Metropolitan West, West 46th St. between 11th & 12th Aves.
Ink48, 653 11th Ave. at West 48th St.
Saturday, April 1, and Sunday, April 2, $5
www.societyillustrators.org
The 2017 MoCCA Arts Festival takes place this weekend at Metropolitan West, where more than four hundred artists will be displaying comics, cartoons, and animated works. Presented by the Society of Illustrators, the show will include the “Awards of Excellence” exhibit, selections from Drew Friedman’s “Heroes of the Comics,” and guests of honor Blutch, Cliff Chiang, Becky Cloonan, David Lloyd, Gene Luen Yang, and Friedman. Below are the special programs, being held at the nearby Ink48 Hotel.
Saturday, April 1
“Reading without Walls: Diversity in Comics,” with Gene Luen Yang, Damian Duffy, Hazel Newlevant, and Whit Taylor, moderated by Jonathan W. Gray, Garamond Room, 12:30
“Drew Friedman: Heroes of the Comics,” with Drew Friedman, Gary Groth, Al Jaffee, and Karen Green, Helvetica Room, 12:30
“Covering Trump: Steve Brodner and Edel Rodriguez in Conversation,” moderated by Steven Heller, Helvetica Room, 2:00
“Blutch in Conversation with David Mazzuchelli,” moderated by Bill Kartalopoulos, Garamond Room, 2:00
“Cliff Chiang Q+A,” moderated by Paul Levitz, Helvetica Room, 3:30
“Fit to Print: French Artists in the New York Times, with Lucie Larousse, Mayumi Otero, Eugène Riousse, Simon Roussin, and Raphael Urwiller, moderated by Alexandra Zsigmond, Garamond Room, 3:30
Sunday, April 2
“David Lloyd in the Spotlight,” with David Lloyd, moderated by Kent Worcester, Garamond Room, 12:30
“Teaching Comics Internationally,” with Jessica Abel, Guillaume Dégé, Ben Katchor, and Merav Solomon, moderated by Bill Kartalopoulos, Helvetica Room, 12:30
“Rutu Modan and David Polonsky in Conversation,” moderated by Tahneer Oksman, Garamond Room, 2:00
“RESIST!,” with Françoise Mouly and Nadja Spiegelman, Helvetica Room, 2:00
“Becky Cloonan Q+A,” moderated by Nathan Fox, Helvetica Room, 3:30
“Anthologies as Art: Kramers Ergot and Lagon,” with Sammy Harkham and Alexis Beauclair, moderated by Bill Kartalopoulos, Garamond Room, 3:30
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Red Shoes is a lush, gorgeous examination of the creative process and living — and dying — for one’s art. Sadler’s Wells dancer Moira Shearer stars as Victoria Page, a young socialite who dreams of becoming a successful ballerina. She is brought to the attention of ballet master Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook) and soon is a member of his famed company. Meanwhile, composer Julian Craster (Marius Goring), whose music was stolen by his professor and used in a Lermontov ballet, also joins the company, as chorus master. As Vicky and Julian’s roles grow, so does their affection for each other, with a jealous Lermontov seething in between. Inspired by Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, The Red Shoes is a masterful behind-the-scenes depiction of the world of dance, highlighted by the dazzlingly surreal title ballet, which mimics the narrative of the central plot. Based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, the fifteen-minute ballet takes viewers into a completely different fantasy realm, using such cinematic devices as jump cuts and superimposition as the drama unfolds well beyond the limits of the stage. To increase the believability of the story and make sure the dance scenes were effective, Powell and Pressburger enlisted players from the international dance community; the film’s cast includes Russian choreographer and dancer Léonide Massine as Lermontov choreographer Grischa Ljubov, French prima ballerina Ludmilla Tchérina as Lermontov star Irina Boronskaja, and Australian dancer Robert Helpmann as Ivan Boleslawsky; Helpmann also served as the film’s choreographer.
In 1999, filmmaker Petra Epperlein’s fifty-seven-year-old father, Wolfgang, thoroughly washed his company car, burned all of his personal papers and photographs, and then hanged himself from a tree in the family garden in their home in Chemnitz, which was known as Karl Marx City in what was formerly communist East Germany from shortly after the end of WWII to the fall of the Berlin Wall. “Much like Karl Marx City, her father set out to erase himself,” narrator Matilda Tucker, Epperlein’s daughter, says near the beginning of the intricately plotted and gripping documentary Karl Marx City. “All that he left behind were questions.” Fifteen years later, Epperlein, who has made such sociopolitical films with her husband, Michael Tucker, as Gunner Palace, The Prisoner Or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair, and Bulletproof Salesman — the duo call themselves Pepper & Bones — returned to Chemnitz to try to answer some of those questions and find out whether her father had killed himself because, as was rumored, he had collaborated with the Stasi, the much-feared East German secret police. Between 1950 and 1990, the German Democratic Republic employed 92,000 officers and 200,000 informants to spy on their own friends, neighbors, and family, using audio and video to track their every move in order to identify supposed enemies of the state. Written, directed, edited, and produced by Epperlein and Tucker — Petra also did the audio recording and Michael served as cinematographer and sound designer — Karl Marx City features declassified surveillance tapes, broadcast intercepts, and propaganda films from the Ministry for State Security (the Stasi, or Staatssicherheit) along with striking new black-and-white footage of Epperlein’s quest as she poignantly retraces her father’s steps. She meets with such current and former employees of the Stasi Archive as Lothar Raschker, Dr. Juliane Schütterle, and Dagmar Hovestadt, Cold War and GDR expert Dr. Douglas Selvage, and Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial director Dr. Hubertus Knabe to examine the history of the Stasi and detail the effects it had on the psyche of the German people. 
