this week in film and television

CICELY TYSON

Cicely Tyson won an Emmy for her masterful performance in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

CICELY TYSON
BAMfilm, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
February 4-10
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

In her bestselling 2021 memoir, Just as I Am (Harper, $28.99), actress and activist Cicely Tyson writes, “The era I grew up in both deepened my racial wound and soothed it with the healing balm of the arts. My childhood spanned the 1920s and 1930s, two of the most economically memorable and culturally rich decades in American history — a period when Negro literature, music and culture flourished. The Roaring ’20s rollicked joyously with jazz, decadence and illegal whiskey, while the thunderous market crash of 1929 rattled nerves throughout the ’30s. What these shifts meant to daily life, or whether they had any noticeable consequence at all, depended upon where you lived and how much you were able to earn, both of which were inextricably tied to the color of your skin.” She continues, “The United States has never been ‘one nation under God’ but several nations gazing up at him, dissimilar faces huddled beneath a single flag. In white America, the ’20s may have roared, but in my Black world — in what has been called the Other America — the decade also moaned. The fact that the Great Depression was given a name just meant that enough whites were now suffering alongside us to warrant an official title.”

Born in the Bronx in 1924 and raised in Harlem, Tyson set a new standard for class and quality. As a young boy, I was transfixed by her performances in the 1974 television movie The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, for which she won an Emmy; Roots, in which she portrays Binta, the mother of Kunta Kinte, earning her an Emmy nomination; and Sounder, the first film I saw based on a book I had read. (Her role as the matriarch of a southern sharecropper family nabbed her an Oscar nod; she was given an honorary Academy Award in 2018 for her body of work.) In addition, I was fortunate to see her onstage several times, in The Trip to Bountiful in 2013, for which she won the Tony for Best Actress, and The Gin Game with James Earl Jones in 2015. She has also been celebrated with the Presidential Medal of Freedom and a Kennedy Center Honor.

Cicely Tyson earned an Oscar nomination for Sounder

Tyson passed away in January 2021 at the age of ninety-six, and BAM is paying tribute to her February 4-10 with a short retrospective that includes The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, in which she plays a 110-year-old former slave involved in the civil rights movement; Sounder, one of the all-time-great dog movies; Bustin’ Loose, the 1981 Richard Pryor comedy in which she plays a schoolteacher; the 1956 Key West-set drama Carib Gold, in which she and Geoffrey Holder made their screen debuts; Hoodlum, Bill Duke’s 1997 Harlem crime flick with Laurence Fishburne and Vanessa Williams (Tyson would later appear with Williams in Bountiful); and Bryan Barber’s 2006 musical Idlewild, costarring Terrence Howard, Ben Vereen, Patti LaBelle, Ving Rhames, Macy Gray, André 3000, and Big Boi.

In 2016, Tyson received the inaugural Sir Sidney Poitier Tribute Award at the Bahamas International Film Festival. (Tyson had appeared on Broadway in 1968 with Louis Gossett Jr. and Diane Ladd in Robert Alan Aurthur’s Carry Me Back to Morningside Heights, the only play Poitier ever directed; it lasted only seven performances.) “This award, in recognition of my dear friend and colleague, delights my heart,” she said at the time of the announcement. “Both Sydney and I have always tried to use our career to not only entertain, and enlighten, but to educate as well.” Poitier, who was also class personified, passed away last month at the age of ninety-four, but both their legacies will live on.

AIR DOLL

Nozomi (Bae Doona) dreams that there’s more to life in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Air Doll

AIR DOLL (Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2009)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Friday, February 4
www.ifccenter.com

Over the last twenty-five years, Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda has compiled a remarkable resume, directing more than a dozen narrative features and five documentaries that investigate such themes as memory and loss. His 2009 film, Air Doll, examines loneliness through the eyes of a blow-up doll come to life. Bae Doona stars as Nozomi, a plastic sex toy owned by Hideo (Itsuji Itao), a restaurant worker who treats her like his wife, telling her about his day, sitting with her at the dinner table, and having sex with her at night. But suddenly, one morning, Nozomi achieves consciousness, discovering that she has a heart, and she puts on her French maid costume and goes out into the world, learning about life by wandering through the streets and working in a video store, always returning home before Hideo and pretending to still be the doll.

