twi-ny recommended events

CHANTAL AKERMAN — IMAGES BETWEEN THE IMAGES: NEWS FROM HOME

Chantal Akerman combines footage of 1970s New York with letters from her mother in NEWS FROM HOME

NEWS FROM HOME (Chantal Akerman, 1977)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Saturday, April 16, 7:00 & 9:00
Series continues through May 1
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

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 Hotel Monterey and La Chambre, before moving back to Belgium in 1973. But in 1976 she returned to New York City to make News from Home, a mesmerizing work about family and dislocation, themes that would be prevalent throughout her career. The film consists of long, mostly static shots, using natural sound and light, depicting a gray, dismal New York City as cars move slowly down narrow, seemingly abandoned streets, people ride the graffiti-laden subway, workers and tourists pack Fifth Ave., and the Staten Island Ferry leaves Lower Manhattan. The only spoken words occur when Akerman, in voice-over, reads letters from her mother, Natalia (Nelly) Akerman, sent during Chantal’s previous time in New York, concerned about her daughter’s welfare and safety. “I’m glad you don’t have that job anymore and that you’re liking New York,” Akerman reads in one letter. “People here are surprised. They say New York is terrible, inhuman. Perhaps they don’t really know it and are too quick to judge.” Her mother’s missives often chastise her for not writing back more often while also filling her in on the details of her family’s life, including her mother, father, and sister, Sylviane, as well as local gossip. Although it was not meant to be a straightforward documentary, News from Home now stands as a mesmerizing time capsule of downtrodden 1970s New York, sometimes nearly unrecognizable when compared to the city of today. The film also casts another light on the relationship between mother and daughter, which was recently highlighted in Akerman’s final film, No Home Movie, in which Chantal attempts to get her mother, a Holocaust survivor, to open up about her experiences in Auschwitz. Nelly died shortly after filming, and Akerman committed suicide the following year, only a few months after No Home Movie played at several film festivals (and was booed at Locarno). News from Home takes on new meaning in light of Akerman’s end, a unique love letter to city and family and to how we maintained connections in a pre-internet world. News from Home is screening April 16 at BAM Rose Cinemas as part of the BAMcinématek series “Chantal Akerman: Images between the Images,” which continues through May 1 with such other films by Akerman as Golden Eighties, Histoires d’Amerique, From the Other Side, and her masterpiece, Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. In addition, Anthology Film Archives will host “Chantal Akerman x 2,” showing No Home Movie and Là-Bas April 15-21.

THE MEASURE OF A MAN

Vincent Lindon plays an unemployed family man desperate to find a job in THE MEASURE OF A MAN

THE MEASURE OF A MAN (LA LOI DU MARCHÉ) (Stéphane Brizé, 2015)
Metrograph, 7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts., 212-660-0312
Lincoln Plaza Cinema, 1886 Broadway at 63rd St., 212-757-2280
Opens Friday, April 15
www.kinolorber.com5

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy,” the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously said. In Stéphane Brizé’s The Measure of a Man, Vincent Lindon excels as a husband and father who is trying his best to survive in a changing world, fraught with challenge and controversy, that has seemingly turned its back on him. In an extraordinary performance embodying the calm before a storm that never comes, Lindon plays Thierry Taugourdeau, a working-class man who has been out of a job since the factory where he toiled for more than twenty years closed twenty months ago. He meets with job counselors, takes classes, interviews over Skype, and joins his fellow laid-off colleagues to figure out what to do next, but it is hard for him to have to start over in his fifties while trying to support his wife (Karine De Mirbeck) and take care of a teenage son who has cerebral palsy, played by Matthieu Schaller, who does have the neurological disorder. When Thierry finally does find employment, it’s not exactly a dream job, but he attempts to soldier on even when he is asked to do things that are against his moral and ethical fiber. “We all get to choose,” he says when his fellow former factory workers talk about taking action against the company that laid them off. “In my case, if only for my mental health, I prefer to draw a line and move on. Does that make me a coward?”

