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

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH FILM FESTIVAL 2015: THE WANTED 18

THE WANTED 18 uses animation to tell story of Israeli cows sold to Palestinian town

THE WANTED 18 (Amer Shomali & Paul Cowan, 2014)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Saturday, June 13, $14, 6:30
Festival runs June 11-21 at multiple venues
212-875-5050
Film opens June 19 at Cinema Village
ff.hrw.org/new-york
www.wanted18.com

The never-ending battle between Israel and the Palestinians is reduced to a single incident attempting to be a microcosm of the conflict in the relatively silly and uneven documentary The Wanted 18. In 1988, shortly after the first Intifada began, an Israeli kibbutz sold eighteen cows to the Palestinian town of Beit Sahour. As the small, tight-knit community rallied around the cows, seeing them as a crucial part to their goal of freedom and independence, the Israelis grew suspicious of the Palestinians’ growing self-sufficiency and declared the cows “a threat to the national security of the state of Israel.” Codirectors Amer Shomali, whose family came from Beit Sahour, and Canadian Paul Cowan (Going the Distance, Westray) tell the story of the fight over the cows through contemporary interviews, drawings, reenactments, archival footage, and stop-motion animation in which four of the cows share their thoughts on the matter: Rivka (voiced by Holly Uloth “O’Brien”), Ruth (Heidi Foss), Lola (casting director Rosann Nerenberg), and Goldie (Alison Darcy). The heavily one-sided tale delves into such issues as taxation, bigotry, boycotts, curfews, and civil disobedience, as people from Beit Sahour give first-person accounts of what happened, along with Ehud Zrahiya, who at the time was advisor to the Israeli military governor on Arab affairs. “We were concerned that Beit Sahour may become a model for other places,” Zrahiya admits. “We were certainly concerned that this might infect other places and would spread to other localities throughout the West Bank.”

But while the animation style itself is fun and creative — the animation was inspired at least in part by a comic book that Shomali read as a child — the invented dialogue of the cows serves to trivialize the matter and turn it into a joke, which is part of the point but also results in making it look like the Palestinians are laughing, and crying, over spilt milk, as it were. Julia Bacha’s more direct 2009 film, Budrus, was much more effective in dealing with an absurd Israeli military order to chop down hundreds of acres of Palestinian olive trees in order to build a separation barrier in the West Bank. The Wanted 18 belittles the situation, especially when Beit Sahour wants to continue the fight despite the signing of the 1993 Oslo Accords by U.S. president Bill Clinton, Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. The Wanted 18 is screening June 13 at 6:30 at Lincoln Center as part of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival and will be followed by a panel discussion with Shomali, Just Vision creative director Bacha, producer Ina Fichman, and Human Rights Watch MENA division executive director Sarah Leah Whitson, moderated by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! The film opens theatrically June 19 at Cinema Village.

MUSEUM MILE FESTIVAL 2015

Uptown institutions stay open late and open their doors for free for Museum Mile Festival

Multiple locations on Fifth Ave. between 82nd & 105th Sts.
Tuesday, June 9, 6:00 – 9:00 pm
Admission: free
www.museummilefestival.org

There’s really only one main problem with the annual Museum Mile Festival: It’s too short. On Tuesday, June 9, from 6:00 to 9:00, nine uptown art and cultural institutions will open their doors for free and fill Fifth Ave. between 82nd & 105th Sts. with family-friendly activities for the thirty-sixth year. There will be live outdoor performances by Calpulli Mexican Dance Company, Paul Miller aka DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid, Evolfo, Kim David Smith, the Martha Graham Dance Company, Sammie & Trudie’s Imagination Playhouse, Silly Billy the Very Funny Clown, and Magic Brian, in addition to face painting, art workshops, chalk drawing, and more. The participating museums (with at least one of their current shows listed here) are El Museo del Barrio (“Under the Mexican Sky: Gabriel Figueroa — Art and Film”), the Museum of the City of New York (“Saving Place: 50 Years of New York City Landmarks”), the Jewish Museum (“Revolution of the Eye: Modern Art and the Birth of American Television,” “Laurie Simmons: How We See”), the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum (“How Posters Work,” “Making Design”), the National Academy (“The Annual 2015: The Depth of the Surface”), the Guggenheim (“Storylines: Contemporary Art at the Guggenheim”), the Neue Galerie (“Gustav Klimt and Adele Bloch-Bauer: The Woman in Gold”), and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (“Van Gogh: Irises and Roses,” “Robert Motherwell: Lyric Suite”), along with the Africa Center (which is building a new home). Don’t try to do too much, because it can get rather crowded; just pick one or two exhibitions in one or two museums and enjoy.

