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

PHAKCHOK RINPOCHE + ERRIC SOLOMON: ANCIENT WISDOM AND TECH FUTURE

Kyabgön Phakchok Rinpoche and Erric Solomon will discuss ancient wisdom, the tech future, and radical happiness at the Rubin on November 10 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Kyabgön Phakchok Rinpoche and Erric Solomon will discuss ancient wisdom, the future of tech, and radical happiness at the Rubin on November 10 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Rubin Museum of Art
150 West 17th St. at Seventh Ave.
Saturday, November 10, $25 (VIP $45), 3:00
212-620-5000
rubinmuseum.org
www.phakchokrinpoche.org

“Getting to know your own mind should be fun,” former Silicon Valley tech executive Erric Solomon said at a recent cocktail party celebrating the release of Radically Happy (Shambhala, $24.95), the new book he cowrote with his longtime friend, Tibetan Buddhist teacher Kyabgön Phakchok Rinpoche, who explained, “It’s about how you can be happy, not why. We already know why we should be happy.” Solomon and Phakchok Rinpoche will be at the Rubin Museum on November 10 at 3:00 for the talk “Ancient Wisdom and Tech Future”; this past summer, Rinpoche appeared at the Rubin for two presentations, a mindfulness meditation and “Stories of Padmasambhava.” Radically Happy: A User’s Guide to the Mind features a foreword by Daniel Goleman and Tara Bennett-Goleman, colorful artwork by Julian Pang, and such chapters as “Why You Need Radical Happiness, or How to Be Less of a Dog and More of a Lion,” “The Looking-for-Happiness Conundrum,” and “Contemplating the Interdependent Nature of Reality.” As the Golemans note, “Phakchok Rinpoche lives much like the rest of us and so can draw on his own doubts, anger, and other familiar feelings to illustrate ways we can each find steadier footing in the rocky realities of our lives.” Solomon and Rinpoche might use the word “radical” a lot in the book, but their approach applies common sense to everyday existence, believing that problems can “be resolved by being more present-moment focused and by thinking of the welfare of others. Could the path to happiness really be that simple?” Part of the Rubin’s yearlong investigation into the future, the talk will be followed by a book signing; general admission is $25, but for $45 you get a signed copy of the book, preferred seating, and a karma tour.

DOC NYC: WORLDS OF URSULA K. LE GUIN

Superb documentary looks at the life and career of genre-redefining writer Ursula K. Le Guin

WORLDS OF URSULA K. LE GUIN (Arwen Curry, 2018)
SVA Theatre
333 West 23rd St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Saturday, November 10, 11:45 am
Festival runs November 8-15
www.docnyc.net
worldsofukl.com

If you’ve never read anything by Ursula K. Le Guin, you’re going to want to fill your bookshelf with her works after watching Arwen Curry’s superb documentary, Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin, making its New York City premiere November 10 at the DOC NYC festival. The intimate portrait focuses on the Berkeley-born author’s writings and how she changed the face of literature for science fiction and fantasy as well as for women authors. “What Ursula was having to navigate was the societal prejudice against science fiction, against the fantastic, and against children’s fiction. All of these things were marginalized,” award-winning writer Neil Gaiman says. Le Guin points out, “The critics had dismissed science fiction and fantasy as essentially worthless, and I knew better. I knew that my work was not second rate, that it was of literary value.” Curry spent seven years researching Le Guin and following her to public appearances and filming her in her longtime home of Portland, Oregon. Le Guin, the author of such masterful novels as A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Left Hand of Darkness, and The Dispossessed as well as the highly influential short story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” died in January 2018 and was interviewed for the film in her eighties; from her deeply wrinkled face emerges the voice and infectious enthusiasm of a much younger woman.

Among the authors singing Le Guin’s praises are Gaiman, David Mitchell, Michael Chabon, Samuel R. Delany, Adrienne Maree Brown, China Miéville, Theodora Goss, Margaret Atwood, and Vonda N. McIntyre, along with professor emeritus James Clifford, editor Annalee Newitz, and Le Guin biographer Julie Phillips, who universally rave not only about what a great writer she was but what a wonderful human being too. Le Guin was the daughter of highly regarded anthropologists Alfred L. Kroeber and Theodora Kroeber, who both studied indigenous cultures destroyed by colonial impact; familiarity with her parents’ work may have contributed to Le Guin’s immense skill of world-building in her books. “Imaginative fiction trains people to be aware that there are other ways to do things and other ways to be, that there is not just one civilization and it is good and it is the way we have to be,” she says in the film. Curry also speaks with Le Guin’s husband and their children and goes to Cannon Beach with Le Guin, a visit beautifully captured by cinematographer Andrew Black. Curry includes home movies, family photographs, speeches, marked-up manuscripts, and shots of Le Guin working at a typewriter; in addition, animator Molly Schwartz brings to life various book covers and a handful of scenes narrated by Le Guin. It’s utterly charming watching Le Guin discuss her career, a gentle soul in touch with who she is and what she does. She even participated in the Kickstarter campaign to fund the project, offering signed books, rare special editions, a framed sketch of her cat, a meet-and-greet, and more. The American Masters presentation is screening at the SVA Theatre at 11:45 am on November 10, with Curry and Schwartz on hand to talk about the film.

