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

ICONS & INNOVATORS: NORMAN LEAR

Norman Lear, seen above in documentary NORMAN LEAR: ANOTHER VERSION OF YOU, will be at the Greene Space to discuss his life and career

Norman Lear, seen above in documentary NORMAN LEAR: ANOTHER VERSION OF YOU, will be at the Greene Space on December 17 to discuss his life and career

Who: Norman Lear, Susan Fales-Hill, Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady
What: Conversation with Norman Lear
When: Saturday, December 17, $25, 6:00
Where: The Greene Space at WNYC, 44 Charlton St. at Varick St.
Why: “In my ninety-plus years I’ve lived a multitude of lives,” Norman Lear writes in his new memoir, Even This I Get to Experience. “I had a front-row seat at the birth of television; wrote, produced, created, or developed more than a hundred shows; had nine on the air at the same time; finished one season with three of the top four and another with five of the top nine; hosted Saturday Night Live; wrote, directed, produced, executive-produced, or financed more than a dozen major films; before normalization, led an entourage of Hollywood writers and producers on a three-week tour of China; founded several cause-oriented national organizations, including the 300,000-member liberal advocacy group People for the American Way; was told by the New York Times that I changed the face of television; was labeled the ‘No. 1 enemy of the American family’ by Jerry Falwell; was warned by Pat Robertson that my arms were ‘too short to box with God’; made it onto Richard Nixon’s ‘Enemies List’; was presented with the National Medal of the Arts by President Clinton; purchased an original copy of the Declaration of Independence and toured it for ten years in all fifty states; was ranked by Entertainment Weekly fortieth among the ‘100 Greatest Entertainers of the Century’ (twenty-nine places ahead of the Sex Pistols); ran the Olympic torch in the 2002 Winter Olympics; blew a fortune in a series of bad investments in failing businesses; and reached a point where I was informed we might even have to sell our home.” That’s quite a legacy for the ninety-four-year-old New Haven native, built around such innovative television programs as All in the Family, Good Times, The Jeffersons, Sanford and Son, Maude, Fernwood 2Night, One Day at a Time, and Marry Hartman, Mary Hartman but one that goes much further than that. On December 17, Lear will sit down with author and television writer Susan Fales-Hill (Always Wear Joy, A Different World) for the next installment of her “Icons & Innovators” series at the Greene Space for a conversation exploring Lear’s extensive life and career. They will be joined by filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady (Jesus Camp, 12th & Delaware), directors of the recently released documentary Norman Lear: Another Version of You, which opened the 2016 Sundance Film Festival. It should be a fascinating, wide-ranging talk, especially given the political situation in the country today.

AUTHOR EVENT — KATHRYN CALLEY GALITZ, “THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART: MASTERPIECE PAINTINGS”

met-masterpieces

Barnes & Noble
150 East 86th St. at Lexington Ave.
Tuesday, December 13, free, 7:00
212-369-2180
www.rizzoliusa.com
stores.barnesandnoble.com

