this week in lectures, signings, panel discussions, workshops, and Q&As

THE ORCHID SHOW: SINGAPORE

The New York Botanical Garden takes visitors to Singapore this year (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The New York Botanical Garden
Enid A. Haupt Conservatory
2900 Southern Blvd., Bronx
Through April 26, $10-$12 children two to twelve, $23-$28 adults, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
718-817-8700
www.nybg.org

You have only until Sunday to catch the New York Botanical Garden’s seventeenth annual Orchid Show, which this year takes visitors to the beautiful land of Singapore known as the “City in a Garden.” Curated by Marc Hachadourian, the show re-creates the dazzling Supertrees in Singapore’s Gardens by the Bay and the arched pathways at the National Orchid Garden in the Singapore Botanic Gardens in the Malaysian country. Among the hundreds of species and hybrids are the Vanda Miss Joaquim, Singapore’s national flower, and the Vanda Awkwafina, named for the New York City-born rapper and actress who played Goh Peik Lin in Crazy Rich Asians. “One of my first memories ever is of my mom taking me to NYBG. I’m truly honored!” she tweeted.

Seventeenth annual NYBG Orchid Show continues through April 28 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

There are still special orchid events you can attend, including the Orchid Insiders Tour daily at 12:30; Orchid Evenings ($38) on April 26 and 27 from 7:00 to 10:00 with the Bronx Night Market Pop-up, a light display, dancers, DJs, and cocktails; a “Troubleshooting with Orchids” lesson on April 27 and 28 at 2:30 and 3:30; an “Orchid Basics Q&A” in the shop every day from 1:30 to 4:30; and “Crazy Real Singapore” on April 27 and 28 at 1:30, with Margaret Leng Tan performing TOY TOY TOY! on her toy piano.

TRIBECA TALKS 2019

Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro will talk about their work together at the Beacon as part of the 2019 Tribeca FIlm Festival

Tribeca Film Festival
Multiple locations
April 24 – May 5, free – $50
www.tribecafilm.com

One of the most exciting parts of the Tribeca Film Festival is the Tribeca Talks section, which features discussions with actors, directors, writers, and other film-crew members talking about their craft. Divided into “Directors Series,” “Future of Film,” “Master Class,” and “Storytellers,” the talks include such cool programs as Sarah Silverman with Mike Birbiglia, Martin Scorsese with Robert De Niro, Michael J. Fox with Denis Leary, David O. Russell with Jennifer Lawrence, Questlove with Boots Riley, Guillermo del Toro with Alec Baldwin, and Hideo Kojima with Norman Reedus along with such topics as “The Art of Adaptation,” “Is Anyone Home? Location-Based Entertainment,” “The Journey of Digital Storytelling to TV,” and “10 Years of 30 for 30.” The events, some of which are free with advance registration, take place at BMCC TPAC, the Tribeca Festival Hub, the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless Theater, the SVA Theater, and the Beacon.

Thursday, April 25
Tribeca Games Presents: Hideo Kojima with Norman Reedus, Stella Artois Theatre @ BMCC TPAC, $40, 6:00

Directors Series: Guillermo del Toro with Alec Baldwin, Stella Artois Theatre @ BMCC TPAC, $40, 8:00

Friday, April 26
Future of Film: The Art of Adaptation, with Mathias Chelebourgh, Pete Billington, and Jessica Shamash, Tribeca Festival Hub, free with advance ticket, 1:00

Future of Film: Building the New Storytellers, with Ken Perlin, Lance Weiler, Alfredo Salazar-Caro, and Jeremy Bailenson, Tribeca Festival Hub, free with advance ticket, 2:30

Queen Latifah with Dee Rees with the Premiere of the Queen Collective Shorts, screening preceded by discussion with Queen Latifah and Dee Rees, Marriott Bonvoy Boundless Theater, $40, 5:30

Saturday, April 27
Future of Film: Is Anyone Home? Location-Based Entertainment, with Coline Delbaere, Ethan Stearns, and Antoine Cayrol, moderated by Loren Hammonds, Tribeca Festival Hub, free with advance ticket, 1:00

Storytellers: Jaron Lanier, Marriott Bonvoy Boundless Theater, $40, 2:00

Directors Series: David O. Russell with Jennifer Lawrence, Stella Artois Theatre @ BMCC TPAC, rush, 6:00

Sunday, April 28
Directors Series: Martin Scorsese with Robert De Niro, Beacon Theatre, 2:00

