this week in film and television

INSIDER INSIGHTS: GERHARD RICHTER PAINTING

Gerhard Richter reveals his creative process in fascinating documentary (photo courtesy of Kino Lorber)

Who: Brinda Kumar, Corinna Belz
What: Livestreamed prerecorded discussion
Where: MetMuseum Facebook and YouTube
When: Tuesday, June 23, free, 6:00
Why: In conjunction with the expansive Met Breuer exhibition “Gerhard Richter: Painting After All,” which opened March 4 for a brief run before the pandemic lockdown and hopefully will continue once the crisis is over, the Met’s “Insider Insights” series will examine Corinna Belz’s 2011 documentary, Gerhard Richter Painting. [Ed. note: It was announced on June 22 that the Met Breuer will be closing for good, so the exhibition will not be coming back.] On June 23 at 6:00, writer-director Belz will be joined by Met Modern and Contemporary Art assistant curator Brinda Kumar for a prerecorded interview discussing the making of the film, which can be streamed for free through July 31 here.

There’s nothing abstract about the title of Belz’s documentary on the German artist, no missing words or punctuation marks. Gerhard Richter Painting is primarily just that: Ninety-seven minutes of Gerhard Richter painting as he prepares for several exhibitions, including a 2009 show at the Marian Goodman Gallery in New York City. In 2007, Belz got a rare chance to capture Richter on camera, making a short film focusing on the stained-glass window he designed for the Cologne Cathedral. Two years later, the shy, reserved Richter, who prefers to have his art speak for itself, invited Belz into his studio, giving her remarkable access inside his creative process, which revealingly relies so much on chance and accident. Belz films Richter as he works on two large-scale canvases on which he first slathers yellow paint, adds other colors, then takes a large squeegee and drags it across the surface, changing everything. It’s fascinating to watch Richter study the pieces, never quite knowing when they are done, unsure of whether they are any good. It’s also painful to see him take what looks like an extraordinary painting and then run the squeegee over it yet again, destroying what he had in order to see if he can make it still better. “They do what they want,” he says of the paintings. “I planned something totally different.”

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About halfway through the film, a deeply concerned Richter starts regretting his decision to allow the camera into his studio. “It won’t work,” he says. “At the moment it seems hopeless. I don’t think I can do this, painting under observation. That’s the worst thing there is.” But continue he does, for Belz’s and our benefit. Belz (Life After Microsoft, Peter Handke: In the Woods, Might Be Late) even gets Richter to talk a little about his family while looking at some old photos, offering intriguing tidbits about his early life and his escape to Düsseldorf just before the Berlin Wall went up. Belz also includes clips from 1966 and 1976 interviews with Richter, and she attends a meeting he has with Goodman about his upcoming show, lending yet more insight into the rather eclectic artist. “To talk about painting is not only difficult but perhaps pointless, too,” Richter, who turned eighty-eight in February, says in the 1966 clip. However, watching Gerhard Richter Painting is far from pointless; Belz has made a compelling documentary about one of the great, most elusive artists of our time. “Man, this is fun,” Richter says at one point, and indeed it is; watching the masterful artist at work is, well, a whole lot more fun than watching paint dry.

SANFORD BIGGERS IN CONVERSATION WITH ROSELEE GOLDBERG: THE SOMETHIN’ SUITE

Sanford Biggers will talk to Performa head RoseLee Goldberg about The Somethin’ Suite and more on Juneteenth

Who: Sanford Biggers, RoseLee Goldberg
What: Talk and screening surrounding The Somethin’ Suite
Where: Performa Instagram Live and Performa website
When: Talk: Friday, June 19, free, noon; screening: June 18 & 19, free, 7:00
Why: In honor of Juneteenth, the anniversary of the end of the Civil War and slavery, Performa chief curator RoseLee Goldberg will discuss art, politics, systemic racism, and more with New York City-based multidisciplinary artist Sanford Biggers. The talk will take place on Instagram Live at noon, in conjunction with screenings on June 18 and 19 of Biggers’s 2007 Performa commission, The Somethin’ Suite, what he called “a post minstrel cycle” and “a darke xperiment.” The twenty-five-minute performance, held at the Box, featured Martin Luther, Saul Williams, Esthero, Shae Fiol, Imani Uzuri, DJ Dahi Sundance, CX KidTRONiK, and Freedome Bradley as a wide range of characters staging a minstrel show, using spoken word, song, music, dance, and film to bring to stark light historical aspects of racism.