On December 13, the Met moves slightly northeast as museum curator and educator Kathryn Calley Galitz discusses her new book, The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Masterpiece Paintings (Skira Rizzoli, September 2016, $75), at the Barnes & Noble on Eighty-Sixth St. and Lexington Ave. The deluxe book examines five hundred classic works, divided into four chronological sections, “Before 1450,” “1450-1750,” “1750-1900,” and “After 1900,” from the ca. 3800-3700 BCE Central Iran “Storage Jar with Mountain Goats” to Kerry James Marshall’s 2014 “Untitled (Studio).” In addition to full-color photos of each piece, the book includes a bibliography and artist-based index. “Every painting has a story to tell. It should come as no surprise, then, that The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Masterpiece Paintings reveals so many intriguing stories,” Met director Thomas P. Campbell writes in the foreword, opposite Georges Braque’s “Still Life with Metronome (Still Life with Mandola and Metronome).” In her essay “Painting through the Ages,” Galitz explains, “As for the qualifier ‘masterpiece,’ it is indeed a loaded term whose inherent subjectivity goes without saying. We each have our own idea of what constitutes greatness, just as, over time, the canon of acknowledged masterpieces has been subject to the vagaries of taste — both scholarly and popular. . . . That a painting completed in 2015 is included in the same volume as works that have enjoyed masterpiece status for centuries may come as a surprise, but its presence forces us to question the imposition of an arbitrary time frame on the notion of a masterpiece.” Many of the reproductions are full pages, allowing readers to delve into the details of some of what makes these works so special. (Getting the prestigious front cover, by the way, is Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres’s “Joséphine-Éléonore-Marie-Pauline de Galard de Brassac de Béarn, Princesse de Broglie,” while Ogata Kōrin’s “Irises at Yatsuhashi [Eight Bridges]” occupies the back.) I started to list some of my personal favorites here, but that would have just gone on . . . and on . . . and on. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Masterpiece Paintings is a beautifully designed book that will make you gasp again and again, much like a trip through the Met’s spectacular galleries does.

ON THE MAP

Jersey’s Tal Brody gave up potential NBA career to help lift Israeli team to glory in 1977

ON THE MAP (Dani Menkin, 2016)
Cinema Village
22 East 12th St. between University Pl. & Fifth Ave.
Opens Friday, December 9
212-529-6799
www.cinemavillage.com
www.onthemapfilm.com

In the 1970s and 1980s, sports and politics began to mix in unsavory ways, from the horrific massacre of the Israeli Olympic team in Munich in 1972 to boycotts of the 1980 and 1984 Summer Games. But sports can also lift nations and their place in the world in remarkable ways. Three years before the “Miracle on Ice,” when the U.S. Olympic hockey team won the Gold Medal in Lake Placid, a previously unsuccessful Israeli basketball team was attempting to pull off a miracle of its own at the 1976-77 European Cup Championship. Writer-director Dani Menkin tells the improbable story of Maccabi Tel Aviv in On the Map, an exciting, superbly made documentary about a group of dedicated men whose on-court efforts were about more than going after the cup. “It’s not just basketball,” point guard Bob Griffin explains. Menkin mixes contemporary and archival footage for maximum impact; seeing the surviving members of the team donning their jerseys again and watching themselves in the biggest international game an Israeli team has ever participated in is tremendously moving. “It was something so unbelievable, so wishful, a great, golden place in sports history,” says sportscaster Alex Giladi, who took much of the amazing footage shown in the film. Fascinating insights emerge as Menkin speaks with Griffin, power forward Eric Minkin, forward Lou Silver, guard Miki Berkovich, center Aulcie Perry, superstar point guard and captain Tal Brody, and Jennifer Boatwright, the widow of small forward Jim Boatwright, in addition to former Notre Dame coach Digger Phelps, Hall of Famer Bill Walton, who played with Brody on the U.S. National Team, former NBA commissioner David Stern, NBA commentator Simmy Reguer, and broadcaster Gideon Hod. Among those putting Maccabi’s battles against Italy’s Mobilgirgi Varèse, Spain’s Real Madrid, and Russia’s CSKA Moscow Red Army into political perspective are former finance minister Yair Lapid, former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren, Maccabi president Shimon Mizrahi, and longtime Soviet prisoner and activist Natan Sharansky.

