this week in music

KYLE ABRAHAM AT THE ARMORY: RUNNING IN CIRCLES TO COMBAT FEAR AND ANXIETY

Kyle Abraham leads a large ensemble in Dear Lord, Make Me Beautiful (photo by Alex Sargent / courtesy Park Ave. Armory)

DEAR LORD, MAKE ME BEAUTIFUL
Park Ave. Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. at Sixty-Seventh St.
December 3-14, $75-$170
www.armoryonpark.org
www.aimbykyleabraham.com

As audience members enter Park Ave. Armory’s massive Wade Thompson Drill Hall to experience Kyle Abraham’s Dear Lord, Make Me Beautiful, they are greeted by Cao Yuxi’s (aka JAMES) stunning set, a large backdrop that spills out over the floor, approaching the seating; projected on it is a pixelated image of Abraham’s head and shoulders, immersed in a naturalistic environment that evokes leaves, flowers, grass, and trees. It’s like a living version of a Kehinde Wiley portrait, except instead of celebrating the subject, in this case he eventually disappears. It’s a poignant evolution that is made even starker when Abraham, who has not danced with an ensemble in nine years, emerges onto the stage, running around in a circle again and again, at first fast but then slowing down until he has to stop and catch his breath.

In the program for the awe-inspiring armory commission, the forty-seven-year-old Pittsburgh-born dancer and choreographer explains, “I’m saddened by delayed positive progressive change in this world and frightened by the chaos of pandemic debris. I’ve never felt so deeply inclined to make something so attached to how I feel in the present. . . . I move through this world full of fear and a newfound fragility. . . . I dance in remembrance of the innocence of my younger self. And I dance in the present day, with sadness and fear of an unknown future, and a fading hope and prayer for imaginable change.”

Abraham is soon joined by a talented troupe of dancers that he has worked with in the past and present — Jamaal Bowman, Amari Frazier, Mykiah Goree, Tamisha Guy, Alysia Johnson, Catherine Kirk, Faith Mondesire, Riley O’Flynn, William Okajima, Morgan Olschewsche, Jai Perez, Donovan Reed, Keturah Stephen, Stephanie Terasaki, Gianna Theodore, and Olivia Wang — who break out into solos, duets, trios, and quartets, lifting, jumping, and interacting to a powerful live commissioned score by yMusic, a chamber ensemble featuring Alex Sopp on flutes and voice, Mark Dover on clarinets, CJ Camerieri on trumpet and French horn, Rob Moose on violin and guitar, Nadia Sirota on viola, and Gabriel Cabezas on cello. Sound, image, and movement come together in exquisite ways as the abstract shapes and colors continue almost microscopically morphing on the screen, providing an alternative to the muted earth palette of Karen Young’s costumes. The immersive sound is by Sam Crawford, with lighting by Dan Scully.

In the sixty-five-minute piece, Abraham, who choreographs for his own company, A.I.M. (Abraham in Motion), as well as New York City Ballet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Paul Taylor American Modern Dance, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, the Royal Ballet, and the National Ballet of Cuba, wears his emotions on his sleeve as he explores aging, fear and anxiety, and loneliness. He was inspired in part by Richard Powers’s 2018 novel, The Overstory, which deals with Americans’ connection to the natural world, especially trees; the book’s narrative is divided into four chapters: “Roots,” “Trunk,” “Crown,” and “Seeds.” The circles Abraham runs could be like the rings of a tree, but in his case he thinks he is running out of time. In addition, he was affected by his father’s early onset dementia at an age only a few years older than Abraham is now.

Dear Lord, Make Me Beautiful is exhilarating and propulsive as well as meditative, with only touches of foreboding. It’s also the kind of work that could only happen at the armory.

In the program note, Abraham asks, “Where will the world be in 5 years?”

It’s a loaded question that is impossible to answer, given the number of wars going on, the growing dangers of climate change, and the rash of international political extremism, but with more works like Dear Lord, Make Me Beautiful, it will be a better place regardless.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

SOUL SEARCHING: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI AND BABE

The Light and the Dark looks at the life and times of Italian painter Artemisia Gentileschi (photo by James Leynse)

THE LIGHT AND THE DARK (THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI)
Primary Stages, 59E59 Theaters
59 East 59th St, between Park & Madison Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 15, $66-$131
www.59e59.org

After seeing Kate Hamill’s The Light and the Dark (the life and times of Artemisia Gentileschi) and Jessica Goldberg’s Babe on the same day, I was hard-pressed to figure out why every woman doesn’t just go all Judith on their own Holofernes. While both plays explore misogyny, sexism, control of a woman’s body, and the dominant patriarchy in the arts, one does so much better than the other, although neither is ultimately successful.

