Dounia and the Princess of Aleppo is one of the highlights of NYICFF 2023
NYICFF 2023
Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, DCTV, Film Forum, Scandinavia House, SVA Theatre, Sag Harbor Cinema
March 3-12, $17-$20 nyicff.org
Entering its second quarter-century, the New York International Children’s Festival (NYICFF) spreads all over town March 3-19, with sixteen features and eight shorts programs, including many US, New York, and international premieres, being shown at Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, DCTV, Film Forum, Scandinavia House, SVA Theatre, and Sag Harbor Cinema. The opening night selection is Jean-Christophe Roger and Julien Chheng’s Ernest and Celestine: A Trip to Gibberitia, the sequel to the 2013 smash Ernest & Celestine, about a bear and a mouse; the screening will be followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers. Among the other features are Pierre Coré’s Belle and Sebastian: Next Generation (with Q&A), the continuing adventures of the beloved characters; Marya Zarif and André Kadi’s Dounia and the Princess of Aleppo (with Q&A), about a princess and some seeds; Keiichi Hara’s Lonely Castle in the Mirror, based on the YA novel by Tsujimura Mizuki; and Kajsa Næss’s Titina, a polar journey with an airship engineer and his dog, “more or less based on true events.”
Among the shorts programs are “Heebie Jeebies,” “Girls’ POV,” and “Celebrating Black Stories.” NYICFF was founded in 1997, “rooted in the belief of film as a path for young people to understand themselves and others. All programs are designed to celebrate the beauty and power of film, spark the inherent capacity of children to connect with complex, nuanced art, and encourage the creation of intelligent films that represent and celebrate unique, diverse, and historically excluded voices.”
Tracy Droz Tragos’s Plan C is the closing night selection of the thirteenth Athena Film Festival
ATHENA FILM FESTIVAL 2023
Barnard Campus
Broadway between 116th & 120th Sts.
March 2-5, $16 (Festival Pass $50) www.athenafilmfestival.com
Begun in 2011, the Athena Film Festival is “dedicated to celebrating and elevating women’s leadership. . . . showcasing women’s leadership from underexplored perspectives; women leading in all places and spaces who are resisting and refuting preconceived notions of all they can be and do. . . . bolstering the pipeline of women creatives who are telling these stories and fostering a network of women in film.” The thirteenth annual event, a collaboration between Barnard’s Women and Hollywood and the Athena Center for Leadership, runs March 2-5, consisting of forty features, documentaries, and shorts and six panel discussions. The opening night film is Chinonye Chukwu’s Till, the story of Mamie Till Mobley’s fight for justice following the lynching of her son, fourteen-year-old Emmett Till. The centerpiece is Davina Pardo and Leah Wolchok’s Judy Blume Forever, honoring the legendary author, and the closing night selection is the New York premiere of Tracy Droz Tragos’s Plan C, about the abortion pill in the wake of the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Highlights in between include Madison Thomas’s Buffy Sainte-Marie: Carry It On, Sarah Polley’s Oscar-nominated Women Talking, Stephen Frears’s The Lost King starring Sally Hawkins and Steve Coogan, Valerie Kontakos’s Queen of the Deuce, Brydie O’Connor’s Love, Barbara about experimental filmmaker Barbara Hammer, and Destiny Macon’s Talk Black. The free panel discussion “Leadership from Below the Line” looks at women and nonbinary film production technicians; among the postscreening panels are “Andrea Dworkin: Ongoing Evolutions of Feminist Herstory,” “Policing Women’s Bodies,” and “Youth Activism, Climate Change, and Environmental Action.”
As I wrote in my preview of the inaugural festival in 2011, “More than a century after women started making movies, it seems a shame that we still need a festival that separates the girls from the boys to celebrate and foster women in film. But alas, we do.” And alas, despite some inroads, that is still true today.