In a 2007 interview, Biggers, who was raised in Los Angeles, told Goldberg, “The whole institution of our popular cultural media, which started with minstrel shows and has now become the hip hop music industry — one of the most lucrative entertainment industries worldwide — originated with making a mockery of blacks. So I’m interested in how much and how little has changed in these last 150 years. We’re at a crucial moment in race relations in America right now, with a lot of old wounds being reopened and reexamined. With the ‘PC’ ethos of the ’90s having passed, and a black man being seriously considered for the US presidency, we cannot afford to not develop a more sophisticated understanding of ‘race’ and ‘otherness.’ So I thought it was a perfect time to really look at the history of how we’ve been imagining ourselves, as African Americans, how white people have projected their stereotypes onto us, and how we’ve reflected their obsession by projecting some of those stereotypes back, because neither party is solely guilty — there’s a complicity.” Given what is happening right now in America, from George Floyd to Aunt Jemima, this program could not be any more timely.

YES! REFLECTIONS OF MOLLY BLOOM

molly bloom

Who: Aedín Moloney of the Irish Repertory Theatre
What: Livestreamed performances adapted for onscreen viewing
Where: Irish Rep onine (link sent after RSVP)
When: Tuesday, June 16, 7:00; Wednesday, June 17, 3:00 & 8:00; Thursday, June 18, 7:00; Friday, June 19, 8:00; Saturday, June 20, 3:00, advance RSVP required (suggested donation $25)
Why: The Irish Rep has become one of the busiest theater companies in New York City during the pandemic, presenting a brand-new coronavirus-related work and hosting the Meet the Makers and The Show Must Go Online series. On May 27 it premiered The Gifts You Gave to the Dark, Darren Murphy’s short, heartbreaking work about a man (Marty Rea) in Belfast with Covid-19 unable to visit his dying mother (Marie Mullen) in Dublin, who is being cared for by her brother (Seán McGinley). Directed by Caitríona McLaughlin, the play gets right to the heart of the crisis as only Irish tales can; it will be available online through October 31.

The Irish Rep now turns its attention to adapting several recent stage productions for the internet, beginning with Yes! Reflections of Molly Bloom. The award-winning seventy-five-minute one-woman show, based on James Joyce’s epic Ulysses, was adapted by Aedín Moloney and Colum McCann, directed by Kira Simring, and features music by Paddy Moloney of the Chieftains (and Aedín’s father); it originally ran at the company’s home on West Twenty-Second St. in June and July of last year, with Moloney as Molly Bloom in the early morning hours of June 17, 1904, as she considers love, loneliness, and isolation. The full team has now reimagined the play for onscreen viewing, with Aedín Moloney reprising her role; it will be performed live from June 16 — Bloomsday, when Joyce’s iconic tome takes place — through June 20. Admission is free with advance RSVP, with a suggested donation of $25.

The Irish Rep continues its online foray with “Meet the Maker: Frank McCourt . . . And How He Got That Way: A Conversation with Ellen McCourt and Malachy McCourt” on June 18; “Meet the Maker: Conor McPherson” on July 2; a special gala screening with new video of Frank McCourt’s The Irish . . . and How They Got That Way on July 13; “Meet the Makers: John Douglas Thompson and Obi Abili on Breaking Barriers in Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones” on July 16; Dan Butler, Sean Gormley, John Keating, Tim Ruddy, and Amanda Quaid in an online version of Conor McPherson’s The Weir from July 21 to 25; and a virtual version of Barry Day’s Love, Noël, a musical about Noël Coward starring Steve Ross and KT Sullivan, from August 11 to 15. I’m exhausted just thinking about it, but I can’t wait to be at my computer to experience the joy of live theater, even if it’s through a screen.

