twi-ny recommended events

JAPAN CUTS: ANTI-PORNO

Ami Tomite stars in Sion Sono’s bizarre, beguiling, anarchistic Anti-Porno

FESTIVAL OF NEW JAPANESE FILM: ANTI-PORNO (ANCHI PORUNO) (アンチポルノ) (Sion Sono, 2016)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Sunday, July 16, 8:45
Festival runs July 13-23
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org
www.nikkatsu-romanporno.com

“I’m a virgin. A virgin, but a whore,” successful novelist, painter, and fashion designer Kyoko (Ami Tomite) says at the beginning of Sion Sono’s bizarre, deliciously candy-colored and anarchic Anti-Porno, making its East Coast premiere July 22 at 10:30 in Japan Society’s Japan Cuts: Festival of New Japanese Cinema. You never know what to expect from Siono, whose previous films include the wild and wacky Love & Peace, the wild and crazy Why Don’t You Play in Hell? and the strangely beautiful and touching Himizu. Anti-Porno is part of Nikkatsu’s Roman Porno Reboot Project, a celebration of the forty-fifth anniversary of the studio’s Japanese softcore films, which began in 1971 with Shōgorō Nishimura’s Apartment Wife: Affair in the Afternoon and continued through 1988 with Daisuke Gotō’s Bed Partner. In true Sono style, he honors the format by confusing fiction with reality, star characters with minor newbies, and the past with the present in ways that are as exhilarating as they are confounding. The story takes place primarily in a spectacular apartment decked out in bright yellows, blues, and reds, with large-scale paintings and a lushly alluring open bathroom. Kyoko is a self-obsessed terror who abuses her dedicated assistant, Noriko (Mariko Tsutsui) — or is it the other way around? “I want to be a whore like you,” Noriko begs. There’s fetishism galore, plenty of nudity, a lizard trapped in a bottle, incest, an audience of girls in Sailor Moon outfits, sycophantic hangers-on, a mysterious sex film, and then a man yells, “Cut!” Soon you’re not sure who’s in charge, who’s the lead, and whether you’re watching a movie, a movie-within-a-movie, or a novel-within-a-movie-within-a-movie. “This isn’t my life!” Kyoko screams. Or is it? Sono, who also wrote the script, uses the porn format to question ideas of sexuality, misogyny, freedom, abuse, feminism, exploitation, dominance, art, power, and pornography itself, resulting in a rousing, er, climax. The gorgeous production design is by Takashi Matsuzuka, with striking cinematography by Maki Ito, raunchy costumes by Kazuhiro Sawataishi, and an inventive, wide-ranging score by Susumu Akizuki. Because of the film’s graphic nature, no one under eighteen will be admitted to the Japan Society screening, which will be preceded by Sawako Kabuki’s hysterical three-minute X-rated animated vomitfest Summer’s Puke Is Winter’s Delight.

PRISMATIC PARK: CACONRAD

Poet CAConrad will be giving personalized (Soma)tic poetry rituals in Madison Square Park through July 23 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Poet CAConrad will be offering free personalized (Soma)tic poetry rituals in Madison Square Park through July 23 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

(SOMA)TIC POETRY RITUALS
Madison Square Park Oval Lawn
Twenty-Fourth St. between Madison & Fifth Aves.
Through July 23, free, 12 noon – 5:00 pm (workshops nightly at 6:00)
www.madisonsquarepark.org
caconrad.blogspot.com

