twi-ny recommended events

REVOLUTIONARY SUMMER: DEBORAH SAMPSON, FIGHTING WOMAN

Judith Kalaora will portray Revolutionary War hero Deborah Sampson at the New-York Historical Society this weekend (photo courtesy History at Play & Vincent Morreale Photography)

LIVING HISTORY WEEKENDS
New-York Historical Society, courtyard
170 Central Park West
August 3-4, free with museum admission ($6-$22), 11:00 am – 3:00 pm
Series continues through September 15
212-485-9268
www.nyhistory.org

Last week, the New-York Historical Society hosted “Trans Identity and the Incredible Story of Deborah Sampson, Revolutionary War Hero,” an illustrated lecture by Alex Myers about the life and times of his ancestor Deborah Sampson, whose life he documents in his award-winning book Revolutionary, a fictionalized version of the brave young Colonial woman who disguised herself as a man to become a soldier in the Continental Army, eventually earning a military pension. Sampson herself — actually, History at Play actress Judith Kalaora — will be at the museum August 3-4 for “Revolutionary Summer: Deborah Sampson, Fighting Woman,” a Living History Weekend presentation being held in conjunction with the exhibition “Revolutionary Summer.” From 11:00 am to 3:00 pm each day, Sampson will be in the N-YHS courtyard, leading members of her regiment, the 4th Massachusetts, in military drills and other activities. Living History Weekends continue through September 15 with such other programs as “Fighting on Horseback” August 10-11 and “George Washington’s Encampment” August 17-18 and 24-25.

FIRST SATURDAYS: BIG UH YUHSELF

Liz Johnson Artur, Josephine, Peckham, chromogenic photograph, 1995 (courtesy of the artist / © Liz Johnson Artur)

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, August 3, free (some events require advance tickets), 5:00 – 11:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The Brooklyn Museum gets ready for the West Indian American Day Carnival on Labor Day in the August edition of its free First Saturday program. There will be live performances by Los Habaneros, DJ I.M., DJ TYGAPAW, and Noise Cans; a hands-on workshop in which participants can make Caribbean carnival masks; a Flag Fête workshop and performance with Haitian choreographer and dance instructor Charnice Charmant and Afrobeat dancers; teen pop-up gallery talks on “Liz Johnson Artur: Dusha”; a screening of Khalik Allah’s Black Mother, followed by a talkback with Allah and curator Drew Sawyer; Likkle Bites with food from Caribbean-owned Brooklyn businesses Greedi Vegan and Island Pops; an artist talk with Liz Johnson Artur; and the discussion “Yoruba in Pop Culture” with Grammy winner Chief Ayanda Clarke, presented by the Fadara Group. In addition, the galleries will be open late so you can check out “Garry Winogrand: Color,” “Nobody Promised You Tomorrow: Art 50 Years After Stonewall,” “Eric N. Mack: Lemme walk across the room,” “Liz Johnson Artur: Dusha,” “One: Egúngún,” “Pierre Cardin: Future Fashion,” “Infinite Blue,” “Rembrandt to Picasso: Five Centuries of European Works on Paper,” and more.

FESTIVAL OF CINEMA NYC 2019

Jaleel White stars in Camilo Vila’s 5th of July, which kicks off Queens film fest

Regal UA Midway Theater, Queens Library at Forest Hills, Queens Museum, Queens Brewery
August 2-11
www.festivalofcinemanyc.com

Forest Hills continues its ascent in the film world with the third annual Festival of Cinema NYC, which kicks off August 2 with Hannah Elless’s short Nora Ephron Goes to Prison and the East Coast premiere of Camilo Vila’s 5th of July, about a series of events that befall a man (played by Jaleel White) after the fireworks are over. The films will be preceded by a red carpet and followed by an after-party. The fest continues through August 11, with twenty narrative features, seven documentaries, a handful of free events, and more than seventy international shorts in addition to web series and animation, experimental works, and music videos. On August 7, Indie Film Collective will present the 72 Hour Short Film Challenge, consisting of a dozen shorts made in three days starting with a line of dialogue, a prop, and a genre. You can find out more about Indie Film Collective at a panel on August 6 with founder and creative director Joseph Eulo and his team.

Drew Barnhardt’s wild Rondo screens at the Festival of Cinema on August 9 just before midnight

Drew Barnhardt’s wild Rondo screens at the Festival of Cinema NYC on August 9 just before midnight

The Queens Library at Forest Hills and the Queens Museum will be home to several free programs (advance registration required), including “A Different Perspective — a Series of Experimental Films from Around the World,” “Monuments & Flowers” (by Arte East), “Race, Sex & Hold the Mayo!” (by the Asian American Film Lab), Surviving Birkenau: The Dr. Susan Spatz Story followed by a Q&A with director Ron Small, Carnaval de Cuba followed by a Q&A with director Roberto Monticello, and the New York premiere of Matej B. Silecky’s Baba Babee Skazala: Grandmother Told Grandmother. The closing night films on August 10 are Santiago Rizzo’s Quest — the Truth Always Rises, about a troubled middle schooler obsessed with tagging, and Francesco Filippi’s half-hour animated Red Hands, followed by the awards dinner celebration on August 11 at the Queens Brewery.

