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

THE CONTENDERS 2013: GRAVITY

Space debris from a Russian satellite threatens an American shuttle crew in GRAVITY

GRAVITY (Alfonso Cuarón, 2013)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Tuesday, November 19, 7:00
Series continues through January 16
Tickets: $12, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk beginning at 9:30 am
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
www.gravitymovie.warnerbros.com

Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity is a breathtaking thriller that instantly enters the pantheon of such classic space fare as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien, and The Right Stuff. While medical engineer Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is fixing a computer glitch outside the shuttle Explorer, veteran astronaut and wisecracker Matt Kowalski (George Clooney), on his final mission before retirement, is playing around with a new jetpack and Shariff (voiced by Paul Sharma) is having fun going on a brief spacewalk. But disaster strikes when debris from a destroyed Russian satellite suddenly comes their way, killing Shariff and the rest of the crew and crippling the shuttle, leaving Stone and Kowalski on their own in deep space, their communication with Mission Control in Houston (voiced by Ed Harris, in a nod to his participation in Apollo 13 and The Right Stuff) gone as well. Kowalski is cool and calm, listening to country music as he tries to come up with a plan that will get them to the International Space Station, but the inexperienced Stone is running out of oxygen fast as she tumbles through the emptiness, Earth in the background, so close yet so far. Written by Cuarón (Y Tu Mamá También, Children of Men) with his son Jonás, Gravity is spectacularly photographed by Emmanuel Lubezki, the master behind numerous works by Cuarón and Terrence Malick (The New World, The Tree of Life), among others. Lubezki and his team even created a new LED light box to increase the film’s realism, which is nothing less than awe-inspiring and mind-bending as it takes place in real time. Despite the vastness of space, Gravity often feels claustrophobic, particularly as Stone struggles to get a breath or attempts to operate a foreign module.

Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) and Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) try to remain together in Alfonso Cuarón’s masterful space epic

Close-ups of Stone and Kowalski reveal reflections of the shuttle and Earth, emphasizing the astronauts’ dire situation as they engage in a very different kind of pas de deux. Gravity also succeeds where directors like James Cameron often fail, as a solid, relatively unsentimental and unpredictable script accompanies the remarkable visuals, which evoke both harrowing underwater adventures as well as dangerous mountain-climbing journeys. (Cuarón also manages to bring it all in in a terrifically paced ninety minutes.) Cuarón and Lubezki favor long takes, including an opening shot lasting more than thirteen minutes, immersing the viewer in the film, further enhanced by being projected in IMAX 3D, which is not used as merely a gimmick here. Stephen Price’s score increases the tension as well until getting melodramatic near the end. Clooney is ever dapper and charming and Bullock is appropriately nervous and fearful in their first screen pairing, even though they only make contact with each other through bulky spacesuits, their connection primarily via speaking. Cuarón, who also edited Gravity with Mark Sanger, has made an endlessly exciting film for the ages, a technological marvel that should have a tremendous impact on the future of the industry. Gravity is screening November 19 at 7:00 as part of MoMA’s annual series “The Contenders” and will be followed by a discussion with both Alfonso and Jonás Cuarón. “The Contenders,” which consists of exemplary films that MoMA believes will stand the test of time, continues this month with Nicole Holofcener’s Enough Said, John Wells’s August: Osage County, Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners, and Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight.

THE LINE KING’S LIBRARY: AL HIRSCHFELD AT THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

Al Hirschfeld’s long relationship with the New York Public Library is explored in exhibit at Lincoln Center

Al Hirschfeld’s long relationship with the New York Public Library and the arts is celebrated in exhibit at Lincoln Center

New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
40 Lincoln Center Plaza
Exhibition continues through January 4
Film screening: Bruno Walter Auditorium, 111 Amsterdam Ave., Monday, November 18, free, 6:00
212-642-0142
www.nypl.org/lpa

Twelve years ago, New York celebrated the life and eighty-plus-year career of legendary artist Al Hirschfeld with a major retrospective at the Museum of the City of New York and an exhibit of his celebrity caricatures at the New York Public Library’s main branch; in addition, Abrams released two books of his work, one focusing on New York, the other on Hollywood, and Hirschfeld made appearances to promote the publications. Nearly eleven years after his passing in January 2003 at the age of ninety-nine, the New York Public Library is honoring Hirschfeld again with a lovely exhibit at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, “The Line King’s Library: Al Hirschfeld at the New York Public Library.” Visitors can first stop by a re-creation of Hirschfeld’s work area, complete with his drawing table and barber chair, which is on permanent view at the library entrance. The exhibition is straight ahead, consisting of more than one hundred color and black-and-white drawings and lithographs, posters, books, letters, video, newspaper and magazine clippings, and various other ephemera, divided by the discipline of Hirschfeld’s subjects: theater, music, dance, and film, in addition to a section on those artists who influenced the man known as the Line King.

