this week in film and television

HOT TICKET ALERT: BASIL TWIST’S DOGUGAESHI

Basil Twist’s Dogugaeshi returns to Japan Society for a twentieth-anniversary encore presentation (photo © Richard Termine)

DOGUGAESHI
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
September 11–19, $44-$58
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org
basiltwist.com

Only seventy-five tickets are available to each of the twelve encore performances of Basil Twist’s Dogugaeshi at Japan Society; six shows are already sold out, so you better hurry if you want to see the special twentieth anniversary revival of the award-winning phenomenon.

Originally presented at Japan Society in 2004 in honor of the 150th anniversary of the US-Japan Treaty of Kanagawa, the sixty-minute work is part of the cultural institution’s fall 2024 series “Ningyo! A Parade of Puppetry.” Dogugaeshi (“doh-goo-guy-ih-shee”) follows the tradition of a stage mechanic developed in Japan’s Awa region using multiple painted fusuma screens and tableaux. “When I heard from several sources of a legendary eighty-eight-screen dogugaeshi, I knew that I had to do this piece with at least eighty-eight screens to bridge this all but vanished art form into the twenty-first century,” Twist, a third-generation puppeteer from San Francisco, explained in a statement.

Performed by four puppeteers including Twist, Dogugaeshi features video projections by Peter Flaherty, lighting by Andrew Hill, and sound by Greg Duffin; the score, composed by shamisen master Yumiko Tanaka, will be played live by Tanaka at the evening shows and by Yoko Reikano Kimura at the matinees. In the narrative, a white fox guides the audience through a tale of Japan’s past and present.

In the above 2014 Japan Society promotional video, Twist says that he sees Dogugaeshi, which has traveled around the globe, as a “sort of meditation into into into into into into this Japanese world. . . . The piece was created for this stage and so it really looks the best on this stage.”

“Ningyo! A Parade of Puppetry” continues October 3–5 with National Bunraku Theater, November 7–9 with “Shinnai Meets Puppetry: One Night in Winter & The Peony Lantern,” and December 12 and 13 with “The Benshi Tradition and the Silver Screen: A Japanese Puppetry Spin-off,” in which star movie talker Ichiro Kataoka and shamisen player Sumie Kaneko accompany screenings of two silent films, Daisuke Ito’s 1927 A Diary of Chuji’s Travels the first night and Shozo Makino’s 1910-17 Chushingura the second evening.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

THE TIES THAT BIND — TALES OF MADNESS: LET THE RIGHT ONE IN

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN

Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) and Eli (Lina Leandersson) discover a different kind of love in Let the Right One In

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (LÅT DEN RÄTTE KOMMA IN) (Tomas Alfredson, 2008)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
Friday, August 16, 7:20
Sunday, August 18, 6:50
Series continues through September 1
metrograph.com

Metrograph’s haunting series “Ties That Bind: Tales of Madness” continues with the original Swedish thriller Let the Right One In, a chilling yet tender coming-of-age story about friendship and the meaning of family. In a snow-covered Stockholm suburb, twelve-year-old Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) is severely bullied by Conny (Patrik Rydmark), Andreas (Johan Sömnes), and Martin (Mikael Erhardsson). The frail, blond Oskar dreams of getting even, but he always backs down. But then he meets the dark-haired, somewhat feral Eli (Lina Leandersson, dubbed by Elif Ceylan), who has moved in next door in their apartment complex. While Oskar lives with his divorced mother (Karin Bergquist) — his father (Henrik Dahl) has moved out to the country — Eli lives with Håkan (Per Ragnar), an older father figure who goes out to gather what Eli needs to survive: blood. But the aging Håkan begins encountering difficulties, forcing Eli to go out and hunt down her own food. As people start to go missing in the small community, Eli and Oskar’s friendship begins to blossom, two outsiders coming to terms with who they are. But when Oskar suddenly strikes back, Conny’s older brother, Jimmy (Rasmus Luthander), gets involved, and the steaks, er, stakes, get a whole lot higher.

Based on the 2004 novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist, Let the Right One In is a gripping horror film that is one of the best of the twenty-first century. By making the protagonists children with common adolescent problems, Lindqvist, who wrote the screenplay, and director Tomas Alfredson (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Snowman) create a more realistic setting, so the scares are that much more intense. Hedebrant and Leandersson have a magical chemistry, their tentativeness and fears intoxicating. They exist in a world that is meant only for them; all of the adults are essentially peripheral, whether parents, teachers, or community members wondering what is going on, and the other kids are merely in their way. And it’s all about that very moment; they both might be twelve, but Eli is going to be that age forever while Oskar gets older.

