Karen Ziemba leads a lovely ensemble in revival of Mrs. Warren’s Profession
MRS. WARREN’S PROFESSION
Theatre Row
410 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Dyer Aves.
Through November 20, $73 (save $20 with code MWPGM) gingoldgroup.org bfany.org
Gingold Theatrical Group returns to live theater with a charming and delightful revival of Bernard Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession, continuing at Theatre Row through November 20. GTG artistic director David Staller adapted the script from several versions Shaw wrote as well as a proposed screenplay, resulting in a lighthearted, peppery satire of Victorian mores and societal prejudices that feels fresh and sprightly today.
Inspired by Henrik Ibsen and his own 1882 novel, Cashel Byron’s Profession, about a man who hides his profession as a boxer from the woman he loves, Shaw’s play is set in 1912 in a country home in Surrey. Vivie (Nicole King), who has recently graduated from university with a degree in mathematics and is preparing to work in the city as an actuary, is waiting for her wealthy mother (Karen Ziemba) to arrive. Vivie has spent much of her life in boarding schools and doesn’t know her mother very well, and it soon becomes apparent that there’s no father in the picture. They are joined by three friends of Mrs. Warren’s: the pompous aristocrat Sir George Crofts (Robert Cuccioli), the architect Praed (Alvin Keith), Rev. Samuel Gardner (Raphael Nash Thompson), and the reverend’s son, Frank (David Lee Huynh).
Crofts, Praed, and the elder Gardner are aware of how Mrs. Warren made her money, first as a prostitute, then as a madam. It’s possible that one of them is Vivie’s father, but that is not exactly preventing them from wooing the young woman with talk of art, romance, faith, and financial success. Meanwhile, Frank, a gold-digging gambler who has known Vivie since childhood, is in love with her, or at least with her money, pitting the men against one another even though Vivie has made it clear that she is ready to make a life for herself in London, unattached.
Vivie (Nicole King) and Frank (David Lee Huynh) consider their futures in Mrs. Warren’s Profession
Handsomely directed by Staller, the comedy of manners and equality plays out over Brian Prather’s lovely white set, consisting of a few chairs, several long steps in the center that evoke the ups and downs of class, and tall, lacy white shelves containing books and dolls, with drapes and ivy nearly swallowing it all up, nature infringing on this community of calculating machinations. Asa Benally’s dainty period costumes and Brandy Hoang Collier’s props add to the overall gracefulness.
The play caused controversy when it debuted in London in 1902 (after having been banned since 1895) and in New York City three years later, primarily because of Mrs. Warren’s profession, even though it’s never mentioned by name. It was written as a call for women’s rights, which still feels relevant more than a century later, as sex workers fight for legalization and respect and women have had to leave the work force in droves during the pandemic to do unpaid labor at home.
In her off-Broadway debut, King is terrific as Vivie, a forward-thinking woman who insists she does not need a man in her life in order to succeed. The men surround her like hungry bees, but she is not about to let them suffocate her; her strong handshake alone intimidates them, revealing her power from the start. When Praed praises that her mother did not raise Vivie “conventionally,” she replies, “Oh! Have I been behaving unconventionally?” He answers, “Oh no: oh dear no. At least, not ‘conventionally unconventionally,’ you understand. . . . When I was your age, young men and women were afraid of each other.” Vivie appears afraid of nothing. “In today’s world there’d be no stopping her,” Shaw wrote. Vivie later tells her mother, “People are always blaming circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.”
And just as Vivie is not about to make any apologies for the choices she’s making and the circumstances she’s creating, Mrs. Warren, wonderfully portrayed by Tony winner Ziemba (Contact,Curtains), is proud of her own past, doing whatever she feels necessary to rise up from her lowly beginnings. (The potent role has previously been played by Joan Plowright, Dana Ivey, Elizabeth Ashley, Cherry Jones, and Lilli Palmer.) “What’s a woman worth? What’s life worth? Without self-respect!” she says to Vivie. “Why am I independent? Because I always knew how to respect myself and control myself.”
