twi-ny recommended events

OSCAR BUZZ PRESENTS: LAST DAYS IN VIETNAM

Documentary looks at the mad rush to get out of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War (photo courtesy Bettmann/Corbis)

LAST DAYS IN VIETNAM (Rory Kennedy, 2014)
Maysles Cinema
343 Malcolm X Blvd. between 127th & 128th Sts.
Sunday, February 8, 7:30
Series runs February 7-18
212-582-6050
www.maysles.org/mdc
www.lastdaysinvietnam.com

To many, the fall of Saigon immediately brings to mind images of men, women, and children climbing the gate at the U.S. embassy, desperately trying to board American helicopters and escape the country as the North Vietnamese army approached. Director and producer Rory Kennedy takes viewers behind the scenes of that madness in the harrowing and revealing documentary Last Days in Vietnam. Kennedy, the youngest daughter of Bobby and Ethel Kennedy, and editor Don Kleszy have woven together remarkable footage from 1970s Vietnam as more than a dozen insiders share their compelling stories, which play out like a gripping thriller with a surprise, emotionally powerful ending. At the center of it all is the late U.S. ambassador Graham Martin, a stubborn patriot who continually refused to vacate the embassy until it was almost too late. U.S. Army captain Stuart Herrington gets personal as he talks about trying to help potential refugees. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and White House press secretary Ron Nessen discuss President Gerald Ford’s attempts to persuade Congress to fund a major evacuation. CIA analyst Frank Snepp and Special Forces advisor Richard Armitage delve into the military’s plans, while South Vietnamese Navy captain Kiem Do, South Vietnamese Army lieutenant Dam Pham, and Vietnamese student Binh Pho tell what it was like from their vantage points. USS Kirk chief engineer Hugh Doyle, USS Kirk captain Paul Jacobs, and Marine pilot Gerald Berry reveal stunning stories of bravery and daring during the evacuation on land and sea and in the air. If you think this is old news, you’re mistaken, as the film offers a whole new perspective on this seminal moment in the history of two nations — and it’s nearly impossible to watch it without thinking that something similar might occur in Iraq and Afghanistan soon. An American Experience production and nominated for an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, Last Days in Vietnam is screening February 8 at 7:30 as part of the Maysles Documentary Center series “Oscar Buzz Presents” and will be followed by a Q&A with Kennedy (Ethel, Ghosts of Abu Ghraib); the series includes such other Oscar-nominated and shortlisted films as Laura Poitras’s Citizenfour, Sam Cullman, Mark Becker, and Jennifer Grausman’s Art and Craft, and Al Hicks’s Keep on Keepin’ On.

TONY CRAGG: WALKS OF LIFE

Tony Cragg’s undulating “Points of View” is part of Madison Square Park installation “Walks of Life” (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Who: Tony Cragg
What: “Walks of Life”
Where: Madison Square Park, between Madison Ave. & Broadway and 23rd & 26th Sts., 212-520-7600
When: Daily through February 8
Why: For nearly twenty years, Turner Prize-winning artist Tony Cragg’s “Resonating Bodies” have flanked the entrance to Robert F. Wagner Jr. Park, a lively pair of large-scale musical instruments. Now the Liverpool-born artist, who lives and works in Wuppertal, Germany, has placed a trio of bronze sculptures, collectively titled “Walks of Life,” on the Madison Square Park lawns, twisting shapes that seem to shake with the location’s high energy. In the southwest corner, visitors are encouraged to walk inside “Caldera,” which stands on three tiptoes, and look up at the sky. On the central Oval Lawn, three eighteen-foot-high works form “Points of View,” rising up with dynamic, humanistic undulating forms; from various angles you can make out abstract facial profiles. And in the northwest corner, the green, dynamic “Mixed Feelings” teeters like a warped Statue of Liberty

TICKET ALERT: THE ICEMAN COMETH

Goodman Theatre revival of Eugene O’Neill’s THE ICEMAN COMETH comes to BAM, starring Brian Dennehy and Nathan Lane (photo by Liz Lauren)

Who: Nathan Lane, Brian Dennehy, John Douglas Thompson, Kate Arrington, and others
What: Goodman Theatre revival of Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh
Where: BAM Harvey Theater, 651 Fulton St. Ashland and Rockwell Pl., 718-636-4100
When: February 5 – March 15, Tuesday – Sunday, $35-$180
Why: The highly praised Chicago revival of The Iceman Cometh, directed by Robert Falls, comes to BAM for a limited engagement, starring Nathan Lane as Hickey, Kate Arrington as Cora, John Douglas Thompson as Joe Mott, John Hoogenakker as Willie Oban, and Brian Dennehy as Larry Slade; the production runs four hours and forty-five minutes with three intermissions (a $30 meal box is available, with either a grilled chicken wrap or a slow-roasted butternut squash sandwich with brie and kale, among other items, but must be purchased at least three days in advance). In addition, Dennehy and Lane will take part in a special talk about the show on Monday, March 2, at 7:30 ($25.)

