John Zorn returns to the Guggenheim for Works & Process program
Who: John Zorn
What: Works & Process: “Commedia dell’arte” by John Zorn
Where: Peter B. Lewis Theater, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Ave. at 89th St., 212-423-3500
When: Sunday, January 24, $20, 9:00
Why: Innovative avant-garde composer, musician, and native New Yorker John Zorn will be the special guest at the next Works & Process program at the Guggenheim, in which artists perform and discuss upcoming pieces. Zorn, who has played on hundreds of albums and with creators from across the artistic spectrum, will be premiering his five-miniatures suite “Commedia dell’arte,” each one inspired by a different character from the sixteenth-century Italian improvisational theatrical art form: Colombina, Harlequin, Pierrot, Pulcinella, and Scaramouche. (In 2013, Zorn premiered two works inside the James Turrell installation at the Guggenheim.) This one-time-only presentation will be followed by a later Works & Process event in which the music will be set to new choreography. The Works & Process spring season continues through May 9 with such other participants as members of the cast and crew of Shuffle Along, Shen Wei Dance Arts, Malpaso Dance Company, American Ballet Theatre, Ryan McNamara, and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins.
Romanian director Radu Jude won the Silver Bear as Best Director at the 2015 Berlin International Film Festival for Aferim!, his savagely funny blacker-than-black comic Western about bigotry, infidelity, and frontier justice in 1835 Wallachia. Lawkeeper Costandin (Teodor Corban) and his son, Ionitā (Mihai Comānoiu), are galloping through the local countryside, searching for runaway Gypsy slave Carfin (Cuzin Toma), who Boyar Iordache Cindescu (Alexandru Dabija) has accused of having an affair with his wife, Sultana (Mihaela Sîrbu). The surly Costandin leads the hunt, verbally cutting down everyone he meets, from random old women to abbots to fellow lawmen, with wicked barbs, calling them filthy whores, crows, and other foul names while spouting ridiculous theories about honor and religion; he even batters his son, saying he’s “a waste of bread” and that “if you slap him, he’ll die of grief.” It’s a cruel, cholera-filled time in which even the monks beat the poor, where Costandin regales a priest with the telling riddle, “Lifeless out of life, life out of lifeless,” which the priest thinks refers to the coming doomsday.
“There are some stories which we are not only an audience to, but may become their participants,” Canadian journalist Joe Schlesinger says at the beginning of Matej Mináč and Patrik Pašš’s poignant, powerful documentary Nicky’s Family. Schlesinger is one of hundreds of Czech and Slovak men and women who, as children, were saved from the Nazis by unassuming Englishman Nicholas Winton on the eve of World War II. Winton’s story remained virtually unknown for sixty years, until his wife found a suitcase in the attic filled with documentation detailing her husband’s quiet heroism. Over the last fifteen years, the “British Schindler” has been celebrated around the world, being knighted by the queen, meeting many of the people he helped save, and inspiring children who are not directly part of “Nicky’s Family” to help others in what is called the “Winton virus of good.” It’s an unforgettable story centered around a man who didn’t set out to be a hero and still appears to be somewhat uncomfortable with all the accolades, which include being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. The film interviews such members of Nicky’s Family as Alice Masters, Ben Abeles, Liesl Silverstone, Dr. Lenata Laxova, Tom Berman, and Tom Schrecker, who have made significant contributions to society that might have never happened had they not been rescued as children by Winton. Director-producer-cowriter Mináč and producer-cowriter-editor Pašš include unnecessary staged re-creations of some of the events of 1938 that actually detract from the central narrative, and the documentary overplays the emotional card in its final scenes, but it tells a story that needs to be told, of a remarkable man who, up to his recent death at the age of 106, continued to be an inspiration and proved that one person can indeed make a difference. Nicky’s Family is screening on January 26 at 7:00 at the Museum of Jewish Heritage and will be followed by a Q&A with Winton’s daughter, Barbara Winton, author of If It’s Not Impossible: The Life of Sir Nicholas Winton, and Budd Mishkin.
