this week in film and television

FREE SUMMER EVENTS: JULY 29 – AUGUST 5

Beach volleyball tournament will be held on Coney Island on August 4

The free summer arts & culture season is under way, with dance, theater, music, art, film, and other special outdoor programs all across the city. Every week we will be recommending a handful of events. Keep watching twi-ny for more detailed highlights as well.

Sunday, July 29
SummerStage: Femi Kuti & Positive Force, Jupiter & Okwess, DJ Geko Jones, Rumsey Playfield, Central Park, 3:00

Monday, July 30
Movies Under the Stars: The Incredibles (Michael Giacchino, 2004), Lower Highland Playground, Highland Park, Queens, 7:30

The Incredibles is screening for free in Highland Park on July 30

Tuesday, July 31
Strictly Tango, free tango lessons, Holley Plaza, Washington Square Park, 6:00

Wednesday, August 1
Carnegie Hall Citywide: Locos por Juana, Bryant Park Upper Terrace, 5:30

Thursday, August 2
New York Euripides Summer Festival Presents Suppliants, American Thymele Theatre, East River Park Amphitheater in John V. Lindsay East River Park, 6:00 (continues August 3, 6-7, and 9-10 at multiple venues)

Peter Wolf will play a free show at Lincoln Center Out of Doors festival on August 3

Friday, August 3
Lincoln Center Out of Doors: Peter Wolf, Super Soul Banned, Damrosch Park Bandshell, 7:30

Saturday, August 4
Brooklyn Beach Sports Festival: Beach Volleyball Tournament (8:00 am – 5:00 pm), Glow in the Dark Beach Volleyball (5:00), Coney Island, free with advance registration

Sunday, August 5
and
Saturday, August 4
INSITU Site-Specific Dance Festival, with simultaneous performances by César Brodermann and Sebastian Abarbanell, Alice Gosti, N E 1 4 Dance, Quilan ‘Cue’ Arnold, and Melissa Riker Kinesis Project in Hunters Point South Park, House of Ninja, Renegade Performance Group, Donofrio Dance Company, Sarah Chien, Sarah Elgart | Arrogant Elbow, and Cecilia Fontanesi Parcon NYC in Gantry Plaza State Park, Kate Harpootlian, Douglas Dunn + Dancers, AnA Collaborations, and Christopher Núñez in Queensbridge Park, and Sophie Maguire & Emma Wiseman, Javier Padilla & the Movement Playground, Khalifa Babacar Top, the Ladies of Hip-Hop Festival, Fleuve | Espase danse, and JoAnna Mendl Shaw / the Equus Projects in Socrates Sculpture Park, 1:00 – 8:00

GEORGIA O’KEEFFE: VISIONS OF HAWAI‘I

A Hawaiian hale offers a place to gather in center of exhibit (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

A Hawaiian hale offers a place to gather in center of Georgia O’Keeffe exhibit at New York Botanical Garden (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The New York Botanical Garden
Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, LuEsther T. Mertz Library Art Gallery
2900 Southern Blvd., Bronx
Tuesday – Sunday through October 28, $10-$28
718-817-8700
www.nybg.org
hawai‘i slideshow

In 1939, Georgia O’Keeffe was offered a commission from the Hawaiian Pineapple Company, later known as Dole, to go to Hawai‘i and create artwork for an ad campaign. The fifty-one-year-old famous artist accepted the proposal, taking it as a chance to explore a state she had never visited before. It turned out to be nine weeks that reshaped her art and her views of nature and beauty; the New York Botanical Garden, which has previously celebrated the work of such artists as Claude Monet and Frida Kahlo, is now exhibiting “Georgia O’Keeffe: Visions of Hawai‘i,” a lovely show that details the flora of what would become the fiftieth state in the Union in 1959, as experienced by O’Keeffe. Twenty of the Wisconsin-raised O’Keeffe’s paintings are on view in the garden’s sixth-floor LuEsther T. Mertz Library Art Gallery; they were last seen as a set in 1940 at an American Place, the midtown gallery run by her husband, photographer Alfred Stieglitz. “If my painting is what I have to give back to the world for what the world gives to me, I may say that these paintings are what I have to give at present for what three months in Hawai‘i gave to me,” O’Keeffe wrote in her artist statement for the show. “Maybe the new place enlarges one’s world a little. . . . Maybe one takes one’s own world along and cannot see anything else.” The NYBG display includes “Waterfall — No. 1 — ’Iao Valley — Maui, 1939,” a green mountain range with a narrow stream of water flowing down the center; the gorgeous “Hibiscus with Plumeria,” an extreme close-up of the flowering plant; and, side-by-side, the two works that the Hawaiian Pineapple Company eventually used in their ad campaign, “Heliconia’s Crab’s Claw Ginger” and “Pineapple Bud.” Outside the gallery are large-scale reproductions of photos O’Keeffe took in Hawai‘i, a digital version of her sketchbook, and copies of the ads in magazines.

