this week in film and television

TRUE CRIME: M

Hans Beckert (Peter Lorre) takes a good look at himself in Fritz Lang classic

M (Fritz Lang, 1931)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Wednesday, July 22, 10:00
Series continues through August 5
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

Fritz Lang’s first sound film, following such classic silent works as Metropolis and Die Nibelungen, is a masterpiece of precision, a crime thriller nonpareil in its examination of a serial killer, mob justice, and the psychological nature of good and evil. In M — Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder, Peter Lorre stars as Hans Beckert, a creepy young man who befriends children before abducting and murdering them. Even with a reward out for his capture, he can’t stop himself from taking yet more little girls, in broad daylight, and writing letters to the police and a local newspaper, practically daring them to catch him. As his spree continues, the local community grows more and more frightened and suspicious, and men and women start looking suspiciously at anyone who even so much as nods to a child on the streets, mass hysteria beckoning. As the police try to figure out a plan of action, the criminals band together and hire beggars to try to track down Beckert, since the larger police presence is negatively impacting their business. Eventually, Beckert, who has a fondness for whistling Edvard Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” is spotted with a child, leading to a series of scenes that are simply spectacular in the flow of their movement as the riveting denouement approaches.

In making M, Lang was inspired by real events involving multiple serial killers. Although the film in no way preaches, Lang, who cowrote the script with his then-wife, Thea von Harbou, considered M very much a message picture. On May 20, 1931, he wrote in the German newspaper Die Filmwoche, “If this film based on factual reports helps to point an admonishing and warning finger at the unknown, lurking threat, the chronic danger emanating from the constant presence among us of compulsively and criminally inclined individuals, forming, so to speak, a latent potential that may devour our lives in flames—and especially the lives of the most helpless among us—and if the film also helps, perhaps, even to avert this danger, then it will have served its highest purpose and drawn the logical conclusion from the quintessential facts assembled in it.” M feels eerily prescient and especially relevant today, when parents’ fear for the safety of their children has perhaps never been greater. Seeing adults waiting outside schools, praying for their kids to be out of harm’s way, is something that can now be witnessed across America day after day.

Hans Beckert (Peter Lorre) doesn’t like what he sees in M

Lorre (The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Maltese Falcon) is exceptional as Beckert, a baby-faced man who might not be quite as evil as everyone imagines. Lang and cinematographer Fritz Arno Wagner (Nosferatu, Diary of a Lost Girl) regularly show Beckert in shadow and in mirrors, as if there are two sides to this child killer. Lang uses no musical score, instead allowing natural sound, and very often pure silence, as Lang (Fury, Ministry of Fear) recognizes that he doesn’t need to overplay his hand. As depicted in the film, if there’s one thing that everyone can agree on, from cops and criminals to blind balloon sellers and mothers and fathers, it’s that there is nothing worse than a man who murders children. Yet Lang ultimately is able to extract some sympathy for Beckert, who makes a powerful plea near the end of the film. Watching M is a gripping, unforgettable experience, despite its terrifying subject matter.

M is screening July 22 at 10:00 as part of Film Forum’s “True Crime” series, which continues through August 5 with such other ripped-from-the-headlines favorites as Sidney Lumet’s Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon, Tadashi Imai’s Darkness at Noon, John McNaughton’s Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, and double features of Richard Fleischer’s The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing and Compulsion and William Friedkin’s The French Connection and The Brink’s Job.

MUSIC DRIVEN / ONE NITE ONLY: REVENGE OF THE MEKONS

Sally Timms and Jon Langford fight the curse of the Mekons in stirring documentary

REVENGE OF THE MEKONS (Joe Angio, 2013)
Nitehawk Cinema
136 Metropolitan Ave. between Berry St. & Wythe Ave.
Wednesday, July 22, $15, 9:45
718-384-3980
www.mekonsmovie.com
www.nitehawkcinema.com

Called “the most revolutionary group in the history of rock ‘n’ roll” by Lester Bangs, the Mekons have been making some of the best music on the planet for more than thirty-five years. But despite a rabid fan base and constant critical adoration, the band, which formed at the University of Leeds back in 1977, has never quite made the big time. Joe Angio captures the wild, DIY spirit of this unique music and art collective in the stirring documentary Revenge of the Mekons. Angio (How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company [and Enjoy It]) follows the self-deprecating band — the members of which are quick to joke about their lack of financial and popular success, especially when they’re onstage and learn from fans that an upcoming gig has been canceled — as they celebrate their thirtieth anniversary and record their most recent excellent album, Ancient and Modern. Angio talks with the current Mekons lineup, which includes cofounders Tom Greenhalgh and Jon Langford along with Susie Honeyman, Rico Bell, Lu Edmonds, Sarah Corina, Steve Goulding, and Sally Timms, as well as such former members as Kevin Lycett, Mark “Chalkie” White, Andy Corrigan, and Dick Taylor, as they recount the band’s rollicking history, beginning with its Leeds days as a socialist punk band battling over shows with Gang of Four through its mid-1980s transformation into alt-country folk rockers.

