Faith Salie shares her quest for approval in one-woman show (photo by Daniel Rader)
APPROVAL JUNKIE
Audible Theatre’s Minetta Lane Theatre
18 Minetta Lane between Sixth Ave. and MacDougal St.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 12, $46-$56 www.audible.com
In her one-woman show, Approval Junkie, actress, author, and television and radio correspondent Faith Salie explains that when she would share a personal or professional success with her father, he would say, “I’m impressed, but not surprised.” I was impressed and surprised by how much I enjoyed the monologue, in which Salie details her lifelong quest for approval, from being an anorexic Georgia high school beauty and talent show contestant to auditioning for acting parts to getting married and wanting to have children. She also admits to being an applause junkie. “I’m half a century old, and I give a ton of fucks that you’re sitting at my feet,” she tells the audience. “Y’all came to the theater. And I’m pretty sure you’re wearing pants. And I hope you’re smiling behind those masks.”
Salie, an Emmy winner who appears regularly on NPR’s Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me! and CBS Sunday Morning, is charming and likable — and brutally honest. She talks about some intensely private moments, but as much as she’s after our approval, she takes a humble, self-deprecating approach, telling a story that, in many ways, could be about any woman, although she acknowledges her significant privilege. She doesn’t brag about her accomplishments or look for sympathy for her failures; she just wants us to enjoy ourselves and, hopefully, learn about how we don’t need to search for approval ourselves around every corner.
Faith Salie accepts approval on opening night of Approval Junkie (photo by Daniel Rader)
The show is adapted from her book of the same name, which has two different subtitles: Adventures in Caring Too Much for the hardcover, My Heartfelt (and Occasionally Inappropriate) Quest to Please Just About Everyone, and Ultimately Myself for the paperback and ebook. For ninety minutes, Salie, in a lovely dark blue jumpsuit and beige heels (the costume is by Ivan Ingermann), walks across Jack Magaw’s spare set, which features a central platform, two small speakers where she sometimes sits, and a stained-glass-like backdrop of abstract geometric shapes on which video and animation are occasionally projected. Salie shares funny and moving stories about going to an Ayurvedic Healing Center in a Sarasota, Florida, strip mall to exorcise the darkness out of her in order to please her wasband (what she calls her ex-husband); being retweeted by Hillary Clinton and Mandy Patinkin; her desperation to look good at her divorce hearing; and attempting to be a hit on Bill O’Reilly’s Fox program. She remembers that early in her career, she took vocal lessons from acting coach Lesly Kahn, who asked her, “Why aren’t you as pretty as I want you to be?” She answers now, “I don’t know — I’m not as pretty as I want me to be.”
Directed by actor and producer Amanda Watkins, the play — which continues at Audible’s Minetta Lane Theatre through December 12, after which an Audible audio recording will be available — has a warm, welcoming atmosphere. Even when lines fall flat, and a bunch do, Salie proceeds, okay with that momentary lack of approval. Except for the animation at the beginning and end, the projections are random and inconsistent; you’ll find yourself time and again thinking something will be shown when nothing is. And that’s okay too.
It’s all bookended by tales about Shel Silverstein’s classic children’s book The Giving Tree (Salie calls the titular tree “the ultimate woodland approval junkie”) and Salie’s friendship with 104-year-old Ruth Rosner, a journey from childhood to old age. Describing Rosner’s sudden fame from Salie’s television profile of her, Salie says, “We all want to sit at the feet of someone with a century of wisdom and hear that once you get old enough, you stop striving, you figure it all out. You have, as the kids say, ‘zero fucks to give.’ But it doesn’t work that way. It feels too good to take a bow.” In this case, Salie has our approval, and she can take a well-deserved bow. (Salie will be taking part in an Audible Theater online 92Y conversation about Approval Junkie with writer and comic Josh Gondelman on November 30 at 7:00.)