The third film teaming Lindon and Brizé (following Mademoiselle Chambon and A Few Hours of Spring), The Measure of a Man has a poignant, realistic feel, unfolding in highly believable, disheartening scenes that are sometimes frustratingly slow, with Brizé and cowriter Olivier Gorce guiding viewers through the procedural machinations as Thierry tries to get his life back on track. You’ll often wish Thierry did more — that he prepared better for an interview, or more carefully chose his words when speaking to a counselor about his son’s future — but part of the point is that he’s doing the best he can in a difficult situation, and he’s only equipped for so much. The vast majority of the cast is made up of nonprofessional actors who really work in the banks and megamarts shown in the film, which is shot with a sometimes shaky handheld camera by cinematographer Eric Dumont and edited by Anne Klotz, both of whom come from the documentary world. Despite some plot meandering, the film is worth seeing for Lindon’s marvelously paced performance, which earned him Best Actor at Cannes and the Césars. A kind of French neorealist film for the twenty-first century, The Measure of a Man opens April 15 at Lincoln Plaza and Metrograph, with Lindon in person at the former after the 7:05 show and the latter after the 7:30 screening. In conjunction with the new release, Metrograph is also presenting “Four Films Starring Vincent Lindon,” which concludes with Claire Denis’s Bastards on April 16 at 3:00.

TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL: NATIONAL BIRD

Documentary sheds new light on many frightening aspects of U.S. drone program

NATIONAL BIRD (Sonia Kennebeck, 2016)
Saturday, April 16, Bow Tie Cinemas Chelsea 4, 6:15
Sunday, April 17, Regal Cinemas Battery Park 11-6, 3:15
Thursday, April 21, Regal Cinemas Battery Park 11-9, 7:30
Friday, April 22, Bow Tie Cinemas Chelsea 8, 5:30
itvs.org/films/national-bird
tribecafilm.com

On May 23, 2013, President Barack Obama gave a speech at the National Defense University at Fort McNair in which he discussed America’s controversial drone program, saying, “Before any strike is taken, there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured — the highest standard we can set.” Sonia Kennebeck’s shattering documentary, National Bird, strongly disputes that claim and adds more accusations as three former military personnel talk about what was really going on behind the scenes. “It’s a secret program, and what that means is that I just can’t go shouting off the hilltops, telling the public what it is,” says Lisa, a former technical sergeant on the drone surveillance system. (The documentary does not use the three main subjects’ last names.) “What I can tell you is that to me, one person who worked within this massive thing, it’s frightening.” Heather, a former drone imagery analyst, has become a massage therapist to deal with the effects of PTSD and anxiety and sleep disorders. “In learning to heal other people, maybe I could heal myself as well,” she says as she tries to come to terms with the many Afghani men women, and children, both military targets and innocent civilians, who died from bombs she dropped from drones. “I can say the drone program is wrong because I don’t know how many people I’ve killed,” she adds. And Daniel, a former signals intelligence analyst and currently a private contractor, carefully explains, “There’s no doubt in my mind that if I said the wrong thing or gave away the wrong kind of information about what I was doing that I wouldn’t be safe from prosecution of any kind.” Kennebeck also speaks with General Stanley McChrystal, who apologized for a 2010 drone attack that killed twenty-three civilians; some of the survivors of that fatal attack; and lawyer Jesselyn Radack, the founder of the Whistleblower and Source Protection Program (WHISPeR) at ExposeFacts, who has represented Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers in addition to Heather, Daniel, and Lisa.

A former technical sergeant on the drone surveillance system heads to Afghanistan to meet victims of drone attacks in NATIONAL BIRD

In her first feature documentary, Kennebeck compares the drone program to video games, as Heather, Daniel, and Lisa, through re-creations and actual documents, reveal how they performed their jobs, resulting in untold deaths, without ever seeing action; Heather, in particular, opens up about how difficult it was to sit at a desk in the United States while dropping bombs in Afghanistan, never knowing whether the victims were the intended targets or how much collateral damage was inflicted. She doesn’t know where to turn because the program is top secret and classified, so she can’t even seek out psychiatric help; meanwhile, she points out that several former colleagues have committed suicide. Lisa is so distraught that she goes to Afghanistan to visit with victims of drone attacks. And Daniel grows more and more paranoid that the more he talks, the more his freedom will be in jeopardy. Kennebeck (Sex — Made in Germany) also includes dramatic overhead drone shots of American communities, showing the terrifying prospect that drone attacks in the United States might not be far off as unmanned warfare spreads around the world. “Like previous advancements in military technology, combat drones have transformed warfare, outpacing the ability of legal and moral frameworks to adapt and address these developments,” Kennebeck explains in her director’s statement. “A broad, immersive, and thoroughly public discourse is critical to understanding the social cost of drone warfare.” Executive produced by Wim Wenders and Errol Morris, National Bird sheds new light on this controversial topic; it’s a chilling look at the next step in the continuing dehumanization of war, seen from multiple angles. “I thought I was going to be on the right side of history, and today I don’t believe I was,” Lisa says. National Bird is screening April 16, 17, 21, and 22 at the Tribeca Film Festival, with Kennebeck and Lisa participating in Q&As after all four shows, along with Radack on April 16 & 17.

