twi-ny recommended events

NYFF56 PROJECTIONS: DIAMANTINO

Giant fluffy puppies get in the way of a Portuguese soccer star’s dreams in Diamantino

NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL: DIAMANTINO (Daniel Schmidt & Gabriel Abrantes, 2018)
Film Society of Lincoln Center
West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Thursday, October 4, Walter Reade Theater, 9:30
Friday, October 5, Howard Gilman Theater, 6:30
Saturday, October 13, Howard Gilman Theater, 9:15
Festival runs through October 14
212-875-5610
www.filmlinc.org

At the fifty-sixth annual New York Film Festival, you can catch a documentary, foreign-language picture, political thriller, high-tech crime chiller, comedy, romantic melodrama, fantasy and sci-fi, and more — all in one wildly entertaining film. Diamantino, Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt’s full-length feature debut, is an absurdist multigenre mashup that is as tense as it is funny, an unpredictable romp that evokes Ernst Lubitsch, Howard Hawks, Michel Gondry, Philip K. Dick, South Park, Cinderella, James Bond, Being There, Minority Report, and Au Hasard Balthazar while feeling wholly original. Carloto Cotta stars as the title character, Diamantino Matamouros, a Portuguese soccer star à la Cristiano Ronaldo (pre-sexual assault allegations) who sees giant fluffy puppies when he is on the field. After botching a penalty kick in the World Cup Final, the stupendously beautiful star learns that his beloved father and mentor (Chico Chapas) has died. His evil twin sisters, Sónia (Anabela Moreira) and Natasha (Margarida Moreira), become his agents and make a secret deal with the mysterious Dr. Lamborghini (Carla Maciel) and a government minister (Silva Joana). Meanwhile, investigators Aisha Brito (Cleo Tavares) and Lucia (Vargas Maria Leite) — lovers who are soon to be married — are looking into Diamantino’s finances and devise a plan to get close to him by having Aisha pose as a male refugee named Rahim who Diamantino adopts as his son.

Diamantino Matamouros (Carloto Cotta) is surrounded by images of himself in Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt’s dazzling feature debut

Everyone except his sisters, who know better, thinks he is some kind of genius mastermind, but Diamantino is actually an addled simpleton who understands very little about life. He enjoyed playing soccer, likes eating Nutella and whipped cream sandwiches, and, following his tearful retirement, hangs out with his cat, Mittens, and dedicates himself to raising Rahim, who he does not realize is actually a grown woman. He’s reminiscent of Chance the Gardener (Peter Sellers) in Being There, but his airheaded statements — which are outrageously funny — are seldom mistaken for brilliance, except when he’s manipulated into making fascistic political statements he doesn’t understand.

Diamantino is stunningly photographed by Charles Ackley Anderson, who quickly adapts the film’s visual style as it switches from fantasy to love story to futuristic thriller, with numerous memorable shots, including Lucia in a white nun’s habit on a motorbike, Diamantino and Rahim sleeping on pillows with large images of the soccer star’s head, and a huge fluffy puppy playing goal in the championship game. American-born directors and longtime collaborators Abrantes and Schmidt, who edited the film with Raphaëlle Martin-Holger, show a deep love and respect for movies, infusing Diamantino with charm and energy, humor and compassion, honoring, in their own way, the history of cinema. The rest of the cast and crew do their part as well, from art director Bruno Duarte and composers Ulysse Klotz and Adriana Holtz to the Moreira sisters and multidisciplinary Portuguese star Manuela Moura Guedes as television interviewer Gisele. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes Critics’ Week, Diamantino is screening in the Projections section of the New York Film Festival on October 4 and 5, with Schmidt and Abrantes participating in Q&As after each show. Also, an October 13 screening at 9:15 has just been added.