John Sims speaks out in multimedia presentations at La MaMa
Who:John Sims What: Five-day multidisciplinary residency Where: The Ellen Stewart Theatre, La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club When: December 1-5, pay what you can $10-$60 Why: Conceptual artist and activist John Sims has been working on the multimedia project Recoloration Proclamation for two decades; it is now ready to be unveiled at La Mama, where the Detroit native is the 2021 artist-in-residence. From December 1 to 5, Sims will present six programs hitting on topical issues involving race, slavery, the Confederacy, police brutality, and inequalities that came to light during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The residency kicks off December 1 at 7:00 with an installation viewing and artist talk featuring the AfroDixieRemixes Listening Session — fourteen different Black versions of “Dixie” — and the world’s largest AfroConfederate flag, followed December 2 at 7:00 (and December 5 at 2:00) with a film screening of Recoloration Proclamation. On December 3, 4, and 5 at 7:00, Sims will take part in live performances of 2020: (Di)Visions of America. It all forms a unique self-portrait of the artist as well as a multidisciplinary look at the mind-set of contemporary America as Sims seeks redemption and rebirth through peace, liberty, and justice.
Kurt Vonnegut travels through his extraordinary life in Unstuck in Time,
KURT VONNEGUT: UNSTUCK IN TIME (Robert B. Weide & Don Argott, 2021)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Friday, November 19 www.ifccenter.com
“I had never seen him so at ease; they had found each other, as the subject and the filmmaker. It felt like a friendship,” Nanny Vonnegut says about her father, author Kurt Vonnegut Jr., and director Robert Weide in Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time, an extraordinary documentary opening November 19 at the IFC Center.
In 1982, twenty-three-year-old Weide wrote a letter to Vonnegut, wanting to make a film about him. Much to Weide’s surprise, the award-winning author of such novels as Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat’s Cradle wrote him back, agreeing to the project. Shooting began in 1988 and continued through Vonnegut’s death in 2007 at the age of eighty-four and beyond. During those years, the two men became good friends, so much so that Weide began doubting his ability to complete the film. “I don’t even like documentaries where the filmmakers has to put himself in the film. I mean, who cares?” he asks in one of several sections where he talks to the camera, concerned that he was becoming too much a part of the story.
After a moving moment in which he discusses putting the camera down and simply enjoying his time with Vonnegut, Weide admits, “Prior to that, I had always been concerned that the friendship might infringe on the film; this was the first time I realized that things had flipped so entirely now that I was worried about the film infringing on the friendship. That was a realization for me that I was maybe in trouble.”
Fortunately, however, Weide and codirector Don Argott, who was brought in to help navigate through Weide’s fears of having grown too close to Vonnegut, keep the main focus on Vonnegut, who opens up about his childhood, his schooling, his early jobs, and, ultimately, his writing career, reflecting on a life well lived yet filled with tragedy, from the death of his sister and her husband to his mother’s suicide and his experiences in Dresden during WWII. Vonnegut is shown giving a lecture in a church, taking a train with Weide, driving through his hometown of Indianapolis, visiting the house where he grew up — and getting sentimental when he sees the casts of his and his siblings’ hands on the top of a small cement wall — and attending his sixtieth high school reunion.
Vonnegut’s brother, Bernard, gives Weide boxes and boxes of home movies and slides, while their sisters, Nanny and Edie, and Vonnegut’s nephews, Jim, Steve, and Kurt Adams — who Vonnegut and his first wife, Jane Marie Cox, took in after the deaths of his beloved sister, Alice, and her husband, James Adams — speak openly and honestly about him, including their extreme disappointment when, upon finally gaining success as a writer, he dumped the devoted Jane for younger photographer Jill Krementz. Over the years, Vonnegut kept sending Weide tapes of his numerous public appearances, so the film includes a treasure trove of clips from speeches, television appearances, and commencement addresses as well as early, annotated drafts of Vonnegut’s writing.
The film discusses the aforementioned books in addition to The Sirens of Titan,Breakfast of Champions, and Mother Night, which was turned into a 1996 movie written by Weide, and explores such favorite Vonnegut characters as the author’s alter ego, Kilgore Trout, and Billy Pilgrim. The title of the film comes from the first line of the second chapter of Slaughterhouse-Five: “Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.” The concept of time is a leitmotif of the documentary, highlighted by the comparison between the decades it took Weide to complete the film, which is significantly about the making of the film itself, and the years it took Vonnegut to finish his last novel, Timequake, which ended up being significantly about the writing of the book. And just as Vonnegut and his children share poignant memories, Weide inserts some of his own, particularly about his wife, Linda. The parallels between Weide and Vonnegut are striking. “How fucked up is that?” Weide says after noting another coincidence.
