights at IFC

ERASERHEAD (David Lynch, 1977)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at Third St.
Friday, February 10, and Saturday, February 11, 12 midnight
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com

David Lynch’s debut feature is about faith, fidelity, and fatherhood. Jack Nance stars as Henry Spencer, a lonely, scared man who suddenly has to raise his newborn child himself after his girlfriend, Mary X (Charlotte Stewart), leaves. Oh, it’s also about fear, fascination, and futility, the most bizarre film ever made by a major director. The avant-garde narrative seems to come from another dimension, with mutants, decapitation, a lady in a radiator, and a pencil-making machine. Everything about the movie, shot in creepy black and white, is strange, from the sound to the special effects to the bizarre score to the greatest hairstyles this side of BARTON FINK. It’s nearly a one-man show, with Lynch serving as writer, director, composer, producer, art director, production designer, editor, and special effects guru. ERASERHEAD is an amazing, unforgettable journey through the diseased mind of a madman. You haven’t truly lived until you’ve seen it at least once.

FRIDAYS AT NOON: AM I TOO CLOSE? MEGAN SPRENGER EXPLORES THE QUESTION

Megan Sprenger continues her ongoing examination of the relationship between audience and performer with free sneak peek at the 92nd St. Y (photo by Yi-chun Wu)

92nd St. Y, Buttenwieser Hall
395 Lexington Ave. at 92nd St.
Friday, February 11, free, 12 noon
212-415-5500
www.92y.org

Back in May 2009, Megan Sprenger and her mvworks company presented …WITHIN US. at P.S. 122, a show that we called “a brilliant evening-length piece of confrontational dance theater that gets right in the audience’s face — literally.” Sprenger will be at the 92nd St. Y on February 11 as part of the Harkness Dance Center’s free Fridays at Noon series, discussing the ever-present question “Am I too close?” with fellow choreographers Sarah Maxfield, who runs the web-based performance relay One-Shot, and Yanira Castro, whose latest project is called a canary torsi. The trio will offer sneak peeks at works-in-progress, including Sprenger’s HOLD MY HAND, and will also participate in a Q&A with the audience, with whom they cannot promise that they won’t get too close.

ATHENA FILM FESTIVAL

Barnard grad Greta Gerwig is one of the honorees at the inaugural Athena Film Festval, held at her alma mater this weekend

Barnard Campus
Broadway between 116th & 120th Sts.
February 11-13, $10 (Festival Pass $50)
www.athenafilmfestival.com

The inaugural Athena Film Festival: A Celebration of Women’s Leadership kicks off a weekend of exciting events tomorrow, with a bevy of film screenings, honorees, panel discussions, Q&As, and more. Hosted by Barnard College’s Athena Center for Leadership Studies, the festival was founded by Kathryn Kolbert and Melissa Silverstein; the initial Honorary Host Committee includes such groundbreaking movers and shakers as Molly Haskell, Delia Ephron, Mira Nair, Anna Quindlen, Sheila Nevins, and Gale Anne Hurd in addition to a couple of men, Kevin Haft and Mark Urman. This year’s Athena Award winners are breakout mumblecore star Greta Gerwig, director Debra Granik, producer Debra Martin Chase, screenwriter Ephron, and documentarian Chris Hegedus, all of whom will be on hand to discuss their work. The festival opens Friday night at 6:00 with Tim Chambers’s THE MIGHTY MACS, which will be followed by a discussion with former WNBA star Kym Hampton, Women’s Sports Foundation CEO Kathryn Olson, and Chambers. Also on the Friday-night schedule are Sherry Hormann’s DESERT FLOWER, followed by a Q&A with fashion model and actress Liya Kebede and film critic Karen Durbin, and Granik’s Oscar-nominated WINTER’S BONE, followed by a discussion with Granik and cowriter and coproducer Anne Rosellini, moderated by film writer Anne Thompson. Among the movies screening Saturday and Sunday are BHUTTO (Duane Baughman & Johnny O’Hara, 2009), followed by a talk by political commentator Mona Eltahawy; REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES (Patricia Cardoso, 2002), followed by a discussion with Cardoso and editor Sloane Kelvin; and CHISHOLM ’72: UNBOUGHT & UNBOSSED (Shola Lynch, 2004), followed by an audience Q&A with Lynch. On Saturday, Barnard grad Gerwig will participate in “A Hollywood Conversation” with Vanity Fair’s Leslie Bennetts at 1:00, Dodai Stewart, Margaret Nagle, and Barnard grad Ephron will examine “The Bechdel Test — Where Are the Women Onscreen” at 4:00, and Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage will offer a sneak peek at her upcoming play, BY THE WAY, MEET VERA STARK, at 4:30. On Sunday at 2:00, Penelope Jagessar Chaffer, Ricki Stern, and Chris Hegedus will explore “Women Documentarians — Stories That Change the World” with film critic Caryn James. It’s an ambitious festival, promising to “examine the values women leaders share — vision, courage, resilience — and explore leadership across race, class, and culture.” More than a century after women started making movies, it seems a shame that we still need a festival that separates the girls from the boys to celebrate and foster women in film. But alas, we do.

