twi-ny recommended events

HAGIGAH IVRIT

Who: Assaf Gavron, Shira Averbuch, Yuval Hamevulbal, Roy Noy, Tal Mosseri, the Power Girls (Tuti and Naama), Rabbi Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, Mesiba Ivrit, Reuven (Ruby) Namdar, and more
What: Hagigah Ivrit (חגיגה עברית)
Where: JCC in Manhattan, B’nai Jeshurun, Israeli-American Council (IAC), Symphony Space, the Highline Ballroom, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Park Avenue Synagogue, Yeshiva University Museum, and other locations
When: March 14-30
Why: The first-ever North American cultural festival celebrating the Hebrew language features a book talk with Assaf Gavron, author of The Hilltop; an interactive educational performance of Peter and the Wolf; the Festifun2 musical production with Israeli child stars; a talk by Rabbi Eliezer Ben-Yehuda on “The Importance of the Hebrew Tongue to the Rebirth of the People in Their Land — and the Continued Existence of Judaism in the Future”; a dance party with live music; Hebrew classes for beginners; Shabbat dinner; a Passover family workshop; a conversation with Sapir Prize for Literature winner Ruby Namdar; a screening of Sharon Maymon and Tal Granit’s The Farewell Party; and other special and ongoing events.

SEYMOUR: AN INTRODUCTION

Pianist Seymour Bernstein speaks with director Ethan Hawke at Steinway & Sons on Sixth Ave. (photo courtesy of Ramsey Fendall)

SEYMOUR: AN INTRODUCTION (Ethan Hawke, 2014)
IFC Center, 323 Sixth Ave. at Third St., 212-924-7771
Lincoln Plaza Cinema, 1886 Broadway between 62nd & 63rd Sts., 212-757-2280
Opens Friday, March 13
www.ifcfilms.com

No, with Seymour: An Introduction, Ethan Hawke hasn’t managed the nearly impossible, filming an adaptation of the J. D. Salinger story about a young man who commits suicide. Instead, Hawke uses the title for his beautifully touching, life-affirming portrait of octogenarian composer and musician Seymour Bernstein. An extraordinary pianist, the Newark-born Bernstein started playing when he was three, began giving lessons when he was fifteen, and, when he turned fifty, decided to stop performing recitals despite great critical success, in order to concentrate on teaching and composing and to avoid his stage fright and the negative aspects of commercial fame. After meeting at a dinner party, Hawke and Bernstein hit it off and agreed to collaborate on the project, which was filmed over the course of two years. Hawke, in his first documentary and third feature as director (following Chelsea Walls and The Hottest State), shows Bernstein holding master classes in auditoriums, teaching in his cramped New York City apartment, talking in a café with former student and current New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman, and selecting just the right piano for a recital Hawke convinces him to give at the Steinway & Sons showroom on West Fifty-Seventh St.; in addition, Hawke speaks with such other Bernstein friends as writer and scholar Andrew Harvey, pianist and lecturer Joseph Smith, and musician and songwriter Kimball Gallagher.

Documentary focuses on master pianist and composer Seymour Bernstein’s love of life and music (photo courtesy of Ramsey Fendall)

Seymour: An Introduction depicts Bernstein as a truly gentle, generous soul who always looks for the positive in people and situations, a perpetual smile on his face. The film focuses on his relationship with the piano more so than his personal life; although he discusses his childhood and his time in the military, he never mentions companions or family outside of his parents. For Bernstein and Hawke, it’s all about the music. “When I was around the age of fifteen, I remember that I became aware that when my practicing went well, everything else in life seemed to be harmonized by that. When my practicing didn’t go well, I was out of sorts with people, with my parents,” Bernstein says near the beginning of the documentary. “So I concluded that the real essence of who we are resides in our talent, in whatever talent there is.” And Bernstein’s talent is extraordinary, a joy to behold, as is his love of life. The endlessly charming and inspiring Seymour: An Introduction opens March 13 at Lincoln Plaza and the IFC Center; the now eighty-seven-year-old Bernstein will be at IFC to talk about the film at the 6:15 and 8:15 shows on Friday night and will be joined by Hawke at the 6:15 and 8:15 shows on Saturday and the 4:15 and 6:15 screenings on Sunday.

