twi-ny recommended events

BROOKLYN MUSEUM FIRST SATURDAY: WORLD AIDS DAY

Marilyn Minter, “Blue Poles,” enamel on metal, 2007 (private collection, Switzerland)

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, December 3, free, 5:00 – 11:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The Brooklyn Museum honors World AIDS Day with its free First Saturday programming on December 3. There will be live performances by MC and producer SCIENZE, the Brooklyn Ballet (The Brooklyn Nutcracker), and DJ Sabine Blaizin; a curator tour of “Marilyn Minter: Pretty/Dirty,” led by assistant curator Carmen Hermo; a Community Resource Fair focusing on political advocacy; a hands-on sketching workshop with live clothed models; pop-art talks of “Infinite Blue” led by teen museum apprentices; a Day With(out) Art / Visual AIDS screening of the video compilation Compulsive Practice, followed by a discussion with Juanita Mohammed of the Women’s AIDS Video Enterprise, feminist writer and Brooklyn College film department chair Alexandra Juhasz, and HIV and gay civil rights activist Justin B. Terry-Smith; and a screening of David Kornfield’s The Red Umbrella Diaries, followed by a talkback with documentary subjects Dale Corvino and Essence. In addition, you can check out such exhibits as “Iggy Pop Life Class by Jeremy Deller,” “Beverly Buchanan — Ruins and Rituals,” “The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago,” “Life, Death, and Transformation in the Americas,” “Marilyn Minter: Pretty/Dirty,” and “Infinite Blue”; admission to “Who Shot Sports: A Photographic History, 1843 to the Present” requires a discounted admission fee of $10.

THE NITEHAWK HOLIDAY SHOW SPECTACULAR: BLACK CHRISTMAS

Creepy phone calls lead to gory violence in Bob Clark’s holiday favorite, BLACK CHRISTMAS

NITEHAWK MIDNITE SCREENINGS: BLACK CHRISTMAS (Bob Clark, 1974)
Nitehawk Cinema
136 Metropolitan Ave. between Berry St. & Wythe Ave.
Friday, December 2, and Saturday, December 3, 12:20 am
718-384-3980
www.nitehawkcinema.com

American-Canadian filmmaker Bob Clark might be best known for the holiday favorite A Christmas Story, but he also directed another, very different yuletide cult classic, Black Christmas. Clark, who had previously made Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things and would go on to make such wide-ranging fare as Rhinestone, Turk 182!, Porky’s, and Baby Geniuses, assembled quite a cast for the 1974 horror flick, also known as Silent Night, Evil Night: Olivia Hussey (Romeo and Juliet), Keir Dullea (2001: A Space Odyssey, Bunny Lake Is Missing), Margot Kidder (Sisters, Superman), John Saxon (Enter the Dragon, A Nightmare on Elm Street), Art Hindle (The Brood, Invasion of the Body Snatchers), and Andrea Martin (SCTV, Pippin). The story is set in a sorority house run by Mrs. MacHenry (Marian Waldman), who lets the young women pretty much do whatever they want (while regularly sneaking drinks herself). A series of obscene phone calls has some of the sisters on edge while Barb (Kidder) is much more bold, challenging the twisted voice. After Clare (Lynne Griffin) disappears, the other women start growing more concerned, including Phyllis (Martin) and Jess (Hussey), as do Phyllis’s boyfriend, Patrick (Michael Rapport), Clare’s boyfriend, Chris (Hindle), and Olivia’s lover, Peter (Dullea), along with Clare’s prim and proper father (James Edmond) and local police lieutenant Kenneth Fuller (Saxon). With Christmas approaching, the body count starts piling up, as do the genre clichés, but it’s all in good fun.

Written by A. Roy Moore and shot in dark, eerie killer’s-point-of-view creepiness by former documentary cinematographer and longtime Clark collaborator Reg Morris (A Christmas Story, Empire of the Ants), Black Christmas is a choppy yet scary slasher flick, evoking the giallo tradition exemplified by Mario Bava and Dario Argento. Clark keeps things mysterious as the brutal murders unfold while also avoiding the key question: Why does no one ever check the freaking attic? Red herrings abound as Carl Zittrer’s sinister score ups the tension. Inspired by real murders as well as urban legends, Black Christmas, which was remade by Glen Morgan in 2006 (with Andrea Martin as Ms. MacHenry!), should be a seasonal tradition in every household, but for now you can check it out in its annual screenings at Nitehawk Cinema, December 2 and 3, as part of the Holiday Show Spectacular, which continues through December 25 with such other Xmas classics as White Christmas, Eyes Wide Shut, Jingle All the Way, Love Actually, Elf, and It’s a Wonderful Life.