Shaw addressed gender stereotypes in his long and detailed 1902 “Author’s Apology,” which called to task critics and censors who, he believed, missed the salient points of the play, including celebrating the title character. “The notion that Mrs. Warren must be a fiend is only an example of the violence and passion which the slightest reference to sex arouses in undisciplined minds, and which makes it seem natural for our lawgivers to punish silly and negligible indecencies with a ferocity unknown in dealing with, for example, ruinous financial swindling. Had my play been titled Mr. Warren’s Profession, and Mr. Warren been a bookmaker, nobody would have expected me to make him a villain as well.”
In the hands of King and Ziemba, and Shaw and Staller, Vivie and Mrs. Warren, each heroic in her own way, tower over the men, who are mere flies buzzing about. Shaw has nothing to apologize for.
Who: Zhang Yang, Peter Loehr, Richard Peña What: Film conversation Where:China Institute online When: Wednesday, November 17, $10, 8:30 Why: China Institute’s ten-part “Seeing China Through Film” continues November 17 with a discussion about Zhang Yang’s 1999 Shower, a touching tale of a family-run bathhouse in Beijing, starring Zhu Xu as the father and Pu Cunxin and Jiang Wu as his sons. Zhang (Sunflower,Paths of the Soul) will be talking online about changes in China since the late 1990s and the battle between tradition and modernity with series curator and Columbia film professor Richard Peña, the former head of the New York Film Festival, and Peter Loehr, whose Imar Film Co. has produced several of Zhang’s works, including Shower,Quitting, and Spicy Love Soup. The series previously featured Jia Zhangke discussing his debut film, The Pickpocket, film historian Christopher Rea on Yuan Muzhi’s Street Angels, Chen Kaige on his debut, Yellow Earth, and associate professor Weihong Bao on Zheng Junli’s Crows and Sparrows. Note that the films are not screened with the conversation but should be watched in advance; free links are usually provided.
Craig Foster, Ross Frylinck, and Sy Montgomery will discuss new book at virtual 92Y talk
Who: Craig Foster, Ross Frylinck, Sy Montgomery What: Virtual discussion as part of 92Y Recanati-Kaplan Talks Where:92Y online When: Tuesday, November 16, $20, 7:00 Why: One of the most popular and poignant films of the pandemic era has been Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed’s Oscar-winning documentary My Octopus Teacher. The film details the incredible friendship between South African filmmaker Craig Foster and an extraordinary octopus in a kelp forest at the bottom of the ocean and how that affects his relationship with his son, Tom; while we were all locked in our homes, it offered a beautiful respite from our loneliness. Foster (The Great Dance: A Hunter’s Story,Touching the Dragon) and his diving partner Ross Frylinck have now written the book Underwater Wild, which shares stories of their undersea adventures with sea hares, cuttlefish, limpets, and many other marine creatures that can teach humans a thing or two.
In her introduction, Jane Goodall writes, “A friend of mine, knowing of my fascination with octopuses, sent me a link to the film My Octopus Teacher. I knew I was in for a treat, but there was no way I could have imagined what a transformative and entrancing experience was in store for me.” On November 16 at 7:00, Foster and Frylinck, cofounders of the Sea Change Project, which “tells stories that connect people to the wild, motivating them to become part of the regeneration of our planet,” will discuss the book in a 92nd St. Y virtual talk with Sy Montgomery, author of such books as The Soul of an Octopus,Tamed and Untamed: Close Encounters of the Animal Kind, and The Good Good Pig: The Extraordinary Life of Christopher Hogwood.
The life and times of Aulcie Perry on and off the court are detailed in Dan Menkin’s latest sports documentary
AULCIE (Dan Menkin, 2019)
Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan
334 Amsterdam Ave. at West Seventy-Sixth St.
Tuesday, November 16, $15, 7:00 cinematters.eventive.org
The closing night selection of the 2020 Israel Film Center Festival at the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan, Dani Menkin’s Aulcie is returning November 16 at 7:00 for a special screening, followed by an in-person Q&A with Menkin. Israeli director Menkin followed up his 2016 documentary, On the Map, about Maccabi Elite Tel Aviv’s unlikely victory in the 1976-77 European Champions Cup, with this inside look into the life of one of its stars, Aulcie Perry. After being the last man cut from the New York Knicks in 1976, Newark native Perry was recruited to play for Maccabi in Israel, where the 6’10” black man — an unusual sight in the Land of Milk and Honey — quickly became a superstar, helping the team to championships, falling in love with top model Tami Ben Ami, and hanging out in hot clubs, living the high life. But it all came tumbling down in a haze of drugs, and Menkin traces Perry’s attempt to put it all back together, primarily by finding the daughter he has not seen since she was a baby.
