twi-ny recommended events

I LIKE IT HERE

Ralph Arlyck explores aging and death in intimately personal I Like It Here

I LIKE IT HERE (Ralph Arlyck, 2022)
DCTV Firehouse Cinema
87 Lafayette St.
August 23-29
212-966-4510
www.dctvny.org
timedexposures.com

“I wanna stay here forever,” a young boy says in his grandfather’s latest documentary, I Like It Here. But as that grandfather, Ralph Arlyck, points out throughout the film, life comes to an end for us all.

Made over the course of several years, I Like It Here is a wistful, painfully honest exploration of aging and death, written, directed, photographed, and narrated by Arlyck, who was born in Brooklyn in 1940 and raised in Suffern, New York. It started out as a documentary about Arlyck’s upstate neighbor, Erno Szemes, an elderly hermit from Hungary, but the gruff Erno decided he didn’t want to share his life in front of a camera.

The project then morphed into a deeply personal story about facing the end, as Arlyck, whose previous films include 1968’s Natural Habitat, 1980’s An Acquired Taste, 1989’s Current Events, and 2004’s Following Sean, visits friends, lovers, and colleagues from his past, some of whom he hasn’t seen in more than half a century or more, while spending time with his wife, children, and grandchildren. In addition, he speaks with unique strangers he meets along his journey.

“I’m wondering how much my friends are thinking about the upcoming end of the days we’re all walking through, about the absolute finality of what will soon happen,” Arlyck says.

He encounters an Iranian man named Homer attempting to cheat death by walking along the side of a road and pulling a tire connected to his body by a chain. Fellow filmmaker Jack Baran is boisterous about life even though he has suffered two major losses. Arlyck visits his first serious girlfriend, writer Linda Chase; his Colgate buddy Mel Watkins; nonagenarian ski instructor Lou Ambrico and his wife, Pat; graveyard caretaker Jackie Szatko; childless artist couple Harry Roseman and Catherine Murphy; Upstate Films cofounder Steve Leiber; filmmakers Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker; and therapist Terry Antman. Ralph and his wife, Elisabeth Cardonne, return to their old campus house at Vassar, which is in danger of being torn down, and travel to Paris, where they are surrounded by youth.

Arlyck has the unique skill of being able to get people to share intimate moments from their lives, often with humor. As Leiber laughs while detailing his heart attack, Arlyck tells us, “As I’m questioning him, it strikes me that documentary filmmaking is almost as invasive as the quadruple bypass he had.” At various times, Erno, Elisabeth, and a neurologist ask Arlyck to turn off the camera, but it seems to be infused into his very being, part of his body. He just cannot stop filming.

Despite dealing with numerous types of severe illness and death, I Like It Here is a lovely and poignant record of one man taking stock before he dies. Editor Emmet Dotan weaves in archival footage, clips from some of Arlyck’s films, and, in the second half, many scenes, old and new, of the director enjoying time with his family, from his parents to his grandkids. The title is somewhat misleading; at one point, Arlyck declares, “I love it here. Maintaining it is a bitch, but I must like that too.” He’s talking about more than just his upstate farm as he contemplates being put out to pasture.

Spoiler alert: I Like It Here runs August 23–29 at DCTV Firehouse Cinema, with Arlyck, who is very much still alive, participating in five Q&As opening weekend, joined by Dotan at two and moderated by Alan Berliner, Kent Jones, Gabrielle Glaser, Phillip Lopate, and Chloé Trayner.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

PARADISE IS BURNING

Three sisters come of age in one summer in Mika Gustafson’s Paradise Is Burning

PARADISE IS BURNING (Mika Gustafson, 2023)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
August 22-29
www.ifccenter.com
www.roomeightfilms.com

“I will never disappear / For forever, I’ll be here,” Swedish electropop musician and composer Fever Ray sings in their 2009 song “Keep the Streets Empty for Me.” The tune plays a key role in Swedish filmmaker Mika Gustafson’s heart-wrenching debut feature, Paradise Is Burning.