SPRING 2016 SPA WEEK

Long-time favorite Essential Therapy in Murray Hill still has $50 SpaWeek appointments available for massage and facials this week.

Longtime favorite Essential Therapy in Murray Hill still has $50 Spa Week appointments available for massages and facials

Multiple locations
Through April 17, all treatments $50
www.spaweek.com

Spa Week continues through Sunday, so New Yorkers still have the opportunity to try one of hundreds of full-length health, wellness, and beauty treatments, including massages and facials, manicures and pedicures, microdermabrasion, peels, waxing, laser hair removal, cellulite reduction, and more, for $50. The appointments went faster than ever this year, but there are still spas offering deals on spaweek.com, including an oat milk facial, enzyme peel, or massage at KUR Skin Lab; Skin Spa’s wonderful OxyTrio face treatment, which twi-ny enjoyed last year; and perennial favorite Essential Therapy’s two massage options (deep tissue or Swedish) or blueberry detox facial. And if there are any spots left, grab one of newcomer Q Flatiron’s Infinity Float sessions, a revolutionary experience in which participants enter their own private cabanalike changing room complete with an Infinity Float pool, then lie down to remain suspended in warm ten-inch-deep water infused with a thousand pounds of Epsom salts for up to an hour. Floaters can regulate the light inside their spacious pods (mini-rooms, really; one can stand up in them), but the best experience comes with the lights off, after ten minutes of relaxing music ends, in silence, resting in perfect balance, senses blissfully at rest. (NOTE: It’s important to remember not to schedule a treatment via the spa’s website; you must register on the official Spa Week site and book from there in order to receive the special deals.)

MARTHA GRAHAM DANCE COMPANY: 90th ANNIVERSARY SEASON

Mats Ek's AXE is part of Martha Graham Dance Companys ninetieth anniversary season (photo by Hibbard Nash Photography)

Mats Ek’s AXE is part of Martha Graham Dance Company’s ninetieth anniversary season at City Center (photo by Hibbard Nash Photography)

New York City Center (and other locations)
130 West 56th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
April 14−18, $35-$95
212-581-1212
marthagraham.org
www.nycitycenter.org

On April 18, 1926, the Martha Graham Concert Group made its public debut, presenting a program at the 48th Street Theater that featured works by Debussy, Scriabin, Rachmaninoff, Brahms, Schumann, Schubert, Satie, and others. This month the Martha Graham Dance Company is celebrating its ninetieth anniversary with a series of special events in New York City. MGDC will be at City Center April 14-18, performing old and new works that honor the past, present, and future of the company and its legendary founder. On April 14, the schedule consists of 1946’s Medea-inspired Cave of the Heart, with music by Barber and set design by Isamu Noguchi; 1947’s Night Journey, an Oedipal tale with music by Schumann and set by Noguchi; and two new pieces, Mats Ek’s AXE, set to Ulf Andersson’s version of Albinoni’s “Adagio,” and Marie Chouinard’s Inner Resources, with music by Louis Dufort. On April 15, Night Journey and AXE will be joined by 1944’s Appalachian Spring, with music by Aaron Copland and set by Noguchi, and Andonis Foniadakis’s Echo, about Echo and Narcissus, with a score by Julien Tarride. The April 16 program comprises Cave of the Heart, Inner Resources, 1936’s politically themed Chronicle, with music by Wallingford Riegger and set by Noguchi, and Nacho Duato’s Rust, with music by Arvo Pärt.