AILEY AT LINCOLN CENTER 2015

AAADT’s Antonio Douthit-Boyd and Linda Celeste Sims perform in Wayne McGregor’s CHROMA (photo by Paul Kolnik)

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater will be performing Wayne McGregor’s CHROMA for the last time at Lincoln Center, while also saying farewell to longtime dancer Antonio Douthit-Boyd (and his husband, fellow dancer Kirven Douthit-Boyd) (photo by Paul Kolnik)

David H. Koch Theater
20 Lincoln Center Plaza
June 10-21, $25 – $135
212-496-0600
www.alvinailey.org
www.davidhkochtheater.com

In June 2013, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater performed at Lincoln Center for the first time in thirteen years. The late-spring season is now becoming an annual event, as the troupe, which takes over City Center every December, will be back at the David Koch Theater for the third straight year. From June 10 to 21, AAADT will present eighteen works across fourteen programs, in addition to an opening-night gala. New pieces include the world premiere of Rennie Harris’s Exodus, the company premiere of artistic director Robert Battle’s No Longer Silent, and new productions of Talley Beatty’s Toccata and Judith Jamison’s “A Case of You” duet from Reminiscin’. Also on the schedule are Battle’s Strange Humors and whirlwind Takademe, Ronald K. Brown’s elegant Grace, Jacqulyn Buglisi’s female celebration Suspended Women, Ulysses Dove’s Bad Blood, Matthew Rushing’s overly earnest ODETTA, Hofesh Shechter’s exhilarating Uprising, and Christopher Wheeldon’s After the Rain Pas de Deux, along with the Ailey classics Night Creature and Revelations. The Saturday afternoon family matinees will be followed by Q&As with the dancers, and Ailey Extension instructor Eddie Stockton will lead a free house dance class on June 11 at 6:00 on Josie Robertson Plaza, with music by DJ C Boogie. The company will also be presenting Wayne McGregor’s physically exertive Chroma for the final time while also saying goodbye to two longtime members, married couple Antonio and Kirven Douthit-Boyd, who will stay with Ailey through a Paris engagement at the Théâtre du Châtelet in July, then become the artistic directors of the Center of Creative Arts in St. Louis.

EGG ROLLS, EGG CREAMS, AND EMPANADAS FESTIVAL 2015

Museum at Eldridge Street
12 Eldridge St. between Canal & Division Sts.
Sunday, June 7, free, 12 noon – 4:00 pm
212-219-0302
www.eldridgestreet.org

The fifteenth annual Egg Rolls & Egg Creams block party is adding quite a twist this year, bringing together not only the Jewish and Chinese communities of the Lower East Side but also the Puerto Rican community. Taking place June 7, the festival will include food and drink, live music (klezmer, salsa, bomba, and plena) and dance, history, culture, and lots more. Among the highlights of the festival are the kosher egg creams and egg rolls — and new this year, empanadas — as well as yarmulke and challah workshops, tea ceremonies, Yiddish, Mandarin, and Spanish lessons, Hebrew and Chinese calligraphy classes, mah jongg, cantorial songs, Peking Opera, Chinese and Puerto Rican mask making, face painting, and free tours of the wonderfully renovated Eldridge St. Synagogue, which boasts the East Window designed by Kiki Smith and Deborah Gans. In past years, the festival has included performances by the Chinatown Senior Center Folk Orchestra, Qi Shu Fang’s Peking Opera, the Shashmaqam Bukharan Jewish Cultural Group, Ray Muziker Klezmer Ensemble, and Cantor Eric Freeman, some of whom will be back again for this year’s multicultural celebration.