The atmosphere is thick and tense throughout, elevated by Hoyte van Hoytema’s inventive cinematography and Johan Söderqvist’s dramatic score, performed by the Slovak National Symphony Orchestra. Despite some very memorable scenes involving shocking violence, at its heart Let the Right One In is a sweetly innocent love story, albeit with a few unusual complications. Matt Reeves directed a 2010 English-language remake starring Kodi Smit-McPhee and Chloë Grace Moretz, and the National Theatre of Scotland staged a terrific theatrical adaptation that played at St. Ann’s Warehouse in 2015, but there’s still nothing like the original, a visually stunning and psychologically adept fresh new take on the vampire legend.

The Metrograph series also features such other mad tales as Dario Argento’s Suspiria, Georges Franju’s Eyes without a Face, Agnieszka Smoczyńska’s The Lure, and J. A. Bayona’s The Orphanage.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

FREE SECOND SUNDAYS: WHITNEY BIENNIAL

Isaac Julien, detail, Once Again . . . (Statues Never Die), 2022 (photo by Ashley Reese), a highlight of the 2024 Whitney Biennial

WHITNEY BIENNIAL: EVEN BETTER THAN THE REAL THING
Whitney Museum of American Art
99 Gansevoort St.
Sunday, August 11, free with timed tickets, 10:30 am – 6:00 pm
212-570-3600
whitney.org

According to Ligia Lewis, the eighty-first Whitney Biennial is “a dissonant chorus”; that’s an apt description of the exhibition, which features more than seventy artists contributing painting, sculpture, video, live performances, and sound and visual installations. Organized by Chrissie Iles and Meg Onli with Min Sun Jeon and Beatriz Cifuentes, this edition is themed “Even Better Than the Real Thing,” with works that delve into the sociopolitical aspects of AI, personal identity, and marginalization.

The biennial comes to a close on August 11 with a free day of special programming as part of the Second Sundays initiative, including tours, workshops, and storytelling. Navigating the biennial can be a daunting task; below are ten recommended highlights, followed by the scheduled programs.

Nikita Gale, Tempo Rubato (Stolen Time): The keys of a seemingly haunted player piano are not connected to wires, so the sound made is just that of the pressing of the wood. Lights dim as the visitor contemplates whether what they are hearing is music and what constitutes an original composition.

Isaac Julien, Iolaus/In the Life (Once Again . . . Statues Never Die): British filmmaker Isaac Julien invites museumgoers to wander around multiple screens hung at different angles and sculptures by African American artists Richmond Barthé and Matthew Angelo Harrison as a film depicts conversations with Alain Locke (André Holland), the influential Harlem Renaissance writer, philosopher, educator, and first Black Rhodes scholar, and white chemist and art collector Albert C. Barnes (Danny Huston).

Seba Calfuqueo, Tray Tray Ko: Chilean artist Seba Calfuqueo makes her way through the sacred landscape where the Mapuche people live, walking amid trees, rocks, and a river, draping herself in a long train of electric blue fabric.

Carolyn Lazard, Toilette: A mazelike conglomeration of mirrored medicine cabinets filled with Vaseline, a by-product of oil and gas production, brings up thoughts of the price of self-care and caregiving as the corporatization of the health-care industry and the decimation of the rainforest get stronger.

Julia Phillips, Mediator: Hamburg-born, Chicago-based Julia Phillips examines pregnancy and motherhood in a piece composed of two chest casts with partial faces separated by a microphone, evoking a spinning game one might find in a public playground.

P. Staff, Afferent Nerves and A Travers Le Mal: A long room bathed in an ominous yellow contains an abstract self-portrait of the UK-born, LA-based artist, with a live electrical net hovering overhead, inviting visitors into what P. Staff calls “a particular trans mode of being that exists in the tension between dissociation and hypervigilance.”

Kiyan Williams, Ruins of Empire II or The Earth Swallows the Master’s House: A reflective aluminum statue of Black trans activist Marsha P. Johnson, holding a sign that declares, “Power to the People,” watches as the north facade of the White House, topped with an upside-down American flag, sinks into the earth in this outdoor installation. Viewers are encouraged to walk through and look closely at the impending death of a once-powerful building constructed by enslaved laborers.

Constantina Zavitsanos, All the time and Call to Post (Violet): Take a seat on the carpeted ramp and get lost in the blue-violet light as captions projected on the wall share such thoughts as “The universe is made of abundance” as you feel the infrasonics of modulated speech reverberating underneath you.