Mekons doc is one heckuva wild and crazy show

Mekons doc is one helluva wild and crazy ride, just like their long career

Angio mixes in amazing raw footage from the 1970s with more contemporary scenes as the Mekons, with their usual reckless abandon and utter joyfulness, play such songs as “Where Were You,” “The Hope and the Anchor,” “Ghosts of American Astronauts,” “Millionaire,” “Hello Cruel World,” “Hard to Be Human,” “Memphis, Egypt,” and “The Curse.” Sharing their love of all things Mekons are such wide-ranging pundits as Jonathan Franzen, Greil Marcus, Gang of Four’s Hugo Burnham and Andy Gill, Will Oldham, Greg Kot, Craig Finn, Luc Sante, Mary Harron, and performance artist Vito Acconci. Back in October 2011, we wrote that “a world that includes the Mekons is just a better place for everyone,” and that still holds true. So start by watching this wonderfully crazy documentary, about a group of crazy characters who have formed a crazy kind of family, then go out and pick up such seminal records as Fear and Whiskey, The Mekons Honky Tonkin’, So Good It Hurts, The Mekons Rock‘n’Roll, Natural, Ancient Modern, etc., and be sure to catch them live — the full band will be in town July 21 for a show at Bowery Ballroom, and there are still a few tickets left. However, their Mekonception performance at Jalopy on Thursday night, in which they will be recording their next record, is sold out. Revenge of the Mekons is screening July 22 as part of Nitehawk Cinema’s “One Nite Only” and “Music Driven” series, and Angio will be on hand for a Q&A with members of the band, so you have several chances to see just what you’ve been missing.

HIGH LINE ART: SUMMER 2015

New book looks at history of art and performance on the High Line

New book HIGH ART: PUBLIC ART ON THE HIGH LINE looks at history of art and performance on repurposed elevated railway

The High Line
Eleventh Ave. from 34th St. to Gansevoort St.
Open daily, free, 7:00 am – 11:00 pm
www.thehighline.org
a walk across the high line, summer 2015

The High Line itself is a glorious work of art. The transformation of the abandoned West Side elevated railway into a public park thirty feet aboveground, weaving from Thirty-Fourth St. and the West Side Highway to Gansevoort St. by near the entrance to the new Whitney, has led to what has deservedly become one of the city’s must-see, most picturesque locations, a place for plants and trees, food and drink, rest and relaxation, and site-specific public art. In her opening essay in the lovely book High Art: Public Art on the High Line (Skira Rizzoli, May 2015, $45), High Line Art curator and director Cecilia Alemani describes the values she has instilled in the art program: “a dedication to bringing important contemporary art to a wide and diverse audience; a desire to surprise viewers with artworks that utilize public channels of communication in new and challenging ways, prompting them to question the role and function of images in public space; and a conviction that artworks are first and foremost sites of encounter and exchange of opinions and experiences.” The full-color book details the history of art on the High Line, which continues to thrillingly achieve Alemani’s goals, from group shows and film screenings to live performances and participatory events — many of which have been covered here on twi-ny — from Sara Sze’s “Still Life with Landscape (Model for a Habitat)” and Stephen Vitiello’s “A Bell for Every Minute” to Trisha Brown Dance Company’s Roof Piece and Alison Knowles’s “Make a Salad.” The large-size paperback also includes a round-table discussion between Alemani and several other curators of public art that takes a fascinating view of how the discipline is changing and how the art is commissioned and perceived. “We want to bring museum-quality works to the High Line and to make them available to our visitors, free of charge,” Alemani tells fellow curators Nicholas Baume, Sara Reisman, Manon Slome, Nato Thompson, and moderator Renaud Proch. “As simple as it sounds, this is a vision that usually resonates with many supporters who share with us a belief in art not only as a form of civic responsibility but also as a basic right that should be equally available to anyone.”

