Alexis Rockman will discuss his fantastical creations he made, such as the above watercolor, for Ang Lee’s LIFE OF PI in special Walls and Bridges program
The Drawing Center
35 Wooster St. between Grand & Broome Sts.
Thursday, October 17, free, 6:30
www.wallsandbridges.net
www.drawingcenter.org
When making his 2012 hit film Life of Pi, director Ang Lee turned to artist Alexis Rockman to create aquatic species for the central part of the narrative, which takes place on the open sea. Rockman’s watercolor drawings are now on view at the Drawing Center, which is the site for the special October 17 program “The Animal Vision,” part of the third annual Franco-American Walls and Bridges festival. New York native Rockman will discuss his hallucinatory work with Belgian philosopher and ethologist Vinciane Despret; the event will be hosted by Rice University English professor Cary Wolfe (Animal Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of Species, and Posthumanist Theory). Rockman’s “Drawings from Life of Pi” continues at the Drawing Center through November 3; in addition, Rockman’s “Rubicon,” consisting of such new paintings as the large-scale “Bronx Zoo” and “Gowanus,” which depict a heavily detailed, surreal animal world, are on view through November 2 at Sperone Westwater. The ten-day Walls and Bridges festival also includes the multimedia presentation “Unrest” October 18 at the Whitney, featuring the live performance “Meurtrière” by Philippe Grandrieux, a screening of Grandrieux’s film White Epilepsy, and a discussion with Grandrieux, Avital Ronell, and Lynne Tillman; “City Shapes,” in which French geographer Michel Lussault and American photographer Matthew Pillsbury discuss the changing urban environment, October 19 at the Aperture Gallery; and the Oh! Oui… company’s music and theater production Stille Nacht October 20 at the Invisible Dog Art Center.
The recent fiftieth-anniversary restoration of Jean-Luc Godard’s Nouvelle Vague classic, Breathless, which came out in 2010, will leave audiences, well, breathless. Godard’s first feature-length film, buoyed by an original treatment by François Truffaut and with Claude Chabrol serving as technical adviser, is as much about the cinema itself as it is about would-be small-time gangster Michel Poiccard (an iconic Jean-Paul Belmondo), an ultra-cool dude wandering from girl to girl in Paris, looking for extra helpings of sex and money and having trouble getting either. Along the way he steals a car and shoots a cop as if shooing away a fly before teaming up with Patricia Franchini (Jean Seberg) and heading out on the run. Godard references William Faulkner and Dashiell Hammett, Humphrey Bogart and Sam Fuller as Michel and Patricia make faces at each other, discuss death, and are chased by the police. Anarchy prevails, both in Belmondo’s character and the film as a whole, which can go off in any direction at any time. Godard himself shows up as the man who identifies Michel, and there are also cameos by New Wave directors Jean-Pierre Melville and Jacques Rivette. The beautiful restoration, supervised by the film’s director of photography, Raoul Coutard, also includes a new translation and subtitles that breathe new life into one of cinema’s greatest treasures. Breathless is screening in a 35mm print October 15 at 9:30 at the Walter Reade Theater as part of the expansive Film Society of Lincoln Center series “Jean-Luc Godard — The Spirit of the Forms,” which continues through October 31 with such other Godard works as British Sounds, Comment ça va, Détective, Every Man for Himself, First Name: Carmen, France/Tour/Detour/Deux enfants, and many more.
Korean Cultural Service continues its three-part tribute to South Korean auteur Park Cheol Soo, who died in a traffic accident earlier this year at the age of sixty-four, with the erotically charged The Green Chair. Shortly after being arrested for having sex with a minor, thirty-two-year-old Kim Mun-hee (Seo Jung) rejoins her barely underage lover, nineteen-year-old Hyun (Shim Ji-ho), as they continue their torrid affair, which led to Mun-hee’s divorce. Mun-hee is sentenced to one hundred hours of social service, working in a ward with women suffering from dementia. A concerned police detective (Sun Wook-hyun) and a sneaky journalist (Kim Jun-han) try to keep close tabs on the lovers, so Hyun and Mun-hee soon end up at the country home of her best friend, Jean (Oh Yun-hong), as things keep heating up, both sexually and emotionally. Park fills the first half of The Green Chair with beautiful shots of Mun-hee’s and Hyun’s naked bodies in artistic arrangements, almost like they are one. But in the second half, things get a bit more abstract, culminating in a bizarre, surreal party that incorporates some of the stranger elements of the French New Wave. The Green Chair ends up being a satisfying, if at times extremely confusing and even maddening, exploration of fantasy, desire, and responsibility, not shy in the least. The Green Chair is screening for free October 15 at Tribeca Cinemas as part of the Korean Movie Night series “Remembering Park Cheol Soo: A Korean Filmmaking Legend,” which began October 1 with Park’s 301, 302 and concludes October 29 with B.E.D.
The delightful documentary David Bromberg Unsung Treasure sings the well-deserved praises of a rather unusual character — a white, Jewish bluesman from ritzy Tarrytown, New York. For more than forty years, masterful guitarist and songwriter David Bromberg has been singing his entertaining brand of the blues and bluegrass, either solo, with his Big Band, or with the Angel Band. A consummate musician, engaging raconteur, and outstanding live performer, he trained with the Rev. Gary Davis before going on to play with such superstars as Bob Dylan, Jerry Garcia, George Harrison, Jerry Jeff Walker, and a litany of others. A big man with an ever-present beard, mustache, and glasses, Bromberg is an utterly charming figure, speaking honestly and openly about his life and career, often mentioning how deeply he was affected by the way he was raised and how that helped instill the blues in him. Beth Toni Kruvant (The Right to Be Wrong, Heart of Stone) traces his early years through wonderful archival footage and old photographs, then delves into his departure from playing music in the late 1980s and 1990s, when he and his wife, singer Nancy Josephson, moved to Wilmington, Delaware, where he established a well-respected 
