this week in film and television

FIRST FRIDAYS! “ALL THE LADIES SAY” UNDERGROUND HIP-HOP ANNIVERSARY

1040 Grand Concourse at 167th St.
Friday, October 2, free, 6:00 – 10:00
718-681-6000
www.bronxmuseum.org

Ten years ago, the Bronx Museum partnered with Full Circle Prod Inc. to promote B-girl culture, leading to, among other things, East Harlem-raised pioneering break dancer Ana “Rokafella” Garcia’s 2010 documentary on female hip-hop culture, All the Ladies Say. On October 2, the Bronx Museum and Rokafella are teaming up again with a special free First Fridays! presentation celebrating the fifth anniversary of the film. The evening will include performances by Lah Tere and Queen Godis from Momma’s Hip Hop Kitchen and DJ KS360, live painting by Lady K Fever, and a dance-off between Brooklyn B-girl Mantis and Connecticut B-girl N’tegrity. The event starts at 6:00, but be sure to get there early to check out the excellent exhibit “¡Presente! The Young Lords in New York” and the new show “Trees Are Alphabets.”

LAURIE ANDERSON WITH MOHAMMED EL GHARANI: HABEAS CORPUS

Laurie Anderson’s latest project is a dazzling immersive installation at Park Avenue Armory (photo by James Ewing)

Park Ave. Armory
643 Park Ave. between 66th & 67th Sts.
October 2-4, installation viewing $15 (12 noon – 7:00), concerts $45 (8:00)
212-933-5812
www.armoryonpark.org
habeas corpus slideshow

With “Habeas Corpus,” multimedia artist Laurie Anderson has taken a very serious topic, the seven-year incarceration of an innocent fourteen-year-old in Guantanamo, and turned it into a stunning celebration of freedom and the indomitability of the human spirit. In 2001, Mohammed el Gharani, a Chadian raised in Saudi Arabia, was arrested in Karachi while praying in a mosque a few days after September 11. He spent the next seven years being tortured in prison until lawyer Clive Stafford Smith and his Reprieve organization finally got him a trial, and U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon granted his writ of habeas corpus and ordered his release in 2009. Anderson and el Gharani have collaborated on “Habeas Corpus,” an immersive audiovisual installation at Park Avenue Armory, but it’s about a lot more than just el Gharani’s grueling personal journey. “It’s a work about words, story, place,” Anderson said at a preview earlier this week. She pointedly noted that it asks the question “Where is America?” Near the back of the vast Wade Thompson Drill Hall, Anderson has built a sculpture that approximates the Lincoln Memorial, a giant white chair on which she has sculpted el Gharani’s body, as if his ghost is sitting there (while evoking the twelfth president, who delivered the Emancipation Proclamation). From October 2 to 4, a full-color el Gharani will be remotely projected onto the work from a studio in West Africa, where he lives; he is unable to be in New York in person because his imprisonment at Guantanamo bars his entry to the United States, despite his innocence. An amiable man who Anderson says “would make a great talk show host,” el Gharani will sit motionless in the chair every day from 12 noon to 7:00, projected live, but he will take a break once an hour, when prerecorded stories he tells about his time at Guantanamo will be shown, dealing with torture as well as developing close, important friendships.