Visitors are invited to contribute to Olafur Eliasson’s “collectivity project” on the High Line (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The current art on the High Line is representative of Alemani’s mission. Starting on the north side, Adrián Villar Rojas’s “The Evolution of God” (through July 31) comprises thirteen cement and clay blocks that have been slowly breaking apart and disintegrating since September 2014. Embedded at different levels in the blocks, which are just to the inside of the walking path, are such artifacts as sneakers, bones, and clothing, mimicking an architectural dig that is evolving; meanwhile, new growth is popping up in the blocks’ crevices, signaling life among death, like the High Line itself. “Panorama” (through March 2016) consists of works by a dozen artists that meld into and comment on the High Line’s natural and constructed environment. While “The Evolution of God” falls apart, Olafur Eliasson’s “The collectivity project” (through September 30) rises up, two tons of white Lego bricks that visitors are invited to play with, building imaginary cityscapes amid an area that is seeing actual heavy construction all around its perimeters. Gabriel Sierra’s “Untitled (All Branches Are Firewood)” summarizes the growth of the High Line both physically and in the popular aesthetic, comprising bright yellow measuring sticks that could be seen easily in May but have now been nearly completely overgrown by plants and trees. Kris Martin’s “Altar” turns Jan and Hubert van Eyck’s Ghent altarpiece “Adoration of the Mystic Lamb” into a celebration of New York City as a religion unto itself. Ryan Gander’s “To employ the mistress . . . It’s a French toff thing” is a classical-style bust of his wife’s body and upper torso that doubles as a water fountain in which visitors have to try to catch the water as it streams through the air. (Also watch out for Gander’s bronze wallet and cell phone that were left on a bench, as well as a sound piece, “Zooming Out / Toodaloo.”) Damián Ortega’s “Physical Graffiti” is a trio of tags made out of rebar that use the open air, instead of a city train or wall, as a canvas. Andro Wekua’s arched “Window” overlooking Chelsea Piers has now virtually disappeared behind rising plants. You should be able to find your building in Yutaka Sone’s dazzlingly intricate “Little Manhattan New York, New York,” carved in marble. The hardest piece to locate is Katrín Sigurðardóttir’s ecologically minded “Bouvetoya,” a white blob hanging underneath the High Line as you exit by the Whitney, reminiscent of all sorts of things, natural and unnatural, that grow on the undersides of New York structures.

Trisha Brown Dance Company’s “Roof Piece” has been a highlight of the High Line’s innovative performance art programming (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The High Line has also become home to exciting live performances. Last week, Francisca Benitez’s “As you lean on me and I lean on you, we move forward” combined sign language and improvisation in three chapters in three locations on three different nights. This week Aki Sasamoto’s Food Rental moves into the elevated park, taking place July 21-23 at 7:00 at the Rail Yards by the Thirtieth St. & Eleventh Ave. side. The Japan-born, New York City-based Sasamoto, whose theatrical installation “Strange Attractors” was presented at the 2010 Whitney Biennial, will be serving “micro performances and playful narrative demonstrations” from a specially built food cart, doling out unusual little plays with unexpected sets and props. Admission is free, and no RSVP is required. Afterward, you should check out the latest film screening at High Line Channel 14 in the Fourteenth St. Passage, “Before the GIF,” a series of old-style animation works by Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg (I’m a Wild Animal, I’m Saving This Egg for Later), Kota Ezawa (Take Off), Lauren Kelley (True Falsetto), Allison Schulnik (Eager), SUN Hun (Shock of Time, People’s Republic of Zoo), and Keiichi Tanaami (OH! YOKO!). In her High Art essay, “The Seriousness of Play: Performance on the High Line,” Adrienne Edwards writes, “Performance on the High Line is an aleatory collision of chance and unanticipated experiences that is the very pulse of the art form itself. Artists and audiences alike are immersed in the unknown possibilities of the bucolic park and its circumferential stages, which enable encounters in the realm of the swerve, which is to say that performance in this particular vector has a unique, more experimental valence, one in which the artists realize a space of the commons through fleeting structures of social choreography.” Yes, a walk across the High Line itself is like performance art, a social choreography unlike any other in this city filled with public art and social choreography.