Robert B. Weide and Kurt Vonnegut became close friends while making documentary over several decades
Weide also speaks with Vonnegut’s friends and fellow writers John Irving and Sidney Offit, his publisher Dan Simon, his biographer Gregory Sumner, novelist Dan Wakefield, and In These Times editor Joel Bleifuss, who gave Vonnegut a forum in his final years. Actor Sam Waterston reads from several of Vonnegut’s works. “He made literature fun. That was huge,” critic David Ulin says.
Along the way, two elements stand out: Vonnegut’s love of laughing — his infectious laughter is sprinkled throughout the film — and his ever-present Pall Mall. In a cute touch, Emmy winner and Oscar nominee Weide (Curb Your Enthusiasm,Lenny Bruce: Swear to Tell the Truth) and Argott (The Art of the Steal,Believer) animate smoke coming out of his cigarettes in still photos.
On the first page of chapter two of Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut also writes of Billy Pilgrim, “He has walked through a door in 1955 and come out another one in 1941. He has gone back through that door to find himself in 1963. He has seen his birth and death many times, he says, and pays random visits to all the events in between. He says. Billy is spastic in time, has no control over where he is going next, and the trips aren’t necessarily fun. He is in a constant state of stage fright, he says, because he never knows what part of his life he is going to have to act in next.” Weide and Argott have captured the essence of Vonnegut the person and Vonnegut the writer in Unstuck in Time, a must-see, utterly fun portrait of a man who never knew what part of his life he was going to have to act in next but always did so with a contagious sparkle.
Emi (Katia Pascariu) goes on a strange journey in Rade Jude’s Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn
BAD LUCK BANGING OR LOONY PORN: A SKETCH FOR A POSSIBLE FILM (BABARDEALA CU BUCLUC SAU PORNO BALAMUC) (Radu Jude, 2021)
Film at Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater, Francesca Beale Theater
144/165 West Sixty-Fifth St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Film Forum, 209 West Houston St.
Opens Friday, November 19 www.filmlinc.org filmforum.org
Radu Jude’s brilliantly absurdist Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn lives up to its title, a wildly satiric takedown of social mores that redefines what is obscene. Winner of the Golden Bear for Best Film at the 2021 Berlinale, the multipart tale begins with an extremely graphic prologue, a XXX-rated homemade porn video with a woman and an unseen man holding nothing back. In the first main section, the woman, a successful teacher named Emi (Katia Pascariu), is distressed to learn that the video is threatening to go viral. She determinedly walks through the streets of Bucharest, buying flowers (which she holds upside down), discussing her dilemma with her boss, the headmistress (Claudia Ieremia), and calling her husband, Eugen, trying to get the video deleted before her meeting with angry parents at the prestigious private school where she teaches young children.
Jude and cinematographer Marius Panduru follow the masked Emi — the film was shot during the pandemic, so masks are everywhere — on her journey, the camera often lingering on the scene well after Emi has left the frame, focusing on advertising billboards, couples in the middle of conversations, people waiting for a bus, and other random actions, before finding Emi again. She sometimes fades into the background, barely seen through the windows of a passing vehicle or amid a crowd crossing at a light. She gets into an argument with a man who has parked on the sidewalk, blocking her way; she insists that he move the car, but he unleashes a stream of misogynistic curses. Swear words are prevalent throughout the film, mostly adding poignant humor.
The second segment consists of a montage of archival and new footage that details some of Romania’s recent history, involving the military, the government, religion, fascism, Nazi collaboration, patriotism, the two world wars, the 1989 revolution, Nicolae Ceaușescu, domestic violence, jokes about blondes, and the value of cinema itself. The bevy of images also points out which NSFW word is most commonly looked up in the dictionary, as well as which is second. (The film is splendidly edited by Cătălin Cristuțiu, with a fab soundtrack by Jura Ferina and Pavao Miholjević.)
It all comes together in the third section, in the school garden, where Emi faces a few dozen masked, socially distanced, very angry parents and grandparents who want her fired immediately, while the headmistress demands a calm discussion. The masked Emi is a stand-in for all of us, facing the wrath of the unruly mob forcing its sanctimonious platitudes on others when it really needs to look at itself. It’s a riotously funny sitcomlike debate in which Jude roasts many common, hypocritical beliefs held by Romanians (and people all over the world) that have not necessarily changed much from the news clips shown in the previous part.