92Y CONFRONTS HATE: ANNA DEAVERE SMITH IN CONVERSATION WITH EW’s SARAH RODMAN

Anna Deavere Smith and Sarah Rodman will discuss in live 92Y talk

Anna Deavere Smith and Sarah Rodman will discuss hate and inequality in livestreamed 92Y talk

Who: Anna Deavere Smith, Sarah Rodman
What: Live discussion about hate and inequality
Where: 92Y YouTube
When: Monday, June 15, free (donations accepted), 7:00
Why: In March 1994, actress, playwright, teacher, and author Anna Deavere Smith wrote and starred in her Tony-nominated one-woman show Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, in which she portrayed dozens of characters to tell the story of the 1992 LA riots after the acquittal of police officers charged in the beating of Rodney King. Late last year, the Signature Theatre revived Smith’s Fires in the Mirror, about the 1991 Crown Heights riots following the death of seven-year-old Gavin Cato. (The Signature was scheduled to revive Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 this spring, but it was canceled because of the Covid-19 crisis.) So the Baltimore-born Smith should have a lot to say about what is happening in America when she sits down for a conversation on June 15 at 7:00 with EW’s Sarah Rodman as part of the 92nd St. Y’s Confronting Hate initiative. You can prep for the free event by watching the filmed version of Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 on PBS, while Smith’s latest work, Notes from the Field, which explores racial injustice in the school-to-prison pipeline, is available on HBO. “92Y Confronts Hate” began on June 7 with the panel “The Politics of the Pandemic,” followed June 8 with Rabbi Peter Rubinstein and Reverend Jacques Andre DeGraff discussing “Building Bridges: Is it Possible?” and continues June 17 with “Directly from France” with Rabbi Delphine Horvilleur and Rabbi Rubinstein and June 18 with “Praying with Our Hearts, Hands, and Feet,” in which Rabbi Rubinstein will be joined by Imam Al-Hajj Talib ’Abdur-Rashid.

ISRAEL FILM CENTER FESTIVAL CLOSING NIGHT: AULCIE (with live Q&A)

The life and times of Aulcie Perry on and off the court are documented in Israel Film Center Festival closer

Who: Dani Menkin, Nancy Spielberg
What: Closing night of Israel Film Center Festival film screening and live Q&A
Where: Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan
When: Sunday, June 14, $8, 6:00
Why: The eighth annual Israel Film Center Festival comes to a close June 14 with Dani Menkin’s Aulcie, followed by a live Zoom Q&A with Menkin and producer Nancy Spielberg. 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. “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.

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 sixty-nine, Perry is honest and forthright throughout, admitting his failings and wanting to make up for lost time. He makes 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.

WE ARE HERE: A CELEBRATION OF RESILIENCE, RESISTANCE, AND HOPE

we are here

Who: Governor Andrew Cuomo, Whoopi Goldberg, Renée Fleming, Adrien Brody, Billy Joel, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, Lang Lang, Joyce DiDonato, Lea Salonga, Lauren Ambrose, Mayim Bialik, Julia Bullock, Christian Reif, Steven Skybell, Isabel Leonard, Lester Lynch, Jelani Remy, Jackie Hoffman, Elmore James, Daniel Kahn, John Brancy, Peter Dugan, Cantor Rebecca Garfein, Sasha Lurje, Dani Marcus, Rachel Zatcoff, J. David Williams, Glenn Seven Allen, Patrick Farrell, Jennifer Zetlan, Blythe Gaissert, Gerald Steichen, Thomas Bagwell, Zalmen Mlotek, Monica Yunus, Camille Zamora, more
What: Gala concert honoring the seventy-fifth anniversary of the end of WWII and the seventy-seventh anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
Where: We Are Here Live
When: Sunday June 14, free (donations accepted here), 2:00
Why: The Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, and Sing for Hope have joined forces with the Lang Lang International Music Foundation for the gala event “We Are Here: A Celebration of Resilience, Resistance, and Hope,” an afternoon of virtual music, theater, and civic discussion honoring the seventy-fifth anniversary of the end of WWII and the seventy-seventh anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, placing everything in context with the current pandemic, societal changes stemming from the murder of George Floyd, and the rise of anti-Semitism around the world. Among the performers and presenters are Whoopi Goldberg, Adrien Brody, Billy Joel, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, Lang Lang, Lea Salonga, Lauren Ambrose, Mayim Bialik, Julia Bullock, Steven Skybell, Jackie Hoffman, Zalmen Mlotek, and many others. Forward editor-in-chief Jodi Rudoren will discuss the 2019 documentary Who Will Write Our History, about the secret group Oyneg Shabes that led the Warsaw Uprising, with executive producer Nancy Spielberg, writer, producer, and director Roberta Grossman, and consultant Dr. Samuel D. Kassow; Gov. Cuomo will deliver special remarks; and Renée Fleming will premiere a new work by composer John Corigliano, with text by Kitty O’Meara. The title of the show, “We Are Here,” comes from the Yiddish song “Zog nit keyn mol,” which means “Never Say” and is known as “Hymn of the Partisans”; it concludes: “So, never say the road now ends for you, / Although skies of lead block out days of blue. / Our longed-for hour will yet come — / Our step will beat out — we are here!”

