Terry Collingsworth will discuss the evils of the chocolate industry in special MOFAD event
Who: Terrence Collingsworth, Clay Gordon What:MOFAD discussion of the history of the chocolate industry and tasting Where:Chelsea Market Maker’s Studio, 75 Ninth Ave. between Fifteenth & Sixteenth Sts. When: Tuesday, November 8, $45 (including chocolate three bars and beverage), 6:00 Why: Every night before we go to bed, my wife and I have several pieces of dark chocolate. We’re hoping an upcoming discussion sponsored by the Museum of Food and Drink doesn’t change our ritual. On November 8 at 6:00, International Rights Advocates founder and executive director Terry Collingsworth and Discover Chocolate author and TheChocolateLife.com and chocophile.com founder Clay Gordon will be at the Chelsea Market Maker’s Studio for “Bittersweet: The Dark Side of the Chocolate Industry,” which examines labor issues and child trafficking in the production and distribution of chocolate. The event was originally scheduled to include journalist Simran Sethi, who wrote in a June 2021 article for The Counter, “Chocolate brought Americans sweet respite in 2020 — more than usual, according to recent research into pandemic purchasing. But the great irony in our chocolate indulgence is that it’s also a product borne out of great suffering.”
Collingsworth and Gordon will examine specific human rights cases and screen a clip from Miki Mistrati’s 2022 documentary The Chocolate War, which follows Collingsworth over a five-year court battle. The evening will conclude with a tasting of three bars from Missouri-based small-batch purveyors Askinosie Chocolate.
Alfredo Jaar explores healing, meditation, and death in Between the Heavens and Me
Who:Alfredo Jaar, Luis Pérez-Oramas What: Film premiere and discussion Where:MoMA, the Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2, 11 West Fifty-Third St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves. When: Monday, November 7, $8-$12, 7:00 Why: During the pandemic, Chilean artist, architect, activist, and filmmaker Alfredo Jaar made the thirteen-minute video Between the Heavens and Me, which he calls “an exercise in healing, a meditation on the immense curing power of music, a philosophical essay on death, and a futile response to a moment of infinite sadness.” In the film, Jaar, whose Black Lives Matter installation 06.01.2020 18.39 had its own gallery at the Whitney Biennial, explores news footage of a mass grave on Hart Island for victims of Covid-19. “My brain cannot comprehend what my eyes are seeing,” he says in voice-over while watching the scene on his laptop. The haunting score features music by Iranian composer Kayhan Kalhor and Greek composer Eleni Karaindrou. The New York theatrical premiere takes place on November 7 at 7:00 as part of MoMA’s “Modern Mondays” series and will be followed by a discussion with Jaar and curator and art historian Luis Pérez-Oramas, who will examine the 2020 film as well as other projects by Jaar, including the recent Red Pavilion and The Power of an Idea.
Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro wonderfully captures the joys and fears of being a child
MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO (TONARI NO TOTORO) (Hayao Miyazaki, 1988)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave. Film: Friday, November 4, $15, 7:00 Talk: Thursday, November 10, $20, 6:30 japansociety.org www.nausicaa.net
The Royal Shakespeare Company is currently presenting a live-action stage adaptation of Hayao Miyazaki’s beloved My Neighbor Totoro at the Barbican, where it is receiving glowing reviews. The show was written by Tom Morton-Smith and is directed by Phelim McDermott, with a score by longtime Miyazaki collaborator Joe Hisaishi and puppetry by Basil Twist. As part of its monthly anime series, Japan Society will be screening a 35mm print of the 1988 film on November 4 at 7:00, followed November 10 at 6:30 by a discussion with Twist (Symphonie Fantastique,Dogugaeshi) about the making of the show.