Mohammed el Gharani takes a moment while recalling his time at Guantanamo (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Upon entering the hall, visitors step into a dark world lit by the glow of el Gharani in the chair as well as swirling lights emanating from a disco ball that causes immediate disorientation. Balance becomes precarious as you teeter toward the sculpture of el Gharani and the chair. But there’s also something exhilarating about it as you forge ahead through the loss of equilibrium. (Long strips of cardboard are provided if you need to take a seat or lie down, and you very well might have to.) Meanwhile, a droning guitar feedback score composed by Anderson’s late husband, Lou Reed, is played by his guitar tech, Stewart Hurwood, on a platform near the front that appears to be moving but is not, presenting yet another illusion, and nearby some of el Gharani’s words flash by on a wall like a ticker tape of memory and crackly snippets of military radio transmissions emanate from covered speakers. It all makes for a dizzying yet thrilling experience that delves into the nature of torture, identity, surveillance, borders, technology, personal responsibility, fighting injustice, and the very future of civilization. Make sure to allow yourself a few hours when you come to the armory in order to really absorb “Habeas Corpus”; walk around it (very carefully), contemplate its multiple meanings, meditate on its messages, and just enjoy the sheer spectacle of it. If you’re lucky, you might get a chance to walk right up to el Gharani and smile or wave at him, and he’ll smile and wave back; he’s been loving the direct interaction with the public. Also, look out for the cellist who occasionally wanders through the crowd, and that violin you hear just might be Anderson playing live, improvising with the cellist and Hurwood. Each night, Anderson will be joined by Syrian musician Omar Souleyman, Pakistani American performer Shahzad Ismaily, the Oakland-based Merrill Garbus (aka tUnE-yArDs), Hurwood, and surprise guests for what Anderson promises will be “a great dance party.” In addition, in the Mary Divver Room, el Gharani shares some of his stories in a short documentary, talking about his friend Shaker Aamer, the construction of Camp 5, how he taught himself English, and imploring Obama to keep his promise and close Guantanamo. He tells his tales very directly, not seeking sympathy or complaining about what happened to him but instead hopeful there will be positive change in the world. And Anderson’s “From the Air,” a monologue about her dog, Lolabelle, and 9/11, plays in the Colonel’s Room, projected onto miniature sculptures of chairs on which tiny versions of Anderson and her dog sit; the text (which is not the lyrics from her 1982 song of the same name) is also part of her new seventy-five-minute film, Heart of a Dog, which will screen at the New York Film Festival on October 8, with Anderson at the Walter Reade Theater to discuss the work.

OKINAWAN VIBES: PARADISE VIEW

Japan Society is presenting thirtieth-anniversary screening of rarely shown Okinawan gem PARADISE VIEW

MONTHLY CLASSICS: PARADISE VIEW (PARADAISU BYU) (Gō Takamine, 1985)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Friday, October 2, $12, 7:00
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

Japan Society has picked a real gem for its October Monthly Classics presentation, writer-director Gō Takamine’s rarely shown wry black comedy, Paradise View. The thirtieth anniversary screening is also part of Japan Society’s three-month multidisciplinary program “Okinawan Vibes,” which takes a look at the southern island that was occupied by the American military from 1945 to 1972 and, in many ways, is not exactly Japan’s favorite relation; Okinawans, who have their own heritage of language, culture, and religion, have faced longtime discrimination as Japan’s largest minority group. The film opens with a gorgeous shot (the cinematographer is Takao Toshioka) of ant lover Reishu (yakuza actor Kaoru Kobayashi, not the executed child murderer) on a vast beach, collecting sea salt to make him feel better about life, which is rather bleak for everyone on Okinawa, especially now that the occupation is over. The married Reishu has apparently knocked up local simpleton Chiru (Japanese pop star Jun Togawa); island girl Nabee is breaking tradition by marrying a Japanese teacher, Ito; Bindalay (Yoko Taniyama) is quitting her music group, the Tropical Sisters, to go solo, while being stalked by a former boyfriend who dresses as a samurai; a blind man returns home after losing his second family in the Philippines; blue chickens and rainbow pigs roam the land; Reishu’s dog has developed a liking for goat balls, which make the mutt horny; and poisonous snakes are everywhere, from coffins to amphibious trucks. The wacky cast also includes Shinzoku Ogimi, Tomi Taira, and composer and musician Haruomi Hosono as the dude with the great porn stache. “The Japanese are strange creatures,” one ne’er-do-well says. An elderly woman soon laments, “We’ll all be Japanese soon,” after which the man adds, “I wonder if we’ll just end up as a backwater province.” There’s plenty of backwater strangeness in Okinawa, as short vignettes sweetly portray a collection of oddballs doing very odd things while also remaining intensely concerned about holding on to their souls. “I had a dream that a dog ate Reishu’s spirit, then threw it up. He’s lost his spirit! He’s been spirited away!” a deadpan Chiru says, capturing the essence of Okinawan native Takamine’s (Okinawan Dream Show, Untamagiru) brilliant love letter to his homeland. The Japan Society screening will be followed by a reception with Okinawan beer and snacks. The Monthly Classics film series continues on November 6 with Yoji Yamada’s The Yellow Handkerchief, in tribute to star Ken Takakura, who passed away last November at the age of eighty-three.

