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

FIRST SATURDAY: RADICAL BLACK HISTORY

Stanley Nelson will be at the Brooklyn Museum to screen and discuss his 2015 documentary, THE BLACK PANTHERS: VANGUARD OF THE REVOLUTION, as part of free Black History Month program

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, February 6, free, 5:00 – 11:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The Brooklyn Museum turns its attention to Black History Month for its February edition of its free First Saturday program. There will be live performances by Dasan Ahanu and Tai Allen (“The Originals,” a live mix-tape honoring Gil Scott-Heron and Oscar Brown Jr.), the New Black Fest (“HANDS UP 7: Testaments,” monologues followed by a Q&A), L.A. Lytes (Latasha Alcindor, DJ Afro Panther, and NonVisuals), and Charles Perry; art chats with experts using the ASK app; interactive activities with the Museum of Impact, the Very Black Project, and #TeamMelanin; an art workshop inspired by Romare Bearden’s collage portraits; an art workshop about Black Lives Matter and gender justice led by activist Joshua Allen; book-club discussions of Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin’s Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party and Bob Avakian’s From Ike to Mao and Beyond: My Journey from Mainstream America to Revolutionary Communist, led by Andy Zee; and a screening of Stanley Nelson’s 2015 documentary, The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, followed by a conversation with Nelson and Elizabeth Sackler. In addition, the galleries are open late so you can check out such exhibitions as “Coney Island: Visions of an American Dreamland, 1861–2008,” “Stephen Powers: Coney Island Is Still Dreamland (to a Seagull),’” “KAWS: ALONG THE WAY,” “Forever Coney: Photographs from the Brooklyn Museum Collection,” and “Agitprop!”

THE COEN BROTHERS: A SERIOUS MAN

Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) is one serious man in underrated Coen brothers film

A SERIOUS MAN (Joel & Ethan Coen, 2009)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Monday, February 1, 3:00 & 7:30
Series runs January 28 – February 4
212-727-8110
filmforum.org
focusfeatures.com

The Coen brothers take their unique brand of dry, black comedy to a whole new level with A Serious Man. Poor Larry Gopnik (a remarkably even-keeled Michael Stuhlbarg) just keeps getting dumped on: His wife, Judith (Sari Lennick), wants to leave him for, of all people, touchy-feely Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed); his brother, Arthur (Richard Kind), keeps hogging the bathroom so he can drain his cyst; his son, Danny (Aaron Wolf), won’t stop complaining that F-Troop isn’t coming in clearly and is constantly on the run from the school drug dealer (Jon Kaminsky Jr.); his daughter, Sarah (Jessica McManus), wants to get a nose job; one of his students (David Kang) has bribed him for a passing grade; his possible tenure appears to be in jeopardy; and he gets no help at all from a series of funnier and funnier rabbis. But Larry keeps on keepin’ on in the Jewish suburbs of Minnesota in 1967, trying to make a go of it as his woes pile higher and higher. Joel and Ethan Coen have crafted one of their best tales yet, nailing the look and feel of the era, from Hebrew school to Bar Mitzvah practice, from office jobs to parking lots, from the Columbia Record Club to transistor radios, from television antennas to the naked neighbor next door. The Coens get so many things right, you won’t mind the handful of mistakes in the film, and because it’s the Coens, who’s to say at least some of those errors weren’t intentional? A Serious Man is a seriously great film, made by a pair of seriously great filmmakers. And while you don’t have to be Jewish and from Minnesota to fall in love with it, it sure can’t hurt.

The Coen brothers will be at Film Forum to kick off retrospective

A Serious Man is screening at Film Forum on February 1 as part of a week-long tribute to Joel and Ethan, consisting of most of their older movies and a pair of film-related concert documentaries, leading up to a sneak preview of their latest, Hail, Caesar! For more than thirty years, the Coens have been capturing the American zeitgeist like no one else, penetrating deep into the psyche of the country, doing so in a wide variety of genres. The series skips over Intolerable Cruelty, The Ladykillers, and Burn After Reading, but the rest of their oeuvre is present and accounted for, from the creepy, atmospheric Blood Simple and Barton Fink to the mad humor of The Hudsucker Proxy and Raising Arizona, from the brutal Westerns No Country for Old Men and True Grit to the gangster picture Miller’s Crossing, in addition to their cult masterpiece, The Big Lebowski. Things get going on January 28 with the beautifully elegant Fargo, followed by a Q&A with Joel and Ethan. D. A. Pennebaker, Chris Hegedus, and Nick Doob will be at Film Forum on February 3 for a showing of their concert film Down from the Mountain, featuring the music from O Brother, Where Art Thou?