Adapted from Yoshiie Goda’s twenty-page manga The Pneumatic Figure of a Girl and inspired by the myth of Galatea, Air Doll is a compelling contemplative study of emptiness and connection. Nozomi’s wide-eyed innocence at the joys of life comes sweet and slowly, played with a subtle wonderment by South Korean model and actress Bae (Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, The Host); the cast also includes Arata, Joe Odagiri, Susumu Terajima, and Kimiko Yo. Gorgeously photographed by Mark Lee Ping-Bing (In the Mood for Love, Flowers of Shanghai), the film does take one nasty turn, but it’s still another contemplative gem from the masterful director of Maborosi, Nobody Knows, Still Walking, and Like Father, Like Son. Air Doll has played numerous festivals over the years but is finally getting its long-overdue official US theatrical release courtesy of Dekanalog, opening February 4 at IFC Center.

NYC’S MOVIE RENAISSANCE 1945 – 1955

New Yorkers should be flocking to see The Naked City and other Big Apple flicks at Film Forum

NYC’S MOVIE RENAISSANCE 1945 – 1955
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Through February 10
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

In his July 2021 book “Keep ’Em in the East”: Kazan, Kubrick, and the Postwar New York Renaissance (Columbia University Press, $40), film historian Richard Koszarski details how New York City came to be a haven for making movies. “Fiorello La Guardia was the first New York mayor to realize the full significance of the motion picture industry to the city’s economic well-being. The few hundred jobs directly at stake in the late 1930s were not unimportant, but ever since the turn of the century, the movies — along with broadcasting and publishing — had also been doing something else for New Yorkers. Where the twentieth century had begun with a range of great American cities competing for world and national attention, it was now clear that modern America was no longer so flat a landscape. Now there was New York — and all those other places. Pittsburgh, Chicago, and San Francisco were all great cities, but New York was the city.”

Tony Curtis and Richard Jaeckel are two of the toughies in Maxwell Shane’s City Across the River

New York City native Koszarski will be at Film Forum to talk about a few of the films in “NYC’s Movie Renaissance 1945 – 1955,” a two-week series consisting of two dozen flicks that take place in and around Gotham, released in the ten years beginning around the end of WWII. The diverse selection ranges from noir and romcoms to musicals and courtroom dramas, psychological studies and cop stories with car chases. Among the many stars you’ll encounter are Joseph Cotten, Jennifer Jones, Marlon Brando, Eva Marie Sainte, Richard Conte, Judy Holliday, Ray Milland, Jane Wyman, Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, Coleen Gray, Richard Widmark, Thelma Ritter, Dana Andrews, Jane Wyatt, Frank Sinatra, Ann Miller, Vittorio Gassman, Gloria Grahame, John Garfield, Moms Mabely, and Victor Mature.

Earl McEvoy’s The Killer That Stalked New York is among the many surprises in Film Forum series

Familiar classics such as Abraham Polonsky’s Force of Evil, Henry Hathaway’s The House on 92nd St. and Kiss of Death, Billy Wilder’s The Lost Weekend, Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen’s On the Town, and William Dieterle’s Portrait of Jennie are joined by such lesser-known works as George Cukor’s The Marrying Kind, Maxwell Shane’s City Across the River, Earl McEvoy’s The Killer That Stalked New York, Maxwell Shane’s City Across the River, Josh Binney’s Boardinghouse Blues, cinematographer extraordinaire Ted Tetzlaff’s The Window, and Bernard Vorhaus’s incarcerated women tale So Young, So Bad with Rita Moreno and Anne Francis.