Ukrainian Institute commemoration event on February 24 features art, film, dance, lectures, panel discussions, and more
Who: Sofika Zielyk, Olia Rondiak, Kathy Nalywajko, Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, Evelyn Farkas, Marcy Kaptur, Adrian Karatnycky, Urmas Reinsalu, Taisa Markus, Denys Drozdyuk, Antonina Skobina, more What:Ukrainian Institute commemoration event Where:The Ukrainian Institute, 2 East Seventy-Ninth St. at Fifth Ave. When: Friday, February 24, free, 12:00 – 6:00 pm Why: On February 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, starting a war that has resulted in the deaths of more than forty thousand people in addition to more than fifty-five thousand wounded, at least fifteen thousand missing, and some fourteen million displaced. Russian president Vladimir Putin’s plan was to “demilitarize and denazify” Ukraine, but he never expected to be in a real battle twelve months later. The Ukrainian Institute will commemorate a year that has proved the strength, valor, and courage of Ukraine, under the leadership of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, with “Unbreakable Spirit: Commemorating One Year of Ukraine’s Resilience & Resistance,” an afternoon of free programming on February 24 that includes art exhibitions, film screenings, panel discussions, dance, and special remarks. On the first floor will be “Window on Ukraine,” “The Pysanka: A Symbol of Hope” with curator and ethnographer Sofika Zielyk and more than five hundred eggs, and a Ukrainian bookstore.
The second floor features a concert hall and Chandelier Room where contemporary Ukrainian paintings will be on display as part of the Kozytskiy Charity Foundation’s “We and the World” initiative, short films and documentaries will be shown from noon to 4:00, and conversations with experts will be held. On the third floor will be a healing space with handmade motanky sculptures with artist Olia Rondiak and a “Lives Cut Short” print and video tribute to fallen artists, curated by Ukrainian dancers Denys Drozdyuk and Antonina Skobina, with live presentations from 4:00 to 6:00. There will also be remarks and conversations with Ukrainian Institute president Kathy Nalywajko, Ukrainian MP Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, American national security advisor Evelyn Farkas, Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, Eurasia Center senior fellow Adrian Karatnycky, Estonian minster of foreign affairs Urmas Reinsalu, White & Case partner Taisa Markus, Ukrainian female former POWs, and others. Slava Ukraini!
Robin Wright gets scanned for Hollywood posterity in The Congress
THE CONGRESS (Ari Folman,, 2013) + WORLD OF TOMORROW (Don Hertzfeldt, 2015)
Museum of the Moving Image, Redstone Theater
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Friday, February 24, $9-$15, 7:00 movingimage.us
The Museum of the Moving Image’s ongoing “Science on Screen” series continues February 24 with an intriguing pair of films that offer unique insight into what might be next. The evening begins with the first episode of Don Hertzfeldt’s seventeen-minute Oscar-nominated animated short World of Tomorrow, a series that began in 2015 and deals with cloning, time travel, digital consciousness, and immortality, featuring stick figures amid bold colors; young Emily is voiced by Hertzfeld’s four-year-old niece, Winona Mae, whose dialogue was recorded while she was playing. “We mustn’t linger,” future Emily (Julia Pott) tells younger Emily. “It is easy to get lost in memories.”
World of Tomorrow is followed by writer-director Ari Folman’s underrated 2013 live action/animated hybrid, The Congress, in which Folman imagines a sad but visually dazzling future. Inspired by Stanislaw Lem’s 1971 short novel The Futurological Congress, the film focuses on Robin Wright as a fictionalized version of herself, an idealistic actress about to turn forty-five who has let her career come second to raising her two children, daughter Sarah (Sami Gayle) and, primarily, son Aaron (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who is slowly losing the ability to see and hear. Wright’s longtime agent, Al (Harvey Keitel), has a last-chance opportunity for her: Jeff Green (Danny Huston), the head of Miramount, wants to scan her body and emotions so the studio can manipulate her digital likeness into any role while keeping her ageless. They don’t want the modern-day Robin Wright but the young, beautiful star of The Princess Bride,State of Grace, and Forrest Gump. The only catch is that in exchange for a substantial lump-sum payment, the real Wright will never be allowed to act again, in any capacity. With no other options, she reluctantly takes the deal. Twenty years later, invited to speak at the Futurological Congress, she enters a whole new realm, a fully animated world where men, women, and children live out their entertainment fantasies. Shocked by what she is experiencing, Wright meets up with Dylan Truliner (Jon Hamm), who has been animating her digital version for years, as a revolution threatens; meanwhile, Green has another offer for her, even more frightening than the first.