ARTISTS AT THE CROSSROADS

R. Luke DuBois and Okwui Okpokwasili will discuss their residencies at the first Artists at the Crossroads discussion

Who: R. Luke DuBois and Okwui Okpokwasili
What: Artists at the Crossroads
Where: TheStage at the TimesCenter, 242 West 41st St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
When: Tuesday, February 1, free, 6:00
Why: New York City–based composer and interactive performance and installation artist R. Luke DuBois and Brooklyn-based writer, dancer, and Bessie-winning choreographer Okwui Okpokwasili will team up for the inaugural Residency Artist Talk, “Artists at the Crossroads,” being held February 1 at 6:00 at the TimesCenter. DuBois and Okpokwasili will discuss their three-month residencies, with a focus on creating public art for Times Square Arts, part of the Times Square Alliance. The free event will be moderated by Deep Lab member Kate Crawford; the next two residents, Brooklyn-based media artist and designer Joshue Ott and New Jersey–born composer Kenneth Kirschner, will be introduced at the end of the talk. The Residency at the Crossroads program “invites artists to experiment and engage with Times Square’s unique urban identity, history, and users. . . . They will be encouraged to invite multidisciplinary collaborators of their choice to create interventions, convenings, and experiments in Times Square’s public spaces, in open studios, and online.”

NEW YORK CHILIFEST

The fifth annual New York City ChiliFest returns to Chelsea Market on January 31

Chelsea Market
75 Ninth Ave. between 15th & 16 Sts.
Sunday, January 31, $50-$70, doors open at 6:30
chelseamarket.com
www.nychilifest2016.com

You can get ready for the February 7 Super Bowl by getting down and dirty with some badass chili at the annual NYC ChiliFest, taking place January 31 at Chelsea Market. The fifth annual competitive celebration of hot meat will feature dishes from Bark Hot Dogs, Untitled, La Palapa, Resto, Toro, El Vez, Black Tap Craft Burgers & Beer, Talde, Untamed Sandwiches, Fleisher’s Craft Butchery, Hill Country Barbecue, Fletcher’s Barbecue Brooklyn, Hecho en Dumbo, Littleneck, Glady’s, Mŏkbar, El Original, Los Tacos No.1, Speedy Romeo, Bar Truman, the Brooklyn Star, and Chelsea Creamline, battling it out for the Golden Chili Mug. The food, which uses meat from responsibly raised animals provided by Dickson’s Farmstand Meat, can be washed down with four specially selected Samuel Adams beers or Mister Katz’s Rock & Rye cocktails from New York Distilling Company. Judging it all will be such chefs, entrepreneurs, and food writers as Adam Sachs, Martin Tessarzik, Brady Lowe, Bill Telepan, Lior Lev Sercarz, Alex Raij, and Catherine Lederer. In addition, there will be live music by Brooklyn band the Defibulators. The basic ticket price is $50, which comes with unlimited chili; for $60, you get unlimited booze as well, and for $70, you get the chili, the booze, and a copy of the Chelsea Market Cookbook. Ticket proceeds benefit Wellness in the Schools, whose mission is to “inspire healthy eating, environmental awareness, and fitness as a way of life for kids in public schools.”

TRISHA BROWN DANCE COMPANY: PROSCENIUM WORKS

PRESENT TENSE is one of three Trisha Brown pieces that will be presented at BAM this week (photo by Dirk Bleicker)

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
January 28-30, $25-$65, 7:30
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.trishabrowncompany.org