Stanley Kubrick’s Killer’s Kiss is part of Film Forum series about the renaissance of NYC-set flicks

Koszarski writes about Fletcher Markle’s Jigsaw, “Interesting suggestions of widespread corruption involving the mafia, right wing vigilantes, and political power brokers who operate out of Manhattan penthouses. . . . Most of the cast consisted of unfamiliar New York faces, but Markle and [Franchot] Tone did convince quite a few of their friends to pop up in oddball cameos.” And he explains about Morris Engel, Ruth Orkin, and Ray Ashley’s absolute gem Little Fugitive, in which a young boy goes on a Coney Island adventure, its “simplicity was itself a great part of its appeal: no pointed moral, no dramatic character arc, no allegorical references to corruption, intolerance, World War II, or nuclear disarmament. Instead the audience is led on by the film’s uncanny sense of observation — not just in terms of photographic imagery but in the way ordinary New Yorkers relate to one another, solve their little problems, and go about the mundane details of their everyday lives.”

Moms Mabely stars in Josh Binney’s Boardinghouse Blues

Koszarski will introduce Joseph Lerner’s awesomely titled Guilty Bystander, featuring Zachary Scott as an ex-cop house detective, on February 2 at 6:40. Master Film Forum programmer Bruce Goldstein will introduce Jules Dassin’s genre-defining The Naked City on February 5 at 7:50, accompanied by his short personal documentary, Uncovering The Naked City, and Susan Delson, author of Soundies and the Changing Image of Black Americans on Screen: One Dime at a Time (Indiana University Press, December 2021, $35-$85), will present “Soundies: America for a Dime” on February 10 at 6:50, focusing on “movie jukebox” clips from Duke Ellington, Nat “King” Cole, Dorothy Dandridge, Fats Waller, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and others.

JOACHIM TRIER — THE OSLO TRILOGY

Renate Reinsve is captivating as a free spirit unable to settle down in The Worst Person in the World

THE OSLO TRILOGY
Film at Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
January 28 – February 3
The Worst Person in the World opens February 4
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.org
neonrated.com

Norwegian director Joachim Trier concludes his Oslo Trilogy with the riveting The Worst Person in the World, which is having a preview screening at Lincoln Center on January 28 before opening there on February 4. Shortlisted for Best International Feature Film, it is part of a weeklong series that includes the first two parts of the trilogy, 2006’s Reprise and 2011’s Oslo, August 31st, along with works selected by Trier and cowriter Eskil Vogt that influenced them.

The Worst Person in the World is highlighted by an unforgettable, captivating performance by Renate Reinsve, who was named Best Actress at Cannes for her portrayal of a young woman who knows what she doesn’t want but isn’t sure about what she does desire. Divided into twelve chapters in addition to a prologue and epilogue, the film follows Julie as she goes from a medical student to a bookstore employee to a photographer, along the way falling in and out of love with a series of men she doesn’t always treat very well. We are often appalled by what Julie does and says, but it’s nearly impossible to turn our backs on her.

Kasper Tuxen’s camera utterly adores Reinsve, with alluring close-ups of her extraordinary eyes, which reveal both her need to be with someone and her craving for freedom. Shortly after meeting Aksel (Anders Danielsen Lie), an older comic book artist, Julie crashes a wedding party and is instantly drawn to Eivind (Herbert Nordrum); although both have significant others, they dive straight into a gorgeously filmed seduction that involves no touching, wondering whether that counts as cheating. It’s a marvelous scene that questions the very nature of relationships and fidelity and sets the stage for everything that comes next.

Despite Julie’s being the protagonist, the title does not refer only to her; at one point, Eivind thinks he might be the worst person in the world, and the film is likely to make you consider whether you have done anything in your life worthy of the designation. Trier and Vogt explore the dichotomy of intimacy and independence, resulting in a work of deep thought and intelligence. There will be a postscreening Q&A on January 28 at 6:00 with Trier, Reinsve, and Lie, who has major roles in all three part of the trilogy; Trier and Reinsve will be back at the Walter Reade Theater on February 4 for a Q&A following the 5:30 show.