In many ways a precursor to Miyazaki’s masterpiece, Spirited Away, the magical multi-award-winning My Neighbor Totoro is a fantastical trip down the rabbit hole, a wondrous journey through the sheer glee and universal fears of childhood. With their mother, Yasuko, suffering from an extended illness in the hospital, Satsuki and her younger sister, Mei, move to a new house in a rural farming community with their father, anthropology professor Tatsuo Kusakabe. Kanta, a shy boy who lives nearby, tells them the house is haunted, and indeed the two girls come upon a flurry of black soot sprites scurrying about. Mei also soon discovers a family of totoros, supposedly fictional characters from her storybooks, living in the forest, protected by a giant camphor tree. When the girls fear their mother has taken a turn for the worse, Mei runs off on her own, and it is up to Satsuki to find her.
Basil Twist will be at Japan Society to share behind-the-scenes stories of the Totoro stage show
Working with art director Kazuo Oga, Miyazaki paints the film with rich, glorious skies and lush greenery, honoring the beauty and power of nature both visually as well as in the narrative. The scene in which Satsuki and Mei huddle with Totoro at a bus stop in a rainstorm is a treasure. (And just wait till you see Catbus’s glowing eyes.) The movie also celebrates the sense of freedom and adventure that comes with being a child, without helicopter parents and myriad rules suffocating them at home and school. Twist’s talk will go behind-the-scenes of the RSC production, discussing the creation of puppets based on animated characters and sharing backstage images.
Eyes of Laura Mars is part of fashionable Machine Dazzle film series at MAD
Who:Machine Dazzle What:Movie Night with Machine Where: The Theater at MAD, Museum of Arts & Design, 2 Columbus Circle at 58th St. & Eighth Ave. When: October 25 & 27, December 20, January 10, $10, 7:00 Why: Walking around the Museum of Arts and Design exhibition “Queer Maximalism x Machine Dazzle” is like wandering through a glorious movie set, with colorful costumes and artworks that tell one heckuva bizarre story; you fully expect the mannequins to suddenly come to life and enter this surreal world. The retrospective of the work of performance artist Machine Dazzle, on view through February 19, is supplemented with a film series hosted by the queer experimental theater genius, born Matthew Flower in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, in 1972, consisting of movies that influenced him as a child of the 1970s and ’80s. It kicked off October 13 with the epic Clash of the Titans and continues October 25 with Robert Wise’s underrated Star Trek: The Motion Picture (can’t wait to hear what Machine will have to say about the Federation uniforms!) and October 27 with Irvin Kershner’s tense neo-noir thriller Eyes of Laura Mars, about a glamorous fashion photographer who is being stalked by a serial killer; the cast includes Faye Dunaway, Tommy Lee Jones, Brad Dourif, René Auberjonois, and Raúl Juliá, and one scene takes place in Columbus Circle, where the museum moved in 2008.
Machine will be on hand to introduce the screening and participate in a discussion afterward; it should be too much fun listening to him talk about the costumes and scenery, and there will be giveaways, costume contests, custom-designed step-and-repeats, photoshoots, and other cool stuff. Be sure to come back December 20 for Robert Greenwald’s Xanadu, when we can all pay tribute to the late Olivia Newton-John and celebrate Machine’s fiftieth birthday, followed January 10 by Guy Hamilton’s Agatha Christie adaptation Evil Under the Sun, featuring Peter Ustinov as Detective Hercule Poirot and also starring Maggie Smith, Jane Birkin, James Mason, Roddy McDowall, and Diana Rigg. In addition, on November 8 from 9:00 am to 1:00 pm, the museum will host “Teacher Workshop: Activism and the Art of Machine Dazzle,” comprising a curator-led tour, an art workshop, and refreshments.
Members of the FLN hide from French paratroops in Gillo Pontecorvo’s neo-Realist classic The Battle of Algiers
THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966)
Aaron Davis Hall
160 Convent Ave.
Thursday, October 27, free with RSVP, 6:00
Series continues monthly through May 11 citycollegecenterforthearts.org
Curated by the great Dr. Jerry Carlson, longtime host of the television show City Cinematheque, City College’s free “Decolonizing Movies: Un-Tarzan Series” believes that “movies were never innocent in the colonial enterprise. Yet brave filmmakers continue to push back and create alternative decolonizing visions.” The series opened September 29 with Ousmane Sembène’s Black Girls and returns October 27 with a screening of Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers.