ATHENA FILM FESTIVAL: WE ARE THE BEST!

Hedvig (Liv LeMoyne), Bobo (Mira Barkhammar), and Klara (Mira Grosin) form a punk band in WE ARE THE BEST!

WE ARE THE BEST! (VI ÄR BÄST) (Lukas Moodysson, 2013)
Lehman Auditorium, 202 Altschul Hall, Barnard Campus
Friday, February 6, $12, 9:00
Festival runs February 5-8
www.athenafilmfestival.com
www.magpictures.com

Thank goodness Lukas Moodysson changed his mind. After his 2009 film, Mammoth, and the death of his father, the Swedish director of such indie faves as Show Me Love, Together, and Lilya 4-ever was extremely depressed and considering quitting the movie business. But he was eventually inspired to make a happy film, and the result is the absolutely delightful We Are the Best! A liberal adaptation of his wife Coco’s semiautobiographical graphic novel Never Goodnight, the film, set in 1982 Sweden, follows the adventures of thirteen-year-old best friends Bobo (Mira Barkhammar) and Klara (Mira Grosin), a pair of outsiders who think they are rebellious punk rockers, making statements by running down the up escalator at the mall and writing an anti-sports song. Joined by fourteen-year-old Christian classical guitarist Hedvig (Liv LeMoyne), they form a punk band to rival middle school heavy metalers Iron Fist. Determined to show that punk is not dead, they futz with their hair, attempt to bond with a teen-boy punk trio, and try their darnedest to gel as a band, even though drummer Bobo and bassist Klara don’t really know how to play their instruments. All the adults in the film, primarily Klara’s parents (Lena Carlsson and David Dencik), Bobo’s mother (Anna Rydgren) and her strange friends, and the two youth recreation leaders (Matte Wiberg and Johan Liljemark, real-life members of the band Sabotage), are pretty goofy themselves, not exactly your prototypical role models, so silliness pervades in wonderfully funny ways.

Writer-director Moodysson celebrates the sheer joy and utter ridiculousness of childhood throughout We Are the Best!, never getting overly serious and allowing his three young stars to improvise, which makes their characters that much more honest and endearing, both in small moments and within the overall narrative, which concentrates on having fun. And indeed, We Are the Best! is nothing if not a whole lot of fun. We Are the Best! is screening February 6 at 9:00 at the Athena Film Festival, the annual “celebration of women and leadership” taking place February 5-8 at Barnard and Columbia between 116th & 120th Sts. and Broadway & Claremont Ave. The fifth edition of the festival includes such other films as Gillian Robespierre’s Obvious Child, Sam Feder’s Kate Bornstein Is a Queer & Pleasant Danger, Justin Simien’s Dear White People, Diana Whitten’s Vessel, and Gina Prince-Bythewood’s Beyond the Lights, master classes with Prince-Bythewood, Cathy Schulman, and Stephanie Laing, panel discussions on gender diversity, crowdfunding, and cinematography, a conversation with Twyla Tharp, and more. This year’s recipient of the Laura Ziskin Liftetime Achievement Award is Jodie Foster.

V. S. GAITONDE: PAINTING AS PROCESS, PAINTING AS LIFE

Breathtaking exhibition welcomes visitors into the meditative world of Indian painter V. S. Gaitonde (photo by David Heald)

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Ave. at 89th St.
Friday – Wednesday through February 11, $18-$22 (pay-what-you-wish Saturday 5:45-7:45)
212-423-3587
www.guggenheim.org

