this week in film and television

FIRST SATURDAY — GRAVITY AND GRACE: MONUMENTAL WORKS BY EL ANATSUI

El Anatsui, “Ozone Layer,” aluminum and copper wire, 2010 (photograph by Andrew McAllister, courtesy of the Akron Art Museum)

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, March 2, free, 5:00 – 11:00 (some events require free tickets distributed in advance at the Visitor Center)
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The Brooklyn Museum celebrates the recent opening of “Gravity and Grace: Monumental Works by El Anatsui,” the first solo museum show by the West African artist who uses recycled material to create dazzling wall pieces, at its March free First Saturday program. (Anatsui’s “Pot of Wisdom” was recently on view at the Jack Shainman Gallery in Chelsea, and his “Broken Bridge II” can be seen along the High Line through next summer.) There will be African-influenced live performances by the Sway Machinery, Ria Boss, and Zozo Afrobeat; a curator talk on El Anatsui led by Kevin Dumouchelle; a screening of Jareth Merz’s An African Election, which is set in El Anatsui’s native Ghana; pop-up gallery talks honoring the sixth anniversary of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art; an artist talk with Fernando Mastrangelo, whose work is featured in “Connecting Cultures: A World in Brooklyn”; and interactive collaborative projects including a group photo mosaic and a Brooklyn Kung Fu & Tai Chi Academy workshop.

FIRST TIME FEST: LITTLE FUGITIVE

Joey Norton goes on the adventure of a lifetime in Coney Island in underground indie classic LITTLE FUGITIVE

LITTLE FUGITIVE (Morris Engel, Ray Ashley, and Ruth Orkin, 1953)
Loews Village VII
66 Third Ave. at Eleventh St.
Friday, March 1, $15, 11:00 am
Festival runs March 1-4
646-580-1383
www.firsttimefest.com

One of the most influential and important — and vastly entertaining — works to ever come out of New York City, Morris Engel’s charming Little Fugitive will be having a special sixtieth anniversary tribute screening on March 1 at 11:00 at the inaugural First Time Fest, followed by a panel discussion with Mary Engel and Foster Hirsch. Written and directed with Ray Ashley and Ruth Orkin, Engel’s future wife, Little Fugitive follows the gritty, adorable exploits of seven-year-old wannabe cowboy Joey Norton (Richie Andrusco, in his only film role), who runs away to Coney Island after his older brother, Lennie (Richard Brewster), and his brother’s friends, Harry (Charlie Moss) and Charley (Tommy DeCanio), play a trick on the young boy, using ketchup to convince Joey that he accidentally killed Lennie. With their single mother (Winifred Cushing) off visiting their ailing mother, Joey heads out on his own, determined to escape the cops who are surely after him. But once he gets to Coney Island, he decides to take advantage of all the crazy things to be found on the beach, along the boardwalk, and in the surrounding area, including, if he can get the money, riding a real pony.

A no-budget black-and-white neo-Realist masterpiece shot by Engel with a specially designed lightweight camera that was often hidden so people didn’t know they were being filmed, Little Fugitive explores the many pleasures and pains of childhood and the innate value of home and family. As Joey wanders around Coney Island, he meets all levels of humanity, preparing him for the world that awaits as he grows older. Meanwhile, Engel gets into the nooks and crannies of the popular beach area, from gorgeous sunrises to beguiling shadows under the boardwalk. In creating their beautifully told tale, Engel, Ashley, and Orkin use both trained and nonprofessional actors, including Jay Williams as Jay, the sensitive pony ride man, and Will Lee, who went on to play Mr. Hooper on Sesame Street, as an understanding photographer, while Eddie Manson’s score continually references “Home on the Range.” Rough around the edges in all the right ways, Little Fugitive became a major influence on the French New Wave, with Truffaut himself singing its well-deserved praises. There’s really nothing quite like it, before or since. The underground classic, which won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1953, was nominated for a Best Screenplay Oscar, and was entered into the National Film Registry in 1997, will be presented in a newly restored 35mm print at the fest, which continues through March 4 with debut films from emerging and established directors.