WORLD AIDS DAY: DALLAS BUYERS CLUB

Jared Leto and Matthew McConaughey give eye-opening performances in gripping DALLAS BUYERS CLUB

ONE NITE ONLY: DALLAS BUYERS CLUB (Jean-Marc Vallée, 2013)
Nitehawk Cinema
136 Metropolitan Ave. between Berry St. & Wythe Ave.
Thursday, December 1, $16, 6:30
718-384-3980
www.nitehawkcinema.com
www.focusfeatures.com

In honor of World AIDS Day, Nitehawk Cinema is teaming up with UNAIDS for a special presentation of the Oscar-nominated Dallas Buyers Club. When foul-mouthed homophobic womanizing racist Ron Woodroof (a career redefining and Oscar-winning Matthew McConaughey) suddenly finds out he has contracted the AIDS virus and has thirty days to live, he is determined to do whatever it takes to stay alive. Soon he has set up a small operation where people with HIV and AIDS can obtain medications that the FDA has not approved but that appear to help control the disease. Based on a true story that was documented in a Dallas Life magazine article in August 1992, Dallas Buyers Club is a gripping look at the AIDS crisis as seen through the eyes of a macho Texas electrician and rodeo man who doesn’t like what he sees when it comes to the medical establishment, believing that doctors and the FDA are in bed with the big pharmaceutical companies, who want to fast-track the questionable AZT drug. Jared Leto gives a spectacular Oscar-winning performance as Ron’s business partner, Rayon, a transgender woman trying to live life as a woman; Leto, almost unrecognizable, immerses himself in the complex role, avoiding genre clichés as the Marc Bolan-worshiping Rayon works alongside Woodroof. And McConaughey goes the full Christian Bale route as Woodroof, losing fifty pounds to play the gaunt wheeler-dealer who loves life too much to just give up. The cast also features Jennifer Garner as Eve Saks, a doctor who is sympathetic to Ron and Rayon’s plight; Denis O’Hare as her strict boss, Dr. Sevard; Griffin Dunne as a former doctor helping AIDS patients in Mexico; and Deerhunter lead singer Bradford Cox as Rayon’s lover, Sunny. Directed by Canadian filmmaker Jean-Marc Vallée (C.R.A.Z.Y., The Young Victoria) and written by Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack, Dallas Buyers Club is a powerful examination of a different side of the AIDS dilemma. The film, which was nominated for six Oscars and won three, is screening at Nitehawk on December 1 at 6:30 and will be followed by a Q&A with Treatment Action Group HIV Prevention Research and Policy Coordinator Jeremiah Johnson.

POETIC AND POLITICAL — THE CINEMA OF RABAH AMEUR-ZAÏMECHE: BACK HOME

Kamel (Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche) and Louisa (Meryem Serbah) are outsiders in their own village in BACK HOME

CINÉSALON: BACK HOME (BLED NUMBER ONE) (Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche, 2006)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, November 29, $13, 4:00 & 7:30
Series continues Tuesdays through December 13
212-355-6100
www.fiaf.org

FIAF’s Cinésalon series “Poetic and Political: The Cinema of Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche” continues November 29 with Ameur-Zaïmeche’s second feature, Bled Number One (Back Home), the follow-up and kind of prequel to Wesh Wesh and the second part of an unofficial trilogy that concludes with Adhen (Dernier Maquis). Kamel (Ameur-Zaïmeche) has returned home to his isolated village of Loulouj in northeast Algeria after having spent several years in France. Meanwhile, Louisa (Meryem Serbah) has left her husband, Ahmed (Ramzy Bedia), but her parents (Meriem Ameur-Zaïmeche and Larkdari Ameur-Zaïmeche) and brother (Soheb Ameur-Zaïmeche) insist she go back to him, saying she is bringing shame on the family. Both Kamel and Louisa feel like outsiders in their own village, which is balancing precipitously between the past and the future. The desperados, a group of young men who are spreading fundamentalist Muslim views, is battling with the patriots, the longtime members of the community, threatening violence on anyone who doesn’t follow the letter of the Koran. During Zerda, the pre-Islamic ritual of slaughtering and serving a bull in which the women are kept separate from the men, Kamel, in his ever-present orange hat, decides to be with the women instead, and the men, feeling shunned, remind him over and over that he is not to eat with them. The treatment of women in this patriarchal society is a central focus of the film. Louisa wants to break free of the chains that bind her, but she takes a bigger risk every time she strays from accepted, outdated convention. And the more Kamel proves to be his own man, the more the other men want to be rid of him. In fact, the patriots closely watch the town border, refusing entry to anyone they don’t want inside.

