twi-ny recommended events

DANIEL FISH: WHITE NOISE

Bruce McKenzie stars in Daniel Fish’s multimedia adaptation of Don DeLillo’s White Noise

NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts
566 La Guardia Pl.
September 20-22, $55-$65
212-992-8484
nyuskirball.org

I first encountered the endlessly inventive, unpredictable work of Daniel Fish four years ago with A (radically condensed and expanded) Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, a brilliantly devised piece that combined a tennis-ball machine with actors performing lines spoken by author David Foster Wallace from audiobooks, interviews, and speeches. The New Jersey–born, New York City–based creator also involves film and classic theater in his avant-garde oeuvre, which includes adaptations of Molière’s The Misanthrope, Clifford Odets’s Paradise Lost, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Merchant of Venice, Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Nicholas Ray’s Bigger Than Life, a piece titled Tom Ryan Thinks He’s James Mason Starring in a Movie by Nicholas Ray in Which a Man’s Illness Provides an Escape from the Pain, Pressure, and Loneliness of Trying to Be the Ultimate American Father, Only to Drive Him Further into the More Thrilling Though Possibly Lonelier Roles of Addict and Misunderstood Visionary. More recently, his Tony-winning revival of Oklahoma! is dividing audiences and critics at Circle in the Square.

Daniel Fish’s White Noise runs at NYU Skirball September 20-22

Fish now has turned his attention to consumerism run rampant as depicted in one of the best American novels of the second half of the twentieth century, Don DeLillo’s National Book Award–winning White Noise. Initially staged last year by Theater Freiburg and Ruhrfestspiele Recklingshausen in Germany, the seventy-minute multimedia work, running September 20-22 at NYU’S Skirball Center, focuses on DeLillo’s extensive use of lists within his narrative. For example: “The ashram is located on the outskirts of the former copper-smelting town of Tubb, Montana, now called Dharamsalapur. The usual rumors abound of sexual freedom, sexual slavery, drugs, nudity, mind control, poor hygiene, tax evasion, monkey-worship, torture, prolonged and hideous death.” And: “You know how I am. I think everything is correctible. Given the right attitude and the proper effort, a person can change a harmful condition by reducing it to its simplest parts. You can make lists, invent categories, devise charts and graphs. This is how I am able to teach my students how to stand, sit and walk, even though I know you think these subjects are too obvious and nebulous and generalized to be reduced to component parts. I’m not a very ingenious person but I know how to break things down, how to separate and classify. We can analyze posture, we can analyze eating, drinking and even breathing. How else do you understand the world, is my way of looking at it.”

White Noise: Freely Inspired by the Novel by Don DeLillo is performed by Bruce McKenzie as Hitler Studies professor Jack Gladney, with live music by composer and percussionist Bobby Previte. The bold projections are by Jim Findlay (including an appearance on video by nineteen German teenagers), with sets by Andrew Leiberman and costumes by Doey Lüthi. I could make a long list of reasons why you should see this, but it’s not really necessary. Just go if you want to experience another unusual theatrical adventure by the amazing Mr. Fish.

THE COOPING THEORY 1969: WHO KILLED EDGAR ALLAN POE?

The Poe Society brings in a medium to try to find out who killed Edgar Allan in The Cooping Theory

RPM Underground
244 West 54th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Through November 2, $75 (plus $25 beverage/food minimum per guest)
www.knock3xs.com

On October 7, 1849, short story master and poet extraordinaire Edgar Allan Poe died a mysterious death at the age of forty. In conjunction with the 170th anniversary of his demise, Poseidon Theatre Company has brought back a revamped version of The Cooping Theory 1969: Who Killed Edgar Allan Poe?, which the Manhattan-based troupe calls “An Immersive Paranormal.” The show, previously presented two years ago in a Brooklyn speakeasy in a somewhat different form, takes place in a series of rooms in RPM Underground, a funky karaoke bar on West Fifty-Fourth St. filled with old-time memorabilia, from typewriters and gas signs to radios and a dentist chair. It’s 1969, and the Poe Society is holding a séance to try to contact Poe so he can tell them how he died, whether from drink, natural causes, murder, or, as many believe, the nineteenth-century practice called cooping, in which men were kidnapped and tortured in order to force them to vote for a political candidate multiple times.