Holland Andrews, Air I Breathe: Radio / Hyperacusis Version 1: Sleeping Bag: Brooklyn-based composer and performer Holland Andrews has created two pieces for the biennial, Air I Breathe: Radio in the stairwell and Hyperacusis Version 1: Sleeping Bag, located in the elevator, works that incorporate music and found sound — in the latter, some made by the elevator itself — that offer a respite from visual overload.

Sunday, August 11
15-Minute Tours: Highlights of the Exhibition, multiple times

Artmaking: Magnetic Mosaic, 11:00 am – 3:00 pm

Artmaking with Eamon Ore-Giron, 11:00 am – 4:00 pm

Story Time with NYPL in the Gallery, 11:00 am, 1:00 pm, 3:00 pm

Double Take: Guided Close-Looking through Intergenerational Dialogue, for teens, 1:00

Recorridos Familiares, 2:30

Recorridos de 15 minutos, 3:00

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

UNDER THE PAVEMENT, THE BEACH: SOMETHING IN THE AIR

The cultural revolution on the early 1970s is back in Olivier Assayas’s Something in the Air

SOMETHING IN THE AIR (APRÈS MAI) (Olivier Assayas, 2012)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
Friday, August 9, 8:00; Saturday, August 10, 11:30 am; Tuesday, August 13, 4:30
Series continues through September 1
metrograph.com
www.ifcfilms.com

Olivier Assayas’s autobiographical coming-of-age tale Something in the Air, screening August 9, 10, and 13 in the Metrograph series “Under the Pavement, the Beach,” is a fresh, exhilarating look back at a critical period in twentieth-century French history. In this sort-of follow-up to his 1994 film about 1970s teenagers, Cold Water, which starred Virginie Ledoyen as Christine and Cyprien Fouquet as Gilles, Something in the Air features newcomer Clément Métayer as a boy named Gilles and Lola Créton (Goodbye First Love) as a girl named Christine, a pair of high school students who are part of a growing underground anarchist movement. Following a planned demonstration that is violently broken up by a special brigade police force, some of the students cover their school in spray paint and political posters, leading to a confrontation with security guards that results in the arrest of the innocent Jean-Pierre (Hugo Conzelmann), which only further emboldens the anarchists. But their seething rage slowly changes as they explore the transformative world of free love, drugs, art, music, travel, and experimental film.

Assayas (Les Destinées sentimentales, Summer Hours) doesn’t turn Something in the Air — the original French title is actually Après Mai, or After May, referring to the May 1968 riots — into a personal nostalgia trip. Instead it’s an engaging and charming examination of a time when young people truly cared about something other than themselves and genuinely believed they could change the world, filled with what Assayas described as a “crazy utopian hope for the future” at a New York Film Festival press conference. The talented cast also includes Félix Armand, India Salvor Menuez, Léa Rougeron, and Carole Combes as Laure, both Gilles’s and Assayas’s muse. Assayas fills Something in the Air with direct and indirect references to such writers, artists, philosophers, and musicians as Syd Barrett, Gregory Corso, Amazing Blondel, Blaise Pascal, Kasimir Malevitch, Max Stirner, Alighiero Boetti, Joe Hill, Soft Machine, Georges Simenon, Frans Hals, and Simon Ley (The Chairman’s New Clothes: Mao and the Cultural Revolution), not necessarily your usual batch of 1970s heroes who show up in hippie-era films.

Writer-director Assayas, editors Luc Barnier and Mathilde Van de Moortel, and cinematographer Éric Gautier move seamlessly from France to Italy to England, from thrilling, fast-paced chases to intimate scenes of young love to a groovy psychedelic concert, wonderfully capturing a moment in time that is too often marginally idealized and made overly sentimental on celluloid. “We’ve got to get together sooner or later / Because the revolution’s here,” Thunderclap Newman sings in their 1969 hit “Something in the Air,” which oddly is not used in Assayas’s film, continuing, “And you know it’s right / and you know that it’s right.” Indeed, Assayas gets it right in Something in the Air, depicting a generation when revolution required a lot more than clicking a button on the internet. “Under the Pavement, the Beach” continues through September 1 with three other films about civil unrest among the student generation, timely given the recent protests on college campuses around America: Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers, Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point, and Ye Lou’s Summer Palace.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

HARLEM WEEK 50: CELEBRATE THE JOURNEY

HARLEM WEEK
Multiple locations in Harlem
August 7-18, free
harlemweek.com

Fifty years ago, actor and activist Ossie Davis cut a ribbon at 138th St. and the newly renamed Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd. (formerly Seventh Ave.), opening what was supposed to be a one-day, one-time-only event known as Harlem Day; Davis called it “the beginning of the second Harlem Renaissance.” Among the cofounders were Davis, his wife, Ruby Dee, Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, Harry Belafonte, Ornette Coleman, Lloyd E. Dickens, David Dinkins, Basil Paterson, Tito Puente, Charles Rangel, Max Roach, Vivian Robinson, “Sugar Ray” Robinson, Hope R. Stevens, Bill Tatum, Barbara Ann Teer, and Rev. Wyatt T. Walker.