Oscar-winning documentary on Al Hirschfeld screens for free at NYPL on November 18

“My contribution is to take the character — created by the playwright and acted out by the actor — and reinvent it for the theater,” Hirschfeld once explained, and the evidence is on the walls, including works depicting Jack Lemmon in Tribute, Lee J. Cobb in Death of a Salesman, Christopher Plummer in Macbeth, Jessica Tandy and Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire, Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews in My Fair Lady, Alan Cumming in Cabaret, and Jackie Mason in The World According to Me, among so many more. There are also caricatures of Marcel Marceau, S. J. Perelman, George Bernard Shaw, Leonard Bernstein, Vladimir Horowitz, Dizzy Gillespie, Katharine Hepburn, and a dazzling, rarely shown 1969 print of Martha Graham. Another highlight is the original drawing for “Broadway First Nighters,” along with a key identifying the dozens of celebrities gathered in a packed room, and paraphernalia from Hirschfeld’s musical comedy Sweet Bye and Bye, a collaboration with Perelman, Vernon Duke, and Ogden Nash. And for those fans who have spent years trying to find all the inclusions of “Nina” in Hirschfeld’s drawings, “Nina’s Revenge” features his daughter holding a brush and smiling, the names “Al” and “Dolly” (for Dolly Haas, her mother and Hirschfeld’s second wife) in her long hair. In conjunction with the exhibition, there will be a free screening of the Oscar-winning 1996 documentary The Line King: The Al Hirschfeld Story, introduced by the director, Susan W. Dryfoos, on November 18 at 6:00 in the Bruno Walter Auditorium at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

DOC NYC: THE PUNK SINGER

Riot grrrl Kathleen Hanna opens up about her life in intimate documentary (photo courtesy of Pat Smear)

SONIC CINEMA — THE PUNK SINGER: A FILM ABOUT KATHLEEN HANNA (Sini Anderson, 2013)
SVA Theatre
333 West 23rd St. between Eight & Ninth Aves.
Saturday, November 16, 7:15
Festival runs November 14-23
212-924-7771
www.thepunksinger.com
www.docnyc.net

A cofounder of the riot grrrl movement, Kathleen Hanna was an outspoken feminist as she toured the world with Bikini Kill and then Le Tigre starting in 1991. But it all came to a mysterious halt in 2005 when the Portland, Oregon, native suddenly went on what became a long hiatus for undisclosed health reasons. Director Sini Anderson gets to the heart of the matter in the intimate, revealing documentary The Punk Singer: A Film About Kathleen Hanna. Incorporating rousing archival footage and photographs along with new interviews, Anderson, in her feature debut, gets Hanna to open up about her life and career, discussing such influences as Kathy Acker and Gloria Steinem as well as the serious health problem that kept her out of the public eye for five years. Hanna also talks about her childhood, a sexual assault that happened to her best friend, her photography and fashion work in college, her zine writing, and the formation of her bands, along the way always pushing her message. “We didn’t give a shit,” she says about the beginnings of Bikini Kill. “We weren’t making money; we knew we were never going to make money. And it was really important that we made our music. We were on a mission. We were going to do what we did whether we got attention or not.” Anderson also speaks with such former and current Hanna bandmates as Johanna Fateman, JD Samson, Kathi Wilcox, and Tobi Vail, musical icons Joan Jett and Kim Gordon, Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein, and Hanna’s husband, Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz; many are interviewed in the back of a snazzy van during a Hanna tribute concert at the Knitting Factory in 2010.

