The forty-third annual Earth Day focuses its attention on global warming this year with its personal theme, “The Face of Climate Change,” inviting people to go to the website, upload a photo, and tell their own story about how they’ve been directly affected by the somehow controversial topic and asking them to “be part of the solution.” Grand Central Terminal will host three days of special events, April 20-22, including presentations by Aimee Follette (“How Food Choices Have the Power to Nurture Us and Heal Our Planet”) and Patricia Moreno (“Be a Powerful Force for Positive Change in the World by Training Your Mind and Moving Your Body”), live performances by the Callen Sisters, Avidya & the Kleshas, and the cast of Annie, and screenings of such films as Dear Governor Cuomo and The Vanishing of the Bees. Among the exhibitors in Vanderbilt Hall will be 511 NY Rideshare/Commuter Link, Build It Green!NYC, Common Ground NYC, Global Justice For Animals and the Environment, Rwanda Women in Action, Sane Energy Project, and ThinkEco CoolNYC, among many others.
Over at the Javits Center, the Green Festival is open to the general public April 20-21, featuring presentations by Neil Chambers (“Resiliency and the Future of Cities”), Stefanie Iris Weis (“Bringing Eco-Sexy Back: Tools, Tips, and Tricks for a Sustainable Love Life”), Sacha Dunn (“Homemade Household Cleaners”), James Fischer (“Urban Beekeeping”), and others as well as a Recycled Runway Eco-Fashion Show and live performances by Reverend Billy and the Earthalujah Chorus and Circa ’95. Union Square will host exhibitor booths, a clothing swap, a CO2 E Drive Green Vehicle Runway Show, and live acts on April 21 and the C02 E Green Drive Project on April 22, while Solar One will have an Earth Day NY CO2 Car Drive on April 21 at 8:00 am.
Orson Welles plays a masterful cinematic magician in the riotous F for Fake, a pseudo-documentary (or is it all true?) about art fakes and reality. Exploring slyly edited narratives involving art forger Elmyr de Hory, writer Clifford Irving, Spanish painter and sculptor Pablo Picasso, and reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes, the iconoclastic auteur is joined by longtime companion Oja Kodar and a cast of familiar faces in a fun ride that will leave viewers baffled — and thoroughly entertained. Welles manipulates the audience — and the process of filmmaking — with tongue firmly planted in cheek as he also references his own controversial legacy with nods to such classics as Citizen Kane and The Third Man. It’s both a love letter to the art of filmmaking as well as a warning to not always believe what you see, whether in books, on canvas, or, of course, at the movies. F for Fake is screening April 20 & 21 at noon as part of the new Nitehawk Cinema monthly series “Art Seen,” which continues May 18-19 with Ben Shapiro’s Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters and June 22-23 with The Cool School and Paul McCarthy’s The Black and White Tapes. Each program will begin with an “Artist Film Club” presentation that includes one video from the 2013 Moving Image Art Fair.
After attending a presentation in 2001 by Robert King, the former Angola 3 inmate, about the controversial conditions in the Louisiana State Penitentiary and the continued incarceration — in solitary confinement — of Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace, Brooklyn-born multidisciplinary artist Jackie Sumell began a correspondence with Wallace that developed into a fascinating friendship that is explored in Angad Singh Bhalla’s debut documentary, Herman’s House. “I’m not a lawyer and I’m not rich and I’m not powerful, but I’m an artist,” Jackie says in the film. “And I knew the only way I could get him out of prison was to get him to dream.” She gets him to dream by having him describe, in exacting detail, the house he’d like to live in if he were to ever be released, and she goes ahead and designs it, working with architects on the blueprints. She also builds a scale model that becomes part of a traveling art exhibit, “The House That Herman Built,” which includes a precise re-creation in wood of Wallace’s six-by-nine-foot cell, his home for thirty-six years. Bhalla, who wrote, directed, and produced the film, while also serving as director of photography with Iris Ng, never shows Wallace on camera; instead, he paints a portrait of the New Orleans native —who was first convicted of bank robbery in 1967, then of killing a prison guard in 1972, eventually sentenced to life without parole for a crime he claims he didn’t commit — through a series of recorded phone conversations he has with Sumell over the years. Bhalla also visits with ex-convict Michael Musser, who got his life back on track because of Wallace; Wallace’s sister Vickie, who is not afraid to speak her mind; and King, who helped form the Angola chapter of the Black Panther Party with Wallace, Woodfox, and others. “You look at this house, you’re looking at me,” Wallace says. Indeed, viewers might never get to see Wallace, but by the end of the film, they will feel like they know him — and will hope for his release. But Bhalla never steers the narrative into a clarion call condemning the prison system and demanding Wallace’s freedom, instead allowing those elements to be subtle parts of this intriguing tale of a very unusual relationship.
Alias Ruby Blade: A Story of Love and Revolution is an intimate, involving documentary that goes behind the scenes of East Timor’s battle for independence, structured like a gripping thriller with a decidedly personal edge. In 1991, Australian Kirsty Sword went to East Timor as part of a team posing as tourists while actually making a secret film about the embattled Indonesian island. Almost immediately, the Australian teacher and activist found herself right in the middle of the violent struggle as bullets flew all around her and her team, but they kept the cameras rolling, compiling amazing footage that helped alert the world as to what was happening there. Sword soon became a courier for the revolution, adopting the spy name Ruby Blade and smuggling in notes and, eventually, electronic equipment to jailed resistance leader Kay Rala “Xanana” Gusmão, who was serving a life sentence in Jakarta’s Cipinang Prison. Armed with a camera, Sword took remarkable footage during those years, most of which has never before been shown to the public; she opened up her archives for husband-and-wife documentarians Tanya Ager Meillier and Alex Meillier and speaks extensively with them in the film, relating her involvement with the independence movement — which included falling in love with the charismatic Xanana. The Meilliers also talk with such key resistance fighters as Nobel Peace Prize winner José Ramos-Horta and diplomat Constancio Pinto as well as historian and human rights activist Geoffrey Robinson and Inside Indonesia editor Pat Walsh, who share their stories about the Indonesian occupation that lasted from 1975 to 1999, followed by a UN-sponsored referendum for independence that led to yet more horrors. But Sword, who narrates much of the film, and Xanana, who appears primarily in archival footage and photographs, never gave up their dream of a free, democratic East Timor while also considering a life together. As much as Alias Ruby Blade delves into the political situation in East Timor, it’s really about how a young, strong woman followed her heart and made a difference in a faraway part of the globe. Alias Ruby Blade will have its North American premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, where it’s part of the Documentary Competition. (By the way, the less you know about how things turned out in East Timor, the more exciting the film is, so don’t read up on it before going to one of the four screenings.)