NYFF53 REVIVALS: RAN

The Fool (Peter) sticks by Hidetaro (Tatsuya Nakadai) as the aging lord descends into madness in Kurosawa masterpiece RAN

RAN (Akira Kurosawa, 1985)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Friday, October 2, 9:00, and Sunday, October 11, 7:30
Festival runs through October 11
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.org

Inspired by the story of feudal lord Mori Motonari and Shakespeare’s King Lear, Akira Kurosawa’s Ran is an epic masterpiece about the decline and fall of the Ichimonji clan. Aging Lord Hidetora (Tatsuya Nakadai) is ready to hand over his land and leadership to his three sons, Taro (Akira Terao), Jiro (Jinpachi Nezu), and Saburo (Daisuke Ryû). But jealousy, misunderstandings, and outright deceit and treachery result in Saburo’s banishment and a violent power struggle between the weak eldest, Taro, and the warrior Jiro. Hidetaro soon finds himself rejected by his children and wandering the vast, empty landscape with his wise, sarcastic fool, Kyoami (Peter), as the once-proud king descends into madness. Dressed in white robes and with wild white hair, Nakadai (The Human Condition, Harakiri), in his early fifties at the time, portrays Hidetaro, one of the great characters of cinema history, with an unforgettable, Noh-like precision. Kurosawa, cinematographers Asakazu Nakai, Takao Saitô, and Masaharu Ueda, and Oscar-winning costume designer Emi Wada bathe the film in lush greens, brash blues, and bold reds and yellows that marvelously offset the white Hidetaro. Kurosawa shoots the first dazzling battle scene in an elongated period of near silence, with only Tôru Takemitsu’s classically based score playing on the soundtrack, turning the film into a thrilling, blood-drenched opera. Ran is a spectacular achievement, the last great major work by one of the twentieth century’s most important and influential filmmakers. Ran, which opened the 1985 New York Film Festival, is screening October 2 at 9:00 and October 11 at 7:30 in the Revivals section of the fifty-third New York Film Festival, which is showing such other revivals as King Hu’s A Touch of Zen and Manoel de Oliveira’s Visit, or Memories and Confessions.

NYFF53 MAIN SLATE: MOUNTAINS MAY DEPART

Zhang Jinsheng (Zhang Yi) shows his love for Shen Tao (Zhao Tao) in materialistic ways in Jia Zhangke’s MOUNTAINS MAY DEPART

MOUNTAINS MAY DEPART (SHAN HE GU REN) (Jia Zhangke, 2015)
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Monday, September 28, Alice Tully Hall, 6:00, and Tuesday, September 29, Francesca Beale Theater, 9:15
New York Film Festival runs through October 11
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.org

Master Chinese writer-director Jia Zhangke returns to the New York Film Festival with Mountains May Depart, a melancholic look at love and relationships in which one decision can change the rest of your life, as well as an allegory about China itself and its path in the world. Jia’s wife and muse, Zhao Tao, stars as Shen Tao, a flighty, flakey young woman flirting with coal miner Liangzi (Liang Jin Dong) and burgeoning capitalist Zhang Jinsheng (Zhang Yi) in 1999 China, the country on the cusp of an economic crisis. It’s easy to see the young woman’s romantic decision as a microcosm of China’s economic decisions, as the working class battles the wealthy elite, and the effects of both are profound. The setup is reminiscent of the love triangle at the center of François Truffaut’s Jules et Jim, but Jia takes it much further, continuing the story in 2014, and then into 2025, a bleak future where individual happiness is painfully elusive. Jia (Still Life, The World, 24 City) and his longtime cinematographer, Yu Lik-wai, shoot the three time periods in different screen ratios, exemplifying how much things evolve as Chinese capitalism and globalism take over, affecting — and disaffecting — the next generation. But the past is always snapping at the characters’ heels; much of the film takes place in the Yellow River basin, where ancient structures recall China’s history, and in Jia’s vision of the future, vinyl LPs are back in fashion (although handheld devices are much cooler). Music plays a key role in the film, primarily Sally Yeh’s Cantonese song “Take Care” and the Pet Shop Boys’ cover of the Village People’s “Go West,” the latter a title that gets to the heart of the film.