Kathleen Hanna gets her message out with Bikini Kill, Le Tigre, and the Julie Ruin

Anderson weaves in plenty of music clips that display Hanna’s powerful stage presence, including snippets of such songs as “Rebel Girl,” “White Boy,” “Distinct Complicity,” “Hot Topic,” “Deceptacon,” and “Aerobicide” from Bikini Kill, Le Tigre, and the Julie Ruin. The Punk Singer is a gripping portrait of a fearless, talented woman who continues to do whatever it takes to get her message out. “What is the story of my life?” Hanna says near the end. “I have no fucking idea.” But now, thanks to Anderson, we do, even if that story is still being written. The Punk Singer is having its New York City premiere November 15 at 9:45 at the SVA Theatre as part of the “Sonic Cinema” section of this year’s DOC NYC festival, with Hanna on hand to talk about the film. DOC NYC, which seeks to “curate [by] guiding audiences toward inspiring work,” runs November 14-21 at the IFC Center and the SVA Theatre; among the other “Sonic Cinema” selections are Rodrigo H. Vila’s Mercedes Sosa: Voice of Latin America, Trevor Laurence and Simeon Hutner’s Harlem Street Singer, Joe Angio’s Revenge of the Mekons, and Jeremy Xido’s Death Metal Angola.

RICHIE’S FANTASTIC FIVE — KUROSAWA, MIZOGUCHI, OZU, YANAGIMACHI & KORE-EDA: THE LIFE OF OHARU

Oharu (Kinuyo Tanaka) lives a life filled with misery after misery in Mizoguchi melodrama

THE LIFE OF OHARU (SAIKAKU ICHIDAI ONNA) (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1952)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Saturday, November 16, $12, 6:00
Series runs monthly through February
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

We used to think that Aki Kaurismäki’s The Match Factory Girl was the saddest film ever made about a young woman who just can’t catch a break, as misery after misery keeps piling up on her ever-more-pathetic existence. But the Finnish black comedy has nothing on Kenji Mizoguchi’s The Life of Oharu, a searing, brutal example of the Buddhist observation of impermanence and the role of women in Japanese society. The film, based on a seventeenth-century novel by Ihara Saikaku, is told in flashback, with Oharu (Kinuyo Tanaka) recounting what led her to become a fifty-year-old prostitute nobody wants. It all starts to go downhill after she falls in love with Katsunosuke (Toshirô Mifune), a lowly page beneath her family’s station. The affair brings shame to her mother (Tsukie Matsuura) and father (Ichiro Sugai), as well as exile. The family is redeemed when Oharu is chosen to be the concubine of Lord Matsudaira (Toshiaki Konoe) in order to give birth to his heir, but Lady Matsudaira (Hisako Yamane) wants her gone once the baby is born, and so she is sent home again, without the money her father was sure would come to them. Over the next several years, Oharu becomes involved in a series of personal and financial relationships, each one beginning with at least some hope and promise for a better future but always ending in tragedy. Nevertheless, she keeps on going, despite setback after setback, bearing terrible burdens while never giving up. Mizoguchi (Sansho the Bailiff, The 47 Ronin, Street of Shame) bathes much of the film in darkness and shadow, casting an eerie glow over the unrelentingly melodramatic narrative. Tanaka, who appeared in fifteen of Mizoguchi’s films and also became the second Japanese woman director (Love Letter, Love Under the Crucifix), gives a subtly compelling performance as Oharu, one of the most tragic figures in the history of cinema.

Donald Richie called THE LIFE OF OHARU “one of Mizoguchi’s most elegantly beautiful films”

Winner of the International Prize at the 1952 Venice International Film Festival, The Life of Oharu is screening on November 16 at 6:00 at Japan Society, introduced by filmmaker and scholar Joel Neville Anderson, as part of the monthly tribute series “Richie’s Fantastic Five: Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, Ozu, Yanagimachi & Kore-eda,” which honors Ohio-born writer, critic, scholar, curator, and filmmaker Donald Richie, who died in February at the age of eighty-eight. Richie was a tireless champion of Japanese culture and, particularly, cinema, and the series features six works by five of his favorite directors. Here’s what Richie said about The Life of Oharu: “Based on a light and picaresque novel by the seventeenth-century writer Saikaku, the film takes a more serious view of the decline and fall of the heroine — from court lady to common whore. Yoshikata Yoda’s script, Tanaka’s performance as Oharu, Hiroshi Mizutani’s art direction, and Ichiro Saito’s score — using Japanese instruments — help make this one of Mizoguchi’s most elegantly beautiful films.” The series continues in December with Yasujiro Ozu’s Late Autumn (screening on Ozu’s birthday, which will also mark the fiftieth anniversary of his death), in January with Mitsuo Yanagimachi’s Himatsuri, and in February with Hirokazu Kore-eda’s After Life, appropriately on the one-year anniversary of Richie’s passing.

