this week in film and television

OSCAR BUZZ PRESENTS: LAST DAYS IN VIETNAM

Documentary looks at the mad rush to get out of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War (photo courtesy Bettmann/Corbis)

LAST DAYS IN VIETNAM (Rory Kennedy, 2014)
Maysles Cinema
343 Malcolm X Blvd. between 127th & 128th Sts.
Sunday, February 8, 7:30
Series runs February 7-18
212-582-6050
www.maysles.org/mdc
www.lastdaysinvietnam.com

To many, the fall of Saigon immediately brings to mind images of men, women, and children climbing the gate at the U.S. embassy, desperately trying to board American helicopters and escape the country as the North Vietnamese army approached. Director and producer Rory Kennedy takes viewers behind the scenes of that madness in the harrowing and revealing documentary Last Days in Vietnam. Kennedy, the youngest daughter of Bobby and Ethel Kennedy, and editor Don Kleszy have woven together remarkable footage from 1970s Vietnam as more than a dozen insiders share their compelling stories, which play out like a gripping thriller with a surprise, emotionally powerful ending. At the center of it all is the late U.S. ambassador Graham Martin, a stubborn patriot who continually refused to vacate the embassy until it was almost too late. U.S. Army captain Stuart Herrington gets personal as he talks about trying to help potential refugees. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and White House press secretary Ron Nessen discuss President Gerald Ford’s attempts to persuade Congress to fund a major evacuation. CIA analyst Frank Snepp and Special Forces advisor Richard Armitage delve into the military’s plans, while South Vietnamese Navy captain Kiem Do, South Vietnamese Army lieutenant Dam Pham, and Vietnamese student Binh Pho tell what it was like from their vantage points. USS Kirk chief engineer Hugh Doyle, USS Kirk captain Paul Jacobs, and Marine pilot Gerald Berry reveal stunning stories of bravery and daring during the evacuation on land and sea and in the air. If you think this is old news, you’re mistaken, as the film offers a whole new perspective on this seminal moment in the history of two nations — and it’s nearly impossible to watch it without thinking that something similar might occur in Iraq and Afghanistan soon. An American Experience production and nominated for an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, Last Days in Vietnam is screening February 8 at 7:30 as part of the Maysles Documentary Center series “Oscar Buzz Presents” and will be followed by a Q&A with Kennedy (Ethel, Ghosts of Abu Ghraib); the series includes such other Oscar-nominated and shortlisted films as Laura Poitras’s Citizenfour, Sam Cullman, Mark Becker, and Jennifer Grausman’s Art and Craft, and Al Hicks’s Keep on Keepin’ On.

ATHENA FILM FESTIVAL: WE ARE THE BEST!

Hedvig (Liv LeMoyne), Bobo (Mira Barkhammar), and Klara (Mira Grosin) form a punk band in WE ARE THE BEST!

WE ARE THE BEST! (VI ÄR BÄST) (Lukas Moodysson, 2013)
Lehman Auditorium, 202 Altschul Hall, Barnard Campus
Friday, February 6, $12, 9:00
Festival runs February 5-8
www.athenafilmfestival.com
www.magpictures.com

Thank goodness Lukas Moodysson changed his mind. After his 2009 film, Mammoth, and the death of his father, the Swedish director of such indie faves as Show Me Love, Together, and Lilya 4-ever was extremely depressed and considering quitting the movie business. But he was eventually inspired to make a happy film, and the result is the absolutely delightful We Are the Best! A liberal adaptation of his wife Coco’s semiautobiographical graphic novel Never Goodnight, the film, set in 1982 Sweden, follows the adventures of thirteen-year-old best friends Bobo (Mira Barkhammar) and Klara (Mira Grosin), a pair of outsiders who think they are rebellious punk rockers, making statements by running down the up escalator at the mall and writing an anti-sports song. Joined by fourteen-year-old Christian classical guitarist Hedvig (Liv LeMoyne), they form a punk band to rival middle school heavy metalers Iron Fist. Determined to show that punk is not dead, they futz with their hair, attempt to bond with a teen-boy punk trio, and try their darnedest to gel as a band, even though drummer Bobo and bassist Klara don’t really know how to play their instruments. All the adults in the film, primarily Klara’s parents (Lena Carlsson and David Dencik), Bobo’s mother (Anna Rydgren) and her strange friends, and the two youth recreation leaders (Matte Wiberg and Johan Liljemark, real-life members of the band Sabotage), are pretty goofy themselves, not exactly your prototypical role models, so silliness pervades in wonderfully funny ways.

