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

DAYS OF AWE: PHILIPPE LESAGE’S WHO BY FIRE

Aliocha (Aurelia Arandi-Longpre) and Jeff (Noah Parker) get close in Who by Fire

WHO BY FIRE (COMME LE FEU) (Philippe Lesage, 2024)
Film at Lincoln Center
Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, Francesca Beale Theater
144 West Sixty-Fifth St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
March 14-20
www.filmlinc.org
www.kimstim.com

Winner of the Grand Prix from the Generation 14plus International Jury at the 2024 Berlinale, Quebecois writer-director Philippe Lesage’s Who by Fire (Comme le feu) is two and a half hours of angst, anger, and jealousy, a coming-of-age drama with a harrowing final fifteen minutes.

One of the special prayers recited during the Jewish High Holidays is the poetic psalm Unetaneh Tokef, which describes repentance, prayer, and charity and includes the following lines: “How many shall pass away and how many shall be born, / Who shall live and who shall die, / Who shall reach the end of his days and who shall not, / Who shall perish by water and who by fire, / Who by sword and who by wild beast, / Who by famine and who by thirst, / Who by earthquake and who by plague, / Who by strangulation and who by stoning, / Who shall have rest and who shall wander, / Who shall be at peace and who shall be pursued, / Who shall be at rest and who shall be tormented, / Who shall be exalted and who shall be brought low, / Who shall become rich and who shall be impoverished.” That quote, which was adapted by Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen into the 1974 song “Who by Fire,” captures the essence of the film, which opens March 14 at Lincoln Center, with Lesage participating in Q&As at the 6:15 screening March 14 and the 3:15 show on March 15.

The story unfolds at a secluded cabin in the gorgeous Canadian woods of Haute-Mauricie, where film director Blake Cadieux (Arieh Worthalter) has invited his former longtime collaborator, screenwriter Albert Gary (Paul Ahmarani), to spend some time. Joining Albert are his college-age daughter, Aliocha (Aurelia Arandi-Longpre), his seventeen-year-old son, Max (Antoine Marchand-Gagnon), and Max’s best friend, the shy, uneasy Jeff (Noah Parker). After a successful series of fiction films, Blake and Albert had a falling out, as the former turned to documentaries and the latter to animated television.

Blake lives with his editor, Millie (Sophie Desmarais), housekeeper, Barney (Carlo Harrietha), cook, Ferran (Guillaume Laurin), and dog, Ingmar (Kamo). Also arriving are well-known actress Hélène Falke (Irène Jacob) and her partner, Eddy (Laurent Lucas).

Over the course of several days, there is a lot of cigarette smoking and wine drinking, discussions about art and responsibility, sexual flirtations, and angry arguments between Blake and Albert that go beyond nasty, in addition to hunting, fishing, and white water rafting in the great outdoors, not all of which goes well.

Three uncut dinner scenes anchor Philippe Lesage’s Who by Fire

Who by Fire is anchored by three uncut ten-minute dinner scenes in which tensions flare, primarily involving Blake and Albert, including one in which oenophile Albert accuses Blake of switching out one of his wines. In two of the scenes, cinematographer Balthazar Lab’s camera remains motionless on one end of the long table, while in the third the camera eventually moves around to focus on Albert having an episode.

But at the center of the story is Jeff, who is awkward in his thoughts and actions. The film opens with Albert, his children, and Jeff driving on a deserted highway to be met by Blake’s helicopter. The first shot inside the car is of two young people with their hands on their knees; we don’t see their faces but can feel that at least one of them wants to touch the other. We soon learn that it is Aliocha — whose name in Russian translates to “defender of men” — and Jeff (the one who wants their hands and legs to meet). Later, after Max tells Jeff that he once caught his sister looking at S&M porn, Jeff makes a misguided play for her and, shunned, runs into the woods with his tail between his legs and becomes lost. After he is rescued, he grows mad at Blake when he catches the director and Aliocha in an intimate moment.

Most of the characters are either unlikable or not fully defined, so spending more than two and a half hours with them is a lot to ask. The cast does its job admirably, finding their way around some of Lesage’s occasionally meandering script. Cédric Dind-Lavoie’s droning score ranges from lilting to elegiac. A party scene that ends with the characters singing and dancing to the B-52’s song “Rock Lobster” starts out fun but quickly becomes something else, no mere break from the glum atmosphere.

Lesage (Les démons, Genèse) expertly balances the claustrophobic interior scenes by glorying in the beauty of nature, with outdoor scenes that celebrate the world outside. But not everyone is as comfortable as he is in those surroundings, leading to one tragedy that is followed by an even worse one, at least as far as manipulating an audience goes.

Who by Fire raises many of the questions asked in the Unetaneh Tokef, and he answers some of them while leaving plenty open to interpretation, as does Cohen when he asks, “And who shall I say is calling?”

