twi-ny recommended events

NETFLIX’S HOUSE OF CARDS SCREENING AND TALK

Robin Wright will be at the 92nd St. Y to discuss last season of House of Cards on October 17

92nd St. Y, Kaufmann Concert Hall
1395 Lexington Ave. at 92nd St.
Wednesday, October 17, $20-$45, 8:30
212-415-5500
www.92y.org
www.netflix.com

It’s one of the most hotly anticipated series of the fall season, streaming on Netflix beginning November 2, and you can get a sneak peek at it on October 17 at the 92nd St. Y when House of Cards comes to the Upper East Side. Kevin Spacey’s career turned into a house of cards when he was accused of sexual assault by Anthony Rapp and others, but the show will go on without him for one more season, with stars Robin Wright and Michael Kelly and executive producers Melissa Gibson and Frank Pugliese at the Y to talk about it. Wright, of course, plays Claire Underwood, who has taken over the presidency from her devious husband, Frank Underwood (Spacey, as a character whose initials are not accidentally FU); Kelly is Doug Stamper, the dark and dedicated loyal ally to Frank who knows where all the bodies are buried. The evening will look at political thrillers, the idea of the first woman president, and how the show evokes what is really happening in Washington and across the country.

LUCY GUERIN INC: SPLIT

Lucy Guerin’s Split makes its US premiere this week at BAC (photo by Gregory Lorenzutti)

Baryshnikov Arts Center, Jerome Robbins Theater
450 West 37th St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
October 11-13, $25, 7:30
212-811-4111
bacnyc.org
www.lucyguerininc.com

Adelaide-born, Melbourne-based choreographer Lucy Guerin returns to the Baryshnikov Arts Center for the first time since 2009 — she was last in the city in 2012 with Untrained at BAM — with the US premiere of Split. The fifty-minute piece features two dancers, Melanie Lane and Lilian Steiner, the former clothed (in a costume designed by Harriet Oxley), the latter not. It’s an intimate, bold work on a square staging area that takes aim at the intense pressure we all feel in today’s furious, nonstop world as space and time close in. Split is set to a gently building electronic score by UK composer Scanner, aka Robin Rimbaud, who has written and performed original music for art installations, a musical comedy, a ballet, and more, collaborating with Bryan Ferry, Wayne MacGregor, Steve McQueen, Laurie Anderson, and others. Steiner, a Melbourne-based choreographer and dancer, received a 2017 Helpmann Award for Best Female Dancer in a Ballet, Dance, or Physical Theatre Production for Split; that same year, Guerin and Gideon Obarzanek won the Helpmann Award for Best Choreography in a Ballet, Dance, or Physical Theatre Production for Attraction. Split also garnered several 2018 Green Room Awards, including Best Ensemble (Duo or Trio), Choreography, and Concept and Realisation. The lighting designer is Paul Lim, with sound design by Robin Fox. Guerin, whose previous works include Conversation Piece, Weather, Structure and Sadness, and Tomorrow, recently told the Australian edition of Dance Information about Split, “The process started from various movement ideas, but it went everywhere, as many of my works do. So, there were times when we were working in big cellophane bags, and learning cartoon movement off YouTube. . . . It ended up being quite a dark piece with a real intensity about it. It’s really an abstract work, but it seems to bring out quite strong images for people, and I think that’s partly because of the clarity of the structure.” Split runs at BAC October 11-13, with tickets only $25 but going fast.

CROSSING THE LINE: JEANNE BALIBAR IN LES HISTORIENNES

French star Jeanne Balibar will be at FIAF for three special events during October

French star Jeanne Balibar will present the world premiere of her one-woman show, Les Historiennes, at FIAF on October 13

French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
October 13, $30-$60, 7:00
Film series continues Tuesdays through October 30
212-355-6100
crossingthelinefestival.org
heymancenter.org