Writer-director Moodysson celebrates the sheer joy and utter ridiculousness of childhood throughout We Are the Best!, never getting overly serious and allowing his three young stars to improvise, which makes their characters that much more honest and endearing, both in small moments and within the overall narrative, which concentrates on having fun. And indeed, We Are the Best! is nothing if not a whole lot of fun. We Are the Best! is screening February 6 at 9:00 at the Athena Film Festival, the annual “celebration of women and leadership” taking place February 5-8 at Barnard and Columbia between 116th & 120th Sts. and Broadway & Claremont Ave. The fifth edition of the festival includes such other films as Gillian Robespierre’s Obvious Child, Sam Feder’s Kate Bornstein Is a Queer & Pleasant Danger, Justin Simien’s Dear White People, Diana Whitten’s Vessel, and Gina Prince-Bythewood’s Beyond the Lights, master classes with Prince-Bythewood, Cathy Schulman, and Stephanie Laing, panel discussions on gender diversity, crowdfunding, and cinematography, a conversation with Twyla Tharp, and more. This year’s recipient of the Laura Ziskin Liftetime Achievement Award is Jodie Foster.

BLACK HISTORY MONTH: LIVING LEGACY

Carrie Hawks will discuss her upcoming documentary, BLACK ENUF, at the Brooklyn Museum’s free First Saturday program for Black History Month

FIRST SATURDAY
Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, February 7, free, 5:00 – 11:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The theme of this year’s annual Brooklyn Museum First Saturday celebration of Black History Month is “Living Legacy,” another eclectic, wide-ranging collection of music, dance, film, art, discussion, and more. The free evening will feature live performances by Chel Lo and Asante Amin’s multimedia “Soundtrack ’63,” Water Seed, and Bilal; screenings of Byron Hurt’s 2013 documentary Soul Food Junkies and Carrie Hawks’s doc-in-progress Black Enuf, both followed by talkbacks with the directors; a quilt-making workshop; a talk with artists Devin Kenny and Sondra Perry with Black Contemporary Art blog founder Kim Drew; a poetry reading and community forum hosted by Mahogany L. Browne, Jonterri Gadson, and Amanda Johnston of Black Poets Speak Out; and J. Ivy discussing his new memoir, Dear Father: Breaking the Cycle of Pain. In addition, you can check out such exhibitions as “Revolution! Works from the Black Arts Movement,” “Judith Scott — Bound and Unbound,” “Double Take: African Innovations,” and “Chitra Ganesh: Eyes of Time.”

CRONENBERG: A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE

Viggo Mortensen is determined to protect wife Maria Bello and their family in David Cronenberg’s A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE

WAVERLY MIDNIGHTS: A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE (David Cronenberg, 2005)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Friday, February 6, and Saturday, February 7, 12 midnight
Series runs through February 21
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
www.historyofviolence.com

Director David Cronenberg just might have made the best film of his career with the brilliant A History of Violence. Set to the marvelously tense music of Howard Shore — which threatens to explode at any moment — the film stars Viggo Mortensen as Tom Stall, a quiet, calm family man who runs a local diner in a small town in Indiana. Stall reluctantly becomes the town hero (and media darling) after a dangerous, bloody incident in his diner, which leads to the arrival of Carl Fogaty (the excellent Ed Harris), an East Coast mob kingpin who insists that Tom is actually Joey Cusack, a former Mafia goon who is in witness protection. As Fogaty and his men harass Tom and his family (wife Maria Bello and kids Ashton Holmes and Heidi Hayes), Stall desperately fights to protect his simple, happy life. William Hurt excels in a small role near the end of the film. A History of Violence is as suspenseful as they come, a simmering masterpiece that blows up the American dream. The film is loosely based on the graphic novel by John Wagner and Vince Locke, but as Cronenberg explained at the 2005 San Diego Comic-Con, he didn’t even know the book existed until the production was well under way, and Josh Olson’s outstanding screenplay ultimately veers far away from its source. A History of Violence is screening February 6 & 7 as part of the IFC Center’s Waverly Midnights “Cronenberg” series, which continues February 13-15 with Eastern Promises before concluding February 20-21 with Cosmopolis.

