this week in film and television

CINEMA AT MAD: REMEMBER FILM?

Work It Kitty is part of Internet Cat Video Festival at Museum of Arts & Design (photo courtesy Walker Art Center)

Museum of Arts & Design
2 Columbus Circle at 58th St. & Eighth Ave.
Friday nights through October 30, free but tickets required, 7:00
800-838-3006
madmuseum.org

The Museum of Arts & Design follows up its intense eight-week Andrei Tarkovsky retrospective with something a little less demanding. Running on Friday nights through October 30, the free “Remember Film?” series kicks off with “I Don’t Want My Pizza Burning: Comedy Came from the Internet,” comprising more than three dozen comic clips from the Web, and continues with such other unique programs as back-to-school episodes of Art Thoughtz with critic extraordinaire Hennessy Youngman; the 2015 Internet Cat Video Festival, a collection of crazy feline shorts that originated at the Walker Art Center; Phil Solomon’s In Memoriam trilogy, made from Grand Theft Auto footage; Sophie Fiennes’s 2006 The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, in which Slavoj Žižek takes a unique look at the history of the movies; Star Wars Uncut: Director’s Cut, consisting of a shot-by-shot re-creation of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope made by more than 1,500 people from around the world; 99%: The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film, a documentary of the grass-roots movement featuring such folks as Matt Taibbi, Naomi Wolf, and Boots Riley; and “Early Works of Ryan Trecartin,” which are just that, early videos made by the popular artist, primarily when he was still an undergraduate. The series was prompted by Fujifilm Global’s 2012 announcement that it was no longer producing motion picture film stock and the bankruptcy of Eastman Kodak, two major signals that digital video was defeating film, making everyone with a camera or cell phone a director.

WELCOME TO LEITH

Documentary looks at issues of hate and free speech in rural North Dakota town

WELCOME TO LEITH (Michael Beach Nichols & Christopher K. Walker, 2015)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at Third St.
Opens Wednesday, September 9
212-924-7771
www.welcometoleithfilm.com
www.ifccenter.com

In 2012, white supremacist leader Craig Cobb began buying up plots of land in Leith, North Dakota, a rural community of twenty-four people in the middle of nowhere, with the intention of taking over the local government and spreading his message of hate. Michael Beach Nichols and Christopher K. Walker document the ensuing battle between the interlopers and the town residents in Welcome to Leith, which opens September 9 at the IFC Center. Inspired by an August 2013 New York Times article about Cobb and Leith, director, producer, and cinematographer Nichols and director, producer, and editor Walker headed to North Dakota, where people on both sides of the escalating controversy gave them remarkable access. As Cobb — and instigator, inciter, manipulator, and provocateur — his right-hand man, Kynan Dutton, Vanguard News Network operator Alex Linder, White Aryan Resistance founder Tom Metzger, Jeff Schoep of the National Socialist Movement, and members of other hate groups support what they believe is essentially a legal coup, Mayor Ryan Schock, Sheriff Steve Bay, photographer Gregory Bruce, Southern Poverty Law Center journalist Ryan Lenz, prosecutor Todd Schwarz, and the citizens of Leith examine their options to fight Cobb, who has brought fear and the concrete threat of potential violence to the small, peaceful community, reminiscent of what a group of neo-Nazis did in Skokie in 1977-78. Nichols and Walker, who previously collaborated on Flex Is Kings, incorporate archival footage, town meetings, courtroom scenes, new interviews, and scary video shot by Dutton’s girlfriend, Deborah Henderson, to create a frightening look at race-baiting, the First and Second Amendments, the U.S. legal system, and, most of all, the rising issue of hate in modern-day America. The film plays out like an edge-of-your-seat thriller, but it’s all too real. Leith might seem a long way away geographically, but it’s a lot closer than you might think.