At 59E59, Primary Stages is presenting The Light and the Dark, about Artemisia Gentileschi, the early Italian Baroque painter whose career was temporarily derailed by sexual assault and gender discrimination. Hamill’s previous feminist-driven works include stirring adaptations of Little Women, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Vanity Fair, and Dracula. She has portrayed such characters as Becky Sharp, Elizabeth Bennet, Meg March, Renfield, and Marianne Dashwood; in The Light and the Dark she inhabits the title role with a tender ferociousness as Artemisia matures from a precocious seven-year-old girl to one of the most talented and important artists of her era, even as she’s held back by men and social mores every step of the way.

Artemisia knows what she wants from a young age. Her Tuscan-born father, Orazio (Wynn Harmon), is a naturalistic, technically skillful painter who delivers precisely what his patrons desire. Admitting he doesn’t know how to raise a girl on his own, he decides to send her to a nunnery for her education, telling his daughter, “Think, if I build a big enough fortune and you mark the sisters well enough, you may be a fine lady — the wife or the mother of the great artist of tomorrow!” Misia, as he calls her, responds, “I don’t want to be a lady! I am I, your Artemisia. And I want to be a painter!”

When she is nine, Orazio lets Misia begin working in his studio, and six years later she is allowed to start painting alongside Agostino Tassi (Matthew Saldívar) and Cosimo Quorli (Jason O’Connell), which could be considered scandalous, especially when Orazio brings in a nude model, a sex worker named Maria (Joey Parsons). Soon the arrogant Agostino takes a personal interest in Artemisia, who is proving to be an exceptional artist with a unique perspective on traditional biblical scenes, and scandal does indeed ensue, against Artemisia’s will.

Artemisia Gentileschi has been undergoing a renaissance of her own this century, a heroic figure for the current time, spurred on by the 2002 Met exhibit “Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi: Father and Daughter Painters in Baroque Italy,” such books as Mary D. Garrard’s Artemisia Gentileschi and Feminism in Early Modern Europe and Gina Siciliano’s I Know What I Am: The Life and Times of Artemisia Gentileschi, and such plays as Sara Fellini’s NEC SPE / NEC METU and Howard Barker’s Scenes from an Execution. Artemisia often repeats “I, I, I” when talking about herself, trying to establish an identity that her father and his friends will not allow her to have because she is a woman, and she is prone to cursing like a sailor, dropping F-bombs again and again.

“Before Caravaggio, painters / Started with the light. / Blank canvas, blank fresco, / And painted layers upon that blankness — / But Caravaggio starts in the darkness / And carves his way out from the shadows,” she says in a way that refers to her own situation. She also declares, as if for all women, “Why should I suffer for nothing? / If I cannot undo it — and I cannot undo it. . . . / I can make it right. / I can control it.”

The show is visually beautiful, from Brittany Vasta’s alluring studio set to Jen Caprio’s lovely period costumes, Seth Reiser’s lighting, and Kylee Loera’s projections of such masterworks by Artemisia as Judith and Holofernes, Susanna and the Elders, The Allegory of Inclination, and Madonna and Child. The cast is effective, but Hamill and director Jade King Carroll too often get caught up in overly earnest monologues and preachy explications; Artemesia speaks at the audience instead of to them. Several didactic art lectures could have been cut or shortened — the play is too long at two and a half hours with intermission — in favor of the narrative itself, which can be compelling.

However, Carroll and Hamill do make The Light and the Dark feel relevant to what is happening today, particularly in the wake of the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Both female actors, Hamill as Artemisia and Parsons as Maria, ultimately take ownership of their bodies away from the men while subverting the male gaze; each gets fully nude, standing boldly onstage, not mere naked subjects to be depicted on canvas but real women shouting out their independence. They might not be holding daggers, preparing to cut off a perpetrator’s head, but you can see and feel their weapons nonetheless.

