this week in film and television

NY INDIE THEATRE FILM FESTIVAL

Attending the NY Indie Theatre Film Festival won’t be as traumatic as visiting Natalie Johnson’s The Taxidermist, which screens on February 8

New Ohio Theatre
154 Christopher St.
February 6-9, individual events free – $10, day/fest passes $15-$30
866-811-4111
newohiotheatre.org

New Ohio Theatre’s fourth annual NY Indie Theatre Film Festival finishes in a big way on February 9 with a special screening of Charles Busch’s 2006 coming-of-age tale A Very Serious Person, in which the writer-director stars as a gay male nurse taking care of an ailing woman portrayed by Polly Bergen. Busch, whose work includes The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife, The Tribute Artist, and the current Primary Stages production The Confession of Lily Dare at the Cherry Lane, will participate in a talkback after the screening. The festival begins February 6 at 7:00 with a screenplay reading of Brooke Berman’s Polly Freed with Annie Parisse, Paul Sparks, Sadie Seelert, Alysia Reiner, Jamie Harrold, Austin Ku, Sebastian Martinez, Clara Young, Becca Lish, Erin Gann, and Julienne Kim and a free opening-night party at 9:00. There will be five screening blocks of short films and web series episodes February 7-8, including works written and/or directed by Victoria Clark, David Zayas Jr., Wendy MacLeod, Caroline V. McGraw, and Alyssa May Gold. On February 9 at 2:00, the competitive Film Race will take place, a benefit for F*It Club in which teams present movies they made only after getting required script elements on February 5; at 4:00, the panel discussion “What Makes a Pitch Sizzle?” brings together Thom Woodley, Sarah Donnelly, and Gideon Evans. “Our mission is to support indie theatre artists wherever their inspiration takes them. If it takes them into new mediums, we want to be there to help,” New Ohio artistic director Robert Lyons said in a statement. Individual events are $5 to $10, with day or festival passes ranging from $15 to $30.

BEANPOLE

Iya (Viktoria Miroshnichenko) deals with horrific tragedy in Kantemir Balagov’s Beanpole

BEANPOLE (Дылда) (Kantemir Balagov, 2019)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Through February 11
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

Russia’s official submission for the Oscar for Best International Film, for which it was shortlisted, Kantemir Balagov’s Beanpole is an unsparing look at PTSD in women, here specifically in WWII but also more generally as mothers and caretakers. In 1945 Leningrad, Iya (Viktoria Miroshnichenko) is a very tall, quiet, former anti-aircraft gunner working in a military hospital for men with severe injuries. She is particularly drawn to Stepan (Konstantin Balakirev), who is paralyzed. She has a condition in which her body freezes, as if trapped in a limbo between life and death, and it horrifically leads to tragedy. Iya’s best friend and lover, Masha (Vasilisa Perelygina), returns from the front, bearing a frightening scar. She deviously sets out to have a child, involving the oddball Sasha (Igor Shirokov) and the head of the hospital, Nikolay (Andrey Bykov), which confuses and deeply upsets Iya.

Masha (Vasilisa Perelygina) and Iya (Viktoria Miroshnichenko) try to put their lives back together after fighting in WWII in Beanpole

Inspired by Belarus author Svetlana Alexievich’s Nobel Prize-winning 1987 book The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of World War II, Balagov’s second film, following his 2017 drama, Closeness, is a thoroughly unpredictable and purposefully uncomfortable journey into the minds of men and, more specifically, women shell-shocked by war. In their film debuts, Miroshnichenko and Perelygina are mesmerizing; cinematographer Ksenia Sereda zeroes in on Miroshnichenko’s head and Perelygina’s face as if they are characters unto themselves. The film’s palette is ochre-based, with explosions of bright yellows, reds, and especially greens — the color of rebirth, renewal, and envy — which pop up in wallpaper, paint, Iya’s sweater, and Masha’s dress. It’s a world in which women, after experiencing such pain and suffering, are expected to get married and pregnant amid all the death surrounding them. Balagov won Un Certain Regard’s Best Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival for this stark, brutal portrayal of average people looking for love amid the ruins. It might be set in 1945, dealing with the aftereffects of the Siege of Leningrad and what it did to the soul of the Russian city, but its exploration of the physical and psychological trauma of war is as relevant today as it was then.