“I don’t work, I relax and wait, and then I apply some paint on the canvas. The most important aspect of painting is waiting, waiting, waiting, between one work and the next,” Indian painter V. S. Gaitonde said shortly after winning the 1989–90 Kalidas Samman prize in the plastic arts. That quote is also good advice as to how his magnificent canvases should be experienced. Nearly four dozen of the Indian artist’s paintings and works on paper are on view in “V. S. Gaitonde: Painting as Process, Painting as Life,” continuing at the Guggenheim through February 11. This first-ever major museum career retrospective introduces audiences to the unique style of Vasudeo S. Gaitonde, called “Gai” by his peers, who was born in Maharashtra in 1924 and passed away in August 2001. Gaitonde, who made only a handful of paintings every year, was influenced by Paul Klee and Mark Rothko, Zen Buddhism and silence, Japanese and Chinese hanging scrolls and calligraphy. He referred to his work, which began with more figuration, as “non-objective” instead of “abstract,” so it is fitting that the survey is being held at the Guggenheim, which opened as the Museum of Non-Objective Painting in 1939 on East Fifty-Fourth St. Little is known about Gaitonde’s life outside of painting, and his work is as mysterious as the man. Using multiple layers of paint, strips of wet newspaper, and a palette knife, Gaitonde created primarily untitled oil on canvas paintings, watercolors, and ink on paper drawings boasting unique combinations of color, form, and texture. The works have both a physical and metaphysical depth, daring the viewer to breathe it all in. The exhibition, curated by Sandhini Poddar, occurs at a time when Gaitonde’s work is now selling in the millions at auction; a 1979 painting recently went for $3.8 million, the most ever paid for a work by a modern Indian artist.

V. S. Gaitonde’s pure painting is about life and process (photo by David Heald)

In one fiery orange painting, a sun rises over an amalgamation of what could be body parts. In another, it looks as if Gaitonde has torn through an earth-toned canvas. In a third work, four arrows point at a central circle, coming together like a totem. Poddar, who had quite a task collecting the works, lays out the aptly titled exhibition beautifully, inviting visitors to take their time as they discover the many wonders of Gaitonde’s pure, impressive skill, revealing that his process was life, and life was his process. “A painting always exists within you, even before you actually start to paint,” he said. “You just have to make yourself the perfect machine to express what is already there.” What is already there is a love of pure painting that is now, at last, getting its due.

BLACK HISTORY MONTH: LIVING LEGACY

Carrie Hawks will discuss her upcoming documentary, BLACK ENUF, at the Brooklyn Museum’s free First Saturday program for Black History Month

FIRST SATURDAY
Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, February 7, free, 5:00 – 11:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The theme of this year’s annual Brooklyn Museum First Saturday celebration of Black History Month is “Living Legacy,” another eclectic, wide-ranging collection of music, dance, film, art, discussion, and more. The free evening will feature live performances by Chel Lo and Asante Amin’s multimedia “Soundtrack ’63,” Water Seed, and Bilal; screenings of Byron Hurt’s 2013 documentary Soul Food Junkies and Carrie Hawks’s doc-in-progress Black Enuf, both followed by talkbacks with the directors; a quilt-making workshop; a talk with artists Devin Kenny and Sondra Perry with Black Contemporary Art blog founder Kim Drew; a poetry reading and community forum hosted by Mahogany L. Browne, Jonterri Gadson, and Amanda Johnston of Black Poets Speak Out; and J. Ivy discussing his new memoir, Dear Father: Breaking the Cycle of Pain. In addition, you can check out such exhibitions as “Revolution! Works from the Black Arts Movement,” “Judith Scott — Bound and Unbound,” “Double Take: African Innovations,” and “Chitra Ganesh: Eyes of Time.”

CRONENBERG: A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE

Viggo Mortensen is determined to protect wife Maria Bello and their family in David Cronenberg’s A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE

WAVERLY MIDNIGHTS: A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE (David Cronenberg, 2005)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Friday, February 6, and Saturday, February 7, 12 midnight
Series runs through February 21
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
www.historyofviolence.com

Director David Cronenberg just might have made the best film of his career with the brilliant A History of Violence. Set to the marvelously tense music of Howard Shore — which threatens to explode at any moment — the film stars Viggo Mortensen as Tom Stall, a quiet, calm family man who runs a local diner in a small town in Indiana. Stall reluctantly becomes the town hero (and media darling) after a dangerous, bloody incident in his diner, which leads to the arrival of Carl Fogaty (the excellent Ed Harris), an East Coast mob kingpin who insists that Tom is actually Joey Cusack, a former Mafia goon who is in witness protection. As Fogaty and his men harass Tom and his family (wife Maria Bello and kids Ashton Holmes and Heidi Hayes), Stall desperately fights to protect his simple, happy life. William Hurt excels in a small role near the end of the film. A History of Violence is as suspenseful as they come, a simmering masterpiece that blows up the American dream. The film is loosely based on the graphic novel by John Wagner and Vince Locke, but as Cronenberg explained at the 2005 San Diego Comic-Con, he didn’t even know the book existed until the production was well under way, and Josh Olson’s outstanding screenplay ultimately veers far away from its source. A History of Violence is screening February 6 & 7 as part of the IFC Center’s Waverly Midnights “Cronenberg” series, which continues February 13-15 with Eastern Promises before concluding February 20-21 with Cosmopolis.