The film, which was written by Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche and Louise Thermes, is photographed in a documentary style, with long shots both in time and distance; often what is being said among the characters can’t be heard and is not translated into English, as it is more for setting a realistic pace and a naturalistic flow. The muted, faded greens and blues of the village residences stand in stark contrast to the lush green mountainside and bright blue sky. The few times there is music, it turns out that it is being played live by Rodolphe Burger by the sea; at one point he sings William Blake’s “The Little Vagabond,” about God and the Devil. Bled Number One (“bled” in Algerian means “field” or “terrain”) is a subtle, poetic film laden with sociopolitical undertones, a melancholic yet beautiful work from an auteur who deserves a bigger audience. “To write Bled Number One, I didn’t return at all to Algeria to capture something about today’s youth there. I wrote this story based on my holiday memories,” Ameur-Zaïmeche has said. “But it is also because I felt that things hadn’t really changed, that time passes differently there. You have the time to reflect and be, faced with the elements. . . . A film is a gesture, a burst, a job, an enterprise, an action. An action in life, a pure lesson of life. It is here that we grasp something alive. For it is necessary to remain alive, no matter what else happens.” Bursting with life, Bled Number One is screening at FIAF on November 29 at 4:00 and 7:30; the later show will be followed by a Q&A with ArteEast executive director Jaime-Faye Bean, and both shows will end with a wine and beer reception. “Poetic and Political: The Cinema of Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche” continues December 6 with Smugglers’ Songs before concluding December 13 with Story of Judas.

CAROLEE SCHNEEMANN: FURTHER EVIDENCE — EXHIBIT C

Carolee Schneemann will be at P•P•O•W on December 2 to discuss her current dual exhibition (photo courtesy P•P•O•W Gallery)

Who: Carolee Schneemann
What: Artist talk in conjunction with two-gallery show
Where: P•P•O•W Gallery, 535 West 22nd St., third floor,
When: Friday, December 2, free, 7:00
Why: Multidisciplinary artist and activist Carolee Schneemann will add an exclamation point to her two-part show, “Further Evidence — Exhibit A” at P•P•O•W and “Further Evidence — Exhibit B” at Galerie Lelong, with “Further Evidence — Exhibit C,” a discussion at P•P•O•W on December 2 at 7:00 with art history and visual studies professor Soyoung Yoon. For more than fifty years, the provocative, groundbreaking Schneemann has been exploring gender identity and the female body through film, photography, and performance, often involving nudity. At P•P•O•W, “Further Evidence — Exhibit A” is highlighted by the 1995-96 multimedia installation “Known/Unknown: Plague Column,” which references a seventeenth-century Viennese column that blamed the bubonic plague on a witch; in her exhibition catalog essay, Yoon writes, “Is there a continuity between this representation of the plague and our more recent imagination about cancer, a link between witch hunts and the current warfare model of cancer treatment?” Also on view at P•P•O•W is “Fresh Blood — A Dream Morphology” from 1981-87, inspired by the form of the letter “V.” Meanwhile, at Galerie Lelong, “Further Evidence — Exhibit B” consists of 1983’s “Precarious,” about the torture of animals, the 2005 collage suite “Caged Cats,” and 2003-4’s “Devour,” which compares domesticity to disaster. Both exhibitions will remain on view through December 3.

THE SERVANT OF TWO MASTERS

Clarice (Adina Verson) and Silvio’s (Eugene Ma) true love is threatened in THE SERVANT OF TWO MASTERS (photo by Henry Grossman)

Theatre for a New Audience, Polonsky Shakespeare Center
262 Ashland Pl. between Lafayette Ave. & Fulton St.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 4, $85
866-811-4111
www.tfana.org

“For nitwits are we all,” the cast declares early on in Theatre for a New Audience’s wacky version of Carlo Goldoni’s eighteenth-century commedia dell’arte classic, The Servant of Two Masters, only the second time the show has ever been presented in English in New York City. The strange and crazy antics, involving lots of nitwits and numbskulls, take place over one very long day in Venezia, as the masked Truffaldino Batocchio from Bergamo (Steven Epp) serves up chaos while secretly serving two masters. The very hungry Truffaldino’s predicament derives from a typically byzantine plot: the supposed death of Federigo Rasponi from Torino is followed by the appearance of Federigo’s sister, Beatrice (Liz Wisan) — disguised as her brother in order to marry his betrothed, Clarice (Adina Verson), the daughter of his business partner, Pantalone (Allen Gilmore), and collect a promised dowry. Truffaldino immediately signs on to serve Federigo/Beatrice. Meanwhile, Clarice wants to marry her true love, Silvio (Eugene Ma), the pampered and overly twee progeny of Dr. Lombardi (Andy Grotelueschen). Later, when the valiant Florindo Aretusi (Orlando Pabotoy) shows up, Truffaldino accepts a position with him as well after Florindo’s aging porter (Liam Craig) proves inadequate. But even though Florindo and Beatrice are madly in love, neither knows the other is in town, and Truffaldino, who has become smitten with Smeraldina (Emily Young), Clarice’s maidservant, struggles to keep it that way so they won’t discover that he’s serving both of them. Over the course of two and a half hours (with intermission), there is masked mayhem, mistaken identity, slapstick comedy, devious deception, satirical songs (with onstage music by Christopher Curtis and Aaron Halva), and improvisation galore, some that works, and some that doesn’t.