REPRESENTATION: ONE OCTOBER

Clay Pigeon interviews construction worker Mark Paris in One October

ONE OCTOBER (Rachel Shuman, 2017)
Nitehawk Cinema
136 Metropolitan Ave. between Berry St. & Wythe Ave.
Thursday, October 4, 7:15
718-384-3980
oneoctoberfilm.com
nitehawkcinema.com

In October 2008, in the midst of the Barack Obama / John McCain presidential election and the mortgage crisis, filmmaker Rachel Shuman took to the streets of New York City with Clay Pigeon, host of The Dusty Show on WFMU, interviewing people as they made their way across Manhattan and other boroughs. The Boston-born, Beacon-based Shuman intended to capture a moment in time and not release the film until after Obama’s second term ended to see how life in the city changed. The result is One October, a kind of love letter to who we were, are, and will be. Inspired by Chris Marker’s 1963 film Le Joli Mai, in which the French director interviewed people on the streets of Paris, Shuman follows Pigeon, Radio Shack mini tape recorder in hand, as he wanders through Central Park, Harlem, Washington Square Park, the Lower East Side, Madison Square Park, the Financial District, the Brooklyn Bridge, Willets Point, Tompkins Square Park, and other locations, approaching a series of men and women who share fascinating details about their personal and professional lives; the Iowa-born Pigeon has an innate knack for quickly understanding his subjects, asking intuitive questions that often surprise them. He speaks with a former freelance photographer who now works construction to make more money for his family, an ambitious lawyer who wants to work at the UN, a mixed-race couple sitting on a bench, a woman railing against the gentrification of Harlem, and a homeless man who turns the tables on the soft-spoken Pigeon. “It’s always interesting to see how the random collection of souls falls together and how the next chapter bears fruit or lies fallow,” he says on his radio show.

In between interviews, cinematographer David Sampliner beautifully photographs trees, buildings, storefronts, statues, the Halloween Parade, political rallies, the Columbus Day Parade, a housing protest, the Blessing of the Animals at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, birds flying across blue skies, Muslims praying at the end of Ramadan, and Jews performing the ritual of Tashlich, casting away their sins by throwing pieces of bread into the East River. The shots, which include classic New York restaurants as well as institutions that have since closed, are accompanied by a bittersweet score by Paul Brill, featuring cellist Dave Eggar. Director, editor, and producer Shuman (Negotiations) has created a loving warning about the future of a city that has been undergoing major changes since October 2008. Executive produced by three-time Oscar nominee Edward Norton, the hour-long One October is having a special October screening at Nitehawk Cinema as part of the “Representation” series, which highlights the scarcity of women directors in the industry; the film will be preceded by Jon Bunning’s fifteen-minute short The Tables, about Ping-Pong in Bryant Park, and followed by a Q&A with Shuman and WFMU host Amanda Nazario.

BAM NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL: THE BACCHAE

Anne Bogart and SITI Company relate Euripides’ The Bacchae to today’s sociopolitical ills in new interpretation (photo by Craig Schwartz)

THE BACCHAE
Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St. at Ashland Pl.
October 3-7, $40-$75
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

Anne Bogart and SITI Company return to BAM’s Next Wave Festival with their new interpretation of Euripides’ classic tale of gods and mortals, religion and the state, the earthly and the divine, The Bacchae. “More than any other play in Western civilization, Euripides’ is probably the one that most directly addresses the art of theater,” Bogart explains in a program note. “We are aware, for example, that we are looking at an actor or at a precisely lit staging and scenery, but at the same time we allow ourselves to enter into another world that is merely suggested by what is actually present.” The work, which premiered at the Getty Villa in California last month, is translated by Aaron Poochigian, with set and lighting by Brian H Scott, sound by Darron L West, and music composed by Erik Sanko. The cast features Ellen Lauren as Dionysus, Barney O’Hanlon as Tiresias, Stephen Duff Webber as Cadmus, Eric Berryman as Pentheus, and Akiko Aizawa as Agave. In conjunction with the show, the talk “Speaking Truth to Power: On Fear and Governance” will take place October 5 at the BAM Fisher’s Hillman Studio ($15, 6:00), with Anne Bogart and Monica Youn in conversation with Corey Robin, and BAM and the Mark Morris Dance Group are teaming up for “Introduction to Suzuki & Viewpoints,” a master class with SITI, on October 10 ($25, 12 noon) for theater artists, actors, dancers, performers, and directors.