THE LEGACY OF PARAGRAPH 175: DIFFERENT FROM THE OTHERS

The devastating effects of Germany’s Paragraph 175 endangers the relationship between Paul Körner (Conrad Veidt) and Kurt Sivers (Fritz Schulz)

DIFFERENT FROM THE OTHERS (ANDERS ALS DIE ANDERN) (Richard Oswald, 1919)
Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust
Edmond J. Safra Plaza, 36 Battery Pl.
Thursday, September 10, $12, 7:00
646-437-4202
www.mjhnyc.org

In 1871, Germany adopted Paragraph 175, an antihomosexual provision in the criminal code that called for the imprisonment of any “male who commits lewd and lascivious acts with another male or permits himself to be so abused for lewd and lascivious acts.” For decades, it led to blackmail, suffering, and often suicide for German homosexuals. In 1919, Austrian writer-director Richard Oswald (Tales of Hoffman, The Picture of Dorian Gray) teamed with noted sexologist Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld (The Homosexuality of Men and Women, Sex in Human Relationships) to make Different from the Others, one of the first films to treat the subject of homosexuality with sympathy and compassion. Conrad Veidt (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Casablanca) stars as Paul Körner, a violin virtuoso who falls for his young student, Kurt Sivers (Fritz Schulz), while Kurt’s sister, Else (Anita Berber), falls for Paul. But when the conniving Franz Bollek (Reinhold Schünzel) sees the two men together, he blackmails Paul, who struggles against ever-growing odds. Written by Oswald and Hirschfeld, who also plays the doctor in the story, the film explores the social and psychological impact of homosexuality and gender identity with care and intelligence, which was among the reasons why the movie was banned in Germany; copies of it were later burned by the Nazis, and today it exists only in a partial fifty-minute version to which text has been added to fill in the destroyed footage. In 2012, flutist and composer Yael Acher Modiano performed an original live score accompanying the film at the Spectacle theater in Brooklyn, and she’ll be at the Museum of Jewish Heritage on September 10 for an encore performance, held in conjunction with the exhibition “Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals 1933-1945” and the related film series “The Legacy of Paragraph 175,” which concludes September 30 with a free fifteenth-anniversary screening of the 2000 documentary Paragraph 175, preceded by a discussion with Dr. Dagmar Herzog.

WORD, ROCK, AND SWORD V: A FESTIVAL EXPLORATION OF WOMEN’S LIVES

Toshi Reagon (l.) and friends will come together for fifth annual festival

Toshi Reagon, Nona Hendryx, and friends will come together for fifth annual festival exploring women’s lives

Multiple venues
September 13-20, free – $25
www.wordrocksword.com

“Word, Rock & Sword” might describe itself as “a festival exploration of women’s lives,” but it also makes clear that “All are welcome” to these eight days of live music, panel discussions, film screenings, yoga, workshops, and other special events, many of which are free and require advance registration because of very limited space. The festival was started by singer-songwriter and activist Toshi Reagon, who explained in a statement, “We struggle in a political climate that still tolerates and actively encourages systemic discrimination against women — from the workplace to the doctor’s office. We witness congressional attacks on funding for Planned Parenthood; the harassment and murder of abortion providers; the denial of access to affordable health care; the constant vulnerability of women and girls to violence and sexual abuse; the daily struggle of women to hold families together in our ailing economy. We will come together to share our gifts and focus our intentions for the twenty-first century.” The fifth annual festival begins September 13 with an Opening Service in a private home with song, poetry, art, storytelling, and silent meditation and continues with such other programs as the discussion “Beyond the Hashtag: Using Art and Technology to Combat the Criminalization of Our Communities,” presented by the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice and the Ford Foundation; “Babies!” with Amy Matthews, which examines the learning experiences of newborns and toddlers; the multisensory anatomy lesson “Sound, Movement, and Mapping Our Bodies” with Matthews and Lydia Mann; Imani Uzuri’s healing creative-expression workshop “Water from the Well”; and “A Musical Celebration of Women’s Lives Year 5” ($20-$25), a concert at (le) poisson rouge with Nona Hendryx, Joan as Police Woman, Martha Redbone, Tamar-kali, SassyBlack, Gina Breedlove, and many more, produced and directed by Reagon and hosted by Karen Williams.

ONE NITE ONLY / THE DEUCE: BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA

Warren Oates gets the starring role he always deserved in Sam Peckinpah’s dark, surreal tequila Western, BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA

BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA (Sam Peckinpah, 1974)
Nitehawk Cinema
136 Metropolitan Ave. between Berry St. & Wythe Ave.
Thursday, September 10, 9:30
718-384-3980
www.nitehawkcinema.com