The Oslo Trilogy began in 2006 with Trier’s feature debut, Reprise, in which Erik (Espen Klouman Høiner) and Phillip (Lie) are best friends who want to become literary sensations. Their lives spiral in and out of control as their dreams come within reach in a film swirling with a punk aesthetic. Reprise is screening January 29 and 31 and February 3, with Trier and Lie on hand for a Q&A at the January 29 show at 6:00.

Anders Danielsen Lie is brilliant as a young man trapped in a world of his own making in Oslo, August 31st

Lie is brilliant as a drug addict in Oslo, August 31st, the middle section of the trilogy. He stars as Anders, a junkie who, early on, attempts suicide by filling his pockets with heavy stones and walking into a lake, a la Virginia Woolf. At the last minute he changes his mind and returns to the rehab clinic where he’s trying to get clean. But when he gets a one-day leave in order to interview for a plum job, as an editorial assistant for a well-known literary journal, he challenges his sobriety by visiting old friends and an ex-lover he still pines for and seeking to see his sister, who is severely disappointed in him.

Lie is a powder keg of desperation as Anders, reminiscent of Jeremy Strong’s portrayal of Kendall Roy in Succession. He is lost in his own warped reality, refusing help when offered, sure that he is the only one who really understands what is going on inside him. It’s all the more painful to watch because he is wasting such promise, wandering from scene to scene in a fog of his own making. It’s a cautionary tale that begins with random people talking about their life in Oslo, as Trier and Vogt narrow down to the details of one man’s ills. Oslo, August 31st is screening January 30 and February 2 and 3, with Trier and Lie participating in a Q&A at the January 30 show 2:30.

Joachim Trier will introduce Arnaud Desplechin’s My Sex Life . . . or How I Got into an Argument at Lincoln Center on January 30

In conjunction with the theatrical opening of The Worst Person in the World on February 4, Trier and Cogt have chosen nine films that have impacted their work and/or they just plain love. The impressive list consists of Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence (introduced by Trier on January 29), John Hughes’s The Breakfast Club, Agnès Varda’s Cléo from 5 to 7, Éric Rohmer’s The Green Ray (introduced by Trier on January 28), Alain Resnais’s Hiroshima mon amour, a digital restoration of Arnaud Desplechin’s My Sex Life . . . or How I Got into an Argument (introduced by Trier on January 30), George Cukor’s The Philadelphia Story, Erik Løchen’s Remonstrance, and Larisa Shepitko’s Wings.

CAMERA MAN: DANA STEVENS ON BUSTER KEATON

Bill Jr. (Buster Keaton) mimics his father, Bill Campbell (Ernest Torrence), in silent film classic

Who: Dana Stevens, Imogen Sara Smith
What: Screening and discussion about Buster Keaton
Where: Film at Lincoln Center, Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, Francesca Beale Theater, 144 West Sixty-Fifth St.
When: Thursday, January 27, $15, 7:00
Why: “Steamboat Bill, Jr. may be [Buster] Keaton’s most mature film, a fitting if too-early farewell to his period of peak creative independence,” Slate film critic Dana Stevens writes. “Its relationship to the rest of its creator’s work has been compared to that of Shakespeare’s last play, The Tempest.” Stevens gets serious about the Great Stone Face, one of silent film’s best comics, in her brand-new book, Camera Man: Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century (Atria, $29.99).