CAVE OF THE HEART will be among the Graham classics performed at ninetieth anniversary season (photo by Hibbard Nash Photography)

April 18 is the big gala, with works ranging from 1926 to 2016: Tanagra, Heretic, Celebration, Lamentation, Chronicle, the Lament from Acts of Light, an excerpt from Appalachian Spring, and the New York premiere of Pontus Lidberg’s Woodland, set to music by Irving Fine. As a bonus, Aurélie Dupont will perform in Lament and Appalachian Spring. In addition, Graham 2 will perform Heretic, and there will be a film screening of rare footage of Three Gopi Maidens from 1926 as well as the new 90 Years in 90 Seconds. The Mannes Orchestra will perform all the music for the Graham classics live throughout the run at City Center. “We are dedicating this celebration to the unknown, to Martha Graham’s appetite for the new,” artistic director Janet Eilber said in a statement. “Graham’s legacy is a wellspring of originality and inspiration . . . of exploration, experimentation, and risk. The new works on our programs this season are part of this directive from the past and will be seen beside the greatest Graham classics.” Prior to the gala, you can head over to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts for a free marathon reading of Graham’s 1991 autobiography, Blood Memory, taking place from 11:00 am to 5:30 pm; among the readers are Patricia Birch, Carmen DeLavallade, Michelle Dorrance, Liz Gerring, Ellen Graff, Virginia Johnson, Deborah Jowitt, Annie-B Parson, Tiler Peck, Wendy Perron, Valda Setterfield, Sonya Tayeh, Wendy Whelan, and Marni Thomas Wood. And finally, the Martha Graham School, Graham 2, the Teens@Graham / All-City Panorama Project, and MGDC principal dancer Blakeley White-McGuire will team up for Martha Graham : We the People on April 21 and 22 at 7:30 at the Martha Graham Studio Theater on Bethune St.; admission is $10-$25. “‘Age’ is the acceptance of a term of years. But maturity is the glory of years,” Graham, who passed away in 1991 at the age of ninety-six, famously said. There should be plenty to glory about in these diverse anniversary programs.

OPEN PLAN: CECIL TAYLOR

Jazz great Cecil Taylor rehearses at the Whitney in November 2015

Whitney Museum of American Art
Neil Bluhm Family Galleries, fifth floor
99 Gansevoort St.
April 14-24, free with museum admission unless otherwise noted
212-570-3600
whitney.org

The fourth stage of the Whitney’s “Open Plan” series, which previously saw Andrea Fraser, Lucy Dodd, and Michael Heizer take over the large fifth-floor space in the new downtown building, hands the reins over to free jazz legend, poet, and New York City native Cecil Taylor. The eighty-seven-year-old pianist will be celebrated in a series of programs beginning April 14 at 8:00 ($50), when Taylor will make a rare public appearance, collaborating with British drummer Tony Oxley and Japanese dancer and choreographer Min Tanaka. On April 15 at 7:00, cellist Tristan Honsinger will perform a solo set, while writer Thulani Davis, dancer and professor Cheryl Banks-Smith, and bassist Henry Grimes join forces for a unique presentation. On April 16 at 2:00, Banks-Smith will moderate “Cecil Taylor and Dance,” a panel discussion with Dianne McIntyre, Heather Watts, and Tanaka. That evening at 7:00, trumpter Enrico Rava, double bassist William Parker, and drummer Andrew Cyrille will perform as a trio, in addition to a solo set by Cyrille. On April 20 at 3:00, a Poetry and Music gathering brings together poets A. B. Spellman and Anne Waldman and saxophonist Devin Brahja Waldman, Anne’s nephew. On April 21 at 3:00, Poetry and Music features Steve Dalachinsky, Clark Coolidge with Michael Bisio, and Nathaniel Mackey with Grimes. That night at 9:00 ($10), Hilton Als directs a restaging of Adrienne Kennedy’s one-act play A Rat’s Mass, starring Helga Davis; Taylor wrote and directed the music for the show. And on April 22 at 6:00, Chris Funkhouser, Tracie Morris and Susie Ibarra, Fred Moten and William Parker, and Jemeel Moondoc/Ensemble Muntu (featuring Parker, Mark Hennen, and Charles Downs) will present an evening of poetry and music. Throughout this part of “Open Plan,” there will also be listening sessions hosted by Davis, Archie Rand, André Martinez, Gary Giddins, Moten and Funkhouser, Ben Young, and Nahum Chandler in addition to screenings in the Kaufman Gallery of such films as Sheldon Rochlin’s Cecil Taylor: Burning Poles, Chris Felver’s Cecil Taylor: All the Notes, Billy Woodberry’s And When I Die, I Won’t Stay Dead, and the world premiere of Amiel Courtin-Wilson’s The Silent Eye about Taylor and Tanaka (and followed by Q&As with the director, who sat on Taylor’s stoop until the pianist would finally talk to him). There will also be documents, videos, audio, scores, photographs, poetry, and ephemera from throughout Taylor’s life and career on view.