AVIVA (with live Q&As)

Real-life dancers Bobbi Jene Smith and Zina Zinchenko star in Boaz Yakin’s Aviva

Who: Boaz Yakin, Bobbi Jene Smith, Zina Zinchenko, Or Schraiber, Tyler Phillips
What: Virtual theatrical release of Aviva (Boaz Yakin, 2019), with live Q&As
Where: Angelika Film Center, $11.99 to rent film; Q&As free
When: Streaming begins June 12; Q&A with director Boaz Yakin and cast members and choreographers Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber, moderated by Robert Rosenberg, June 13 & 20, free with RSVP, 7:00; with Yakin and cast members Zina Zinchenko and Tyler Phillips, moderated by Rosenberg, June 14, free with RSVP, 7:00; with filmmakers June 18, Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan, free with RSVP, 8:30
Why: “There’s nothing more depressing or lonely than being alone in New York City,” a character says in voice-over early on in Boaz Yakin’s intensely intimate and sexual Aviva, an SXSW2020 selection that is being released virtually June 12 through the Angelika online here in New York. A few moments later, the character adds, “And so we created an imaginary space together, a space outside of time and space, shared only by us.” Aviva is a tantalizing, introspective film seemingly made for the time of coronavirus, with so many people still sheltering in place, facing isolation and loneliness, seeking connections via new spaces such as Zoom.

Yakin, a New York-based Israeli American writer, director, and producer who previously made Fresh, Remember the Titans, and Max, collaborated extensively with dancer-choreographer Bobbi Jene Smith on the film, which uses an array of beautiful bodies — nearly every actor is introduced in the nude — to express ideas of personal identity, traditional gender roles, love, friendship, boundaries, and creativity. Zina Zinchenko plays Aviva, a free-spirited Jewish dancer in Paris who is set up with Eden (Tyler Phillips), a relatively uncommunicative and ultraserious New Yorker. In Hebrew, Aviva means springlike and innocent, while Eden is named after the Garden of Eden, particularly the promise that turns into a fall from grace.

Yakin brilliantly explores the masculine-feminine contradictions in us all by also having Smith portray Eden as a woman, and her real-life husband, Or Schraiber, play Aviva as a man. The other characters recognize the two Edens and two Avivas, speaking with them as if there is nothing odd about the situation. In addition, the four speak to each other, arguing and debating the state of their desires, which becomes especially intriguing, and confusing, in the numerous graphic sexual scenes that sometimes involve multiple men and women. Dances are intricately placed throughout the film as part of the drama; the actors don’t simply break out into song a la Hollywood musicals so much as the movement usually develops more organically as characters get close, touch hands, and then come together in gorgeously choreographed solos and pas de deux, as well as a fun, freewheeling scene in a club. Yakin regularly breaks the fourth wall as characters speak directly at the viewer and, occasionally, the boom mic and the cameramen enter shots; there is no reason for him to hide that this is a movie, and that it is about dance, among other things.

Smith and Aviva co-choreographer Schraiber are both veterans of Ohad Naharin’s storied Israeli troupe Batsheva; the former teaches Gaga, Naharin’s unique physical language, and her parents are mimes who teach movement for actors at Juilliard; the real lives of Smith and Schraiber were detailed in the extraordinary 2017 documentary Bobbi Jene. Smith, Schraiber, and Zinchenko have also appeared together in such Batsheva pieces as The Last Work, while Zinchenko and Phillips are both veterans of Sleep No More. The four protagonists’ familiarity with one another adds another level of intimacy; we sometimes feel like we’re intruding on real life, which contrasts effectively with Bobbi Gene, which is framed like a fiction film.

New Yorkers will get a cathartic kick when the story travels to Coney Island and Central Park, recognizing such familiar sites as the Wonder Wheel and the Hans Christian Andersen statue, popular spots come spring and summer. It’s also no coincidence that children are front and center in those scenes. For those of us missing the connections that dance, sex, and going to the movies bring us, Aviva satisfies many of those needs. There will be free, live Q&As with Yakin and members of the cast on June 13, 14, 18, and 20; the film can be rented online for $11.99.