FIRST TIME FEST

Amy Nicholson’s ZIPPER is among the debut films seeking to gain notice at the inaugural First Time Fest

The Players Club, 16 Gramercy Park South
Loews Village VII, 66 Third Ave. at Eleventh St.
March 1-4, $15 per screening, special passes $75-$500
646-580-1383
www.firsttimefest.com

Everyone remembers their first time — even Martin Scorsese, Gay Talese, Harry Belafonte, Michael Shannon, Ellen Burstyn, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Ryan, and other stars who will share their experiences and/or judge those of others at the inaugural First Time Fest. No, they won’t be discussing their sexual initiations. First Time Fest celebrates debut works by seminal and up-and-coming directors, held over the course of four days of screenings, panel discussions, and conversations. Along with such classic fare as Barbara Kopple’s Harlan County U.S.A., Darren Aronofsky’s Pi, John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon, Todd Solondz’s Welcome to the Dollhouse, Wes Anderson’s Bottle Rocket, and Todd Haynes’s Poison is such new fare as Benj Binks’s Mongolian Bling, Luciano Quilici’s I Love You All (Los Quiero a Todos), Seth Fisher’s Blumenthal, Amílie van Elmbt’s Headfirst (La Tête la Première), and Amy Nicholson’s Zipper. Belafonte and Shannon will participate in special intimate conversations, while panels includes such topics as “Diversity in Cinema,” “Show Me the Money,” “The Critical Eye,” “ADD — Transmedia Storytelling in the Crazed 21st Century,” “How They Did It,” and “Sell Baby Sell!” One of the new films will be awarded the grand prize of theatrical distribution, and Scorsese will present Aronofsky with the John Huston Award for Outstanding Achievement in Cinema.

PARK CHAN-WOOK: OLDBOY

Choi Min-sik is at his creepy best in the second part of Park Chan-wook’s Vengeance trilogy

OLDBOY (Park Chan-wook, 2003)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Friday, March 1, free with museum admission, 7:00
Series runs February 28 – March 3
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us

The second in director Park Chan-wook’s revenge trilogy (in between Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and the 2005 New York Film Festival selection Sympathy for Lady Vengeance), Oldboy is a twisted, perverse psychological thriller that won the Grand Prix de Jury at Cannes, among many other international awards. Choi Min-sik (Chihwaseon) stars as Oh Dae-su, a man who has been imprisoned for fifteen years — but he doesn’t know why, or by whom. When he is finally released, his search for the truth becomes part of a conspiracy game, as he can seemingly trust no one. As he gets closer to finding everything out, the gore and terror continues to increase. Choi is outstanding as the wild-haired Dae-su in Park’s awesome rampage of a film, which is not for the faint of heart. Oldboy is screening on March 1 as part of a Museum of the Moving Image/Korea Society tribute to Park in conjunction with the release of his first English-language film, Stoker, which opens March 1 but will get a sneak preview at the museum on February 28, with Park on hand to participate in a postscreening discussion; the series continues through March 3 with Joint Security Area, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Lady Vengeance, and a trio of shorts (Night Fishing, N.E.P.A.L. Never Ending Peace and Love, and Cut).

MoMA SELECTS — POV: MY REINCARNATION

Documentary looks at the complex relationship between a father and son

DOCUMENTARY FORTNIGHT 2013 — MOMA’S INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF NONFICTION FILM AND MEDIA: MY REINCARNATION (Jennifer Fox, 2010)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Saturday, March 2, 5:00
Festival runs February 27 – March 4
Tickets: $12, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk beginning at 9:30 am
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
www.myreincarnationfilm.com