Every night, an audience of no more than sixty adults is sworn in as new members of the society by wealthy, budding psychologist Tom Turner (Aaron Latta-Morissette), upbeat actress Anna Carver (Makaela Shealy), the heart-on-his-sleeve Jimmy Harder (Johnny Pozzi), and the ever-dependable Gina Standen (Samantha Lacey Johnson), along with WASPy pledge twins Crispin (Brian Alford) and Cordelia Carlyle (Estelle Olivia), who have hired Madam Harlow (Dara Kramer) to lead the proceedings. (The names of the characters were inspired by Poe’s real life and writings: for example, he was born on Carver St. in Boston; MGM once claimed that Jean Harlow was a direct descendant of Poe, who had no children; he would have been named Cordelia if he were born a girl — his mother had recently portrayed the king’s youngest daughter in Lear; he publicly decried the work of Thomas Carlyle; and he used to find respite on a rocky knoll he named Mount Tom along the Hudson River.)

You never know what’s going to happen in The Cooping Theory

The evening begins with a cocktail hour during which the audience can mingle with the characters, having one-on-one conversations that can be both entertaining and informative; I learned a lot while talking to Anna and Cordelia and catching Jimmy playing a haunting ballad on his guitar. Then Madam Harlow enters and the show really takes off; audience members are free to stay in one space, follow specific characters for extended periods of time, or just go with the flow. You will not be touched or asked to do anything you don’t want to; the rules and recommendations are supplied early on by director Aaron Salazar, who conceived the fab project. You can navigate at your own pace, although the narrative grows more and more frantic and exciting as it nears the grand finale, so be sure to wear comfortable shoes and not settle in anywhere for too long a stretch. The dialogue — the aptly named Nate Raven, formerly known as Nate Suggs before he married Rick Raven, is credited with writing the book — is chock full of direct and indirect references to Poe’s work, from such popular stories as The Fall of the House of Usher, The Tell Tale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, The Tomb of Ligeia, The Masque of the Red Death, The Mystery of Marie Rogêt, Berenice, and Eleonora to such poems as The Raven, Annabel Lee, Spirits of the Dead, and The Conqueror Worm. Knowledge of Poe’s work is not a prerequisite, but it is a bonus.

The cast is delightfully energetic and extremely careful not to bowl anyone over as they race down hallways and close doors for more private moments. You don’t have to be a Poe fan or believe in the spiritual world in order to have a great time at The Cooping Theory 1969, but the more you invest of yourself, the more thrilling it all is. “It’s gotten a bit freaky, hasn’t it?” Anna says at one point. It sure has, but only in the best way. (Poe addicts will also want to check out John Kevin Jones’s one-man performance piece Killing an Evening with Edgar Allan Poe at the Merchant’s House Museum from September 24 to November 3.)

ARTHOUSE THEATER DAY: PUTNEY SWOPE

Putney Swope is back in a fiftieth anniversary 4K restoration screening at Alamo Drafthouse

PUTNEY SWOPE (Robert Downey, 1969)
Alamo Drafthouse Downtown Brooklyn
445 Albee Square West
Wednesday, September 18, 7:00
718-513-2547
drafthouse.com

The past, present, and immediate future of indie cinema are represented in the fourth annual Art House Theater Day, taking place September 18 at several venues in New York as well as around the country. Peter Strickland’s 2018 In Fabric and Brett Story’s 2019 The Hottest August will be screening at IFC; In Fabric will also be shown at Nitehawk’s Prospect Park cinema. But the film to see is the fiftieth anniversary 4K restoration of Robert Downey Sr.’s counterculture cult classic, the low-budget 1969 satire Putney Swope, playing at the Alamo Drafthouse in Downtown Brooklyn and Yonkers. Downey Sr. is still alive, and this presentation includes a prerecorded introduction from the eighty-three-year-old writer-director of such other movies as Chafed Elbows, Sweet Smell of Sex, Greaser’s Palace, and Rittenhouse Square.