The film is set up as Perry’s confession to that daughter, Cierra Musungay. “I always knew one thing: that I wanted to tell you my story, the way it is, with the good and the bad,” he says at the beginning of the documentary. “So where do I start? People say you start at the beginning. But I wanted to start at the end, or when I thought the end was coming.” He was inspired to track her down after facing a serious health scare. “I think, that only when I almost died, I started to really live. And that’s when I wanted to find you and, maybe in some ways, find myself,” he adds.
Writer, producer, and director Menkin goes back and forth between archival footage, animation by Assaf Zellner, and interviews with Aulcie’s sister Bernadine Lewis, his friends Wayne Tyre and Roy Young, his ex-girlfriend Juanita Jackson, his son Aulcie Perry Jr., and many men from his Maccabi family, including former teammates Earl Williams and Tal Brody, team president Shimon Mizrahi, co-owner Oudi Recanati, coach Zvi Sherf, and manager Shamluk Maharovsky, who was like a father to him. “In Israel, there wasn’t that much prejudice against Black players, and he felt at home here,” NBA commentator Simmy Reguer says. “Aulcie came in like a blessing from the gods,” fellow Jersey native and team captain Brody recalls. And Sports Illustrated writer Alexander Wolff explains, “At Maccabi Tel Aviv, Aulcie Perry was Michael Jordan, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar rolled into one.”
Now seventy-one, Perry is honest and forthright throughout, admitting his failings and wanting to make up for lost time. He offers no excuses for his precipitous fall, and he’s not seeking sympathy. He’s a man who made mistakes and wants a chance to set things right. Aulcie is a cautionary tale of redemption with heart and soul, focusing on the need to be part of a family, no matter how different and unexpected it may be.
Jimmy “Beau James” Walker (Martin Dockery) and Fiorello “the Little Flower” La Guardia (Christopher Romero Wilson) step into the ring in Tammany Hall (photo by Maria Baranova)
TAMMANY HALL
SoHo Playhouse
15 Vandam St.
Wednesday – Sunday thorugh January 9, $93.75 www.sohoplayhouse.com
Tammany Hall is a rousing immersive production that puts audience members right in the middle of a fierce political battle — in 1929, between incumbent mayor Jimmy “Beau James” Walker (Martin Dockery) and Harlem congressman Fiorello “the Little Flower” La Guardia (Christopher Romero Wilson). The exciting and high-energy show takes place throughout SoHo Playhouse, renamed the Huron Club; numerous rooms have been repurposed by Dan Daly, from a central space with a boxing ring where a debate occurs to secret offices, a theater, the rooftop, and a bar — it might be the Prohibition Era, but the drinks are flowing.
It’s election night, November 5, 1929, a week after the Black Tuesday stock market crash. Gentleman Jimmy is running for his second term, backed by the powerful Tammany Hall machine, pitted against upstart reformer La Guardia, who wants to rid city government of corruption, patronage, and graft. The outcome appears to have already been decided — er, rigged — since Tammany Hall is Walker’s home turf and he is surrounded by sycophants and supporters. As the audience, which has been given ballots, finds seats around the ring, various characters come up and talk to them individually; how you relate to these brief chats could lead to what story you follow and how involved you get. There are at least three separate threads; I highly recommend that people in your group head off in different directions to compare notes later, as one participant will not be able to see everything by themselves.
“We got to get through the debate,” Tammany Hall operative Olvany (Isaac J Conner) says to guests. “We got to let La Guardia have his say, but we know Walker will have him down and out in the first round. It’s really a done deal and I know we can count on you, right? Of course we can.” Team Walker also includes the mayor’s mistress, Betty Compton (Marie Anello), who wants to become a popular entertainer; her fellow performer Marion “Kiki” Roberts (Chloe Kekovic); gangster Legs Diamond (Nathaniel J. Ryan); the wealthy, connected “Battery” Dan Finn (Andrew Broaddus); pianist and musical director Smarty (Sami Petrucci); choreographer Ritzi (Charley Wenzel), Judge Joseph Crater’s girlfriend; and Tammany Hall fixture Curry (Shahzeb Hussain).