In a working-class Swedish suburb, sixteen-year-old Laura (Bianca Delbravo) is doing everything she can to keep her and her two sisters, twelve-year-old Mira (Dilvin Asaad) and seven-year-old Steffi (Safira Mossberg), together despite an absent father and a mother who disappears for long periods of time. When social services schedules a visit, Laura is worried that the three girls, who are very close, will be separated and put into foster care. Laura seeks help from her aunt Vera (Andrea Edwards) and their neighbors, Sasha (Mitja Siren) and Zara (Marta Oldenburg), an older couple who run a karaoke bar, but there’s not much they can do; Laura is on her own to preserve her family.

It’s summer, so school is not an issue. Laura comes up with elaborate plans to steal groceries from the supermarket. She avoids social services’ phone calls. She gives her sisters plenty of room to roam but fiercely protects and defends them if there are any problems. All three are going through major life events. When Mira gets her period, a group of friends hold a dramatic ritual celebration. Steffi is waiting for her first baby tooth to fall out. As Mira grows friendly with Sasha, “managing” his karaoke singing aspirations, Steffi collects stray dogs and meets Micai (Ellie Ghanati), another disaffected youth; they set up a unique little outdoor “home” where they can both let their rage out and find peace and privacy.

Laura enjoys breaking into other people’s houses and pretending to live like they do, eating their food, swimming in their pools, and trying on their clothes. She never takes anything from them; instead, she finds a kind of freedom, tinged with danger. In one house, she watches bullfighting on television; she is both matador and charging animal. Meanwhile, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker is on in their own home, a film about a journey into a mysterious forbidden Zone where it is believed that people can achieve their most inner desires.

Running away after being chased out by the angry owner of a house and looking lost, she bumps into Hanna (Ida Engvoll), a thirtysomething woman who is instantly intrigued by Laura. The two quickly grow close; Hanna joins Laura on her fantasy adventures into houses, becoming friend, confidant, and maybe more. Hanna is a kind of mother figure — the type of parent Laura wishes she had — before the teenager finds out more about Hanna and her quest for freedom.

It’s no mere coincidence that the title, Paradise Is Burning, evokes Jennie Livingston’s award-winning 1990 documentary, Paris Is Burning, about BIPOC/LGBTQIA+ ball culture in New York City, where anyone and everyone can feel safe and secure being whoever they are and whoever they want to be. In nearly every scene, Laura looks like she’s ready to explode, to break free of the life she has been forced into. The sacrifices she must make are too much for any teenager to be asked to do. In one telling moment, she brings home T-shirts for her and Mira; Mira initially chooses the one with an eagle on it, but when she sees Laura put on the other one, with wolves, she asks to switch, which Laura does without complaint. Mira, who also thinks she’s ready for her mother’s fancy white high heels, aspires to be more like her older sister, who she considers tough and strong, not acknowledging that Laura is just a kid too, one whose ability to soar is being suppressed. In fact, animals figure prominently throughout the film, from rats and dogs to a Botero-like cat and three white flamingos hiding their heads in the water, emphasizing the wild nature of the sisters’ less-than-standard domestic existence.

Laura (Bianca Delbravo) finds an unexpected new friend in Hanna (Ida Engvoll) in Paradise Is Burning

In her first film, Delbravo is absolutely brilliant as Laura — she was discovered six years before shooting by Gustafson’s cowriter, Alexander Öhrstrand (who also has a small but key part in the movie), when he overheard Delbravo screaming at someone over the phone. With her pouty lips, puppy-dog eyes, and button nose, she’s a mesmerizing figure, a young woman trapped between being a child and an adult, best exemplified by subtle changes she makes in her movement and mannerisms when Laura is with her sisters as opposed to when she is with Hanna — superbly portrayed by Engvoll — who is also caught between two worlds.

Named Best Director and Best Screenwriter (with Öhrstrand) at the 2023 Venice Orizzonti, Gustafson exhibits an impressive talent in her first full-length narrative film; she previously made such works as the short Mephobia and the documentary Silvana. Her grasp of character development packs an emotional punch, as does the tempting sense of freedom lurking just around each corner for every character, reminiscent of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Nobody Knows and Andrea Arnold’s American Honey and Fish Tank, while injecting a bit of David Lynch into the karaoke scenes.