On the Map is a terrific documentary, particularly because Menkin (39 Pounds of Love, Dolphin Boy) was able to acquire so much outstanding black-and-white and color footage of the events discussed in the film, from Israeli defense minister Moshe Dayan greeting the team on court before games to Brody practicing by himself, from players sharing a prophetic cake to head coach Ralph Klein giving inspirational locker-room speeches. There is also archival footage of the 1972 Olympic massacre, the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin preparing to resign, Egyptian president Anwar Sadat meeting with U.S. president Jimmy Carter, and the 1976 Air France hijacking that led to Operation Entebbe. In the middle of it all is Brody, a kid from Jersey who helped change Israel and its position on the world stage. “There are some things that are more important than sport,” Stern says. “The excitement was just too much. I wanted more,” Perry asserts with a big smile. On the Map expertly delivers big-time on both accounts. The film opens December 9 at Cinema Village, with Menkin participating in Q&As following the 3:00, 5:00, and 7:00 screenings December 9-11.

SELECTED SHORTS: PAUL GIAMATTI CURATES STORIES FROM THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS

Paul Giamatti is hosting and curating an evening of fiction from the New York Review of Books at Symphony Space

Who: Paul Giamatti, Jane Kaczmarek, Billy Porter, Kathryn Erbe
What: Paul Giamatti Curates Stories from the New York Review of Books
Where: Symphony Space, Peter Jay Sharp Theatre, 2537 Broadway at 95th St., 212-864-5400
When: Wednesday, December 7, $30 ($80 premium), 7:30
Why: For more than fifty years, the New York Review of Books has been exploring American culture, society, and politics, publishing articles by prominent writers from around the world. On December 7, Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning Brooklynite Paul Giamatti will be at Symphony Space for the latest edition of “Selected Shorts,” in which actors and other artists read specially chosen short stories. Giamatti will be curating the evening, choosing fiction from the collection of the prestigious New York Review of Books, a roster that includes W. H. Auden, Anton Chekhov, Saki, Daphne du Maurier, Elizabeth Hardwick, and so many others. “I go to the New York Review of Books for everything weird, wild, classic, and obscure,” the star of Sideways, John Adams, and American Splendor explains. “They’ve got one of the greatest collections of authors, past and present, on the planet.” Taking the stage to perform the works will be seven-time Emmy nominee Jane Kaczmarek (Malcolm in the Middle, Apollo 11), Tony winner Billy Porter (Kinky Boots, Shuffle Along), and Tony nominee Kathryn Erbe (Law & Order: Criminal Intent, The Speed of Darkness). The program is being held in cooperation with the NYRB Classics, a series “dedicated to publishing an eclectic mix of fiction and nonfiction from different eras and times and of various sorts.”

OPEN SPECTRUM: WHAT WILL BE DIFFERENT?

what-will-be-different

Who: Rana Abdelhamid, Susana Cook, Margo Jefferson, Elizabeth A. Sackler, Adrienne Truscott, Lenora M. Lapidus, Catharine R. Stimpson
What: A Discussion on Women’s Lives After the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election
Where: New York Live Arts, 219 West 19th St., 212-924-0077
When: Monday, December 5, $5, 7:00
Why: Much has been made about statistics that show forty-two percent of women voted for Donald Trump for president, choosing an accused sexist, misogynist, and worse over Hillary Clinton, a woman who has fought for the rights of women and children for decades. On December 5 at New York Live Arts, a group of women will take part in “An Open Spectrum: Critical Dialogues Forum,” addressing the topic “What Will Be Different? A Discussion on Women’s Lives After the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election.” Curated by Brian Tate and Janet Wong, the event will feature WISE founding president Rana Abdelhamid, performance artist Susana Cook, Pulitzer Prize–winning critc Margo Jefferson, arts activist Elizabeth A. Sackler, PhD, and multidisciplinary choreographer, writer, and performer Adrienne Truscott; feminist scholar Catharine R. Stimpson will serve as moderator, and ACLU Women’s Rights Project director Lenora M. Lapidus will deliver special remarks. Held in conjunction with MAPP International, the talk will focus on how women’s lives and gender equality might be affected during Trump’s presidency and what can be done about it; a wine reception will follow.