JOSÉ

José (Enrique Salanic) and Luis (Manolo Herrera) look to the stars in Queer Lion award winner

JOSÉ (Li Cheng, 2018)
Quad Cinema
34 West 13th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Opens Friday, January 31
212-255-2243
quadcinema.com/film/jose
www.outsiderpictures.us

At one point in Li Cheng’s gentle, beautifully sensitive José, the title character (Enrique Salanic) is consoling his friend and coworker, Monica (Jhakelyn Waleska Gonzalez), as an airplane passes far off in the distance and José catches a glimpse of it just before it disappears from view. In the very next scene, José is walking determinedly toward the camera as a flock of birds wheels in the sky behind him. The meaning is clear: José is trapped in his situation, unable to fly; he’s barely scraping by at an unfulfilling, low-paying job, taking care of his mother (Ana Cecilia Mota), and unable to live his life in Guatemala — or anywhere else — as a nineteen-year-old gay man out in the open. In a bizarre turn, Salanic has been denied a visa to come to America to support the US theatrical release of the film, which begins January 31 at the Quad. He has traveled all over the world with José, which won the Queer Lion at the seventy-fifth annual Venice Film Festival, but the US embassy explained, “You have not demonstrated that you have the ties that will compel you to return to your home country after your travel to the United States.” The rejection is doubly strange given that Salanic went to school in Missouri and Canada, and, in the film, his character feels like he cannot leave his religious mother to pursue his own hopes and dreams.

José (Enrique Salanic) comforts Monica (Jhakelyn Waleska Gonzalez) in Li Cheng’s José

Gorgeously photographed by cinematographer Paolo Giron with a sharp sense of place and pace and compassionately written by Cheng and fellow producer George F Roberson, the film follows José as he explores first love with Luis (Manolo Herrera). José works at a dobladas restaurant, trying to lure in cars that are driving by a busy corner. He works with Monica and her boyfriend, Carlos (Esteban Lopez Ramirez), carefully overseen by their manager (Cesar Lorenzo Yojcom Candido). José doesn’t say much; he just goes about his daily business, taking walks, riding the bus, and sneaking away to spend time with other men, primarily Luis. There are numerous graphic sex scenes in the film, tinged with both sweetness and sadness. In only his second film and first as a lead, Salanic, who is of Mayan descent, is softly riveting, commanding the camera like a pro.

The plot rings true every step of the way: The film often has a cinéma-vérité feel; all the actors are nonprofessionals, evoking Italian neo-Realism and the work of Hou Hsiao-hsien, using natural light and sound whenever possible. The Chinese-born Cheng and American native Roberson, both of whom have PhDs and previously collaborated on 2014’s Joshua Tree, lived in Guatemala for two years researching and making the film, which they funded themselves; they interviewed hundreds of young people in the twenty largest Latin American cities across twelve countries, asking three main questions: “Which person are you closest to in your life? What’s your most unforgettable memory? Have you been in love?” The result is a film that is a stark portrait of today’s youth in a troubled, difficult world with limited options, whether gay or straight, where refugees are treated like villains and turned away at borders and children are ripped away from their parents. But the film has hope; we have faith that José will ultimately find his path, although the search is likely to be long and arduous. Cheng will be at the Quad for several Q&As January 31 to February 2, moderated by Before Stonewall codirector Robert Rosenberg or NewFest’s Nick McCarthy, but, alas, no Salanic.

FIRST SATURDAYS: FUTURA NOIR

Common will sit down for a fireside chat as part of Brooklyn Museum First Saturday program this week