In January 2013, Trisha Brown Dance Company kicked off its “Proscenium Works” tour at BAM, presenting Newark (Niweweorce), Les Yeux et l’âme, I’m going to toss my arms — if you catch them they’re yours, Homemade, and Set and Reset in the Howard Gilman Opera House. The New York–based troupe, which was founded in 1970, took the tour around the world, with stops in Canada, Germany, Slovenia, France, and other countries, and is now returning to BAM for the next-to-last “Proscenium Works” show, being held January 28-30 at BAM. (The grand finale takes place February 4-6 at the University of Washington in Seattle.) The program begins with the seminal 1983 BAM commission Set and Reset, which we described three years ago as “a stirring collaboration” bringing together Laurie Anderson’s hypnotic, repetitive “Long Time, No See,” Robert Rauschenberg’s three-part geometric construction on which newsreel-style black-and-white footage is projected, and lighting by six-time Tony nominee Beverly Emmons. That is followed by Present Tense, Brown’s 2003 work that features aerial choreography set to a score by John Cage and colorful costumes and stage design by artist Elizabeth Murray. (The costumes have been reimagined by Elizabeth Cannon.) The evening concludes with Newark (Niweweorce), in which different-colored wall screens by artist Donald Judd occasionally descend from above and divide the stage into claustrophobic spaces; the piece is set to Judd’s minimalist score that combines silence with bolts of loud noises that resemble the sounds of an MRI, which didn’t exist when Newark (Niweweorce) debuted in 1987. The company includes Cecily Campbell, Marc Crousillat, Olsi Gjeci, Leah Ives, Tara Lorenzen, Carolyn Lucas, Diane Madden, Jamie Scott, and Stuart Shugg. And as a bonus, “Heart and Mind,” an exhibition of Murray’s paintings and drawings, is on view through February 15 in the Diker Gallery Café.

ECSTATIC MUSIC FESTIVAL 2016

John Colpitts and Man Forever will kick off the sixth annual Ecstatic Music Festival on January 29 with Tigue (photo by Lisa Corson)

Who: Man Forever, Tigue, Phil Kline, Judd Greenstein
What: Ecstatic Music Festival kickoff
Where: The Jerome L. Greene Performance Space at WNYC and WQXR, 44 Charlton St. at Varick St.
When: Friday, January 29, $20, 7:30
Why: The sixth annual Ecstatic Music Festival, sponsored by the Kaufman Music Center, gets under way January 29 at the Greene Space with the pairing of Man Forever (Ryonen, Pansophical Cataract), led by John Colpitts (aka Kid Millions), and Brooklyn-based trio Tigue (Matt Evans, Amy Garapic, and Carson Moody, joined by Tristan Kasten-Krause and Ben Seretan) teaming up for a new look at Louis Thomas Hardin’s 1971 album, Moondog II. The evening will be hosted by Phil Kline (Unsilent Night), with discussions and Q&As with the artists and curator Judd Greenstein. “The Ecstatic Music Festival brings together artists who don’t typically work together and gives them the opportunity to create something completely new on the stage of an intimate chamber music hall,” Kaufman Music Center executive director Lydia Kontos explained in a statement. “The result is invigorating and often genuinely surprising concerts audiences would not be able to experience anywhere else.” Greenstein added, “This year’s festival is as varied as any we’ve ever presented, with collaborators coming from areas of the musical spectrum that are new to the Ecstatic Music Festival.” The festival continues through March 19 with more than four dozen sonic artists playing Merkin Concert Hall; a festival pass is $150, while other packages are available at various discount levels. Among the shows to look out for are Rachel Grimes and Longleash on February 10, Yo La Tengo and Alvin Lucier on February 17, Lee Ranaldo and Dither on March 2, and William Tyler, Quindar, and Nick Hallett on March 17.

NY COMICS & PICTURE-STORY SYMPOSIUM: KIM DEITCH

Legendary cartoonist Kim Deitch will discuss his current work-in-progress at NYC symposium

Who: Kim Deitch
What: NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium
Where: The New School, the Klein Conference Room (A510), 66 West Twelfth St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
When: Tuesday, January 26, free, 7:00
Why: L.A.-born, New York-based cartoonist Kim Deitch, the Eisner Award-winning author and illustrator of such works as The Boulevard of Broken Dreams, A Shroud for Waldo, Shadowland, and The Amazing, Enlightening, and Absolutely True Adventures of Katherine Whaley, is the special guest at the 141st meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium, being held at the New School on January 26 at 7:00. The underground legend, aka Fowlton Means, will present an illustrated lecture on his latest project, a semiautobiographical tale of reincarnation in which virtually nothing is true. The 139th meeting, held December 15, featured a panel on Hugo Pratt, while the 140th meeting, held December 21, consisted of an illustrated talk by Peter Blegvad. The spring season continues through May 10 with such other cartoonists as Monroe Price, Archie Rand, Paula McDowell, Sara Lipton, Sam Gross, and Kristen McKinney. As always, admission is free and open to the public.