In celebration of the launch of the tome, Stevens will be at Lincoln Center’s Francesca Beale Theater on January 27 at 7:00 to screen a 4K restoration of the 1928 classic, directed by Charles Reisner, about a riverboat battle and true love, preceded by a 2K restoration of Keaton and Edward F. Cline’s twenty-five-minute masterpiece, One Week, about a pair of newlyweds (Keaton and Sybil Seely) and their unusual new home. (Both films feature orchestral scores by American composer Carl Davis.) Stevens will put Keaton’s life and work in sociocultural context with Criterion contributor Imogen Sara Smith, author of Buster Keaton: The Persistence of Comedy. If you’ve never seen Keaton on the big screen, now is the time, as no one could turn tragedy into comedy quite like Keaton.

FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA’S THE CONVERSATION

Gene Hackman traps himself in a corner in Francis Ford Coppola’s gripping psychological thriller The Conversation

THE CONVERSATION (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
January 14-27
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

While changing the face of Hollywood cinema with The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, American auteur Francis Ford Coppola snuck in yet another 1970s masterpiece, the dark psychological thriller The Conversation, which will be screening January 14-27 at Film Forum in a new 35mm print supervised by Coppola himself for this engagement. Gene Hackman gives a riveting performance as Harry Caul, an audio surveillance expert who has been hired to record a meeting between two people (Cindy Williams and Frederic Forrest) in Union Square in San Francisco. Thinking that he might have stumbled onto a murder plot, Caul soon finds himself in the middle of a dangerous conspiracy that threatens the lives of all those involved. The Conversation is a gripping, taut examination of obsession, paranoia, and loneliness as well as an exploration of language and communication. Caul might spend most of his time listening in on the intimate conversations of others, but he is an intensely private individual who is extremely uncomfortable in his own skin.

A recorded conversation between a mysterious couple (Talia Shire and Frederic Forrest) triggers a possible conspiracy in Coppola masterpiece

A deeply religious man who also plays the saxophone, Caul has trouble relating to other people; Hackman is particularly outstanding in a party scene where Caul is forced to talk shop with fellow surveillance expert Bernie Moran (Allen Garfield), who wants to know Caul’s secrets, but the always nervous Caul isn’t about to share everything. The film, winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes and nominated for three Oscars — Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Sound (Walter Murch and Art Rochester) — also examines how people hear what they want to hear and see what they want to see, and it takes on even more meaning in a twenty-first century dominated by public and private surveillance, from store security cameras and government monitoring to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. The supporting cast, which also features Harrison Ford, Robert Duvall, Teri Garr, and John Cazale, is exceptional, as is Bill Butler’s cinematography, but this is Hackman’s show all the way, leading to one of the great endings in the history of cinema.

“I’ve always been especially proud of The Conversation, partly because it was from my own original story and screenplay,” Coppola said in February 2020. “I count it among the most personal of all my films and I’m happy the movie became the very thing it was about — invasion of privacy and its erosive impact on both victims and perpetrators. This was my goal when I conceived it almost fifty years ago, and to my surprise, the idea still resonates today.”

CINEMATTERS: NY SOCIAL JUSTICE FILM FESTIVAL 2022

Emily and Sarah Kunstler’s Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America opens third annual Cinematters: NY Social Justice Film Festival (photo courtesy Off Center Media)

CINEMATTERS: NY SOCIAL JUSTICE FILM FESTIVAL
Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan online
Carole Zabar Center for Film
January 13-17, $15 per film, $5 for shorts block, $40 all-access pass
mmjccm.org

From the Covid-19 pandemic to the murder of George Floyd to the January 6 insurrection, the last two years have revealed the ever-growing gap and animosity between the two Americas. The third annual Cinematters: NY Social Justice Film Festival, being held virtually January 13-17 by the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan, consists of five features, four shorts, a weekend of service, and a racial justice workshop that explores what has become of the modern-day United States.