The cartoonish cast, which includes Olimpia Mălai as Mrs. Lucia, Nicodim Ungureanu as Lt. Gheorghescu, Alexandru Potocean as Marius Buzdrugovici, and Andi Vasluianu as Mr. Otopeanu, really gets to strut its stuff while making sure their masks are properly covering their mouths and noses. They argue about beloved national poet Mihai Eminescu and Russian writer Isaac Babel, delve into various sexual positions, repeat Woody the Woodpecker’s trademark call, and quote long, intellectual passages from the internet as Jude (I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians,Aferim!) reveals where society’s true obscenities lie. It’s an irreverent tour de force that offers three distinct endings to put a capper on the strangely alluring affair, turning a scary mirror on the sorry state of twenty-first-century existence.
Playfully subtitled A Sketch for a Possible Film in a reference to André Malraux’s description of Eugène Delacroix’s belief that his sketches could be of the same quality as his paintings, Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, Romania’s official Oscars submission, opens November 19 at Lincoln Center and Film Forum.
Who: Zhang Yang, Peter Loehr, Richard Peña What: Film conversation Where:China Institute online When: Wednesday, November 17, $10, 8:30 Why: China Institute’s ten-part “Seeing China Through Film” continues November 17 with a discussion about Zhang Yang’s 1999 Shower, a touching tale of a family-run bathhouse in Beijing, starring Zhu Xu as the father and Pu Cunxin and Jiang Wu as his sons. Zhang (Sunflower,Paths of the Soul) will be talking online about changes in China since the late 1990s and the battle between tradition and modernity with series curator and Columbia film professor Richard Peña, the former head of the New York Film Festival, and Peter Loehr, whose Imar Film Co. has produced several of Zhang’s works, including Shower,Quitting, and Spicy Love Soup. The series previously featured Jia Zhangke discussing his debut film, The Pickpocket, film historian Christopher Rea on Yuan Muzhi’s Street Angels, Chen Kaige on his debut, Yellow Earth, and associate professor Weihong Bao on Zheng Junli’s Crows and Sparrows. Note that the films are not screened with the conversation but should be watched in advance; free links are usually provided.
The life and times of Aulcie Perry on and off the court are detailed in Dan Menkin’s latest sports documentary
AULCIE (Dan Menkin, 2019)
Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan
334 Amsterdam Ave. at West Seventy-Sixth St.
Tuesday, November 16, $15, 7:00 cinematters.eventive.org
The closing night selection of the 2020 Israel Film Center Festival at the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan, Dani Menkin’s Aulcie is returning November 16 at 7:00 for a special screening, followed by an in-person Q&A with Menkin. Israeli director Menkin followed up his 2016 documentary, On the Map, about Maccabi Elite Tel Aviv’s unlikely victory in the 1976-77 European Champions Cup, with this inside look into the life of one of its stars, Aulcie Perry. After being the last man cut from the New York Knicks in 1976, Newark native Perry was recruited to play for Maccabi in Israel, where the 6’10” black man — an unusual sight in the Land of Milk and Honey — quickly became a superstar, helping the team to championships, falling in love with top model Tami Ben Ami, and hanging out in hot clubs, living the high life. But it all came tumbling down in a haze of drugs, and Menkin traces Perry’s attempt to put it all back together, primarily by finding the daughter he has not seen since she was a baby.
The film is set up as Perry’s confession to that daughter, Cierra Musungay. “I always knew one thing: that I wanted to tell you my story, the way it is, with the good and the bad,” he says at the beginning of the documentary. “So where do I start? People say you start at the beginning. But I wanted to start at the end, or when I thought the end was coming.” He was inspired to track her down after facing a serious health scare. “I think, that only when I almost died, I started to really live. And that’s when I wanted to find you and, maybe in some ways, find myself,” he adds.
Writer, producer, and director Menkin goes back and forth between archival footage, animation by Assaf Zellner, and interviews with Aulcie’s sister Bernadine Lewis, his friends Wayne Tyre and Roy Young, his ex-girlfriend Juanita Jackson, his son Aulcie Perry Jr., and many men from his Maccabi family, including former teammates Earl Williams and Tal Brody, team president Shimon Mizrahi, co-owner Oudi Recanati, coach Zvi Sherf, and manager Shamluk Maharovsky, who was like a father to him. “In Israel, there wasn’t that much prejudice against Black players, and he felt at home here,” NBA commentator Simmy Reguer says. “Aulcie came in like a blessing from the gods,” fellow Jersey native and team captain Brody recalls. And Sports Illustrated writer Alexander Wolff explains, “At Maccabi Tel Aviv, Aulcie Perry was Michael Jordan, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar rolled into one.”
