Sylvia Palacios Whitman, “Passing Through,” documentation of performance, Sonnabend Gallery, 1977 (photo © 1977 by Babette Mangolte)
Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, May 5, free (“David Bowie is” requires advance tickets, $25), 5:00 – 11:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org
Latin art is the centerpiece of the Brooklyn Museum’s free First Saturday program on May 5. There will be live performances by Batalá New York, Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana (Mujeres Valientes), Combo Chimbita, and Jarina De Marco (with visuals by Screaming Horses); a curator tour of “Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985” led by Catherine Morris; a community talk about the Sylvia Rivera Law Project; a hands-on art workshop in which participants can make a mask honoring their cultural heritage; a candle-decorating collage workshop with feminist collective Colectiva Cósmica, featuring a set by Ecuadorian-Lithuanian producer, DJ, and cultural activist Riobamba; screenings of experimental short films by Latin American women filmmakers, hosted by Jesse Lerner; a book-club talk about Marta Moreno Vega’s When the Spirits Dance Mambo; and pop-up gallery talks on “Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985” by teen apprentices. In addition, the galleries will be open late so you can also check out “William Trost Richards: Experiments in Watercolor,” “Arts of Korea,” “Infinite Blue,” “Ahmed Mater: Mecca Journeys,” “A Woman’s Afterlife: Gender Transformation in Ancient Egypt,” and more. However, please note that advance tickets are required to see “David Bowie is,” at the regular admission price.
Tamer El Said’s extraordinary debut feature, In the Last Days of the City, is an elegiac love letter to his deeply troubled hometown, Cairo, as well as a treatise on the responsibilities filmmakers have to their art and to society as a whole. Almost ten years in the making, the film was shot between 2008 and 2010, finishing shortly before the Arab Spring uprising in January 2011 in Tahrir Square, and was not completed and screened until 2016, when it started winning prizes at festivals around the world. It finally receives its New York theatrical release at the Museum of the Modern Art, running April 27 through May 3, where El Said will take part in a postscreening conversation on opening night at 7:00; in addition, on April 30 at 7:00, MoMA’s “Modern Mondays” series will present 
The behind-the-scenes story of the making of Duck Butter, having its final world premiere screening at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 26 before opening at the Village East the next day, turns out to be better than the film itself. That doesn’t mean there isn’t lots to appreciate about the too-intimate drama, which chronicles the ups and downs, fears and desires of two women experiencing a full relationship in a twenty-four-hour period. Director Miguel Arteta (Beatriz at Dinner, Chuck & Buck) and actress Alia Shawkat (State of Grace, Arrested Development) initially wrote a script about an eighteen-month relationship between a man and a woman that featured a twenty-four-hour period in which they get to know each other by having sex once every sixty minutes. One friend advised that they instead make the movie just about the twenty-four hours, so they began looking for a male actor to star opposite Shawkat. After coming up empty, they decided that Laia Costa (Bandolera, Victoria), who had already been cast in a smaller role, was right for the part. They stripped the script down to its bare essentials, allowing the two actresses to improvise most of their dialogue as the main section of the film was claustrophobically photographed by Hillary Spera in about twenty-seven hours, giving it a cinéma vérité feel. 
Don’t be scared off by the title of House Two; it’s not a sequel to a horror film you didn’t see. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t downright frightening. On November 19, 2005, the Haditha Massacre took place, in which a small unit of U.S. Marines shot and killed two dozen Iraqis, including women and children, in a bedroom in a location identified as “House Two.” The Marines were searching for those responsible for setting off an IED nearby. The next year, following a Time magazine story about the incident, Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning director Michael Epstein decided to make a film about the trial of Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich, who was charged with eighteen counts of murder. In order to get as much behind-the-scenes information as possible without having to surrender it to the court or the military, Epstein actually became an official part of Wuterich’s defense team, gaining full access to its strategy and all those involved, beginning with Wuterich himself. In exchange, the legal team agreed that Epstein would have ownership of all footage he shot and that he could use it in any way he saw fit; thus, he had complete control over the documentary, and the legal team would even indemnify him for any resulting libel claims from them or Wuterich. What Epstein found out about the case is utterly shattering, a widespread conspiracy to cover up the incident — which recalled the 1968 My Lai Massacre in Vietnam — with a shocking revelation of who was ultimately in charge of the whitewashing.