WELCOME TO COMPUTER AGE: DEMON SEED

Julie Christie is trapped in a suburban nightmare in Donald Cammell’s DEMON SEED

COMPUTER AGE — EARLY COMPUTER MOVIES, 1952-1987: DEMON SEED (Donald Cammell, 1977)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Friday, November 15, $12, 7:00
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us

Based on the novel by Dean R. Koontz, Donald Cammell’s creepy, claustrophobic 1977 futuristic thriller Demon Seed offers a very different look at motherhood. The film stars a surprisingly game Julie Christie as Susan Harris, a frustrated housewife whose husband, Alex (Fritz Weaver), is the leader of a team that has built a master computer known as Proteus (voiced by Robert Vaughn). When Alex goes off for several months to further Proteus’s already impressive attributes, the supercomputer starts developing a mind of its own, locking Susan in the house and deciding she must give birth to its child. Cammell, who codirected Performance with Nicolas Roeg, fills Demon Seed with trippy, psychedelic visuals and cool technological flourishes, along with an electronic score by Ian Underwood and Lee Ritenour supplementing Jerry Fielding’s central musical themes. The film delves into suburban paranoia with Toffler-esque flare and an Orwellian fear of artificial intelligence. The film harkens back to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and Joseph Sargent’s Colossus: The Forbin Project while influencing such future films as John Badham’s WarGames, which also names its supercomputer “Joshua” and casts Weaver look-alike John Wood as computer creator Dr. Stephen Falken. Demon Seed is screening with Ron Hays’s 1981 Earth, Wind & Fire video Let’s Groove on November 15 at 7:00, kicking off the Museum of the Moving Image series “Computer Age: Early Computer Movies, 1952-1987,” which continues through November 17 with such other computer-prescient films as Steven Lisberger’s Tron and Nick Castle’s The Last Starfighter, several shorts programs (including one featuring works by Larry Cuba, John Whitney, and John Whitney Jr.), and a conversation with computer artist Lillian Schwartz.

DOC NYC: HUNGRY

Takeru Kobayashi fights to get back his crown in HUNGRY

MIDNIGHT DOCS: HUNGRY (Jeff Cerulli & Barry Rothbart, 2013)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Friday, November 15, 11:59 pm
Festival runs November 14-21
212-924-7771
www.hungrythefilm.com
www.docnyc.net

“Every person has a basis desire to eat,” Takeru Kobayashi says at the beginning of Jeff Cerulli and Barry Rothbart’s tasty documentary, Hungry. “There is also the desire to sleep, to have sex,” he continues. “That’s why it’s difficult to see eating as a sport.” From 2001 to 2006, Kobayashi almost single-handedly put the sport of competitive eating on the map by winning the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest six straight times. But as interest around the world grew, a seemingly irreparable gap grew between some of the sport’s champions and the International Federation of Competitive Eating (IFOCE), which runs Major League Eating (MLE) and is owned and operated by brothers George and Richard Shea. In the film, Cerulli and Rothbart explore the controversy over contracts that led to Kobayashi, Dave “U.S. Male” Goldstein, Brad “the Lunatic” Sciullo, and other rather unique characters being cut off from MLE and taking part instead in unsanctioned events. Goldstein opens up his home to the filmmakers, sharing personal moments with his family, while the rebel Sciullo discusses his battle with a twenty-pound hamburger. Cerulli and Rothbart also speak with such competitive eating champs as Mike “the Scholar” Devito, Furious Pete Czerwinski, Crazy Legs Conti, and El Wingadore, in addition to Dr. Christopher Dimaio, a gastroenterologist who has a word of warning for all of them. But they do what they do because they can’t stop the need to compete, just like any other athlete, and also because some of them don’t have anything else. “Normal life is dreadful,” says jalapeño master Pat “Deep Dish” Bertoletti. The film gets both exciting and disgusting as Goldstein and others prepare for Wing Bowl, followed by Kobayashi coming up with his own plan for July 4. Whether you consider competitive eating a true sport or not, Hungry will make you hungry for more. Hungry is serving up its world premiere November 15 at 1:45 at the IFC Center as part of the “Midnight Docs” section of this year’s DOC NYC festival, with Cerulli, Rothbart, and Kobayashi on hand to talk about the film. The festival, which seeks to “cross fertilize [by] gathering practitioners of many fields — filmmakers, writers, photographers, and other storytellers — to inspire each other,” runs November 14-21 at the IFC Center and the SVA Theatre; among the other “Midnight Docs” are Christina Voros’s Kink, Jonah Bekhor and Zach Math’s The Final Member, and Morgan Matthews’s Shooting Bigfoot.