Downey skewers race, religion, politics, the corporate world, and Madison Ave. in the absurdist comedy, featuring a crazy cast of characters portrayed by professional actors as well as first-timers Downey found in city bars and cafés and on the street. When ad agency owner Mario Elias Sr. (David Kirk) drops dead during a meeting, the rest of the board, consisting primarily of a bunch of conniving, corrupt white men, accidentally vote the one black man, musical director Putney Swope (Arnold Johnson), to be the next chairman. Instead of stepping aside, Swope decides to take over and make radical changes, renaming the company Truth and Soul, Inc., firing white employees for any reason whatsoever, and hiring a team of Black Power men and women with no advertising experience to produce commercials that go far beyond industry standards, featuring foul language, nudity, and interracial relationships while promoting such products as Dinkleberry Frozen Chicken Pot Pie and Lucky Airlines, where one lucky passenger will win a trip to a back room with nearly naked stewardesses. However, he refuses to make ads for alcohol, toy guns, and tobacco. Putney courts favor with US president Mimeo and the first lady, portrayed by real-life husband-and-wife little people Pepi and Ruth Hermine, whose right-hand man, Mr. Borman Six (Larry Wolf), is a neo-Nazi. But power corrupts, and Swope soon becomes more militant and dictatorial, getting away with his bizarre business plan as the film turns into a fable of rebellion gone astray.

putney swope 2

Putney Swope almost didn’t get distributed. In 1969, at a special advance screening, Native New Yorker Downey, the father of Robert Downey Jr., reluctantly allowed Don Rugoff of Cinema Five in, even though Rugoff was late; afterward, Rugoff told him, “I don’t understand this movie, but I like it,” and shortly released the film to sold-out audiences. Downey and cinematographer Gerald Cotts switch between black-and-white for the main narrative and color for the television commercials, giving extra oomph to the latter, which get stranger and stranger, while Charley Cuva provides the groovy music and New Breed Inc. the chic costumes. The cast and crew had such trouble understanding Johnson’s mangled line readings that Downey dubbed in his dialogue in postproduction himself, using a raspy black voice that is way over the top; Putney Swope might be an equal opportunity offender, but it could never be made today, given the current politically correct environment.

Much of the acting is terrible, but a few familiar faces show up to offer a bit of a respite: Antonio Fargas, best known as Huggy Bear on Starsky and Hutch, plays the ever-angry Arab; Allan Arbus, who was Dr. Sidney Freedman on M*A*S*H (note that the poster to the left is a takeoff of the marketing campaign for Robert Altman’s film version of M*A*S*H) and was married to photographer Diane Arbus, is Mr. Bad News, filling in Swope on the continuing adventures of serial sex offender Sonny Williams (Perry Gewirtz); Shelley Plimpton (the mother of Martha Plimpton) and singer Ronnie Dyson, who were in Hair together, appear as the interracial couple pushing face cream; and Allen Garfield, a successful character actor in such films as The Conversation and Nashville, is Mario Elias Jr. The tall, awkward Stanley Gottlieb is a hoot as Nathan, who speaks primarily in bad jokes, while poet Donald Lev is a lone anarchist. Added to the US National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2016, Putney Swope — a major influence on such films as Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights, in which Don Cheadle plays a character named Buck Swope, Cosmo the firecracker boy is inspired by Chinese businessman Wing Soney, and Downey Sr. makes a cameo (in addition, Louis CK hosted a Q&A with Downey in LA five years ago) — holds up better than expected, despite its cutting-edge story and small details that leave no one unblemished. It’s certainly no Mad Men, but it’s still a far-out document of a critical time in American history.

THE TALMUD

Meta-Phys. Ed. multimedia production brings together the Talmud and Kung Fu movies (photo by Jenny Sharp)

The Doxsee @ Target Margin Theater
232 52nd St. between Second & Third Aves., Sunset Park
Through September 28, $20-$25
866-811-4111
www.targetmargin.org/talmud

In his 2012 book A Kosher Christmas: ’Tis the Season to Be Jewish, Rabbi Joshua Eli Plaut discusses, among other things, American Jewish families’ penchant for eating Chinese food every December 25 and San Francisco’s annual Kung Pao Kosher Comedy show, taking place December 24-26 this year, providing “Jewish comedy on Christmas in a Chinese restaurant.” Experimental theater director Jesse Freedman, who cofounded Meta-Phys. Ed. in 2011 with Rabbi Bronwen Mullin, has found another connection between Jewish and Chinese culture, turning it into a new multimedia show, The Talmud, which opened last night at the Doxsee @ Target Margin Theater in Sunset Park.