On October 13, extraordinary French actress Jeanne Balibar will be at Florence Gould Hall for the world premiere of Les Historiennes (“The Historians”), a one-woman show that concludes FIAF’s annual Crossing the Line multidisciplinary festival. Balibar, the daughter of a renowned philosopher and a well-respected physicist, will portray three characters in the presentation: the Murderer, based on Anne-Emmanuelle Demartini’s writings on Violette Nozière, a teenager who killed her father in the 1930s; the Slave, based on Charlotte de Castelnau’s writings on several historical issues; and the Actress, about French stage and film star Delphine Seyrig and her father, archaeologist Henri Seyrig. In conjunction with Les Historiennes, FIAF has been hosting “Brilliant Quirky: Jeanne Balibar on Film,” consisting of ten Balibar movies on Tuesdays through October 30. On October 9 she will be at FIAF for a Q&A following the 7:30 sneak preview screening of Barbara, directed by Mathieu Amalric, who was celebrated at FIAF three years ago with his own film series and his US theatrical debut in Le Moral des ménages (“Fight or Flight”).

Jeanne Balibar will be at FIAF on October 9 to discuss her latest film, Mathieu Amalric’s Barbara

In addition, Maison Française at Columbia is hosting several free, related discussions with the scholars that inspired Les Historiennes, in French with English translations. Last night, “Writing History from a Crime: The Violette Nozière Case” featured Demartini in conversation with Stephane Gerson and Judith Surkis. On October 10 at 6:00, “Marriage and Slavery in the Early Portuguese Atlantic World” features de Castelnau-L’Estoile in conversation with Amy Chazkel and Roquinaldo Ferreira, followed on October 11 at 6:00 by “Biography and the Social Sciences: the Case of Claude Lévi-Strauss” with Loyer in conversation with Emmanuelle Saada and Camille Robcis. And on October 12, Balibar will join Demartini, Loyer, and de Castelnau-L’Estoile for “Women’s voices, women’s stories” at 1:00. “Brilliant Quirky: Jeanne Balibar on Film” continues with such other Balibar flicks as Raúl Ruiz’s Comedy of Innocence and 2013’s Par exemple, Électre, her first film as a director, a collaboration with Pierre Léon in which she also stars.

JULIANA F. MAY: FOLK INCEST

Juliana May’s Folk Incest makes its world premiere this week at Abrons Arts Center (photo by Chris Cameron)

Abrons Arts Center, Studio G05
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
Tuesday – Saturday, October 9-20, $20, 7:30
212-598-0400
www.abronsartscenter.org
www.maydance.org

New York City native Juliana F. May creates complex, challenging works that take on heavy social issues while exploring the boundaries of dance. Referring to such pieces as Gutter Gate, Adult Documentary, and Commentary=not thing, she states on her website, “I have become increasingly interested in the relationship between feeling, form, and, most recently, in the Aristotelian notion of Necessity. . . . This notion of necessity came to the forefront of the work as I began to wonder how abstraction could be necessary. . . . I manipulate text, song, dialogue and vocalization in an effort to expose the chaotic, conflictual and conversely innocent mode of communication between people.” From October 9 to 20 at Abrons Arts Center, May and her company, MAYDANCE, will present the world premiere of the evening-length piece Folk Incest, a work for five women performers that explores form, sexual trauma, the Holocaust, and the fetishization of young girls; among its pop-culture inspirations are the music of Joan Baez along with John Waters’s Cry Baby, with ample doses of humor added to the seriousness. May wrote, directed, and choreographed the work, which will be performed by Leslie Cuyjet, Tess Dworman, Lucy Kaminsky, Molly Poerstel, and Rebecca Wender, with music by Tatyana Tenanbaum, lighting by Madeline Best, and costumes by Mariana Valencia. Several nights are already sold out, so get your tickets now to see the latest from one of the city’s most fascinating movement artists.

THE WAR AT HOME

Restored documentary follows ten years of student protests at the University of Wisconsin in Madison

THE WAR AT HOME (Glenn Silber, 1979)
New York Film Festival: Film Society of Lincoln Center, Francesca Beale Theater
West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway, 212-875-5610
Tuesday, October 9, 8:00
Metrograph, 7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts., 212-660-0312
Opens Friday, October 12
www.filmlinc.org
metrograph.com

