Documentary delves into the life and legacy of jazz aficionado and civil libertarian Nat Hentoff
THE PLEASURES OF BEING / OUT OF STEP: NOTES ON THE LIFE OF NAT HENTOFF (David L. Lewis, 2014)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Wednesday, June 25
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
www.pleasuresthemovie.com
The seven-decade legacy of one of America’s most important and influential journalists is celebrated in David L. Lewis’s illuminating documentary, The Pleasures of Being / Out of Step: Notes on the Life of Nat Hentoff. The too-short, sometimes scattershot eighty-five-minute film reveals Hentoff to be much more than just a columnist and a critic; Lewis, in his debut feature film, shows Hentoff, who turned eighty-nine earlier this month, to be a fascinating character who speaks his mind, a fierce defender of the First Amendment, a crucial participant in the spread of jazz in the mid-twentieth century (including as a record producer), and an outspoken libertarian who is adamantly antiabortion. “When he came to a room, nobody said, ‘Oh, here’s the critic,’” saxophonist and composer Phil Woods explains. “They said, ‘Here’s a friend of the music.’ It’s a whole different thing. He was part of the family.” Lewis speaks extensively with the Boston-born Hentoff, a bent-over man with thick, silvery-gray hair, beard, and mustache who types with two fingers in his extremely messy and crowded home office, as well as Hentoff’s wife, Margot; cultural critic Stanley Crouch; former Village Voice editor Karen Durbin; First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams; recently deceased poet and activist Amiri Baraka; jazz historians Dan Morgenstern and John Gennari; and even Voice editor Tony Ortega, who fired Hentoff in 2009. Hentoff discusses his childhood, his start in journalism, his personal and professional relationships with such figures as Bob Dylan, Charles Mingus, and Malcolm X, and his steadfast defense of civil liberties.
Nat Hentoff sits down with Edmond Hall at Boston’s Savoy Club in 1948 (photo by Bob Parent)
The film is narrated by Andre Braugher, who reads passages from some of Hentoff’s seminal liner notes, and also includes stunning, rarely seen archival footage of Lenny Bruce, Hentoff on William F. Buckley’s Firing Line and with Andrew Young on Look Up and Live, an all-star rendition led by Billie Holiday of “Fine and Mellow” from the television program The Sound of Jazz, and other great clips. “You never know what impact you have, if any,” Hentoff says late in the film. “So I write to write, and hope that some of it has some effect.” Hentoff needn’t worry; he’s had plenty of effect, and continues to do so now, in his weekly column for the independent news site WorldNetDaily. The Pleasures of Being / Out of Step opens June 25 at the IFC Center, with Lewis participating in Q&As following the 8:00 screening on June 25 and the 8:15 show on June 27.
Journalist and documentarian Frauke Finsterwalder’s twisted and dark feature-length fiction debut, Finsterworld, paints a rather unflattering portrait of a modern-day Germany still haunted by World War II. Written by Finsterwalder (Die große Pyramide, Weil der Mensch ein Mensch ist) and her author husband, Christian Kracht, the black comedy follows a dozen interrelated characters, each with his or her own personal hang-ups and fetishes, as they go through one very wild and crazy day. Claude Petersdorf (Michael Maertens) is a pedicurist who has an unnatural desire for the feet of Frau Sandberg (Margit Carstensen), a wheelchair-bound resident of an old age home. Her son, Georg Sandberg (Bernhard Schütz), and his wife, Inga (Corinna Harfouch), are a wealthy, self-obsessed couple who are embarrassed to be Germans. Their son, Maximilian (Jakub Gierszał), is a spoiled brat who, with his best friend, Jonas (Max Pellny), bullies quirky-nerdy fellow students Natalie (Carla Juri) and Dominik (Leonard Scheicher) during a class trip to a concentration camp led by teacher Lehrer Nickel (Christoph Bach), who thinks the kids can actually learn something from the sins of the past. Tom (Ronald Zehrfeld) is a cop who likes to put on a different kind of uniform at times — he’s a closet Furry. Tom’s girlfriend, Franziska Feldenhoven (Sandra Hüller), is a frustrated documentary filmmaker stuck with a boring subject. And Einsiedler (Johannes Krisch) is a hermit who captures and cares for a forest raven. Various odd actions intersect, bringing the diverse cast of characters together in strange, ultimately dangerous ways as they all keep picking at their scabs, both physical and psychological.