this week in film and television

TICKET ALERT: BUGS BUNNY AT THE SYMPHONY II

Twenty-fifth anniversary show (photo © 2012 by George Daugherty)

Who: New York Philharmonic, conductor George Daugherty, and special guest Whoopi Goldberg (May 15-16)
What: Bugs Bunny at the Symphony II
Where: Avery Fisher Hall, 10 Lincoln Center Plaza, Broadway between West 62nd & West 65th Sts.
When: May 14-16, $55–$145, 7:30 (plus 2:00 matinee on May 16)
Why: Tickets are going fast for the twenty-fifth anniversary of “Bugs Bunny at the Symphony,” in which the New York Philharmonic plays live scores to classic Warner Bros. cartoons projected behind the orchestra on a big screen. Among the Looney Tunes favorites, all featuring classical music, of course, are What’s Opera, Doc?, Rabbit of Seville, A Corny Concerto, and Rhapsody Rabbit. We learned everything we know about classical music from two sources, Merrie Melodies and Stanley Kubrick films, so we were thrilled when we saw “Bugs Bunny on Broadway” back in 1990, and now we’re even more thrilled that it’s coming back our way for four shows at Avery Fisher Hall May 14-16.

ART OFF THE WALL — CHITRA GANESH: EYES OF TIME

Chitra Ganesh, “Eyes of Time,” detail, mixed-media wall mural, 2015 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Brooklyn Museum
Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Herstory Gallery, fourth floor
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Thursday, March 26, free with museum admission, 6:00-9:30
Exhibition continues through July 12
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org
www.chitraganesh.com
eyes of time online slideshow

In her exceptional new site-specific installation, “Eyes of Time,” in the Brooklyn Museum’s Herstory Gallery, multimedia artist Chitra Ganesh investigates female divinity, multiplicity, and power, inspired by the goddess Kali, one of the women honored with a place setting in Judy Chicago’s seminal work “The Dinner Party,” the centerpiece of the museum’s Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, home to the Herstory Gallery. Ganesh, a lifelong Brooklynite, supplements her wall sculpture with selections from the museum’s collection, comprising contemporary works by Kiki Smith, Shoichi Ida, and Barbara Jones-Hogu as well as a small seventeenth-century Indian bronze of a standing Kali and an ancient Egyptian bronze of a seated Sekhmet. “In mythic tales both Sekhmet and Kali are connected to blood, death, destruction, and protection, and to fierce animals such as lions and tigers,” Ganesh writes in a wall label. “These qualities contrast with characteristics typically idealized in women today and point to the formidable roles played by the ancient goddesses.” About Louise Bourgeois’s 1996 drypoint, “Eyes,” Ganesh adds, “The third eye, as seen on Kali, has often been associated with supernatural powers in Indian mythology and continues to appear in contemporary imagery. The act of gazing into numerous eyes might also recall the practice of darshan, a dialectical and spiritual way of looking that considers the object as both image and living being, providing an experience of seeing that informs South Asian culture.”

Those explanations also offer just the right way to approach “Eyes of Time,” a sprawling mural of three women that covers one wall of the gallery. At the left is a contemporary figure holding a jagged, starlike piece of the universe over one eye while the other eye looks directly at the viewer. In the middle is a figure based on Kali, the goddess of time, change, and destruction, who has six arms, three legs, three breasts, and a skirt of severed arms of different colors. Words emerge from her long hair, including “quicksand,” “rainbows,” and “knowing.” One hand has an eyeball in its palm, one holds a whip, while another wields a blood-dripping scythe with an eye on it. Instead of a head, on her neck is the Grand Central clock, without its hands. And on the right is a science-fiction woman made out of such machine parts as gears and speakers laid out in a kind of architectural rendering. All three women, representing the past, the present, and the future, have shiny jewels embedded into their being, while two rows of decorated flags hang above them. In some ways, it’s like the three figures have escaped from Ganesh’s comic book Tales of Amnesia, which is also on view, giving three-dimensional life to these superhero characters. “These narrative devices allude to the power of multiple forms of femininity that coexist within the same frame and, at times, within a single being, as well as to darker aspects of Kali,” Ganesh writes about her 2002 book. On March 26, the Brooklyn Museum’s next edition of “Art Off the Wall” will celebrate “Eyes of Time” with an evening of special activities, consisting of an artist and curator talk with Ganesh and Saisha Grayson, a zine library inspired by Tales of Amnesia, screenings of three of Ganesh’s short films (Rabbithole; What Remains; My dreams, my works must wait till after hell…), a movement workshop with Ajna Dance Company, and a Bhangra dance party with DJ Rekha.