Predictably, one of my freshman-year film classes featured weekly screenings of such all-time classics as Citizen Kane, The Godfather, and The Searchers. But when the professor assigned topics for our two papers that semester, he chose a pair of works he considered underrated, overlooked masterpieces. One was Nicholas Ray’s Bigger Than Life, in which James Mason plays a teacher overcome by a prescription drug addiction. The other was Sam Peckinpah’s Mexican cult favorite, the awesomely titled Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, which Williamsburg’s Nitehawk Cinema is presenting September 10 as part of its ongoing “One Nite Only” and “The Deuce” series. Befitting this crazy film, the evening promises prizes and surprises, a beer-infused after-party, and music by DJ Bones. Following his bitter experience with MGM over Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, California native Peckinpah headed south to shoot a very strange tequila Western about an American loser making one last stab for love and wealth. Longtime sideman Warren Oates, who had previously appeared in Peckinpah’s Ride the High Country, Major Dundee, and The Wild Bunch, gets one of his only lead roles as Bennie, a down-on-his-luck former army officer now running a third-rate Mexico City bar and playing “Guantanamera” over and over again on the piano for tips. He is approached by a pair of dapper gentlemen, Sappensly (Robert Webber) and Quill (Gig Young), who need his help in locating a man named Alfredo Garcia, offering Bennie ten grand. What Bennie doesn’t know is that there is a one-million-dollar bounty on Garcia’s head put out by El Jefe (Emilio Fernandez), a warlord whose daughter, Theresa (Janine Maldonado), was knocked up by Garcia, a noted ladies’ man. As it turns out, Bennie’s girlfriend, a prostitute named Elita (Isela Vega), knows exactly where Garcia, a lover of hers as well, is buried, the recent victim of a fatal car accident. The film then turns into a violent and lurid road movie as Bennie and Elita encounter some extremely shady characters, including a couple of biker rapists (Kris Kristofferson and Donnie Fritts), a pair of locals also after Alfredo’s noggin, and Garcia’s family. All Bennie wants is to make some fast cash so he can take Elita away from all of this abject madness, but it’s not going to be nearly as easy as he expected, and a whole lot bloodier.

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is an absolutely unforgettable film, featuring an absolutely unforgettable performance by Oates (Two-Lane Blacktop, Stripes), who is spectacularly seedy as Bennie, whether professing his love for Elita, trying to act suave in front of professional hit men, removing crabs from his genitals, or talking nonsense to a disembodied cranium. At one moment he is ever-so-cool, while the next he is a sweaty, pathetic derelict who just can’t catch a break. But you can’t help but love the poor schlemiel, even after he makes mistake after mistake. Garcia also has a decidedly feminist edge, depicting exceptional inner strength from Theresa and Elita. Peckinpah received total control over the film, with no studio people involved, and it shows, as he takes it places no suited executive would ever allow. “Hollywood no longer exists. It’s past history,” Peckinpah told Variety in October 1973 after having several films significantly cut and reedited by studios. “I’ve decided to stay in Mexico because I believe I can make my pictures with greater freedom here.” Peckinpah, who was battling the bottle at the time, also takes a shot at himself in the film when Bennie says, “You ought to be drunk in Fresno, California. This place is a palace.” The auteur, who made only fourteen feature films in his career — he got his start directing television series in the 1950s and ’60s, from Gunsmoke and The Rifleman to Zane Grey Theater and The Westerner — was born in Fresno in 1925; he died in Inglewood, California, in 1984 at the age of fifty-nine. Kentucky native Oates died in Los Angeles two years earlier at the age of fifty-three. But they each left behind quite a legacy, including this small gem, a bizarre, unusual, very dark and creepy Western that really, at its immense heart, is just a tender little tale of love and redemption.

INGRID BERGMAN AT BAM / THE INGRID BERGMAN TRIBUTE

BAM celebration of Ingrid Bergman centennial kicks off with theatrical presentation featuring Isabelle Rossellini and Jeremy Irons

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, BAMcinématek: BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Tribute: Saturday, September 12, $35-$85, 8:00
Film festival: September 13-29
718-636-4100
www.bam.org/theater
www.bam.org/film