DOC NYC: THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS

Three Identical Strangers tells the amazing story of adopted triplets who find one another only to learn horrible details of their separation

THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS (Tim Wardle, 2018)
Cinepolis Chelsea
260 West 23rd St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Thursday, November 8, 6:15
Friday, November 9, 10:15 am
Festival runs November 8-15
www.docnyc.net
www.threeidenticalstrangers.com

At the beginning of Tim Wardle’s Three Identical Strangers, screening November 8 and 9 at the ninth annual DOC NYC festival, Bobby Shafran says, “When I tell people my story, they don’t believe it. I guess I wouldn’t believe the story if someone else were telling it, but I’m telling it. And it’s true, every word of it.” He then discusses how, in 1980, through a series of coincidences, he discovered that he was an adopted triplet, and the three brothers, born on July 12, 1961, became the best of friends, going on a media blitz and taking New York City by storm. That in itself is a great story, but that’s only the first part of this gripping movie; what follows is a thriller-like investigation into the lives of Edward Galland, David Kellman, and Robert Shafran involving why they were separated at birth by the Louise Wise Services adoption agency. It’s an utterly captivating film, as every time you think the story can’t get more bizarre, it does. Wardle speaks with many members of the three boys’ adopted families, journalists, and several people who were involved in the nature/nurture experiment that separated them; it’s absolutely heart-wrenching watching them learn what happened to them back in 1961 that changed their lives forever and ultimately resulted in tragedy — and the full truth is still not known. Winner of a Special Jury Prize at Sundance among awards at many other festivals, Three Identical Strangers is screening in the Short List section of DOC NYC, with Wardle present at both shows.

DOC NYC: BEYOND THE BOLEX

Alyssa Bolsey’s Beyond the Bolex explores a family legacy and the history of early film

BEYOND THE BOLEX (Alyssa Bolsey, 2018)
Cinepolis Chelsea
260 West 23rd St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Thursday, November 8, 9:15
Festival runs November 8-15
www.docnyc.net
www.jacquesbolseyproject.com

The ninth annual DOC NYC festival, a celebration of nonfiction film, is bigger than ever, this year consisting of more than three hundred shorts and features and with an all-star collection of celebrity-driven works from November 8 to 15. But often it’s the small documentaries that offer the most surprises. One such film, screening at Cinepolis Chelsea on opening night, is Alyssa Bolsey’s Beyond the Bolex. Bolsey made her first movie when she was twelve, but following the death of her paternal grandfather, she found out that filmmaking was truly in her blood: Her great-grandfather was Jacques Bolsey, the inventor of the Bolex and an influential experimental filmmaker. “I had no idea that there was a long-lost family legacy waiting to be uncovered, a treasure trove going all the way back to the early days of film,” she says. But while speaking with such directors and cinematographers as Wim Wenders, Bruce Brown, Dave Alex Riddett, Jonas Mekas, and Barbara Hammer, she also discovers details about her family history she never knew during a twelve-year investigation into Jacques’s life and career. The world premiere screening will be followed by a Q&A with Alyssa Bolsey and producer Camilo Lara Jr.

SCIENCE ON SCREEN — RHINOCEROS: THE DECLINE OF CIVILIZATION

Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder can only do so much to battle fascism and conformity in Rhinoceros

RHINOCEROS (Tom O’Horgan, 1974)
Museum of the Moving Image, Redstone Theater
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Sunday, November 4, $15, 6:30
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us

Seven years after striking comedy gold in Mel Brooks’s The Producers, Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder teamed up again in the misguided, misbegotten Rhinoceros, Tom O’Horgan’s completely mishandled cinematic adaptation of Eugène Ionesco’s 1959 Theatre of the Absurd classic. Mostel reprises the role of bon vivant John (Jean), which earned him a Tony, while Wilder is his downstairs neighbor Stanley (Bérenger), a schlemiel of an accountant. Stanley is in love with his coworker Daisy (Karen Black), which coincidentally is the same name as the sheep Wilder’s character falls hard for in Woody Allen’s 1972 Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex *But Were Afraid to Ask. But this time the animal problem involves the rhinoceros, some species of which in the twenty-first century are endangered because they are illegally hunted for their horns and by big-gamers filling their trophy cases. The plot deals with individuality and fascism as humanity threatens to become extinct as the strong-skinned rhino starts taking over the streets, even though we never see them. Meta and metaphors abound in the wacky, way-too-over-the-top slapstick farce, which never gains traction; even the 1970s score is utterly absurd, and not in a good way. I’ve seen a terrific production of the play in French and a disappointing one in Yiddish, but the movie is in its own oddball category.

Rhinoceros is screening November 4 at 6:30 at the Museum of the Moving Image as part of the “Science on Screen” series, with political scientist Ester Fuchs, author of Mayors and Money: Fiscal Policy in New York and Chicago and director of WhosOnTheBallot.org, and Theresa Rebeck, writer of such current shows as Bernhardt/Hamlet and Downstairs — and who wrote her own adaptation of Rhinoceros in 1996 — attempting to examine the film within the context of the decline of civilization today, particularly under President Donald Trump, whose sons are trophy hunters themselves.