The festival opens with Emily and Sarah Kunstler’s Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America, in which civil rights attorney Jeffery Robinson traces the history of racism from slavery to today. The spotlight selection is Iman K. Zawahry’s Americanish, about an immigrant trying to make her way in Jackson Heights. The festival closes with John Maggio’s A Choice of Weapons: Inspired by Gordon Parks, in which such figures as LaToya Ruby Frazier, Spike Lee, Anderson Cooper, Ava DuVernay, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar discuss the life and legacy of photographer Gordon Parks. Also being shown are Christi Cooper’s Youth v Gov, about young activists taking on the US government, and Jeff Adachi and Chihiro Wimbush’s Ricochet, which tells the story of an undocumented immigrant accused of murder in San Francisco. All screenings will be followed by a live Zoom Q&A with the filmmakers and other participants.

“These films are not just entertainment. Cinematters celebrates the power of film as a vehicle for social change, with some of the most important films of the year,” Carole Zabar Center for Film director Isaac Zablocki said in a statement. “These films shine a light on dark areas and bring action where our society needs movement.”

In addition to the screenings, Repair the World Harlem is sponsoring an MLK Weekend of Service with the East Harlem Tutorial Program on January 16-17, and there will be an allyship workshop on Monday at 3:30.

MELTDOWN IN DIXIE (Emily Harrold, 2021)
January 13-17, $5
Live Zoom Q&A January 17, 2:00
www.meltdownindixie.com

When Tommy and Debbie Daras first bought avowed racist Maurice Bessinger’s popular barbecue restaurant in Orangeburg, South Carolina, transforming it into Edisto River Creamery & Kitchen — home of the Double Dog Dare — the couple was not alarmed by the Confederate flag that flew on the tiny far corner of the parking lot, accompanied by a stone monument honoring soldiers who fought for the South in the Civil War. Tommy saw it as part of the area’s history, even as he did not believe in what it stands for.

After the June 2015 mass shooting that killed nine Blacks attending a Bible study class at Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, the Sons of Confederate Veterans put up a much bigger flag, as if in support of the murders, leading Tommy to change his mind; he wanted the memorial gone. But as director and producer Emily Harrold shows in the forty-minute documentary Meltdown in Dixie, racism and fear are alive and well in Orangeburg, a city where more than sixty percent of the residents are people of color and that suffered its own race massacre in 1968 over the integration of a bowling alley. As the Darases and their lawyer, Justin Bamberg, go to the zoning board and the courts to have the flag and memorial removed, they are challenged every step of the way by Sons of Confederate Veterans Camp 842 Lt. Commander Buzz Braxton and their attorney, Lauren Martel.

“White supremacy has its roots everywhere; Orangeburg is no different,” Bamberg points out. Meanwhile, Braxton proclaims that Robert E. Lee was “probably the greatest man to ever walk the face of this Earth,” defends his use of the N-word, says the slave trade was good for African Americans, and participates in Civil War reenactments that portray the southern army as heroes and patriots. Harrold gives equal time to both sides of the argument, letting everyone share their views without judgment.

Documentary follows heated battle over Confederate monument in Orangeburg, South Carolina

Meltdown in Dixie gets to the heart of the controversy over Civil War monuments without making it about Democrats vs. Republicans or even whites against Blacks; in many ways, Tommy represents a significant section of America that is caught in between the current reevaluation of history that is going on in schools and small towns across the country. He admits to having had the image of a Confederate flag on his car when he was a professional racer but also says he is following in the footsteps of his father, who he proudly explains didn’t have a racist bone in his body.

“When I bought the creamery, I saw it was in a beautiful park — I said, what’s not to like. But if I could rewind this whole situation, I would have never came to South Carolina in the first place,” he acknowledges. It’s hard to blame him for thinking that.

Meltdown in Dixie is available in a shorts block with Patrice D. Bowman’s Under the Sun After the Wind, Mark Decena’s Heal Thy Neighbor: Denver, and Melissa Gira Grant and Ingrid Raphael’s They Won’t Call It Murder. In conjunction with MLK Day, there will be a live Zoom Q&A on January 17 with Bowman, Harrold, and others, moderated by arts and culture critic Jo Livingstone.