“Every single human being is creative. When we commit ourselves to nurturing our artistic capacities we improve our ability to more deeply discern the world around us and make the constructive decisions needed in order to thrive in this world,” fifty-one-year-old poet CAConrad writes in his (Soma)tic Manifesto. Through July 23, Conrad will be performing “(Soma)tic Poetry Rituals” in Madison Square Park, under one of American artist and MacArthur Fellow Josiah McElheny’s three sculptures that comprise “Prismatic Park,” a collaborative public art project that is hosting free dance, music, and poetry through October 8, sponsored by Danspace Project, Blank Forms, and Poets House. Born in Kansas and raised in Pennsylvania, Conrad is the author of such books as The City Real & Imagined, ECODEVIANCE: (Soma)tics for the Future Wilderness, and the upcoming While Standing in Line for Death. In 1998, Conrad’s boyfriend, AIDS activist Earth (Mark Holmes), was brutally raped, tortured, and murdered in Tennessee at the age of thirty-six. In order to break out of his subsequent depression and his inability to break away from a factorylike existence that had been with him since childhood when his family ran a casket company, Conrad developed rituals that helped respark his creative energy and his life in general. He is currently in the midst of a six-day residency in Madison Square Park, sitting (in the shade) at a small table under McElheny’s open red vaulted-roof pavilion (with red and yellow glass), where the public is invited to join him for approximately twenty minutes as Conrad develops a personalized (Soma)tic poetry ritual for each individual participant, involving crystals, liquids, and writing. The rituals are meant to help anyone seeking new ways to cope with today’s world; they are not limited to writers. The personalized rituals — bring pen and paper to take copious notes — are first come, first served, from 12 noon to 5:00, followed by workshops from 6:00 to 8:00; on July 22, Conrad delves into crystal trees, while on July 23 he will read tarot cards. “Prismatic Park,” which also features a blue sound wall and a reflective green dance floor, continues with concerts by Joe McPhee & Graham Lambkin (July 25-30), Shelley Hirsch (August 22-27), Matana Roberts (September 5-10), and Limpe Fuchs with poet Patrick Rosal (October 3-8), dance by Netta Yerushalmy (August 1-6) and Jodi Melnick (September 12-17, 19-24), and poetry by Joshua Bennett (August 15-20), Donna Masini (August 29 – September 3), and Mónica de la Torre (September 26 – October 1).

THE FENCER

Märt Avandi stars as real-life fencing champion Endel Nelis in The Fencer

THE FENCER (MEIKKAILIJA) (VEHKLEJA) (Klaus Härö, 2016)
Angelika Film Center, 18 West Houston St. at Mercer St., 212-995-2570
Lincoln Plaza Cinema, 1886 Broadway between 62nd & 63rd Sts., 212-757-2280
Opens Friday, July 21
thefencermovie.com

Based on a true story, Finnish director Klaus Härö’s The Fencer is a compelling and moving film about a man on the run who suddenly finds himself in a situation that unexpectedly suits him. Estonian actor and comedian Märt Avandi stars as Endel Nelis, a real-life fencing champion who has escaped Stalinism in Leningrad and is hiding out as a teacher in a school in Haapsalu, Estonia, with a new last name. Initially dour and stand-offish, Endel is assigned by the school principal (Hendrik Toompere), a strict party loyalist, to run the sports club, and he soon decides to teach them how to fence, using homemade foils. His interaction with the children, especially Marta (Liisa Koppel), Jaan (Joonas Koff), Lea (Ann-Lisett Rebane), Toomas (Egert Kadastu), and Tiiu (Elbe Reiter), many of whom have been orphaned because of the German and Soviet occupations of Estonia and the continuing presence of the Soviet secret police, lead him to take a personal interest in their lives, as well as reevaluating the meaning of his own. He grows close with fellow teacher Kadri (Ursula Ratasepp), but when his old friend Aleksei (Kirill Käro) tells him that he needs to leave because the police are on his trail, Endel has some critical decisions to make, and not just about himself.

Endel Nelis (Märt Avandi) finds new meaning to his life in Klaus Härö’s The Fencer

The Fencer is the fourth of Härö’s five feature films to be selected as Finland’s submission for the Academy Awards. The first screenplay written by Finnish novelist and sculptor Anna Heinämaa, the film is tenderly directed by Härö with an acute visual sense (the sharp cinematography is by Tuomo Hutri), which comes about at least in part because of language barriers — he speaks Finnish, Swedish, and English, but the actors, including the children, speak Estonian and Russian. Härö (The New Man, Mother of Mine) steers clear of turning The Fencer into a historical drama, instead concentrating on the human aspects of the story rather than focusing on how the Soviets invaded Estonia after the war and rounded up men who had been drafted by the Nazis. He also handles what could have been a clichéd fencing competition with a gentle touch, the matches evoking a different kind of battle in which participants don’t end up dead. Resembling a young Max von Sydow, Avandi is excellent as Endel, an intensely private man who is suspicious of everything, keeping to himself until he becomes involved in something bigger than his own fears. He turns into a different person when he picks up his foil, suddenly ready to face a world that might not be quite as bitter and harsh as he thinks, where a man can stand up for what’s right, prepared to face the consequences.