SUMMER ON THE HUDSON PICTURE SHOW: THE GREAT GATSBY

Nick (Tobey Maguire), Jay (Leonardo DiCaprio), Daisy (Carey Mulligan), and Tom (Joel Edgerton) are caught up in matters of the heart in THE GREAT GATSBY

THE GREAT GATSBY (Baz Luhrmann, 2013)
Pier I, Riverside Park South at 70th St.
Wednesday, July 22, free, 8:00
www.thegreatgatsby.warnerbros.com
www.nycgovparks.org

Baz Luhrmann’s sumptuous version of The Great Gatsby is a dazzling reimagining of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel of old and new money and the American dream. The Australian director and his wife, costume and production designer extraordinaire Catherine Martin, have turned the classic tale into a lush spectacle without losing focus on the main story of life and love during the Roaring Twenties. Leonardo DiCaprio, who played the male lead in Lurhmann’s contemporary take on Romeo + Juliet, is superb as Jay Gatsby, the mystery man previously portrayed by Warner Baxter in 1926, Alan Ladd in 1949, Robert Redford in 1974, and Toby Stephens in 2000, adding a compelling level of vulnerability to the character. Gatsby has built a magnificent palace for himself on Long Island, hosting wild parties that he doesn’t care about; all he truly wants is Daisy (Carey Mulligan), a former love who has married successful businessman Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton) and lives in a mansion right across the bay. The villainous Tom is having an affair with the lower-class Myrtle Wilson (Isla Fisher), whose unaware husband, George (Jason Clarke), runs a gas station and garage in the Valley of Ashes. Although a loner, Gatsby befriends his neighbor, Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire), a young, innocent bond trader who rents a modest home at the base of Gatsby’s enormous estate and whose cousin just happens to be Daisy. As Carraway is sucked into this glamorous, debauched society, which also includes wild and elegant golf champion Jordan Baker (Elizabeth Debicki), he is forced to reexamine his own hopes and dreams as he tries to find his place in the world.

Baz Luhrmann throws one helluva party in his reimagining of THE GREAT GATSBY

Luhrmann and cowriter Craig Pearce have framed the tale by putting Carraway, the narrator of the book and film, in a sanitarium, where a doctor (Jack Thompson) convinces him that writing down what happened with Gatsby will help him overcome his alcoholism and depression; the device, which is not part of the novel, is based on Fitzgerald’s own time spent in a sanitarium. Luhrmann and Pearce, who did extensive research for the project, also include elements from Fitzgerald’s Trimalchio, the first draft of The Great Gatsby, which will certainly anger purists. Purists are also likely to be furious at the soundtrack, which features songs by Jay Z (one of the film’s producers), his wife, Beyoncé, André 3000, will.i.am, Lana Del Rey, Gotye, and the xx alongside Jazz Age re-creations by the Bryan Ferry Orchestra of Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love” and Roxy Music’s “Love Is the Drug.” But this is not your high school English teacher’s Gatsby; instead, it’s F. Scott Fitzgerald for the twenty-first century, not meant to be seen through the billboard spectacles of oculist Dr. T. J. Eckleburg but through 3-D glasses that invite viewers into the oh-so-fashionable goings-on in eye-popping ways. “Is all this made entirely from your own imagination?” Daisy asks Gatsby at one point. In this case, it’s made from the minds of two wildly inventive men, Luhrmann and Fitzgerald, who together throw one helluva party. Nominated for two Academy Awards (for costume and production design), The Great Gatsby is screening July 22 as part of the free Summer on the Hudson Picture Show series in Riverside Park, which continues Wednesday nights through August 12 with Beasts of the Southern Wild on July 29, Moonrise Kingdom on August 5, and Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax on August 12 before concluding with The Fantastic Mr. Fox on August 13.

TRAINWRECK

Amy Schumer tries to find some peace in TRAINWRECK

TRAINWRECK (Judd Apatow, 2015)
Opens Friday, July 17
www.trainwreckmovie.com

Amy Schumer’s meteoric rise continues with Trainwreck, and this semiautobiographical, raunchy romantic comedy should certainly not derail this New York native’s ascent. Schumer, who first broke through to national attention on Comedy Central’s roast of Charlie Sheen, then won a prestigious Peabody Award for her extremely clever and insightful cable series, Inside Amy Schumer, wrote and stars in Trainwreck, playing Amy, a magazine writer who prefers drinking and quick sex to cuddling and sleepovers. Once the deed is done, either she or the dude is gone, and she continues on with her supposedly happy life, which includes her sister, Kim (Brie Larson), who has had the gall to go all suburban mom and housewife on her; her philandering father, Gordon (Colin Quinn), a Mets fanatic who is suffering from MS; and her boss at S’Nuff, Dianna (an unrecognizable Tilda Swinton), a sassy Brit with no time for melodrama. Fortunately, through most of the film, director Judd Apatow eschews the melodrama as well, until he lets it all cave in with closing scenes that undo nearly everything that has been built up before. Thankfully, however, most of what happens before is as smart and funny as it is outrageous and perceptive. Amy is assigned a story on Dr. Aaron Conners (Bill Hader), a sports specialist whose best friend is LeBron James, who is a blast playing himself as a deeply sensitive, extremely cost-conscious man. Amy has to reevaluate her world view when she starts falling for Aaron, going against everything she believes in by dating a nice guy who just might really care about her.

