Kyabgön Phakchok Rinpoche will give a special talk with Erric Solomon on the Lower East Side on August 14
Jewel and Lotus Ethical Pop-up Shop & Gallery
Mark Miller Gallery
92 Orchard St. between Allen & Essex Sts.
Friday, August 14, $25, advance RSVP recommended, reception at 6:15, presentation at 7:15
212-253-9479
markmillergallery.com
www.phakchokrinpoche.org
“Normally, we think when we have the right stuff in the right circumstances, happiness happens,” notes Phakchok Rinpoche. “But we really don’t have to depend on the stuff and the circumstances; we need only to make a slight yet radical shift. And then we will be happy no matter what.” Sounds good, but what, or who, is a rinpoche? “Rinpoche” is an honorific, applied to Tibetan Buddhist teachers, much like “Rabbi” is applied to Jewish ones. Tibetan Buddhism is getting more attention lately, and the Dalai Lama receives plenty of publicity. Buddhist references abound in popular culture, too (The Matrix, anyone? Or Jon Stewart’s “moment of Zen”?) but what does its philosophy actually say? On Friday night on the Lower East Side, a popular young Tibetan teacher and a former Silicon Valley executive will try to bring the concepts down to earth for the contemporary mind. Thirtysomething Kyabgön Phakchok Rinpoche, a member of a historic family of Tibetan teachers, is known for his sharp wit, realism, sense of humor, and accessible speaking. He received traditional Tibetan Buddhist training in the Nyingma tradition, and he’s been teaching throughout the world for the last ten years (as well as occasionally hopping on a Citi Bike to get around when he’s in town). There’s more info at his website and in his online teaching program, but you can hear him in person at this informal Friday evening gathering at the second annual Jewel and Lotus Ethical Pop-up Shop & Gallery, where he and Erric Solomon, a Silicon Valley software success who retired early and then spent three years on retreat in Tibet (and now runs whatmeditationreallyis.com), will be talking about how to be happy. And on a warm summer night on the Lower East Side, that seems like a very good thing to learn. (The pop-up shop and gallery show continue through August 23, featuring Rutongo Embroideries from Rwanda, calligraphy by Marlow Brooks, and items from more than twenty ethically conscious brands. There will also be a fashion party on August 20.)
Kôbô Abe and director Hiroshi Teshigahara collaborated on five films together, including the marvelously existential Woman of the Dunes in 1964 and The Face of Another two years later. In the latter, Tatsuya Nakadai (The Human Condition, Kill!) stars as Okuyama, a man whose face has virtually disintegrated in a laboratory accident. He spends the first part of the film with his head wrapped in bandages, a la the Invisible Man, as he talks about identity, self-worth, and monsters with his wife (Machiko Kyo), who seems to be growing more and more disinterested in him. Then Okuyama visits a psychiatrist (Mikijirô Hira) who is able to create a new face for him, one that would allow him to go out in public and just become part of the madding crowd again. But his doctor begins to wonder, as does Okuyama, whether the mask has actually taken control of his life, making him as helpless as he was before. Abe’s remarkable novel is one long letter from Okuyama to his wife, filled with utterly brilliant, spectacularly detailed examinations of what defines a person and his or her value in society. Abe wrote the film’s screenplay, which tinkers with the time line and creates more situations in which Okuyama interacts with people; although that makes sense cinematically, much of Okuyama’s interior narrative, the building turmoil inside him, gets lost. Teshigahara once again uses black and white, incorporating odd cuts, zooms, and freeze frames, amid some truly groovy sets, particularly the doctor’s trippy office, and Tōru Takemitsu’s score is ominously groovy as well. As a counterpart to Okuyama, the film also follows a young woman (Miki Irie) with one side of her face severely scarred; she covers it with her hair and is not afraid to be seen in public, while Okuyama must hide behind a mask. But as Abe points out in both the book and the film, everyone hides behind a mask of one kind or another. The Face of Another is screening August 7 as part of the Rubin Museum Cabaret Cinema series “Movie Masks,” being held in conjunction with the excellent exhibition 
The film that gave Ozzy Osbourne’s band its name, Black Sabbath is just about everything you could want such a movie to be: cheap, exploitive, and featuring Boris Karloff, with nods to great French and Russian storytellers. (Um, sure . . . of course.) Founded in 1954 by James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff, American International Pictures was responsible for hundreds of low-budget independent films through 1980, specializing in horror, Westerns, blaxploitation, sci-fi, biker flicks, teen delinquency, women in prison, and even beach movies. Anthology Film Archives is paying tribute to the famed studio with a three-part series that begins July 31 by focusing on auteurs who either cut their teeth with AIP or were already well established. It’s quite a list; through September 3, Anthology will be screening works by Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Vincente Minnelli, Brian De Palma, and Roger Corman, who will make several appearances at the downtown movie house. Also on the roster is Italian scaremaster Mario Bava, whose Black Sabbath will be shown August 1, 4, and 8. Black Sabbath is, appropriately enough, an anthology of three short films hosted by Boris Karloff, a kind of melding of Karloff’s Thriller television series with Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone. The Italian-French coproduction was significantly changed by AIP, altering the order of the films and drastically modifying one of the plots. Black Sabbath opens with “A Drop of Water,” supposedly based on a short story by Anton Chekhov. Late one night, nurse Helen Chester (Jacqueline Pierreux) is summoned by an elderly caretaker (Milly Monti) to a stately home where a medium — sporting perhaps the most frightening face ever on a dead person, with dark, deep-set eyes and a viciously wicked smile that makes her look like an evil doll — has died during a séance. After stealing the medium’s ring off her finger, Helen is suddenly taunted by a buzzing fly and drops of water, evoking what was experienced by the killer in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” who was haunted by the unending sound of a beating heart. (Perhaps not coincidentally, AIP was famous for its Poe adaptations.) The conclusion is truly chilling, with a cool little coda.
