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

A HAUNTING AT HENDRICK’S

The historic Hendrick I. Lott House will open its doors for several special events this month

Hendrick I. Lott House
1940 East 36th St., Marine Park
Thursday, October 20, $75, 7:00
Tours on October 27-28, $25, 11:00 & 2:00
www.lotthouse.org
archtober.org

In 1652, the Lotts, a family of French Huguenots, immigrated to Brooklyn from Holland. In 1719, they purchased a farm in Flatlands and built a house there the following year. The Dutch Colonial farmhouse, a New York City landmark that was bought by the city in 2002 — and has a history that includes slave labor — is generally closed to the public, but it will open its doors this Halloween season for several special events. On October 20, the home will host “A Haunting at Hendrick’s,” a cocktail party and costume fundraiser at 7:00, with all proceeds going to the preservation and renovation of the house. In addition, on October 27 and 28 at 11:00 and 2:00, there will be rare tours of the Lott home. It’s all part of Archtober, a month of programs celebrating the architecture of the city. Among the many other sites participating in Archtober are Grand Central Terminal, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Times Square, the South Street Seaport, the Guggenheim, Ellis Island, and the subway.

NETFLIX’S HOUSE OF CARDS SCREENING AND TALK

Robin Wright will be at the 92nd St. Y to discuss last season of House of Cards on October 17

92nd St. Y, Kaufmann Concert Hall
1395 Lexington Ave. at 92nd St.
Wednesday, October 17, $20-$45, 8:30
212-415-5500
www.92y.org
www.netflix.com

It’s one of the most hotly anticipated series of the fall season, streaming on Netflix beginning November 2, and you can get a sneak peek at it on October 17 at the 92nd St. Y when House of Cards comes to the Upper East Side. Kevin Spacey’s career turned into a house of cards when he was accused of sexual assault by Anthony Rapp and others, but the show will go on without him for one more season, with stars Robin Wright and Michael Kelly and executive producers Melissa Gibson and Frank Pugliese at the Y to talk about it. Wright, of course, plays Claire Underwood, who has taken over the presidency from her devious husband, Frank Underwood (Spacey, as a character whose initials are not accidentally FU); Kelly is Doug Stamper, the dark and dedicated loyal ally to Frank who knows where all the bodies are buried. The evening will look at political thrillers, the idea of the first woman president, and how the show evokes what is really happening in Washington and across the country.

CROSSING THE LINE: JEANNE BALIBAR IN LES HISTORIENNES

French star Jeanne Balibar will be at FIAF for three special events during October

French star Jeanne Balibar will present the world premiere of her one-woman show, Les Historiennes, at FIAF on October 13

French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
October 13, $30-$60, 7:00
Film series continues Tuesdays through October 30
212-355-6100
crossingthelinefestival.org
heymancenter.org

On October 13, extraordinary French actress Jeanne Balibar will be at Florence Gould Hall for the world premiere of Les Historiennes (“The Historians”), a one-woman show that concludes FIAF’s annual Crossing the Line multidisciplinary festival. Balibar, the daughter of a renowned philosopher and a well-respected physicist, will portray three characters in the presentation: the Murderer, based on Anne-Emmanuelle Demartini’s writings on Violette Nozière, a teenager who killed her father in the 1930s; the Slave, based on Charlotte de Castelnau’s writings on several historical issues; and the Actress, about French stage and film star Delphine Seyrig and her father, archaeologist Henri Seyrig. In conjunction with Les Historiennes, FIAF has been hosting “Brilliant Quirky: Jeanne Balibar on Film,” consisting of ten Balibar movies on Tuesdays through October 30. On October 9 she will be at FIAF for a Q&A following the 7:30 sneak preview screening of Barbara, directed by Mathieu Amalric, who was celebrated at FIAF three years ago with his own film series and his US theatrical debut in Le Moral des ménages (“Fight or Flight”).

