BAY OF ALL SAINTS examines the water slums of Bahia, Brazil, known as the palafitas
American Museum of Natural History
Central Park West at 79th St.
November 29 – December 2, $12-$45
212-769-5200
www.amnh.org
The thirty-sixth annual Margaret Mead Film Festival, held at the American Museum of Natural History in honor of the revolutionary work done by the master cultural anthropologist, focuses this year on the narrative itself. “The stories build bridges, dissolve ownership,” North American ethnology curator Peter M. Whiteley explains in the festival brochure. “Whose story is it? It is mine, yours, now via film, all the world’s. The local is made global, the unfamiliar familiar, and the universe of human understanding is expanded.” From November 29 through December 2, viewers will be taken to contemporary Pakistan in Saida Shepard and Samina Quraeshi’s The Other Half of Tomorrow, India and Burma in Patrick Morell’s Nagaland: The Last of the Headhunters, the slums of Bahia, Brazil, in Annie Eastman, Diane Markrow, and Davis Coombe’s Bay of All Saints, a “shack side” district of South Africa in Benjamin Kahlmeyer’s Meanwhile in Mamelodi, and Tajikistan for a look at an unusual sport in Najeeb Mirza’s Buzkashi! Two food-themed films, Valérie Berteau and Philippe Witjes’s Himself He Cooks, which goes inside the Sikh tradition of langar in the Golden Temple of Amritsar, and Rob and Lisa Fruchtman’s Sweet Dreams, about a group of Rwandan women opening the country’s first ice-cream shop, are being presented in conjunction with the museum’s new exhibit, “Our Global Kitchen: Food, Nature, Culture.” There will also be a tribute to legendary filmmaker George Stoney, featuring screenings of Man of Aran and How the Myth Was Made, a Bhangra Dance Party with DJ Rekha, an African drumming performance in the Hall of Birds of the World, a Mead Arcade with online games, and several Mead Dialogues, including “Re-Seeing the Century: The Expedition on Film,” “Through Navajo Eyes,” and “Sun Kissed.” The Mead is one of the city’s most important film festivals, offering penetrating, educational, joyful, and frightening looks at a world outside our own — and sometimes a lot closer to home that we could ever imagine.
“A great virtuoso madman,” “scary,” “a motherfucker,” “a lovable rogue,” “a dope addict,” “the hammer of the gods,” “a force of nature,” “horrible,” “the world’s greatest drummer” — these are just some of the terms of affection heaped on legendary drummer Ginger Baker by his friends, relatives, and musical colleagues at the beginning of Jay Bulger’s propulsive documentary, Beware of Mr. Baker. In 2009, after spending three months with Baker and his family in South Africa, Bulger published the in-depth article “The Devil and Ginger Baker” in Rolling Stone. Two years later, Bulger went back to expand the story into a feature-length film, but Baker was not about to make it easy for him, continually insulting his questions, calling him names, and even cracking him in the nose with his cane. “He influenced me as a drummer but not as a person,” Bad Company and Free drummer Simon Kirke says of Baker, an opinion shared by many in this revealing film. Baker might be crotchety, but he also opens up to Bulger, particularly in describing when, as a child during WWII, he would hear the bombings outside, sounds that would have an impact on his playing. Bulger speaks with such other percussionists as the Rolling Stones’ Charlie Watts, Rush’s Neal Peart, the Grateful Dead’s Mickey Hart, Metallica’s Lars Ulrich, the Police’s Stewart Copeland, Vanilla Fudge’s Carmine Appice, and Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason, as well as such former Baker bandmates as Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce, and Steve Winwood, who all rave about Baker’s remarkable abilities behind the kit while also delving into his self-destructive behavior, which led him through a parade of groups, home countries, and spouses. “I don’t know if it’s his ability to move on or it’s his inability to stay,” points out Baker’s third wife, Karen Loucks Rinedollar, a statement that applies to both Baker’s personal and professional lives. 
A British gangster on the run hides out with a psychedelic rock star in this strangely enticing film from Donald (The Demon Seed) Cammell and Nicolas Roeg (making his big-screen directorial debut). James Fox didn’t know what he was getting into when he signed on to play Chas, a mobster who finds sanctuary with mushroom-popping rock-diva has-been Turner, played with panache by Mick Jagger. Throw in Anita Pallenberg, a fab drug trip, and the great “Memo to Turner” scene and you have a film that some consider the real precursor to MTV, some think a work of pure demented genius, and others find to be one of the most pretentious and awful pieces of claptrap ever committed to celluloid. We fall somewhere in the middle of all of that. Performance is screening November 23-24 as part of the MoMA tribute “The Rolling Stones: 50 Years on Film,” celebrating the group’s golden anniversary, which includes appearances in New Jersey and Brooklyn next month. Throughout their career, the Stones have gotten some of the world’s greatest directors to make live concert films of their shows, most of which are part of this series, which continues through December 2 with such other films as Hal Ashby’s Let’s Spend the Night Together, Martin Scorsese’s Shine a Light, Albert and David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin’s Gimme Shelter, and Jean-Luc Godard’s Sympathy for the Devil in addition to Kenneth Anger’s Invocation of My Demon Brother and more.