DISTANT CONSTELLATION

Selma tells the heartbreaking story of her family during the Armenian genocide in Distant Constellation

DISTANT CONSTELLATION (Shevaun Mizrahi, 2018)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
Opens Friday, November 2
212-660-0312
metrograph.com
grasshopperfilm.com

Shevaun Mizrahi’s debut feature, Distant Constellation, is a lovely, intimate portrait of a group of residents at an old age home in Istanbul who just go about their business or share deeply personal stories while major construction outside tears down the past to build a future the senior citizens will not be a part of. Two men spend much of their day going up and down in the elevator, making fun of each other, talking about aliens, and not wanting to be bothered by anyone else. A man is delighted to bring in halvah. A photographer who now can barely see repeats words and phrases as he tries to fix his flash. A man sleeps in a coffinlike bed, coughing, gasping, and singing as the wind whistles through the window. A woman tells the heart-wrenching tale of what she and her family went through during the Armenian genocide of 1915. And another man talks about his unending passion for sex and eroticism, reading passages from Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. There’s a lot of napping and sitting, staring into nothingness and watching television. Snow falls lightly from the sky. A flock of birds fly near giant cranes.

Life goes on at Turkish retirement home, inside and outside, in Distant Constellation

A still photographer who studied filmmaking at NYU and apprenticed with Oscar-nominated cinematographer Ed Lachman (Far from Heaven, Carol), Mizrahi regularly travels to Turkey to visit her father. (Her mother is an American.) Back in 2009, she started spending time at a retirement home for the elderly in her father’s hometown and, using a basic DSLR camera, began filming the very old men and women. Encouraged by film-school friends Shelly Grizim and Deniz Buga and inspired by Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil, Pedro Costa’s Colossal Youth, and Wallace Stevens’s “Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour,” Mizrahi decided to make a full-length film. She focuses her camera, which almost never moves, directly on her subjects, many of whom speak in their bedrooms, the construction often visible outside. Mizrahi shoots Selma, the genocide survivor, in extreme close-up, every moment of her life seemingly right there on her face. The people are not identified in the film by their full names, there is no voiceover narration, no doctors or nurses are interviewed, and no ages or background information is supplied other than what they choose to tell Mizrahi.

At one point Mizrahi, who served as director, cinematographer, editor, and sound designer — Grizim and Buga ultimately became her producers and worked with her on the sound, with Grizim also contributing to the editing and visual effects — shows two old alarm clocks side-by-side, with slightly different times, a wry comment on time itself, something that the residents do not experience the same as the construction workers, who expect to be part of the future they are building. Mizrahi even humanizes them, not casting them as villains eliminating the past. It’s quite a group of elderly characters she’s assembled, members of minorities who speak in Turkish, English, Armenian, French, Greek, and Kurdish. “Light the first light of evening, as in a room / In which we rest and, for small reason, think / The world imagined is the ultimate good,” Stevens wrote in “Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour.” But as someone says in Distant Constellation, “So is life.” The genuinely poetic film opens November 2 at Metrograph, with Mizrahi appearing at Q&As at the 7:00 show Friday, moderated by Eric Hynes, and at the 7:45 show on Saturday.

SOUL OF A NATION: ART IN THE AGE OF BLACK POWER

Faith Ringgold, “United States of Attica,” offset lithograph on paper, © 2018 courtesy ACA Galleries, © 2018 Faith Ringgold

FIRST SATURDAYS
Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, November 3, free (some events require advance tickets), 5:00 – 11:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The Brooklyn Museum explores art and Black Power in the November edition of its free First Saturday program. There will be live performances by Antoine Drye, Shelley Nicole’s blaKbüshe, and the Brooklyn Dance Festival; an Art & Dialogue discussion with curators Valerie Cassel Oliver and Catherine Morris; a hands-on workshop in which participants can create miniature paintings inspired by jazz and the work of Alma Thomas, William T. Williams, and others; a curator tour of “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power” with Ashley James; original poetry and music by Jaime Lee Lewis, Jennifer Falu, Joekenneth Museau, Asante Amin, Frank Malloy, and Terry Lovette in addition to excerpts from the 1968 collection Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing; pop-up poetry with Sean DesVignes, Joel Dias-Porter, and Omotara James of Cave Canem; an “Archives as Raw History” tour with archivist Molly Seegers; and the community talk “Black Art Futures Fund.” In addition, the galleries will be open late so you can check out “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power,” “Syria, Then and Now: Stories from Refugees a Century Apart,” “One: Do Ho Suh,” “Half the Picture: A Feminist Look at the Collection,” “Something to Say: Brooklyn Hi-Art! Machine, Deborah Kass, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, and Hank Willis Thomas,” “Cecilia Vicuña: Disappeared Quipu,” “Rob Wynne: FLOAT,” “Infinite Blue,” “A Woman’s Afterlife: Gender Transformation in Ancient Egypt,” and more.