this week in film and television

CLASSIC IFC CENTER: LOVES OF A BLONDE

Elizabeth T. has chosen Miloš Forman’s LOVES OF A BLONDE for “Classic IFC Center” series

LOVES OF A BLONDE (LÁSKY JEDNÉ PLAVOVLÁSKY) (Miloš Forman, 1965)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Friday, June 10, through Sunday, June 12, 11:00 am
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com

Released a few years before the Summer of Love and Prague Spring, Miloš Forman’s Loves of a Blonde is a very funny romantic black comedy that also has a lot to say about women’s burgeoning sexual freedom. The delightful Hanu Brejchovou stars as Andula, a young factory worker whose sexual liberation is ahead of its time in an old-fashioned small town. When a trainload of military reservists arrives, most of the single women do their best to attract the uniformed men at a big party, but Andula is more interested in pianist Milda (Vladimíra Pucholta). In a scene for the ages, three men try to pick up Andula and her two friends, with hysterical results. Later, when Andula visits Milda in Prague, she meets the piano player’s parents (Milada Jezková and Josef Sebánek), who are a droll riot. A Czech New Wave classic that evokes Godard and Truffaut, Loves of a Blonde, which was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, caused a sensation when it played the New York Film Festival and introduced Forman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Amadeus) to the world. Notably, assistant director and cowriter Ivan Passer, who also worked with Forman on The Firemen’s Ball, defected to America following Prague Spring and went on to make such films as Born to Win and Cutter’s Way. Loves of a Blonde is screening June 10-12 at 11:00 in the morning in the “Classic IFC Center” series, in which members of the staff select personal favorites; this one was chosen by Elizabeth T. in membership. The series continues June 17-19 with Alfonso Cuarón’s A Little Princess before concluding June 24-26 with Susan Seidelman’s Desperately Seeking Susan.

TALES OF CINEMA: THE FILMS OF HONG SANG-SOO

South Korean writer-director Hong Sang-soo is celebrated in three-weekend retrospective at Museum of the Moving Image (photo courtesy Festival del film Locarno)

Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
June 3-19
718-777-6888
www.movingimage.us

The Museum of the Moving Image’s seventeen-day, eighteen-film retrospective of the work of South Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo heads into its second weekend with a string of half a dozen highly original flicks made between 2006 and 2011, as Hong continues his exploration of the creation of art and cinema itself. (The museum previously celebrated Hong’s oeuvre with a 2012 series that consisted of five films.) You can watch as his storytelling abilities and character development continue to grow, even as they remain abstract and mysterious. The festival began with such works as The Day a Pig Fell into the Well, On the Occasion of Remembering the Turning Gate, and Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors and concludes June 17-19 with such more recent fare as Our Sunhi, Nobody’s Daughter Haewon, and Hill of Freedom.

Hong Sang-soo’s WOMAN ON THE BEACH in another beautifully shot but overly long drama about art and love

WOMAN ON THE BEACH (HAEBYEONUI YEOIN) (Hong Sang-soo, 2006)
Friday, June 10, 7:00
www.movingimage.us

Director Joong-rae (Kim Seung-woo) is having trouble with the script for his next film, so he gets production designer Chang-wook (Ki Tae-woo) to drive him out to Shinduri Beach for some quiet relaxation, away from the hustle and bustle of Seoul. Chang-wook brings along his girlfriend, Moon-sook (Ko Hyun-joung), an aspiring composer and singer who is immediately attracted to Joong-rae. As Chang-wook’s jealousy grows and Moon-sook and Joong-rae wonder if they have a future together, the director meets Sun-hee (Song Sun-mi), a soon-to-be divorcée who also has eyes for Joong-rae. Writer-director Hong Sang-soo’s moving romantic comedy features beautiful locations shot by Kim Hyung-koo, a sweet score by Jeong Yong-jin, and unusual but believable characters. At 127 minutes, the film, which was selected for the 2006 New York Film Festival, is far too long, not quite knowing how to end, but stick with it nonetheless.