In Pontecorvo’s gripping neo-Realist war thriller, a reporter asks French paratroop commander Lt. Col. Mathieu (Jean Martin), who has been sent to the Casbah to derail the Algerian insurgency, about an article Jean-Paul Sartre had just written for a Paris paper. “Why are the Sartres always born on the other side?” Mathieu says. “Then you like Sartre?” the reporter responds. “No, but I like him even less as a foe,” Mathieu coolly answers. In 1961, French existentialist Sartre wrote in the preface to Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth, the seminal tome on colonialism and decolonialism, “In Algeria and Angola, Europeans are massacred at sight. It is the moment of the boomerang; it is the third phase of violence; it comes back on us, it strikes us, and we do not realize any more than we did the other times that it’s we that have launched it,” referring to European colonization. “There are those among [the oppressed creatures] who assert themselves by throwing themselves barehanded against the guns; these are their heroes. Others make men of themselves by murdering Europeans, and these are shot down; brigands or martyrs, their agony exalts the terrified masses. Yes, terrified; at this fresh stage, colonial aggression turns inward in a current of terror among the natives. By this I do not only mean the fear that they experience when faced with our inexhaustible means of repression but also that which their own fury produces in them. They are cornered between our guns pointed at them and those terrifying compulsions, those desires for murder which spring from the depth of their spirits and which they do not always recognize; for at first it is not their violence, it is ours, which turns back on itself and rends them; and the first action of these oppressed creatures is to bury deep down that hidden anger which their and our moralities condemn and which is however only the last refuge of their humanity. Read Fanon: you will learn how, in the period of their helplessness, their mad impulse to murder is the expression of the natives’ collective unconscious.” Sartre’s brutally honest depiction of colonialism serves as a perfect introduction to Pontecorvo’s film, made five years later and then, unsurprisingly, banned in France. (In 1953, the Martinique-born Fanon, who fought for France in WWII, moved to Algeria, where he became a member of the National Liberation Front; French authorities expelled him from the country in 1957, but he kept working for the FLN and Algeria up to his death in 1961. For more on The Wretched of the Earth, see the documentary Concerning Violence: Nine Scenes from the Anti-Imperialistic Self-Defense.)
Terrorism and counterinsurgency take to the streets in Oscar-nominated THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS
In The Battle of Algiers, Pontecorvo (Kapò, Burn!) and screenwriter Franco Solinas follow a small group of FLN rebels, focusing on the young, unpredictable Ali la Pointe (Brahim Haggiag) and the more calm and experienced commander, El-hadi Jafar (Saadi Yacef, playing a character based on himself; the story was also inspired by his book Souvenirs de la Bataille d’Alger). Told in flashback, the film takes viewers from 1954 to 1957 as Mathieu hunts down the FLN leaders while the revolutionaries stage strikes, bomb public places, and assassinate French police. Shot in a black-and-white cinema-vérité style on location by Marcello Gatti — Pontecorvo primarily was a documentarian — The Battle of Algiers is a tense, powerful work that plays out like a thrilling procedural, touching on themes that are still relevant fifty years later, including torture, cultural racism, media manipulation, terrorism, and counterterrorism. It seems so much like a documentary — the only professional actor in the cast is Martin — that it’s hardly shocking that the film has been used as a primer for the IRA, the Black Panthers, the Pentagon, and military and paramilitary organizations on both sides of the colonialism issue, although Pontecorvo is clearly on the side of the Algerian rebels. However, it does come as a surprise that the original conception was a melodrama starring Paul Newman as a Western journalist.
All these years later, The Battle of Algiers, which earned three Oscar nominations (for Best Foreign Language Film in 1967 and Best Director and Best Original Screenplay in 1969) and underwent a 4K restoration for its fiftieth anniversary, still has a torn-from-the-headlines urgency that makes it as potent as ever. “Decolonizing Movies: Un-Tarzan Series” continues November 12 with Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s The Last Supper, December 7 with Robert M. Young’s The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez, and January 26 with Lino Brocka’s Manila in the Claws of Light.