Robin Wright enters the animated, hallucinogenic fantasy world of the future in The Congress
The Congress is a stunning examination of America’s obsession with celebrity culture and pharmaceutical release amid continuing technological advancements in which avatars can replace real people and computers can do all the work. The animated scenes, consisting of sixty thousand drawings made in eight countries, are mind-blowing, referencing the history of cartoons, from early Max Fleischer gems through Warner Bros. classics as well as nods to Disney, Pixar, Who’s Afraid of Roger Rabbit, and even Richard Linklater’s rotoscoped Waking Life; Folman also pays homage, directly and indirectly, to James Cameron and Stanley Kubrick. (The central part of the cartoon scenes were actually filmed live first, then animated based on the footage; be on the lookout for cameos by Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Frida Kahlo, and dozens of other familiar faces.)
Wright gives one of her best performances playing a modified version of herself, maintaining a calm, cool demeanor even as things threaten to completely break down around her. Paul Giamatti does a fine turn as her son’s concerned doctor, and Huston has a ball chewing the colorful scenery as the greedy, nasty studio head (as well as numerous other authority figures). The film also plays off itself in wonderful ways; the fictionalized Wright is at first against being scanned and used in science-fiction films, but the real Wright, of course, has agreed to be turned into a cartoon character in a science-fiction film. The story does get confusing in the second half, threatening to lose its thread as it goes all over the place, but Folman, whose previous film was the Oscar-nominated Waltz with Bashir, manages to bring it all together by the end, led by the stalwart Wright. Named Best European Animated Feature at the European Film Awards, The Congress is an eye-popping, soul-searching, hallucinogenic warning of what just might be awaiting all of us.
F. Murray Abraham will discuss his long career at National Arts Club virtual event (photo courtesy HBO)
Who: F. Murray Abraham, John F. Andrews What:Virtual conversation Where:The National Arts Club online When: Tuesday, February 21, free with RSVP, 6:00 Why: At the 2010 National Arts Club gala, the Shakespeare Guild honored actor F. Murray Abraham with its Gielgud Award for Excellence in the Dramatic Arts, calling the Pittsburgh-born, El Paso–raised Syrian American actor “one of the most versatile artists of our time.” Among those celebrating him were Tom Hulce, Jerry Stiller, Anne Meara, Oskar Eustis, and Michael Feingold.
Over a six-decade career onstage and small and big screen, Abraham has accumulated one Oscar, two Obies, one Grammy nod, three Emmy nominations, and other accolades with stellar performances in Amadeus,Homeland,The White Lotus,Uncle Vanya,The Grand Budapest Hotel, and so many more productions. On February 21 at 6:00, the eighty-three-year-old Abraham, who lost his wife of sixty years, Kate Hannan, this past November, will discuss his long, wide-ranging career, in conversation with Shakespeare Guild president John F. Andrews. The special National Arts Club virtual event is free with advance RSVP here.
Samantha Soule and Daniel Talbott’s Midday Black Midnight Blue kicks off New Ohio Theatre’s seventh and final NYCITFF
NYC INDIE THEATRE FILM FESTIVAL
New Ohio Theatre
154 Christopher St.
February 16-19 in person, February 20-26 streaming, passes $35-$50, individual screenings $14-$20 newohiotheatre.org
There will be a melancholy cloud hovering over New Ohio Theatre’s seventh NYC Indie Theatre Film Festival (NYCITFF); this iteration will be its last, as founding artistic director Robert Lyons announced earlier this week that the company will cease operations at the end of the current season after thirty years of presenting experimental and cutting-edge theater and film.
“The decision is the result of a confluence of factors, including my intention to step down as artistic director, the shifting landscape and dynamics of the field, and increased financial pressures on the organization,” Lyons wrote in a statement. “The board and I believe theater organizations have their own natural life spans, and felt the time was right for New Ohio to step aside and make space for the next generation of theater-makers and producers. We believe this is an important moment for new ideas, new energy, and new models for the indie theater scene.”
The final NYCITFF takes place February 16-19 at New Ohio’s longtime home on Christopher St., with encore streamings of all films February 20-26. The festival consists of six features, thirty-four shorts in four programs (“Non-traditional Storytelling,” “Dating Drama,” “Everything Changes,” “Friendship Bonds”), two workshops (“Infinite Space: Making Theater in Virtual Reality” with Jocelyn Kuritsky, Alex Basco Koch, and Meghan Finn, and “Staging Film: Tricks of the Trade, Merging Stage and Film” with Kevin Laibson), and a reception and a happy hour.
