this week in film and television

HUMAN CONDITIONS: THE FILMS OF MIKE LEIGH

The career of Mike Leigh is celebrated in Lincoln Center retrospective

HUMAN CONDITIONS: THE FILMS OF MIKE LEIGH
Film at Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
May 27 – June 8
www.filmlinc.org

For more than fifty years, British auteur Mike Leigh has been making character-driven films set in working-class worlds, anchored by memorable performances: Katrin Cartlidge in Career Girls, David Thewlis in Naked, Sally Hawkins in Happy-Go-Lucky, Jim Broadbent and Timothy Spall in Life Is Sweet, Marianne Jean-Baptiste in Secrets & Lies, Imelda Staunton in Vera Drake. His famed style involves the actors immersing themselves in their roles months and months ahead of shooting, resulting in stories steeped in reality, and humanity.

Film at Lincoln Center is honoring the seventy-nine-year-old director with the two-week retrospective “Human Conditions: The Films of Mike Leigh,” consisting of all fourteen of his features and two of his shorts (A Sense of History and The Short and Curlies), ranging from 1973’s Bleak Moments to 2018’s Peterloo. Leigh will be at the Walter Reade Theater for Q&As following the May 27 screening of the 4K restoration of Naked, the May 28 screening of a new restoration of Secrets & Lies, and the May 29 screening of a new restoration of his Gilbert & Sullivan biopic, Topsy-Turvy. Below are select reviews.

A pair of sisters contemplate their miserable lives in Mike Leigh’s first film, Bleak Moments

BLEAK MOMENTS (LOVING MOMENTS) (Mike Leigh, 1971)
Friday, May 27, 4:00
Saturday, May 28, 9:00
Friday, June 3, 1:00
www.filmlinc.org

British master filmmaker Mike Leigh’s feature debut, 1971’s Bleak Moments, is just that, a series of grim scenes involving five main characters who are not exactly the most scintillating of conversationalists. But slowly, the dark, dreary opening evolves into a wickedly funny black comedy about different sorts of relationships (familial, sexual, professional), comprising episodes that help define the film’s alternate title, Loving Moments. It would be hard for Sylvia (Anne Raitt) to live a more boring life. A typist at an accounting firm, she spends most of her free time at home taking care of her sister, Hilda (Sarah Stephenson), who suffers from a kind of autism. Hilda works with Pat (Joolia Cappleman), a strange bird obsessed with movies, Maltesers, and Hilda. Meanwhile, teacher Peter (Eric Allan), who seems terrified of people, shows interest, if you can call it that, in all three women. And Norman (Mike Bradwell), a wannabe singer-songwriter, has moved into Sylvia’s garage, where he plays music that intrigues Hilda. Over a short period of time, the three women and two men sit around, go for walks, eat, drink, and, mostly, say very little to one another, their tentativeness palpable, each one terribly frightened in his or her own way of what life has to offer, of connecting. But Leigh isn’t making fun of them; instead, Bleak Moments is a lovingly drawn story of real life, where people don’t always know exactly what to say or do or how to react in various situations.

Peter (Eric Allan) and Sylvia (Anne Raitt) go on a date to remember in Bleak Moments

Originally mounted as a stage production, Bleak Moments transitioned to the big screen with the financial help of Albert Finney. As became his trademark, Leigh had the actors first embody the roles in rehearsals and preparation, giving the film a believability despite the absurdity of it all. The overwhelming despair and hesitation demonstrated by the characters becomes painfully funny, especially when Peter takes Sylvia to a Chinese restaurant and, afterward, she tries to ply him with sherry.

In January 2013, Leigh discussed Bleak Moments with the Guardian, at first comparing it to watching paint dry and acknowledging that some people thought it was “the most boring film in the world” while also explaining, “From this distance, I cautiously feel I’m allowed to feel a touch of paternal pride in my young self. With such brief life experience, did I really invent this painful, tragic-comic tale of a beautiful but suppressed young woman, tied to her elder, mentally challenged sister? I guess I’m astonished at the maturity and sophistication of my achievement, not to mention its pathos and irony. . . . I’ve tried to vary my films considerably, but I would have to admit that Bleak Moments remains, in some ways, the mother of all Mike Leigh films. And I’m very proud of it.” As well he should be.