Jeanne Balibar will be at FIAF on October 9 to discuss her latest film, Mathieu Amalric’s Barbara

In addition, Maison Française at Columbia is hosting several free, related discussions with the scholars that inspired Les Historiennes, in French with English translations. Last night, “Writing History from a Crime: The Violette Nozière Case” featured Demartini in conversation with Stephane Gerson and Judith Surkis. On October 10 at 6:00, “Marriage and Slavery in the Early Portuguese Atlantic World” features de Castelnau-L’Estoile in conversation with Amy Chazkel and Roquinaldo Ferreira, followed on October 11 at 6:00 by “Biography and the Social Sciences: the Case of Claude Lévi-Strauss” with Loyer in conversation with Emmanuelle Saada and Camille Robcis. And on October 12, Balibar will join Demartini, Loyer, and de Castelnau-L’Estoile for “Women’s voices, women’s stories” at 1:00. “Brilliant Quirky: Jeanne Balibar on Film” continues with such other Balibar flicks as Raúl Ruiz’s Comedy of Innocence and 2013’s Par exemple, Électre, her first film as a director, a collaboration with Pierre Léon in which she also stars.

THE WAR AT HOME

Restored documentary follows ten years of student protests at the University of Wisconsin in Madison

THE WAR AT HOME (Glenn Silber, 1979)
New York Film Festival: Film Society of Lincoln Center, Francesca Beale Theater
West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway, 212-875-5610
Tuesday, October 9, 8:00
Metrograph, 7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts., 212-660-0312
Opens Friday, October 12
www.filmlinc.org
metrograph.com

In 1979, the Oscars paid tribute to a changing sentiment in the country regarding the Vietnam War and its veterans, showering accolades on The Deer Hunter and Coming Home. The next year, Vietnam was not so front and center, although a small but important film was nominated for Best Documentary Feature (and also won the Special Jury Prize at Sundance): Glenn Silber and Barry Alexander Brown’s The War at Home, an eye-opening look at the year-by-year history of the antiwar movement at the University of Wisconsin in Madison from 1963 into the early 1970s. Following a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for a rerelease of a new 4K digital restoration by IndieCollect, The War at Home is screening October 9 in the Revivals section of the fifty-sixth annual New York Film Festival before opening for a theatrical run at Metrograph on October 12. Although the revival shows its age, the film is startlingly relevant, serving as both a primer and a warning about peaceful protest today. “When we were producing The War at Home in our twenties, we often said we were ‘making this film for our children’ because we understood that we had lived through an extraordinary political and turbulent period,” Silber and Brown explain on the Kickstarter page. “The film is also about the lessons of this politically intense time when a generation of young Americans confronted their government’s policies and lies.”

Glenn Silber and Barry Alexander Brown in 1979 while making The War at Home

The film traces the antiwar movement in Madison chronologically, combining new interviews of participants on both sides of the issue with archival footage of the brutality of the war and clips of such politicians as Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard M. Nixon, presidential candidates Eugene McCarthy, Hubert Humphrey, and Charlene Mitchell, Defense secretary Robert McNamara, and Congressman Gerald R. Ford. In one of the film’s most poignant moments, Sen. Ted Kennedy says to a UW audience that he knows what they are against but asks what they are for. Silber and Brown speak with such pivotal figures as Karleton Armstrong, Wisconsin Student Association vice president Margery Tabankin, sociology professor Maurice Zeitlin, black activists Wahid and Liberty Rashad, Elinore Pullen, Susan Colson, ROTC cadet Jack Calhoun, Evan Stark, Quaker peace activist Betty Boardman, businessman and Holocaust survivor Jack Von Mettenheim, underground newspaper editor Ken Mate, Madison mayor Paul Soglin, campus journalist Jim Rowen, and poet Allen Ginsberg, along with campus police chief Ralph Hanson, Sen. Gaylord Nelson, Madison police chief inspector Herman Thomas, university president H. Edwin Young, and Vietnam veterans Al Jenkins, Doug Bradley, and Ron Carbon. “We were trying to build a whole counterculture,” says Students for a Democratic Society head Henry Haslach, noting that their goal was to have an impact on all social issues, not just the war. The film shows the protestors as they burn draft cards, occupy an administration building, demonstrate against Dow chemical, hold a student strike, travel to the 1968 Democratic National Convention, and participate in a national moratorium while featuring songs by Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Buffalo Springfield, and Sgt. Barry Sadler and a remarkable political advertisement that makes today’s attack ads look mild.

