Zina Saro-Wiwa, detail, “The Invisible Man,” pigmented inkjet print, 2015 (Seattle Art Museum, commission, courtesy of the artist © Zina Saro-Wiwa)
Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, May 7, free, 5:00 – 11:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org
The Brooklyn Museum celebrates its new exhibition, “Disguise: Masks and Global African Art,” which pairs twenty-five contemporary works of art with historical masquerade pieces to create a dialogue, at its free First Saturday program on May 7. The evening will feature live performances by Ifetayo Youth Ensemble, Jojo Abot, DJ Tunez, Laara Garcia (activating Saya Woolfalk’s “ChimaTEK: Virtual Chimeric Space”), and Djassi DaCosta Johnson (performing Brendan Fernandes’s In Touch); screenings of Jennie Livingston’s Paris Is Burning and short films from Wangechi Mutu’s AFRICA’SOUT!; a multimedia book club reading and discussion with Nnedi Okorafor, N. K. Jemisin, and Ibi Zoboi, along with performing arts collective BKLYN ZULU; pop-up gallery talks; a hands-on workshop in which participants can make their own masks and costumes; a talk by Arts of Africa and the Pacific Islands associate curator Kevin Dumouchelle on African masquerade around the world; interactive storytelling exploring African myth with Gage Cook; and, for the grand finale, a Vogue Ball hosted by Jacolby Satterwhite. In addition, you can check out such other exhibitions as “This Place,” “Tom Sachs: Boombox Retrospective, 1999–2016,” “Stephen Powers: Coney Island Is Still Dreamland (to a Seagull),” and “Agitprop!”
In a 1966 interview with Pierre Daix about Masculin feminin, director Jean-Luc Godard said, “When I made this film, I didn’t have the least idea of what I wanted.” Initially to be based on the Guy de Maupassant short stories “The Signal” and “Paul’s Mistress,” the film ended up being a revolutionary examination of the emerging youth culture in France, which Godard identifies as “the children of Marx and Coca-Cola.” Godard threw away the script and worked on the fly to make the film, which stars Jean-Pierre Léaud as Paul, a peculiar young man who quickly becomes obsessed with budding pop star Madeleine, played by real-life Yé-yé singer Chantal Goya. (Godard discovered her on a television variety show.) Paul chases Madeleine, getting a job at the same company, going to the movies and nightclubs with her and her friends, and meeting her in cafés, where he wants to talk about the troubles of contemporary society and she just wants to have a good time. “Man’s conscience doesn’t determine his existence. His social being determines his conscience,” Paul proclaims. He continually argues that there is nothing going on even as strange events occur around him to which he is completely oblivious, including a lover’s spat in which a woman guns down a man in broad daylight. (Sounds of rapid-fire bullets can be heard over the intertitles for each of the film’s fifteen faits précis, evoking a sense of impending doom.) Paul has bizarre conversations with his best friend, Robert (Michel Debord), a radical who asks him to help put up anarchist posters. Posing as a journalist, Paul brutally interviews Miss 19 (Elsa Leroy), a young model with a very different view of society and politics. Godard has also included a playful battle of the sexes in the center of it all: Paul wants Madeleine, much to the consternation of Madeleine’s roommate, Elisabeth (Marlène Jobert), who also has designs on her; meanwhile, Robert goes out with another of Madeleine’s friends, the more grounded Catherine (Catherine-Isabelle Duport), who is interested in Paul. It all makes for great fun, taking place in a surreal black-and-white world dominated by rampant consumerism.
“The whole idea of fragmentation appeals to me,” filmmaker, photographer, and installation artist Agnès Varda says in the middle of her unusual cinematic autobiography, the César-winning documentary The Beaches of Agnès. “It corresponds so naturally to questions of memory. Is it possible to reconstitute this personality, this person Jean Vilar, who was so exceptional?” She might have been referring to her friend, the French actor and theater director, but the exceptional Belgian-French Varda might as well have been referring to herself. Later she explains, “My memories swarm around me like confused flies. I hesitate to remember all that. I don’t want to.” Fortunately for viewers, Varda (Jacquot de Nantes, The Gleaners and I) does delve into her past in the film, sharing choice tidbits from throughout her life and career, in creative and offbeat ways that are charmingly self-effacing. Using cleverly arranged film clips, re-creations, photographs, and an array of frames and mirrors, the eighty-year-old Varda discusses such colleagues as Jean-Luc Godard, Chris Marker, and Alain Resnais; shares personal details of her long relationship with Jacques Demy; visits her childhood home; rebuilds an old film set; speaks with her daughter, Rosalie Varda, and son, Mathieu Demy; talks about several of her classic films, including La Pointe Courte, 