“The Talmud is a very exciting and important Jewish text and is incredibly difficult to understand,” he explains in a statement. “I was watching a Kung Fu movie and thought, ‘This Kung Fu movie reminds me of the Talmud.’ I started to learn more Talmud and thought, ‘This reminds me of Kung Fu movies.’ I started to watch and learn more about Chinese martial arts cinema, my appreciation for them deepened, and the world of the Talmud, which had previously been opaque to me, started to make sense.” As a Jew and a Kung Fu movie fan, I fully understand where Freedman is coming from. The Talmud, consisting of the Mishnah and the Gemara, is a dense text that examines Jewish law and customs, requiring years of study to grasp its labyrinthine breadth. However, not even years of study will help you figure out what is happening in most Kung Fu movies, whether they are in Chinese or English. Trying to figure out the plot in films that have been dubbed into English rather than subtitled is especially confusing and entertaining, worthy of its own Mishnah investigation. Freedman’s complex production fits right in with those themes.

The Talmud continues at the Doxsee @ Target Margin Theater in Sunset Park through September 28 (photo by Jenny Sharp)

Continuing through September 28, The Talmud is set on a chessboard floor with several long, narrow, translucent curtains, reminiscent of Chinese scroll paintings, onto which Hebrew words from the Talmud are projected, as well as live streams of the action occurring onstage, courtesy of an iPhone basically strapped to the stomach of actress Lucie Allouche. (The senic design is by Kyu Shin, with projections by Lacey Erb and costumes by Karen Boyer.) Allouche, Abrielle Kuo, Eli M. Schoenfeld, and Jae Woo detail stories from one chapter of the Talmud, including the complex law of Sicarii, the case of mistaken identity involving enemies Kamtza and bar Kamtza and Nero, and the battle between zealots and sages over peace with the Romans. These pieces are dense with meaning that is difficult to follow within the play’s narrative; as you are still evaluating what you have just seen, the next tale proceeds, jumbling together in your mind. The show is punctuated by choreographed Kung Fu movement among the four actors, occasionally enhanced with swooshing sound effects; the score is by Avi Amon, with lovely music performed onstage by Lu Liu on pipa. The Talmud is a well-crafted production, with good performances and intriguing staging, but, like reading the Talmud and watching Kung Fu movies, you’ll be left scratching your head, not quite fully sated.

EYESLICER FEST CLOSING NIGHT FILM: KNIVES AND SKIN

Carolyn Harper (Raven Whitley) goes missing in teen noir Knives and Skin

KNIVES AND SKIN (Jennifer Reeder, 2019)
Nitehawk Cinema Williamsburg
136 Metropolitan Ave. between Berry St. & Wythe Ave.
Tuesday, September 17, 7:00
Festival runs September 14-17
718-384-3980
nitehawkcinema.com
www.chicagofilmproject.com

Knives and Skin, Jennifer Reeder’s feature-length debut as a writer-director, is the closing-night selection of Eyeslicer Fest, four days of special events celebrating the second season of The Eyeslicer, the self-described “secret TV show blending the boldest new American filmmaking into mind-expanding, mixtape-style episodes.” Screening September 17 at 7:00 at Nitehawk Cinema in Williamsburg, Knives and Skin is a creepy coming-of-age tale of girlhood, loss, and consent set in small-town America where the disappearance of a teenage girl tilts an already off-balance community even more on edge. Marching band member Carolyn Harper (Raven Whitley) has decided to lose her virginity to jock Andy Kitzmiller (Ty Olwin), but when she suddenly changes her mind, he becomes angry, pushes her to the ground, and leaves her in the woods. When she doesn’t come home, her mother, Lisa (Marika Engelhardt), quickly goes off the deep end, obsessed with her daughter’s clothes and smell. Fellow marching band members Charlotte Kurtich (Ireon Roach), April Martinez (Aurora Real de Asua), and Afra Siddiqui (Haley Bolithon), each of whose identities lie firmly outside old-fashioned mainstream America’s idea of girlhood, are preparing for homecoming, but Carolyn’s situation has cast a damper over everything.