Kim Tae-woo is outstanding as annoying, self-obsessed auteur in Hong Sang-soo’s LIKE YOU KNOW IT ALL

LIKE YOU KNOW IT ALL (JAL ALJIDO MOT HAMYEONSUH) (Hong Sang-soo, 2009)
Saturday, June 11, 1:00
www.movingimage.us

South Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo’s 2009 film about a South Korean auteur, Like You Know It All, is another intriguing examination of art and sex in contemporary society, following Night and Day (2008), Woman on the Beach (2006), Tale of Cinema (2005), and Woman Is the Future of Man (2004). Hong, who has served as a juror at several film festivals and whose work has screened at fests all over the world, sets his latest self-reflexive story at the real Jecheon International Music and Film Festival, where director Ku will be part of the jury. But it turns out that Ku is a self-absorbed, insensitive, and subtly obnoxious filmmaker who cares only about himself, walking away from fans and colleagues in the middle of a conversation or in the midst of signing an autograph, interested only in listening to people praise his own talent, which has been relegated to art-house films that few people see and even fewer understand. After leaving the festival to teach a class at a school on Jeju Island, he visits with a famous painter and former mentor who has unknowingly married Ku’s first love, setting the stage for the creepy Ku to perform yet more selfish acts. Kim Tae-woo is outstanding in the lead role, playing the self-obsessed director with an unerring casualness that makes him more absurdly ridiculous than conniving and mean-spirited. With a little bit of Federico Fellini’s 8½ here and a touch of Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories there, Hong once again reveals the soft underbelly of ego within the film industry, but he also needs to edit himself more, as the bittersweet, slyly ironic Like You Know It All, made for a mere $100,000, is yet another of his films to clock in at more than two hours (though it feels longer).

Boram (Song Sun-mi), Youngho (Kim Sang-joong), and Seongjun (Yu Jun-sang) examine their lives in fascinating ways in Hong Sang-soo’s THE DAY HE ARRIVES

THE DAY HE ARRIVES (BUKCHON BANGHYANG) (Hong Sang-soo, 2011)
Saturday, June 11, 3:30, and Sunday, June 12, 4:00
www.movingimage.us

For most of his career, South Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo has been making films about filmmakers, although not always about the filmmaking process itself. In such works as Woman on the Beach, Like You Know It All, Tale of Cinema, and Oki’s Movie, he’s delved into the more personal side of lead characters who are established or emerging directors. Hong reaches a career peek with his latest, The Day He Arrives, a deeply intuitive, vastly intelligent, and surprisingly existential exploration of a young man at a crossroads in his life. After having made four little-seen films and deciding to become a country teacher instead, director Seongjun (Yu Jun-sang) returns to his hometown in Seoul to visit his friend Youngho (Kim Sang-joong), a film critic who has just left his wife and is hanging out with a film teacher named Boram (Song Sun-mi). Seongjun stops by to visit his old girlfriend, Kyungjin (Kim Bok-yung), keeps bumping into an actress who appeared in one of his films, goes drinking with a trio of fans, and meets Yejeon (also played by Kim Bok-yung), the owner of a local bar where Youngho and Boram take him. As all of the main characters examine their lives, each one lacking something important, Hong has several scenes repeat multiple times with slight differences, as if they are alternate takes imbued with new meaning as the audience continues to learn more about the protagonists. Each revised scene contributes more insight and develops the characters further, even if the story seems to have backtracked in time. The nonlinear narrative and Kim Hyung-koo’s beautiful black-and-white cinematography evoke aspects of Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories, Harold Ramis’s Groundhog Day, and François Truffaut’s Day for Night, exceptional films that, like The Day He Arrives, carefully balance fantasy and reality, fiction and nonfiction while depicting the inherent dual nature of cinema and humanity. Earlier in his career, Hong seemed to have trouble ending his films, which would linger on well past the two-hour mark, but with the outstanding, poetic Oki’s Movie and its follow-up, The Day He Arrives, both of which run approximately eighty minutes, he has found an excellent length for his work — one that now almost feels too short, as he clearly has so much to say. The Day He Arrives will be preceded by Hong’s 2011 short List.