Two of Georgia O’Keeffe’s Hawai‘i paintings were used in ad campaign (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Two floors down is the short documentary Off in the Faraway Somewhere: Georgia O’Keeffe’s Letters from Hawai’i, in which Sigourney Weaver narrates excerpts of letters O’Keeffe sent back home to Stieglitz, who is voiced by Zach Grenier. “It was as beautiful as anything I’ve ever seen,” O’Keeffe wrote about the ocean views. Down the hall is “Flora Hawaiiensis: Plants of Hawai‘i,” a history of flora on the Hawaiian Islands, divided into native plants, canoe plants (brought by the first human visitors), and post-contact plants, introduced after Captain James Cook’s 1778 landing there. The walk to the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory along Garden Way is lined with hanging lights by Hawaiian-Chinese sculptor Mark Chai inspired by plants in O’Keeffe’s paintings; in the round pond is “Heliconia Loop,” the large, circular hole in the middle serving as a kind of viewing scope for the surrounding trees. (As a bonus, the work lights up at night.)

The Enid A. Haupt Conservatory celebrates Georgia O’Keeffe’s love of Hawai‘i both inside and out (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The centerpiece of the exhibition is, of course, the display in the conservatory, where hundreds of plantings have been added to create a Hawaiian-like atmosphere. The colorful plants and trees, both inside and outside, include heliconia, pineapple, kava, breadfruit, lotus, white angel’s trumpet, bird-of-paradise, hibiscus, cup of gold vine, Hawaiian tree fern, flamingo flower, ti plant, coconut palm, ohia lehua, jackfruit, red rosemallow, Arabian coffee, taro, banana, Maui wormwood, screw-pine, frangipani, sacred lotus, sweet-potato, sugar cane, candlenut tree, Indian-mulberry, air-potato, Malaysian-apple, and bottle gourd, among others. Visitors can take a break in a traditional hale, a structure made of wooden poles, natural cords, and a pili-grass thatched roof, all surrounded by plants. In conjunction with the Poetry Society of America, poems on white boards pop up on the path, by Brandy Nālani McDougall (“Māui,” “Red Hibiscus in the Rain,” “Yellow Orchids”), Puanani Burgess (“Awapuhi”), Kahikāhealani Wights (“Koa”), Sage U’ilani Takehiro (“Kou Lei”), Juliet S. Kono (“Silverswords”), and several by former US poet laureate W. S. Merwin (“Islands,” “Remembering Summer”). “I am looking at trees / they may be one of the things I will miss most from the earth / though many of the ones I have seen / already I cannot remember,” Merwin writes in “Trees.” Curated by Theresa Papanikolas, PhD, of the Honolulu Museum of Art, “Georgia O’Keeffe: Visions of Hawai‘i” more than establishes just how unforgettable the state can be.

The heliconia is one of the many plants that inspired Georgia O’Keeffe when she was in Hawai‘i (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The exhibit is supplemented with special events throughout its run, which ends October 28. On July 28 and 29, Celebrate Hawai‘i Weekend features “The History of Hawaiian Tattooing,” “‘Iolani Palace’s Queen Gowns,” and the NYBG Fashion Walk. “Aloha Nights” ($18-$38) take place on August 4 and 18 and September 1 and 8, with an evening viewing, interactive storytelling hula lessons, lei-making demonstrations, and live music. Hula Kahiko and Hula Auna demonstrations will be held on Saturdays and Sundays through September 30. And artisan demonstrations of coconut kiʻi puppet-making, lei-making, Hawaiian instrument crafting, poi-making, and more are set for Saturday and Sunday afternoons as well. E hauʻoli!