STRANGER THAN FICTION: THE MUSES OF ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER

Documentary delves into Isaac Bashevis Singer’s love of women and their work as his translators

THE MUSES OF BASHEVIS SINGER (Asaf Galay & Shaul Betser, 2014)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Tuesday, March 24, 8:00
212-924-7771
www.stfdocs.com
www.the-muses-of-bashevis-singer.com

Who ever thought that little old Yiddish mensch Isaac Bashevis Singer was such a horndog? Asaf Galay and Shaul Betser begin The Muses of Bashevis Singer, their light and playful documentary, with the following quote from the Nobel Prize-winning author: “In my younger days I used to dream about a harem full of women. Lately I’m dreaming of a harem full of translators. If those translators could be women in addition, this would be paradise on earth.” Well, it seems that Singer, who was born in Poland in 1902, emigrated to the United States in 1935, and died in Florida in 1991 at the age of eighty-eight, found that paradise, as Galay and Betser meet with a series of women who were among many hand-picked by Singer, the man who nearly singlehandedly preserved Yiddish literature in the twentieth century, to serve as his translators, and not necessarily because of their language skills. “There were certain women who were more than just translators to him. It happened quite often,” says his Swedish publisher, Dorothea Bromberg, who also talks about Alma, Singer’s wife of more than fifty years. “He loved her, I’m sure, in his own way,” she adds. “She was very jealous of him, and she was completely right.” Galay and Betser meet with translators Eve Fridman, Evelyn Torton Beck, Dvorah Telushkin, Marie-Pierre Bay, Duba Leibell, and Dr. Bilha Rubenstein as well as Singer biographers Florence Noiville and Janet Hadda, his granddaughters Hazel Karr and Merav Chen-Zamir, Yentl the Yeshiva Boy playwright Leah Napolin, and his longtime secretary and proofreader, Doba Gerber, who share intimate, surprising tales about the author of such books as The Family Moskat, The Magician of Lublin, Shosha, and Enemies, a Love Story and such short stories as “Gimpel the Fool,” “A Friend of Kafka,” and “Zlateh the Goat.”

The seventy-two-minute film, lifted by a bouncy, airy soundtrack by Jonathan Bar-Giora, also includes footage of Singer making speeches, appearing on interview programs, going to a Jewish deli, walking on the Coney Island boardwalk, and writing with pen on paper and on a typewriter with Yiddish characters. But as the title implies, The Muses of Bashevis Singer doesn’t depict him as a callow cad but as a determined writer — and father and husband — who just loved women, loved being surrounded by women, using them as inspiration for his marvelous stories that mixed fiction with reality. “Isaac was a very frisky old man,” says Leibell, who worked with Singer in his later years after he moved to Florida with Alma. “That’s to put it very mildly.” The Muses of Bashevis Singer concludes the IFC Center’s winter Stranger than Fiction series on March 24 and will be followed by a Q&A with the director.

