The late Elie Wiesel will be honored with a marathon reading of his first book, NIGHT, at the Museum of Jewish Heritage on January 29 (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)
Who: Elisha Wiesel, Andre Aciman, Ambassador Katalin Bogyay, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Ambassador Dani Dayan, Ambassador François Delattre, Tovah Feldshuh, Joel Grey, Sheldon Harnick, Jessica Hecht, Fanya Gottesfeld Heller, David Hyde Pierce, Bill T. Jones, Daniel and Nina Libeskind, Sheila Nevins, Itzhak Perlman, Ron Rifkin, Geraldo Rivera, Daryl Roth, Brita Wagener, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, more
What: Marathon reading of Elie Wiesel’s Night
Where: Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, Edmond J. Safra Hall, 36 Battery Pl., 646-437-4202
When: Sunday, January 29, free, 3:00 – 8:00
Why: “In retrospect I must confess that I do not know, or no longer know, what I wanted to achieve with my words,” Elie Wiesel wrote in a 2006 translation of his seminal 1960 memoir, Night, about his and his father’s experience in Auschwitz. “I only know that without this testimony, my life as a writer — or my life, period — would not have become what it is: that of a witness who believes he has a moral obligation to try to prevent the enemy from enjoying one last victory by allowing his crimes to be erased from human memory.” The Museum of Jewish Heritage and National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene are honoring the legacy of Holocaust survivor and Nobel Laureate Wiesel, who passed away last July at the age of eighty-seven, with a free five-hour marathon reading of Night on January 29 from 3:00 to 8:00. Among the participants are Tovah Feldshuh, Joel Grey, Sheldon Harnick, Jessica Hecht, David Hyde Pierce, Bill T. Jones, Itzhak Perlman, Ron Rifkin, Geraldo Rivera, and Dr. Ruth Westheimer. There will also be free admission to the museum itself, which is currently featuring such exhibitions as “My Name Is . . . The Lost Children of Kloster Indersdorf” and “Seeking Justice: The Leo Frank Case Revisited” in addition to its Core Exhibition that places the Holocaust in context with modern Jewish history. You can join the waitlist for this sold-out event or livestream it for free on Sunday afternoon.
Zachary Heinzerling’s Emmy-winning 
IFC Center is celebrating the January 27 theatrical release of Alex Infascelli’s documentary S Is for Stanley, about longtime Stanley Kubrick aide Emilio D’Alessandro, with a two-week festival that includes every one of the Bronx-born ex-pat’s feature works, nearly all of which are being projected in DCP, along with a pair in 35mm. Kubrick’s 1953 seldom-seen psychological war drama, Fear and Desire, will be shown on January 30, along with the auteur’s half-hour industrial short The Seafarers. His first full-length film, made when he was twenty-four, Fear and Desire is a curious tale about four soldiers (Steve Coit, Kenneth Harp, Paul Mazursky, and Frank Silvera) trapped six miles behind enemy lines. When they are spotted by a local woman (Virginia Leith), they decide to capture her and tie her up, but leaving Sidney (Mazursky) behind to keep an eye on her turns out to be a bad idea. Meanwhile, they discover a nearby house that has been occupied by the enemy and argue over whether to attack or retreat. Written by Howard Sackler, who was a high school classmate of Kubrick’s in the Bronx and would later win the Pulitzer Prize for The Great White Hope, and directed, edited, and photographed by the man who would go on to make such war epics as Paths of Glory, Full Metal Jacket, and Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, Fear and Desire features stilted dialogue, much of which is spoken off-camera and feels like it was dubbed in later. Many of the cuts are jumpy and much of the framing amateurish. Kubrick was ultimately disappointed with the film and wanted it pulled from circulation; instead it was preserved by Eastman House in 1989 and restored twenty years later, which is good news for film lovers, as it is fascinating to watch Kubrick learning as the film continues. His exploration of the psyche of the American soldier is the heart and soul of this compelling black-and-white war drama that is worth seeing for more than just historical reasons. “There is a war in this forest. Not a war that has been fought, nor one that will be, but any war,” narrator David Allen explains at the beginning of the film. “And the enemies who struggle here do not exist unless we call them into being. This forest then, and all that happens now, is outside history. Only the unchanging shapes of fear and doubt and death are from our world. These soldiers that you see keep our language and our time but have no other country but the mind.”