“There’s no room for innocence,” Fever Ray also sings in “Keep the Streets Empty for Me.” Both Gustafson and Delbravo bravely navigate innocence and experience in their feature cinematic debuts, marking them as two to watch.

Paradise Is Burning opens this weekend at the IFC Center, with Gustafson participating in Q&As at the 7:00 sneak-peek screening on August 22 and the 7:15 shows on August 23 and 24.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

HOT TICKET ALERT: BASIL TWIST’S DOGUGAESHI

Basil Twist’s Dogugaeshi returns to Japan Society for a twentieth-anniversary encore presentation (photo © Richard Termine)

DOGUGAESHI
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
September 11–19, $44-$58
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org
basiltwist.com

Only seventy-five tickets are available to each of the twelve encore performances of Basil Twist’s Dogugaeshi at Japan Society; six shows are already sold out, so you better hurry if you want to see the special twentieth anniversary revival of the award-winning phenomenon.

Originally presented at Japan Society in 2004 in honor of the 150th anniversary of the US-Japan Treaty of Kanagawa, the sixty-minute work is part of the cultural institution’s fall 2024 series “Ningyo! A Parade of Puppetry.” Dogugaeshi (“doh-goo-guy-ih-shee”) follows the tradition of a stage mechanic developed in Japan’s Awa region using multiple painted fusuma screens and tableaux. “When I heard from several sources of a legendary eighty-eight-screen dogugaeshi, I knew that I had to do this piece with at least eighty-eight screens to bridge this all but vanished art form into the twenty-first century,” Twist, a third-generation puppeteer from San Francisco, explained in a statement.

Performed by four puppeteers including Twist, Dogugaeshi features video projections by Peter Flaherty, lighting by Andrew Hill, and sound by Greg Duffin; the score, composed by shamisen master Yumiko Tanaka, will be played live by Tanaka at the evening shows and by Yoko Reikano Kimura at the matinees. In the narrative, a white fox guides the audience through a tale of Japan’s past and present.

In the above 2014 Japan Society promotional video, Twist says that he sees Dogugaeshi, which has traveled around the globe, as a “sort of meditation into into into into into into this Japanese world. . . . The piece was created for this stage and so it really looks the best on this stage.”

“Ningyo! A Parade of Puppetry” continues October 3–5 with National Bunraku Theater, November 7–9 with “Shinnai Meets Puppetry: One Night in Winter & The Peony Lantern,” and December 12 and 13 with “The Benshi Tradition and the Silver Screen: A Japanese Puppetry Spin-off,” in which star movie talker Ichiro Kataoka and shamisen player Sumie Kaneko accompany screenings of two silent films, Daisuke Ito’s 1927 A Diary of Chuji’s Travels the first night and Shozo Makino’s 1910-17 Chushingura the second evening.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

THE STORY OF LOT’S WIFE

The Story of Lot’s Wife celebrates a never-named but key biblical character (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

THE STORY OF LOT’S WIFE
The Cell Theatre
338 Twenty-Third St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Thursday – Sunday through August 25, $10-$35, 11:00 am – 7:00 pm
www.thecelltheatre.org
www.ofotheater.com

Dan Daly reimagines a mysterious figure from the Bible in the immersive, performerless theater installation The Story of Lot’s Wife, extended at the Cell through August 25.

Described as “a recentering through text, object, and action,” the fifteen-minute ritualistic but not religious experience gives agency and identity to Lot’s wife, who is never named in the Bible, neither in the Old Testament nor in the New Testament, where Jesus declares as a warning, “Remember Lot’s wife.”

The narrative is divided into ten sections, beginning with a prologue that relates the tale of Lot, his wife, and their daughters as two angels descend from heaven to save them from the rampant sin occurring in Sodom and Gomorrah. As they leave the burning city, Lot’s wife looks back at the devastation and becomes a pillar of salt.