JAPAN CUTS: OUTRAGE CODA

Takeshi Kitano is back to finish his yakuza trilogy with Outrage Coda

FESTIVAL OF NEW JAPANESE FILM: OUTRAGE CODA (アウトレイジ最終章) (AUTOREIJI SAISHUSHO) (Takeshi Kitano, 2017)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Saturday, July 28, 5:15
Series runs July 19-29
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

The annual Japan Cuts series continues July 28 with the New York premiere of Takeshi Kitano’s Outrage: Coda, the finale in his yakuza series that began in 2010 with Outrage, followed two years later by Beyond Outrage. It’s not exactly the meeting of the five families in The Godfather when clan leaders get together as former stock trader Nomura (Ren Osugi) considers stepping down from his role as boss and selecting a replacement. Jockeying for various positions are the old school Nishino (Toshiyuki Nishida), the big, not too bright Hanada (Pierre Taki), the deeply pensive Nakata (Sansei Shiomi), and the sharp, cool Chang (Tokio Kaneda), who seems to have stepped right out of an episode of the original Hawaii Five-O. Detective Shigeta (Yutaka Matsushige) is on the case, watching it all very carefully, especially when round-faced Otomo (Kitano, who goes by the name Beat Takeshi as an actor) returns after a stint on Jeju Island in Korea.

Potential succession leads to betrayals and double crosses in Outrage Coda

Don’t try to make too much sense of the nonsensical plot, which involves multiple double crosses, endless betrayals, devious conniving, doofy decision making, and ridiculous twists as Kitano (Kikujiro, Zatōichi) has fun playing with genre conventions and composer Keiichi Suzuki’s award-winning score soars. Characters regularly treat one another like kids, calling their cohorts stupid idiots like Moe insulting Larry and Curly. (Kitano is a comedian as well.) Meanwhile, Otomo, the coolest of customers, is up to something, guns blazing, all captured splendidly by cinematographer Katsumi Yanagijima. Oh, and just wait till you see Nomura’s retirement wear. Outrage Coda is screening at Japan Society on July 28 at 5:15; Japan Cuts: Festival of New Japanese Film continues through July 29 with such other works as Masayuki Suo’s Abnormal Family, Akiko Ohku’s Tremble All You Want, Keisuke Yoshida’s Thicker than Water, and House creator Nobuhiko Obayashi’s Hanagatami.

THE THIRD MURDER

Kōji Yakusho goes face-to-face with Masaharu Fukuyama in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s The Third Murder

THE THIRD MURDER (三度目の殺人) (SANDOME NO SATSUJIN) (Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2017)
Quad Cinema
34 West 13th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
July 20-26
212-255-2243
www.wildbunch.biz
quadcinema.com

Japanese auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda, the master of the intimate, intricate family drama, changes gears in the gripping legal thriller The Third Murder. Kore-eda, whose Shoplifters won the Palme d’Or at Cannes this year, started his career making documentaries; since he turned to fiction, often inspired by actual events (including in his own life), his films — Still Walking, After the Storm, Our Little Sister, Like Father, Like Son — have been infused with an organic feeling of realism. That sensibility also shines through in The Third Murder, which is essentially a search for the truth in its many forms and disguises. Masaharu Fukuyama stars as Tomoaki Shigemori, a defense attorney who takes on the case of Misumi (Kōji Yakusho), a factory worker who is facing the death penalty for killing his boss, a crime he has confessed to.

Previously convicted killer Misumi (Kōji Yakusho) keeps changing his story even after confessing in gripping legal procedural

But every time Shigemori meets with Misumi — separated by glass in small rooms in a prison that makes each of them look trapped, as well as equating them as if the glass were a mirror — Misumi, who has previously served thirty years for double murder, slightly alters his story or adds new details that force Shigemori and his legal team to reevaluate their defense strategy and question not only why Misumi did it but whether he is even the guilty party despite his confession. But Shigemori is not necessarily interested in the facts, only information that can help him prevent Misumi’s execution, whether true or not. While Shigemori’s father, Daisuke Settsu (Kōtarō Yoshida), thinks his son is way off base, Akira Kawashima (Shinnosuke Mitsushima) keeps investigating further. As the mystery widens, the victim’s wife (Yuki Saito) and daughter, Sakie Yamanaka (Suzu Hirose), get involved and Misumi’s daughter tries to stay out of it as Shigemori also has to deal with his own daughter (Aju Makita), who has a knack for getting into trouble and lying to her parents.

Mother (Yuki Saito) and daughter (Suzu Hirose) deal with a brutal killing in The Third Murder

The moral dilemma at the heart of The Third Murder is a fascinating one, since Kore-eda opens the film, which he wrote, directed, and edited, with a brutal scene in which Misumi murders his boss and burns the body in a field by a river. There is no doubt that it’s Misumi; a close-up shows the look in his eyes and the bloodstains on his face as he watches the flames. But as Shigemori’s doubts grow, so do the viewer’s, as if Kore-eda is reminding us to question everything we see, even when caught on camera. He was inspired to make the film after having a discussion with a lawyer friend who said that uncovering the truth is not necessarily the goal of courts or lawyers, so Kore-eda decided to make a film about a lawyer who becomes obsessed with the truth, even if it has no bearing on the guilt or innocence of his client. He did extensive research, holding mock trials and interview sessions and having cinematographer Mikiya Takimoto watch Michael Curtiz’s Mildred Pierce — Kore-eda also has cited David Fincher’s Seven and Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low as influences — before using CinemaScope for the first time in order to give the film more breadth. No mere genre exercise, The Third Murder is a deep, multilayered, first-rate crime drama by one of the world’s best directors, searching for truth in character, narrative, and film itself.