A CONVERSATION WITH YVONNE RAINER AND LYNNE TILLMAN

Yvonne Rainer will be at the Film Society of Lincoln Center for a comprehensive retrospective of her work in cinema

TALKING PICTURES: THE CINEMA OF YVONNE RAINER
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Amphitheater, Francesca Beale Theater
Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
144 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Monday, July 24, free, 7:00
Series runs July 21-27
212-875-5232
www.filmlinc.org

In 1965, Yvonne Rainer wrote the “No Manifesto,” publicly saying no to “spectacle, virtuosity, transformations and magic and make-believe, the glamour and transcendency of the star image, the heroic, the anti-heroic, trash imagery, involvement of performer or spectator, style, camp, seduction of spectator by the wiles of the performer, eccentricity, and moving or being moved.” It will be difficult, if not impossible, for audiences to maintain many of those ideals when the legendary eighty-two-year-old dancer, choreographer, actor, director, performance artist, and writer comes to the Film Society of Lincoln Center for a week-long celebration of her celluloid career. “Talking Pictures: The Cinema of Yvonne Rainer” runs July 21-27 at the Francesca Beale Theater, with shorts and features made by and/or starring Rainer, along with works that inspired and influenced her. The roster includes Rainer’s Lives of Performers, Film About a Woman Who . . . , Journeys from Berlin/1971, The Man Who Envied Women, and Privilege, among others, along with her collaborations with Maya Deren, Hollis Frampton, and Charles Atlas (who will introduce Trio A/Rainer Variations) in addition to Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game, Andy Warhol’s Paul Swan, Trinh T. Minh-ha’s Naked Spaces — Living Is Round, and Ulrike Ottinger’s Madame X: An Absolute Ruler. On July 24 at 7:00, the California-born Rainer will sit down with novelist, cultural critic, and Woodmere native Lynne Tillman (Haunted Houses, What Would Lynne Tillman Do?) in the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center Amphitheater in a discussion focusing on Rainer’s film career; admission is free and first-come, first-served. It’s a real treat to see Rainer’s work and to listen to her in person, so don’t miss this very special opportunity.

FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD — NEW YORK IN THE 70s: THE LANDLORD

Young Elgar Winthrop Julius Enders’s (Beau Bridges) spoiled life of privilege is about to dramatically change in The Landlord

THE LANDLORD (Hal Ashby, 1970)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Sunday, July 23, 12:30, 4:30, and 8:30
Series runs through July 27
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

When rich kid Elgar Winthrop Julius Enders (Beau Bridges) finally decides to do something with his spoiled life of privilege, he takes a rather curious turn, buying a dilapidated tenement in a pregentrified Park Slope that resembles the South Bronx in Hal Ashby’s poignant directorial debut, The Landlord. At first, the less-than-worldly Elgar doesn’t quite know what he’s gotten himself into, believing it will be easy to kick out the current residents and then replace the decrepit building with luxury apartments. He pulls up to the place in his VW bug convertible, thinking he can just waltz in and do whatever he wants, but just as his car is vandalized, so is his previously charmed existence, as he gets to know wise house mother Marge (Pearl Bailey), the sexy Francine (Diana Sands), her activist husband, Copee (Louis Gossett Jr.), and Black Power professor Duboise (Melvin Stewart), none of whom is up-to-date with the rent. Meanwhile, Elgar starts dating Lanie (Marki Bey), a light-skinned half-black club dancer he assumed was white, infuriating his father, William (Walter Brooke), and mother, Joyce (a delightful, Oscar-nominated Lee Grant), who are in the process of setting up their daughter, Susan (Susan Anspach), with the white-bread Peter Coots (Robert Klein).

Elgar has a whole lot of learning to do in Hal Ashby’s New York City–set black comedy