Sally Hawkins is unforgettable in Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky

HAPPY-GO-LUCKY (Mike Leigh, 2008)
Sunday, May 29, 9:00
Friday, June 3, 3:30
www.filmlinc.org

Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky is the most charming of all his films. Sally Hawkins gives a career-making performance as Poppy, the most delightful film character since Audrey Tatou’s Amélie (in Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s 2001 French comedy Le Fabuleux Destin D’amélie Poulain). Poppy is a primary school teacher who has an endearing, seemingly limitless love of life; she talks playfully with strangers in bookstores, teases her sister (Kate O’Flynn) and best friend (Alexis Zegerman) with the sweetest of smirks, takes a flamenco lesson on a whim with a colleague, and, when her bicycle is stolen, simply starts taking driving lessons.

However, her driving instructor, Scott (Eddie Marsan), is a tense, angry man with endless chips on his shoulder, trying to sour Poppy at every turn. But Poppy is no mere coquettish ingenue; when she senses a problem with one of her students, she is quick to get to the bottom of the situation, with the appropriate serious demeanor. As with most Leigh films, much of the dialogue is improvised (following long rehearsal periods), adding to its freshness. But also as with most Leigh films, there are dramatic turning points, but even those can’t wipe away Poppy’s — or the audience’s — endless smile.

British painter J. M. W. Turner (Timothy Spall) and his devoted housekeeper, Hanna Danby (Dorothy Atkinson), pause for a moment in biopic

MR. TURNER (Mike Leigh, 2014)
Sunday, June 5, 2:00
Wednesday, June 8, 3:30
www.filmlinc.org

Timothy Spall was named Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival for his compelling portrayal of British artist Joseph Mallord William Turner in Mike Leigh’s lovely biopic, Mr. Turner. Spall, who played Peter Pettigrew in the Harry Potter series and has appeared in such other Leigh films as Topsy-Turvy, All or Nothing, Life Is Sweet, and Secrets & Lies, portrays Turner as a gruff, self-involved painter who grunts and growls his way through life. At his home studio he is assisted by his aging father, William (Paul Jesson), and his devoted housekeeper, Hanna Danby (Dorothy Atkinson), who he occasionally shags when in the mood. Turner carries his sketchbook wherever he goes, always on the look-out for a beautiful landscape or winter storm that could become the subject of his next painting. With that in mind, he rents a room in a small seaside inn run by Sophia Booth (Marion Bailey), who eventually becomes more than just his landlady. An artist well ahead of his time, Turner becomes frustrated with the men at the Royal Academy of Arts and lisping art critic John Ruskin (Joshua McGuire), who don’t appreciate his work properly, especially when he starts heading toward abstraction.

J. M. W. Turner (Timothy Spall) is always on the look-out for a subject to paint in Mr. Turner

Leigh does not paint the kindest portrait of J. M. W. Turner, who turned his back on his former mistress, the shrill Sarah Danby (Ruth Sheen), and their two daughters (Sandy Foster and Amy Dawson); doesn’t have the nicest things to say about such contemporaries as John Constable (James Fleet) and Benjamin Haydon (Martin Savage); and won’t listen to the stern warnings of his doctor (David Horovitch). Turner is an artist first and foremost; everything else takes a backseat in his life. Despite being based on actual events, the film was made in Leigh’s usual style, with the actors improvising within set scenes; Spall, who studied painting for two years in preparing for the role, takes full advantage of the opportunity, often refusing to articulate, grunting and growling as he deals with other people who dare share their thoughts and opinions with him. It’s a very funny conceit that helps define a rather unusual character.

As befits a story about a masterful painter, cinematographer Dick Pope, who has shot most of Leigh’s films, beautifully photographs the sun rising and setting over vast landscapes, capturing its glowing light cast over the sea. Leigh keeps the narrative subtle, as when Turner and Sophia sit for a daguerreotype; almost nothing extraordinary happens in the scene, but from a few groaned questions and Spall’s expression, viewers can sense Turner realizing the changes that photography will bring to realist painting, spurring his controversial switch to more abstract canvases. It is not shown as a eureka moment but just another part of Turner’s development in becoming one of the most important and influential artists of the nineteenth century. And then there are the paintings themselves, glorious works that are always a joy to see, especially in a film that is a work of art itself.