More than twenty years in the making, Jennifer Fox’s My Reincarnation tells the fascinating story of a very unusual father-son relationship amid the modern world of tulkus, or reincarnated Tibetan lamas. World-renowned high Tibetan Buddhist Master Chögyal Namkhai Norbu travels around the world teaching meditation and Dzogchen practice. He meets with the Dalai Lama, advises students and fans, signs copies of his many books, and builds support for his beleaguered native land, Tibet. But his son, Yeshi Silvano Namkhai, who was born in 1970 in Italy (where Rinpoche Namkhai Norbu taught at university from 1964 to 1992), had no desire to follow in his father’s footsteps and instead went into the computer business, starting a family and rejecting nearly everything his father believes in — including that Yeshi might just be the reincarnation of his great-uncle, Khyentse Rinpoche Chökyi Wangchug, and so is destined for a life of service and tradition. “Everybody knows about me and nobody knows me at all,” Yeshi says about trying to establish his own identity. Father and son and the rest of the family allowed Fox remarkable access, holding nothing back as they talk about their lives and each other; Yeshi is particularly vocal about his father’s treatment of him over the years. But soon Yeshi has a change of heart, and the documentary takes an unexpected turn. Fox, who has previously made such films as Beirut: The Last Home Movie, Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman, and An American Love Story, shot more than one thousand hours of footage, which she edited down to a tight seventy-five-minutes, including archival and newsreel footage as well. As much as it is about a father and a son, My Reincarnation is also about the old vs. the new, tradition vs. modernization, private love vs. public responsibility, the spiritual vs. the technological, and, above all, familial legacy. My Reincarnation is screening at MoMA on March 2 at 5:00 as part of the “MoMA Selects: POV” section of “Documentary Fortnight 2013: MoMA’s International Festival of Nonfiction Film and Media” and will be followed by a Q&A with the director; the POV portion, which runs February 27 to March 4, celebrates a quarter-century of the award-winning PBS program POV and also includes such films as Marlon Riggs’s Tongues Untied, Freida Lee Mock’s Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision, Robert Kenner’s Food, Inc., and Alan Berliner’s Nobody’s Business. “As we celebrate our twenty-fifth anniversary on PBS, MoMA’s retrospective program allows us to review our history, share insights about documentary craft and culture with the public, and celebrate with the indie filmmaking community,” POV co-executive producer Cynthia López said in a statement. “The ways in which documentaries have contributed to our culture will be a focus of conversations at the screenings. We hope the public will find that these documentaries inform, entertain, and challenge conventional wisdom.”

MoMA SELECTS — POV: WHERE SOLDIERS COME FROM

Dom grows disillusioned as he serves his country in Afghanistan (photo by Heather Courtney)

DOCUMENTARY FORTNIGHT 2013 — MOMA’S INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF NONFICTION FILM AND MEDIAWHERE SOLDIERS COME FROM (Heather Courtney, 2011)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Saturday, March 2, 2:00
Festival runs February 27 – March 4
Tickets: $12, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk beginning at 9:30 am
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
www.wheresoldierscomefrom.com

Returning to her small hometown of Hancock in Northern Michigan, documentarian Heather Courtney (Letters from the Other Side) wanted to make a film about the Upper Peninsula area and its residents, and she came up with quite a story. For several years, Courtney followed a group of young men who had enlisted in the National Guard because they either didn’t have enough money for college or didn’t know what else to do with their lives; she then traveled with them as they got called up and sent to fight the war in Afghanistan. Dominic Fredianelli, Cole Smith, and Matt “Bodi” Beaudoin never fully considered what they were getting into when they signed up; they clearly did not join up merely for patriotic reasons, so it doesn’t take long before they start questioning what America is doing over there. The three men, along with their families back home, allowed Courtney remarkable access, holding nothing back as they share their bittersweet emotions, their politics, their fears, and their overwhelming confusion. The men’s National Guard unit is assigned to an IED sweeper team that goes out in heavily protected vehicles, searching for and detonating hidden improvised explosive devices, but even carefully monitored explosions take their toll on the soldiers, not to mention the surprise bombs that nearly blow them to pieces. Courtney, who served as producer, director, cinematographer, and coeditor, does not add any voice-over narration or accumulate facts and statistics; instead, she lets the story tell itself, avoiding propaganda and grand statements. At first it is hard to have much sympathy for Dom, Cole, and Bodi, who should have thought a lot more about their decision to join the National Guard, but as they and their families get more deeply involved in the war, Where Soldiers Come From grows ever-more poignant and frightening. Where Soldiers Come From is screening at MoMA on March 2 at 2:00 as part of the “MoMA Selects: POV” section of “Documentary Fortnight 2013: MoMA’s International Festival of Nonfiction Film and Media”; the POV portion, which runs February 27 to March 4, celebrates a quarter-century of the award-winning PBS program POV and also includes such films as Marco Williams and Whitney Dow’s Two Towns of Jasper, Kelly Duane de la Vega and Katie Galloway’s Better This World, Marshall Curry’s If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front, and Laurel Chiten’s Twitch and Shout. “POV films and filmmakers have been at the center of a golden age of documentary filmmaking,” POV executive producer Simon Kilmurry explained in a statement. “The films in MoMA’s special program not only look back at the first twenty-five years of POV but also look forward. Collectively, they illustrate how vibrant and essential documentaries have become in exploring the human experience.”