Gus (Arliss Howard) and Abby (Marisa Tomei) wonder about a new employee in Babe (photo by Monique Carboni)

BABE
The New Group at the Pershing Square Signature Center
The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre
480 West 42nd St. between between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 22, $99-$119
thenewgroup.org

Jessica Goldberg’s Babe has much in common with Kate Hamill’s The Light and the Dark (the life and times of Artemisia Gentileschi); instead of taking place in the world of Baroque painting, it is set in the contemporary music industry, where an old-school record producer, Gus (Arliss Howard), spews sexism and misogyny in his search for artists with a soul. He gives short shrift to his longtime right-hand person, Abby (Marisa Tomei), who discovered 1990s sensation Kat Wonder (Gracie McGraw) but has never received the recognition she deserves.

When a young Gen Z woman, Katherine Becker (McGraw), comes in for a job interview and ultimately gets hired, each character’s flaws become exposed, as well as their strengths, but it is hard to care in this lackluster story searching for its own purpose, never filling in the blank canvas it started with.

Comparisons abound between the two shows. “I don’t want to make people feel great, I want to destroy shit! I want the girls in the front, moshing the fuck out of each other!” Kat declares in a way Gentileschi never would have. Abby, who is gay, explains, “People think if you’re a certain age without a partner, you’re alone. But it’s not true,” evoking Artemisia saying, “I have no interest — in marrying,” but with less conviction. While Hamill empowers Artemisia, having her stand onstage naked, using her body as a model for the self-portrait Allegory of Inclination, Goldberg makes Abby sexless, having had a double mastectomy as a result of cancer. “So it doesn’t really make me feel —” she tells Katherine, implying she lacks physical and emotional desire and confidence. While The Light and the Dark references Caravaggio, Michelangelo, Donatelli, and Botticelli, Babe brings up Liz Phair, Bob Dylan, Joan Jett, and Kathleen Hannah.

At one point in The Light and the Dark, men assume that Artemisia did not actually paint anything, that a woman is incapable of creating high-quality art and that someone else must be behind it all, which is one of the reasons Artemisia signs her name on her canvases “in bold type . . . And wait for my accolades to roll in!” In Babe, a New Group production at the Pershing Square Signature Center, Abby eventually asserts, “I want my NAME. On the record.” As women in fields run by men, neither receives those accolades, but Abby has settled for compromising where Artemisia keeps up the fight.

Marisa Tomei, Arliss Howard, and Gracie McGraw star in the New Group’s Babe
(photo by Monique Carboni)

During the job interview, amid outdated questions that would drive a human resources department to drink, Gus asks Katherine, “Do you have a soul?” Unfortunately, it’s Babe itself that lacks heart and soul. Even at only eighty-five minutes it drags on, like side two of an old record that doesn’t live to up to the flip side.

Derek McLane’s office set is attractive and BETTY’s original music is fine, but the narrative and time shifts are bumpy; director Scott Elliott never gets a handle on the rhythm. Interestingly, although Gus has a disdain for groups, preferring solo artists performing songs written by others, he wears a Killers T-shirt, the Las Vegas band led by lead singer and chief songwriter Brandon Flowers. The costumes, which never change, are by Jeff Mahshie.

Whereas it is obvious why Hamill made The Light and the Dark, celebrating a woman who faced tremendous obstacles in order to express herself through her remarkable art, it is decidedly unclear what points Goldberg (Refuge, Good Thing) is trying to make in Babe; it’s like a concept album without a concept. It purports to be about “the American spirit of individualism,” as Abby says, as well as the resistance to the DEI movement, but it’s as flat as an LP that is not going to go gold or platinum anytime soon, instead gathering dust on a shelf.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

LET THEM EAT CAKE: TWO EDIBLE MONO-OPERAS AT ASYLUM NYC

THERE WILL BE CAKE!
Asylum NYC
123 East Twenty-Fourth St. between Lexington & Park Aves.
December 12-14, $10-$35, 1:30
www.operapraktikos.org
asylumnyc.com

Will there be cake at There Will Be Cake! Yes indeed, there will be cake at the two afternoon mono-operas taking place December 12-14 at 1:30 at Asylum NYC, presented by Opera Praktikos (OPrak).

The pair of related works are set in the same kitchen fifty years apart; Bon Appetit!, by Lee Hoiby, Julia Child, and Mark Shulgasser, features mezzo-soprano Hailey McAvoy singing the role of the beloved host of the breakthrough cooking program The French Chef, while OPrak’s first commission, Fluffernutter, by composer-lyricist Spicer Carr and librettist-playwright Marianna Mott Newirth, features Zwisenfach Shanley Horvitz as Sarah Karmichael and piano arrangements by Patrick Tice-Carroll.

The works, which deal with memory and food, are directed by Gwynn MacDonald, with music direction by Calvin Hitchcock. The December 14 performance is already sold out, although it is also available via livestream.