DOC NYC: REVENGE OF THE MEKONS

Sally Timms and Jon Langford fight the curse of the Mekons in stirring documentary

SONIC CINEMA: REVENGE OF THE MEKONS (Joe Angio, 2013)
SVA Theatre
333 West 23rd St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Friday, November 15, 9:45
Festival runs November 14-21
212-924-7771
www.mekonsmovie.com
www.docnyc.net

Called “the most revolutionary group in the history of rock ‘n’ roll” by Lester Bangs, the Mekons have been making some of the best music on the planet for more than thirty-five years. But despite a rabid fan base and constant critical adoration, the band, which formed at the University of Leeds back in 1977, has never quite made the big time. Joe Angio captures the wild, DIY spirit of this unique music and art collective in the stirring documentary Revenge of the Mekons. Angio (How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company [and Enjoy It]) follows the self-deprecating band — the members of which are quick to joke about their lack of financial and popular success, especially when they’re onstage and learn from fans that an upcoming gig has been canceled — as they celebrate their thirtieth anniversary and record their most recent excellent album, Ancient and Modern. Angio talks with the current Mekons lineup, which includes cofounders Tom Greenhalgh and Jon Langford along with Susie Honeyman, Rico Bell, Lu Edmonds, Sarah Corina, Steve Goulding, and Sally Timms, as well as such former members as Kevin Lycett, Mark “Chalkie” White, Andy Corrigan, and Dick Taylor, as they recount the band’s rollicking history, beginning with its Leeds days as a socialist punk band battling over shows with Gang of Four through its mid-1980s transformation into alt-country folk rockers.

Mekons doc is one heckuva wild and crazy show

Mekons doc is one helluva wild and crazy ride, just like their long career

Angio mixes in amazing raw footage from the 1970s with more contemporary scenes as the Mekons, with their usual reckless abandon and utter joyfulness, play such songs as “Where Were You,” “The Hope and the Anchor,” “Ghosts of American Astronauts,” “Millionaire,” “Hello Cruel World,” “Hard to Be Human,” “Memphis, Egypt,” and “The Curse.” Sharing their love of all things Mekons are such wide-ranging pundits as Jonathan Franzen, Greil Marcus, Gang of Four’s Hugo Burnham and Andy Gill, Will Oldham, Greg Kot, Craig Finn, Luc Sante, Mary Harron, and performance artist Vito Acconci. Back in October 2011, we wrote that “a world that includes the Mekons is just a better place for everyone,” and that still holds true. So start by watching this wonderfully crazy documentary, about a group of crazy characters who have formed a crazy kind of family, then go out and pick up such seminal records as Fear and Whiskey, The Mekons Honky Tonkin’, So Good It Hurts, The Mekons Rock‘n’Roll, Natural, Ancient Modern, etc., and be sure to catch them live when they come anywhere near your town. Revenge of the Mekons is having its world premiere November 15 at 9:45 at the SVA Theatre as part of the “Sonic Cinema” section of this year’s DOC NYC festival, with Angio, Langford, Timms, Bell, and Goulding on hand to talk about the film. DOC NYC, which seeks to “cultivate new audiences [by] attracting newcomers with the excitement of a festival atmosphere,” runs November 14-21 at the IFC Center and the SVA Theatre; among the other “Sonic Cinema” selections are Rodrigo H. Vila’s Mercedes Sosa: Voice of Latin America, Trevor Laurence and Simeon Hutner’s Harlem Street Singer, and Jeremy Xido’s Death Metal Angola.