The Rally is part of annual Pride festivities in New York City
Multiple locations
June 19-26, free – $160
www.nycpride.org
Last year’s NYC Pride celebration was giddy with delight because of the Supreme Court’s decision to make same-sex marriage legal throughout America. Things are expected to take a more somber yet angry tone this year in reaction to the horrific mass shooting in Orlando. In a letter posted on its website, NYC Pride co-chairs Maryanne Roberto Fine and David Studinski explain, “Some folks have asked if any of our events will be canceled for safety reasons. All events will continue to go on as scheduled. The reason for this is simple: we must never let those who wish to silence us win.” As always, the ticketed events are selling out fast, so you better act quickly if you want to shake your groove thang at some pretty crazy parties.
Sunday, June 19
Pride Luminaries Brunch, with special guests Edie Windsor, Judith M. Kasen, Thomas Duane, Brad Hoylman, Daniel O’Donnell, Daniel Dromm, and Corey Johnson, David Burke Kitchen, 23 Grand St., $50, 12 noon – 4:00
Monday, June 20
OutCinema, screening of Strike a Pose (Reijer Zwaan & Ester Gould, 2016) and after-party, SVA Theatre, 333 West 23rd St., $25, 7:30
Tuesday, June 21
Family Movie Night: Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995), hosted by Miss Richfield 1981, Pier 63, Hudson River Park, free, 8:30
Friday, June 24
The Rally, with a live performance by Bob the Drag Queen, hosted by Todrick Hall, Pier 26, Hudson River Park, free (VIP passes $40-$100), 7:00 – 10:00
Fantasy, with DJs Grind and Scott Martin and special secret performances, the Diamond Horseshoe, 235 West 46th St., $25-$75, 10:00 pm – 5:00 am
Saturday, June 25
VIP Rooftop Party, with DJs Paulo, Eddie Martinez, and Peter Napoli, Hudson Terrace, 621 West 46th St., $45-$125, 2:00 – 10:00
Teaze, formerly known as Rapture on the River, exclusive party for women only, with DJs Samantha Ronson, Toni*K, and Tatiana and a live performance by Mya, Pier 26, Hudson River Park at Laight St., general admission $25, VIP $79, 3:00 – 10:00 pm
WE Party: Graffiti, with DJs Oscar Velazquez and Micky Friedmann, Hammerstein Ballroom, 311 West 34th St., $100-$140, 10:00 pm – 6:00 am
Sunday, June 26
PrideFest, street fair with music, food, merchandise, and live performances by Parson James and many others, hosted by Bianca Del Rio, Hudson St. between Abingdon Sq. & West 14th St., free, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
The March, with grand marshals Jazz Jennings, Subhi Nahas, and Cecilia Chung, Lavender Line from 36th St. & Fifth Ave. to Christopher & Greenwich Sts., free, 12 noon
Dance on the Pier, with Ben Baker, Honey Soundsystem, Hoxton Whores, Alain Jackinsky, and Fergie, Pier 26, Hudson River Park at Laight St., $25-$160, 2:00 – 10:00 pm
Femme Fatale, with DJs Mary Mac, Citizen Jane, and Tatiana, Hudson Terrace, 621 West 46th St., $25-$50, 4:00 – 10:00
First it took a long time for French-Vietnamese writer-director Tran Anh Hung (The Scent of Green Papaya) to convince Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami to let him adapt his 1987 novel, Norwegian Wood — Tran had been interested in turning the book into a movie ever since he first read it in 1994, but Murakami notoriously does not allow his novels to become films — and then, once the film was made and played at prestigious festivals in Venice, Toronto, and Dubai, still took more than a year to find a U.S. distributor. Norwegian Wood is a moving, faithful adaptation of Murakami’s elegiac novel about unrequited love, romantic communication, and death. After his best friend, Kizuki (Kengo Kora), commits suicide, Watanabe (Death Note’s Ken’ichi Matsuyama) and Kizuki’s girlfriend, Naoko (Babel’s Rinko Kikuchi), who previously were part of an inseparable trio with Kizuki, go their separate ways. After a short time, they meet up accidentally in Tokyo, where Watanabe is attending university and Naoko is trying to get over her loss. But an event on her twentieth birthday causes Naoko to take off again, this time seeking professional help at a sanitarium. Watanabe can’t stop thinking about Naoko, jeopardizing a possible relationship with the aggressive, sexually open Midori (Kiko Mizuhara), who already has a boyfriend but is extremely interested in Watanabe. Meanwhile, Watanabe disapproves of how his friend Nagasawa (Tetsuji Tamayama) continually cheats on his girlfriend, Hatsumi (Eriko Hatsune), who is devoted to him. With the student riots of the late 1960s swirling around them, Watanabe, Naoko, Midori, Nagasawa, Hatsumi, and Naoko’s roommate, Reiko (Reika Kirishima), take long, hard looks at what they want out of life and love, and they don’t always like what they find. Beautifully shot by Mark Lee Ping-Bing and featuring a subtle score by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood (There Will Be Blood), Norwegian Wood is a slow-paced, psychologically intense drama. Watanabe and Naoko are often shown walking amid vast natural landscapes of green forests and snow-covered mountains, but they are tied up tight within themselves, trapped in their own memories. The carefully composed sex scenes give depth and intelligence to the main characters without overplaying their emotions. The story itself might be relatively slight — it lacks the range of Murakami’s later books — but Tran has done a fine job bringing it to the screen. Norwegian Wood is screening at MoMA on June 17 and 29 at 7:30 in the series “Luminosity: The Art of Cinematographer Mark Lee Ping-Bing,” which runs June 16-30 and includes such other Lee-lensed treasures as Yang Chao’s Crosscurrent, Wang Tung’s Strawman, Tran’s The Vertical Ray of the Sun, and Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Flowers of Shanghai, Dust in the Wind, The Assassin, and The Puppetmaster. In addition, Lee will sit down with Department of Film associate curator La Frances Hui for 