Virtually on his own in enemy territory, La Guardia tells onlookers, “It feels like classic Tammany Hall, this. This overbearing architecture and antechambers and club exclusive access — I can’t stand it. Sure, that could just be a personal thing, but politics are made up of people and people building buildings and people choosing to build buildings like this — to make people feel privileged for being allowed to see inside them, inside the club. . . . We should all have access all the time. To the workings. To the truth. All these curtains and panels and smoke and mirrors, that’s hooey. Simple, open, transparency. It’s not a lot to ask for.”
Meanwhile, Isidor Jacob Kresel (Jesse Castellanos) and Valentine (Natasa Babic) appear to be recruiting people for undisclosed missions. It all comes together for a grand finale in an illegal downstairs speakeasy.
SoHo Playhouse is transformed into the Huron Club on election night, 1929, for immersive production (photo by Maria Baranova)
As with nearly all immersive productions, the more you put into it, the more you get out of it. You don’t have to participate; the actors are trained to select those who show more interest in lending a hand and getting in on the act. I loved every scintillating second as Kresel’s right-hand man, helping him and the Little Flower in their attempt to take down Tammany.
The many rooms of the Huron Club, built on property John Jacob Astor bought from Aaron Burr on Van Dam St., are brought to wonderful life by Daly, with clever touches everywhere you look, many referencing gambling; the lighting is by Emily Clarkson, with songs by Gavin Whitworth, sound by Megan Culley, and fanciful period costumes by Grace Jeon, all of which makes it feel like you’ve stepped into 1929 New York. Created and directed by Darren Lee Cole (Fleabag,Killer Joe) and Alexander Flanagan-Wright (The Great Gatsby,Orpheus), Tammany Hall is a sordid tale of power, greed, and hubris that fits right in with our current political climate, perverted by the rampant questioning of the legitimacy of America’s electoral process and the prevalence of big money. The tall and wiry Dockery is appropriately dapper, smarmy, and self-satisfied as Walker, while Wilson portrays La Guardia with a fiery passion and determination.
Perhaps it’s all summed up best by Ritzi, who says near the end, “I need a drink. You need a drink? The bar’s reopened. Tammany Hall still stands.” But not for long.
Matthew Heineman’s The First Wave closes the 2021 DOC NYC festival
DOC NYC 2021
In-person: November 10-19, $19 per screening
Online: November 11-28, $12 per screening
IFC Center, 323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Cinépolis Chelsea, 260 West Twenty-Third St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
SVA Theatre, 333 West Twenty-Third St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves. www.docnyc.net
The twelfth annual DOC NYC festival emerges from the pandemic with a hybrid collection of more than two hundred films and events that offer an alternative to the continuing rash of fake news and truthiness found on cable and social media. Of course, documentarians have their own agendas as well, but they lean strongly in favor of highlighting important issues through facts and celebrating legitimate feats accomplished through individual determination, both public and private.
This year’s sections include “Coming of Age,” “Fight the Power,” “Luminaries,” “Personal Journeys,” “Sonic Cinema,” and “Focus: Journalists,” covering more than seventy themes, from Food & Wine, History, and Music to Activism, Outsiders, and War & Conflict. The 2021 Lifetime Achievement Award winners are cameraperson, cinematographer, and director Joan Churchill (Gimme Shelter,Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer,Shut Up & Sing) and Raoul Peck (Fatal Assistance,Moloch Tropical,I Am Not Your Negro).
Sam Pollard and Rex Miller’s Citizen Ashe is the centerpiece selection of this year’s DOC NYC fest
Among the many portraits are explorations of such figures as entertainer and Rat Packer Dean Martin, singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette, chef Julia Child, actress and filmmaker Adrienne Shelly, singer Dionne Warwick, cartoonist Spain Rodriguez, undersea explorer Jacques Cousteau, restaurateur and TV host Anthony Bourdain, rapper DMX, actress Selma Blair, basketball star Kevin Garnett, and author Kurt Vonnegut, with works by such luminaries as Stanley Nelson, Liz Garbus, Eva Orner, Alison Klayman, Jon Alpert, Andrea Arnold, and Todd Haynes.