LOWER EAST SIDE FESTIVAL OF THE ARTS: ARTISTS EMBRACE LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL

Who: Nearly two hundred performers
What: Lower East Side Festival of the Arts
Where: Theater for the New City, 155 First Ave. at Tenth St.
When: May 27-29, free (donations accepted)
Why: The twenty-seventh annual Lower East Side Festival of the Arts, a wide-ranging, indoor and outdoor celebration of the vast creativity of the neighborhood over the decades, will feature nearly two hundred performers, at Theater for the New City and on Tenth St. Taking place May 27-29, the festival, with the theme “Artists Embrace Liberty and Justice for All,” includes dance, spoken word, theater, music, visual art, and more from such familiar faves as David Amram, the Thunderbird American Indian Dancers, Shakespeare in the Parking Lot, James Rado, La MaMa, Akiko, Folksbiene National Yiddish Theater, Malachy McCourt, KT Sullivan, Eduardo Machado, Austin Pendleton, the Rod Rodgers Dance Company, Melanie Maria Goodreaux, Chinese Theater Works, New Yiddish Rep, Eve Packer, 13th Street Rep, and Metropolitan Playhouse.

The event will be emceed at the various locations by Crystal Field, Robert Gonzales Jr., Danielle Aziza, Sabura Rashid, David F. Slone Esq., and Joe John Battista. There will also be vendors and food booths and special programs for children curated by Donna Mejia and hosted by John Grimaldi, film screenings curated by Eva Dorrepaal, a “poetry jam with prose on the side” curated by Lissa Moira, and an art show curated by Carolyn Ratcliffe. Select performances will be livestreamed here.

PIONEERS GO EAST COLLECTIVE: CROSSROADS

Paz Tanjuaquio will present Dead Stars Still Shine at Judson Church

Who: Pioneers Go East Collective
What: Multimedia cross-disciplinary performance series
Where: Judson Memorial Church, 55 Washington Sq. South between Thompson & Sullivan Sts.
When: May 26–28, free – $50 sliding scale, 8:00
Why: Pioneers Go East Collective continues its “Crossroads” series May 26-28 at Judson Memorial Church with works by Yoshiko Chuma, Symara Johnson, Anabella Lenzu, Amanda Loulaki, Molly&Nola, and artists-in-residence Angel Acuña, Doron Perk, Paz Tanjuaquio, and Dane Terry, curated by Daniel Diaz, Gian Marco Riccardo Lo Forte, and Philip Treviño. The 8:00 program on May 26 includes Acuña’s video EPIFANIO – DV no.0001, Perk’s Grandfather Visit solo, Tanjuaquio’s Dead Stars Still Shine, a collaboration with visual artist/composer Todd B. Richmond and digital artist Onome Ekeh, with poetry by Luis H. Francia, and pianist Terry’s On Eternity, with visuals by Bizzy Barefoot. On May 27 at 8:00, Chuma will be joined by dancers Emily Pope and Sarah Skaggs and multi-instrumentalist Ginger Dolden for Hey Women!, the latest in Chuma’s “Head in the Sand” series; Johnson’s The Kitchen Sink Ranger at the Midnight Rodeo; Molly&Nola’s Steer, dealing with livestock auctioneering and cloning; and Pioneers Go East Collective’s film My Name’Sound.

Saturday’s lineup includes Hey women!, My Name’Sound, Lenzu’s A bone to pick with you, and a new piece by Loulaki, who explains, “There is something that is never able to be described, just to be sensed, and that is the place where we sometimes could meet. Traces of actions and faint memories wondering for their place in time. The focus shifts, the essence morphs, and pause gives meaning to time and sense to presence.” In addition, there will be NEXT! workshops on May 26 at 6:00 with Perk and on May 27 at 6:00 with Parijat Desai.

DanceAfrica 2022: HOMEGROWN

Asase Yaa African American Dance Theater will perform at BAM’s annual DanceAfrica festival

Who: Asase Yaa African American Dance Theater, Bambara Drum and Dance Ensemble, Farafina Kan, Harambe Dance Company, LaRocque Bey School of Dance, BAM/Restoration Dance Youth Ensemble, DanceAfrica Spirit Walkers, more
What: DanceAfrica Festival 2022
Where: BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, 30 Lafayette Ave.
When: May 21 – June 2, many events free, Gilman dances $12.50 – $85, film screenings $16
Why: The coming of summer means the arrival of one of the best festivals of every year, BAM’s DanceAfrica. The forty-fifth annual event features the theme “Homegrown,” with five companies making return visits to BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House: Asase Yaa African American Dance Theater, Bambara Drum and Dance Ensemble, Farafina Kan, Harambe Dance Company, and LaRocque Bey School of Dance, along with the BAM/Restoration Dance Youth Ensemble and DanceAfrica Spirit Walkers, highlighting movement and music from Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, and the Caribbean, accompanied by Arkestra Africa. Curated by artistic director Abdel R. Salaam, the festival also includes the Tribute to the Ancestors, Community Day, a Memorial Room, the DanceAfrica Bazaar with more than 150 vendors, dance workshops and master classes in Brooklyn Bridge Park and the Mark Morris Dance Center, the Water Your Roots Youth Dance Expo & Talent Show, the Council of Elders Roundtable “Legacy & Preservation,” Christopher Myers’s stained-glass work Be Lost Well (Stay in the House All Day), and a late night dance party with DJ YB.

