Kinesis Project’s Secrets and Seawalls takes place on board the Wavertree July 20, 27, and 30
A DANCE PERFORMANCE ABOARD SHIP WAVERTREE
South Street Seaport Museum
12 Fulton St.
July 20, 27, 30, $30 (VIP $45), 7:00
southstreetseaportmuseum.org
www.kinesisproject.com
The South Street Seaport Museum and Kinesis Project dance theatre have teamed up to present Secrets and Seawalls, a site-specific performance taking place on board the 1885 full-rigged cargo ship Wavertree. Inspired by such devastating storms as Hurricane Sandy, Kinesis Project artistic director Melissa Riker and architect Lee H. Skolnick explore notions of power and vulnerability, particularly in regard to the weather and New York City’s seawalls, in the piece, which was previously performed in 2015 on the beach at Fort Tilden in Gateway National Park in the Rockaways, an area that was severely hit by Sandy. Divided into two acts, the immersive work features dancers Cassandra Cotta, Zachary Denison, Michelle Amara Micca, and Zoe Allocco, with costumes by Asa Thornton and live music by Katie Down, Helen Yee, and Michael Evans. VIP tickets include a tour of the Wavertree, which was built in Southampton, Great Britain, became part of the museum’s Street of Ships in 1968, and was restored in 2015-16, in addition to a postshow meet-and-greet with the performers. Riker has noted that Secrets and Seawalls was also influenced by Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem “I Am Much Too Alone in This World, Yet Not Alone,” which says, “I want to mirror your image to its fullest perfection, / never be blind or too old / to uphold your weighty wavering reflection. I want to unfold.”
In 1971, twenty-year-old Chantal Akerman moved to New York City from her native Belgium, determined to become a filmmaker. Teaming up with cinematographer Babette Mangolte, she made several experimental films, including 
Writer, director, editor, and composer Soro Hakimoto’s cinematic debut, Haruneko, opens with a swirling, unidentifiable image and gently haunting music featuring portentous voices that fade away as a misty forest emerges and an old white car appears, complete with a black cat. “Let’s sing,” the young driver (Keisuke Yamamoto) mumbles to himself as an old man (Yohta Kawase) looks steadily in front of him in the backseat. It’s an alluring beginning to a film that includes so many classic Japanese movie tropes: ghosts, ominous felines, yakuza, a mysterious forest, sudden bursts of singing, poorly translated subtitles, and a perplexing plot. Amid a lush green landscape is a lone cabin, where people come to die. It is operated by the Manager (Yamamoto) with the help of a young boy named Haru (Ryuto Iwata); also there are the boy’s piano-playing sister (Minako Akatsuka), their grandmother (Lily), and an old man (Min Tanaka) who sits in a rocking chair on the porch. In the middle of the forest is a dark area where the Manager, dressed in a striking white tuxedo, hosts a magic lantern show, spouting poetry and breaking out into uplifting J-pop as slides of a person’s life are projected onto a screen. “Petals are dancing in the wind to celebrate our meeting and departing,” the Manager says. “What is what you see to you? What is not what you don’t see to you?” Later the café is visited by a distraught and crazed yakuza on the run (Yo Takahashi) and a longhaired man (Llon Kawai) with a selfie stick who has committed a horrific atrocity, both seeking, in their own ways, to end their misery. Through it all, the residents of the café remain calm and understanding as their visitors face their destiny.
Nitehawk Cinema turns back the clock a decade for its summer series “Back10: 2007,” presenting sixteen films that premiered that year, which saw No Country for Old Men nab Best Picture, Daniel Day-Lewis (There Will Be Blood) win Best Actor, and Marion Cotillard (La Vie en Rose) capture the Best Actress trophy at the eightieth Academy Awards. The series begins July 15 at midnight with David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises, followed Sunday morning by American Gangster. Based on a true story, Ridley Scott’s American Gangster tracks the path of two very different men during the Vietnam War era. Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) is a proud, dedicated man from poor southern roots who is determined to become the most respected and loved drug lord of Harlem. Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe) is an honest-to-a-fault Jewish cop studying to become a lawyer while failing miserably in his personal life. Cold, calculating, and smooth as silk, Lucas will do whatever is necessary to ensure his absolute success, including shooting another player in the head in plain view on an uptown street. Meanwhile, Roberts becomes a pariah in the corrupt police department when he finds nearly a million dollars in cash and turns it in. As the war escalates in Southeast Asia, Lucas and Roberts are both on a dangerous road that threatens to explode all around them.