As Child once said, “Drama is very important in life: You have to come on with a bang. You never want to go out with a whimper. Everything can have drama if it’s done right. Even a pancake.”

And certainly cake.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

SILENT MASTERPIECES WITH LIVE BENSHI AND SAMISEN AT JAPAN SOCIETY

Benshi star Ichiro Kataoka will narrate two silent masterpieces at Japan Society, with live shamisen music by Sumie Kaneko

THE BENSHI TRADITION AND THE SILVER SCREEN: A JAPANESE PUPPETRY SPIN-OFF
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Thursday, December 12, and Friday, December 13, $22-$31, 7:30
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

Japan Society’s “Ningyo! A Parade of Puppetry” began in September with Basil Twist’s mind-blowing Dogugaeshi and continued in October with National Bunraku Theater’s Date Musume Koi no Higanoko (Oshichi, the Greengrocer’s Daughter) and Sonezaki Shinju (The Love Suicides at Sonezaki) and in November with Sachiyo Takahashi/Nekaa Lab’s One Night in Winter and The Peony Lantern.

The fall series concludes with “The Benshi Tradition and the Silver Screen: A Japanese Puppetry Spin-Off,” two evenings of live music by Sumie Kaneko on the shamisen and benshi narration by contemporary “movie talker” Ichiro Kataoka, in Japanese with English subtitles, accompanying a pair of rarely screened silent masterpieces. On December 12, they will perform to Daisuke Ito’s 1927 jidaigeki A Diary of Chuji’s Travels, starring Denjirō Ōkōchi; originally a four-hour triptych, only 111 fragmented minutes now remain. That will be followed on December 13 by Shozo Makino’s 1910-17 ninety-minute work-in-progress Chushingura, an incomplete early cinematic adaptation of the story of the 47 ronin featuring Matsunosuke Onoe, who is said to have appeared in a thousand films by the time of his death in 1926 at the age of fifty, though only six survive, at least in part.

Both events will be preceded by a lecture at 6:30 by Princeton University professor Dr. Junko Yamazaki; there will be a postshow private gathering for artists and Japan Society members on December 12 and an artist Q&A on December 13. The previous productions in “Ningyo! A Parade of Puppetry,” being held in conjunction with the Japan Society exhibition “Bunraku Backstage,” sold out in advance, so act quickly if you want to catch what should be two rare, unique experiences.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

ROBERT SIODMAK: “CORRUPTER OF THE GERMAN FAMILY”

Phantom Lady is one of seventeen films in Robert Siodmak retrospective at Lincoln Center

ROBERT SIODMAK: DARK VISIONARY
Film at Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
144 West Sixty-Fifth St. at Amsterdam Ave.
December 11-19, All-Access Pass $119
www.filmlinc.org

In his 2010 essay “Dark Mirrors” for the Museum of the Moving Image, David Cairns wrote, “If film noir had not somehow coalesced from a miasma of influences floating in the atmosphere of ’40s America — postwar disillusion and anxiety, French poetic realism, German Expressionism, the gangster movie, and pulp fiction traditions — perhaps only Fritz Lang or Robert Siodmak could have invented it. Lang, because his work always carried a dark worldview, filtering sociopolitical tensions and focusing them into intense, ecstatic, tortured images. Siodmak, because his movies already followed two normally divergent paths — social realism and expressionist nightmare — which converge to make noir.”

While the Austrian-born German-American Lang is well known for such classics as Metropolis, M, You Only Live Once, Ministry of Fear, The Big Heat, and Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler, made in Germany and Hollywood, Siodmak, who was born in Dresden and worked in Germany, Paris, and California, is far less well known despite making some all-time favorites in multiple genres and being denounced by Josef Goebbels as “a corrupter of the German family.”

Film at Lincoln Center is honoring the director with the seventeen-film retrospective “Robert Siodmak: Dark Visionary,” including new 4K restorations of 1943’s Son of Dracula, 1944’s Phantom Lady, 1945’s The Suspect, and 1946’s The Killers. The works range from 1930’s People on Sunday, codirected by Edgar G. Ullmer, through 1952’s The Crimson Pirate, and feature such stars as Ava Gardner, Lon Chaney Jr., Maria Montez, Charles Laughton, Olivia de Havilland, George Sanders, Dorothy McGuire, Burt Lancaster, Barbara Stanwyck, Victor Mature, Yvonne De Carlo, Lloyd Bridges, and Ella Raines.

