this week in film and television

DANCEAFRICA 2020

danceafrica

Who: Mikki Shepard, DJ YB, Mamma Normadien, Baba N’goma Woolbright, Charmaine Warren, Abdel R. Salaam, Karen Thornton Daniels, Sabine LaFortune, Coco Killingsworth, Farai Malianga, more
What: BAM’s DanceAfrica
Where: BAM online
When: Through May 29 (and beyond), free (some film screenings require small payment)
Why: One of our favorite ways of ushering in the summer season is by going to BAM’s annual DanceAfrica festival, a weekend of dance, films, a street bazaar, and more celebrating African culture. The forty-second annual event is taking place online, with livestreamed performances, film screenings, archival videos, interviews, classes, and a virtual bazaar. “The spirit of DanceAfrica has no boundaries, and will always find its way to the people,” Baba Abdel R. Salaam said in a statement. Below is the full schedule. And be prepared to shout “Ago!” “Amée!!” from the comfort of wherever you are sheltering in place.

Through May 27
FilmAfrica: Aya of Yop City (Marguerite Abouet & Clément Oubrerie, 2012), Mother of George (Andrew Dosunmu, 2012), Rafiki (Wanuri Kahiu, 2018), Youssou N’Dour: I Bring What I Love (Chai Vasarhelyi, 2008), pay-what-you-wish to $4.99

Through May 29
“DanceAfrica Visual Art: Omar Victor Diop”

Through June 14
DanceAfrica Virtual Bazaar, with clothing, jewelry, home goods, food, and accessories

Monday, May 25
“DanceAfrica: The Early Years,” with Mikki Shepard, 11:00 am

DanceAfrica Dance Party, with DJ YB, 7:00

Tuesday, May 26
“DanceAfrica: Behind the Scenes,” with Abdel R. Salaam, Charmaine Warren, and Council of Elder members Mamma Normadien and Baba N’goma Woolbright, 6:00

Wednesday, May 27
“DanceAfrica: The Council of Elders,” with Stefanie Hughley and Council of Elder leaders Mamma Lynette White-Mathews and Baba Bill (William) Mathews, 6:00

Thursday, May 28
“Education and DanceAfrica,” with Karen Thornton Daniels, Sabine LaFortune, Coco Killingsworth, and Abdel R. Salaam, 6:00

Opens Thursday, May 28
FilmAfrica: A Screaming Man (Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, 2010), Chez Jolie Coiffure (Rosine Mbakam, 2018), I Am Not a Witch (Rungano Nyoni, 2017), National Diploma (Dieudo Hamadi, 2014), prices TBD

Friday, May 29
“Bantaba West African Dance Class,” with Karen Thornton Daniels and Farai Malianga, RSVP required, 2:00

“DanceAfrica: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow,” with Coco Killingsworth, Charmaine Warren, and Abdel R. Salaam, 6:00

36 CINEMA: SHOGUN ASSASSIN WITH LIVE COMMENTARY BY RZA

shogun assassin

Who: RZA, Dan Halsted, Mustafa Shaikh
What: Live commentary during streaming of martial arts movie
Where: 36 Cinema
When: Sunday, May 24, $10, 9:15
Why: Rapper, writer, producer, actor, and director RZA has long displayed his admiration for martial arts movies. He is a cofounder of Wu-Tang Clan, which was named after the 1983 Hong Kong film Shaolin vs. Wu Tang, and he directed, cowrote, and starred in the 2012 movie The Man with the Iron Fists. In conjunction with 36 Chambers, the lifestyle company he cofounded in 2016 with Mustafa Shaikh — Wu-Tang Clan’s debut album was called Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) — he has now started 36 Cinema, an online site that will stream martial arts classics with live commentary. They kicked things off earlier this month with Shaolin vs. Wu Tang, and on May 24 they will head to Japan for the 1980 jidaigeki favorite Shogun Assassin, a crossover film directed by Kenji Misumi and Robert Houston, inspired by Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima’s long-running manga series Lone Wolf & Cub. The film features Tomisaburo Wakayama, the brother of producer and Zatoichi star Shintaro Katsu, as Ogami Ittō, a former executioner who has become a righteous defender of the common people and who lives by a very specific code; the film was sampled in Wu-Tang member GZA’s 1995 album, Liquid Swords, which was produced by RZA. RZA will provide live commentary, joined by Shaikh, who will moderate viewer questions, and Hollywood Theatre head programmer Dan Halsted. Tickets are limited and cost ten dollars; you will receive a link an hour before showtime. “Meet the greatest team in the history of mass slaughter!” the film’s tagline declares. We can’t wait.