The festival opens with Penny Lane’s Listening to Kenny G, with director and subject participating in a postscreening discussion; the centerpiece is the New York City premiere of Sam Pollard and Rex Miller’s Citizen Ashe, a look at tennis great and activist Arthur Ashe, with Matthew Heineman’s The First Wave, about the beginning of the pandemic in New York City’s hospitals, the closing-night selection. Keep watching this space for more recommendations and capsule reviews as the festival continues, both in person at the IFC Center, Cinépolis Chelsea, and the SVA Theatre and online.
Todd Haynes will discuss his latest film at DOC NYC
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND (Todd Haynes, 2021)
IFC Center
Wednesday, November 10, 9:30 www.docnyc.net
The Velvet Underground was more than just a music group; they electrified a generation, and continue to do so today, half a century later. Todd Haynes, whose 1998 Velvet Goldmine was set in the world of glam rock and whose 2007 I’m Not There explored the career of Bob Dylan through six characters and a nonlinear narrative, now turns his attention to the true story behind the Velvets. Haynes details the history of the band by delving into leaders John Cale and Lou Reed’s initial meeting, the formation of the Primitives with conceptual artists Tony Conrad and Walter DeMaria, and the transformation into the seminal VU lineup at the Factory under Pop icon Andy Warhol’s guidance: singer-songwriter-guitarist Reed, Welsh experimental composer and multi-instrumentalist Cale, guitarist Sterling Morrison, drummer Maureen Tucker, and German vocalist Nico. Much of Haynes’s documentary focuses on Warhol’s position in helping develop and promote the Velvets. “Andy was extraordinary, and I honestly don’t think these things could have occurred without Andy,” Reed, who died in 2013, says. Haynes will be at the IFC Center to introduce the November 10 screening.
The life and career of Anthony Bourdain is explored in Roadrunner
ROADRUNNER: A FILM ABOUT ANTHONY BOURDAIN (Morgan Neville, 2021)
IFC Center
Thursday, November 11, 9:45 www.docnyc.net
Director Morgan Neville goes behind the scenes to share the story of beloved restaurateur and TV show host Anthony Bourdain in Roadrunner. Neville, whose previous films include The Cool School,20 Feet from Stardom, and Won’t You Be Neighbor?, will be at IFC to introduce the November 11 screening.
Two Minnesota high school teams battle it out in Tommy Haines’s Hockeyland
There’s the Stanley Cup playoffs for the NHL pros and the Frozen Four for the NCAA Men’s Ice Hockey Championship, but Tommy Haines focuses on a pair of rival Minnesota high school teams, the underdog Eveleth-Gilbert Golden Bears and the far more successful Hermantown Hawks, as they prepare to perhaps meet in the playoffs. Haines follows the very different approach of the two coaches, delves into the lives of the teams’ best players, talks to the parents, and goes inside the locker rooms as the teenagers balance education with the game and their future. The film contains lots of good hockey action, along with intimate moments as injuries occur and pro scouts come to watch. The November 13 screening will be followed by a Q&A with Haines, producers JT Haines and Andrew Sherburne, cinematographer Benjamin Handler, and film subjects Elliot Van Orsdel, Indio Dowd, and members of their families.
Fatima Shaik searches for a critical piece of family history in The Bengali
“Why would anybody come from the other side of the world to find somebody who doesn’t even exist anymore?” author Fatima Shaik says at the beginning of The Bengali. “Why not?” asks director Kavery Kaul. Armed with a partial ship’s registry and a photograph of her grandfather, Shaik Mohamed Musa, who left his small village in India in 1893 to make a new life in the United States, in New Orleans, where he married a Black woman, Fatima travels to her ancestral country, wanting to know more about where she came from and to see a patch of land that he owned. Joined by Kaul, who is Bengali, and cinematographer John Russell Foster, who is white, they have very little information and face roadblock after roadblock until success is in reach, but everywhere she goes, Fatima is met with resistance, as Indians view her with suspicion, thinking that she, a Christian in a Muslim community, might be there to reclaim her grandfather’s land. The Bengali is an emotional, deeply personal search for identity, almost to the point of obsession, of seeking out one’s family history in a land where you don’t speak the language and are not immediately welcome. The November 13 New York City premiere at IFC will be followed by a Q&A with Kaul and producer Lucas Groth.