Monday, April 29
Future of Film: Immersive Storytelling Across the Mediums, with Jessica Brillhart and Aaron Katz, Tribeca Festival Hub, free with advance ticket, 1:00

Future of Film — Sharing Is Caring: Shared Experiences in Mixed Reality, with Adam May, Lucy Hammond, May Abdalla, and Amy Rose, Tribeca Festival Hub, free with advance ticket, 2:30

Master Class: The Art of Cinematic Sound, with Walter Murch, Ben Burtt, Gary Rydstrom, and Midge Costin, moderated by Glenn Kiser, SVA Theater 2 Beatrice, $40, 5:00

Storytellers: Sarah Silverman with Mike Birbiglia, Stella Artois Theatre @ BMCC TPAC, $40, 8:00

Questlove will be interviewed by Boots Riley at the Tribeca Film Festival

Tuesday, April 30
Storytellers: Michael J. Fox with Denis Leary, Stella Artois Theatre @ BMCC TPAC, $40, 6:00

Storytellers: Questlove with Boots Riley, Marriott Bonvoy Boundless Theater, rush, 2:00

Wednesday, May 1
Storytellers: Rashida Jones, Stella Artois Theatre @ BMCC TPAC, $40, 6:00

Friday, May 3
Master Class: Irwin Winkler on the Art and Craft of Producing, SVA Theater 2 Beatrice, free with advance ticket, 3:30

Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Award, Stella Artois Theatre @ BMCC TPAC, $50, 4:00

Prune Nourry and Serendipity, screening followed by discussion with Prune Nourry, Rita Charon, and Nina Collins, Marriott Bonvoy Boundless Theater, $24, 8:00

Saturday, May 4
Tribeca Celebrates Pride Day, with Jeffrey Winter, Wade Davis, River Gallo, Sadé Clacken Joseph, Raul Castillo, Tanya Saracho, Ser Anzoategui, Roberta Colindrez, Kevin Huvane, Lesli Klainberg, John Cameron Mitchell, Leilah Weinraub, Simon Halls, Rivianna Hyatt, Fabrice Houdart, Alok Vaid-Menon, Tre’vell Anderson, Joanna Lohman, Sarah McBride, Malcolm Kenyatta, Stacy Lentz, Kathy Tu, Staceyann Chin, Twiggy Pucci Garçon, and many others, Marriott Bonvoy Boundless Theater, $30, 10:00 am

Directors Series: Marielle Heller, SVA Theater 2 Beatrice, $40, 1:00

Master Class — The Journey of Digital Storytelling to TV: A Discussion with HBO Talent, SVA Theater 2 Beatrice, free with advance ticket, 5:30

Sunday, May 5
10 Years of 30 for 30, with Connor Schell, Ezra Edelman, Alex Gibney, and Marina Zenovich, moderated by Chris Connelly, SVA Theater 2 Beatrice, $30, 3:30

CARMINE STREET GUITARS

Rick Kelly and Cindy Hulej are a mutual admiration society in Carmine Street Guitars

CARMINE STREET GUITARS (Ron Mann, 2018)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Opens Wednesday, April 24
212-727-8110
filmforum.org
www.sphinxproductions.com

In the second half of Ron Mann’s utterly delightful and unique documentary Carmine Street Guitars, a well-dressed, well-groomed young man enters the title store in Greenwich Village and identifies himself as Adam Shalom, a Realtor who is selling the building next door. Shalom tries to talk about square footage, but Carmine Street Guitars founder and owner Rick Kelly barely looks up as he continues cleaning a fret. It’s a critical, uncomfortable moment in an otherwise intimate and inviting film; throughout the rest of the eighty-minute documentary, the soft-spoken Kelly talks guitars and craftsmanship with a stream of very cool musicians and his punk-looking young apprentice, Cindy Hulej. But Shalom’s arrival hearkens to one of the main reasons why Mann made the movie: to capture one of the last remaining old-time shops in a changing neighborhood, a former bohemian paradise that has been taken over by hipsters and corporate culture, by upscale stores and restaurants and luxury apartments. You’ll actually cheer that Kelly gives Shalom such short shrift, but you’ll also realize that Shalom and others might be knocking again at that door all too soon.