CHOICE EATS

Who: More than sixty restaurants from the metropolitan area
What: The Village Voice Choice Eats Eighth Annual Tasting Event
Where: Metropolitan Pavilion, 125 West 18th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
When: Friday, March 13, 6:00 – 10:00 (21 and older only)
Why: We warned you back in January that you’d have to move fast to get tickets to this year’s Choice Eats gourmet feeding frenzy, and lo and behold, all tickets are now sold out for the March 13 event except for the $170 VIP combo that gets you early admission into the Metropolitan Pavilion on Friday and the Intrepid on May 5 for the Choice Streets food-truck festival. Music will be supplied by Q104.3 and 106.7 FM DJ Jonathan Clarke, with beer from such breweries as Sixpoint, Smuttynose, Abita, Flying Dog, Lost Nation, Stella Artois, and Asahi in addition to specialty vodka, rum, whisky, wine, and other spirits. To make sure you find your favorites, check out this map and plan your path in advance, because it gets crazy crowded pretty quickly, and the Metropolitan Pavilion can become a confusing maze, especially as you fill up on food and booze.

REELABILITIES: NY DISABILITIES FILM FESTIVAL

Rory Culkin will be among the special guests at the ReelAbilities film festival, discussing his starring role in GABRIEL

Multiple venues
March 12-18, free – $50 (most film screenings $12-$13)
newyork.reelabilities.org

The seventh annual ReelAbilities film festival will feature more than two dozen programs, focusing on “promoting awareness and appreciation of the lives, stories, and artistic expressions of people with different disabilities.” This year’s festival, running March 12-18, will take place at more than three dozen locations in all five boroughs in addition to Westchester and Long Island. The Finishers, Nils Tavernier’s drama about a teenager with cerebral palsy who is convinced by his father that the two should compete together in an Ironman triathlon in France, is the opening-night selection, with a gala screening at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, while the closing-night film is Carlo Zoratti’s The Special Need, about a twenty-nine-year-old autistic man who is determined to lose his virginity, being shown March 18 at the JCC in Manhattan and followed by a reception. Among the other films are Adam Kahan’s The Case of the Three Sided Dream, a documentary about blind and paralyzed jazzman Rahsaan Roland Kirk; Troy Kotsur’s mockumentary No Ordinary Hero: The SuperDeafy Movie; Richard Kane’s Jon Imber’s Left Hand, which tells the story of the artist who had to switch the hand he paints with because of ALS; and Lou Howe’s Gabriel, which stars Rory Culkin as a teenager dealing with mental illness. (Many of the screenings will be followed by discussions and Q&As with the filmmakers, actors, protagonists, and health professionals.) There will also be such special events as “(In)Visible,” a conversation between blind Michigan Supreme Court justice Richard Bernstein and Jason’s Connections cofounder Jason Harris; a multimedia exhibit at the JCC in Manhattan by the Jack and Shirley Silver Center for Special Needs; the ReelAbilities Comedy Night at the JCC with Anita Hollander, Mary Archbold, Pat Shay, Shannon DeVido, and David Harrell; and a Shabbat Dinner celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, with film screenings and a panel discussion with historian Warren Shaw, Justice Bernstein, photographer Rick Guidotti, and others, moderated by Lawrence Carter-Long.