Mia (Sylvia Chang) takes stock of her complicated life in MOUNTAINS MAY DEPART

Zhao is marvelous as the bittersweet Shen, from singing at the colorful Fenyang Spring Festival Gala as the new millennium approaches to trying to restore her relationship with her son (Dong Zijian), who her husband insisted be named Dollar. Her eyes are filled with emotion as she proceeds on a course that was never what she dreamed. In the third section, Sylvia Chang shines as Mia, a sensitive, divorced teacher from Hong Kong who grows close to Dollar in a future world in which English has eclipsed Chinese, so fathers and sons literally do not speak the same language. Navigating the four physical sufferings of Buddhist thought — birth, old age, sickness, and death, Jia avoids showing many key moments in the lives of the characters, often leaving it up to the audience to uncover what has happened over the years and decades, which has a certain grace, although the ambiguous ending is more than a bit frustrating, even if it makes sense as a parable for China as a whole. But it’s all encapsulated in the briefest of kisses in a helicopter that will both brighten and break your heart. And keep an eye out for the guy with the Guangdong Broadsword. Mountains May Depart is screening at the New York Film Festival on September 28 at 6:00 and September 29 at 9:15, with Jia and Zhao in person to talk about the film. In addition, Jia will take part in a free HBO Directors Dialogue at the Howard Gilman Theater on September 29 at 6:00, and Walter Salles’s documentary, Jia Zhangke, a Guy from Fenyang, is being shown at the festival on September 30 and October 1.

NYFF53 MAIN SLATE: THE FORBIDDEN ROOM

Roy Dupuis plays a heroic woodsman in Guy Maddin and Evan Johnsons unpredictably strange and wonderful homage to early cinema, THE FORBIDDEN ROOM

Roy Dupuis plays a heroic woodsman in Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson’s unpredictably strange and wonderful homage to lost early cinema, THE FORBIDDEN ROOM

THE FORBIDDEN ROOM (Guy Maddin & Evan Johnson, 2015)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Monday, September 28, 9:00, and Tuesday, September 29, 8:30
Festival runs through October 11
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.org
theforbiddenroom-film.com

Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson’s The Forbidden Room is a deliriously mesmerizing epic tone poem, a crafty, complex avant-garde ode to cinema as memory, and memory as cinema. An homage to the lost films of the silent era, it is the illegitimate child of Bill Morrison and David Lynch, of Jack Smith and Kenneth Anger, of D. W. Griffith and Josef von Sternberg. The impossible-to-describe narrative jumps from genre to genre, from submarine thriller to Western adventure to murder yarn, from romantic melodrama and crime story to war movie and horror tale, complete with cannibals, vampires, poisoned leotards, “valcano” eruptions, caged lunatics, butt obsession, squid theft, explosive jelly, a fantastical mustache, and skeletal insurance defrauders. Intertitles that often fade away too soon to decipher help propel the plot, contain lines from John Ashbery and the Bible, and blast out such words as “Deliverer of Doom,” “Diablesa!” and “Trapped!” Text in intricate fonts announces each new character and actor, including Maddin regular Louis Negin as the Sacrifice Organizer, Slimane Dazi as shed-sleeper and pillow-hugger Baron Pappenheim, Lewis Furey as the Skull-Faced Man, and Roy Dupuis as a “mysterious woodsman” determined to rescue captured amnesiac Margot (Clara Furey) from the evil clutches of the Red Wolves. Also involved in the bizarre festivities are Udo Kier, Geraldine Chaplin, Mathieu Amalric, Charlotte Rampling, and Maria de Medeiros.