UNITED STATES vs. REALITY WINNER (Sonia Kennebeck, 2021)
Saturday, November 13, IFC Center, 9:50
Monday, November 15, Cinépolis Chelsea, 4:15 www.docnyc.net www.codebreakerfilms.com
The Broadway play Is This a Room is a verbatim re-creation of the FBI’s interrogation of Reality Winner, an Air Force veteran who was suspected of leaking classified documents. Award-winning documentarian Sonia Kennebeck, whose previous films include Enemies of the State, about a family under siege when their hacker son gets into serious trouble with the government, and National Bird, which revealed the devastating story of the military personnel pushing the buttons in America’s drone war, now goes behind the scenes to tell what really happened with Winner, the Intercept, and other parties involved in the complex situation. The November 13 and 15 screenings will be followed by a Q&A with Kennebeck, the latter moderated by Jo Livingstone of the New Republic.
An amateur British theater group consisting of bus drivers, engineers, and dispatchers adapt a Ridley Scott classic in Alien on Stage
In 2015, a group of bus drivers, engineers, and dispatchers in Dorset, England, banded together to put on an amateur theatrical adaptation of Ridley Scott’s Alien a benefit for the Allendale Community Centre and the Guillain-Barré Syndrome Charity. Calling themselves Paranoid Dramatics, the men and women took a DIY approach, creating the costumes and special effects from scratch and learning their lines to the best of their abilities. After seeing the show, Danielle Kummer and Lucy Harvey became obsessed with it and decided to document the play’s surprising move to London’s West End. The result is an extremely fun film about human ingenuity against all odds; just as Ripley had to face the monster, will this group survive as opening night approaches? And will Scott be there to cheer them on? The November 14 and 15 screenings will be followed by a Q&A with Kummer.
An eleven-year-old blind boy seeks to become a board game champ in Go through the Dark
GO THROUGH THE DARK (Yunhong Pu, 2021)
Cinépolis Chelsea
Saturday, November 13, 7:10
Tuesday, November 16, 9:30 www.docnyc.net www.instagram.com
First-time filmmaker Yunhong Pu serves as director, producer (with Jean Tsien), cinematographer, editor, and publicist for the subtly captivating Go through the Dark. Yunhong travels with eleven-year-old Guanglin Xu, a blind Chinese boy who has a remarkable affinity for Go, which might be the world’s oldest board game, as he participates in competitions and seeks special coaching far away. He is being raised by a single father who adores him but might not always understand what is best for his son. As father and child meet more people, new options arise for Guanglin, who does not know how to ask for what he truly wants and needs. The game Go involves turning over small, circular black and white stones, but there’s nothing black-and-white about this unique and moving story. Yunhong will participate in Q&As at the November 13 and 16 screenings.
Gary Oldman has a lot to say about Eadweard Muybridge’s photos and personal life in stirring documentary
EXPOSING MUYBRIDGE (Marc Shaffer, 2021)
Saturday, November 13, IFC Center, 7:05
Monday, November 15, Cinépolis Chelsea, 2:00 www.docnyc.net www.muybridgethemovie.com
English photographer Eadweard Muybridge is most well known for taking some of the earliest, most influential pictures in the history of the art form (and sometimes animating them), including The Horse in Motion, his shots of redwoods in Yosemite, and his plates of nude men and women walking, running, and stepping over plates. But writer, director, and producer Marc Shaffer focuses on Muybridge’s bizarre life as well as his photography in the documentary Exposing Muybridge, highlighting an existence filled with murder, betrayal, naked ambition, legal and political wheeling and dealing, alchemy, and immense talent and ingenuity. Among those sharing their thoughts about Muybridge are actor and collector Gary Oldman, who must play the photographer in the eventual film, and author Rebecca Gowers, who is related to the man Muybridge killed. The sordid doings grow more and more intriguing as Shaffer cuts between the speakers, archival photographs and letters, and dozens of Muybridge’s pictures. My only quibble with the film is that I was hoping to learn the proper way to pronounce the photographer’s chosen surname (he was born Edward James Muggeridge), but not everyone in the film says “Muybridge” the same way. The November 13 and 15 screenings will be followed by a Q&A with Shaffer.
