this week in film and television

CHANTAL AKERMAN — IMAGES BETWEEN THE IMAGES: NEWS FROM HOME

Chantal Akerman combines footage of 1970s New York with letters from her mother in NEWS FROM HOME

NEWS FROM HOME (Chantal Akerman, 1977)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Saturday, April 16, 7:00 & 9:00
Series continues through May 1
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

In 1971, twenty-year-old Chantal Akerman moved to New York City from her native Belgium, determined to become a filmmaker. Teaming up with cinematographer Babette Mangolte, she made several experimental films, including Hotel Monterey and La Chambre, before moving back to Belgium in 1973. But in 1976 she returned to New York City to make News from Home, a mesmerizing work about family and dislocation, themes that would be prevalent throughout her career. The film consists of long, mostly static shots, using natural sound and light, depicting a gray, dismal New York City as cars move slowly down narrow, seemingly abandoned streets, people ride the graffiti-laden subway, workers and tourists pack Fifth Ave., and the Staten Island Ferry leaves Lower Manhattan. The only spoken words occur when Akerman, in voice-over, reads letters from her mother, Natalia (Nelly) Akerman, sent during Chantal’s previous time in New York, concerned about her daughter’s welfare and safety. “I’m glad you don’t have that job anymore and that you’re liking New York,” Akerman reads in one letter. “People here are surprised. They say New York is terrible, inhuman. Perhaps they don’t really know it and are too quick to judge.” Her mother’s missives often chastise her for not writing back more often while also filling her in on the details of her family’s life, including her mother, father, and sister, Sylviane, as well as local gossip. Although it was not meant to be a straightforward documentary, News from Home now stands as a mesmerizing time capsule of downtrodden 1970s New York, sometimes nearly unrecognizable when compared to the city of today. The film also casts another light on the relationship between mother and daughter, which was recently highlighted in Akerman’s final film, No Home Movie, in which Chantal attempts to get her mother, a Holocaust survivor, to open up about her experiences in Auschwitz. Nelly died shortly after filming, and Akerman committed suicide the following year, only a few months after No Home Movie played at several film festivals (and was booed at Locarno). News from Home takes on new meaning in light of Akerman’s end, a unique love letter to city and family and to how we maintained connections in a pre-internet world. News from Home is screening April 16 at BAM Rose Cinemas as part of the BAMcinématek series “Chantal Akerman: Images between the Images,” which continues through May 1 with such other films by Akerman as Golden Eighties, Histoires d’Amerique, From the Other Side, and her masterpiece, Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. In addition, Anthology Film Archives will host “Chantal Akerman x 2,” showing No Home Movie and Là-Bas April 15-21.

THE MEASURE OF A MAN

Vincent Lindon plays an unemployed family man desperate to find a job in THE MEASURE OF A MAN

THE MEASURE OF A MAN (LA LOI DU MARCHÉ) (Stéphane Brizé, 2015)
Metrograph, 7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts., 212-660-0312
Lincoln Plaza Cinema, 1886 Broadway at 63rd St., 212-757-2280
Opens Friday, April 15
www.kinolorber.com5

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy,” the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously said. In Stéphane Brizé’s The Measure of a Man, Vincent Lindon excels as a husband and father who is trying his best to survive in a changing world, fraught with challenge and controversy, that has seemingly turned its back on him. In an extraordinary performance embodying the calm before a storm that never comes, Lindon plays Thierry Taugourdeau, a working-class man who has been out of a job since the factory where he toiled for more than twenty years closed twenty months ago. He meets with job counselors, takes classes, interviews over Skype, and joins his fellow laid-off colleagues to figure out what to do next, but it is hard for him to have to start over in his fifties while trying to support his wife (Karine De Mirbeck) and take care of a teenage son who has cerebral palsy, played by Matthieu Schaller, who does have the neurological disorder. When Thierry finally does find employment, it’s not exactly a dream job, but he attempts to soldier on even when he is asked to do things that are against his moral and ethical fiber. “We all get to choose,” he says when his fellow former factory workers talk about taking action against the company that laid them off. “In my case, if only for my mental health, I prefer to draw a line and move on. Does that make me a coward?”