Who: Al Pacino What: Benefit screening and Q&A for the Actors Studio Where:United Palace Theatre, 4140 Broadway at 175th St. When: Thursday, October 27, $35-$1000, 7:00 Why: The Actors Studio is celebrating its seventy-fifth anniversary with a special event at United Palace Theatre on October 27 at 7:00, a screening of Sidney Lumet’s classic Brooklyn-set drama Dog Day Afternoon, followed by a conversation with the star of the film and current Actors Studio copresident, Al Pacino. “This incredible institution, founded by Elia Kazan, Cheryl Crawford, and Robert Lewis, followed by Lee Strasberg, has left an indelible mark on the world of film and theater,” the East Harlem-born Pacino said in a statement. “It’s where actors are given the freedom to take chances and explore their work and craft. Anyone can audition for the Actors Studio. I’m surprised more people don’t know that. Once an actor becomes a member of the Actors Studio, it doesn’t cost anything, it’s totally free, and membership is for life. It’s going to be a great night at the United Palace. I look forward to watching Dog Day Afternoon and engaging, live, with an audience of New Yorkers, some who will be seeing it for the first time and others who will be seeing it for the first time in years.”
The 1975 film, based on a true story, earned six Oscar nominations, including Pacino for Best Actor, and won one statuette, for Frank Pierson’s original screenplay. Pacino stars as Sonny Wortzik, who leads a bank robbery with his friends Sal (John Cazale) and Stevie (Gary Springer) for a very special reason; the cast also features Chris Sarandon, Carol Kane, Lance Henriksen, Judith Malina, Dominic Chianese, James Broderick, Penelope Allen, and Charles Durning. Tickets for the event range from $35 to $1000; the other copresidents of the Actors Studio, the home of Method acting, are Alec Baldwin and Ellen Burstyn. “There are actors all over the world [who] regardless of their circumstances, professional or personal, regardless of whatever difficulties they are facing, whatever problems or changes — there is one thing they can rely on and that is that eleven o’clock on Tuesday and Friday mornings come rain, shine, snow, or what have you there is a session in the Actors Studio. And the fact that actors can count on that, that they know that that exists, can help them get through,” longtime studio artistic director Strasberg, who played Hyman Roth in The Godfather II opposite Pacino’s Michael Corleone, explained once upon a time.
Dustin (Jeremiah Garcia), Mike (Jeffrey Laughrun), and Lucas (Jamir Brown) prepare for battle in Stranger Sings! The Parody Musical (photo by Evan Zimmerman_MurphyMade)
STRANGER SINGS! THE PARODY MUSICAL
Playhouse 46 at St. Luke’s
308 West Forty-Sixth St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Thursday – Tuesday through August 13, $39-$111 www.strangersingsthemusical.com playhouse46.org
Fans of Stranger Things — and I am proudly one of them — can’t get enough of the Netflix series, an engrossing horror story that premiered in 2015 and will present its fifth and final season in 2024. In addition to books, comics, video games, and podcasts, there is also Stranger Things: The Experience, an immersive presentation that has traveled to New York, San Francisco, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and London, and Stranger Sings! The Parody Musical, which has returned to Manhattan, continuing at Playhouse 46 at St. Luke’s through August 13.
Stranger Things takes place in the mid-1980s in the small, close-knit all-American town of Hawkins, Indiana. “We wanna welcome you to Hawkins / Where everything is a total cliché! / We’re just like folks from classic films and TV shows / It’s nostalgic and you love us that way! / We live a safe, simple life here in Hawkins / Our government says there’s nothing to fear! / Expect nothing but the everyday normal / Cuz stranger things have never happened here,” the cast announces at the beginning.