FilmAfrica runs May 27 to June 2, consisting of more than two dozen films, from Moussa Touré’s 1997 TGV (followed by a Q&A with Touré and Amy Andrieux), Raymond Rajaonarivelo’s 1996 When the Stars Meet the Sea, and Amleset Muchie’s 2019 Min Alesh! to Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s 2008 Sex, Okra, and Salted Butter, Balufu Bakupa-Kanyinda’s 2006 Juju Factory, and Dumisani Phakathi’s Don’t F*** with Me, I Have 51 Brothers and Sisters.

CANE FIRE

Activists fight for ancestral land in Kauaʻi in Anthony Banua-Simon’s Cane Fire

CANE FIRE (Anthony Banua-Simon, 2020)
BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
May 20-26
www.bam.org

Not that it’s surprising, but colonialism is alive and well in the United States, as revealed in Anthony Banua-Simon’s poignant documentary Cane Fire, screening May 20-26 at BAM.

While doing research for his 2013 short, Third Shift, about the demise of the Domino Sugar Factory in South Williamsburg and its replacement with luxury condos and commercial properties, Banua-Simon became immersed in his family’s Hawaiian history; in the 1920s, his great-grandfather immigrated to Kauaʻi from the Philippines to work in the sugar and pineapple plantations. His great-grandfather eventually left, leaving family behind, but not before serving as an extra in Lois Weber’s long-lost 1934 melodrama, Cane Fire (aka White Heat), which was filmed on Kauaʻi and deals with sugar plantations, imperialism, and mixed marriages.

While searching for more information about the film, Banua-Simon became immersed in the history of Kauaʻi, from its use as a favorite Hollywood shooting location to labor strife, cultural appropriation, and the building of massive “plantation-style” resorts on land taken from the native population, particularly following its gaining statehood in 1959, primarily for military purposes.

Banua-Simon depicts how Kauaʻi has changed through the eyes of his elderly great-uncle Henry Bermoy, a former union leader who does not like what he sees happening to the land and the culture. Banua-Simon also speaks with his younger cousins River Bermoy, Micah Bermoy, and Dylan Silva, who are trying to make lives for themselves on the island; Henry’s longtime friend and colleague, Alfredo Castillo, who bemoans the end of unions; popular singer Larry Rivera, who will take whatever gig he’s offered; second generation sugar company manager Mike Faye, who believes that industrial growth benefits everyone and always has; union rep Pamela Green; Mike Wong, who works such long hours (for low pay) at Smith’s Tropical Paradise that he has no time for his family; activists Keʻala Lopez and Kamu “Charles” Hepa, who risk their freedom to protect ancestral land; and real estate broker Chad Deal, who promotes luxury living on the island with no sense of how that negatively impacts the families who have lived there for generations.

“For those who can afford it, the island continues to fulfill the escapist fantasy,” Banua-Simon explains about more than a hundred years of exploitation. “But for the working class and native resident, Kauaʻi is at a breaking point.”

Banua-Simon keeps close track of developer Tyler Greene, who is planning on restoring the old Coco Palms resort to its former glory, when Hollywood greats partied there, owner Grace Guslander appropriated Hawaiian culture to please white tourists, and locals were taken advantage of as part of the cost of doing business. Banua-Simon incorporates new interviews with archival photographs and video; clips of Charlton Heston, John Wayne, Kevin Costner, Yvette Mimieux, Frank Sinatra, Nicolas Cage, Jennifer Aniston, Adam Sandler, and others in such movies and TV shows shot on Kauaʻi as Blue Hawaii, Jungle Heat, Diamond Head, South Pacific, Fantasy Island, Big Jim McLain, Dinocroc vs. Supergator, Dragonfly, and Pagan Love Song; old commercials for luxury travel promising the heights of extravagance; and more that reveal the disconnect between the native Hawaiians and the white interlopers.

And it’s still happening today.

“There are forces out there that don’t want us to survive because our existence threatens directly their existence,” Keʻala says as a group of locals occupy a historic, important site that is going to be redeveloped. “The fact that the kingdom exists takes away from the legitimacy of the corporations that stole these lands.”