The third film teaming Lindon and Brizé (following Mademoiselle Chambon and A Few Hours of Spring), The Measure of a Man has a poignant, realistic feel, unfolding in highly believable, disheartening scenes that are sometimes frustratingly slow, with Brizé and cowriter Olivier Gorce guiding viewers through the procedural machinations as Thierry tries to get his life back on track. You’ll often wish Thierry did more — that he prepared better for an interview, or more carefully chose his words when speaking to a counselor about his son’s future — but part of the point is that he’s doing the best he can in a difficult situation, and he’s only equipped for so much. The vast majority of the cast is made up of nonprofessional actors who really work in the banks and megamarts shown in the film, which is shot with a sometimes shaky handheld camera by cinematographer Eric Dumont and edited by Anne Klotz, both of whom come from the documentary world. Despite some plot meandering, the film is worth seeing for Lindon’s marvelously paced performance, which earned him Best Actor at Cannes and the Césars. A kind of French neorealist film for the twenty-first century, The Measure of a Man opens April 15 at Lincoln Plaza and Metrograph, with Lindon in person at the former after the 7:05 show and the latter after the 7:30 screening. In conjunction with the new release, Metrograph is also presenting “Four Films Starring Vincent Lindon,” which concludes with Claire Denis’s Bastards on April 16 at 3:00.

TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL: NATIONAL BIRD

Documentary sheds new light on many frightening aspects of U.S. drone program

NATIONAL BIRD (Sonia Kennebeck, 2016)
Saturday, April 16, Bow Tie Cinemas Chelsea 4, 6:15
Sunday, April 17, Regal Cinemas Battery Park 11-6, 3:15
Thursday, April 21, Regal Cinemas Battery Park 11-9, 7:30
Friday, April 22, Bow Tie Cinemas Chelsea 8, 5:30
itvs.org/films/national-bird
tribecafilm.com

On May 23, 2013, President Barack Obama gave a speech at the National Defense University at Fort McNair in which he discussed America’s controversial drone program, saying, “Before any strike is taken, there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured — the highest standard we can set.” Sonia Kennebeck’s shattering documentary, National Bird, strongly disputes that claim and adds more accusations as three former military personnel talk about what was really going on behind the scenes. “It’s a secret program, and what that means is that I just can’t go shouting off the hilltops, telling the public what it is,” says Lisa, a former technical sergeant on the drone surveillance system. (The documentary does not use the three main subjects’ last names.) “What I can tell you is that to me, one person who worked within this massive thing, it’s frightening.” Heather, a former drone imagery analyst, has become a massage therapist to deal with the effects of PTSD and anxiety and sleep disorders. “In learning to heal other people, maybe I could heal myself as well,” she says as she tries to come to terms with the many Afghani men women, and children, both military targets and innocent civilians, who died from bombs she dropped from drones. “I can say the drone program is wrong because I don’t know how many people I’ve killed,” she adds. And Daniel, a former signals intelligence analyst and currently a private contractor, carefully explains, “There’s no doubt in my mind that if I said the wrong thing or gave away the wrong kind of information about what I was doing that I wouldn’t be safe from prosecution of any kind.” Kennebeck also speaks with General Stanley McChrystal, who apologized for a 2010 drone attack that killed twenty-three civilians; some of the survivors of that fatal attack; and lawyer Jesselyn Radack, the founder of the Whistleblower and Source Protection Program (WHISPeR) at ExposeFacts, who has represented Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers in addition to Heather, Daniel, and Lisa.

A former technical sergeant on the drone surveillance system heads to Afghanistan to meet victims of drone attacks in NATIONAL BIRD