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, February 1, free (some events require advance tickets), 5:00 – 11:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The Brooklyn Museum has a wide-ranging program with several surprises for its annual Black History Month edition of its free First Saturday gathering. There will be live performances by Topaz Jones, Niles Luther, NVR Sleep (Rodney Hazard, Mikey, Fab Roc, and ClassicNewWave), and Bri Blvck; an Ancestral Healing sound bath from HealHaus, with intention-setting by Omar Davis and a sound bath facilitated by Phyllicia Bonanno; a screening of Billy Gerard Frank’s 2019 short film Second Eulogy: Mind the Gap, followed by a talkback with artist and activist Renee Cox, artist Christopher Udemezue, and Frank, moderated by writer and curator Ebony L. Haynes; a Scholar Talk with Niama Safia Sandy on race, power, nationalism, and imperialism; a curator tour of “Jacques-Louis David Meets Kehinde Wiley” led by Lisa Small and Eugenie Tsai; teen apprentice pop-up gallery talks focusing on works by Black artists in the American Art galleries; a hands-on art workshop where participants can make an urban garden, inspired by Kehinde Wiley; a poetry reading with Osyris Antham, Chanice Hughes-Greenberg, and Cyrée Jarelle Johnson; and “Real People: A Fireside Chat with Common,” a conversation with artist, actor, and activist Common (Lonnie Rashid Lynn), moderated by Peloton cycling instructor Tunde Oyeneyin. In addition, the galleries will be open late so you can check out “Jacques-Louis David Meets Kehinde Wiley,” “Out of Place: A Feminist Look at the Collection,” “One: Xu Bing,” “JR: Chronicles,” and more.

BLACK WOMEN — TRAILBLAZING AFRICAN AMERICAN ACTRESSES & IMAGES, 1920 – 2001: WITHIN OUR GATES

Sylvia Landry (Evelyn Preer) seeks to raise money to expand education for black children in Within Our Gates

WITHIN OUR GATES (Oscar Micheaux, 1920) / ST. LOUIS BLUES (Dudley Murphy, 1929)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Tuesday, January 28, 6:35
Series continues through February 13
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

#OscarsSoWhite and #OscarsSoMale have you disappointed and mad? Film Forum is offering just the medicine with its four-week, sixty-film festival “Black Women: Trailblazing African American Actresses & Images, 1920 – 2001.” Running through February 13, the wide-ranging series consists of movies starring Hattie McDaniel, Dorothy Dandridge, Cicely Tyson, Ethel Waters, Josephine Baker, Diana Ross, Angela Bassett, Diahann Carroll, Oprah Winfrey, Juanita Moore, Whoopi Goldberg, Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, Ruby Dee, Eartha Kitt, Abbey Lincoln, Gloria Foster, Ella Fitzgerald, Vonetta McGee, Alfre Woodard, Lonette McKee, Lynn Whitfield, Janet Jackson, Queen Latifah, Pam Grier, Tamara Dobson, Whitney Houston, Halle Berry, and many others, made by black, white, male, and female directors. The oldest film being presented is the oldest surviving film made by an African American director, Oscar Micheaux’s Within Our Gates, on January 28 at 6:35. A response to D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, Micheaux’s film, released in 1920 after trouble with the censor board, packs a whole lot into its seventy-nine minutes, giving the film an epic feel as it deals with violent crime, rape, slavery, poverty, education, love quadrangles, Jim Crow, subservient blacks, mixed-race romance, the Great Migration, and other incendiary topics.

within our gates

“I have always tried to make my photoplays present the truth, to lay before the Race a cross-section of its own life, to view the Colored heart from close range,” Micheaux explained on January 24, 1925. “It is only by presenting those portions of the Race portrayed in my pictures, in the light and background of their true state, that we can raise our people to greater heights. . . . The recognition of our true situation will react in itself as a stimulus for self-advancement.” He does just that with Within Our Gates, in which Evelyn Preer plays Sylvia Landry, a young woman in love with Conrad Drebert (James D. Ruffin). However, Sylvia’s supposed friend, the manipulative Alma Prichard (Floy Clements), is also in love with Conrad and determined to steal him from her. Meanwhile, Alma’s stepbrother, gangster Larry Prichard (Jack Chenault), wants Sylvia, who is not interested in him. Larry is being closely watched by a detective, Philip Gentry (William Smith), who was tipped off by the FBI as to his whereabouts.

A car accident leads Sylvia to meet Dr. V. Vivian (Charles D. Lucas) and philanthropist Elena Warwick (Mrs. Evelyn), who wants to help Sylvia, but Elena’s friend, the racist Geraldine Stratton (Bernice Ladd), would rather see no women gain the right to vote if a new amendment would include black women as well. The story shifts gears when Alma tells Dr. Vivian about Sylvia’s past, involving Sylvia’s adopted family, a robbery and shooting, a white landlord (Ralph Johnson) and his brother (Grant Gorman), and a tattletale Uncle Tom (E. G. Tatum) seeking to gain favors, all shown in flashback. It’s a complex tale filled with surprising twists, and it’s a critically important film in the history of black cinema.