ALBERT MAYSLES TRIBUTE AND MAYSLES DOCUMENTARY CENTER OPEN HOUSE

The life and career of Albert Maysles will be celebrated on March 22 at the Maysles Documentary Center

Maysles Documentary Center
343 Lenox Ave./Malcolm X Blvd. between 127th & 128th Sts.
Sunday, March 22, free with advance registration, 11:00 am – 11:00 pm
maysles.org

In the 1960s and ’70s, Albert Maysles, his brother, David, and Charlotte Zwerin changed the face of documentary filmmaking and cinéma vérité with such genre-redefining works as What’s Happening! The Beatles in the USA, Salesman, Gimme Shelter, and Grey Gardens, breaking down the fourth wall as they photographed their subjects. “As a documentarian I happily place my fate and faith in reality,” Albert explained. “It is my caretaker, the provider of subjects, themes, experiences — all endowed with the power of truth and the romance of discovery. And the closer I adhere to reality the more honest and authentic my tales. After all, knowledge of the real world is exactly what we need to better understand and therefore possibly to love one another. It’s my way of making the world a better place.” David passed away in January 1987 at the age of fifty-five, Zwerin died in 2004 at seventy-two, and now Albert has left us, saying farewell on March 5 at the age of eighty-eight, having helped make the world a better place. Of course, his legacy lives on, in the works of so many other documentarians, from Errol Morris to Andrew Jarecki, as well as with the film center that bears his name, the Maysles Documentary Center in Harlem. On Sunday, March 22, the MDC will host an all-day tribute to its legendary founder with an open house, screenings, and special introductions; admission is free with advance registration. The celebration begins at 11:00 with the 1965 short Meet Marlon Brando, 1964’s What’s Happening! The Beatles in the USA, and a reception. Other programs include With Love from Truman and Salesman at 2:00, Ozawa and Muhammad and Larry at 5:00, and Running Fence, Cut Piece, Salvador Dali’s Fantastic Dream, and excerpts from Muhammad and Larry and Iris at 8:00. “Remember, as a documentarian you are an observer, an author but not a director, a discoverer, not a controller,” Maysles said in describing his craft. “Don’t worry that your presence with the camera will change things. Not if you’re confident you belong there and understand that in your favor is that of the two instincts, to disclose or to keep a secret, the stronger is to disclose.” He changed things indeed.

WIM WENDERS: PINA (IN 3-D)

PINA is a 3-D celebration of seminal choreographer Pina Bausch and Tanztheater Wuppertal

PINA: DANCE, DANCE, OTHERWISE WE ARE LOST (Wim Wenders, 2011)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Monday, March 16, 6:30, and Tuesday, March 17, 6:45
Series runs March 2-17
Tickets: $12, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk beginning at 9:30 am
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
www.pina-film.de

Back in 2004, in reviewing Pina Bausch’s Fur Die Kinder von Gesern, Heute und Morgen (For the Children of Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow) at BAM, we wrote, “You don’t have to be a dance fan to love the always engaging Pina Bausch.” The same holds true for Wim Wenders’s loving 3-D documentary, Pina. The longtime director of Tanztheater Wuppertal, German choreographer Bausch created uniquely entertaining pieces for more than thirty years, combining a playful visual language with a ribald sense of humor, cutting-edge staging, diverse music, and a stellar cast of men and women of varying ages and body sizes, resulting in a new kind of dance theater. A friend of hers for more than twenty years, Wenders (Wings of Desire, Paris, Texas) was collaborating with Bausch on a film when she suddenly died of cancer in 2009 at the age of sixty-eight, two days before rehearsal shooting was to begin. Wenders decided to proceed, making a film for Pina instead of with her. Using the latest 3-D technology, including a specially developed camera rig mounted on a crane, Wenders invites audiences onstage as he captures thrilling, intimate performances of several of Bausch’s seminal works, 1975’s Le Sacre du printemps, 1978’s Café Müller, 1978 and 2000’s Kontakthof (Contact Zone), 2002’s Fur Die Kinder, and 2006’s Vollmond (Full Moon), which were selected by Bausch and Wenders together.

