Panelists will be at the Museum of the City of New York to discuss legacy of Yiddish theater in America
Who: Tovah Feldshuh, Adam Kantor, Michelle Slonim, Jackie Hoffman, David Chack
What: Panel discussion
Where: Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Avenue at 103rd St., 212-534-1672
When: Monday, July 18, $25, 6:30
Why: Yiddish theater is on the rise again, with the successful revival of The Golden Bride by the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, which is back at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, and the Drama Desk-nominated Death of a Salesman by the New Yiddish Rep. On July 18, Adam Kantor (Motel in the current revival of Fiddler on the Roof), stand-up comedian Michelle Slonim (Date Me!), Tovah Feldshuh (Golda’s Balcony), Jackie Hoffman (Once upon a Mattress), and moderator David Chack (past president of the Association for Jewish Theatre) will gather at the Museum of the City of New York to discuss “Yiddish Theater’s Legacy in American Performance,” being held in conjunction with the exhibition “New York’s Yiddish Theater: From the Bowery to Broadway,” which continues through August 14.
The 2016 Human Rights Watch Film Festival kicked off last month with Nanfu Wang’s alarming debut feature documentary, Hooligan Sparrow, for which she won the annual Nestor Almendros Award for courage in filmmaking, and now it’s returning to New York City for a pair of one-week runs, first in Brooklyn, then in Manhattan. The film is a brave, disquieting look at Chinese activist Ye Haiyan, better known as Hooligan Sparrow, an advocate for sex workers’ rights, as she leads protests against a school principal who sexually abused six elementary school girls. “If you film us, we’ll smash your camera,” a man tells Wang at the beginning. Later she’s told she will be beaten if she doesn’t hand over her equipment. But she’s determined to keep telling the story any way she can. Sparrow, who gained notoriety for a project in which she offered free sex to migrant workers, is joined by Shan Lihua, Tang Jitian, Jia Lingmin, Wang Yu, and lawyer Wang Jianfen as she battles law enforcement, the government, and brothel owners, her safety and freedom in constant jeopardy. “If I believe something is right and I’m obliged to do it, they can’t stop me by arresting me or even killing me,” she defiantly says. She and her daughter, Lan Yaxin, keep getting evicted from their homes and banned from numerous provinces, but that doesn’t prevent her from protesting with such signs as “All China’s Women’s Federation Is a Farce. China’s Women’s Rights Are Dead” and “You Can Kill Me, But You Can’t Kill the Truth.” Born and raised in a remote Chinese farming village and currently based in New York City, Wang, who directed, produced, photographed, and edited Hooligan Sparrow, never backs down even as she meets with Chinese officials and is followed everywhere she goes, forced to become suspicious of nearly everyone she encounters. “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you,” Joseph Heller wrote in Catch-22. Wang clearly has reason to be paranoid.
Unpredictable Japanese writer-director Sion Sono defies expectations once again with Love & Peace, a wacky tokusatsu tale that has been gestating for more than two decades but has finally hit the big screen, with all its crazy madness. One of six films Sono (
“I like mixing fiction and reality,” writer, director, and star Arnaud Viard says in his second film, Paris, Love, Cut, the French title of which is Arnaud fait son 2ème film, or “Arnaud Makes His Second Film.” As the movie opens, Viard, sitting on the toilet, says directly into the camera, “Sometimes, in life, nothing works. You struggle . . . Nothing. Then, one day, it all flows. Just like that. Fluid. Magnificent. As if you were constipated, then suddenly . . . not at all. Last time things flowed was when I made my first film.” A longtime television actor who made his biggest impact as Jean-François in the French series Que du bonheur, Viard released his debut feature, Clara et moi, in 2004, then experienced difficulties raising money for his follow-up. In Paris, Love, Cut, Viard plays a version of himself, a longtime television actor who made his biggest impact as Jean-François in the French series Happy Times and who released his debut feature in 2004, then experienced difficulties raising money for his follow-up. Viard is trying to have a baby with his girlfriend, Chloé (Irène Jacob), but she is having trouble getting pregnant, echoing his inability to give birth to his second film, which he decides will be about a man unable to get an erection. He takes a job teaching an acting class, where he falls for twenty-one-year-old student Gabrielle (Louise Coldefy), whose goal is to become a famous actress. As he meets with his producer (Christophe Rossignon), other directors, his ailing mother (Nadine Alari), a sex coach (Chris Esquerre), a psychoanalyst (Pierre Aussedat), a tax agent (Marie-Christine Laurent), his sisters, and various dates, he has a generally positive take on life; he is soft-spoken and gentle, with a fun sense of humor whether being audited or going to a party thrown by his students, one of whom (Hamza Meziani) gets to the heart of the matter when he delivers a monologue from Alfred de Musset’s Don’t Fool with Love: “All men are liars, false, fickle, hypocritical, cowardly, contemptible, sensual. All women are faithless, deceitful, vain, curious, and depraved. The world is a bottomless sewer where shapeless beasts writhe on mountains of filth. But one thing is holy and sublime, the union of two beings, so imperfect and horrible.”