Micheaux’s first work was The Homesteader, which is lost; he would go on to make such pictures as Body and Soul, Veiled Aristocrats, and Underworld. The Library of Congress Motion Picture Conservation Center restored Within Our Gates in 1993 from a lone Spanish print, so most intertitles were rewritten in English, and a section in the middle was lost. In 2016, DJ Spooky (aka Paul D. Miller) added a guitar-and-piano-based soundtrack, but the Film Forum screening of a 35mm print will be accompanied by a live score played by Steve Sterner. In addition, it will be preceded by Dudley Murphy’s sixteen-minute 1929 short St. Louis Blues, highlighted by Bessie Smith in her only film appearance. The series continues with such films as both Foxy Brown and Jackie Brown, The Color Purple, Set It Off, Lady Sings the Blues, Monster’s Ball, and Dirty Gertie from Harlem U.S.A.

LUNAR NEW YEAR 4718: YEAR OF THE RAT

year of the rat

Multiple venues
January 25 – February 20
www.betterchinatown.com
www.explorechinatown.com

Gōng xǐ fā cái! New York City is ready to celebrate the Year of the Rat with special events all over town. People born in the Year of the Rat, the first zodiac sign, are clever and resourceful and have the potential to be wealthy and prosperous. Below are some of the highlights happening here in the five boroughs during the next several weeks of Chinese New Year.

Saturday, January 25
New Year’s Day Firecracker Ceremony & Cultural Festival, Sara D. Roosevelt Park, Grand Street at Chrystie St., free, 11:00 am – 3:30 pm

Lunar New Year Celebration, with family-friendly arts and crafts, mask-making workshop, lantern making, zodiac animal origami, compost activities, face painting ($5), winter tree tour, plant sale, zodiac-themed storytelling, lion dance performance, and more, Queens Botanical Garden, 43-50 Main St., free, 12 noon – 4:00

Sunday, January 26
Sunday, February 16 & 23
Shadow Theater Workshops: The Art of Chinese New Year, with artists from Chinese Theatre Works, China Institute, 40 Rector St., $20, 2:00 pm

Saturday, February 1
Lunar New Year Family Festival, with “Sounds of the New Year” featuring the pipa and the erhu, “Whirling, Twirling Ribbons” workshop, lion dance performance, food, storytelling, face painting, zodiac arts and crafts, a gallery hunt, more, Museum of Chinese in America, 215 Centre St., $12, 10:00 – 1:00 and 2:00 – 5:00

Lunar New Year Chinese Temple Bazaar, with food, live performances, activities, and more, Flushing Town Hall, 137-35 Northern Blvd., $5, 11:00 & 2:00

Lunar New Year Festival: Year of the Rat, Lunar New Year Parade, Sesame Street Puppeteers Featuring Alan Muraoka, Integrating Identity with Vincent Chong, Festive Feast with Emily Mock, Luminous Lanterns with China Institute, Wu-Wo Tea Ceremony & Bubble Tea Gatherings, Hand-Pulled Noodle Demonstration, Creative Calligraphy with Zhou Bin, Metal Mouse Masterpieces with the Rubin Museum of Art, Hero Rats with Lydia DesRoche, Fierce Dragon Creations, Luminous Lanterns with China Institute, more, Met Fifth Ave., free with museum admission (some events require advance tickets), 11:00 am – 5:00 pm

Family Day: Moon over Manhattan, with Bo Law Kung Fu: Lion Dance and Kung Fu demonstration, Rabbit Days and Dumplings, arts & crafts, and more, Asia Society, 725 Park Ave., $5-$12, 1:00 – 5:00

Lunar New Year, with music and dance, martial arts, theater, a lion parade, and more, presented with the New York Chinese Cultural Center, Brookfield Place, 230 Vesey St., free, 2:00 – 3:15

year of the rat 2

Sunday, February 2
Chinese New Year Family Festival, with lion dances, dumpling and paper-lantern workshops, storytelling, a puppet show, live music, more, China Institute, 40 Rector St., general admission free, some programs $20 in advance, 12:00 – 4:00 pm