The opening night selection on February 16 at 8:00 is Samantha Soule and Daniel Talbott’s Midday Black Midnight Blue, a drama set on Whidbey Island where a man (Chris Stack) is haunted by a lost love (Soule); the cast includes two-time Emmy winner Merritt Wever (Nurse Jackie,Godless) and off-Broadway favorite Dale Soules (I Remember Mama,The Capables). In-person screenings conclude February 19 at 4:00 with Rat Queen Theatre Co and Colt Coeur’s The Goddamn Looney Tunes, a multimedia musical about a teen punk band.
Director Reid Farrington gives instructions to Rafael Jordan on set of Mendacity (photo by Miguel Aviles)
The work that perhaps best encompasses the intersection of film and theater is Mendacity, which uses real political protests as a way into exploring lies through a production of Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at the Connelly Theater, starring Lindsey Graham as Maggie the Cat (Adam Patterson), the United States of America as Brick (Rafael Jordan), AOC as SisterWoman (Jennifer McClinton), Tr*mp as Big Daddy (Kevin R. Free), and Jared Kushner as Big Mama (assistant director Laura K Nicoll). When Brick tells Maggie, “I can’t be trusted anymore,” it takes on multiple meanings. Married director and editor Reid Farrington and writer Sara Farrington have been melding film and theater for more than fifteen years, in such original and complex shows as The Passion Project (Carl Th. Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc), Gin & “It” (Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope), and CasablancaBox (Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca), so Mendacity is a natural next step for them. (In addition, Sara Farrington’s Untitled Ukraine Project was part of New Ohio’s “Now in Process” earlier this month.)
A bride and her bridesmaids are looking for trouble in fab Paul Feig comedy
BRIDESMAIDS (Paul Feig, 2011)
Alamo Drafthouse Downtown Brooklyn
445 Albee Square West
Monday, February 13, $22.36, 10:05 www.bridesmaidsmovie.com drafthouse.com
The bachelorette partying will jump right off the screen and into the audience at Alamo Drafthouse on February 13 when the Downtown Brooklyn venue hosts its next movie party with a screening of Paul Feig’s Bridesmaids. The interactive event, specially timed for Valentine’s Eve, features lemons, poo spray, bridal veils, special cocktails and shakes, and other goodies.
The film itself is not one of those lousy SNL one-note movies, nor is it a silly chick flick. As it turns out, Bridesmaids is one of the most consistently funny laugh-out-loud romps of this century. Directed by Freaks and Geeks creator Feig, Bridesmaids is an endlessly clever and insightful examination of love, loneliness, and friendship starring SNL’s Kristen Wiig, who cowrote the smart script with Groundlings member Annie Mumolo (who makes a cameo as a nervous flyer). Wiig shows impressive depth and range as Annie, a perennial screw-up whose closest childhood friend, Lillian (Maya Rudolph), is marrying into a very snooty upper-crust family. After agreeing to be Lillian’s maid of honor, Annie gets involved in a battle of wits with Lillian’s future sister-in-law, the elegant Helen (a radiant Rose Byrne), who is determined to outshine Annie in every way possible and steal Lillian away from her.
Already a mess — she had to close her bakery, she shares an apartment with a bizarre pair of British siblings, she works in a jewelry store where she drives away potential customers with her sorry tales of woe, and she allows herself to be treated miserably as a late-night booty call for a self-centered businessman (Jon Hamm) — Annie experiences a series of hilarious, pathetic setbacks as she attempts to organize the bridal shower and bachelorette party, including a riotous potty-humor scene in a high-end boutique that is likely to go down in comedy history for its sheer relentlessness.
The rest of the bridesmaids are quite a hoot — Becca (Ellie Kemper), the Disney-loving kewpie doll; Rita (Wendi McLendon-Covey), a foul-mouthed married mom who can’t wait to go crazy away from her family; and the groom’s burly sister, Megan (the hugely entertaining Melissa McCarthy, on the cusp of superstardom), who lives life without a filter. Annie is so caught up in her own failures that she doesn’t recognize when something potentially good enters her life, in the form of state trooper Nathan Rhodes (Chris O’Dowd). Wiig gives the finest performance of her career to that point as Annie. Despite the slapstick nature of many of the jokes, Bridesmaids is filled with heart and soul, making it one of the best comedies in years. Alamo’s Movie Party series continues February 25 with Elizabeth Banks’s Cocaine Bear, with an agility course, bear claws, gummy bears, and more (but none of that white stuff).