Banua-Simon directed, edited, and photographed Cane Fire and cowrote and produced it with Michael Vass. A member of the volunteer-run Spectacle Theater in Brooklyn, Banua-Simon and Vass will be at BAM on May 20 and 21 for Q&As moderated by Alex Press and Steve Macfarlane, respectively, following the 7:00 screenings each night. In addition, documentarian Joan Lander is presenting “Eyes of the Land: Hawai‘i Shorts by Nā Maka o ka ‘Āina,” a special program at Spectacle on May 18 at 7:30 consisting of All Hawaiʻi Stand Together, No Tell Me Go, Waimanalo Eviction, and Na Wai E Ho’ōla I Nā Iwi — Who Will Save the Bones?

HBO’s SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE: SPECIAL SCREENING AND CONVERSATION

Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac will talk about their HBO series at the 92nd St. Y

Who: Jessica Chastain, Oscar Isaac, Hagai Levi, Amy Herzog, Michael Ellenberg
What: Screening and discussion
Where: 92nd St. Y, Kaufmann Concert Hall, 1395 Lexington Ave. at Ninety-Second St.
When: Thursday, May 19, $27-$45, 7:00
Why: If you missed HBO’s English-language adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s six-part Scenes from a Marriage, you can get a special chance to watch one of the 2021 episodes on the big screen, followed by a conversation with members of the creative team, at the 92nd St. Y on May 19. Bergman’s 1973 miniseries detailed the slow, heart-wrenching fracture of the relationship between Marianne (Liv Ullmann) and Johan (Erland Josephson). Directed and executive produced by Hagai Levi (The Affair, In Treatment) and written by Levi and playwright Amy Herzog (4000 Miles, Mary Jane), the remake turns the tables on such issues as infidelity, truth, gender, responsibility, and identity, with Oscar Isaac as Jonathan and Jessica Chastain as Mira. The 92Y screening will be followed by a discussion with Isaac, Chastain, Levi, Herzog, and producer Michael Ellenberg that goes behind the scenes of the making of the almost painfully intimate show.

VISIONS OF OKINAWA: CINEMATIC REFLECTIONS

Go Takamine’s Paradise View kicks off Japan Society series about the Okinawan transition

VISIONS OF OKINAWA: CINEMATIC REFLECTIONS
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
May 13 – June 3, $15 in-person screenings, $10 online rentals (three-film pass $24)
www.japansociety.org

“Did you have your fortune told?” a character asks in Go Takamine’s Paradise View. “Yes, things are looking good” is the answer.

On June 17, 1971, the last of the Ryukyu Islands was returned to Japanese control. Japan Society began its celebration of that pivotal event in March with “Waves Across Time: Traditional Dance and Music of Okinawa.” The tribute continues May 13 to June 3 with “Visions of Okinawa: Cinematic Reflections,” consisting of five in-person screenings and three streaming films, all set around the transition of power. Part of the “Okinawa in Focus: Globus Film Series,” the festival begins May 13 at 7:00 with the North American premiere of the 2021 edit of Go Takamine’s Paradise View, followed by a reception; the 1985 work, which deals with a funeral, a wedding, dangerous snakes, and painful dentistry, will be available for streaming starting May 14.

Chris Marker’s 1996 Level Five, a French film involving a computer game restaging the Battle of Okinawa as part of an investigation into the Japanese tendency to bury the past, will be shown May 14 at 4:30, followed at 7:00 by a rare archival 35mm print of Nagisa Oshima’s 1972 Dear Summer Sister, in which Oshima, who appears in Level Five, takes viewers on an unusual tourist trip across Okinawa. Sadao Nakajima’s 1976 Terror of Yakuza, inspired by actual gang warfare on Okinawa and starring the great Sonny Chiba, screens May 20 at 7:00; an imported 35mm print of Go Takamine’s 1989 Untamagiru, an adaptation of the uchina shibai play and featuring John Sayles as a US military commander who really loves his dog, will be shown May 21 at 7:00.

Motoshinkakarannu explores the complicated transition of power on Okinawa

The virtual screenings also include the special “Focus on the Nihon Documentarist Union (NDU),” a pair of black-and-white guerrilla-style nonfiction works by the NDU, which was founded in 1968 at Waseda University. The 1971 Motoshinkakarannu and 1973 Asia Is One are screening for the first time outside of Japan, with new English subtitles, taking on immigration, socioeconomic issues, labor protests, and other complex issues.