A VIEW FROM THE VAULTS — RECENT FILM ACQUISITIONS: 24 CITY

Su Na (Zhao Tao) looks out at a changing China in Jia Zhangke’s 24 City

24 CITY (ER SHI SI CHENG SI) (Jia Zhang-ke, 2008)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Wednesday, July 25, $8-$12, 7:00
Series runs through August 8
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
www.cinemaguild.com

With the imminent closing of a once-secret munitions plant known as Factory 420 in Chengdu, eight workers relate their unique stories in another fascinating look at capitalism in a changing China by Sixth Generation writer-director Jia Zhang-ke, who has previously investigated the transformations in his native country in such excellent works as Platform, Unknown Pleasures, The World, Useless, and Still Life. While five of the tales are told by actual male workers in their own words, three are fictional stories recited by female actors, including Joan Chen as Little Flower, Lü Liping as Hao Dali, and Jia regular Zhao Tao as Su Na. Jia sees the factory, which is being torn down to make way for a luxury apartment complex called 24 City, as a symbol of contemporary China, as the past is ripped away in favor of capitalist-based technological modernization and the celebration of wealth. By intermingling fact and fiction, as he does in most of his work, Jia creates a fascinating pseudo-documentary that also subtly touches upon women’s changing role in Chinese industry and society. 24 City is screening at MoMA on July 25 at 7:00 as part of “A View from the Vaults: Recent Film Acquisitions,” which continues through August 8 with such other works being added to MoMA’s collection as Alfonso Cuarón’s Y Tu Mamá También, William Wellman’s Night Nurse, Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky, and Pere Portabella’s Cuadecuc, vampir (Count Dracula).

FREE SUMMER EVENTS: JULY 22-29

Hal Willner’s Amarcord Nino Rota is part of Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival on July 27

Sunday, July 22
SummerStage: Ginuwine, the Ladies of Pink Diamond, and DJ Stacks, Corporal Thompson Park, Staten Island, 5:00

Monday, July 23
The Racial Imaginary Institute: On Whiteness: Intolerable Whiteness by Seung-Min Lee, the Kitchen, waitlist only, 7:00

Tuesday, July 24
Movies Under the Stars: Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Rian Johnson, 2017), Wingate Park, Brooklyn, 8:45

Wednesday, July 25
Hudson RiverFlicks — Big Hit Wednesdays: Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (Jake Kasdan, 2017), Hudson River Park, Pier 63, 8:30

Thursday, July 26
Broadway in Bryant Park: songs from VITALY: An Evening of Wonders, Come from Away, Kinky Boots, The Band’s Visit, and Wicked, cohosted by Bob Bronson, Christine Nagy, and the cast of The Play That Goes Wrong, Bryant Park Lawn, 12:30

Friday, July 27
Lincoln Center Out of Doors: Hal Willner’s Amarcord Nino Rota, featuring music from the first two Godfather films and the tribute album Amarcord Nino Rota (I Remember Nino Rota), with multiple performers, Damrosch Park Bandshell, 7:30

Guelaguetza Festival New York City takes place at Socrates Sculpture Park on July 28

Guelaguetza Festival New York City takes place at Socrates Sculpture Park on July 29

Saturday, July 28
BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival:Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (Hayao Miyazaki, 1985), screening preceded by live performance by Kaki King featuring Treya Lam, Prospect Park Bandshell, 7:30

Sunday, July 29
Ballet Folklórico Mexicano de Nueva York’s Guelaguetza Festival, Socrates Sculpture Park, 2:00

BAMCINÉMATEK AND THE RACIAL IMAGINARY INSTITUTE — ON WHITENESS: WHITE MATERIAL / THE VIRGIN SUICIDES

Maria Vial (Isabelle Huppert) is determined to see her coffee crop through to fruition despite the growing dangers in Claire Denis’s White Material

WHITE MATERIAL (Claire Denis, 2009)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Tuesday, July 17, 7:00
Series continues through July 19
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.ifcfilms.com