FIRST SATURDAY: INTERNATIONAL LGBTQ PRIDE

Zanele Muholi (South African, b. 1972). Faces and Phases installed at dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany, 2012. (Photo: © Anders Sune Berg)

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

The June installment of the Brooklyn Museum’s free First Saturday program celebrates LGBTQ Pride, with live performances by the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus, Aye Nako, DJ Lynnee Denise, DJ Ilsa, and Junglepussy with DJ Joey Labeija; an exhibition talk by Jess Wilcox on “Zanele Muholi: Isibonelo/Evidence” and ten-minute pop-up gallery talks about “Diverse Works: Director’s Choice, 1997–2015”; a flag-making workshop; a poetry performance by Dark Matter (Alok Vaid-Menon and Janani Balasubramanian); a literary workshop with bklyn boihood, focusing on its upcoming publication, Outside the XY; screenings of Seyi Adebanjo’s 2013 documentary, Trans Lives Matter! Justice for Islan Nettles, followed by a talkback with the director, and Dan Sickles & Antonio Santini’s 2014 film, Mala Mala, followed by a talkback with the directors and cast memebers Paxx and Joyce Puty; and a tribute to retiring museum director Arnold Lehman, with reflections and performances by DapperQ, Visual Aids, Harriett’s Apothecary, Haiti Cultural Exchange, CaribBEING, Afrika 21/Harriet’s Alter Ego, and Balmir Latin Dance. In addition, you can check out such exhibitions as “Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks,” “Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic,” “Kara Walker: ‘African Boy Attendant Curio (Bananas),’” and “Chitra Ganesh: Eyes of Time.”

SHANNON EBNER WITH DAVID REINFURT: A HUDSON YARD

Shannon Ebner and David Reinfurt’s “A Hudson Yard” public art collaboration will be celebrated on June 4 on the High Line (photo by Timothy Schenck)

Who: Shannon Ebner, David Reinfurt, Alex Waterman
What: Launch of art-project pamphlet with live music
Where: 14th Street Passage on the High Line at 14th Street
When: Thursday, June 4, free, 6:00 – 8:00
Why: From May 2014 to April 2015, New Jersey-born artist Shannon Ebner, who lives and works in Los Angeles and specializes in combining sculpture, photography, and language, added a four-by-six-foot wheat-pasted poster of different versions of the capital letter “A” in Chelsea and the Meatpacking District, giving odd, mysterious ratings to street corners, construction sites, and random walls, one at the beginning of each month, in collaboration with New York City-based graphic designer and writer David Reinfurt. Once put up, the posters remained for between one day and one week, depending on the weather or someone taking it down. On June 4 at 6:00, the work, known as “A Hudson Yard,” will be celebrated with the release of a pamphlet containing photographs and text by the artists, who will be on the High Line, at the 14th Street Passage, for its public unveiling, accompanied by “Clouds and Crowds for 12 Singers,” a new composition by Alex Waterman that will be performed at 6:30.

BROOKLYN SPACES BOOK LAUNCH

Who: Oriana Leckert, Hungry March Band, Morgan O’Kane, Batala NYC, Stefan Zeniuk, DJ Dirtyfinger, the Artist Formerly Known as Anya Sapozhnikova and others from House of YES, Dani Leigh & Demi Fyrce of Big Sky Works
What: Book party celebrating the launch of Brooklyn Spaces: 50 Hubs of Culture and Creativity (Monacelli Press, May 19, $29.95)
Where: Gowanus Ballroom, 55 Ninth St.
When: Saturday, May 30, free (suggested donation $10), 7:00 – late
Why: In her new book expanded from her popular website, Brooklyn Spaces, Oriana Leckert selects fifty of the most unusual and fascinating places in Brooklyn, documenting, as she writes in the introduction, “the Brooklyn I know, the Brooklyn that is mine, the Brooklyn that endlessly inspires me with its passion, innovation, and experimentation.” On May 30, Leckert will host a crazy-mad book party at the Gowanus Ballroom, one of the locations detailed in the book. “One of the most perfect representations of a Brooklyn underground arts space, the Gowanus Ballroom succeeds beautifully at artistic exhibition, cultural advancement, and creative commerce, all within a gorgeously strange historic building,” Leckert writes. (Other spots included in the book are Brooklyn Brainery, Flux Factory, the Invisible Dog, the Morbid Anatomy Museum, the Schoolhouse, Superhero Supply Co., and the Swamp.) The all-night book launch will feature art, music, dance, photography, and lots of unpredictable goings-on, selected from other cultural institutions and artist houses singled out in the book.