MoMA PRESENTS: BENEDIKT ERLINGSSON’S OF HORSES AND MEN

Human nature is explored through the eyes of horses in wildly entertaining Icelandic tale

OF HORSES AND MEN (HROSS Í OSS) (Benedikt Erlingsson, 2013)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
March 11-17
Tickets: $12, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk beginning at 9:30 am
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
hrosss.is/the-film

Iceland’s entry for the 2013 Academy Awards and winner of the 2014 Nordic Council Film Prize, Benedikt Erlingsson’s black comedy, Of Horses and Men, takes an absurdist look at the relationship between humans and horses, incorporating love, sex, pain, responsibility, friendship, religion, and death in darkly comic and heart-rending ways. In a tight-knit community spread across a sweeping rural landscape in Iceland, horses are far more plentiful than people. One morning, Kolbeinn (Ingvar E. Sigurdsson) goes for a ride aboard his gorgeous white mare as men, women, and children come outside to watch him pass by like it’s a parade. But a shocking, unexpected encounter with Solveig’s (Charlotte Bøving) black stallion sets into motion a series of interconnected vignettes, each successive one featuring a minor character from a previous scene. Lust, land disputes, gender distinction, and other agreements and disagreements lead to either tragedy or joy, but, of course, this being Iceland, the former is far more prevalent, especially as more and more Brennivin (Black Death) and other drink is consumed. Writer-director Erlingsson’s debut feature is gorgeously photographed by Bergsteinn Björgúlfsson, whose camera moves lovingly over the green fields and mountainous valleys, treating the horses like Hollywood sirens, zooming in on their eyes to show the reflection of the people who seek to control them, equating the basic animal instincts of both species. The horses in the film are no mere props; Erlingsson, who grew up in a theatrical family and has directed numerous stage productions (in addition to owning a horse, whom he called his “life companion,” for thirty years until recently having to put her down), treats the animals like characters in their own right, revealing their, dare we say, humanity. Produced by Icelandic cinema legend Friðrik Þór Friðriksson (Children of Nature, Mamma Gógó), Of Horses and Men is a dark, wildly entertaining treatise on human nature among a rather quirky and unusual equestrian set. The film is being shown March 11-17 at the Museum of Modern Art as part of the ongoing MoMA Presents series.

DCTV PRESENTS STRAY DOG

Ron “Stray Dog” Hall takes his wife, and viewers, on a marvelous ride into the heart of America in Debra Granik’s charming documentary

STRAY DOG (Debra Granik, 2014)
DCTV (Downtown Community Television Center)
87 Lafayette St.
Wednesday, March 11, $10, 7:00
212-966-4510
www.dctvny.org
www.straydogthemovie.com

Shortly after meeting Ron “Stray Dog” Hall at the Biker Church in Branson, Missouri, writer-director Debra Granik (Down to the Bone) cast the Vietnam vet as Thump Milton in her second feature, the Oscar-nominated Winter’s Bone. Upon learning more about him, she soon decided that he would be a great subject for a documentary, so she took to the road, following him across the country in the engaging and revealing Stray Dog. Nearly always dressed in black, including his treasured leather jacket covered in medals and patches — when he puts it in a suitcase for a trip, it’s a ritual like he’s folding the American flag — Hall is a wonderfully grizzled old man with a fluffy white beard. At home, he is learning Spanish online so he can communicate better with his new wife, Alicia, a Mexican immigrant, and her two sons (who still live across the border). He visits with his teenage granddaughter, who is making some questionable decisions about her future. In Missouri, he owns and operates the At Ease RV Park, where he gives breaks to fellow vets who can’t always afford to pay the rent. And when he goes on the road, participating in the Run for the Wall, joining up with thousands of other bikers heading for the annual service at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, he stops along the way at other ceremonies honoring soldiers who have gone missing, are POWs, or were killed in action in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other wars.