Now seventy-one, Perry is honest and forthright throughout, admitting his failings and wanting to make up for lost time. He offers no excuses for his precipitous fall, and he’s not seeking sympathy. He’s a man who made mistakes and wants a chance to set things right. Aulcie is a cautionary tale of redemption with heart and soul, focusing on the need to be part of a family, no matter how different and unexpected it may be.
Matthew Heineman’s The First Wave closes the 2021 DOC NYC festival
DOC NYC 2021
In-person: November 10-19, $19 per screening
Online: November 11-28, $12 per screening
IFC Center, 323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Cinépolis Chelsea, 260 West Twenty-Third St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
SVA Theatre, 333 West Twenty-Third St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves. www.docnyc.net
The twelfth annual DOC NYC festival emerges from the pandemic with a hybrid collection of more than two hundred films and events that offer an alternative to the continuing rash of fake news and truthiness found on cable and social media. Of course, documentarians have their own agendas as well, but they lean strongly in favor of highlighting important issues through facts and celebrating legitimate feats accomplished through individual determination, both public and private.
This year’s sections include “Coming of Age,” “Fight the Power,” “Luminaries,” “Personal Journeys,” “Sonic Cinema,” and “Focus: Journalists,” covering more than seventy themes, from Food & Wine, History, and Music to Activism, Outsiders, and War & Conflict. The 2021 Lifetime Achievement Award winners are cameraperson, cinematographer, and director Joan Churchill (Gimme Shelter,Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer,Shut Up & Sing) and Raoul Peck (Fatal Assistance,Moloch Tropical,I Am Not Your Negro).
Sam Pollard and Rex Miller’s Citizen Ashe is the centerpiece selection of this year’s DOC NYC fest
Among the many portraits are explorations of such figures as entertainer and Rat Packer Dean Martin, singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette, chef Julia Child, actress and filmmaker Adrienne Shelly, singer Dionne Warwick, cartoonist Spain Rodriguez, undersea explorer Jacques Cousteau, restaurateur and TV host Anthony Bourdain, rapper DMX, actress Selma Blair, basketball star Kevin Garnett, and author Kurt Vonnegut, with works by such luminaries as Stanley Nelson, Liz Garbus, Eva Orner, Alison Klayman, Jon Alpert, Andrea Arnold, and Todd Haynes.
The festival opens with Penny Lane’s Listening to Kenny G, with director and subject participating in a postscreening discussion; the centerpiece is the New York City premiere of Sam Pollard and Rex Miller’s Citizen Ashe, a look at tennis great and activist Arthur Ashe, with Matthew Heineman’s The First Wave, about the beginning of the pandemic in New York City’s hospitals, the closing-night selection. Keep watching this space for more recommendations and capsule reviews as the festival continues, both in person at the IFC Center, Cinépolis Chelsea, and the SVA Theatre and online.
Todd Haynes will discuss his latest film at DOC NYC
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND (Todd Haynes, 2021)
IFC Center
Wednesday, November 10, 9:30 www.docnyc.net
The Velvet Underground was more than just a music group; they electrified a generation, and continue to do so today, half a century later. Todd Haynes, whose 1998 Velvet Goldmine was set in the world of glam rock and whose 2007 I’m Not There explored the career of Bob Dylan through six characters and a nonlinear narrative, now turns his attention to the true story behind the Velvets. Haynes details the history of the band by delving into leaders John Cale and Lou Reed’s initial meeting, the formation of the Primitives with conceptual artists Tony Conrad and Walter DeMaria, and the transformation into the seminal VU lineup at the Factory under Pop icon Andy Warhol’s guidance: singer-songwriter-guitarist Reed, Welsh experimental composer and multi-instrumentalist Cale, guitarist Sterling Morrison, drummer Maureen Tucker, and German vocalist Nico. Much of Haynes’s documentary focuses on Warhol’s position in helping develop and promote the Velvets. “Andy was extraordinary, and I honestly don’t think these things could have occurred without Andy,” Reed, who died in 2013, says. Haynes will be at the IFC Center to introduce the November 10 screening.