Wednesday, February 5
Classic Films for the New Year: Eat Drink Man Woman (Ang Lee, 1994), China Institute, 40 Rector St., $5, 6:30 pm

Friday, February 7
Lunar New Year Night Market, with food and drinks, live performances, art and culture, lion dance, vendors, and more, Museum of Chinese in America, 215 Centre St., $99 (includes one-year MoCA membership), 6:00 – 10:00

Saturday, February 8
Super Saturday Lion Dances, throughout Chinatown, free

Sunday, February 9
Twenty-first annual New York City Lunar New Year Parade & Festival, with cultural booths in the park and a parade with floats, antique cars, live performances, and much more from China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, and other nations, Chinatown, Sara D. Roosevelt Park, and Columbus Park, free, 11:00 am – 3:30 pm

Peking Opera in Lunar New Year Presented by Qi Shufang Peking Opera Company, Queens Public Library, 41-17 Main Street, Flushing, free, 2:00

Thursday, February 13 & 20
MOCAKIDS Storytime! New Year’s Traditions, Museum of Chinese in America, 215 Centre St., $5, 4:00

I WISH I KNEW

Zhao Tao wanders through modern-day China in Jia Zhang-ke’s elegiac documentary

I WISH I KNEW (Jia Zhang-ke, 2010)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
Opens Friday, January 24
212-660-0312
metrograph.com

Throughout his professional career, which began with the 1997 underground hit Pickpocket, Sixth Generation Chinese writer-director Jia Zhang-ke has shuttled easily between documentaries (Useless, 24 City) and narrative features (The World, Still Life) — and it’s not always obvious which is which, as his steady, poetic style is built on subtlety, slow rhythms, and an innate sense of realism (and he freely mixes fantasy and reality as well). His 2010 documentary, the Cannes Film Festival Un Certain Regard selection I Wish I Knew, adds elements of fiction to its compelling examination of the intimately personal side effects that resulted from the Chinese civil war and Cultural Revolution, as many people left Shanghai for Taipei and Hong Kong. Jia and interviewer Lin Xudong meet with elderly men and women who tell tragic stories of family and friends being murdered and executed by the government; an especially poignant scene is set at a community gathering where senior citizens dance to Dick Haymes’s version of the old standard “I Wish I Knew”; one of the interviewees sings into the camera, “I wish I knew someone like you could love me / I wish I knew you place no one above me / Did I mistake this for a real romance? / I wish I knew, but only you can answer,” which could be as much about a personal relationship as the revolution itself. Jia also talks with several filmmakers and actresses, from Hou Hsiao-hsien and Wang Toon to Huang Baomei, Rebecca Pan, and Wei Wei, illustrating how Shanghai has been depicted on film with clips from such movies as Hou’s Flowers of Shanghai, Xie Jin’s Huang Baomie, Wang’s Red Persimmon, Lou Ye’s Suzhou River, Wang Bing’s To Liberate Shanghai, Wong Kar-wai’s Days of Being Wild, and Michelangelo Antonioni’s Cina.

As the nearly two-hour documentary reaches its conclusion, they interview younger people, including bestselling writer, blogger, and race-car champion Han Han, who don’t share the same conflicted memories of communism and the Cultural Revolution, instead praising an evolving modern-day capitalistic Shanghai that has brought them vast wealth, with no interest in the past of Deng Xiaoping, Mao Zedong, and Chiang Kai-shek. Throughout the film — which is finally being released theatrically in the US, opening January 24 at Metrograph in a rarely screened director’s cut that puts back censored images and adds missing facts — Jia’s onscreen muse, Zhao Tao, who has appeared in many of his works, walks through contemporary Shanghai, pausing as she languidly looks out over the ever-changing city, where intensely poor neighborhoods are being torn down right around the corner from massive construction projects. Commissioned for the 2010 World Expo held in Shanghai, I Wish I Knew might not have been quite what the expo folk expected, but then again, they did give carte blanche to Jia, who never takes the easy way out, creating yet another complex, confusing, and controversial cinematic experience.