DRY POWDER

Rick (Hank Azaria) finds himself in a battle between Seth (John Krasinski) and Jenny (Claire Danes) in Sarah Burgess’s DRY POWDER (photo by Joan Marcus)

Martinson Hall, the Public Theater
425 Lafayette St. at Astor P.
Tuesday through Sunday through May 1, $95
212-539-8500
www.publictheater.org

Being a Wharton and NYU grad, I had a, well, personal vested interest in seeing Sarah Burgess’s first professionally produced play, Dry Powder, continuing at the Public Theater’s Martinson Hall through May 1. Several decades ago, I dumped a potential career in high finance to work in publishing and the arts, but many of my fellow students and close friends made their way to Wall Street and Park Ave., where they still engage in the art of the deal. (One has even played golf with Donald Trump.) So I wasn’t sure just how much of this show about a private equity firm fighting for its financial life I would be able to take, but fortunately, Burgess has written a smart, tightly constructed play in which nothing is black and white but instead a very specific kind of green — as well as a deep shade of cobalt blue. Hank Azaria stars as Rick, the terse, direct founder of KMM Capital Management. In the midst of a public relations blunder involving an elephant and his impending marriage, Rick is brought a seemingly can’t-miss proposition by one of his two limited partners, Seth (John Krasinski). Seth wants Rick to sign off on a deal to buy the family-owned American company Landmark Luggage while promising Landmark CEO Jeff Schrader (Sanjit De Silva) that KMM will help it grow, rather than move the home base, lay off employees, and eventually flip it. But the offshore-layoff-quick-sale scenario is precisely what Rick’s other limited partner, Jenny (Claire Danes), has figured out could earn KMM more money. While Seth, a married man looking to have children, has developed a friendly relationship with Jeff and seems to care about Landmark’s future, Jenny, a single woman and workaholic with no friends, is all about the bottom line and nothing else; she doesn’t seem to understand personal connections or even the public good. “People can’t relate to me,” she says without a hint of regret. Facing a financial crisis, Rick has some important decisions to make that will affect more than just KMM.

Seth (John Krasinski) and Jenny (Claire Danes) take opposing views of a major deal in DRY POWDER (photo by Joan Marcus)

Burgess fills Dry Powder with such financial terms as “leveraged buyouts,” “letters of intent,” “dividend recaps,” “IPOs,” and “dry powder” (industry slang for liquid cash reserves), but the shop talk never overwhelms the narrative, which also avoids drifting into a clear good vs. evil setup. The audience sits on all four sides of Rachel Hauck’s dramatically simple, rectangular, boldly blue stage, a raised platform with a desk and three boxes that serve multiple purposes, moved around between scenes by well-dressed men and women while Lindsay Jones’s music and Jason Lyons’s colorful lighting grab your attention. In a power suit and sporting short-cropped hair, three-time Emmy winner Danes (Homeland, Temple Grandin) is a delight as Jenny, a robotic, cold-hearted financier who doesn’t care that she doesn’t know the name of her chief analyst, who has recently been hospitalized. Danes gives her just the right balance between tough negotiator and comic relief. Krasinski (The Office, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men) plays Seth with a smarmy charm that reveals the character’s claims of trying to benefit society while making money are perhaps not quite as true as he lets on, as he’s too quick to defend the size of his yacht and his score on the GMATs. Five-time Emmy winner Azaria (The Simpsons, Tuesdays with Morrie) imbues Rick with a tortured edge while loving the game. De Silva (War Horse, Awake and Sing!) is sort of an onstage stand-in for the everyday American, having worked hard, made something of himself, but is now on the cusp of something big and facing some hard choices. Director Thomas Kail, on a bit of a roll with Hamilton (as well as Lin-Manuel Miranda’s earlier Broadway hit, In the Heights), manages to make all ninety-five minutes more than palatable, given that we’re essentially watching one-percenters argue over tens of millions of dollars and the value of American jobs. It’s not an earth-shattering exploration of what makes these people tick, but it doesn’t purport to be anything other than exactly what it is. And it makes me extremely happy that I chose a different career path. (Advance tickets for Dry Powder are sold out, but there is a $20 TodayTix lottery for each performance, and $750 – $1,000 seats are available for the closing week benefit.)