In her first feature documentary, Kennebeck compares the drone program to video games, as Heather, Daniel, and Lisa, through re-creations and actual documents, reveal how they performed their jobs, resulting in untold deaths, without ever seeing action; Heather, in particular, opens up about how difficult it was to sit at a desk in the United States while dropping bombs in Afghanistan, never knowing whether the victims were the intended targets or how much collateral damage was inflicted. She doesn’t know where to turn because the program is top secret and classified, so she can’t even seek out psychiatric help; meanwhile, she points out that several former colleagues have committed suicide. Lisa is so distraught that she goes to Afghanistan to visit with victims of drone attacks. And Daniel grows more and more paranoid that the more he talks, the more his freedom will be in jeopardy. Kennebeck (Sex — Made in Germany) also includes dramatic overhead drone shots of American communities, showing the terrifying prospect that drone attacks in the United States might not be far off as unmanned warfare spreads around the world. “Like previous advancements in military technology, combat drones have transformed warfare, outpacing the ability of legal and moral frameworks to adapt and address these developments,” Kennebeck explains in her director’s statement. “A broad, immersive, and thoroughly public discourse is critical to understanding the social cost of drone warfare.” Executive produced by Wim Wenders and Errol Morris, National Bird sheds new light on this controversial topic; it’s a chilling look at the next step in the continuing dehumanization of war, seen from multiple angles. “I thought I was going to be on the right side of history, and today I don’t believe I was,” Lisa says. National Bird is screening April 16, 17, 21, and 22 at the Tribeca Film Festival, with Kennebeck and Lisa participating in Q&As after all four shows, along with Radack on April 16 & 17.

OPEN PLAN: CECIL TAYLOR

Jazz great Cecil Taylor rehearses at the Whitney in November 2015

Whitney Museum of American Art
Neil Bluhm Family Galleries, fifth floor
99 Gansevoort St.
April 14-24, free with museum admission unless otherwise noted
212-570-3600
whitney.org

The fourth stage of the Whitney’s “Open Plan” series, which previously saw Andrea Fraser, Lucy Dodd, and Michael Heizer take over the large fifth-floor space in the new downtown building, hands the reins over to free jazz legend, poet, and New York City native Cecil Taylor. The eighty-seven-year-old pianist will be celebrated in a series of programs beginning April 14 at 8:00 ($50), when Taylor will make a rare public appearance, collaborating with British drummer Tony Oxley and Japanese dancer and choreographer Min Tanaka. On April 15 at 7:00, cellist Tristan Honsinger will perform a solo set, while writer Thulani Davis, dancer and professor Cheryl Banks-Smith, and bassist Henry Grimes join forces for a unique presentation. On April 16 at 2:00, Banks-Smith will moderate “Cecil Taylor and Dance,” a panel discussion with Dianne McIntyre, Heather Watts, and Tanaka. That evening at 7:00, trumpter Enrico Rava, double bassist William Parker, and drummer Andrew Cyrille will perform as a trio, in addition to a solo set by Cyrille. On April 20 at 3:00, a Poetry and Music gathering brings together poets A. B. Spellman and Anne Waldman and saxophonist Devin Brahja Waldman, Anne’s nephew. On April 21 at 3:00, Poetry and Music features Steve Dalachinsky, Clark Coolidge with Michael Bisio, and Nathaniel Mackey with Grimes. That night at 9:00 ($10), Hilton Als directs a restaging of Adrienne Kennedy’s one-act play A Rat’s Mass, starring Helga Davis; Taylor wrote and directed the music for the show. And on April 22 at 6:00, Chris Funkhouser, Tracie Morris and Susie Ibarra, Fred Moten and William Parker, and Jemeel Moondoc/Ensemble Muntu (featuring Parker, Mark Hennen, and Charles Downs) will present an evening of poetry and music. Throughout this part of “Open Plan,” there will also be listening sessions hosted by Davis, Archie Rand, André Martinez, Gary Giddins, Moten and Funkhouser, Ben Young, and Nahum Chandler in addition to screenings in the Kaufman Gallery of such films as Sheldon Rochlin’s Cecil Taylor: Burning Poles, Chris Felver’s Cecil Taylor: All the Notes, Billy Woodberry’s And When I Die, I Won’t Stay Dead, and the world premiere of Amiel Courtin-Wilson’s The Silent Eye about Taylor and Tanaka (and followed by Q&As with the director, who sat on Taylor’s stoop until the pianist would finally talk to him). There will also be documents, videos, audio, scores, photographs, poetry, and ephemera from throughout Taylor’s life and career on view.