Sungam (Kim Young-ho) battles displacement and loneliness in Hong Sang-soo’s NIGHT AND DAY

NIGHT AND DAY (BAM GUAN NAT) (Hong Sang-soo, 2008)
Saturday, June 11, 6:30
www.movingimage.us

Hong Sang-soo returned to the New York Film Festival for the fifth time with Night and Day, a character-driven tale about displacement and loneliness. Kim Young-ho stars as Sungam, a married painter in his forties who flees South Korea for France after having been turned in for smoking marijuana with U.S. tourists. A fish out of water in Paris, he settles into a Korean neighborhood, spending most of his time with two young art students, Yujeong (Park Eun-hye) and Hyunju (Seo Min-jeong). He also meets an old girlfriend, Minsun (Kim You-jin), who is still attracted to him. And every night he calls his wife, Sungin (Hwang Su-jung), wondering when he’ll be able to return home. Hong tells the story in a diary-like manner, with interstitials acting like calendar pages. Sometimes a day can be filled with talk of art, a party, and a chance encounter, while others can consist of a brief, random event with no real bearing on the plot, reminiscent of Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise, just without the existential cynicism and dark humor. As with 2006’s Woman on the Beach, Hong lets Night and Day go on too long (it clocks in at 141 minutes), with too many inconsequential (even if entertaining) vignettes, but it’s so much fun watching Kim Young-ho’s compelling performance that you just might not care about the length.

Oki (Jung Yumi) walks the fine line between fiction and reality in OKI’S MOVIE

OKI’S MOVIE (OK-HUI-UI YEONGHWA) (Hong Sang-soo, 2010)
Sunday, June 12, 7:00
www.movingimage.us

In works such as Like You Know It All, Woman on the Beach, Tale of Cinema, and Woman Is the Future of Man, Hong Sang-soo has explored the nature of his craft, using the creative process of filmmaking as a setting for his relationship-driven dramas. He examines the theme again in Oki’s Movie, a beautifully told tale told in four sections built around film professor Song (Moon Sung-keun) and students Jingu (Lee Sun-kyun) and Oki (Jung Yumi). Each chapter — “A Day for Chanting,” “King of Kiss,” “After the Snowstorm,” and “Oki’s Movie” — features a different point of view with a different narrator while walking the fine line between fiction and nonfiction. As in Tale of Cinema, certain parts are films within the film, shorts made by the characters for their class. Hong keeps viewers guessing what’s real as Oki balances a possible love triangle between her, Jingu, and Song; the final segment is a poetic masterpiece that brings everything together. In an intriguing twist — and emblematic of the realistic quality of Hong’s oeuvre — Oki’s Movie had its official U.S. theatrical release at the Maysles Cinema, the Harlem institution devoted to documentaries.

THE GOD CELLS

A patient receives a controversial treatment in THE GOD CELLS

THE GOD CELLS: FETAL STEM CELL CONTROVERSY (Eric Merola, 2016)
Cinema Village
22 East 12th St. between University Pl. & Fifth Ave.
Opens Friday, June 3
212-529-6799
stemcellsmovie.com
www.cinemavillage.com

In his 2014 documentary, Second Opinion: Laetrile at Sloan Kettering, writer, director, producer, and coeditor Eric Merola investigated the controversy over Laetrile, focusing on Memorial Sloan Kettering science writer Ralph W. Moss, PhD, and the banning of the cancer drug, which resulted in patients flocking to Mexico to receive treatment. Now Merola, whose two-part Burzynski explored the cancer therapy Antineoplastons, turns his attention to the stem-cell controversy in The God Cells, another important documentary that, unfortunately, suffers from some of the same filmmaking problems Second Opinion did. The pacing is awkward, the narrative overly biased, and alternating front and side shots of various speakers are needlessly disconcerting. The film also plays out like an infomercial for stem-cell treatment, which is banned in the United States, so Merola follows numerous patients to Mexico, where they receive the shots and many have experienced remarkable results. Although Merola does note the antiabortion movement’s religion-based fight against the use of stem cells, he instead reveals that the bigger issue in preventing their use in the U.S. is that the FDA is making it as difficult as possible to get the treatment approved because of its potential financial impact on Big Pharma and doctors, who benefit from people taking more and more drugs and coming back again and again for various other, arguably less-successful treatments.

Merola meets with men, women, and children who suffer from lupus, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, severe arthritis, and Parkinson’s, among other diseases, and who report nearly instantaneous recovery after stem-cell injections; in fact, they are shown golfing, rowing, and participating in other sports activities when previously they had trouble just walking. Also singing the praises of stem cells are former football quarterbacks John Brodie and Jerry Kramer and Laugh-In creator George Schlatter. While some doctors go on the record in support of stem cells, others are more hesitant, fearful of retribution from colleagues and the American medical industry. Merola spends too much time with CIRM, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, and celebrity doctor William C. Rader of Stem Cell of America, outspoken proponents of stem-cell research. And the film features an overly long section on television director and producer David Barrett (Blue Bloods, Cold Case), who talks about how stem cells saved his life as well as that of his grandfather, ninety-nine-year-old Dave McCoy, who might be deserving of his own documentary. Interestingly, Barrett is the executive producer of The God Cells. Still, it’s a critically vital film that will open your eyes on yet another medical controversy that raises the question: Is corporate moneymaking more important than the health of the individual? The film opens at Cinema Village on June 3, with Merola and special guests participating in a Q&A following the 7:10 show that night.