LOWER EAST SIDE FESTIVAL OF THE ARTS: THE MT. OLYMPUS OF LES LOVE! and more

festival of the arts

Who: Charles Busch, Phoebe Legere, Penny Arcade, Austin Pendleton, David Amram, F. Murray Abraham, William Electric Black, more
What: Live concert and summit (and many other events)
Where: Theater for the New City
When: Saturday, May 23, free, 8:00 (festival runs May 22-24)
Why: Since 1996, Theater for the New City’s annual Lower East Side Festival of the Arts has been a harbinger of summer, three days of multidisciplinary performances taking place in and around the organization’s East First St. home. But the twenty-fifth anniversary of the popular weekend event goes virtual because of the Covid-19 pandemic, but that doesn’t mean it’s slowed down in the least. From May 22 to 24, the festival, whose theme is “Renaissance: Arts Alive 25,” will feature 250 participants providing music, dance, theater, discussion, and more, all for free. The centerpiece occurs on May 23 at 8:00 with “The Mt. Olympus of LES Love!,” a concert with an amazing lineup consisting of Charles Busch, Phoebe Legere, Penny Arcade, Austin Pendleton, David Amram, F. Murray Abraham, and William Electric Black, followed by a summit that attempts to answer the question “Where do we go from here?”

The three-day celebration will feature such speakers as Nii Gaani Aki, Michael Musto, Brad Hoylman, Carlina Rivera, and Candice Burridge; theater excerpts with Barbara Kahn, Anne Lucas, Eve Packer, Greg Mullavey, the Drilling Company, Folksbiene National Yiddish Theater, Nuyorican Poets Café, and others; comedy from Reno, Stan Baker, Trav S.D., Wise Guise, Izzy Church, Epstein and Hassan, and Ana-Maria Bandean with Gemma Forbes; dance with Ashley Liang Dance Company, Constellation Moving Co., Dixon Place, H.T. Chen & Dancers, Wendy Osserman Dance Company, Thunderbird American Indian Dancers, and Zullo/RawMovement; music by Donald Arrington, Allesandra Belloni, Michael David Gordon and the Pocket Band, Art Lillard, and Yip Harburg Rainbow Troupe; cabaret with KT Sullivan, Marissa Mulder, Eric Yves Garcia, Aziza, and Peter Zachari; and poetry readings by Coni Koepfinger, Tsaurah Litzky, Lola Rodriguez, Bob Rosenthal, Lissa Moira, and Brianna Bartenieff; along with puppetry, film screenings, children’s events, and visual art, all for free, although donations are gladly accepted.

THE MAKING OF AMARILLO RAMP (introduced by Lee Ranaldo)

©Holt/Smithson Foundation, Licensed by VAGA at ARS, New York. Distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix.

Nancy Holt follows the creation of husband Robert Smithson’s Amarillo Ramp in documentary (© Holt/Smithson Foundation)

Who: Lee Ranaldo
What: Online film screening and introduction
Where: Holt/Smithson Foundation Vimeo and Instagram Live
When: Friday, May 22, free, 2:00 (streams for twenty-four hours)
Why: The Holt/Smithson Foundation, which continues and expands the legacies of husband-and-wife artists Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson, have been livestreaming rare films by and about the couple on Friday afternoons at 2:00, leaving them up on Vimeo and IGTV for twenty-four hours. On May 22, the foundation will present Holt’s The Making of Amarillo Ramp, a documentary that goes behind the scenes of the creation of Smithson’s last earthwork, 1973’s Amarillo Ramp, consisting of rocks and dirt that was meant to emerge from an artificial lake in Amarillo but is now eroding in a dry basin. Holt shot the film in 1973, but it wasn’t edited and completed until 2013; Smithson died at the age of thirty-five in a plane crash while surveying the work, which was finished by Holt, Tony Shafrazi, and Richard Serra, while Holt passed away in 2014 at the age of seventy-five. The thirty-two-minute 16mm film will be introduced by musician, composer, visual artist, writer, producer, and Sonic Youth cofounder Lee Ranaldo, who in 1998 released the experimental album Amarillo Ramp (for Robert Smithson), which features the title track in addition to “Non-Site #3,” “Notebook,” “Here,” and a cover of John Lennon’s “Isolation,” which fits in all too well with the current pandemic; Smithson was a land artist working outside, amid large expanses of deserted areas, and Ranaldo has just released a new video for “Isolation,” with footage taken during the coronavirus crisis.

VIRTUAL CINEMA: SPACESHIP EARTH LIVE Q&A

A group of biospherians shelter in place in a geodesic dome in Spaceship Earth

Who: David Teague, Marley Mcdonald, Brian Becker
What: Zoom Q&A about Spaceship Earth
Where: Maysles Documentary Center website
When: Saturday, May 16, free, 4:00
Why: Big Brother meets Silent Running and The Martian in Spaceship Earth, Matt Wolf’s new documentary that takes on new meaning in the age of coronavirus. Currently, most of America is sheltering in place, stuck in their homes. In Spaceship Earth, which is streaming on the Maysles Documentary Center website, Hulu, and other online platforms, Wolf (Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell, Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project) takes us behind the scenes of the development of Biosphere 2, the 1991 project that was supposed to be all about sustainability and biodiversity, with a crew of eight planning on living within the large dome in Oracle, Arizona, for two years, in a kind of self-imposed lockdown or quarantine. Wolf goes back to the beginning, to an avant-garde theater troupe that eventually morphed into a group of unique individuals determined to save the planet, under the leadership of ecologist, writer, activist, and engineer John “Johnny Dolphin” Allen, who founded the hippie Theater of All Possibilities in San Francisco, and moneyman Ed Bass, whose family was in the Texas oil business.