The life and career of Anthony Bourdain is explored in Roadrunner
ROADRUNNER: A FILM ABOUT ANTHONY BOURDAIN (Morgan Neville, 2021)
IFC Center
Thursday, November 11, 9:45 www.docnyc.net
Director Morgan Neville goes behind the scenes to share the story of beloved restaurateur and TV show host Anthony Bourdain in Roadrunner. Neville, whose previous films include The Cool School,20 Feet from Stardom, and Won’t You Be Neighbor?, will be at IFC to introduce the November 11 screening.
Two Minnesota high school teams battle it out in Tommy Haines’s Hockeyland
There’s the Stanley Cup playoffs for the NHL pros and the Frozen Four for the NCAA Men’s Ice Hockey Championship, but Tommy Haines focuses on a pair of rival Minnesota high school teams, the underdog Eveleth-Gilbert Golden Bears and the far more successful Hermantown Hawks, as they prepare to perhaps meet in the playoffs. Haines follows the very different approach of the two coaches, delves into the lives of the teams’ best players, talks to the parents, and goes inside the locker rooms as the teenagers balance education with the game and their future. The film contains lots of good hockey action, along with intimate moments as injuries occur and pro scouts come to watch. The November 13 screening will be followed by a Q&A with Haines, producers JT Haines and Andrew Sherburne, cinematographer Benjamin Handler, and film subjects Elliot Van Orsdel, Indio Dowd, and members of their families.
Fatima Shaik searches for a critical piece of family history in The Bengali
“Why would anybody come from the other side of the world to find somebody who doesn’t even exist anymore?” author Fatima Shaik says at the beginning of The Bengali. “Why not?” asks director Kavery Kaul. Armed with a partial ship’s registry and a photograph of her grandfather, Shaik Mohamed Musa, who left his small village in India in 1893 to make a new life in the United States, in New Orleans, where he married a Black woman, Fatima travels to her ancestral country, wanting to know more about where she came from and to see a patch of land that he owned. Joined by Kaul, who is Bengali, and cinematographer John Russell Foster, who is white, they have very little information and face roadblock after roadblock until success is in reach, but everywhere she goes, Fatima is met with resistance, as Indians view her with suspicion, thinking that she, a Christian in a Muslim community, might be there to reclaim her grandfather’s land. The Bengali is an emotional, deeply personal search for identity, almost to the point of obsession, of seeking out one’s family history in a land where you don’t speak the language and are not immediately welcome. The November 13 New York City premiere at IFC will be followed by a Q&A with Kaul and producer Lucas Groth.
UNITED STATES vs. REALITY WINNER (Sonia Kennebeck, 2021)
Saturday, November 13, IFC Center, 9:50
Monday, November 15, Cinépolis Chelsea, 4:15 www.docnyc.net www.codebreakerfilms.com
The Broadway play Is This a Room is a verbatim re-creation of the FBI’s interrogation of Reality Winner, an Air Force veteran who was suspected of leaking classified documents. Award-winning documentarian Sonia Kennebeck, whose previous films include Enemies of the State, about a family under siege when their hacker son gets into serious trouble with the government, and National Bird, which revealed the devastating story of the military personnel pushing the buttons in America’s drone war, now goes behind the scenes to tell what really happened with Winner, the Intercept, and other parties involved in the complex situation. The November 13 and 15 screenings will be followed by a Q&A with Kennebeck, the latter moderated by Jo Livingstone of the New Republic.
An amateur British theater group consisting of bus drivers, engineers, and dispatchers adapt a Ridley Scott classic in Alien on Stage
In 2015, a group of bus drivers, engineers, and dispatchers in Dorset, England, banded together to put on an amateur theatrical adaptation of Ridley Scott’s Alien a benefit for the Allendale Community Centre and the Guillain-Barré Syndrome Charity. Calling themselves Paranoid Dramatics, the men and women took a DIY approach, creating the costumes and special effects from scratch and learning their lines to the best of their abilities. After seeing the show, Danielle Kummer and Lucy Harvey became obsessed with it and decided to document the play’s surprising move to London’s West End. The result is an extremely fun film about human ingenuity against all odds; just as Ripley had to face the monster, will this group survive as opening night approaches? And will Scott be there to cheer them on? The November 14 and 15 screenings will be followed by a Q&A with Kummer.