THE WITNESS

The murder of Kitty Genovese is reinvestigated by one of her brothers in THE WITNESS

THE WITNESS (James Solomon, 2015)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Friday, June 3
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
www.thewitness-film.com

The main image used to promote James Solomon’s debut documentary, The Witness, is a 1961 black-and-white photograph of Kitty Genovese. In the portrait, she stares back at the viewer almost accusingly; in light of her famous death three years later, it is as if she is calling us all out for the events that happened during and after her murder. In 1964, Genovese was killed by an assailant on a Kew Gardens street while, as the New York Times reported, thirty-eight neighbors heard the screams, looked out their windows, and did nothing. Forty years later, the paper reexamined the case and their coverage and found numerous holes in their original story. That set Kitty’s brother, Bill Genovese, who was sixteen when his sister was killed, on an obsessive mission to find out the truth about what really went down on March 13, 1964, and afterward, when New York City was publicly decried across the world as an awful oasis of urban apathy. Genovese hooked up with screenwriter Solomon (The Conspirator, The Bronx Is Burning) and spent eleven years reinvestigating the case — the two men had actually met in 1999, when Solomon was collaborating on a never-realized fictionalization of the story with Joe Berlinger and Alfred Uhry for HBO. The Witness plays out like a police procedural as Genovese follows every crumb he possibly can, meeting with witnesses, detectives, his sisters’ friends, and such journalists as Gabe Pressman, Mike Wallace, and Abe Rosenthal, the Times editor who wrote the book Thirty-Eight Witnesses: The Kitty Genovese Case, which helped turn the sordid tale into legend. “The story doesn’t make any sense to me,” Pressman admitted he thought back in 1964, although no one would question the Newspaper of Record. But Genovese does just that, and what he discovers is nothing short of shocking.

While The Witness sheds fascinating new light on the case — among the things that Genovese finds out is that the police were called and that his sister did not die alone in an apartment vestibule — it also, at long last, humanizes Kitty Genovese. No longer is she a mysterious figure whose unanswered screams came to represent all that was wrong with New York City in the 1960s but instead is revealed as a gregarious, popular young woman with a zest for life. By no means a criminal, she’s been memorialized by that 1961 photo, actually a mug shot taken after she was arrested on minor charges for bookmaking, having been a small player in a numbers racket from the lively bar where she worked. And that’s not the only way her character has been misrepresented over the years. However, the film moves way too slowly, and just as some of Bill’s siblings want him to stop his obsessive pursuit, there are many moments when you’ll want him to stop as well, particularly when he’s meeting with Steven Moseley, the son of Kitty’s killer, Winston Moseley, and when Bill and Solomon re-create the murder with an actress. Genovese was so deeply wounded by his sister’s death that he enlisted in the Marines and ended up losing both legs in Vietnam; he is seen at times making his way up stairs and driving and getting out of his car, inspirational moments that will have you cheering for him. Ultimately, The Witness proves that we can’t always believe what we read, even if it’s in the New York Times, while also absolving the city of at least some of its perceived sins of the past. The Witness opens at IFC Center on June 3; director James Solomon and Bill Genovese will be on hand for Q&As following the 7:05 show on June 3 (moderated by Sarah Heyward), the 7:05 show on June 4 (moderated by Clyde Haberman), and the 2:50 show on June 5 (moderated by Richard Price).