BAMcinématek has teamed up with the Racial Imaginary Institute, a collective that “convenes a cultural laboratory in which the racial imaginaries of our time and place are engaged, read, countered, contextualized, and demystified,” to present the series “BAMcinématek and the Racial Imaginary Institute: On Whiteness.” Continuing through July 19, the festival, which “aims to foster a dialogue about what it means to be white in America,” has already shown such films as Taxi Driver, The Swimmer, The Jerk, Rocky, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. It moves to another continent on July 17 with Claire Denis’s White Material. In an unnamed West African nation besieged by a bloody civil war between rebels and the military government, Maria Vial (Isabelle Huppert) steadfastly refuses to leave her coffee plantation, determined to see the last crop through to fruition. Despite pleas from the French army, which is vacating the country; her ex-husband, André (Christophe Lambert), who is attempting to sell the plantation out from under her; and her workers, whose lives are in danger, Maria is unwilling to give up her home and way of life, apparently blind to what is going on all around her. She seems to be living in her own world, as if all the outside forces exploding around her do not affect her and her family. Without thinking twice, she even allows the Boxer (Isaach De Bankolé) to stay there, the seriously wounded leader of the rebel militia, not considering what kind of dire jeopardy that could result in. But when her slacker son, Manuel (Nicolas Duvauchelle), freaks out, she is forced to take a harder look at reality, but even then she continues to see only what she wants to see. A selection of both the New York and Venice Film Festivals, White Material is an often obvious yet compelling look at the last remnants of postcolonial European domination as a new Africa is being born in disorder and violence. Directed and cowritten (with French playwright Marie Ndiaye) by Denis (Chocolat, Beau Travail), who was born in Paris and raised in Africa, the film has a central flaw in its premise that viewers will either buy or reject: whether they accept Maria’s blindness to the evolving situation that has everyone else on the run. Watching Maria’s actions can be infuriating, and in the hands of another actress they might not have worked, but Huppert is mesmerizing in the decidedly unglamorous role.

A family is torn apart by tragedy in THE VIRGIN SUICIDES

A family is torn apart by tragedy in Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides

THE VIRGIN SUICIDES (Sofia Coppola, 1999)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Tuesday, July 17, 4:30 & 9:30
Series continues through July 19
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

The Virgin Suicides, which traces the downfall of a suburban Michigan family in the 1970s, is chock-full of period songs, with well-known tunes by Heart, the Hollies, Carole King, Styx, Todd Rundgren, 10CC, the Bee Gees, and ELO all over the film. But it’s Air’s score that gives it added emotional depth, from tender piano lines that evoke Pink Floyd and late-era Beatles to rowdier, synth-and-drum-heavy moments to mournful dirges and hypnotic, spacey sojourns. In the film, nerdy math teacher Ronald Lisbon (James Woods) and his wife (Kathleen Turner) are raising five teenage girls, Therese (Leslie Hayman), Mary (A. J. Cook), Bonnie (Chelse Swain), Lux (Kirsten Dunst), and Cecilia (Hanna R. Hall). As the tale begins, Cecilia is rushed to the hospital after attempting suicide. “What are you doing here, honey? You’re not even old enough to know how bad life gets,” her doctor says, to which she responds, looking directly into the camera, “Obviously, Doctor, you’ve never been a thirteen-year-old girl.” On her next try, Cecilia succeeds in killing herself, leading Mrs. Lisbon to become stiflingly overprotective and domineering. But she starts losing control of her daughters when high school hunk Trip Fontaine (Josh Hartnett) falls hard for Lux. Coppola (Lost in Translation, The Bling Ring) shows a sure hand in her directorial debut, marvelously capturing small-town teen angst, even if things go a bit haywire in the latter stages. The film is narrated by Giovanni Ribisi and also stars Jonathan Tucker, Noah Shebib, Anthony DeSimone, Lee Kagan, and Robert Schwartzman as a group of boys who are rather obsessed with the sisters in different ways. There are also cameos by Scott Glenn as a priest, Danny DeVito as a psychiatrist, and Michael Paré as the adult Trip, and look for a pre-Star Wars Hayden Christensen as Jake Hill Conley. In an interview with Dazed in conjunction with the fifteen-year anniversary of The Virgin Suicides, Air’s Nicolas Godin noted, “I really hated being a teenager. It was a pretty horrible time, and although I had good friends, I am so happy to be out of that time. . . . I definitely brought that to the film score, this idea of not being loved enough.” You can show your love for The Virgin Suicides at BAMcinématek on July 17 at 4:30 & 9:30 when it screens as part of “BAMcinématek and the Racial Imaginary Institute: On Whiteness.” The series continues with Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather Part II on July 18 and Jordan Peele’s Oscar-winning Get Out on July 19, followed by a discussion with culture writer Rembert Browne.