Based on the novel by Kristin Hunter, The Landlord is a telling microcosm of race relations and class conflict in a tumultuous period in the nation’s history, as well as that of New York City, coming shortly after the civil rights movement and the free-love late ’60s. The film is masterfully shot by Astoria-born cinematographer Gordon Willis (Klute, Annie Hall, Manhattan, all three Godfather movies), who sets the bright, open spaces of the Enderses’ massive estate against the dark, claustrophobic rooms of the dank tenement. Screenwriter Bill Gunn (Ganja and Hess) and Ashby avoid getting overly preachy in this at-times outrageous black comedy, incorporating slapstick along with some more tender moments; the scene in which Joyce meets Marge is a marvel of both. And just wait till you see Coots’s costume at a fancy fundraiser. The Landlord began quite a string for Ashby, who followed it up with Harold and Maude, The Last Detail, Shampoo, Bound for Glory, Coming Home, and Being There in a remarkable decade for the former film editor (In the Heat of the Night) who died in 1988 at the age of fifty-nine. The Landlord is screening July 23 at 12:30, 4:30, and 8:30 in Film Forum’s terrific “Ford to City: Drop Dead — New York in the 70s” series, which continues through July 27 with such other Gotham favorites as Taxi Driver, Midnight Cowboy, Saturday Night Fever, and Marathon Man and such inspired double features as Shaft and Super Fly, Across 110th Street and Cops and Robbers, Dressed to Kill and Death Wish, Three Days of the Condor and The Eyes of Laura Mars, and The Warriors and Escape from New York.

LYGIA PAPE: A MULTITUDE OF FORMS

Lygia Pape, “Livro do tempo” (“Book of Time”), tempera and acrylic on wood, 365 parts, 1961-63 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The Met Breuer
945 Madison Ave. at 75th St.
Through July 23, suggested admission $12-$25
212-731-1675
www.metmuseum.org
www.lygiapape.org

There’s only a few more days to see the best current exhibition in New York City by an artist you’ve never heard of but need to. Continuing at the Met Breuer through Sunday, “Lygia Pape: A Multitude of Forms” is the first retrospective of multidisciplinary Brazilian artist Lygia Pape, who passed away in 2004 at the age of seventy-seven. “My concern is always invention. I always want to invent a new language that’s different for me and for others, too,” she said. “I want to discover new things. Because, to me, art is a way of knowing the world . . . to see how the world is . . . of getting to know the world.” The show opens up a whole new world of invention, a wonderland of geometric form, color, time, and space, consisting of a wide range of drawing, woodcuts, painting, sculpture, film, dance, installation, and performance art taking on the personal and the political, the psychological and the cultural. During her five-decade career, Pape (pronounced pah-PAY) was part of the Concretists, Grupo Frente, and Neoconcretism, pushing the boundaries of the picture plane as she merged genres in unique ways. Her “Pinturas,” “Relevos,” and “Tarugos” demonstrate the development of her style, as square boxes, horizontal bars, and skewed lines eventually emerge from her canvas, creating a three-dimensionality that invades the viewer’s space. Her woodcuts, called “Tecelares,” and ink drawings, known as “Desenhos,” furthered her geometric abstraction, while her “Poema-objetos” turned paper into sculpture, leading to such works as “Livro da criação” (“Book of Creation”), a facsimile of which visitors can engage with, offering an alternate view of their surroundings.

Lygia Pape, “Roda dos prazeres” (“Wheel of Pleasures”), porcelain vessels, droppers, distilled water, flavorings, and food coloring, 1967 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

In the short 1967 film O ovo (“The Egg”), Pape breaks through a white box on the beach. In “Divisor” (“Divider”), dozens of heads jut out from a huge white sheet as the participants walk through the streets of Rio de Janeiro. “Ballet neoconcreto I” and “Ballet neoconcreto II” might look like an experimental film of moving geometric shapes but instead are recordings of live performances in which dancers are actually inside the forms, guiding them. “Her trajectory, especially in the 1960s and 1970s, was informed by the irreverence of underground cinema and the influence of vernacular and indigenous cultures and shaped by a strong awareness of her role as a woman artist,” Glória Ferreira explains in her exhibition catalog essay. “Roda dos prazeres” (“Wheel of Pleasures”) is activated at specific times, allowing museumgoers to taste the colored liquids arranged in a circle of bowls, each a different flavor. The massive “Livro do tempo” (“Book of Time”) features 365 painted blocks, as if each day is represented by a new semaphore. “Banquete tupinambá” (“Tumpinamba Banquet”) consists of a wooden table and two chairs covered in red feathers, a lightbulb dangling over it, two polyurethane breasts almost hidden within the work. In its own room is “Ttéia 1, C,” a mesmerizing installation of golden thread pouring down like gorgeous sunlight in the darkness. And yes, those are mummified cucarachas in “Box of Cockroaches.” Much of Pape’s oeuvre is tinged with but not overwhelmed by sociopolitical messages; in fact, she was imprisoned for three months in 1973 for her political activities in a country that experienced tremendous upheaval during her lifetime. But that didn’t stop Pape from doing what she does best, creating remarkable art while existing on the fringes. “I always enjoyed marginality. I made a point about staying in the periphery. I was very much an anarchist,” Pape noted in 2000. “Marginality . . . is a bourgeois concept,” she also wrote. There is nothing marginal or bourgeois about this revelatory exhibition. (For more on Lygia Pape and the show, which is beautifully curated by Iria Candela, you can watch the May 4 Met symposium “To Live Is to Invent: Perspectives on the Art and Times of Lygia Pape” here.)