PARK CHAN-WOOK: STOKER

India (Mia Wasikowska) and Uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode) develop a rather unusual relationship in STOKER

STOKER (Park Chan-wook, 2013)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Thursday, February 28, $20, 7:00
Series runs through March 3
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us
www.foxsearchlight.com/stoker

Korean auteur Park Chan-wook has made some of the most suspenseful and violent films of the young century, beginning with the military thriller Joint Security Area and continuing with the Vengeance trilogy, consisting of Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy, and Lady Vengeance, as well as Thirst and the romantic comedy I’m a Cyborg But That’s OK. A master of mood, Park finally makes his long-awaited English-language debut with Stoker, a creepy, atmospheric work that evokes Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby, Michael Haneke’s Funny Games, Paul Wendikos’s The Mephisto Waltz, the television show Dark Shadows, and Richard Donner’s The Omen while also managing to be wholly original. Rising Australian actress Mia Wasikowska (In Treatment, The Kids Are All Right) stars as India Stoker, a shy, introverted high school student whose father, Richard (Dermot Mulroney), has just died in a terrible accident and whose mother, Evelyn (Nicole Kidman), is too quick to grow close with Richard’s brother, Charlie (Matthew Goode) — whom India and her mom didn’t even know existed until he just showed up at the funeral. Uncle Charlie seems to have a mysterious power over people and a chilling need to control situations, especially when it comes to those who know about his secret past, including the old housekeeper, Mrs. McGarrick (Phyllis Somerville), and Charlie’s aunt, Gin (Jacki Weaver). He also takes great pleasure in placing himself firmly in the middle of a potential incestuous love triangle with Evelyn and India. But once India learns more than she ever wanted to know about her uncle, she is both repulsed by and attracted to what he is capable of. Written and coproduced by actor Wentworth Miller (The Human Stain, Prison Break), Stoker is another compelling mood piece from Park, who creates a gripping, fearful, claustrophobic world inside the Stoker’s large Nashville mansion. He releases information ever-so-slowly over the course of the film’s ninety-nine minutes, resulting in plenty of frustration as well as suspense. The look of the film, courtesy of production designer Thérèse DePrez and cinematographer Chung Chung-hoon, often has a dated, 1950s feel to it, even though it is set in the present day, with flat colors that offset India’s black-and-white shoes. The film suffers from several leaps of faith Park requires the audience to make, asking them to forgive some relatively unforgivable plot holes, and Goode is not quite convincing enough as Charlie, but Wasikowska’s portrayal of the troubled young woman is riveting, and everything comes around full circle in the shattering conclusion. Stoker, which opens theatrically on March 1, is having a special advance screening on February 28 as part of the Museum of the Moving Image tribute to Park and will be followed by a discussion with the director; the series continues through March 3 with Park’s Oldboy, Joint Security Area, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Lady Vengeance, and a trio of shorts (Night Fishing, N.E.P.A.L. Never Ending Peace and Love, and Cut).