“To me, this is a story about two parents who love their children, who love this particular child who is transgender, and who want the very best things in the world for her,” Michael Silverman of the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund says at the beginning of Growing Up Coy, a poignant and timely documentary about one family’s public fight to allow one of their children to legally establish her gender identity. When she was eighteen months old, Coy Mathis, who was born male but was unhappy that way, began displaying distinct female tendencies, exhibiting extreme displeasure when treated as a boy. She began kindergarten in the conservative town of Fountain, Colorado, as male but soon chose to transition, identifying as female. “She started asking us, when are we going to take her to the doctor so that she can be a girl, and when are we going to get the doctors to cut her penis off,” her mother, Kathryn Mathis, says in the film. “That was when it became a problem, and we reassured her that we would do everything we could so that she would be happiest as an adult.” Coy was initially given permission to use the girls bathroom, but in first grade, in late 2012, the school changed its policy and she was denied access. Kathryn, a photographer, and her husband, former Marine and full-time student Jeremy, decided to fight back, engaging in a legal battle that they eventually brought to the press when the school administration refused to acknowledge Coy’s gender choice. Soon the Mathises, who have five children under the age of eight — Dakota, who is is autistic, Auri, and triplets Coy, Max, and Lily, who has cerebral palsy and quadriplegia — are being both celebrated and excoriated on social media, in newspaper columns, and by talking heads on television, but they are determined to do whatever it takes, even if it includes making Coy the poster child in a heated debate over a controversial issue that most people don’t fully understand. “She doesn’t want to have to explain who she is and talk about how she’s different,” Kathryn says. “She just wants to be.”
Taiwanese New Wave master Hou Hisao-hsien might be the best filmmaker whose work you’ve never seen. For more than thirty years, he has been telling intimate, meditative stories about life, family, and relationships with a gentle, deeply intuitive style, infused with gorgeous visuals and subtly beautiful soundtracks. One of his most elegant works, Flowers of Shanghai, is set in brothels, known as flower houses, in 1884 in the British Concession, where men and women congregate for social interaction and develop long-term bonds and responsibilities to one another based on much more than just sex. The men play drinking games, smoke opium, and buy the women gifts. The story, told in a series of vignettes as Mark Lee Ping-Bing’s camera slowly moves through dark, lush, reddish gas-lit interiors, focuses on Master Wang (Tony Leung Chiu-wai), who has promised to be the sole patron of Crimson (Michiko Hada) but who has also been secretly seeing the younger Jasmin (Vicky Wei) and lavishing her with presents. The elder Master Hong (Luo Tsai-erh) and Auntie Huang (Rebecca Pan), the madam, discuss the situation, bringing up issues of responsibility and honesty, attempting to come to some kind of understanding in an exchange that shows respect for both the men and women who are a far cry from the Western conception of johns and prostitutes.
Janina Quint’s debut feature documentary, Germans & Jews, explores an intriguing premise: why so many Jews are moving to Germany, either returning to their homeland or living there for the first time. However, director and producer Quint, a non-Jewish German, and producer and executive producer Tal Recanati, an American-born Jew raised in the U.S. and Israel, reduce the film to random cocktail-party chatter; in fact, far too much of Germans & Jews takes place at a dinner party as second-generation Germans and Jews ramble on about guilt, responsibility, education, forgiveness, and how Germany has changed since WWII. The film would have benefited from more speakers like German-born American historian Dr. Fritz Stern and Thorsten Wagner, a Danish-German historian and grandson of a Nazi sympathizer, who are able to put the situation into fascinating perspective with a sincere intelligence. “I think it is true that most Germans now understand their past and the horror that they visited upon the world, but it’s a very hard thing,” Dr. Stern says. “And to find ways around to explain it is a natural human response.”