The festival has blossomed over the last half century into the annual favorite Harlem Week, a summer gathering packed full of live performances, film screenings, local vendors, panel discussions, a job fair, fashion shows, health screenings, exhibits, and more. This year’s theme is “Celebrate the Journey”; among the highlights are the Uptown Night Market, the Percy Sutton Harlem 5K Run & Health Walk, Great Jazz on the Great Hill, Harlem on My Mind Conversations, a Jobs & Career Fair, the Children’s Festival, the Concert Under the Stars, and the centerpiece, “A Great Day in Harlem.” Below is the full schedule; everything is free.

Wednesday, August 7
Climate Change Conference, Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building, West 125th St., 6:00

Thursday, August 8
Uptown Night Market, 133rd St. & 12th Ave., 4:00 – 10:00

Harlem Summerstage, Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building, 5:30

HW 50 Indoor/Outdoor Film Festival, 7:00

Friday, August 9
Senior Citizens Day, with health demonstrations and testing, live performances, exhibits, panel discussions, the Senior Hat Fashion Show, and more, Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building, 10:00 am – 3:00 pm

Saturday, August 10
NYC Summer Streets Celebrating Harlem Week’s 50th Anniversary, 7:00 am – 3:00 pm

The Percy Sutton Harlem 5K Run & Health Walk, West 135th St., 8:00 am

Choose Healthy Life Service of Renewal and Healing, noon

Great Jazz on the Great Hill, Central Park Great Hill, 4:00

Harlem Week/Imagenation Outdoor Film Festival: Black Nativity (Kasi Lemmons, 2013), 7:00

Sunday, August 11
A Great Day in Harlem, with Artz, Rootz & Rhythm, the Gospel Caravan, AFRIBEMBE, and Concert Under the Stars featuring the Harlem Music Festival All-Star Band, music director to the stars Ray Chew, and special guests, General Grant National Memorial, Riverside Dr., noon – 7:00

Monday, August 12
Youth Conference & Hackathon, 10:00 am – 3:00 pm

Children’s Corner — Books on the Move: “Mommy Moment,” 10:00 am

Tuesday, August 13
Economic Development Day, noon – 3:00

Arts & Culture/Broadway Summit, 3:00

Harlem on My Mind Conversations, 7:30

Wednesday, August 14
NYC Jobs & Career Fair, CCNY, 160 Convent Ave., 10:00 am – 4:00 pm

Harlem on My Mind Conversations, 7:00

Thursday, August 15
Black Health Matters/HARLEM WEEK Summer Health Summit & Expo, with free health screenings, prizes, breakfast, and lunch, the Alhambra Ballroom, 2116 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd., 9:00 am – 3:00 pm

Harlem Summerstage, Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building Plaza, 5:00

Banking & Finance for Small Business & Entrepreneurs, Chase Community Banking Center, 55 West 125th St., 6:00 – 9:45

Harlem on My Mind Conversations, 8:45

Saturday, August 17
NYC Summer Streets Celebrating HARLEM WEEK’s 50th Anniversary, 109th St. & Park Ave. – 125th St. & Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd., 7:00 am – 3:00 pm

NYC Children’s Festival, with storytelling, live performances, dance, hip hop, theater, poetry, arts & crafts, double dutch competitions, face painting, technology information, health services, and more, Howard Bennett Playground, West 135th St., noon – 5:00

Summer in the City, with live performances, fashion shows, and more, West 135th St., 1:00 – 6:00

Alex Trebek Harlem Children’s Spelling Bee, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, 515 Malcolm X Blvd., 2:00

Harlem Week/Imagenation Outdoor Film Festival, Great Lawn at St. Nicholas Park, West 135th St. 6:00

Sunday, August 18
NYC Health Fair, West 135th St., noon – 5:00

NYC Children’s Festival, with storytelling, live performances, dance, hip hop, theater, poetry, arts & crafts, double dutch competitions, face painting, technology information, health services, and more, Howard Bennett Playground, West 135th St., noon – 5:00

Harlem Day, with live performances, food vendors, arts & crafts, jewelry, hats, sculptors, corporate exhibitors, games, a tribute to Harry Belafonte, and more, West 135th St., 1:00 – 7:00

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

PHILIPPE PETIT: TOWERING!!