In new interviews and archival footage, Wolf introduces us to Allen, Margret “Firefly” Augustine, William “Freddy” Dempster, Marie “Flash” Harding, Mark Nelson, Kathelin Gray, Tony Burgess, Kathy Dyhr, and others who were involved in the project, which had some cultlike elements, in addition to the eight men and women who became biospherians (Jane Poynter, Taber MacCallum, Abigail Alling, Bernd Zabe, Linda Leigh, Mark Van Thillo, Roy Walford, and Sally Silverstone). Among the major influences were William S. Burroughs, R. Buckminster Fuller, and the Whole Earth Catalog. And just wait till you see Stephen Bannon enter the picture.

Perhaps what’s most fascinating about Spaceship Earth is how far away 1991 seems, and how little we have learned since then. The film will continue streaming at the Maysles site through May 22; on May 16 at 4:00, there will be a live Zoom Q&A with editor David Teague, associate editor Marley Mcdonald, and archival/story producer Brian Becker.

GIFTS OF LIFE: PROFILES IN COURAGE FROM THE TRANSPLANT COMMUNITY (online premiere and live Q&A)

Gifts of Life documentary highlights the stories of three organ transplant recipients

Who: Shelby Caban, Jack Cloonan, Jennifer Lentini, Doug Housman, John Redican, Joy Oppedisano, Michael David Drucker
What: Online film premiere and live discussion/Q&A
Where: Zoom link available here
When: Wednesday, May 13, free (donations accepted), 8:00
Why: After being selected for the Queens World Film Festival, the SR Socially Relevant Film Festival New York, the Hell’s Kitchen NYC Festival, the Point Lookout Film Festival, and many others and being named Best Documentary Short at the Big Apple Film Festival, Michael David Drucker’s Gifts of Life: Profiles in Courage from the Transplant Community is having its online premiere May 13 at 8:00 over Zoom, where the thirteen-minute film will be screened, followed by a live discussion and Q&A. The beautifully photographed work shares the stories of two women and one man who are alive today because of organ donations: Shelby Caban, Jack Cloonan, and Jennifer Lentini, who all feel an obligation to live life to the fullest in tribute to the people who donated their organs upon their tragic deaths. “There’s an uncommon level of gratitude among organ recipients. They have the utmost appreciation for their donors and for every moment of their extended life. It’s an inspiration to hear their stories of struggle and resilience,” Drucker says in his director’s statement.

They also are all giving back to society in their own ways. In making the film, writer-director Drucker (The Copper Cowboy, Inside My Life on the Spectrum) teamed up with LI TRIO and Hearts for Russ, two organizations leading the fight to increase awareness and funding for organ transplants. “The numbers for New York are horrific compared to any other state for registered organ donors,” Lentini says in the documentary, a poignant fact especially now that we’re in lockdown because of the coronavirus. The live Q&A will feature Caban, Cloonan, Lentini, Drucker [ed. note: Drucker is a close childhood friend of mine], executive producers Doug Housman and John Redican, and producer Joy Oppedisano. The event is free, but donations are accepted, pun intended.

SILENT MOVIE MONDAYS: ONE WEEK / COPS WITH PAUL DOOLEY

Paul Dooley gives a talk about Buter Keaton at Retroformat Los Angeles (photo courtesy Retroformat)

Who: Paul Dooley, Cliff Retallic
What: Livestreamed classic silent movies with special guests
Where: Retroformat Facebook page
When: Monday nights at 10:30, free with RSVP
Why: Retroformat in Los Angeles has teamed with Flicker Alley LLC, Lobster Films, and Blackhawk Films to present #SilentMovieMondays, livestreamed screenings of silent classics on Facebook, with live musical accompaniment by Retroformat musical director Cliff Retallick, special guest lecturers, and Q&As. On May 4, they showed Max Linder’s 1921 Seven Years Bad Luck and had a talk with self-described “cinevore” Serge Bromberg. On May 11, the great Paul Dooley, the ninety-two-year-old star of stage and screen, including such films as A Wedding, Breaking Away, Popeye, Cars, and Sixteen Candles, will be on hand to talk about Buster Keaton, who will be featured in one of his all-time best, One Week, about a pair of newlyweds and their new home, as well as Cops, in which he gets in trouble with the LAPD. Dooley, who refers to himself as “a household face” and was the cocreator of the long-running children’s show The Electric Company, considers Keaton his hero; he played a Keystone cop in one of Keaton’s 1964-65 Ford Econoline commercials. Retroformat, whose “sole mission is to educate and inspire enthusiasm for the art and history of silent film,” will continue the series during the pandemic shutdown with future titles and guests to be announced.