THE KILLERS

Burt Lancaster makes a killer film debut in classic 1946 noir from Robert Siodmak

THE KILLERS (Robert Siodmak, 1946)
Thursday, December 12, 6:30
Friday, December 13, 8:30
www.filmlinc.org

In 1950, Edmond O’Brien starred as auditor Frank Bigelow in Rudolph Maté’s classic noir D.O.A., a story told in flashback as Bigelow tries to figure out why someone has poisoned him. Four years earlier, O’Brien dealt with another kind of fatalism in Robert Siodmak’s The Killers, playing insurance agent Jim Reardon, who is investigating why a gas station attendant was brutally gunned down in his bed in suburban Brentwood, New Jersey. The film opens with cold-hearted contract killers Al (Charles McGraw) and Max (William Conrad) arriving in town, looking for the Swede (Burt Lancaster), aka Pete Lund and Ole Andreson. They waltz into Henry’s Diner, giving orders and exchanging mean-spirited dialogue with no fears or worries. When Nick Adams (Phil Brown) warns the Swede that the men are coming to kill him, the former boxer knows there’s nothing he can do about it anymore; he’s tired of running, and he’s ready to meet his end. It’s a shocking way to begin a movie; up to that point, it’s a faithful version of Ernest Hemingway’s short story, but the rest is the splendid invention of writers Richard Brooks, Anthony Veiller, and John Huston and producer Mark Hellinger. Reardon soon finds himself meeting with a series of gangsters as they relate, through flashbacks, a plot to rob a payroll, perpetrated by a motley crew that includes “Dum Dum” Clarke (Jack Lambert), “Blinky” Franklin (Jeff Corey), the Swede, and mastermind Big Jim Colfax (Albert Dekker), along with Big Jim’s gun moll, femme fatale extraordinaire Kitty Collins (Ava Gardner). Reardon’s boss (Donald MacBride) wants him to forget about it, since it’s essentially about a meager $2,500 insurance claim, but Reardon is determined to find out what happened to a quarter million in cash, with the help of the Swede’s childhood friend, Lt. Sam Lubinsky (Sam Levene).

Ava Gardner turns more than a few heads in THE KILLERS

Ava Gardner turns more than a few heads in The Killers

The Killers is an intense, passionate heist flick, structured like Citizen Kane, starting with a death and then putting everything together via interviews and flashbacks. Lancaster and Gardner are magnetic, he in his screen debut, she in the film that made her a star. Siodmak (The Dark Mirror, The Spiral Staircase) masterfully navigates the noir tropes, from Miklós Rózsa’s jazzy score, which jumps out from the opening credits, and Woody Bredell’s oft-angled black-and-white cinematography that maintains an ominous, shadowy sensibility throughout to deft characterizations and surprising plot twists. As it makes its way through the seven deadly sins, The Killers lives up to its fab billing as a “Raw! Rugged! Ruthless drama of a man who gambled — his luck — his love — his life for the treachery of a girl’s lips.” Nominated for four Oscars, for Best Director, Best Film Editing (Arthur Hilton), Best Music, and Best Adapted Screenplay, The Killers, which was also made into a 1958 student short by Andrei Tarkovsky and a 1964 crime drama by Don Siegel starring Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, John Cassavetes, Norman Fell, and Ronald Reagan, is screening December 12 and 13 in a new 4K restoration in the Film at Lincoln Center series “Robert Siodmak: Dark Visionary.” Be on the lookout for such other gems and surprises as Inquest, The Burning Secret, Cobra Woman, The Spiral Staircase, and Criss Cross.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

IT’S BASHERT! CELEBRATING BOOKS AT THE MUSEUM OF JEWISH HERITAGE

NEW YORK JEWISH BOOK FESTIVAL
Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust
Edmond J. Safra Plaza, 36 Battery Pl.
Sunday, December 8, free with advance RSVP, 10:00 am – 9:00 pm
866-811-4111
mjhnyc.org

The 2024 New York Jewish Book Festival, being held December 8 at the Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, is chock-full of exciting literary events, starting at 10:00 am and continuing through a 6:00 concert by Marcin Masecki and Ger Mandolin Orchestra. And best of all, everything is free. There will be talks, workshops, panel discussions, and book signings, covering such topics as “Deconstructing Jewish Masculinity,” “Jewish Icons,” “It’s Bashert! Jewish Love and Romance,” “Translating Yiddish Prose by Women,” and “Rebuilding Lives: Survivors After the Holocaust.” Among the books being featured are Rebecca Clarren’s The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota and an American Inheritance, F. K. Clementi’s South of My Dreams: Finding My American Home, Delia Ephron’s Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life, Reuven Fenton’s Goyhood, and Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer’s The Joy of Connections: 100 Ways to Beat Loneliness and Live a Happier and More Meaningful Life. Below is the full schedule.