After reading the account, one audience member at a time then enters a small, narrow winding structure, walking through a beaded curtain and along a tiled path lined by fragile blue velvet, stopping at nine stations to read from a handout and examine a related object on a plinth. (Daly conceived the project during the pandemic, when theaters were closed and people were not interacting with one another.) Among the items are Himalayan salt, a bar napkin, a piece of brimstone, and a framed icon, accompanied in the booklet by a brief description and a photo of a related object from the real world. An atmospheric soundscape by Julian Singer-Corbin echoes through the space, which is dimly lit by Zoe Griffith.

Daly, who wrote the text and designed and constructed the installation, seizes on the word “became.” At the second stop, the narrative explains: “The story says, / ‘and she became a pillar of salt.’ / You were not turned, you became. / It follows that a choice was made to become, / To preserve, / To remember the people you love. / When you ‘become’ you have a will, / To become is not forced upon you, it is an action.”

Daly proposes that it was not divine intervention but her own tears that changed Lot’s wife’s body into salt. He also sees her as a gay icon, suggesting that what she was looking back at was, at least in part, a homosexual community that was not involved in debasement but in same-sex love; he acknowledges that queerness never factored specifically in the biblical tale, but he writes, “We welcome the name ‘Sodomites’ with honor.” As of late 2023, twelve states still had laws against consensual sodomy, or gay sex. The play concludes with a communal call for renewal.

The Story of Lot’s Wife is presented through the new company Other Forms of Theater (Ofo), which seeks to “create and support performances that do not fit neatly into the definition of ‘theatre’ and exist below what is deemed commercially viable. We experiment with the theatrical form and rethink what performance is, not just artistically but also structurally.”

Daly, who has designed such shows as the immersive Tammany Hall at SoHo Playhouse and Third Rail Project’s site-specific Oasis at Brookfield Place, has accomplished just that with The Story of Lot’s Wife, which is about a lot more than a biblical yarn. On your way out, be sure to say hello to the person behind the desk and share your thoughts; it’s likely to be Daly himself.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

CONEY ISLAND SAND SCULPTING CONTEST 2024

Twenty-fifth annual Sand Sculpting Contest takes place in Coney Island on Saturday (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Thirty-second annual Coney Island Sand Sculpting Contest should feature plenty of impressive creations on Saturday (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

CONEY ISLAND SAND SCULPTING CONTEST
Coney Island
Boardwalk between West Tenth & Twelfth Sts.
Saturday, August 17, free, 11:00 am – 4:00 pm
www.coneyisland.com
www.allianceforconeyisland.org

The thirty-second annual Coney Island Sand Sculpting Contest will take place at the People’s Playground on August 17, as amateurs, semiprofessionals, and professionals will create masterpieces in the Brooklyn sand, primarily with a nautical theme. It’s a blast watching the constructions rise from nothing into some extremely elaborate works of temporary art. The event, which features cash prizes, is hosted by the Alliance for Coney Island and features four categories: Adult Group, Family, Individual, and People’s Choice. There are always a few architectural ringers who design sophisticated castles, along with a handful of gentlemen building, well, sexy mermaids. You can usually register as late as eleven o’clock Saturday to participate. While visiting Coney Island on August 17, you should also check out the Coney Island Museum, the Coney Island Circus Sideshow, Burlesque at the Beach’s “Boner Killers” with Jo “Boobs” Weldon, MiscAllaneous DomTop, Iris Explosion, Sweaty Eddie, Poison Eve, Voodoo Onyx, Broody Valentino, Porcelain, and Storm, and the New York Aquarium in addition to riding the Cyclone and the Wonder Wheel, a must every summer.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

THE 17th ANNUAL CHARLES BUKOWSKI MEMORIAL READING

Who: Kat Georges, Peter Carlaftes, Jennifer Blowdryer, Puma Perl, Michael Puzzo, Danny Shot, Richard Vetere, George Wallace, more
What: Annual tribute to Charles Bukowski
Where: The Bitter End, 147 Bleecker St. between Thompson & La Guardia
When: Thursday, August 15, $10, 6:00
Why: “What sort of cultural hangover keeps Charles Bukowski in print and popular more than twenty years after his death?” S. A. Griffin asks in his Three Rooms Press essay “Charles Bukowski: Dean of Another Academy.” “In light of the fact that a good portion of what has been published since his passing in 1994 may not be the man’s best work, along with some heavy editing at times, why does Charles Bukowski remain relevant well into the 21st century?”