Rick Kelly welcomes “instigator” Jim Jarmusch to his Greenwich Village shop in Carmine Street Guitars

The rest of the film is an absolute treat. Mann follows five days in the life of Carmine Street Guitars; each day begins with a static shot of the store from across the street, emphasizing it as part of a community as people walk by or Kelly, who was born in Bay Shore, arrives with a piece of wood he’s scavenged. The camera then moves indoors to show Kelly and Hulej making guitars by hand, using old, outdated tools and wood primarily from local buildings that date back to the nineteenth century. Kelly doesn’t do computers and doesn’t own a cell phone; he leaves all that to Hulej, who posts pictures of new six-strings on Instagram. Meanwhile, Kelly’s ninetysomething mother, Dorothy, works in the back of the crazily cluttered store, taking care of the books with an ancient adding machine. Over the course of the week, they are visited by such musicians as Dallas and Travis Good of the Sadies (who composed the film’s soundtrack), “Captain” Kirk Douglas of the Roots, Eleanor Friedberger, Dave Hill of Valley Lodge, Jamie Hince of the Kills, Nels Cline of Wilco, Christine Bougie of Bahamas, Marc Ribot, and Charlie Sexton. Bill Frisell plays an impromptu surf-guitar instrumental version of the Beach Boys’ “Surfer Girl.” Stewart Hurwood, Lou Reed’s longtime guitar tech, talks about using Reed’s guitars for the ongoing “DRONES” live installation. “It’s like playing a piece of New York,” Lenny Kaye says about the guitars made from local wood while also referring to the shop as part of the “real village.”

Mann, the Canadian director of such previous nonfiction films as Grass, Know Your Mushrooms, and Comic Book Confidential, was inspired to make the movie at the suggestion of his friend Jarmusch, who in addition to directing such works as Stranger Than Paradise (which featured Balint), Down by Law, and 2016 NYFF selection Paterson is in the New York band Sqürl. Plus, it was Jarmusch who first got Kelly interested in crafting his guitars with wood from buildings, “the bones of old New York,” resulting in Telecaster-based six-strings infused with the history of Chumley’s, McSorley’s, the Chelsea Hotel, and other city landmarks. Carmine Street Guitars, which is far more than just mere guitar porn, opens April 24 at Film Forum, with Mann, Kelly, and Hulej participating in Q&As following the 7:45 show on Wednesday night, joined by Jarmusch, and after the 6:00 screening on Friday and 4:10 show on Saturday.

LAWRENCE WEINER AND GLENN FUHRMAN IN CONVERSATION

Who: Lawrence Weiner and Glenn Fuhrman
What: Artist talk in conjunction with publication of The FLAG Art Foundation: 2008-2018
Where: Gagosian Shop, 976 Madison Ave. at 75th St., 212-796-1224
When: Tuesday, April 16, free with RSVP, 6:00
Why: In celebration of its tenth anniversary, the Chelsea-based FLAG Art Foundation has published The FLAG Art Foundation: 2008-2018, a fully illustrated catalog that looks back at its first fifty exhibitions, which has featured such artists as Louise Bourgeois, Mark Bradford, Maurizio Cattelan, Robert Gober, Félix González-Torres, Jim Hodges, Ellsworth Kelly, Charles Ray, Gerhard Richter, and Cindy Sherman. On April 16, gallery founder Glenn Fuhrman and seventy-seven-year-old Bronx-born conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner will be at the Gagosian Shop on the Upper East Side to discuss the history of FLAG as well as its current exhibition “On Board the Ships at Sea Are We,” consisting of works by Weiner, Rachel Whiteread, and Robert Therrien examining scale, materiality, and absence. The catalog includes a foreword by Fuhrman, preface by founding director Stephanie Roach, and original contributions from Ashley Bickerton, Delia Brown, Patricia Cronin, Cynthia Daignault, Lisa Dennison, Sarah Douglas, Elmgreen & Dragset, Eric Fischl, James Frey, Louis Grachos, Stamatina Gregory, Jane Hammond, Hilary Harkness, Jim Hodges, Philae Knight, Josephine Meckseper, Richard Patterson, Jack Shear, Carolyn Twersky, Lesley Vance, Rebecca Ward, and Heidi Zuckerman. Admission is free with advance RSVP.

