twi-ny recommended events

DOC NYC: OFF THE RAILS

Transit junkie Darius McCollum is profiled in new documentary OFF THE RAILS which has NYC premiere at DOC NYC fest on November 12 before opening at Metrograph on November 18

OFF THE RAILS (Adam Irving, 2016)
SVA Theatre
333 West 23rd St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Saturday, November 12, $16-$18, 9:30
Opens November 18 at Metrograph
www.docnyc.net
www.offtherailsmovie.com

Ever since he was a child, Darius McCollum has been obsessed with mass transit. But McCollum, who was born in Brooklyn and raised in Queens, is not just another train buff. He has spent the last thirty-five years in and out of jail, imprisoned for operating trains and buses in the metropolitan area. His surprising story is told in Adam Irving’s debut feature documentary, Off the Rails. “Over the years, I have operated trains in the New York City subway system, Metro-North, the Long Island Rail Road, New Jersey Transit, and yet, I have never ever been an employee of any of these agencies,” McCollum says at the beginning of the film while putting on an MTA uniform like it was official military dress. “I feel like I’m proud, I feel I’m worthy of something, I feel like I’m a part of something,” he said about being decked out in MTA garb. McCollum doesn’t simply take the trains and buses on joyrides but follows all MTA rules and procedures, which he knows inside out. “For Darius, it was for the joy of driving the train safely. All of his crimes were victimless, there were no crashes, he would safely make all of the stops, make the announcements,” says Jude Domski, who wrote the play Boy Steals Train about McCollum. Through first-person accounts, family photos, home movies, archival footage, reenactments, and animation, McCollum is revealed to be a sweet-natured mama’s boy who has Asperger’s syndrome. “I’m really good with trains, but I can’t seem to figure out people,” he says. “And it’s hard for me to tell what someone is thinking or feeling. I get confused in social situations. I have trouble making friends.” A large but gentle man, McCollum understands the consequences of his actions but is unable to prevent himself from hopping on board and taking over when the opportunity arises. Comparing himself to Superman, McCollum explains, “His weakness is Kryptonite; my weakness is the third rail.”

Transit junkie Darius McCollum contemplates his future in Adam Irving’s OFF THE RAILS

Among those pointing out that McCollum has never been properly treated for his mental illness are Michael John Carley of the GRASP Asperger’s organization, psychoanalyst Michael Garfinkle, PhD, therapist Howard Irving, PhD, forensic social worker Rey Cusicanqui, and autism employment specialist Marcia Scheiner. While former assistant DA Michael Dougherty defends the city’s continued prosecution of McCollum, his new attorney, Sally Butler — who took over after McCollum’s longtime lawyer, Stephen Jackson, was indicted for fraud — has become a champion for McCollum, determined to see that justice is done and trying to get him the treatment he so obviously needs. Named Best Documentary at five film festivals, Off the Rails is a warm, intimate documentary, lovingly directed by Irving, who photographed the film, produced it with Glen Zipper, and wrote and edited it with Tchavdar Georgiev. Domski describes McCollum as “charming, affable, friendly, extremely gregarious,” and the same can be said for the film. One of the most touching parts comes when McCollum and his mother, Liz, read letters they have written to each other over the years, during long periods when they were unable to see each other in person. McCollum might be known in the press as the Public Transit Bandit, Train in the Neck, Transit Kook, and Train Thief, but Irving shows a different side of him, and maybe a different side of us in the process. Copresented by Rooftop Films, Off the Rails is screening November 12 at 9:30 at the SVA Theatre as part of the DOC NYC festival, with Irving on hand to discuss the film. It will then play November 18-24 at Metrograph, with journalist Sarah Wallace, who has interviewed McCollum, moderating a Q&A with Irving after the 7:30 show opening night. DOC NYC runs November 10-17 at IFC Center, the SVA Theatre, and Cinépolis Chelsea, consisting of more than two hundred films, workshops, panel discussions, and other events, the largest nonfiction festival in the world.