1984

Citizens of Oceania prepare for the Two Minutes Hate (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Hudson Theatre
139-141 West 44th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through October 8, $35 – $274
www.thehudsonbroadway.com

Among the myriad virtues of George Orwell’s final novel, the 1949 groundbreaking, language-redefining 1984, is its continued relevance to changing times, as every generation finds its prescience remarkable. “It’s a vision of the future no matter when it’s being read,” Martin (Carl Hendrick Louis), an antiques dealer, tells protagonist Winston Smith (Tom Sturridge) in Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan’s confounding stage version, running at the Hudson Theatre through October 8. Martin was talking about both Winston’s secret diary and the masterful source material, Orwell’s clear-eyed view of a bleak future ruled by unseen totalitarian entities who keep the populace under constant suppression and surveillance. Later in the scene, Martin explains to Winston, “Every age sees itself reflected.” Neither of these lines is in the original text, but they get to the heart of this inconsistent theatrical adaptation. Orwell warned us that all this was coming, and now we’re virtually there, pun intended. It’s no coincidence that the book keeps appearing on the bestseller list as President Donald Trump and his associates speak out about “alternative facts” and “fake news” and cabinet members are confirmed to head departments responsible for policy they seem to be against. Icke and Macmillan have interlaced a confusing framing story that takes place well past 2050, inspired by the book’s appendix, looking back at how Winston attempted to navigate a world drowning in Newspeak, where Big Brother proclaims, “War Is Peace,” “Freedom Is Slavery,” and “Ignorance Is Strength” and such words as “doublethink,” “thoughtcrime,” “telescreen,” and “unperson” have entered the lexicon. Romantic love is illegal, but Winston and Julia, who both work at the Ministry of Truth, where Winston erases people and events from history, decide to take a risk, finding themselves in each other’s arms while also plotting to bring down the party. But it’s not going to be easy, as they soon discover.

O’Brien (Reed Birney) explains the way things are to Winston (Tom Sturridge) and Julia (Olivia Wilde) (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

The 101-minute intermissionless play features some very strong moments, particularly whenever party leader and possible Brotherhood agent O’Brien (Reed Birney) is onstage. The scenes change with a shocking blast of noise and blinding white lights, courtesy of sound designer Tom Gibbons and lighting designer Natasha Chivers, which is frighteningly effective. Later, the torture scenes are so graphic that the theater bars anyone under fourteen. (Originally there was no age limit, but too many families were exiting early with their scared youngsters in tow.) Playing off the concept of the telescreen watching people’s every movement, Icke (Oresteia, Mr. Burns, a post-electric playEvery Brilliant Thing, City of Glass) rely too much on live projections by video designer Tim Reid; at one point the audience is watching the screens at the top of Chloe Lamford’s set for an extended period of time as no live action takes place onstage but instead is being streamed from offstage. In addition, the fourth wall is broken twice, but it’s more of an off-putting device than it is an effective warning that this could happen to us if we’re not careful. “Words matter. Facts matter. The truth matters,” Winston says as the play references Trump and his fight with the media. There’s not much passion between Wilde, in her Broadway debut, and Tony nominee Sturridge (Orphans, Punk Rock), while Tony winner Birney (The Humans, Circle Mirror Transformation) brings just the right calm demeanor to O’Brien. The cast also features Michael Potts as Charrington, Nick Mills as Syme, Wayne Duvall as Parsons, and Cara Seymour as Mrs. Parsons, and the disappearance/erasure of one of the secondary characters is handled quite cleverly. But the narrative jumps around too much between the past, the present, and the future and strays too often from the central plot, creating confusion and annoyance. The story’s overall message — which Orwell arrived at in part as a response to the rise of Stalinism while also predicting the German Stasi — gets buried in too much stylistic stagecraft. However, its relevance is still terrifyingly apparent: Big Brother is indeed watching us, and we don’t seem to mind anymore what they see.