Writing Workshop: Tell Me Everything!, with Beth Harpaz, Events Hall, 10:15

Deconstructing Jewish Masculinity, with Ronnie Grinberg, Miriam Eve Mora, Sarah Imhoff, and Laura Shaw Frank, Classrooms A/B, 10:15

Emerging Narratives: Debut Jewish Fiction, with Danny Goodman, Sarah Seltzer, Lauren Aliza Green, Sasha Vasilyuk, and Susan Weidman Schneider, Keeping History Center, 10:15

Jewish Icons: Judy Blume, Jean Carroll, and Marty Glickman, with Jeffrey S. Gurock, Grace Kessler Overbeke, Rachelle Bergstein, and Stephanie Butnick, the Studio, 10:15

Rebecca Clarren and Sarah Podemski: The Cost of Free Land, with Rebecca Clarren, Sarah Podemski, Edmond J. Safra Hall, 11:30

Jewish Icons: Judy Blume, Jean Carroll, and Marty Glickman Book Signing, Events Hall, 11:30

It’s Bashert! Jewish Love and Romance, with Ali Rosen, Hannah Reynolds, Hannah Orenstein, and Lior Zaltzman, the Studio, 11:30

Deconstructing Jewish Masculinity Book Signing, Lobby 1, 11:30

Emerging Narratives: Debut Jewish Fiction Book Signing, Lobby 3, 11:30

Translating Yiddish Prose by Women, with Ellen Cassedy, Anita Norich, and Lisa Newman, Classrooms A/B, 11:45

Jews Writing Jews: Creating Jewish Characters, with Elyssa Friedland, Caroline Leavitt, Reuven Fenton, Julia Gergely, and Elizabeth Harris, Keeping History Center, 11:45

It’s Bashert! Jewish Love and Romance Book Signing, Events Hall, 12:45

Salinger’s Soul, with Stephen B. Shepard and Lisa Newman, the Studio, 12:45

Rebecca Clarren and Sarah Podemski: The Cost of Free Land Book Signing, Lobby 1, 12:45

Delia Ephron and Amy Schwartz: Left on Tenth, with Delia Ephron and Amy Schwartz, Edmond J. Safra Hall, 1:00

Jews Writing Jews: Creating Jewish Characters Book Signing, Lobby 3, 1:00

Translating Yiddish Prose by Women Book Signing, Lobby 1, 1:00

Rebuilding Lives: Survivors After the Holocaust, with Seth Stern, Sandra Fox, and Sarah Maslin Nir, Classrooms A/B, 1:15

On Being Jewish Now: Reflections from Authors & Advocates, with Bradley Tusk, Ali Rosen, Samantha Ettus, and Zibby Owens, Keeping History Center, 1:15

Salinger’s Soul Book Signing, Events Hall, 2:00

The Joy of Connections, with Allison Gilbert and Rachel Wright, the Studio, 2:00

Delia Ephron and Amy Schwartz: Left on Tenth Book Signing, Lobby 1, 2:15

The Old Jewish Men’s Guide to Eating, Sleeping, and Futzing Around, with Noah Rinsky and Jonah Bromwich, Edmond J. Safra Hall, 2:30

Rebuilding Lives: Survivors After the Holocaust Book Signing, Lobby 1, 2:30

On Being Jewish Now: Reflections from Authors & Advocates Book Signing, Lobby 3, 2:30

Crafting Jewish Fantasy and Folklore, with A. R. Vishny, Laura R. Samotin, and Veronica Schanoes, Classrooms A/B, 2:45

The Diary of Anne Frank: Beloved and Banned, with Dr. Lauren Bairnsfather and Adam Langer, Keeping History Center, 2:45

The Joy of Connections Book Signing, Events Hall, 3:15

Jewish Poetry Workshop, with Sean Glatch, the Studio, 3:30

The Old Jewish Men’s Guide to Eating, Sleeping, and Futzing Around Book Signing, Lobby 1, 3:45