JAPAN SINGS! THE JAPANESE MUSICAL FILM: SINGING LOVEBIRDS

Oharu (Haruyo Ichikawa) finds herself caught between Lord Minezawa (Dick Mine) and Reisaburō (Chiezō Kataoka) in SINGING LOVEBIRDS

SINGING LOVEBIRDS (OSHIDORI UTAGASSEN) (鴛鴦歌合戦) (Masahiro Makino, 1939)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Tuesday, April 12, 7:00
Festival runs April 8-23
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

In the 1930s, on the cusp of WWII, Japan was in the process of creating its own cinematic musical genre. One of the all-time classics is the wonderful Singing Lovebirds, a period romantic rectangle set in the days of the samurai. Oharu (Haruyo Ichikawa) is in love with handsome ronin Reisaburō (Chiezō Kataoka), but he is also being pursued by the wealthy and vain Otomi (Tomiko Hattori) and the merchant’s daughter, Fujio (Fujiko Fukamizu), who has been promised to him. Meanwhile, Lord Minezawa (jazz singer Dick Mine) has set his sights on Oharu and plans to get to her through her father, Kyōsai Shimura (Takashi Shimura), a former samurai who now paints umbrellas and spends all of his minuscule earnings collecting antiques. “It’s love at first sight for me with this beautiful young woman,” Lord Minezawa sings about Oharu before telling his underlings, “Someone, go buy her for me.” But Oharu’s love is not for sale. Directed by Masahiro Makino, the son of Japanese film pioneer Shōzō Makino, Singing Lovebirds is utterly charming from start to finish, primarily because it knows exactly what it is and doesn’t try to be anything else, throwing in a few sly self-references for good measure.

A romantic rectangle is at the center of Masahiro Makino’s charming 1939 musical, SINGING LOVEBIRDS

Made in a mere two weeks while Kataoka was ill and needed a break from another movie Masahiro Makino was making — he tended to make films rather quickly, compiling a resume of more than 250 works between 1926 and 1972 — Singing Lovebirds features a basic but cute script by Koji Edogawa, playful choreography by Reijiro Adachi, a wide-ranging score by Tokujirō Ōkubo, silly but fun lyrics by Kinya Shimada, and black-and-white cinematography by Kazuo Miyagawa, who would go on to shoot seminal films by Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi, Yasujirō Ozu, and Kon Ichikawa. There are fab touches throughout the film, from the comic-relief group of men who follow Otomi around, professing their love, to the field of umbrellas made by Kyōsai that resembles a mural by Takashi Murakami, to a musical number sung by Lord Minezawa in which the musicians are clearly not playing the instruments that can be heard on the soundtrack. And of course, it’s also worth it just to hear the great Takashi Shimura, who appeared in so many classic Kurosawa films, sing, although he doesn’t dance. Singing Lovebirds might not have tremendous depth, primarily focusing on money and greed, love and honesty, but the umbrellas do serve as clever metaphors for the many different shades of humanity, for places to hide, and for ways of seeking protection from a world that can be both harsh and beautiful. Singing Lovebirds is screening April 12 at 7:00 as part of Japan Society’s 2016 Globus Film Series “Japan Sings! The Japanese Musical Film,” which continues through April 23 with such other musicals as Tomu Uchida’s Twilight Saloon, Kihachi Okamoto’s Oh, Bomb, Nagisa Oshima’s Sing a Song of Sex, and Tetsuya Nakashima’s Memories of Matsuko.

EDM ANTHEMS — FRENCH TOUCH ON FILM: THE VIRGIN SUICIDES & A TRIP TO THE MOON

Georges Méliès’s A TRIP TO THE MOON is part of unusual double feature at FIAF

THE VIRGIN SUICIDES (Sofia Coppola, 1999) and A TRIP TO THE MOON (Georges Méliès, 1902)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, April 12, $14, 4:00 & 7:30
Series continues Tuesdays through April 26
212-355-6100
www.fiaf.org