MONO X: CINEMA 16

Charles and Ray Eames’s POWERS OF TEN is part of Cinema 16 presentation at Mono X Festival, featuring live score by members of Blonde Redhead

99 Scott Studios
Saturday, November 12, free with advance RSVP, 7:00
cinemasixteen.com
mononoawarefilm.com

After a two-and-a-half-year hiatus, Molly Surno and Cinema 16 are back, taking part in the Mono X Festival, Mono No Aware’s tenth annual Cinema Arts Festival. Continuing the tradition of staging happenings built around experimental films, started by Amos and Marcia Vogel in 1947, Surno pairs avant-garde works with live music. On November 12, C16 will inaugurate the new 99 Scott space in Brooklyn with twin brothers Simone and Amedeo Pace of Blonde Redhead playing a commissioned score to Norman McLaren’s 1952 A Phantasy of Color, Jordan Belson’s 1972 Chakra, Malcom Le Grice’s 1970 Berlin Horse, Sarah Petty’s 1981 Furies, Charles and Ray Eames’s 1977 Powers of Ten, Naomi Uman’s 1999 Removed, Adam Beckett’s 1974 Flesh Flows, and Scott Bartlett’s 1968 OffOn. Started in November 2007, Mono No Aware “is a cinema-arts nonprofit organization working to promote connectivity through the cinematic experience and preserve the technologies of traditional motion picture filmmaking, [seeking] to build the first nonprofit motion picture lab in the United States.” The Mono X Festival continues through December 3 with such other programs as “Expanded Cinema from the UK” at the Firehouse, “A New York 8mm Minute: Reduce to Cognition” at Spectacle, “Never – Still” at the CAVE home of LEIMAY, and “Mono Made, 2009-2016” at BRIC.

THE WATERMELON WOMAN

Cheryl Dunye wrote, directed, edited, and stars in THE WATERMELON WOMAN

THE WATERMELON WOMAN (Cheryl Dunye, 1996)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
Opens Thursday, November 10
212-660-0312
metrograph.com

“The idea came from the real lack of information about the lesbian and film history of African American women. Since it wasn’t happening, I invented it,” Cheryl Dunye says about her 1996 debut, The Watermelon Woman, which has undergone a twentieth-anniversary 2K HD restoration that opens at Metrograph on November 10. In the film, the first feature by a black lesbian, Dunye plays herself, a twenty-five-year-old black lesbian working at a video store with her goofy best friend, Tamara (Valerie Walker). Searching for a topic to make a movie on, Cheryl becomes obsessed with an actress who played a mammy in Plantation Memories and other 1930s films. The actress was listed in the credits as the Watermelon Woman; Cheryl decides to find out more about her, going on a journey in and around her hometown of Philadelphia, discovering more and more about the actress, also known as Fae Richards, and the battle black lesbians had to fight in the early-to-mid-twentieth century. In the meantime, Cheryl begins a relationship with Diana (Guinevere Turner), a privileged white woman who has just moved into the area, mimicking what Cheryl has found out about Richards, who had an affair with white director Martha Page.

Diana (Guinevere Turner) and Cheryl Dunye (as herself) stars a relationship in THE WATERMELON WOMAN

The Watermelon Woman suffers from amateurish filmmaking techniques (Michelle Crenshaw was the cinematographer, while Dunye served as editor in addition to writer, director, and star), but its central issue is a compelling one, and Dunye is engaging as her onscreen alter ego. Richards (Lisa Marie Bronson) and Page (producer Alexandra Juhasz) are seen only in photographs and archival footage shot by white lesbian artist Zoe Leonard (her photography assistant was Kimberly Peirce, who went on to make Boys Don’t Cry), while Doug McKeown (The Deadly Spawn) directed the scenes from fake movies Plantation Memories and Soul of Deceit. (The photographs became an art project of its own, touring museums around the world.) The film features numerous cameos by writers, musicians, and activists, including Camille Paglia as herself, V. S. Brodie as a karaoke singer, Sarah Schulman as the CLIT archivist, David Rakoff as a librarian, and Toshi Reagon as a street singer. The Watermelon Woman is a heartfelt tribute to black lesbians by a black lesbian who is restoring one woman’s true identity as a microcosm for all black women who have had theirs taken away. The film also became part of an attempt by certain congressmen to defund the National Endowment for the Arts, which supplied a $31,500 grant to Dunye; Michigan Republican Peter Hoekstra, head of the House Education and Workforce Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, singled the film out as offensive. The Watermelon Woman is also a reminder of what research was like pre-Google, a mere twenty years ago. Dunye has gone on to make such films as Stranger Inside, Black Is Blue, Mommy Is Coming, and My Baby’s Daddy, continuing her exploration of multiracial, gay, and trans culture. The Watermelon Woman opens November 10 at Metrograph; the 7:00 show that night will be introduced by Dunye, who will also take part in a postscreening Q&A. Juhasz will moderate a discussion on 1990s music and fashion with author and activist Jeffrey Marsh and DJ Bill Coleman following the 9:00 show on November 11, and Juhasz will be back for an introduction and Q&A at the 5:15 show on November 15.