OUTSIDER ART FAIR 2011

Just Folk will be exhibiting works by Bill Traylor at the nineteenth annual Outsider Art Fair (Bill Traylor, “Yellow Goat,” poster paint and graphite on cardboard, ca. 1939-42)

The Mart
7 West 34th St. off Fifth Ave.
February 11-13, $20 (includes catalog)
www.sanfordsmith.com

The nineteenth annual Outsider Art Fair gets under way tonight with an advance preview benefiting the Creative Growth Art Center, which “serves adult artists with developmental, mental, and physical disabilities,” and the Fountain Gallery, which “provides an environment for artists living and working with mental illness to pursue their personal visions and to challenge the stigma that surrounds mental illness.” The show, held at the Mart at 7 West 34th St., opens to the general public on Friday, featuring more than thirty galleries displaying works by outsider, visionary, and self-taught artists who paint, draw, and sculpt without specific training and education. Among the exhibitors are the Electric Pencil, Ricco/Maresca, Carl Hammer, Just Folk, Yukiko Koide Presents, Marcia Weber Art Objects, and Maxwell Projects. Special events include a Friday-night after-party ($50), a presentation by Dr. Thomas Röske of the Prinzhorn Collection on Saturday at 1:30 ($25), and a panel discussion on the role of artists with disabilities in outsider and contemporary art on Sunday at 2:00 ($25). Outsider Art Week continues at the American Folk Art Museum, with Anna Panszczyk delivering the Nathan Lerner Annual Lecture, “Reading Ephemera (and Fairies) in the Artworks of Henry Darger,” Friday at 4:30 (free with museum admission), followed Sunday at 10:00 by the Anne Hill Blanchard Symposium, “Uncommon Artists XIX: A Series of Cameo Talks,” with Laurel Gitlen speaking on Michael Patterson-Carver, Brett Littman on Eugene Von Bruenchenhein, Kendall Messick on Gordon Brinckle, and Tom Whitehead on Clementine Hunter connoisseurship ($35), and a 1:00 screening of Kendall Messick’s 2003 film, THE PROJECTIONIST, followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker (free with museum admission).

OSCAR WATCH: RESTREPO

Life in the Korengal Valley was not all fun and games for Specialist Misha Pemble-Belkin, Ross Murphy, and the rest of Battle Company, 173rd US Airborne at Outpost Restrepo in Afghanistan (photo © Tim Hetherington)

RESTREPO: ONE PLATOON, ONE YEAR, ONE VALLEY (Sebastian Junger & Tim Hetherington, 2010)
Paley Center for Media
25 West 52nd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Thursday, February 10, $20, 6:30
212-621-6800
www.restrepothemovie.com
www.paleycenter.org

From June 2007 to July 2008, journalists Sebastian Junger (THE PERFECT STORM) and Tim Hetherington (LIBERIA: AN UNCIVIL WAR) made a total of ten trips to the dangerous Korengal Valley in Afghanistan, documenting the full deployment of Battle Company of the 173rd Airborne Brigade. With snipers hidden all around them, the fifteen soldiers of Second Platoon built a remote, strategic outpost they named Restrepo after PFC Juan Restrepo, the well-liked company medic who was killed early on. Junger and Hetherington film such men as Captain Dan Kearney, Staff Sergeant Kevin Rice, and Sergeant Brendan C. O’Byrne as they go about their daily duties, joking around, playing the guitar, meeting with Afghan locals to get information about the Taliban, and digging trenches while prepared to be shot at at any moment. The journalists took more than 150 hours of footage, supplemented with interviews with several of the soldiers after they were safely back at home base in Italy, talking about what they went through. There is nothing political about RESTREPO, nor does it pull at the heartstrings with melodramatic, overemotional scenes; instead, it depicts the harsh realities of battle, including the long stretches of boredom punctuated by sudden life-or-death situations. There is no narration, no one discusses the possible merits of the war, and no generals or politicians are on hand to defend America’s involvement in the region. There’s no ethnocentric yahooism, nor is there racist treatment of the mostly unseen enemy. It’s just war, pure and simple, seen from the perspective of men who chose to join the army and risk their lives for their country. The film won the documentary Grand Jury Prize at last year’s Sundance Festival and also screened at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival at Lincoln Center. Nominated for an Oscar for Best Documentary, RESTREPO is having a special presentation February 10 at the Paley Center, followed by a panel discussion with Junger, Hetherington, and THE WRONG WAR author Bing West, moderated by Foreign Affairs’ Gideon Rose.