The seventeenth annual Charles Bukowski Memorial Reading takes place August 15 at 6:00 at the Bitter End in Greenwich Village in honor of what would have been the 104th birthday of the author of such books as Pulp, Factotum, Post Office, On Cats, and Love Is a Dog from Hell, with tribute readings by performance artist Penny Arcade, musician and storyteller Jennifer Blowdryer, poets Puma Perl, Danny Shot, and George Wallace, and playwrights Richard Vetere and Michael Puzzo, hosted by Kat Georges and Peter Carlaftes of Three Rooms Press. Bukowski, who died in 1994 at the age of seventy-three, will be celebrated through poetry, oral history, rare videos, and live performances, with a special look at what he might have thought about the 2024 elections, presidential immunity, nonalcoholic beer, AI, and other contemporary issues. As a bonus, various prizes will be given away.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

THE TIES THAT BIND — TALES OF MADNESS: LET THE RIGHT ONE IN

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN

Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) and Eli (Lina Leandersson) discover a different kind of love in Let the Right One In

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (LÅT DEN RÄTTE KOMMA IN) (Tomas Alfredson, 2008)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
Friday, August 16, 7:20
Sunday, August 18, 6:50
Series continues through September 1
metrograph.com

Metrograph’s haunting series “Ties That Bind: Tales of Madness” continues with the original Swedish thriller Let the Right One In, a chilling yet tender coming-of-age story about friendship and the meaning of family. In a snow-covered Stockholm suburb, twelve-year-old Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) is severely bullied by Conny (Patrik Rydmark), Andreas (Johan Sömnes), and Martin (Mikael Erhardsson). The frail, blond Oskar dreams of getting even, but he always backs down. But then he meets the dark-haired, somewhat feral Eli (Lina Leandersson, dubbed by Elif Ceylan), who has moved in next door in their apartment complex. While Oskar lives with his divorced mother (Karin Bergquist) — his father (Henrik Dahl) has moved out to the country — Eli lives with Håkan (Per Ragnar), an older father figure who goes out to gather what Eli needs to survive: blood. But the aging Håkan begins encountering difficulties, forcing Eli to go out and hunt down her own food. As people start to go missing in the small community, Eli and Oskar’s friendship begins to blossom, two outsiders coming to terms with who they are. But when Oskar suddenly strikes back, Conny’s older brother, Jimmy (Rasmus Luthander), gets involved, and the steaks, er, stakes, get a whole lot higher.

Based on the 2004 novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist, Let the Right One In is a gripping horror film that is one of the best of the twenty-first century. By making the protagonists children with common adolescent problems, Lindqvist, who wrote the screenplay, and director Tomas Alfredson (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Snowman) create a more realistic setting, so the scares are that much more intense. Hedebrant and Leandersson have a magical chemistry, their tentativeness and fears intoxicating. They exist in a world that is meant only for them; all of the adults are essentially peripheral, whether parents, teachers, or community members wondering what is going on, and the other kids are merely in their way. And it’s all about that very moment; they both might be twelve, but Eli is going to be that age forever while Oskar gets older.

The atmosphere is thick and tense throughout, elevated by Hoyte van Hoytema’s inventive cinematography and Johan Söderqvist’s dramatic score, performed by the Slovak National Symphony Orchestra. Despite some very memorable scenes involving shocking violence, at its heart Let the Right One In is a sweetly innocent love story, albeit with a few unusual complications. Matt Reeves directed a 2010 English-language remake starring Kodi Smit-McPhee and Chloë Grace Moretz, and the National Theatre of Scotland staged a terrific theatrical adaptation that played at St. Ann’s Warehouse in 2015, but there’s still nothing like the original, a visually stunning and psychologically adept fresh new take on the vampire legend.

The Metrograph series also features such other mad tales as Dario Argento’s Suspiria, Georges Franju’s Eyes without a Face, Agnieszka Smoczyńska’s The Lure, and J. A. Bayona’s The Orphanage.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]