In 1979, the Oscars paid tribute to a changing sentiment in the country regarding the Vietnam War and its veterans, showering accolades on The Deer Hunter and Coming Home. The next year, Vietnam was not so front and center, although a small but important film was nominated for Best Documentary Feature (and also won the Special Jury Prize at Sundance): Glenn Silber and Barry Alexander Brown’s The War at Home, an eye-opening look at the year-by-year history of the antiwar movement at the University of Wisconsin in Madison from 1963 into the early 1970s. Following a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for a rerelease of a new 4K digital restoration by IndieCollect, The War at Home is screening October 9 in the Revivals section of the fifty-sixth annual New York Film Festival before opening for a theatrical run at Metrograph on October 12. Although the revival shows its age, the film is startlingly relevant, serving as both a primer and a warning about peaceful protest today. “When we were producing The War at Home in our twenties, we often said we were ‘making this film for our children’ because we understood that we had lived through an extraordinary political and turbulent period,” Silber and Brown explain on the Kickstarter page. “The film is also about the lessons of this politically intense time when a generation of young Americans confronted their government’s policies and lies.”

Glenn Silber and Barry Alexander Brown in 1979 while making The War at Home

The film traces the antiwar movement in Madison chronologically, combining new interviews of participants on both sides of the issue with archival footage of the brutality of the war and clips of such politicians as Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard M. Nixon, presidential candidates Eugene McCarthy, Hubert Humphrey, and Charlene Mitchell, Defense secretary Robert McNamara, and Congressman Gerald R. Ford. In one of the film’s most poignant moments, Sen. Ted Kennedy says to a UW audience that he knows what they are against but asks what they are for. Silber and Brown speak with such pivotal figures as Karleton Armstrong, Wisconsin Student Association vice president Margery Tabankin, sociology professor Maurice Zeitlin, black activists Wahid and Liberty Rashad, Elinore Pullen, Susan Colson, ROTC cadet Jack Calhoun, Evan Stark, Quaker peace activist Betty Boardman, businessman and Holocaust survivor Jack Von Mettenheim, underground newspaper editor Ken Mate, Madison mayor Paul Soglin, campus journalist Jim Rowen, and poet Allen Ginsberg, along with campus police chief Ralph Hanson, Sen. Gaylord Nelson, Madison police chief inspector Herman Thomas, university president H. Edwin Young, and Vietnam veterans Al Jenkins, Doug Bradley, and Ron Carbon. “We were trying to build a whole counterculture,” says Students for a Democratic Society head Henry Haslach, noting that their goal was to have an impact on all social issues, not just the war. The film shows the protestors as they burn draft cards, occupy an administration building, demonstrate against Dow chemical, hold a student strike, travel to the 1968 Democratic National Convention, and participate in a national moratorium while featuring songs by Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Buffalo Springfield, and Sgt. Barry Sadler and a remarkable political advertisement that makes today’s attack ads look mild.

University of Wisconsin was a hotbed of student protests during the Vietnam War (photo by Roger Turner / Wisconsin State Journal)

Nearly forty years after its initial release, The War at Home is no mere time capsule, particularly as Wisconsin is now a key swing state, and Silber will be at the NYFF screening to talk about the film’s current relevance. “Today, we’re facing another president who’s threatening war, destroying our environmental protections, rejecting climate change, lying to the public, debasing the truth, attacking the news media, and tearing at the very fabric of our democratic institutions. That’s why the resistance has sprung up and is fighting back,” he and Brown write on the Kickstarter page. After the Tuesday screening at the festival, The War at Home will open at Metrograph on Friday, with Silber and Brown appearing at Q&As with an all-star lineup: October 12 at 8:30 with Michael Moore, October 13 at 1:00 with Alex Gibney, October 14 at 1:00 with Mark Rudd, and October 15 at 7:15 with Amy Goodman.