Director Judd Apatow and costars Amy Schumer and Bill Hader laugh it up on the set of TRAINWRECK

The film starts unraveling once Aaron begins treating Amar’e Stoudemire, who is a Knick in the film but since has gone on to play for Dallas and then sign with Miami, and ends with a cringe-worthy scene in Madison Square Garden. However, by then Schumer has already won you over with her ribald appeal over the course of numerous hysterical vignettes that are not quite as surreal as those on her Comedy Central show but are just as perceptive and tongue-in-cheek, skewering everything in her path, from love and romance to sexism and misogyny, doing the kinds of things men usually do in such movies, including those written, directed, and/or produced by Apatow (The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, This Is 40). Professional wrestling champ John Cena nearly steals the show as Amy’s boyfriend who gets into an unforgettable argument with a guy (comic Keith Robinson) in a movie theater, an improvised scene that might make you choke on your popcorn. And King James rules with surprising chops when dishing lovelorn advice to Aaron. Many of the smaller roles are played by yet more comics; be on the lookout for Dave Attell, Vanessa Bayer, Jon Glaser, Tim Meadows, Jim Norton, and Bridget Everett, among others. Yes, that’s Method Man as Amy’s father’s caretaker, while ninety-nine-year-old Norman Lloyd, a veteran of Hitchcock, Welles, and St. Elsewhere, is her dad’s hospice pal, and the two people in the mock dogwalker movie are indeed Daniel Radcliffe and Marisa Tomei. But the stunt casting eventually gets burdensome, especially when Chris Evert, Matthew Broderick, and Marv Albert show up, as well as the Knicks City Dancers. It’s as if Schumer and Apatow didn’t have enough faith in their central story and had to fill it up with lots of silly fluff, which is a shame, because Schumer and Hader have a winning, infectious chemistry, and the film’s unfortunate plot turns ultimately undo much of what Schumer had accomplished as a woman in a man’s world, as writer and actor. But that shouldn’t slow down this express train of a talent.

IRRATIONAL MAN

Philosophy professor Abe Lucas (Joaquin Phoenix) becomes more than a mentor for student Jill Pollard (Emma Stone) in Woody Allen’s IRRATIONAL MAN

IRRATIONAL MAN (Woody Allen, 2015)
Opens Friday, July 17
sonyclassics.com/irrationalman

Woody Allen mines familiar territory in his forty-sixth film as director, the perhaps overly rational Irrational Man. You won’t have to look too hard to find elements of such earlier Allen flicks as Love and Death, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Match Point, and Manhattan, in addition to Richard Fleischer’s Compulsion and Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope and Strangers on a Train. There’s lots of philosophical discussion about the meaning of life, a potential affair between an older man and a younger woman, and an attempt to commit the perfect murder. And even though Irrational Man is not in the same league as any of its forebears, it still manages to have something intriguing to say on each of those subjects. Joaquin Phoenix stars as philosophy professor Abe Lucas, a drunken philanderer with a bad reputation who has lost his zeal for living. There’s much aflutter as he arrives at Braylin College (actually Salve Regina University in Rhode Island) to teach a summer session; fellow professor Rita Richards (Parker Posey) immediately throws herself at him, hoping he can take her away from her humdrum existence, while student Jill Pollard (Emma Stone) is more than intrigued by the dour, sour has-been. “You suffer from despair,” Jill says, to which Abe replies, “How comforting that would be.” But the prospect of pulling off the perfect murder, ridding the planet of someone who Lucas decides does not deserve to live, injects a passionate zest in the previously impotent professor as he does a one-eighty and suddenly embraces the life he had given up on.