NOAH BAUMBACH IN PERSON: THE SQUID AND THE WHALE

Walt (Jesse Eisenberg) and Lili (Anna Paquin) take measure of their lives in THE SQUID AND THE WHALE

THE SQUID AND THE WHALE (Noah Baumbach, 2005)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
Monday, December 5, $15, 7:00
212-660-0312
metrograph.com

After an eight-year break from directing, Noah Baumbach returned with the exceptional, unexpected drama The Squid and the Whale. You’ll think you’ll know just where this semiautobiographical 2005 Sundance Film Festival award winner (for writing and directing) and New York Film Festival hit is going — yet another painfully realistic look into the dissolution of a New York City family — but lo and behold, The Squid and the Whale will surprise you over and over again. And even when it does head toward the cliché route, it adds just the right twist to keep things fresh. Bernard (Jeff Daniels) and Joan Berkman (Laura Linney) are reaching the end of their marriage, and their two sons, Walt (Jesse Eisenberg) and Frank (Owen Kline), aren’t handling it very well; Walt is taking credit for having written Pink Floyd’s “Hey You,” and Frank has developed the curious habit of pleasuring himself and then – well, you’ll have to see it to believe it. And while Joan hits the dating scene and has begun writing, Bernard is becoming a woolly has-been author who just might be getting the hots for one of his sexy students (Anna Paquin). Set in 1986 Park Slope (there are scenes shot in Prospect Park, the Santa Fe Grill, and other familiar Brooklyn locations) and at the American Museum of Natural History, The Squid and the Whale features sharp dialogue, well-developed characters, and outstanding acting from a terrific ensemble that includes several rising stars. The soundtrack includes Lou Reed’s great “Street Hassle” and a score, composed by Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips (of Luna), that borrows liberally from Risky Business, of all things. The Squid and the Whale is screening December 5 at 7:00 at Metrograph, with Baumbach (Frances Ha, Greenberg) on hand for a Q&A. As a bonus, the first 150 ticket holders will receive a Criterion tote bag and a copy of the director-approved Criterion Blu-Ray 4K digital transfer of the film, a package that includes new interviews with Baumbach, Daniels, Eisenberg, Kline, Linney, Wareham, and Phillips, a behind-the-scenes documentary, audition footage, a booklet essay by Kent Jones, and Jonathan Lethem’s 2005 interview of Baumbach. (A 9:15, $15 screening has been added as well, without the Q&A or goodie bag.)

BROOKLYN MUSEUM FIRST SATURDAY: WORLD AIDS DAY

Marilyn Minter, “Blue Poles,” enamel on metal, 2007 (private collection, Switzerland)

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, December 3, free, 5:00 – 11:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The Brooklyn Museum honors World AIDS Day with its free First Saturday programming on December 3. There will be live performances by MC and producer SCIENZE, the Brooklyn Ballet (The Brooklyn Nutcracker), and DJ Sabine Blaizin; a curator tour of “Marilyn Minter: Pretty/Dirty,” led by assistant curator Carmen Hermo; a Community Resource Fair focusing on political advocacy; a hands-on sketching workshop with live clothed models; pop-art talks of “Infinite Blue” led by teen museum apprentices; a Day With(out) Art / Visual AIDS screening of the video compilation Compulsive Practice, followed by a discussion with Juanita Mohammed of the Women’s AIDS Video Enterprise, feminist writer and Brooklyn College film department chair Alexandra Juhasz, and HIV and gay civil rights activist Justin B. Terry-Smith; and a screening of David Kornfield’s The Red Umbrella Diaries, followed by a talkback with documentary subjects Dale Corvino and Essence. In addition, you can check out such exhibits as “Iggy Pop Life Class by Jeremy Deller,” “Beverly Buchanan — Ruins and Rituals,” “The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago,” “Life, Death, and Transformation in the Americas,” “Marilyn Minter: Pretty/Dirty,” and “Infinite Blue”; admission to “Who Shot Sports: A Photographic History, 1843 to the Present” requires a discounted admission fee of $10.