JAY MYSELF

Photographer Jay Maisel goes through decades of stuff as he moves out of longtime East Village home in Jay Myself

JAY MYSELF (Stephen Wilkes, 2018)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Opens Wednesday, July 31
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

In 1966, Brooklyn-born photographer Jay Maisel moved into the 1898 Germania Bank Building on the corner of Bowery and Spring, purchased with a now astonishing $25,000 down payment. Nearly fifty years later, in early 2015, after decades of taking pictures and collecting tens of thousands of random items, he was forced to sell the graffiti-laden, six-floor, 36,000-square-foot property because of rising maintenance costs; at fifty-five million dollars, it was the largest private real estate deal in New York history. One of his protégés, Stephen Wilkes — who back in the 1970s knocked on Maisel’s door and showed him his portfolio — documents Maisel’s months-long exit from the landmark building as he and a team of assistants sift through the maelstrom and Maisel regales him with stories from his career, which has included shooting for advertising agencies, Sports Illustrated, New York magazine, and jazz legends. “Objects are there for you only if you really see them. If you don’t, they don’t exist. And a lot of people don’t see things,” Maisel philosophizes. “Before you’re going to be able to see, you have to look. And before you can look, you have to want to look. And art is, to some effect, trying to make others see what you see.”

Documentary follows Jay Maisel’s nearly fifty-year history in the Bank on Spring & Bowery

Maisel, a calm man with a penchant for littering his sentences with curses, leads Wilkes through the six floors, showing items from his vast collection, one that borders on hoarding. “Each floor represented a certain partition of his mind,” Wilkes explains. Wilkes speaks with such other photographers as Jeff Dunas, Duane Michals, Dan Winters, Peter Murphy, Matt Dean, Hale Gurland, Barbara Bordnick, Jamie Smith, and Melchior DiGiacomo, who rave about Maisel’s influence and his iconoclastic personality. “He sees all this potential in things that no one else would. He just has such a sense of play,” his daughter, Amanda, says. Maisel, who carries a camera everywhere he goes, constantly snapping pictures, adds, “What I’m trying to do all the time is to try and see things anew, to see things the way a child would see them.”

The quintessentially New York documentary doesn’t dig too deep into his personal life and tends to be overly worshipful, but Maisel, who turned eighty-eight earlier this year, is an engaging character, chomping on a cigar, telling of his studies at Yale with Josef Albers, and going through boxes and boxes (and boxes and boxes) of stuff — what many would call junk — that he refuses to part with as the team from Moishe’s is faced with a virtually impossible situation. “I think there’s a delight in the perception and the enjoyments of objects,” he notes. There’s also a delight and enjoyment in watching this mensch over the course of seventy-eight minutes. Jay Myself opens at Film Forum on July 31, with Maisel and Wilkes participating in Q&As at several shows from July 31 to August 4.

TWEETUP SPACES

Grand Central is hosting #Tweetups through August 4 (photo by twi-ny/ mdr)

Vanderbilt Hall, Grand Central Terminal
The Africa Center, 1280 Fifth Ave.
Through August 4, free
www.sharedstudios.com/tweetups

Twitter can be a den of iniquity, where both famous and anonymous people share their vitriolic thoughts on the world at large and specific individuals, starting at the very top with the current president of the United States, who is obsessively twitterpated with the social media site. Twitter seeks to change that in at least a small way with #Tweetups, in which Twitter users can speak with one another face-to-face in large-scale Skype-like meetings held in giant containers. One such container, labeled “What’s Happening?,” will be in Vanderbilt Hall in Grand Central Terminal through August 4, offering #Tweetups to passersby, who walk on a red carpet leading into the container, at the end of which is a giant screen connecting to people in other cities. There is also a screen at the Africa Center along Museum Mile.

A red carpet leads you into personal discussions with people around the world (photo by twi-ny/ mdr)

Admission is free, and there is no advance registration necessary. Presented in conjunction with Shared_Studios, “Tweetup Spaces” is happening in forty cities around the world; there is an hourly schedule available so you can choose what location you want to connect with. For example, on July 31 in Grand Central, you can hook up with tweeters in Gaza at 8:00 am, Dallas at 2:00 pm, and Melbourne at 10:00 pm and take part in “#HereWeAre: Celebrating Women around the World,” focusing on discussions involving such hashtags as #SheInspiresMe, #EffYourBeautyStandards, #YesAllWomen, and #EqualPay; on August 1 at the Africa Center, you can converse with people from Lagos at 11:00 am and London at 4:00 and hang around for “The Twitter Table: What’s Happening?,” a noon lunch connecting Harlem and Lagos, followed by a happy hour. Translators and conversation guides are on site to make sure things go smoothly. You can also watch on small monitors #Tweetups going on in other countries. Twitter a place to bring people together instead of tear them apart? What a novel concept!