NYFF56 MAIN SLATE: 3 FACES

Iranian auteur Jafar Panahi plays himself in gorgeously photographed and beautifully paced 3 Faces

NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL: 3 FACES (SE ROKH) (Jafar Panahi, 2018)
Film Society of Lincoln Center
West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Monday, October 8, Alice Tully Hall, 5:00
Saturday, October 13, Walter Reade Theater, 8:30
Festival runs through October 14
212-875-5610
www.filmlinc.org

One of the most brilliant and revered storytellers in the world, Iranian auteur Jafar Panahi proves his genius yet again with his latest cinematic masterpiece, the tenderhearted yet subtly fierce road movie 3 Faces. Making its US premiere this week at the New York Film Festival — it previously won the Best Screenplay prize at Cannes — 3 Faces walks the fine line between fiction and nonfiction while defending the art of filmmaking. Popular Iranian movie and television star Behnaz Jafari, playing herself, has received a video in which a teenage girl named Marziyeh (Marziyeh Rezaei), frustrated that her family will not let her study acting at the conservatory where she’s been accepted, commits suicide onscreen, disappointed that her many texts and phone calls to her hero, Jafari, went unanswered. Deeply upset by the video — which was inspired by a real event — Jafari, who claims to have received no such messages, enlists her friend and colleague, writer-director Panahi, also playing himself, to head into the treacherous mountains to try to find out more about Marziyeh and her friend Maedeh (Maedeh Erteghaei). They learn the girls are from a small village in the Turkish-speaking Azeri region in northwest Iran, and as they make their way through narrow, dangerous mountain roads, they encounter tiny, close-knit communities that still embrace old traditions and rituals and are not exactly looking to help them find out the truth.

Iranian star Behnaz Jafari plays herself as she tries to solve a mystery in Jafar Panahi’s 3 Faces

Panahi (Offside, The Circle) — who is banned from writing and directing films in his native Iran, is not allowed to give interviews, and cannot leave the country — spends much of the time in his car, which not only works as a plot device but also was considered necessary in order for him to hide from local authorities who might turn him in to the government. He and Jafari stop in three villages, the birthplaces of his mother, father, and grandparents, for further safety. The title refers to three generations of women in Iranian cinema: Marziyeh, the young, aspiring artist; Jafari, the current star (coincidentally, when she goes to a café, the men inside are watching an episode from her television series); and Shahrzad, aka Kobra Saeedi, a late 1960s, early 1970s film icon who has essentially vanished from public view following the Islamic Revolution of 1978-79, banned from acting in Iran. (Although Shahrzad does not appear as herself in the film, she does read her poetry in voiceover.) 3 Faces is gorgeously photographed by Amin Jafari and beautifully edited by Mastaneh Mohajer, composed of many long takes with few cuts and little camera movement; early on there is a spectacular eleven-minute scene in which an emotionally tortured Behnaz Jafari listens to Panahi next to her on the phone, gets out of the car, and walks around it, the camera glued to her the whole time in a riveting tour-de-force performance.

Behnaz Jafari and Jafar Panahi encounter culture clashes and more in unique and unusual road movie

3 Faces is Panahi’s fourth film since he was arrested and convicted in 2010 for “colluding with the intention to commit crimes against the country’s national security and propaganda against the Islamic Republic”; the other works are This Is Not a Film, Closed Curtain, and Taxi Tehran, all of which Panahi starred in and all of which take place primarily inside either a home or a vehicle. 3 Faces is the first one in which he spends at least some time outside, where it is more risky for him; in fact, whenever he leaves the car in 3 Faces, it is evident how tentative he is, especially when confronted by an angry man. The film also has a clear feminist bent, not only centering on the three generations of women, but also demonstrating the outdated notions of male dominance, as depicted by a stud bull with “golden balls” and one villager’s belief in the mystical power of circumcised foreskin and how he relates it to former macho star Behrouz Vossoughi, who appeared with Shahrzad in the 1973 film The Hateful Wolf and is still active today, living in California. 3 Faces is screening October 8 at Alice Tully Hall and October 13 at the Walter Reade Theater; Panahi, of course, will not be present at either show, as his road has been blocked, leaving him a perilous path that he must navigate with great care.