TONY BENNETT IN CONVERSATION WITH SCOTT SIMON

just-getting-started

Who: Tony Bennett, Scott Simon
What: Author event
When: Monday, November 14, free, 7:00
Where: Barnes & Noble Union Square, 33 East Seventeenth St. at Union Square North, 212-253-0810
Why: Anthony Dominick Benedetto from Astoria, better known as Tony Bennett, may have turned ninety in August, but according to the title of his latest book, he’s Just Getting Started (HarperCollins, November 15, $27.99). In this follow-up to 2012’s Life Is a Gift, the ever-positive painter and crooner pays tribute to a wide range of people who have had an impact on him, including Fred Astaire, Judy Garland, Cole Porter, Amy Winehouse, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Lady Gaga, and Charlie Chaplin. On November 14, Bennett will be at the Union Square Barnes & Noble, in conversation with his cowriter, NPR host Scott Simon, author of such memoirs as Home and Away and Unforgettable: A Son, a Mother, and the Lessons of a Lifetime and the novel Pretty Birds. Wristbands will be given out beginning at 9:00 am for the 7:00 pm event, for those who purchase the book at that store; Mr. Benedetto will not be personalizing books, posing for photos, or signing any memorabilia. But just to be in the same room as that voice and smile. . . .

DOC NYC: THY FATHER’S CHAIR

A cleaning crew has its work cut out for it in Alex Lora and Antonio Tibaldi’s THY FATHER’S CHAIR

THY FATHER’S CHAIR (Alex Lora & Antonio Tibaldi, 2015)
Cinépolis Chelsea
260 West Twenty-Third St. at Eighth Ave.
Sunday, November 13, $16-$18, 5:15
212-691-5519
www.docnyc.net

Directors Antonio Tibaldi and Alex Lora put the viewer right in the middle of twin brothers Abraham and Schrag’s desperately crowded and traumatic situation in the compulsively watchable observational documentary Thy Father’s Chair. After their parents died, the slovenly, unmarried Jewish scholars just plain stopped cleaning up after themselves, allowing newspapers, magazines, food, garbage, kitty litter, and myriad other items to pile up around them. They were not collectors hoarding valuable possessions or personal mementos; they were simply unable to organize anything or throw stuff away in their Brooklyn apartment. Only when their upstairs tenant stopped paying rent in protest, demanding they clean their place — the tenants had to deal not only with bad odors from the brothers’ apartment but with vermin as well — do they seek out assistance, hiring an Israeli man named Hanan of Home Clean Home to come and make their apartment safe and livable again. But it’s no easy task, as Abraham watches Hanan and his hazmat-suited team very carefully, continually trying to talk them out of tossing away certain items HCH insists must go; meanwhile, Schrag just moans on and on as he downs bottles of wine. (One of the only ways to tell the identical twins apart is by the wine stains on Schrag’s white shirt.) “What the hell! Nobody’s helping me,” Abraham cries out. “We are here to help you!” Hanan says. “You’re not going to help me. You’re going to tell me what to do,” Abraham replies. Later, Abraham tells Hanan, “What is it, a punishment?” Hanan responds, “It’s not punishment. I’m trying to help you; you’re not working with me.” Abraham just can’t bear to get rid of what is clearly mostly junk and garbage, including vastly outdated electronic equipment and canned food. The only item that the brothers search for that is indeed worth keeping is their megillah scroll, but that is the exception. Abraham also agonizes over his father’s favorite chair, not wanting Hanan to take it yet debating whether he is even worthy enough to sit in it. “The Torah wants everything to be clean, but unfortunately we veered from it,” he concedes. The brothers actually do understand what is going on, that their hoarding is patently absurd and dangerous, but they are powerless to stop it.

Documentary focuses on Brooklyn twin brothers who have serious hoarding problem

Director and cinematographer Tibaldi and director and editor Lora cast no judgment on the two men; the filmmakers work, much like the Maysles brothers did, like flies on the wall, recording the crazy things going on in this railroad apartment in Midwood for eight days. Complicating matters, Tibaldi couldn’t always get the kinds of shots he wanted, as he was physically limited as to where he could stand because of the mounds of filth. There’s no back story; we find out almost nothing about who Abraham and Schrag are and what they have done with their lives, what their hopes and dreams might have been, other than what little they reveal of themselves onscreen, which is dominated by an overwhelming fear of things being taken away from them. There are also no talking heads offering expert opinions or psychological evaluations about the brothers and their situation. Both melancholic and absurdly funny, the twins’ predicament is sort of what would happen if the Beale women of Grey Gardens had mated with Homer Lusk Collyer and Langley Wakeman Collyer, the famous hoarding brothers who died less than two weeks apart in their Harlem brownstone, no longer able to survive their suffocating surroundings. Bjarke Kolerus and Simon Don Eriksen’s gentle music also doesn’t comment on the ridiculousness of it all, instead treating it with understanding. “I feel sorry and sad to see you sad,” Hannan tells Abraham, who replies, “I feel bad about the stuff that’s being thrown out, but it has to be done,” trying to convince himself that it’s all going to be okay. The Father’s Chair, which is dedicated to Chantal Akerman, is screening November 13 at 5:15 at Cinépolis Chelsea, with Lora and Tibaldi participating in a Q&A afterward. DOC NYC runs November 10-17 at IFC Center, the SVA Theatre, and Cinépolis Chelsea, consisting of more than two hundred films, workshops, panel discussions, and other events, the largest nonfiction festival in the world.