University of Wisconsin was a hotbed of student protests during the Vietnam War (photo by Roger Turner / Wisconsin State Journal)

Nearly forty years after its initial release, The War at Home is no mere time capsule, particularly as Wisconsin is now a key swing state, and Silber will be at the NYFF screening to talk about the film’s current relevance. “Today, we’re facing another president who’s threatening war, destroying our environmental protections, rejecting climate change, lying to the public, debasing the truth, attacking the news media, and tearing at the very fabric of our democratic institutions. That’s why the resistance has sprung up and is fighting back,” he and Brown write on the Kickstarter page. After the Tuesday screening at the festival, The War at Home will open at Metrograph on Friday, with Silber and Brown appearing at Q&As with an all-star lineup: October 12 at 8:30 with Michael Moore, October 13 at 1:00 with Alex Gibney, October 14 at 1:00 with Mark Rudd, and October 15 at 7:15 with Amy Goodman.

NYFF56 SPOTLIGHT ON DOCUMENTARY: CARMINE STREET GUITARS

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

NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL: CARMINE STREET GUITARS (Ron Mann, 2018)
Film Society of Lincoln Center
West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Saturday, October 6, Walter Reade Theater, 4:15
Monday, October 8, Francesca Beale Theater, 2:30
Festival runs through October 14
212-875-5610
www.filmlinc.org

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 harkens 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, is screening in the Spotlight on Documentary section of the New York Film Festival on October 6 and 8, with Mann participating in Q&As after each show, joined by special guests, including Kelly and Hulej on October 6. The film will be preceded by the world premiere of eighty-seven-year-old Manfred Kirchheimer’s thirty-nine-minute Dream of a City, a collage of 16mm black-and-white images of construction sites and street scenes taken between 1958 and 1960, set to music by Shostakovich and Debussy. Kirchheimer (Stations of the Elevated) will also be at both Q&As as well as the October 6 free NYFF Docs Talk with Alexis Bloom, James Longley, Mark Bozek, and Tom Surgal, moderated by Lesli Klainberg.

NYFF56 PROJECTIONS: DIAMANTINO

Giant fluffy puppies get in the way of a Portuguese soccer star’s dreams in Diamantino

NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL: DIAMANTINO (Daniel Schmidt & Gabriel Abrantes, 2018)
Film Society of Lincoln Center
West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Thursday, October 4, Walter Reade Theater, 9:30
Friday, October 5, Howard Gilman Theater, 6:30
Saturday, October 13, Howard Gilman Theater, 9:15
Festival runs through October 14
212-875-5610
www.filmlinc.org

At the fifty-sixth annual New York Film Festival, you can catch a documentary, foreign-language picture, political thriller, high-tech crime chiller, comedy, romantic melodrama, fantasy and sci-fi, and more — all in one wildly entertaining film. Diamantino, Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt’s full-length feature debut, is an absurdist multigenre mashup that is as tense as it is funny, an unpredictable romp that evokes Ernst Lubitsch, Howard Hawks, Michel Gondry, Philip K. Dick, South Park, Cinderella, James Bond, Being There, Minority Report, and Au Hasard Balthazar while feeling wholly original. Carloto Cotta stars as the title character, Diamantino Matamouros, a Portuguese soccer star à la Cristiano Ronaldo (pre-sexual assault allegations) who sees giant fluffy puppies when he is on the field. After botching a penalty kick in the World Cup Final, the stupendously beautiful star learns that his beloved father and mentor (Chico Chapas) has died. His evil twin sisters, Sónia (Anabela Moreira) and Natasha (Margarida Moreira), become his agents and make a secret deal with the mysterious Dr. Lamborghini (Carla Maciel) and a government minister (Silva Joana). Meanwhile, investigators Aisha Brito (Cleo Tavares) and Lucia (Vargas Maria Leite) — lovers who are soon to be married — are looking into Diamantino’s finances and devise a plan to get close to him by having Aisha pose as a male refugee named Rahim who Diamantino adopts as his son.

Diamantino Matamouros (Carloto Cotta) is surrounded by images of himself in Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt’s dazzling feature debut

Everyone except his sisters, who know better, thinks he is some kind of genius mastermind, but Diamantino is actually an addled simpleton who understands very little about life. He enjoyed playing soccer, likes eating Nutella and whipped cream sandwiches, and, following his tearful retirement, hangs out with his cat, Mittens, and dedicates himself to raising Rahim, who he does not realize is actually a grown woman. He’s reminiscent of Chance the Gardener (Peter Sellers) in Being There, but his airheaded statements — which are outrageously funny — are seldom mistaken for brilliance, except when he’s manipulated into making fascistic political statements he doesn’t understand.