MOSTLY MOZART FESTIVAL: BLAK WHYTE GRAY

Boy Blue returns to Lincoln Center with Blak Whyte Gray at Mostly Mozart Festival (photo by Richard Termine)

Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College
524 West Fifty-Ninth St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
August 1–3, 7:30
Festival continues through August 9
www.lincolncenter.org
boyblueent.com

London-based troupe Boy Blue’s Blak Whyte Gray made its US debut last November at Lincoln Center’s White Light Festival. The sold-out dance-theater production proved so popular that Lincoln Center is bringing it back, running August 1-3 at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College as part of — surprise! — the annual summer Mostly Mozart Festival. The three-part, ninety-minute piece offers an abstract look at culture and identity, incorporating hip-hop, African chanting, electronics, and more. The music and creative direction are by Boy Blue cofounder Michael “Mikey J” Asante, with choreography and direction by Kenrick “H2O” Sandy, lighting by Lee Curran, and costumes by Ryan Dawson Laight. The August 2 show will be followed by a talk with Sandy and Pulitzer Prize–winning writer, professor, and critic Margo Jefferson. “The time is right to ask questions, to break free from the inner tension of a system that isn’t working, and to emerge on the other side to an awakening — a return to roots, a celebration of culture,” Boy Blue’s website explains about Blak Whyte Gray. Mostly Mozart continues through August 9 with plenty of Wolfgang programs as well as Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Yang Liping Contemporary Dance’s Under Siege, and International Contemporary Ensemble performing works by Nathan Davis, Ann Cleare, György Kurtág, Kate Soper, Anahita Abbasi, and Dai Fujikura.

WE CAN’T EVEN — MILLENNIALS ON FILM: FRANCES HA

Frances (Greta Gerwig) has to reexamine her life when her best friend moves on in Frances Ha

FRANCES HA (Noah Baumbach, 2012)
BAMfilm, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Saturday, August 3, 4:30 & 9:15
Series continues through August 6
718-636-4100
www.franceshamovie.com
www.bam.org

Lena Dunham meets Woody Allen and François Truffaut in Noah Baumbach’s utterly delightful and frustratingly believable Frances Ha, screening August 3 in BAM’s “We Can’t Even: Millennials on Film” series. Breakout mumblecore star Greta Gerwig (Hannah Takes the Stairs, Nights and Weekends) plays the title character, a twenty-seven-year-old New York dancer living with her best friend from college, Sophie (Mickey Sumner). They tell each other everything and even sleep in the same bed. “The coffee people are right — we are like a lesbian couple that doesn’t have sex anymore,” Frances playfully tells Sophie. But when Sophie suddenly announces that she’s moving in with her boyfriend, Patch (Patrick Heusinger), Frances’s life starts going on a downward spiral, her childlike manner and carefree attitude no longer as charmingly quirky as it used to be.

She first moves in with hot stud Lev (Adam Driver) and Benji (Michael Zegen), who nicknames her “Undateable.” She suffers a serious setback in the dance company where she apprentices, she’s running out of money, and Sophie is becoming more and more distant. But as Frances grows more and more desperate, she also finally starts taking a longer look at who she is — and who she wants to be. Shot in a deep, penetrating black-and-white by cinematographer Sam Levy, Frances Ha wonderfully captures the life of millennial twentysomethings, from their dependence on texting and self-involvement to their often bewildering inability to think about a real future.

Greta Gerwig cowrote and stars in Noah Baumbachs delightful FRANCES HA

Greta Gerwig cowrote and stars in partner Noah Baumbach’s delightful Frances Ha

Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale, Margot at the Wedding) follows Frances as she moves around New York City and goes back to her alma mater, Vassar (which is Baumbach’s also), marking each location as a new phase in her life. Gerwig, who took dance as a child and studied the discipline at Barnard (the choreography in the film is by Max Stone and Travis Waldschmidt), cowrote the script with Baumbach — they are romantic partners as well and had a son in March 2019. Although Gerwig initially did not consider herself for the title role, she is terrific as Frances, sort of the illegitimate daughter of Annie Hall and Antoine Doinel. The soundtrack features music by indie duo Dean + Britta — Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips also play the hosts of a dinner party Frances attends — in addition to Georges Delerue, the French composer of hundreds of films, including many by Truffaut. And yes, Gerwig’s real parents play her mother and father in the film. “We Can’t Even: Millennials on Film” continues at BAM through August 6 with such other works as Gerwig’s directorial debut, Ladybird, Xavier Dolan’s I Killed My Mother, Sean Baker’s Tangerine, and Laura Poitras’s Citizenfour.