Wim Wenders’s PINA takes to the streets of Wuppertal, Germany

The dancers seem to be more motivated than ever, reveling in Bausch’s building, repetitive vocabulary of movement and discussing how she inspired them with just a few words. As a bonus, Wenders includes footage of Bausch dancing Café Müller. Some members of the company also dance personal memories on the streets, in a factory, and aboard a monorail in and around Wuppertal. Pina is not a biopic; Wenders does not delve into Bausch’s personal life or have random talking heads discuss her contribution to the world. Instead, he focuses on how she used movement to celebrate humanity and get the most out of the men, women, and children who worked with her. In the September 2009 memorial ceremony held for Bausch at the Wuppertal Opera House, Wenders said, “I would like to ask all of you, finally, to cherish this treasure of Pina’s gaze. . . . appreciating that you knew Pina, that we all knew her gaze and were fortunate enough to experience such a priceless gift.” With Pina, which was nominated for a Best Documentary Oscar, Wenders has given us a beautiful gift, a wonderful tribute to his great friend. Pina is screening in 3-D on March 16 & 17 as the sixteen-day Wim Wenders retrospective concludes at MoMA; there is also still time to catch such other Wenders works as Alice in the Cities, Tokyo-Ga, The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, Buena Vista Social Club, and lesser-known shorts and early films.

SOCIALLY RELEVANT FILM FESTIVAL NY

Tribeca Cinemas, 54 Varick St., Maysles Cinema, 343 Malcolm X Blvd., the Quad, 34 West 13th St., the SVA Theatre, 333 West 23rd St., the Center for Remembering and Sharing, 123 Fourth Ave., and the CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Ave.
March 16-22, free – $15 (all access pass $200)
www.ratedsrfilms.org

Started last year by Nora Armani as a response to the violence in mainstream movies, both in the narrative as well as the style of filmmaking, the Socially Relevant Film Festival consists of fiction and nonfiction films from more than thirty countries focusing on “human interest stories that raise awareness to social problems and might offer positive solutions through the powerful medium of cinema.” The festival, running at Tribeca Cinemas, Maysles Cinema, the CUNY Graduate Center, the SVA Theatre, the Center for Remembering and Sharing, and the Quad, opens March 16 with a free screening (advance RSVP recommended) of Hϋseyin Karabey’s Come to My Voice, in which a young Kurdish girl, with her grandmother, has to find a gun to free her imprisoned father. Other programs include Michael Buckley’s Plundering Tibet with Giordano Cossu’s Umudugudu! Rwanda 20 Years On; Justin Thomas’s Truth Through a Lens, about the evolution of onetime Brooklyn street kid Dennis Flores; Matthias Leupold’s Lighter than Orange, which looks at the human cost of the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam; and Kaouther Ben Hania’s mockumentary Challat of Tunis, about the vicious slashing of eleven women in 2003. Most screenings will be followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers and other guests. There will also be panel discussions on distribution, storytelling, casting, and, closing the festival, “Next: An Open Dialogue on the Potential of Art as a Revolutionary Tool,” with Jessica Vale and Cherrell Brown, moderated by Adam Kritzer.

HAGIGAH IVRIT

Who: Assaf Gavron, Shira Averbuch, Yuval Hamevulbal, Roy Noy, Tal Mosseri, the Power Girls (Tuti and Naama), Rabbi Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, Mesiba Ivrit, Reuven (Ruby) Namdar, and more
What: Hagigah Ivrit (חגיגה עברית)
Where: JCC in Manhattan, B’nai Jeshurun, Israeli-American Council (IAC), Symphony Space, the Highline Ballroom, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Park Avenue Synagogue, Yeshiva University Museum, and other locations
When: March 14-30
Why: The first-ever North American cultural festival celebrating the Hebrew language features a book talk with Assaf Gavron, author of The Hilltop; an interactive educational performance of Peter and the Wolf; the Festifun2 musical production with Israeli child stars; a talk by Rabbi Eliezer Ben-Yehuda on “The Importance of the Hebrew Tongue to the Rebirth of the People in Their Land — and the Continued Existence of Judaism in the Future”; a dance party with live music; Hebrew classes for beginners; Shabbat dinner; a Passover family workshop; a conversation with Sapir Prize for Literature winner Ruby Namdar; a screening of Sharon Maymon and Tal Granit’s The Farewell Party; and other special and ongoing events.