VIETGONE

Quang (Raymond Lee) and Nhan (Jon Hoche) take readers on a wild ride in Qui Nguyen’s VIETGONE (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Manhattan Theatre Club
New York City Center Stage 1
131 West 55th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 4, $90
212-581-1212
vietgoneplay.com
www.nycitycenter.org

In such works as She Kills Monsters, Six Rounds of Vengeance, Alice in Slasherland, Aliens versus Cheerleaders, and Living Dead in Denmark, Arizona-born Vietnamese American playwright and screenwriter Qui Nguyen brings a fresh perspective to the stage, incorporating martial arts, horror, and irreverent humor within a comic-book sensibility. (He’s also a writer for Marvel Studios and founder of the New York-based Vampire Cowboys troupe.) He gets more serious, but no less wild, in his latest drama, Vietgone, a semiautobiographical look at the Vietnam War inspired by his family’s real experiences. “All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental,” the playwright (Paco Tolson) announces to the audience at the very beginning. “That especially goes for any person or persons who could be related to the playwright. Specifically his parents. Who this play is absolutely not about. Seriously, if any of you peeps repeat or retweet anything you’ve seen to my folks tonight, you’re assholes.” Nguyen and director May Adrales then tell the story of “a completely made-up man named Quang” (Raymond Lee), a former South Vietnamese soldier who is living in a refugee camp at the Fort Chaffee military base in Arkansas. A married man with two children he has not seen in several years, Quang is trying to get out of America and go back to Vietnam to be with them. “In Saigon / City in Vietnam / Shot up by the Viet Cong / They stole my peep’s freedom / so I’m coming to kill them / Call me their arch villain / Can’t stop me I’m willin’ / to die for this vision / Of a Vietnam that’s free / from those evil VC,” he raps. “You can’t stop me / I’m like a pissed off Bruce Lee / With a hi-ya, a kick, and a kung fu grip / We’ll come out swinging / We don’t give no shits.”

The cast of Qui Nguyen’s VIETGONE struts its stuff in Manhattan Theatre Club production at City Center (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Quang is heading to California on a motorcycle with his friend Nhan (Jon Hoche), where they’ll catch a flight home. The time shifts between April and July 1975, as Quang and Nhan get out during the fall of Saigon and Quang develops a sexual relationship at Fort Chaffee with the cold and carefree Tong (Jennifer Ikeda), despite the protests of her grandmother, Huong (Samantha Quan). But through it all, Quang just wants to reunite with his family. “We don’t belong here. We belong there,” he tells Nhan. “There, we’re heroes. We’re sons. We’re men. There, we count for something. Here, however, we ain’t shit.” On their travels, they encounter a hippie dude (Tolson), a flower girl (Quan), and a redneck biker (Tolson); meanwhile, flashbacks reveal the tough decisions Tong had to make when she chose to leave Vietnam for America. “The communists are going to be rolling into our streets any day now with the mind to make dead all of us who aren’t waving red flags and you’re going to stick around to get riddled with bullets?” she says to her brother, who won’t leave his girlfriend. “I’m not going to let you die here. I can’t. I can’t. That would destroy me. It would absolutely destroy me.” Quang and Tong might be sleeping together in America, but they are both after something they may not be able to find again.