Following hot on the heels of MoMA’s Centennial Celebration of Ingrid Bergman, honoring the one hundredth anniversary of the actress’s birth on August 29, BAM joins the party with two special programs. The festivities begin on September 12 with “The Ingrid Bergman Tribute,” a multimedia theatrical staging in the Howard Gilman Opera House created and written by Ludovica Damiani and Guido Torlonia in collaboration with Isabella Rossellini, one of Bergman’s three daughters. The presentation, directed by Torlonia (Handmade Cinema), will feature Rossellini and Jeremy Irons performing material based on interviews, unpublished letters, and Rossellini’s own memories and will also include home videos and unreleased film clips. Damiani has previously staged tributes to such cinema giants as Luchino Visconti and Federico Fellini. The one-night-only event will be followed by the film series “Ingrid Bergman at BAM,” a fourteen-movie, seventeen-day festival that includes some of the works shown at MoMA in addition to other classics and lesser-known fare. One of the greatest films ever made, Casablanca, starts things off on September 13; the festival also includes such gems as Anastasia, Notorious, Europa ’51, Gaslight, Spellbound, and Murder on the Orient Express as well as Gustaf Molander’s A Woman’s Face, Per Lindberg’s June Night, Vincente Minnelli’s A Matter of Time with Liza Minnelli and Charles Boyer, and Lewis Milestone’s Arch of Triumph with Boyer and Charles Laughton. Bergman, who was nominated for seven Oscars, winning three, while also capturing a Tony for Joan of Lorraine and two Emmys, for Startime and A Woman Called Golda, died of breast cancer on her sixty-seventh birthday in 1982.

THE BLACK PANTHERS: THE VANGUARD OF THE REVOLUTION

Documentary looks at the history and legacy of the Black Panther movement

THE BLACK PANTHERS: THE VANGUARD OF THE REVOLUTION (Stanley Nelson, 2015)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
September 2-15
212-727-8110
filmforum.org
theblackpanthers.com

At the beginning of The Black Panthers: The Vanguard of the Revolution, Black Panther Ericka Huggins says, “We know the party we were in, and not the entire thing. We were making history, and it wasn’t nice and clean.” Documentarian Stanley Nelson spent seven years making the revelatory film, which details the rise and fall of a group of radical militant African American men and women who decided to fight back against the white establishment and show that black lives matter, almost half a century ago, and no, it isn’t all nice and clean. Nelson (Freedom Riders, The Murder of Emmett Till) combines powerful, rarely seen archival footage with new interviews of the people who were involved in this revolution, which was more complicated than it is often given credit for. The film is sharply one-sided; although a handful of former police officers and FBI agents state their case, their views are given short shrift. “The Panthers were a criminal organization, were violent, and they wanted to kill cops. That’s all I needed to know,” says Ron McCarthy of the LAPD. But Nelson primarily speaks with many surviving members of the party, including Kathleen Cleaver, Elaine Brown, Emory Douglas, Elbert “Big Man” Howard, Jamal Joseph, Flores Forbes, in addition to historians and journalists who put it all in perspective.

Radical, militant organization fights for black rights as it attempts to stage a revolution

Radical militant organization takes on the establishment in the 1960s and ’70s

Nelson and editor Aljernon Tunsil (Jesse Owens, The Abolitionists) weave together a compelling, and surprising, portrait of the organization, delving into the stories behind such critical personalities as Huey P. Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, David Hilliard, Fred Hampton, and Bobby Seale. The film examines police raids, media coverage, FBI infiltration, trials, and the Panther infighting that ultimately led to their downfall. Perhaps the most frightening images in the film, however, involve the Panthers’ interaction with the police, particularly when coming out of a building with their hands up and their shirts off, trying to prove to the primarily white officers that they are unarmed so they don’t get shot in cold blood. It’s a vivid reminder of some of what’s still happening today around the country while serving as a fascinating companion piece to F. Gary Gray’s Straight Outta Compton; in fact, Nelson employs a potent, funky soundtrack by Tom Phillips along with period songs by Billy Paul, the Chi-Lites, Eugene Blacknell and the New Breed, and Fred Wesley & the J.B.’s. “It is essential to me as a filmmaker to try and give the viewer a sense of what it has meant to be black in America and consider this within our contemporary context,” Nelson explains in his director’s statement. “The legacy of the Black Panther Party had a lasting impact on the way black people think and see ourselves, and it is important that we look at and understand that.” The Black Panthers: The Vanguard of the Revolution does just that, shedding new light on a misunderstood, troubled, and dangerous organization whose legacy can still be felt today. Film Forum is hosting more than a dozen special panel discussions during the film’s run there (September 2-16), with several appearances by Nelson as well as such Black Panthers as Forbes, Joseph, Omar Barbour, Claudia Williams, and Charles “Cappy” Pinderhughes along with journalist Jamilah Lemiux, writer Rita Williams-Garcia, Panther attorney Gerald Lefcourt, and others.