IN PERPETUAL FLIGHT: THE MIGRATION OF THE BLACK BODY

Alvin Ailey dancer and choreographer Hope Boykin will perform at “In Perpetual Flight: The Migration of the Black Body” presentation at Schomburg Center (photo by Steve Vaccariello)

The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
Langston Hughes Auditorium
515 Malcolm X Blvd.
Tuesday, April 16, free with advance registration, 6:30
www.nypl.org

Carnegie Hall’s wide-ranging, multidisciplinary Migrations: The Making of America festival comes to the Langston Hughes Auditorium at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture on April 16 for “In Perpetual Flight: The Migration of the Black Body.” Through dance, music, and theater, the program traces the journey toward liberation of the black body across time in the US, from the slave trade and the Great Migration to the Civil War and the Back to Africa movement, exploring its impact on contemporary American culture. The evening, held in conjunction with the fiftieth anniversary of Dr. Barbara Ann Teer’s National Black Theatre and its current NBT Beyond Walls initiative, features four live performances and presentations by Alvin Ailey dancer and choreographer Hope Boykin, screenwriter, playwright, and director Keith Josef Adkins, Obie-winning actress and singer Kenita R. Miller, composer and sound designer Justin Hicks, NBT CEO Sade Lythcott, and NBT artistic director Jonathan McCrory, utilizing works from the Schomburg Center archives from such seminal figures as James Baldwin, Harriet Powers, Marcus Garvey, Harriet Tubman, and Jacob Lawrence. “This event is allowing us to acknowledge the consistent flight, movement, and navigation black people have been engaged in within this country ever since the black body was ripped from the shores of Africa — human bodies stripped from home and forced into slavery,” McCrory said in a statement. “That perpetual flight has produced four hundred years of migration that have generated moments of agitation, acceleration, acclimation, and aspiration.” Admission is free; advance registration is strongly recommended.

INTERROGATIONS OF FORM: MUSEUM AS SANCTUARY

SUNDAY SALON
Park Ave. Armory
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
Sunday, April 14, $25, 3:00
212-933-5812
www.armoryonpark.org

In December, Cuban artist and activist Tania Bruguera was arrested in Havana for protesting Decree 349, which criminalizes public and private art that the Ministry of Culture deems unpatriotic or does not receive government permission for commercialization. “Before there was censorship, you could play around. Now you go to jail, now they take your house. It’s not a joke. There are no more games to play,” Bruguera told the Guardian in February. “What we want is to eliminate the decree and work together to find regulations that are based on the needs of the artists and what will protect them, not only the government.” Bruguera, an artist-in-residence at Park Avenue Armory, will be at the armory on April 14 for the Sunday Salon discussing a place to seek refuge: The presentation, part of the Interrogations of Form series, is entitled “Museum as Sanctuary.” The salon kicks off at 3:00 with an introduction by Bruguera and “Make Sanctuary Not Art,” a ritual gathering on safe spaces led by Luba Cortes, Geoff Trenchard, Jackie Vimo, and Abou Farman. From 4:30 to 5:30, the pop-up exhibition “You See Me?!?” displays work by undocumented LGBTQ Mexican American artist Julio Salgado and the collective Emulsify, including the video installation “Con Cámaras y Sín Papeles.” The afternoon concludes at 5:30 with “Institutions as Sanctuary in Times of Exclusion,” a conversation with Alexandra Délano Alonso, Camilo Godoy, Sonia Guiñansaca, Bitta Mostofi, and Verónica Ramírez, moderated by Bruguera.

KAROLE ARMITAGE’S YOU TOOK A PART OF ME

Egumi Eda plays the lead role in Karole Armitage’s You Took a Part of Me at Japan Society (photo © Julieta Cervantes; Karole Armitage © Marco Mignani)

Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Friday, April 12, and Saturday, April 13, $30, 7:30
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

Wisconsin-born, Tony-nominated choreographer Karole Armitage follows up Art of the In-Between, which debuted last October at National Sawdust in Brooklyn in the Celebrate Mexico Now festival, with the world premiere of You Took a Part of Me at Japan Society this weekend with her company, Armitage Gone! Dance. Loosely inspired by the fifteenth-century noh play Nonomiya, the kazura-mono piece features Lady Rokujō, a character from The Tale of Genji, and deals with memory, obsession, and love. Created in collaboration with MIT Media Lab and part of Carnegie Hall’s Migrations: The Making of America festival, You Took a Part of Me features a live score by Reiko Yamada played live by multi-instrumentalist Yuki Isami; longtime Armitage dancer Megumi Eda will perform the lead role. The set includes a bridge known as a hashigakari that extends into the audience. The April 12 show will be followed by a meet-the-artists reception, while the April 13 program will conclude with an artist Q&A.