FIAF’s CinéSalon series includes an unusual double feature that doesn’t seem to make sense as part of “EDM Anthems: French Touch on Film,” which began with Daft Punk Unchained and previously screened Mia Hansen-Løve’s Eden, a fictionalized journey into the start of the electronic dance movement scene. But as it turns out, the 2010 restoration of Georges Méliès’s 1902 classic, A Trip to the Moon (“Le Voyage dans la Lune”), one of the most influential films ever made, and Sofia Coppola’s 1999 adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides’s debut novel, The Virgin Suicides, have something key in common: Both feature soundtracks by French electronica duo Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel, better known as Air. A Trip to the Moon is an early example of narrative storytelling and, specifically, science fiction, a fifteen-minute adventure that goes from an Astronomic Club meeting of scientists to the moon, pushing the boundaries of cinema. Méliès himself plays Professor Barbenfouillis, who leads a contingent of five men (entertainers Victor André, Delpierre, Farjaux, Kelm, and Brunnet) into space, guiding their self-built capsule directly, and famously, into the eye of the man in the moon. Once there, the men, sans space suits or oxygen tanks, do battle with the Selenites before attempting to return home. Inspired by the works of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, Méliès creates a world that is a kind of mash-up of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz, with fanciful characters, hallucinogenic scenes, and a robust color scheme; of course, those films came later, but the books were in print by 1900. Air’s score, which includes vocalizations, lends the proceedings a, dare we say, trippy atmosphere.

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, 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, 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 A Trip to the Moon and The Virgin Suicides at FIAF on April 12 at 4:00 & 7:30; the later screening will be introduced by DJ SuperJaimie.

LOOK AT US NOW, MOTHER!

Gayle Kirschenbaum delves into her love-hate relationship with her mother in compelling, often agonizing documentary

LOOK AT US NOW, MOTHER! (Gayle Kirschenbaum, 2015)
Village East Cinemas
181-189 Second Ave. at 12th St.
Opens Friday, April 8
212-529-6799
lookatusnowmother.com
www.villageeastcinema.com

“Am I ever going to be able to understand, forgive, and cherish my mother, before time runs out?” filmmaker Gayle Kirschenbaum asks at the beginning of her debut feature documentary, Look at Us Now, Mother! In the film, Kirschenbaum, who previously made the cable hit A Dog’s Life: A Dogamentary and the film festival short My Nose, about her mother’s extreme dislike of her daughter’s nose — and which Kirschenbaum is currently attempting to turn into a full feature, The Bigger Version — spends eighty-four minutes detailing her relationship with her mother, Mildred Abramowitz Kirschenbaum, which was more than rocky from the day Gayle was born, when Mildred, who clearly expected and wanted another boy to join her two older sons, got a baby girl instead. Gayle brings together old home movies, travel footage, visits to a pair of therapists and a plastic surgeon, and interviews with her two brothers and her mother’s friends and first cousins to paint a not-too-pretty picture of Mildred, who lives in Boca Raton and has been putting Gayle down and blaming her since the very beginning. In the film, Mildred claims that she has no idea why her daughter is complaining now, although on one therapist visit, she does admit to at least one Mommie Dearest moment. It’s often painful to watch as Gayle, who wrote, directed, and produced the film in addition to editing it with Alex Keipper and shooting it with Steven Gladstone, relives much of the psychological and emotional torture she experienced at the hands of her parents, primarily her mother, who continues to be nasty, rude, uncaring, and disapproving, even if Mildred doesn’t admit it and even if, deep down, she truly loves her daughter. “We are now off to go to see a therapist,” Mildred says at one point. “We’re going to find out what’s wrong with Gayle’s relationship with me.”

The trauma Gayle suffered is palpable throughout the film as her mother never lets up, unwilling to share her feelings or face up to the harm she inflicted on Gayle, who has never married and has no children. Gayle, who goes deep into her family history, merely wants a mother’s love, but there is too often none to be had. In her director’s statement, Kirschenbaum explains, “I never expected to make such a deeply personal film. I had spent most of my career behind the camera telling other people’s stories, but it soon became apparent that the highly charged relationship I had with my mother and its transformation from hate to love was a story I had to tell.” And it’s a story that everyone can relate to, no matter your relationship with your mother — whom you are likely to call as soon as the film is over. Look at Us Now, Mother! is playing April 8-14 at Village East Cinema, with some serious Q&A sessions following many of the screenings throughout the run, including discussions with both Gayle and Mildred Kirschenbaum, therapist Lois Braverman, Rabbi Aaron Raskin, nonviolent communication instructor Dr. Clara Moisello, psychiatrist Dr. Anthony Stern, associate producer Jessica Phillips, filmmaker and teacher Laszlo Santha, and mindfulness and yoga teacher Shoshana Perry.