The cast of THE SERVANT OF TWO MASTERS has a blast in commedia dell’arte classic (photo by Gerry Goodstein)

In 2011, playwright Richard Bean and director Nicholas Hytner transformed The Servant of Two Masters into the hit Broadway comedy One Man, Two Guvnors, which earned James Corden a Tony for Best Actor. At TFANA’s Polonsky Shakespeare Center, director Christopher Bayes (This Ridiculous Dreaming, The 39 Steps) and star Epp (Tartuffe, Figaro), veterans of Theatre de la Jeune Lune, have gone back to Goldoni’s more improvisational original, further adapting Constance Congdon’s version of Christina Sibul’s translation, eschewing a more structured narrative for large amounts of ad libbing. Thus, the play is different every night; right now it is rife with references to the presidential election that can range from wickedly funny to random and repetitive, along with nods to current commercial jingles that get chuckles but feel out of place. Valérie Thérèse Bart’s period costumes are a hoot, colorful and dankly elegant, while Katherine Akiko Day’s set is centered by a curtain through which the characters enter and exit, with a trompe l’oeil sky in the background in front of which are miniature houses. The cast, many of whom have worked together before either at Yale Rep or Juilliard, displays an infectious camaraderie and a willingness to try just about anything; Epp is a terrific physical comedian, harkening back to the days of vaudeville, while Pabotoy, Gilmore, and Fiasco Theater’s Grotelueschen and Young are stand-out commedia dell’arte practitioners. The play is probably about a half hour too long, and the anti-Trump jokes were often too easy and obvious, detracting from the overall atmosphere of chaotic fun. In the beginning, Truffaldino asks several times, “When’s the play going to start?” Near the conclusion, he declares, “This play’s never gonna end!” Of course, it does end, and you’ll leave the theater in a gleeful mood, if not completely satiated.

NORTHERN POLE TERRITORY: A SANTASTICAL BIT OF HOLIDAY NONSENSE

Santa Hanukklaus is among the special guests at second annual Santastical at Northern Territory in Brooklyn

Northern Territory
12 Franklin St. at Meserole St., Brooklyn
Thursday – Sunday, December 1-23, free admission ($15 Santa photos, $5 rooftop access), 6:00 – 10:00 pm
santastical.com
www.northernterritorybk.com

“There is no price tag on being able to say, ‘Hey I did something really strange today,’” immersive-theater impresario Timothy Haskell says, and he knows something about strange. Haskell is the mastermind behind such seasonal productions as Nightmare Haunted House and Full Bunny Contact, and now his Northern Pole Territory: A Santastical Bit of Holiday Nonsense is back for its second year. The demented adventure is presented by Psycho Clan, which consists of Haskell, production designer Paul Smithyman, props designer Faye Armon, Charles Dunham, and Nathaniel Nowak. From Thursday to Sunday evening December 1-23, Australian-American restaurant and rooftop bar Northern Territory, which is located in an old Greenpoint factory building, will host three floors of holiday mischief. On the ground floor, for fifteen dollars you can get your photo taken with the kind of Santas not usually found in department stores — Hunky Santa, Sexy Mrs. Claus, the Jewish Santa Hanukklaus, and Elvis Santa. Five bucks gains you entry to the rooftop bar, where you can engage in snowball fights, share a kiss in the mistletoe grotto, pretend ice-skate, hang out amid tacky lawn decorations and colored lights, and try to avoid the evil Krampus in the Christmas tree forest. A fifteen-dollar advance ticket gets you a photo with Santa and rooftop access. The nights are for adults only, but there will be a family brunch on Sundays from 12 noon to 3:00, when Santa photos are only ten bucks but the roof will be closed. Sunday, December 11, is Gay Afternoon/Night from 4:00 to 8:00, with a SCRUFF DJ spinning tunes. Of course, you can also have dinner at the restaurant, which serves such dishes as fish in foil, Aussie beef burger, grilled halloumi, lamb lollies, Aussie meat pie, mushy peas, and fish and chips in addition to half a dozen craft beers on tap and unique cocktails.