BALLET 422

Viewers are taken behind the scenes as Justin Peck creates a new work for New York City Ballet

BALLET 422 (Jody Lee Lipes, 2014)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Elinor Bunin Monroe Film Center, Francesca Beale Theater, 144 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave., 212-875-5600
Landmark Sunshine Cinema, 143 East Houston St. between First & Second Aves., 212-330-8182
Opens Friday, February 6 (special advance screening February 3 at 7:00 at BAMcinématek)
www.magpictures.com

In Ballet 422, Jody Lee Lipes takes viewers behind the scenes as twenty-five-year-old New York City Ballet dancer Justin Peck choreographs the 422nd original piece for the prestigious company, Paz de la Jolla. One of fifty dancers in the Corps de Ballet, which the film calls “the lowest rank” of NYCB, Peck was named by company head Peter Martins to be the New York Choreographic Institute’s first active choreographer-in-residence for the 2011-12 season, and he is the only current NYCB dancer to choreograph for the company. Documentarian and cinematographer Lipes (NY Export: Opus Jazz, Tiny Furniture) focuses on the fascinating collaboration that goes into creating a ballet. “As a former soloist with New York City Ballet, I had long dreamed about pulling back the veil on the making of a new ballet,” producer Ellen Bar explains on the film’s Hatchfund page, which has raised more than $55,000 for the project. “Even as a dancer who was often part of the choreographic process, I never saw the other artistic and technical elements develop until the very end. Wouldn’t it be amazing to invite audiences into a world they can never visit in person and to let them watch it unfold in real time?” Lipes does just that, showing Peck and ballet master Albert Evans working out specific moves with principal dancers Sterling Hyltin, Amar Ramasar, and Tiler Peck; costumers Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung discussing materials with the performers; Mark Stanley detailing the lighting design; and Peck meeting with conductor Andrews Sill, who reveals that the orchestra is not particularly fond of playing the ballet’s musical score, Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu’s “Sinfonietta la Jolla.”

Sterling Hytlin, Amar Ramasar, and Tiler Peck rehearse with Justin Peck on 422nd original piece for New York City Ballet

There are no talking heads in the film, no experts chiming in on the beauty and intricacy of ballet, no one pontificating on how unusual it is for such a young dancer to already be choreographing his fifth work for the company, following Year of the Rabbit, Tales of a Chinese Zodiac, In Creases, and Capricious Movements. No one stops and looks into the camera, sharing their fears, hopes, or dreams; Lipes doesn’t even identify who’s who, instead allowing the drama to play out sans editorial comment. A few times, the camera goes with Peck as he puts on his backpack and heads home to his unglamorous Queens apartment, and the surprise ending puts everything in fabulous perspective. You don’t have to love ballet or know anything about it to enjoy Ballet 422, an intimate, compelling inside look into the creative process, but don’t be surprised if you soon find yourself ordering tickets for an upcoming NYCB production — perhaps even Peck’s latest work for the company, a new interpretation of Aaron Copland’s Rodeo, which is having its premiere February 4 at the David H. Koch Theater. Ballet 422 opens February 6 at the Landmark Sunshine and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, where Lipes and Peck will participate in a Q&A following the 7:15 screening and will introduce the 9:35 show on February 6. In addition, the film is having a sneak peek February 3 at 7:00 as part of the BAMcinématek series “Two by Jody Lee Lipes,” followed by a Q&A with Lipes.

ECCENTRICS OF FRENCH COMEDY: YOYO

All the wealth in the world can’t make a lonely millionaire (Pierre Étaix) happy in YOYO

CINÉSALON: YOYO (Pierre Étaix, 1965)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, February 3, 4:00
Series continues Tuesdays through February 24
212-355-6100
www.fiaf.org