Charlotte Kurtich (Ireon Roach) faces a harsh reality in Jennifer Reeder’s Knives and Skin

Reeder focuses on two families over the course of the film, which was inspired by the work of such feminist auteurs as Chantal Akerman and Catherine Breillat in addition to such indie faves as Todd Solondz and Todd Haynes, with the heaviest debt to David Lynch’s Twin Peaks as she uses our generic societal anxiety about female teen sexuality to reveal the hidden underbelly of a typical midwestern town, complete with surreal moments. (There’s also bits of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Mean Girls, and The Breakfast Club embedded in its DNA.) Andy’s mother, Lynn (Audrey Francis), can’t face reality; his father, Dan (Tim Hopper), is an out-of-work clown fooling around with pregnant waitress Renee Darlington (Kate Arrington); his sister, Joanna (Grace Smith), sells underwear to the principal (Tony Fitzpatrick); and he is closest to his unusual grandmother (Marilyn Dodds Frank). Renee is married to Doug (James Vincent Meredith), the local sheriff in charge of the Carolyn Harper case; their son, Jesse Darlington (Robert T. Cunningham), is the school mascot and friends with Joanna; and their daughter, Laurel Darlington (Kayla Carter), is exploring her sexuality with Colleen (Emma Ladji). Racism, misogyny, sexual harassment, bullying, and more lie at the center of a community unable to come to grips with what’s really going on every day.

knives-and-skin-poster

Cinematographer Christopher Rejano bathes the film in richly saturated blues, reds, greens, and pinks, accompanied by a lurking score by Nick Zinner of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. There are several scenes that feature hauntingly beautiful a cappella versions of such 1980s hits as Modern English’s “I Melt with You,” New Order’s “Blue Monday,” the Go-Go’s “Our Lips Are Sealed,” Naked Eyes’ “Promises, Promises,” and Icicle Works’ “Birds Fly (Whisper to a Scream),” lending the film a stark poignancy that overrides some of the inconsistent acting and over-the-top absurdities and singlehandedly makes it worth watching. The screening will be followed by a casual party in the Lo-Res Bar; Eyeslicer Fest begins September 14 and also includes the Radical Film Fair at Kickstarter HQ on September 15, the world premiere of season two of The Eyeslicer in Green-Wood Cemetery on September 16, and the theatrical release of Aaron Schimberg’s Chained for Life at IFC through September 19.

CROSSING THE LINE FESTIVAL: OPENING NIGHT

Crossing the Line Festival opens with Isabelle Adjani in Opening Night

French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
September 12-14
Festival continues through October 12
212-355-6160
crossingthelinefestival.org/2019

After the audience has settled in at FIAF’s Florence Gould Hall for Cyril Teste’s multimedia adaptation of John Cassavetes’s 1977 film Opening Night, there appears to be confusion on the stage, as a man in headphones converses in French with an unseen tech crew, their words not translated on the supertitles screen. It’s a disorienting moment, especially if you don’t understand French, and a terrific introduction to one of the themes of the play, the pull between fact and fiction, fantasy and reality inherent in theater and cinema. The man in the headphones is the play-within-a-play’s director, Manny (Morgan Lloyd Sicard), who is helming a melodrama featuring famous actress Myrtle Gordon (five-time César winner Isabelle Adjani) and her stoic costar, Maurice (Frédéric Pierrot); in the original film, itself based on a play by John Cromwell, Gena Rowlands was Myrtle, her real-life husband, Cassavetes, was Maurice, and one of their closest friends, Ben Gazzara, was Manny, their personal relationships further blurring the lines of reality.

With opening night a day away, Myrtle is having trouble with her lines and her physical presence, particularly in a scene that involves Maurice slapping her. She’s becoming emotionally unhinged, having a nervous breakdown, spurred by the earlier accidental death of a seventeen-year-old fan seeking an autograph and Myrtle’s inability — or overt unwillingness — to relate to her character, who is all too much like her, as if she is unable to face her own fate. Throughout the play’s eighty-five minutes, there is an additional figure onstage, cameraman Nicolas Doremus, who follows the characters as they move about Ramy Fischler’s elegant living-room set, which features a couch, a table, knickknacks on shelves, a visible backstage area with Agnès b.’s costumes, and, at the very center, a large screen where Doremus’s footage streams live, offering viewers a different angle on what’s happening. At one point, Doremus zooms in close on Manny and Myrtle, who might be about to kiss, the cameraman completing a kind of love triangle between life and artifice; at another, Doremus films other characters behind stage sharing their concerns as Myrtle is alone on the couch, drinking away her pain. Everyone is dressed in dark colors, mostly black, signaling potential doom.