Quang (Raymond Lee) and Tong (Jennifer Ikeda) have something to celebrate while Tong’s unhappy grandmother (Samantha Quan) looks on (photo by Carol Rosegg)

A production of Manhattan Theatre Club in association with South Coast Repertory, where the play debuted, Vietgone turns genre clichés inside out while toying with stereotypes, including who speaks with what accent. Passionately directed by Adrales with a frenetic warmth, the hip-hop immigrant tale — with a sweet nod to Hamilton — is colorful and energetic, taking place on Tim Mackabee’s impressive set, featuring a giant billboard, a horizon backdrop, and tiny telephone poles that represent the American road, creatively lit by Justin Townsend. Jared Mezzocchi’s projections, including graphic-novel-like drawings, set the time and the tone; the scene in which Quang and Nhan race for the helicopter to escape Saigon is absolutely breathtaking. Lee (tokyo fish story, Four Clowns) and Ikeda (Love and Information, Marie Antoinette) have a strong chemistry, while Vampire Cowboys artistic associate Hoche (Soul Samurai, The Inexplicable Redemption of Agent G), Quan (Masha No Home, An Infinite Ache), and longtime Nguyen collaborator Tolson (Fight Girl Battle World, Men of Steel) have a ball in multiple roles. The play is not as polished as it could be; several moments could be tightened up, and its clever but unusual storytelling techniques are not for everyone, obviously, as a chunk of older people left at intermission. But they should have stuck it out, as the rest of us did, who were caught up in this compelling love story about home that is both funny and moving, historical and contemporary, given the current debate over immigrants and refugees from around the world.

DOC NYC: CITY OF JOY

Madeleine Gavin’s CITY OF JOY reveals how a small group of dedicated activists help turn tragedy into empowerment in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo

CITY OF JOY (Madeleine Gavin, 2016)
SVA Theatre
333 West 23rd St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Friday, November 11, $16-$18, 7:00
www.docnyc.net
www.impactpartnersfilm.com

Madeleine Gavin’s debut feature, City of Joy, is as heartbreaking as it is uplifting, as shocking as it is life affirming. Ever since the two Congo civil wars of the 1990s, rape has been used as a horrific military tactic in the country; hundreds of thousands of women and children have been and continue to be attacked repeatedly by members of militias who are attempting to gain access to the country’s rich mineral resources, including coltan, tin, tungsten, and gold, which are much sought after by global corporations. In 2007, gynecologist/obstetrician Dr. Denis Mukwege, activist Christine Schuler-Deschryver, and playwright Eve Ensler cofounded the City of Joy, a securely walled and guarded safe space in Bukavu in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo where survivors of rape and sexual violence come to get their life back, learning to reclaim control of their bodies and their minds. “My sisters, you will change the suffering you’ve endured into power,” Schuler-Deschryver declared at the official opening in 2011. Elegantly photographed by Taylor Krauss and Lisa Rinzler, highlighting the spectacular beauty of the area and the bright, colorful outfits worn by the women, the film focuses on several of the survivors’ horrific tales and how they are overcoming their fears. Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues and Necessary Targets, explains, “The magnitude of the stories were beyond anything I had ever heard in my life.” Indeed, the women’s accounts are extremely difficult to listen to, but that’s part of the healing process for everyone. “When all women are free, that’s when you stop talking,” Ensler tells them, encouraging them to say the word “vagina” and to become more familiar with a part of their anatomy they should not fear. “I went to bed with no worries. We were at peace. No reason to be afraid. But one day everything changed, and I ended up in a place I never thought I’d be,” Jane Mukunila says of her brutal torture. Her transition is a centerpiece of the film.

Survivors come together to turn tragedy into hope in CITY OF JOY

“City of Joy was established as a center for survivors of rape and gender violence in the DRC,” program manager Mama Bachu Bahati reads from the organization’s mission statement. “The goal is to transform these women into leaders.” Risking their own personal safety, Dr. Mukwege, Schuler-Deschryver, Mama Bachu Bahati, self-defense instructors Duncan Bomba and Winnie Anyango, and others seek to empower these women to build strong new communities as they graduate from the program and reenter the world. “I think this love, this desire to fight for others, even when things for you have been completely destroyed, I believe that is the story of the struggle of the Congolese woman,” says the doctor, who has treated more than forty thousand women at Panzi Hospital. Gavin also edited the film, which boasts an outstanding soundtrack, with a score by Tomandandy and songs by Lokua Kanza, Geoffrey Oryema, and Papa Wemba to more fully immerse viewers in Congolese culture. Exhilarating and terrifying, City of Joy is a brutally honest and intensely important film, one that demands that nations such as the United States take action and put an end to the use of rape as a military weapon. The film is having its world premiere at DOC NYC on November 11 at 7:00 at the SVA Theatre, with Gavin, Ensler, Dr. Mukwege, Mukunila, and Schuler-Deschryver participating in an extended conversation afterward. DOC NYC runs November 10-17 at IFC Center, the SVA Theatre, and Cinépolis Chelsea, consisting of more than two hundred films, workshops, panel discussions, and other events, the largest nonfiction festival in the world.