French auteur Pierre Étaix’s strange and beautiful films were long inaccessible, the subject of nearly two decades of legal wrangling, but on February 3 at 4:00, the French Institute Alliance Française will be presenting his 1965 bittersweet black-and-white slapstick charmer, Yoyo, as part of its January-February CinéSalon “Eccentrics of French Comedy” series, followed by a wine reception. (In April 2010, Étaix was finally able to once again bring his films to the public, his entire output restored and making their New York debut at a festival of all five features and three shorts at Film Forum in October 2012.) Étaix, who wrote Yoyo with master collaborator Jean-Claude Carrière, who also cowrote films by Luis Buñuel, Miloš Forman, Volker Schlöndorff, Andrzej Wajda, Nagisa Oshima, and Louis Malle and won an honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement in 2014, stars as a ridiculously wealthy but extremely bored man who lives alone in an ornately decorated, absurdly large chateau. It’s 1925, and he has servants for absolutely everything, as well as his own private band and flappers, but he pines for his lost love, Isolina (Claudine Auger). One day she arrives with a traveling circus, along with a young boy (Philippe Dionnet) who turns out to be his son. She at first rejects the multimillionaire, but when he loses it all on Black Tuesday, the three of them form their own traveling circus, with the boy ultimately turning into a popular clown named Yoyo (played as an adult by Étaix) and seeking to restore the chateau and his family.

French auteur Pierre Étaix takes clowning around very seriously in rediscovered classic

The first section of the film is a glorious homage to the silent film era and other cinematic comedians, with director and star Étaix evoking his mentor, Jacques Tati; Charlie Chaplin; Buster Keaton; and, later, Jerry Lewis, with whom he’d appear as Gustav the Great in Lewis’s never-to-be-seen Holocaust film The Day the Clown Died. Nouvelle Vague cinematographer Jean Boffety (An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge; Je t’aime, je t’aime) shoots Yoyo in a sharp, gorgeous black-and-white, composing breathtaking shots that boast a dazzling symmetry that must make Wes Anderson giddy with delight, while Étaix fills the film with ingenious sight gags that would make Ernie Kovacs proud (just wait till you see the supposed still-life painting), all anchored by Jean Paillaud’s memorable musical theme. But once the stock market crashes and talkies take over, dialogue enters the picture, and the camera is often off balance, the perfect symmetry a thing of the past. With Yoyo, Étaix, who had previously made Heureux Anniversaire and The Suitor and would go on to make The Great Love and En pleine forme, was influenced by the sudden, tragic death of his father, his love of the circus — he had already worked under the big tent, and he would leave films to become a clown in a traveling circus in the early 1970s — and his viewing of Fellini’s 8½ (look for the La Strada poster) resulting in a film that sometimes gets a little lost and too surreal, but he ultimately brings things back around as Yoyo grows into a star and the story travels through the arc of twentieth-century entertainment, from the silent era to talkies to television. It’s a real treat that Étaix’s work is undergoing this rediscovery; lovers of Michel Hazanavicius’s The Artist will particularly enjoy Yoyo. “Eccentrics of French Comedy” continues through February 24 with Riad Sattouf’s The French Kissers introduced by Jean-Philippe Tessé, Jacques Rozier’s Du côté d’Orouët introduced by Annie Bergen, Eric Rohmer’s The Tree, the Mayor and the Mediatheque introduced by Nicholas Elliott, and Luc Moullet’s The Land of Madness introduced by Pavol Liska.

ORSON WELLES 100: TOO MUCH JOHNSON — FILM & LIVE THEATER EVENT

Joseph Cotten stars in Orson Welles’s newly edited 1938 silent comedy, TOO MUCH JOHNSON, screening for the first time ever at Film Forum

Who: Orson Welles
What: Encore presentation of Too Much Johnson as part of “Orson Welles 100” series
Where: Film Forum, 209 West Houston St., 212-727-8110
When: Thursday, February 5, $25, 7:30
Why: In August 2013, the raw footage of Orson Welles’s first professional film, a deliriously entertaining 1938 silent comedy made in conjunction with the Mercury Theatre staging of William Gillette’s 1894 farce and starring Joseph Cotten, Virginia Nicolson, Arlene Francis, Mary Wickes, John Houseman, and Welles, was discovered in Italy, and it has now been edited by William Hohauser and is being screened for the first time ever at Film Forum; the February 2 show is sold out, so they’ve added a special encore presentation on February 5, with the film, as originally intended, serving as prologues to live theatrical readings by the Film Forum Players (Carl Wallnau, Yelena Shmulenson, Jacqueline Sydney, Bob Ader, Karen Sklaire, Ben Rauch, Jonathan Smith), directed by Allen Lewis Rickman and with live music by Steve Sterner (you can see the unedited footage here).