Nerdy twelve-year-olds Lucas Sinclair (Jamir Brown), Dustin Henderson (Jeremiah Garcia), and Mike Wheeler (Jeffrey Laughrun) stop their Dungeons & Dragons game to help find the missing Will Byers, a shy young boy who has disappeared. Will’s mother, Joyce (usually played by Caroline Huerta but I saw the vibrant Hannah Clarke Levine; the actor portraying Joyce also operates Will, a small puppet), is distraught and determined to locate her son, with or without the support of the local sheriff, Jim Hopper (Shawn W. Smith), who has his own scars when it comes to family. Also involved are Will’s older brother, Jonathan (Garrett Poladian), an oddball aspiring photographer; the oh-so-cool and handsome Steve Harrington (Poladian), who has the hots for Nancy Wheeler (Harley Seger), Mike’s adorable older sister; and Barb Holland (SLee), Nancy’s best friend and perpetual third wheel.
Joyce Byers (Caroline Huerta) is determined to find her son in playful parody (photo by Evan Zimmerman_MurphyMade)
Strange things start occurring following the mysterious appearance of Eleven (Seger), a young girl with scary powers. “She looks like an escaped mental patient,” Dustin says. He’s not that far off; Eleven, whose real name is Jane, has run away from a government-run testing facility where she was under the care of Dr. Brenner (Poladian), known as Papa. “I always wanted a dad / Who never would make me cry / One who’d tell me, ‘Kid, I’m so proud of you,’ / Instead of ‘Stay in your cell til July,’” she sings. Throughout the show, Dr. Brenner and two men in white lab coats keep trying to track down Eleven and bring her back to the facility, supposedly for her own safety.
Oh, there’s also a murderous demogorgon hanging around, an evil creature in tight spandex that has emerged from the Upside Down, a creepy hell where Will and Barb have been taken.
You don’t have to be a big fan of Stranger Things to get a kick out of the parody musical, but it does help, as it is filled with inside jokes and aural and visual references to the show as well as the 1980s themselves. Audience members, a few of whom arrive dressed like some of the characters, sit on all four sides of the central staging area, which is surrounded by tree branches, as if the Upside Down is ever-present (the set is by Walt Spangler), and dozens of props (courtesy Brendan McCann) that are used in the show, from a 1980s telephone and bicycle handlebars to gynormous walkie-talkies and a boombox. There are also four beanbag chairs for audience members who want occasional interaction with the performers.
Barb Holland (SLee) stands up for herself and lets everyone know it in Stranger Sings! (photo by Evan Zimmerman_MurphyMade)
Jonathan Hogue wrote the book, music, and lyrics, which are lots of fun, with arrangements and orchestrations by Michael Kaish and playfully goofy choreography by Ashley Marinelli. The production, which features such musical numbers as “Hopper Triggered,” “Getting Closer,” and “Where There’s a Will,” is too long at 110 minutes with intermission, but director Nick Flatto keeps it all from descending into chaos; the creepy lighting and sound are by Jamie Roderick and Germán Martínez, respectively, and Matthew Solomon’s costumes immediately identify who is who. (You can come in your own costume October 21-31 and qualify for audience-voted prizes each night.)
The engaging cast captures the essence of the series, the feeling of constant impending doom along with the promise that comes with adolescence as the residents of Hawkins explore who they are and who they might be. Levine is terrific as Joyce, although a scene about Winona Ryder, who plays the mother on the show, although funny, jars you out of the narrative. Smith is fab as the brave, heroic sheriff, and Poladian is a hoot switching between the heartthrob Harrington and the weird Jonathan. Eleven is relegated to a relatively small role in the parody and, curiously, Dr. Brenner, played by a composed and careful Matthew Modine on Netflix, is portrayed here as a bumbling idiot.
Stranger Sings! does seek to right a terrible wrong from the streaming series in resurrecting Barb, who is mostly forgotten after a pool party; she doesn’t even make the cut in the nineteen-character cast list on Wikipedia. But the parody gives her several star turns, complete with well-deserved grudges. When Jonathan asks, “I’m confused . . . who is that?” Barb replies, “That’s right. Who IS that? Could that be poor Barb Holland, the throw-away plot device who not one person thought to look for??” SLee brings down the house a few times, but there ends up being too much of Barb; I wanted more Eleven. And for fans of Max, as I am, the show primarily stays within the first season, with some Easter eggs of what is to come.