Fellow professor Rita Richards (Parker Posey) has the hots for Abe Lucas (Joaquin Phoenix) in new Woody Allen film

The final film produced by Allen’s longtime collaborator Jack Rollins, who passed away last month at the age of one hundred, Irrational Man jumps too easily between extremes; it’s often all or nothing, with no nuance in the middle. Although none of the characters are instantly likable, you’ll end up rooting for them nonetheless as they get caught up in love and death, Dostoevsky and Kierkegaard. Irrational Man lacks the snappy witticisms of classic Allen, and it sounds different too; instead of well-known tunes from the Jazz Age and the Great American Songbook, Allen populates the film with the music of the Ramsey Lewis Trio, using “The ‘In’ Crowd” as its overly repetitive theme. Allen has never really been part of the “in crowd” — in Annie Hall, he memorably referenced the Groucho Marx line “I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member” — and Irrational Man will not do anything to change that. Despite solid performances, the film takes some twists and turns that are hard to swallow, and it struggles to get past a pervasive coldness. It has enough enjoyable moments to make it worth seeing, particularly for Allen completists/apologists — it’s unlikely to win him any new fans — but it also feels like Allen was already thinking about his next picture while still making this one. As he approaches eighty, he continues his pace of one movie per year, which he has maintained since 1982, but quantity rarely trumps quality. It’s been a long while since he’s had back-to-back triumphs, so perhaps it’s time for him to concentrate more on what he’s doing in the present rather than what’s coming next.

SOMETHING ELSE: A CELEBRATION OF ORNETTE COLEMAN ON FILM — ORNETTE: MADE IN AMERICA / CHAPPAQUA

Shirley Clarke’s portrait of free jazz legend Ornette Coleman is screening in Brooklyn in a beautiful 35mm restoration

ORNETTE: MADE IN AMERICA (Shirley Clarke, 1985) & CHAPPAQUA (Conrad Rooks, 1966)
Spectacle
124 South Third St. between Bedford Ave. & Berry St.
July 17-23, $5
212-924-7771
www.spectacletheater.com
www.milestonefilms.com

In September 1983, innovative saxophonist and Fort Worth, Texas, native Ornette Coleman received a key to the city of his hometown and then helped open the new Caravan of Dreams arts center by performing the world premiere of “Skies of America,” a specially commissioned work that teamed Coleman and his band, Prime Time, with the Fort Worth Symphony. Director Shirley Clarke uses this celebratory event as the central focus of her 1985 documentary, Ornette: Made in America, which was recently released in a beautiful new 35mm restoration overseen by Milestone Films as part of its continuing Project Shirley, which began with a dazzling new print of Clarke’s 1962 film about jazz and drugs, The Connection. In Ornette: Made in America, Clarke combines footage she shot of Coleman back in the 1960s for a never-completed film with new material that offers an inside look at Coleman and his relationship with his son, Denardo, a musical prodigy who has played drums with his father for decades, since he was a young boy. Clarke also includes staged scenes of young versions of Coleman wandering through his old neighborhood of Fort Worth, then turning to the camera to deliver determined stares, in addition to shots of a theater troupe dancing joyously down the street, Coleman performing through the years in San Francisco, New York City, and Nigeria, and interactions with such prominent figures as music critic Robert Palmer, artist Brion Gysin, writer William S. Burroughs, and architect Buckminster Fuller, who had a profound influence on Coleman’s unique free jazz sound. “As Buck says, you can’t see outside yourself, but we do have imagination,” Coleman explains inside a geodesic dome. “The expression of all individual imagination is what I call harmolodics, and each being’s imagination is their own unison, and there are as many unisons as there are stars in the sky.” Clarke puts the film together like one of Coleman’s free jazz compositions, filled with harmolodics, going from black-and-white to color and back again, cutting between interviews and live performances, moving from relaxing images to propulsive moments, and regularly bordering on the goofy, including talking heads in an animated television set, brief explanatory text in marquee scrolls, and shots of Coleman riding a spacecraft over the surface of the moon. Despite such silliness, Ornette: Made in America is a thrilling portrait of a national treasure, a one-of-a-kind musician who was still playing his unique brand of music into his eighties, right up until his death last month.

Brooklyn’s Spectacle Theater is paying tribute to Coleman with the special presentation “Something Else: A Celebration of Ornette Coleman on Film,” running July 17-22 and consisting of daily screenings of Ornette: Made in America along with Pierre Hébert’s 1968 fourteen-minute short, Population Explosion, with a score by Coleman, and Conrad Rooks’s 1966 forty-eight-minute cult film, Chappaqua, which was supposed to use Coleman’s specifically commissioned “Chappaqua Suite,” but Rooks decided to replace it because it was too good; however, Spectacle will be showing the film with Coleman’s original composition. In addition, a separate program will feature Andrew Lampert’s 2012 film, All Magic Sands/Chappaqua, which pairs Coleman’s “Chappaqua Suite” with footage from producer Al Gannaway’s never-completed religious adventure story.