Philippe Petit will look back at his historic walk between the Twin Towers at special events at St. John the Divine (photo courtesy Man on Wire)

Who: Philippe Petit, Sting, Anat Cohen, Molly Lewis, Sophie Auster, Tim Guinee, Lorenzo Pisoni, Evelyne Crochet, Shawn Conley, James Marsh, Michael Miles, and students of Ballet Tech
What: Live performances celebrating fiftieth anniversary of Twin Towers high-wire walk
Where: The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, 1047 Amsterdam Ave. at 112th St.
When: Wednesday, August 7, and Thursday, August 8, $50-$500 (VIP $1800), 8:30
Why: It was an unforgettable moment in my childhood. On August 7, 1974, French tightrope artist Philippe Petit, six days shy of his twenty-fifth birthday, pulled off what he called “le coup”: After six years of secret planning, he snuck up to the top of the South Tower of the recently built World Trade Center and walked on a 131-foot-long wire he had strung to the other, 1,350 feet aboveground, traversing it eight times over forty-five minutes using a balancing pole. The crossing was completely unauthorized; spectators and security officers alike were stunned. It was a spectacular achievement that went viral well before there was anything like social media. It was all over the news, on television and in the papers, and it was all anyone was talking about.

“This is probably the end of my life to step on that wire,” Petit says in James Marsh’s 2008 documentary, Man on Wire. “Death is very close.”

The Twin Towers opened on April 4, 1973, and were destroyed on September 11, 2001.

Petit has also walked the high wire at the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Louisiana Superdome, the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Paris Opera, the Museum of the City of New York, the Eiffel Tower, and locations in Jerusalem, Tokyo, Vienna, Frankfurt, Belgium, Switzerland, and numerous US cities. In 1982, 1992, and 1996, he performed the feat at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, where he has been an artist in residence for more than four decades.

On August 7 and 8, in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of his World Trade Center walk, called the “artistic crime of the century,” Petit has conceived and directed “Towering!!,” a special two-night multidisciplinary happening consisting of nineteen scenes at the cathedral, where he will be joined by clarinetist Anat Cohen, musical whistler Molly Lewis, singer-songwriter Sophie Auster, actors Tim Guinee and Lorenzo Pisoni, classical pianist Evelyne Crochet, bassist and composer Shawn Conley, musician, author, and educator Michael Miles, and students from Ballet Tech dance school.

Petit, who turns seventy-five on August 13, will walk the high wire and share stories about his WTC adventure. In addition, his good friend Sting will play three songs, including “Let the Great World Spin,” which was written specifically for this event, and Marsh will debut a short film about Petit.

Limited tickets are still available for several sections as well as VIP seating, which comes with Champagne and dessert with Petit after the performance. Part of the proceeds support programs at the cathedral and the preservation of Petit’s archives.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

CatVideoFest 2024

CatVideoFest 2024
IFC Center, 323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Nitehawk Cinema, 188 Prospect Park West
Saturday, August 3, and Sunday, August 4, 11:00 am
(Nitehawk bonus screenings August 10-11)
www.ifccenter.com
nitehawkcinema.com
www.catvideofest.com

“There have likely never been so many cats living on the streets of New York,” New York magazine declared in July. There have likely also never been so many cat videos living on the internet.

During times of strife, especially amid the tumult of social media, many of us seek solace in cat videos. There’s just something about the tricky little devils riding Roombas, squeezing into ridiculously tight spaces, sneaking up on us like ninjas, and jumping and climbing everywhere that soothes our souls. “There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats,” polymath Albert Schweitzer said.

Cat fanciers can find refuge from the maelstrom at Oscilloscope Laboratories’ “CatVideoFest 2024,” screening August 3 and 4 at IFC Center and Nitehawk Cinema. The final selection of videos were chosen from more than fifteen thousand short films, divided into such sections as drama, music, animation, and action-adventure. “Everything that you’d possibly want to see a cat do you will see a cat do,” IFC general manager Harris Dew told WPIX earlier this week.

A portion of the proceeds from IFC ticket sales will go to Animal Haven, which has been rescuing cats and dogs and finding them forever homes since 1967; the Nitehawk screenings, which continue August 10 and 11, benefit Sean Casey Animal Shelter, which specializes in the most difficult medical cases.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer, editor, and cat lover; you can follow him on Substack here.]