SPEAKEASY DOLLHOUSE: THE GIRL WHO HANDCUFFED HOUDINI

The Girl Who Handcuffed Houdini investigates the mysterious death of Harry Houdini in a very adult immersive production

Theatre 80
78-80 St. Marks Pl. at First Ave.
Wednesday – Saturday through November 10, $100-$200, 7:00
www.minkywoodcock.com
theatre80.wordpress.com

Ehrich Weisz, better known as Harry Houdini, died under mysterious circumstances on October 31, 1926, at the age of fifty-two. Writer, artist, musician, and immersive theater impresario Cynthia von Buhler investigates the events surrounding the possible murder of the master magician in The Girl Who Handcuffed Houdini, which opened last night at Theatre 80 on St. Marks Pl. Adapted from the four-part comic-book series von Buhler wrote and illustrated (featuring cover collaborations with David Mack, Robert McGinnis, Dean Haspiel, and others), the show invites audience members to follow one of three conceptual narratives: the Pragmatists, led by Bennie Woodcock (Luka Fric), Sam Smiley (Ryan Salvato), and Nurse La Chatte (choreographer Delysia La Chatte); the Spiritualists, represented by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Lord Kat), Margery of Boston (Veronica “the Love Witch” Varlow), J. Gordon Whitehead (E. James Ford), and Lady Marler (Celeste Hudson); and the Magician’s Favored Guests, VIPs connected to Harry Houdini (director Vincent Cinque), Bess Houdini (Robyn Adele Anderson), and Minky Woodcock (Pearls Daily), the fictional detective trying to find out the truth about Houdini’s death. Most of the characters and situations are inspired by actual events; ticket holders receive advance emails pointing to newspaper accounts and other ephemera as well as the introduction to the comic book, which establishes the setup. The different groups make their way through multiple rooms on several floors of the three-story townhouse, site of a former jazz nightclub and movie revival house that was a popular Prohibition destination (Scheib’s Place) and now is home to the Museum of the American Gangster and the William Barnacle Tavern as well as a hotel.

Dancer and choreographer Delysia La Chatte plays Nurse La Chatte in The Girl Who Handcuffed Houdini

The plot focuses on Houdini’s desperate need to find a true medium who could actually contact the spirit world; he dedicated the last years of his life to debunking frauds who were bilking grieving customers. To get close to the magician, Minky becomes Houdini’s assistant, much to the displeasure of Bess, who assumes Minky will become her husband’s next lover. Houdini was friends with Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes and a leading advocate of spirit photography; his wife, Lady Doyle, was believed to have psychic abilities. Both play important roles in a séance led by Margery, who is heckled by Dr. Kretzka, who thinks it is all a bunch of nonsense. Houdini is also at odds with Madame Marcia (Sidney Morss), who is fearful that Houdini is trying to put an end to her and her colleagues’ business. Meanwhile, Houdini’s lawyer, Bernard Ernst (Tony Noto), wanders around with his parrot. Also making appearances are Houdini’s muscled assistant, Jim Collins (Mat Leonard); Jack Price (Will Davis), a McGill University student who witnessed a key moment that might have impacted Houdini’s death; and a pianist (Anna Stefanic) performing period songs.

As with von Buhler’s earlier theatrical productions, including Speakeasy Dollhouse, The Brothers Booth, and The Bloody Beginning, the audience is encouraged to dress up in period costumes, which adds to the atmosphere, although the night we went the audience was disappointingly garbed. It helps if you are open to just about anything; participation is encouraged but not mandatory. (I ended up playing a critical role in Houdini’s death.) As with so many immersive shows, there is a significant FOMO factor, since multiple scenes are going on in separate rooms at the same time, so just be resigned that you are not going to see everything. The transitions in The Girl Who Handcuffed Houdini are ragged from the very start; we arrived on schedule yet still managed to not be guided to an opening séance. At other times groups are led into locations where something is already going on, ends, and then a new scene begins, causing confusion. It is also awkward having to walk outside in order to go upstairs and downstairs; there may be no other way to do that in this building, but it takes away from your immersion in the Houdini mystery as you suddenly encounter people on the street who have no idea what you’re doing. After the show, everyone receives the hardcover edition of von Buhler’s graphic novel. (They were supposed to be signed, but ours weren’t, which was fine but curious.) Regardless, it’s all still a lot of fun. Von Buhler, who serves as producer, writer, art director, set designer, music director, and puppet designer, has a great feel for the Prohibition era, and she knows how to titillate her audience, with song, dance, magic, drink, and ample nudity. You might not change your mind about whether spirits exist, but you’ll still enjoy a spirited evening — complete with a lovely absinthe station you can indulge in at the bar, if you get there early enough and/or decide to stay late.