ASCENSION (Jessica Kingdon, 2021)
Cinépolis Chelsea
260 West Twenty-Third St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday, November 16, 4:15
Thursday, November 18, 4:45 www.docnyc.net/film/ascension ascensiondocumentary.com
Jessica Kingdon’s Ascension is one of the most beautifully photographed documentaries you’re ever likely to see. Evoking the mesmerizing visual style of such photographers as Andreas Gursky, Edward Burtynsky, and Jeff Wall, director, editor, and producer Kingdon and producer and cinematographer Nathan Truesdell, who rarely moves his camera, explore Xi Jinping’s promise of the Chinese Dream, what the leader calls “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese people,” in a three-part film about capitalism and consumption, poverty and wealth in China. The biracial Chinese American Kingdon first explores the job market, as men and women in outdoor booths shout out hourly wages, responsibilities, and housing opportunities to those in need of work, who are then shown toiling in factories, sewing, plucking fowl, and building sex dolls.
In the second section, workers are indoctrinated into the company lifestyle, learning how to climb the ladder through very specific and often demeaning business etiquette; the film concludes by showing the luxuries success and wealth can bring. One of the most memorable shots in a film filled with them is of a glamorous young woman being photographed at a seaside resort as a worker, unnoticed by the model and photographer, tends to a lush green lawn; the differences between her posh bag and chapeau and his garbage bag and straw hat, his face hidden as hers pouts for the camera, speak volumes. Featuring a pulsating score by Dan Deacon, Ascension might be specifically about China, but it also relates to what is happening in America today, particularly with the current supply chain issues as so many workers decided not to return to work as the pandemic lockdown lifted while income inequality continues to grow at obscene levels. The November 16 screening will be followed by a Q&A with Kingdon.
DRIFT: FRAGILE FUTURE
The Shed, the McCourt
545 West 30th St. at Eleventh Ave.
Wednesday – Sunday through December 19, exhibition $25, Drifters and exhibition $35
Includes admission to Ian Cheng: Life After BOB
646-455-3494 theshed.org online slideshow
Since 2007, the Amsterdam-based duo DRIFT, a partnership between Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta, have been exploring the intersection and interdependence of humans, nature, and technology. Their environmentally conscious, multidimensional works are like individual ecosystems that present hope for a future potentially doomed by climate change. Continuing through December 19 at the Shed at Hudson Yards, Fragile Future is a wonderland of experiential installations, presented by Superblue, which specializes in immersive art.
The exhibition begins with Fragile Future, a light sculpture with a modular system based on the growth of dandelions, constructed from LED lights, phosphor bronze, printed circuit board, and the hairs and seeds of dandelions themselves. Coded Coincidence consists of dozens and dozens of beaded lights that move about a long, rectangular, netted space, sudden gusts of air making them mimic the flight of elm seeds in the spring. There’s an emotional aspect to the movement as they travel in groups and gather in a corner, or, with a kind of sadness, one gets trapped in the netting, alone until it can be freed and join the rest of the herd.
Ego might be composed of nylon fiber, ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene fiber monofilaments, polyester, and polyvinyl fluoride and run by motors set to specific algorithms, but it seems to have an organic life of its own. Created for Nederlandse Reisopera’s production of Monteverdi’s opera L’Orfeo, about the love between Orpheus and Eurydice and his descent into the underworld, Ego is a monumental handmade woven block that rises, falls, spreads out, collapses, and twists and turns as if magically floating through space, evoking human emotions amid a gentle soundscape. Describing its construction, Gordijn explains in a Drift video, “It depends on how that ego is shaped, how flexible it is, or how rigid it is. Because if it is rigid, there is only one truth, and if it’s flexible, you can move along with what is needed in order for it to accept certain truths or accept how life is or how the world is being built. And I think it’s a big difficulty in everybody’s life to be flexible in your vision and to be flexible in your perspective. But we have to be flexible, and I like that about Ego, that it can be a very rigid block but it can also completely change. It can be a solution.”