Crafting Jewish Fantasy and Folklore Book Signing, Lobby 1, 4:00

Unearthing Untold Holocaust Stories, with Chris Heath, Elizabeth White, Jack Fairweather, and Debórah Dwork, Classrooms A/B, 4:15

In Her Words: Contemporary Jewish Women’s Memoirs, with F. K. Clementi, Bonny Reichert, Sara Glass, and Evelyn Frick, Keeping History Center, 4:15

Yiddish Translation Workshop, with Anita Norich, the Studio, 4:45

Unearthing Untold Holocaust Stories Book Signing, Lobby 1, 5:30

In Her Words: Contemporary Jewish Women’s Memoirs Book Signing, Lobby 3, 5:30

Gersuite – A Concert by Marcin Masecki and Ger Mandolin Orchestra, Edmond J. Safra Hall, 6:00

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

POETRY IS THE MUSIC OF THE SOUL: ART CONTEMPLATES HISTORY IN TWO NEW DOCS

Nikita Khrushchev visits America and President Dwight D. Eisenhower in Soundtrack to a Coup d’État

SOUNDTRACK TO A COUP d’ÉTAT (Johan Grimonprez, 2024)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Opens Friday, November 1
212-727-8110
filmforum.org
kinolorber.com

Two new documentaries opening November 1 in New York use music and poetry, respectively, to look at a pair of seminal moments in twentieth-century world history.

At Film Forum, visual artist Johan Grimonprez’s Soundtrack to a Coup d’État is a 150-minute jazz epic, an exhilarating barrage of words, images, and music that delves deep into the January 1961 assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of what would become the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In 1960, in a move that struck a blow against colonialism, sixteen African countries were admitted to the United Nations, and that year also saw the UN’s first peacekeeping operation on the continent. Amid espionage and international machinations, the cold war reaches new levels. Soviet chairman Nikita Khrushchev rhythmically bangs his shoe on a General Assembly table and US president Dwight D. Eisenhower befriends Belgian king Baudouin in an effort to secure uranium. The CIA gets involved in possibly nefarious operations in Africa, using unknowing jazz musicians as deflections.

Grimonprez (dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y, Shadow World) and editor Rik Chaubet interweave quotes by Khrushchev, Eisenhower, Malcolm X, Sukarno, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Fidel Castro, activist Léonie Abo, Irish diplomat and writer Conor Cruise O’Brien, CIA director Allen Dulles, Secretary of State John F. Dulles, activist Andrée Blouin, mercenaries “Mad” Mike Hoare and Bruce Bartlett, Belgian premier Gaston Eyskens, UN secretary-general Dag Hammarskjöld, writer In Koli Jean Bofane, CIA station chief Larry Devlin, DRC president Joseph Kasa-Vubu, Voice of America broadcaster Willis Conover, Belgian colonel Frédéric Vandewalle, and others with songs by such legends as Nina Simone (“Wild Is the Wind”), Louis Armstrong (“Black and Blue”), Miriam Makeba (“Mbube”), Thelonius Monk, John Coltrane (“In a Sentimental Mood”), Miles Davis (“Blue in Green”), Ornette Coleman (“January”), Dizzy Gillespie (“And Then She Stopped”), and Duke Ellington (“Take the ‘A’ Train”), along with archival footage, album covers, and boldly designed graphics.

The musical centerpieces are drummer Max Roach and vocalist Abbey Lincoln (“Tears for Johannesburg,” “Freedom Day,” “Triptych: Prayer/Protest/Peace”), who, at the UN Security Council in 1961, protested the murder of Lumumba, and Gillespie, who speaks with his trademark humor about the controversies. “This is what you might call a cool war,” Ellington tells Gillespie, who responds, “The weapon that we will use is the cool one,” holding up his horn. He also has fun teasing a television news journalist about the situation in Africa.

Powerful, poetic quotes are spoken or are blasted across the screen.

“One day independence will come to the Congo and the white will become black, and the black will become white.” — Congolese cleric Simon Kimbangu

“There is a limit to the usefulness of the past.” — Indian UN ambassador Krishna Menon

“The enemy is imperialism.” — Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah

“Any fool can start a war that even a wise man cannot end.” — Soviet chairman Nikita Khrushchev (over footage of a submarine rising through ice and Khrushchev petting his dog, looking like a Bond villain)

“Sure, I’d rather be a poet than a politician. . . . I’m suspicious of the written word; I prefer the spoken word. I trust it more in the world of politics.” — Belgian premier Paul-Henri Spaak

“If Africa is shaped like a revolver, then Congo is its trigger.” — French psychiatrist and philosopher Frantz Fanon

Soundtrack to a Coup d’État is like a multimedia jazz concert, every minute promising some kind of improvisatory surprise from many of the greatest singers and instrumentalists of the era. It’s a radical documentary with radical views; the scenes when Khrushchev and Castro come to America are unforgettable, and several of its positions on issues are controversial. But it moves and grooves to the rhythm of the beat in a way that will suck you into its world while making you reconsider much of what you know about the incidents it explores.