THE MUSIC OF NEIL YOUNG AT CARNEGIE HALL

Carnegie Hall
Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
881 Seventh Ave. at West 57th St.
Thursday, February 10, $45-$250, 8:00
www.neilyoungcarnegie.com

Music impresario Michael Dorf’s annual benefit honoring rock-and-roll icons this year turns to Canadian Hall of Famer Neil Young, after previously paying tribute to such megastars as Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, the Who, R.E.M., Elton John, and others. Dorf, the Knitting Factory guru who now runs City Winery, has once again put together a stellar lineup of musicians to play songs from throughout Young’s long, diverse career, which took off when Young was part of Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young in the mid-to-late 1960s, then exploded with the success of his early-’70s solo albums, AFTER THE GOLD RUSH and HARVEST. The ridiculously prolific anticorporate rocker has released more than thirty studio albums and eight live records (in addition to those with the Springfield and CSNY), ranging from acoustic folk and country to rockabilly and grunge, from electronic noise and the blues to environmental activism and antiwar screeds. The tribute, taking place at Carnegie Hall on February 10, raises funds for such music and arts programs for underprivileged youth as Fixing Instruments for Kids in Schools, Church Street School for Music & Art, the Pinwheel Project, Music Unites, the American Symphony Orchestra, and Young Audiences New York. The impressive roster of performers includes Patti Smith & Jesse Smith, the Roots, Nada Surf, Cowboy Junkies, Juliana Hatfield & Evan Dando, Bettye LaVette, Shawn Colvin, Bebel Gilberto, Aaron Neville, the Wood Brothers, Keller Williams, Joan Osborne, Jakob Dylan, J Mascis, Glen Hansard, Mason Jennings, DeVotchKa, Ben Ottewell, Pete Yorn, Joe Purdy, and house bandleader Larry Campbell, who will be hosting a sold-out live rehearsal of the show tonight at City Winery. In past “Music of” shows, the Boss and members of R.E.M. participated in their own tributes, so there’s always a chance that car and train enthusiast Young might be on hand, although we wouldn’t bet on it.

THE SUSAN SARANDON PICTURE SHOW

Susan Sarandon will participate in celebratory career tribute at BAM this week

BAMcinématek
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
February 10-13
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

Perhaps no contemporary American actress other than Meryl Streep has given the world of motion pictures as many iconic characters and memorable cinematic moments as Susan Sarandon, but there’s one thing Sarandon has that not even Streep does — a simmering sexuality portrayed with comfort and ease, still burning at the age of sixty-four. The Academy Award-winning, New York City-born sex symbol has been on the scene since her dazzling debut as Melissa Compton in JOE (John G. Avildsen, 1970), going on to star in such unforgettable films as THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (Jim Sharman, 1975), PRETTY BABY (Louis Malle, 1978), ATLANTIC CITY (Louis Malle, 1980), THE HUNGER (Tony Scott, 1983), BULL DURHAM (Ron Shelton, 1988), THELMA & LOUISE (Ridley Scott, 1991), and DEAD MAN WALKING (Tim Robbins, 1995). If the last decade has not been quite as kind to her, she still has already amassed one helluva resume, and her career is being celebrated this week with a too-brief retrospective at BAM. “The Susan Sarandon Picture Show” begins February 10 with a screening of ROMANCE & CIGARETTES (John Turturro, 2006), which will be followed by a Q&A with Sarandon and writer-director Turturro, after which Sarandon will switch theaters for a Q&A with writer-director Paul Schrader following a screening of the underrated LIGHT SLEEPER (Paul Schrader, 1992). Friday’s lineup includes JOE GOULD’S SECRET (Stanley Tucci, 2000), PRETTY BABY, THE FRONT PAGE (Billy Wilder, 1974), and a late-night showing of ROCKY HORROR, with Saturday steaming up with THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK (George Miller, 1987) and THE HUNGER. On Sunday afternoon, BAM will hold concurrent screenings of DEAD MAN WALKING, THELMA & LOUISE, ATLANTIC CITY, and BULL DURHAM, after which all attendees will move into the Howard Gilman Opera House for a conversation with Sarandon, moderated by Bob Balaban.