BRIAN DE PALMA: DIONYSUS IN ’69

Brian De Palma uses split-screen technique to capture as much of DIONYSUS IN ’69 as he possibly can

DIONYSUS IN ’69 (Brian De Palma, Bruce Rubin, and Robert Fiore, 1970)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
Sunday, June 5, 5:30
Series runs June 1-30
212-660-0312
metrograph.com

Newark-born auteur Brian De Palma might be best known for such critical and popular successes as Scarface, Carrie, The Untouchables, Dressed to Kill, and Mission:Impossible, but he got his start as an underground indie filmmaker working in downtown Manhattan. One of his most intriguing pictures is the documentary Dionysus in ’69, screening June 5 in a monthlong retrospective at Metrograph that includes every De Palma movie save for his first, Murder a la Mod. In 1968, the Performance Group, led by Richard Schechner, staged Dionysus in ’69 in the Performing Garage on Wooster St., a participatory play based on William Arrowsmith’s translation of Euripides’ The Bacchae. The show was almost more of a happening than a drama, as the actors regularly disrobed (and at several points form a kind of sexual human centipede) and the audience, either sitting on the floor or up in wooden platforms with ladders, became part of the action. Dionysus in ’69 was the first example of Schechner’s Environmental Theater, a theory that posited, among other things: “1. The audience is in a living space and a living situation. Things may happen to and with them as well as ‘in front’ of them. 2. When a performer invites participation, he must be prepared to accept and deal with the spectator’s reactions. 3. Participation should not be gratuitous.” In a 1975 interview with David Bartholomew, De Palma explained, “I was very strongly affected by the play when I saw it. . . . This was the most exciting thing I’d seen on stage in years. So I began to try and figure out a way to capture it on film. I came up with the idea of split-screen, to be able to show the actual audience involvement, to trace the life of the audience and that of the play as they merge in and out of each other. I wanted to get the very stylized dramatic life of the play juxtaposed to what was really going on in that room at that time. I was floored by the emotional power of it.”

The cast and the audience interact in unique ways in DIONYSUS IN ’69

De Palma and codirectors Bruce Rubin and Robert Fiore weave in and around the actors and the audience with handheld cameras that make viewers feel like they are right there in the midst of a wild and crazy orgiastic experience as Dionysus (William Finley, who appeared in eight of De Palma’s films) engages in verbal battles with Pentheus (Will Shepherd) over faith, the wrath of the gods, and ritualistic behavior, referring to each other by their real names as well as their characters’. The cast also includes Joan MacIntosh as Agave, Patrick McDermott as Tiresias, and Richard Dia as Cadmus. De Palma uses a split screen to show two angles of what is occurring in the garage at every moment, including occasionally getting glimpses of the cameramen themselves. De Palma would go on to use the split-screen technique in future works, and the theme of voyeurism would become one of his trademarks. In 2012, the Austin-based company Rude Mechs restaged the original Dionysus in ’69 at New York Live Arts, using De Palma’s film as a major source, but seeing the original event onscreen has a charm, and strangeness, all its own. “I always feel that even though the film didn’t make any money, it was something that should have been done. I think [Dionysus in ’69] will live long, long, after some of my other movies,” De Palma told Bartholomew. You can judge for yourself during the Metrograph series, which boasts such early, experimental flicks as Get to Know Your Rabbit, Greetings, and Hi, Mom! as well as many films that will live on much, much longer.

GENRE IS A WOMAN: WANDA

Barbara Loden wrote, directed, produced, and stars in WANDA

WANDA (Barbara Loden, 1970)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Friday, June 3, 12:30, and Tuesday, June 14, 6:20
Series runs June 3-16
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

“If you don’t want anything, you won’t have anything, and if you don’t have anything, then you’re as good as dead,” Mr. Dennis (Michael Higgins) tells Wanda Goronski (Barbara Loden) in Wanda, which appropriately kicks off Film Forum’s two-week “Genre Is a Woman” festival on June 3. The first theatrical feature written, directed, produced by, and starring an American woman, Wanda is a raw, naturalistic road-trip movie about an emotionally vacant woman who walks through life in a kind of stupor, wandering into situations to avoid being alone yet still trapped in an unrelenting alienation. Loden, who won a 1964 Tony for her portrayal of Maggie in Arthur Miller’s After the Fall — the play was directed on Broadway by Elia Kazan, whom she would marry four years later and remain with through her tragic death in 1980 — doesn’t try to turn Wanda into a feminist antihero, but she does take all the power away from her, making her completely dependent on other people, primarily men, an excellent counterpoint to Loden herself, who has all the power. Staying on her sister’s (Dorothy Shupenes) couch in the middle of Pennsylvania coal country, Wanda is almost zombielike as she slowly heads to court in curlers and a housecoat and lets the judge award custody of her two children to her soon-to-be-ex-husband (Jerome Thier). “I’m just no good,” she mumbles. Broke and apparently with no faith or hope in her future, she proceeds to get involved with some sketchy losers, including Mr. Dennis, who takes her on a minor crime spree that is a far cry from Bonnie and Clyde. All along the way, she rarely has anything of any interest to say to anyone; the only time she speaks clearly and definitively is when she explains that she likes onions on her hamburgers.