Grimonprez will be at Film Forum for Q&As following the 6:45 screening on November 1 and the 4:00 show on November 2.

After: Poetry Destroys Silence explores how poetry deals with such tragic events as the Holocaust

AFTER: POETRY DESTROYS SILENCE (Richard Kroehling, 2024)
Cinema Village
22 East 12th St. between University Pl. & Fifth Ave.
Opens Friday, November 1
www.cinemavillage.com
www.after.film

In the 2016 documentary The Last Laugh, director Ferne Pearlstein spoke with survivors as well as such comics as Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Harry Shearer, David Steinberg, Susie Essman, and Rob Reiner in an attempt to find a connection between humor and the Holocaust “You can do jokes about Nazis,” Gilbert Gottfried says in the film, “but if you say ‘Holocaust,’ then it becomes bad taste.”

In After: Poetry Destroys Silence, writer, director, and editor Richard Kroehling looks at the relationship between poetry and the Holocaust, but, unsurprisingly, there is little humor to be found. It’s an intensely serious film that tries to tell its story in a form that mimics that of its subject. Just as Soundtrack to a Coup d’État unfurls like a jazz concert, After is told like an epic poem. But in this case, scenes of poignant purity and beauty are interrupted by self-congratulatory moments as experts feel the need not just to share poetry but to defend its existence as a necessary art form in interpreting history.

Following a projected quote from Theodor Adorno that reads, “To write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric,” poet Alicia Ostriker explains, “After Auschwitz, poetry is barbaric. It’s easy for people to think that and many people do, but they’re thinking that is part of the contempt for poetry; that is also contempt for the human soul.”

“After certain kinds of genocide and suffering, how can the world go on at all?” poet and critic Edward Hirsch asks. “I think it’s the obligation of poetry to respond to certain kinds of horror. The Holocaust is a kind of test case for poetry because of course it defies language. It defeats language. And yet language has to respond. It’s our job as poets to remember what happened.”

The film works better when it concentrates on the poems themselves, which are often accompanied by archival footage from Auschwitz, shots of nature (especially fire and water), whispers, and music from a violin, piano, and typewriter. Citing memories from his time in the camps, ninety-one-year-old survivor Walter Fiden proclaims, “Everything can be overcome. Nothing is hopeless.”

Hungarian poet and actor Géza Röhrig (Son of Saul, To Dust) recalls visiting an empty Auschwitz in 1986, using a map his grandfather made, and seeing various artifacts left behind, from toothbrushes and children’s toys to Hebrew letters and drawings on walls. He notes, “I felt that if I could not become six million, I will step into the shoes of one.”

There are other contributions from survivor Paul Celan, Yehuda Amichai, Christine Poreba, Taylor Mali, Sabrina Orah Mark, film producer Janet R. Kirchheimer, and Pulitzer Prize nominee Cornelius Eady, who performs an anonymous poem from the Warsaw Ghetto with a jazz sensibility. In a ten-minute segment in the middle of the film, Oscar winner Melissa Leo (The Fighter, Frozen River) and Bo Corre (Mulberry St., Harrow Island) try to find meaning in a lost photograph from 1945. Tribute is paid to Raoul Wallenberg, Oskar Schindler, and André Trocmé. The late photographer Charles Carter recites haunting poetry while contemporary shots of his are mixed in with historical footage. The beautiful cinematography is by Lisa Rinzler, with evocative sound by Helge Bernhardt.

In Soundtrack to a Coup d’État, Max Roach declares, “We do use the music as a weapon against man’s inhumanity toward man.” The same can be said for the poetry in After.

After: Poetry Destroys Silence opens November 1 at Cinema Village, with Kroehling on hand for a Q&A following the 1:00 screening. On November 3 at 5:00, Kroehling, Kirchheimer, Eady, and Röhrig will participate in a panel discussion and reception at Town & Village Synagogue, moderated by Rabbi Irwin Kula, and there will be a panel discussion with the same group on November 6 at Cinema Village after the 7:00 show.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]