Morgan Lloyd Sicard, Isabelle Adjani, and Frédéric Pierrot star in Cyril Teste’s multimedia adaptation of John Cassavetes’s Opening Night at FIAF

Teste (Patio, Nobody) based his script on Cassavetes’s screenplay more than the final film itself, although he did use the director’s longtime friend and cinematographer, Al Ruban, who shot Opening Night, as a consultant. Teste encourages improvisation and changes stage directions every night, ensuring that each performance is unique in a way a film can never be yet still capturing the essence of the movie. “While Cassavetes’s other great films are models of immediacy — gut-level attempts to devise a cinematic syntax that accounts for and responds to the quantum flux of moment-to-moment experience — the doubly framed and multiply mirrored Opening Night operates at a remove,” Dennis Lim notes in his Criterion essay, which is appropriately titled “The Play’s the Thing.” He continues, “The filmmaker’s habitual insistence on the inseparability of actor and character (and of art and life) reverberates here within the haunted corridors of a backstage melodrama.” Adjani (The Story of Adele H, Queen Margot) is ravishing in her New York theatrical debut, her regal stage demeanor working hand-in-hand with her total command of the screen; we get to see both facets of her immense talent at the same time, which is both a treat and disconcerting; non-French speakers will lose a little as they avert their eyes to the supertitles while also deciding whether to look at the activity onstage, backstage, or onscreen. Sicard is superb as the director, and Pierrot is hardy as the skeptical Maurice, but Doremus stands out by not standing out even as he is right in the middle of the action. Opening Night opens FIAF’s monthlong Crossing the Line Festival and is supplemented by “Magnetic Gaze: Isabelle Adjani on Screen,” consisting of ten of her films shown on Tuesdays through October 29.

TATTOO UPRISING

Ink legends Stoney St. Clair and Ed Hardy show how it’s done in Columbus, Ohio, in 1980 in Alan Govenar’s Tattoo Uprising (photograph by Alan Govenar / courtesy of Documentary Arts)

TATTOO UPRISING (Alan Govenar, 2019)
Cinema Village
22 East 12th St. between University Pl. & Fifth Ave.
Opens Friday, September 13
212-529-6799
www.tattoouprising.com
www.cinemavillage.com

“Just the way they say you are what you eat, you are what you wear, too,” Calamity Jane Nemhauser says in Tattoo Uprising, Alan Govenar’s forty-years-in-the-making documentary celebrating the art of inking human bodies. Writer-director Govenar has been working on the film since 1980, when he was finishing his 1981 half hour Stoney Knows How, about tattoo legend Stoney St. Clair. Govenar and editor Jason Johnson-Spinos interweave four decades of interviews and archival footage into the film, in which Govenar speaks extensively with St. Clair and fashionista Ed Hardy, who redefined what tattooing could be; documentarian Les Blank and director Werner Herzog, who show off their tats while the former is making Burden of Dreams and the latter Fitzcarraldo; woman tattoo artists Cynthia Witkin, Calamity Jane, Jamie Summers, and Anne de Hey!; sideshow performer and tattoo artist Captain Don, who sings a song about his chosen profession; and prisoners who reveal their tattoos and discuss the impact they have on their feelings of freedom.

Author Govenar also delves into the history of tattooing, from biblical times through the Renaissance, from Captain James Cook’s discoveries to Gus Wagner’s influential flash tattoos, and such art exhibitions as “Flash from the Past: Classic American Tattoo Designs 1890 – 1965” at the Hertzberg Circus Collection and Museum in San Antonio and “Pierced Hearts and True Love: A Century of Drawings for Tattoos” at the Drawing Center in New York. “It’s a hot language. It’s a cellular semiotics of communication that we’re only now beginning to realize exists across the world and throughout history in a way that no other medium functions,” Hardy explains. And there’s plenty of tattooing, the camera getting up close and personal as needles buzz into flesh, creating complicated, daring, and exquisite designs, using the human body as a living canvas.