Although shot digitally, the film explores photographic emulsion and time-ravaged nitrate while treating celluloid as an art object unto itself, looking like Maddin (Tales from the Gimli Hospital, My Winnipeg) and Johnson stomped on, burned, tore up, and put back together the nonexistent physical filmstrip. Thus, major kudos are also due Maddin’s longtime editor, John Gurdebeke, and music composers Galen Johnson, Jason Staczek, and Maddin himself for keeping it all moving forward so beautifully. The film was photographed by Benjamin Kasulke and Stéphanie Anne Weber Biron in alternating scenes of black-and-white, lurid, muted color, and sepia tones that offer constant surprises. The Forbidden Room might be about the magic of the movies, but it is also about myth and ritual, dreams and fantasy as it explores storytelling as psychodrama. Oh, and it’s also about taking baths, as Marv (Negin) so eagerly explains throughout the film. But most of all, The Forbidden Room is great fun, a truly unpredictable and original work of art that is a treat for cinephiles and moviegoers everywhere. The Forbidden Room is screening at the New York Film Festival on September 28 at 9:00 and September 29 at 8:30, with Maddin and Johnson in person at the Walter Reade Theater. In addition, their thirty-one-minute documentary short, Bring Me the Head of Tim Horton, a behind-the-scenes account of the making of Paul Gross’s Afghanistan war movie, Hyena Road, is being shown both days (12 noon – 6:00; 8:30 – 11:00) for free at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Amphitheater across the street.

THEATER & CINEMA: VA SAVOIR

Jeanne Balibar is extraordinary in Jacques Rivette masterpiece

CINÉSALON: VA SAVOIR (WHO KNOWS?) (Jacques Rivette, 2001)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, September 29, $14, 4:00 & 7:30 (later screening introduced by Mathieu Bauer)
Series continues through October 27
212-355-6100
www.fiaf.org

Jacques Rivette’s Va Savoir is a long, talky French movie about very beautiful, very complicated, sex-crazed men and women — and it just might be the master filmmaker’s crowning glory, a magnificent masterpiece that deserved its slot as the New York Film Festival’s opening night selection back in 2001. This erotically charged, very funny drama is set around a traveling theater company’s return to Paris to put on Pirandello’s As You Desire Me in the original Italian. Ugo (Sergio Castellitto), the director and costar of the play, is romantically involved with Camille (Jeanne Balibar), the lead actress, who visits her former lover Pierre (Jacques Bonnaffé), a philosopher with a thing for Heidegger, who is now living with Sonia (Marianne Basler), a dance instructor who is being chased by Arthur (Bruno Todeschini), a ne’er-do-well whose half sister, Do (Hélène de Fougerolles), has taken a liking to Ugo and offers to help him find an unpublished ghost play by Carlo Goldini, which her mother (Catherine Rouvel) just might have. Every minute of this film is pure magic, and at the center of it all is the fantastique Camille, an instinctual, graceful actress whom everyone — men and women — fall in love with, played by the fantastique, instinctual, graceful Balibar, whom audiences will fall in love with as well. French film enthusiasts should watch for Claude Berri in a small role. Lovingly photographed by William Lubtchansky and edited by his wife, Nicole Lubtchansky, Va Savoir is screening at 4:00 and 7:30 on September 29 in FIAF’s CinéSalon series “Theater & Cinema”; the later show will be introduced by Mathieu Bauer. (FIAF is screening the 154-minute version, not the 220-minute director’s cut.) The Tuesday festival continues through October 27 with such other stage-related dramas as Olivier Assayas’s Clouds of Sils Maria, Arnaud Desplechin’s Esther Kahn, Abdellatif Kechiche’s Games of Love and Chance, and François Truffaut’s The Last Metro.