THE MILE-LONG OPERA, A BIOGRAPHY OF 7 O’CLOCK

The Mile-Long Opera premieres on the High Line on October 3 at 7:00 (photo by Jean Coleman)

The High Line, Gansevoort St.
October 3-8, free with advance timed reservation
www.thehighline.org
milelongopera.com

Now that we’re in October, sunset has moved into the 6:30 range, but “civil” twilight is hovering around 7:00. So it is appropriate that from October 3-8, the High Line will be hosting The Mile-Long Opera, a biography of 7 o’clock, beginning each night at seven. The free presentation consists of one thousand singers from across New York, delivering the world premiere of this site-specific event, as the audience makes their way along the elevated park. The words were written by poets Anne Carson (librettist) and Claudia Rankine (essayist), based on interviews conducted with New Yorkers at Abrons Arts Center and the Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce in Manhattan, ARTs East NY in Brooklyn, Jacob A. Riis Neighborhood Settlement in Queens, the POINTCDC in the Bronx, and Snug Harbor in Staten Island, discussing what seven o’clock means to them. The work was created by composer David Lang and Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the design studio behind the High Line. The Mile-Long Opera is directed by Elizabeth Diller and Lynsey Peisinger, with music direction by Donald Nally, sound by Jody Elff, lighting by John Torres, and costumes by Carlos Soto; wildly inventive, multidisciplinary Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson is the creative adviser. Although advance registration is closed, there will be standby lines beginning at 6:30 each night at Gansevoort & Washington Sts.; since the event is free, you can expect many people who have signed up will not show, so there should be a pretty good chance of getting in. You can also experience the event in 360 degrees via an app that will be available on October 3. So think about it: Just what does 7:00 mean to you?

DALE CHIHULY: ROSE CRYSTAL TOWER

Dale Chihuly’s “Crystal Rose Tower” is part of Art in the Parks’ golden anniversary (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Art in the Parks
Union Square Park
Through October 5
www.unionsquarenyc.org
rose crystal tower slideshow

For a year, Dale Chihuly’s “Rose Crystal Tower” has stood tall on the median by the southeast corner of Union Square Park, but it’s set to come down October 5. Presented by NYC Parks, the Union Square Partnership, and the Marlborough Gallery, the thirty-one-foot-high sculpture, made of Polyvitro crystals and steel, is part of the fiftieth anniversary of the Art in the Parks program. The seventy-seven-year-old, internationally renowned, Tacoma-born Chihuly has been working with glass since the late 1960s; oddly, he was blinded in his left eye by glass in a car accident in 1976. “New York City’s energy, architecture, and rich creative history is formidable and it continues to offer infinite inspiration for artists,” Chihuly, whose “CHIHULY” exhibition was on view last year at the New York Botanical Garden, said in a statement.

NYFF56 RETROSPECTIVE TRIBUTE TO PIERRE RISSIENT: A TOUCH OF ZEN

King Hu’s A Touch of Zen is a trippy journey toward enlightenment

NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL: A TOUCH OF ZEN (King Hu, 1969)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Howard Gilman Theater
165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Tuesday, October 2, 6:30
Festival runs through October 14
212-875-5610
www.filmlinc.org