Hall is a gregarious, gentle man who people instantly flock to and gather around — a scene in which two of his cats sit on each of his knees is absolutely heartwarming — but he is also haunted by some of the things he did in Vietnam, suffering from nightmares that sometimes have him screaming out loud while sleeping in bed. And he wears one of his mottoes right on his arm: “Never Forgive Never Forget.” At one point he sits comfortably on a couch and says, “Just kind of being free, don’t hurt nobody, do what you want to do — a nice thing, ain’t it? You know, I’d rather live as a free man for a year than a slave for twenty.” Granik simply follows Hall as he experiences life with his surprisingly refreshing point of view; no one ever turns to the camera to make any confessions, and no talking heads are brought on board to evaluate what we’re seeing. Granik just lets this beautiful piece of Americana unfold at its own pace while also touching on such hot-button topics as immigration reform, gun control, the economic crisis, and PTSD, making no judgments as we follow the captivating exploits of a man who is part Buddha, part Santa, and all patriot. Stray Dog, which made its New York premiere this past October at the 52nd New York Film Festival, will be screening March 11 at 7:00 at DCTV, followed by a Q&A with director Granik, editor and producer Tory Stewart, and cinematographer Eric Phillips-Horst.

PHOENIX: XU BING AT THE CATHEDRAL

Xu Bing’s “Phoenix” will soar out of St. John the Divine on March 15 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine
1047 Amsterdam Ave. at 112th St.
Daily through March 15, suggested donation $10
212-316-7540
www.stjohndivine.org

After more than a year spent hovering over the nave at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, Huang and Feng are getting ready to take off on the next part of a journey that has seen them go from Beijing to Shanghai to Massachusetts. In January 2014, Chinese artist Xu Bing, who lives and works in Beijing and New York, installed two giant phoenixes, the ninety-foot-long male Feng and the hundred-foot-long female Huang, the two totaling more than twelve tons, at the cathedral. Originally commissioned for the World Financial Center in Beijing, “Phoenix” was ultimately rejected when Xu, a member of the ’85 New Wave Movement who went through “reeducation” as a child and whose father spent time in jail as a political prisoner, decided to use detritus from construction sites to build the two birds as a statement emphasizing the widening gap between the wealthy and the poor, capital and labor in China, where peasant communities are torn down to make way for high-end commercial ventures. It would be easy to see “Phoenix” as a metaphor for the mythological creatures rising from the ashes, especially at St. John the Divine, evoking not only the resurrection of Jesus but the cathedral’s seven-year restoration following a devastating 2001 six-alarm fire, but in Chinese legend the phoenix, known as the fenghuang, represents the combination of yin and yang, the sun and the moon, made up of elements from different animals and celestial bodies, filled with the promise of good fortune, loyalty, dignity, and compassion.

Xu, whose other recent New York projects include “The Living Word” at the Morgan, “Where Does the Dust Itself Collect?” in the Spinning Wheel Building, and “The Character of Characters” animated video at the Met, did not build Feng and Huang with random debris, instead carefully constructing each body part with specific objects; for example, the heads are made from the nose of industrial jackhammers, depicting strength and power, while feathers are built from shovelheads. Working with a team of primarily migrant workers, Xu also incorporates bamboo, girders, tools, hard hats, rebar, wheels, and other waste materials found at Beijing construction sites. “With this, there’s a kind of internal logic that produces beauty. You also produce a sense of humor,” Xu said through a translator in an artist talk he gave at MASS MoCA, where “Phoenix” made its U.S. debut in 2013. He then compared his process to Chinese folk art. “The method of Chinese folk art is to use the most inexpensive, the cheapest materials to express [people’s] hopes for the future and for their lives.” He also added LED lights to Feng and Huang, turning them into mysterious constellations in the dark. Facing away from the altar, the phoenixes are imbued with an engaging spirituality, especially when the cathedral’s church organ is being played, the music echoing throughout the vast space. The birds look very much at home inside this self-described “house of prayer for all people and a unifying center of intellectual light and leadership,” companions to Greg Wyatt’s outdoor Peace Fountain, but on March 15 they will be migrating once again, off on the next stop of their amazing journey.