The next room is filled with “Materialism,” a collection of reverse-engineered sculptures that reduce such consumer products as a Big Mac menu, a coffee cup, an iPhone, a pencil, and a bicycle into colored blocks based on the size of their raw materials, resulting in miniature architectural models meant to reveal how we exploit the earth and its labor force.
In the two-channel, twelve-minute film Drifters, Drift’s iconic concrete blocks float through New York City at one end of a long room and across mountains, rivers, and forests at the other end, searching for where they came from and what awaits them.
The pièce de resistance takes place in the McCourt, the Shed’s 17,000-square-foot McCourt performance venue, only at certain times and with an extra charge, so plan your visit carefully. Four levitating Drifters, real versions of the blocks from the film in the previous room, move slowly throughout the space for more than an hour, set to a droning soundtrack by Anohni, the English singer-songwriter who used to lead the band Antony and the Johnsons. The blocks are floating without wires, engaged in a butoh-like dance as they very (very) slowly flip, lower, and rise, sometimes dangling just overhead. Occasionally they gently bump into each other in a kind of soft kiss. The audience can walk around the area, sit in folding chairs, or lie down on their backs on the floor as these monoliths put on a mesmerizing show that could be an outtake from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. During the performance, I asked Gordijn how they did it. After offering two guesses that she quickly said no to, I suggested a third, which she simply smiled at. It’s extraordinarily peaceful and relaxing while also instilling hope for a future where humans, nature, and technology can exist together in harmony.
[On December 10 and 11, Ego will be activated by special dance performances, featuring Company Wo. (Daniel Kersh, Marcella Ann Lewis, Erika Choe, Jordan Demetrius Lloyd, and Myssi Robinson) from 11:30 to 5:00 and Project-TAG (Mizuho Kappa) from 5:30 to 8:00 on Friday and Limón Dance Company (Jessica Sgambelluri) from 11:30 to 2:00 and Battery Dance (Durgesh Gangani, Jillian Linkowski, Razvan Stoian, Randall Riley, Sarah Housepian, and Vivake Khamsingsavath) from 2:30 to 8:00 on Saturday.]
Drift exhibit at Pace features self-portraits of founders Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
DRIFT MATERIALISM: PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE
Pace Gallery
540 West Twenty-Fifth St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
November 5 – December 18, free www.pacegallery.com
In an April 2020 online Pace discussion with musician Lee Ranaldo — he was supposed to play live with Ego when it was previously at Pace but it was canceled because of the pandemic — Gordijn said about the lockdown, “One of the beautiful things I found in the last days or weeks, actually, was that I realized that every night at a certain time, a group of crows is flying the same circles as if they’re all waiting for each other. Every day it is around 8:00, before sunset. This sort of connection with a place, where you start to get to know the animals, the plants, and the particularities, that is what I would love to explore more and the relationship that you can have with that.”
It is that kind of worldview that makes Drift’s work so compelling. In conjunction with Drift: Fragile Future, Pace is presenting “Drift Materialism: Past, Present, Future,” which expands on the “Materialism” room at the Shed. Continuing through December 18, the small show features sculptures that resemble Russian Constructivism filtered through children’s blocks. For the large-scale wall hanging 1980 Beetle, Gordijn and Nauta took apart a Volkswagen and put it back together. The resulting blocks represent forty-two materials, reduced to their accumulated mass.
Drift usually deconstructs inanimate objects, but two new works explore the molecular elements of the human body, side-by-side self-portraits of Gordijn and Nauta that are exactly equal. In the back room, the augmented reality Block Universe consists of a plexiglass sun surrounded by planets; the gallery supplies iPads that depict orbiting Drifters and other elements. The title comes from the theory that everything is happening at once, that past, present, and future exist in unison.
“We’re not having relationships with the materials and objects around us anymore,” Nauta explains in a Drift video. “And if you start losing the connection with this, you’re going to be very unhappy, because you lose the wonder in life.”
Next up is Drift’s kinetic sculpture Amplitude, a permanent commission slated to go on view at 45 Rockefeller Plaza, providing yet more wonder.