Watching King Hu’s 1969 wuxia classic, A Touch of Zen, brings us back to the days of couching out with Kung Fu Theater on rainy Saturday afternoons. The highly influential three-plus-hour epic features an impossible-to-figure-out plot, a goofy romance, wicked-cool weaponry, an awesome Buddhist monk, a bloody massacre, and action scenes that clearly involve the overuse of trampolines. Still, it’s great fun, even if it is way too long. (The film, which was initially shown in two parts, earned a special technical prize at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival.) Shih Jun stars as Ku Shen Chai, a local calligrapher and scholar who is extremely curious when the mysterious Ouyang Nin (Tin Peng) suddenly show up in town. It turns out that Ouyang is after Miss Yang (Hsu Feng) to exact “justice” for the corrupt Eunuch Wei, who is out to kill her entire family. Hu (Come Drink with Me, Dragon Gate Inn) fills the film with long, poetic establishing shots of fields and the fort, using herky-jerky camera movements (that might or might not have been done on purpose) and throwing in an ultra-trippy psychedelic mountain scene that is about as 1960s as it gets. A Touch of Zen is ostensibly about Ku’s journey toward enlightenment, but it’s also about so much more, although we’re not completely sure what that is. The film is screening on October 2 at 6:30 as part of the fifty-sixth New York Film Festival’s Retrospective tribute to Pierre Rissient, Cannes film scout, publicist, producer, distributor, etc., who believed, “It is not enough to love a film. One must love it for the right reasons!” Rissient passed away in May at the age of eighty-one; the sidebar also includes such other films that Rissient championed as Lino Brocka’s Manila in the Claws of Light, Clint Eastwood’s Play Misty for Me, Fritz Lang’s House by the River, and Joseph Losey’s Time without Pity.

THE SIX BRANDENBURG CONCERTOS

Anne de Keersmaeker’s adaptation of The Six Brandenburg Concertos comes to the Park Ave. Armory this week

Park Ave. Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
October 1-7, $45-$95
212-933-5812
www.armoryonpark.org
www.rosas.be/en

Belgian choreographer Anne de Keersmaeker has been making deeply thoughtful, intellectually exciting, stunningly beautiful work — “the art of dance as an act of writing movements in space and time,” as it says in the mission statement of her company — for nearly four decades. On October 1, just a few weeks after its September 12 world premiere in Berlin, her eagerly anticipated adaptation of The Six Brandenburg Concertos opens at the Park Avenue Armory, home to several great explorations of Bach, from the 2014 St. Matthew Passion by Peter Sellars, with the Berliner Philharmoniker conducted by Sir Simon Rattle, to the 2015 Goldberg by pianist Igor Levit and visual artist Marina Abramovic. De Keersmaeker’s piece is choreographed for sixteen members of all generations in her Rosas company, performed to all six concertos played live by noted baroque orchestra B’Rock, conducted by Amandine Beyer, who has worked with De Keekrmaeker previously. With costumes by An D’Huys and set and lighting design by Jan Versweyveld, Ivo van Hove’s partner and regular collaborator, the two-hour piece promises to be a fascinating look at the interplay of pattern in music and movement, interpreted by masters.

six brandenburg concertos

De Keersmaeker has never shied from setting her works to music that is both challenging and fiercely beloved; in 1980, her well-known Violin Phase was performed to the music of Steve Reich, and just a year ago in September, twi-ny was riveted by her work with Salva Sanchez on A Love Supreme at New York Live Arts, performed to John Coltrane’s classic album. “Like no other, Bach’s music carries within itself movement and dance, managing to combine the greatest abstraction with a concrete, physical, and, subsequently, even transcendental dimension,” De Keersmaeker has said. In a recent interview with Jan Vandenhouwe, artistic director of Kunsthuis Opera Vlaanderen Royal Ballet Flanders, De Keersmaeker noted, “Just like Bach in composing, I have to impose rules on myself which over time I can break. . . . Measure by measure we try to compensate Bach’s musical counterpoint with a choreographic counterpoint. It is certainly an enormous challenge to match the logic of the dance vocabulary with that of the music.” It’s a challenge that will be met in the Wade Thompson Drill Hall during this very special week of performances, by De Keersmaeker and her co-creators and dancers, Boštjan Antončič, Carlos Garbin, Frank Gizycki, Marie Goudot, Robin Haghi, Cynthia Loemij, Mark Lorimer, Michaël Pomero, Jason Respilieux, Igor Shyshko, Luka Švajda, Jakub Truszkowski, Thomas Vantuycom, Samantha van Wissen, Sandy Williams, and Sue Yeon Youn. De Keersmaeker and Beyer will take part in an artist talk with Performa founding director and chief curator RoseLee Goldberg on October 4 at 6:00; the event is sold out, but it will be streamed live on Facebook here.