Diamantino is stunningly photographed by Charles Ackley Anderson, who quickly adapts the film’s visual style as it switches from fantasy to love story to futuristic thriller, with numerous memorable shots, including Lucia in a white nun’s habit on a motorbike, Diamantino and Rahim sleeping on pillows with large images of the soccer star’s head, and a huge fluffy puppy playing goal in the championship game. American-born directors and longtime collaborators Abrantes and Schmidt, who edited the film with Raphaëlle Martin-Holger, show a deep love and respect for movies, infusing Diamantino with charm and energy, humor and compassion, honoring, in their own way, the history of cinema. The rest of the cast and crew do their part as well, from art director Bruno Duarte and composers Ulysse Klotz and Adriana Holtz to the Moreira sisters and multidisciplinary Portuguese star Manuela Moura Guedes as television interviewer Gisele. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes Critics’ Week, Diamantino is screening in the Projections section of the New York Film Festival on October 4 and 5, with Schmidt and Abrantes participating in Q&As after each show. Also, an October 13 screening at 9:15 has just been added.

REPRESENTATION: ONE OCTOBER

Clay Pigeon interviews construction worker Mark Paris in One October

ONE OCTOBER (Rachel Shuman, 2017)
Nitehawk Cinema
136 Metropolitan Ave. between Berry St. & Wythe Ave.
Thursday, October 4, 7:15
718-384-3980
oneoctoberfilm.com
nitehawkcinema.com

In October 2008, in the midst of the Barack Obama / John McCain presidential election and the mortgage crisis, filmmaker Rachel Shuman took to the streets of New York City with Clay Pigeon, host of The Dusty Show on WFMU, interviewing people as they made their way across Manhattan and other boroughs. The Boston-born, Beacon-based Shuman intended to capture a moment in time and not release the film until after Obama’s second term ended to see how life in the city changed. The result is One October, a kind of love letter to who we were, are, and will be. Inspired by Chris Marker’s 1963 film Le Joli Mai, in which the French director interviewed people on the streets of Paris, Shuman follows Pigeon, Radio Shack mini tape recorder in hand, as he wanders through Central Park, Harlem, Washington Square Park, the Lower East Side, Madison Square Park, the Financial District, the Brooklyn Bridge, Willets Point, Tompkins Square Park, and other locations, approaching a series of men and women who share fascinating details about their personal and professional lives; the Iowa-born Pigeon has an innate knack for quickly understanding his subjects, asking intuitive questions that often surprise them. He speaks with a former freelance photographer who now works construction to make more money for his family, an ambitious lawyer who wants to work at the UN, a mixed-race couple sitting on a bench, a woman railing against the gentrification of Harlem, and a homeless man who turns the tables on the soft-spoken Pigeon. “It’s always interesting to see how the random collection of souls falls together and how the next chapter bears fruit or lies fallow,” he says on his radio show.

In between interviews, cinematographer David Sampliner beautifully photographs trees, buildings, storefronts, statues, the Halloween Parade, political rallies, the Columbus Day Parade, a housing protest, the Blessing of the Animals at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, birds flying across blue skies, Muslims praying at the end of Ramadan, and Jews performing the ritual of Tashlich, casting away their sins by throwing pieces of bread into the East River. The shots, which include classic New York restaurants as well as institutions that have since closed, are accompanied by a bittersweet score by Paul Brill, featuring cellist Dave Eggar. Director, editor, and producer Shuman (Negotiations) has created a loving warning about the future of a city that has been undergoing major changes since October 2008. Executive produced by three-time Oscar nominee Edward Norton, the hour-long One October is having a special October screening at Nitehawk Cinema as part of the “Representation” series, which highlights the scarcity of women directors in the industry; the film will be preceded by Jon Bunning’s fifteen-minute short The Tables, about Ping-Pong in Bryant Park, and followed by a Q&A with Shuman and WFMU host Amanda Nazario.