Mr. Dennis (Michael Higgins) takes Wanda Goronski (Barbara Loden) for quite a ride in WANDA

Shot in a cinéma vérité style by documentary cinematographer Nicholas T. Proferes, Wanda is a riveting and infuriating exploration of the death of the American dream as the 1960s come to an end and the country reexamines itself, not necessarily liking what it sees. Apathy competes with melancholy as Wanda is unable and unwilling to take control of her life, dressed in the same white outfit and carrying the same white pocketbook throughout nearly the entire film, but she is more disconsolate than angelic. Much of the film is improvised and most of the characters are portrayed by nonprofessional actors or people who just happened to be in the area, like the scene in which Mr. Dennis and Wanda encounter a family flying a remote-control model airplane. (Higgins would go on to make more than fifty films, including The Conversation, The Stepford Wives, and The Seduction of Joe Tynan.) Coming on the cusp of the women’s liberation movement, Wanda is about a pouty sad-sack who barely ever changes emotion, always wearing the same blank stare. It’s not that she’s promiscuous, adventurous, or even unpredictable; she just is. You desperately want her to take action, to care about something or someone, but it’s just not going to happen. It’s almost as if Loden is setting the groundwork for such future films as Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore and Taxi Driver, which feature such strong, decisive female characters as Alice (Ellen Burstyn) in the former and Iris (Jodie Foster) in the latter, who at least attempt to take matters into their own hands; elements of Wanda can also be found in Aki Kaurismäki’s Match Factory Girl and Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. Wanda would end up being Loden’s only film as writer and director; she died in 1980 of cancer at the age of forty-eight. Named Best Foreign Film at the Venice International Film Festival, Wanda is screening in a recently restored 35mm print on June 3 and 14 at Film Forum; “Genre Is a Woman” continues through June 1 with such other woman-directed features as Kathryn Bigelow’s Blue Steel and Point Break, Cindy Sherman’s Office Killer, Ida Lupino’s The Hitch-Hiker, Doris Wishman’s Bad Girls Go to Hell, Katt Shea’s Poison Ivy, Mary Harron’s American Psycho, Penelope Spheeris’s SubUrbia, and Amy Heckerling’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

FIRST SATURDAY: PRIDE AND AGITPROP!

LJ Roberts, “Sisters Are Doing It for Themselves,” Jacquard-woven cotton and Lurex, hand-dyed fabric, crank-knit yarn, thread, 2011 (photo by Mario Gallucci)

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, June 4, free, 5:00 – 11:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

Pride Month is the centerpiece of the Brooklyn Museum’s June edition of its vastly popular free First Saturday program. The evening will feature live performances by New York City Gay Men’s Chorus and DJ Mursi Layne; storytelling by Queer Memoir; screenings of Jake Witzenfeld’s Oriented, followed by a talkback with Tarab NYC, and Asurf Oluseyi’s Hell or High Water, followed by a talkback with activists Kehinde Bademosi, Noni Salma Lawal, Ekene Okuwegbunam, and Adejoke Tugbiyele; a movement workshop inspired by domestic workers, by Studio REV-; pop-up gallery talks on “Disguise: Masks and Global African Art”; a hands-on workshop in which participants can make their own Pride-based iron-on patch; a curator talk by Catherine J. Morris and Stephanie Weissberg on “Agitprop!”; the talk “Women, Art, AIDS, and Activism,” with Joy Episalla, Kia Labeija, Jessica Whitbread, Egyptt Labeija, Sue Schaffner, and Carrie Moyer, hosted by Visual AIDS and moderated by LJ Roberts; a printmaking workshop about immigration and undocumented youth; and outdoor projections by the Illuminator. In addition, you can check out such other exhibitions as “This Place,” “Tom Sachs: Boombox Retrospective, 1999–2016,” and “Stephen Powers: Coney Island Is Still Dreamland (to a Seagull).”