An eleven-year-old blind boy seeks to become a board game champ in Go through the Dark
GO THROUGH THE DARK (Yunhong Pu, 2021)
Cinépolis Chelsea
Saturday, November 13, 7:10
Tuesday, November 16, 9:30 www.docnyc.net www.instagram.com
First-time filmmaker Yunhong Pu serves as director, producer (with Jean Tsien), cinematographer, editor, and publicist for the subtly captivating Go through the Dark. Yunhong travels with eleven-year-old Guanglin Xu, a blind Chinese boy who has a remarkable affinity for Go, which might be the world’s oldest board game, as he participates in competitions and seeks special coaching far away. He is being raised by a single father who adores him but might not always understand what is best for his son. As father and child meet more people, new options arise for Guanglin, who does not know how to ask for what he truly wants and needs. The game Go involves turning over small, circular black and white stones, but there’s nothing black-and-white about this unique and moving story. Yunhong will participate in Q&As at the November 13 and 16 screenings.
Gary Oldman has a lot to say about Eadweard Muybridge’s photos and personal life in stirring documentary
EXPOSING MUYBRIDGE (Marc Shaffer, 2021)
Saturday, November 13, IFC Center, 7:05
Monday, November 15, Cinépolis Chelsea, 2:00 www.docnyc.net www.muybridgethemovie.com
English photographer Eadweard Muybridge is most well known for taking some of the earliest, most influential pictures in the history of the art form (and sometimes animating them), including The Horse in Motion, his shots of redwoods in Yosemite, and his plates of nude men and women walking, running, and stepping over plates. But writer, director, and producer Marc Shaffer focuses on Muybridge’s bizarre life as well as his photography in the documentary Exposing Muybridge, highlighting an existence filled with murder, betrayal, naked ambition, legal and political wheeling and dealing, alchemy, and immense talent and ingenuity. Among those sharing their thoughts about Muybridge are actor and collector Gary Oldman, who must play the photographer in the eventual film, and author Rebecca Gowers, who is related to the man Muybridge killed. The sordid doings grow more and more intriguing as Shaffer cuts between the speakers, archival photographs and letters, and dozens of Muybridge’s pictures. My only quibble with the film is that I was hoping to learn the proper way to pronounce the photographer’s chosen surname (he was born Edward James Muggeridge), but not everyone in the film says “Muybridge” the same way. The November 13 and 15 screenings will be followed by a Q&A with Shaffer.
ASCENSION (Jessica Kingdon, 2021)
Cinépolis Chelsea
260 West Twenty-Third St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday, November 16, 4:15
Thursday, November 18, 4:45 www.docnyc.net/film/ascension ascensiondocumentary.com
Jessica Kingdon’s Ascension is one of the most beautifully photographed documentaries you’re ever likely to see. Evoking the mesmerizing visual style of such photographers as Andreas Gursky, Edward Burtynsky, and Jeff Wall, director, editor, and producer Kingdon and producer and cinematographer Nathan Truesdell, who rarely moves his camera, explore Xi Jinping’s promise of the Chinese Dream, what the leader calls “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese people,” in a three-part film about capitalism and consumption, poverty and wealth in China. The biracial Chinese American Kingdon first explores the job market, as men and women in outdoor booths shout out hourly wages, responsibilities, and housing opportunities to those in need of work, who are then shown toiling in factories, sewing, plucking fowl, and building sex dolls.
In the second section, workers are indoctrinated into the company lifestyle, learning how to climb the ladder through very specific and often demeaning business etiquette; the film concludes by showing the luxuries success and wealth can bring. One of the most memorable shots in a film filled with them is of a glamorous young woman being photographed at a seaside resort as a worker, unnoticed by the model and photographer, tends to a lush green lawn; the differences between her posh bag and chapeau and his garbage bag and straw hat, his face hidden as hers pouts for the camera, speak volumes. Featuring a pulsating score by Dan Deacon, Ascension might be specifically about China, but it also relates to what is happening in America today, particularly with the current supply chain issues as so many workers decided not to return to work as the pandemic lockdown lifted while income inequality continues to grow at obscene levels. The November 16 screening will be followed by a Q&A with Kingdon.