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

BODY POSITIVITY AND NEGATIVITY: SUMO AT THE PUBLIC

Wrestlers known as rikishi get ready to do battle in Lisa Sanaye Dring’s Sumo (photo by Joan Marcus)

SUMO
Anspacher Theater, the Public Theater
425 Lafayette St. at Astor Pl.
Tuesday through Sunday through March 30, $65-$93
212-539-8500
publictheater.org

Lisa Sanaye Dring’s Sumo takes audiences inside the ancient Japanese sport and sacred Shinto ritual of sumo, in which large-sized wrestlers known as rikishi do battle in a dohyo, or ring, attempting to push their opponent to the mat or out of the circle. Each competitor wears only a mawashi, or silk belt, around their waist, leaving little to the imagination, as they seek to climb the ladder of success through such san’yaku, or ranks, as the lower jonokuchi, jonidan, and sandanme to the higher sekiwake, ōzeki, and the ultimate yokozuna. Most matches are over in a few seconds, although some can last upwards of a minute.

The tense Ma-Yi Theater Company drama, which premiered in 2023 at La Jolla Playhouse and is now at the Public’s Anspacher Theater through March 30, is too long at two hours and twenty minutes (with intermission), and in its second act it gets caught up in treacly melodrama, but it is still a compelling exploration of dedication, honor, tradition, and respect in a sport Americans know little about, in a changing world that is redefining masculinity and conceptions about the human body.

Mitsuo (David Shih) is an ōzeki known as Kōryū, or Exalted Dragon, who runs a heya, or stable of wrestlers, that consists of the stalwart jūryō Ren (Ahmad Kamal), the makushita Shinta (Earl T. Kim), the sandanme Fumio (Red Concepción), the jonidan So (Michael Hisamoto), and the maezumo Akio (Scott Keiji Takeda), an overeager eighteen-year-old newcomer who is not ready to pay his dues, which includes sweeping up, remaining silent, and pouring tea before earning his way into the dohyo. A trio of kannushi, or Shinto priests (Kris Bona, Paco Tolson, Viet Vo), serve as a Greek chorus as well as the gyoji, or referees, and sponsors who scour the tournaments and practices deciding who they will bankroll.

Speaking directly to the audience early on, they explain, “Rikishi were once gods. Kami! Who fought for ownership of Japan. There were two deities: Takeminakata-no-Kami, god of wind and water, who fought on behalf of the humans. And Takemikazuchi-no-Kami, god of thunder, who fought on behalf of the divine. The imperial family supposedly descends from Takemikazuchi, and if Takeminakata had won instead of Takemikazuchi, Japan wouldn’t have been ruled for centuries by emperors and instead would have been governed by commoners — people like you. Ok, maybe not you.”

Mitsuo starts working Akio hard, seeing promise in him, which rankles the others, who nonetheless sneak in little lessons for Akio when no one else is around; they will be punished if Mitsuo catches them breaking the rules, which Akio doesn’t want to follow. “There is a saying: Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water,” So tells Akio, who shoots back, “I’m not here to be enlightened.” A moment later, So, explaining how good they all have it, adds, “In here, we are free. But you have to learn to trust us.”

The rikishi compete in a series of matches, employing such kimarite, or techniques, as harite (a slap), henka (a sidestep), and tachiai (initial charge); train in their heya, where no one else, especially women, are permitted; and, in the case of two of the men, grow extremely close. At one point Akio shares his doubts with Shinta, asking, “Do you think I can do this?” Shinta responds, “I have no idea. Can your body? Probably. It depends.” Akio: “On what?” Shinta: “On if the gods want it.” Akio: “Who?” Shinta: “Whoever you pray to.” Akio: “I don’t pray.” Shinta: “Yes you do.” Shinta poetically discusses what’s at the heart of sumo: “Our bodies are so big, so alive, that we wake everyone who sees. . . . It’s a service. It’s all an offering to her.” Akio repeats, “Her,” to which Shinta says, “Yes. The spirit of sumo is a woman.”

As the heya participates in several tournaments, friendships and relationships get tested and Akio needs to look deep inside himself to figure out who he truly is.

David Shih leads a strong cast in Lisa Sanaye Dring’s Sumo at the Public (photo by Joan Marcus)

Although I’ve never been to a wrestling or sumo tournament, I have seen several boxing bouts, sitting ringside as well as in the upper decks; unsurprisingly, the closer you are to the action, the more exciting it is. The same is true for Sumo; from my second-row aisle seat, I seemed to have a different experience from some of my colleagues, who were in the last row. Every foot stomp, or shiko, gave me a tingle. Wilson Chin’s dramatic set turns two of the Anspacher’s pillars into a prop around the dohyo; when the actors are not in the ring, they are practically in the audience’s lap.

Paul Whitaker’s lighting features five rows of nine lights behind sliding doors that open and close to indicate time and space changes. Hana S. Kim’s lively projections announce details of the matches on the back wall and floor, occasionally fitting neatly within the dohyo. Mariko Ohigashi’s costumes go beyond the miwashi to include elegant kimono, traditional gyoji wear, and contemporary clothing. Fabian Obispo’s sound design and original compositions enhance the atmosphere, setting the pace with Japanese hip-hop before the show and at intermission, blasting out such tunes as Denzel Curry’s “Sumo | Zumo,” ¥ellow Bucks’s “My Resort,” and Yuki Chiba’s “Dareda?”

Be prepared to see a lot of flesh; these are big men who might not win any bodybuilding contests but have sacrificed conventional notions of physical attractiveness for the cause, to be the best at what they do, knowing that when they are done, they will have trouble reconnecting to society, as this exchange details:

Shinta: You can’t leave.
So: I’ve given my whole body.
Fumio: There’s this pus that comes from my feet.
Shinta: Someone got my right ear — no more sound.
So: I miss my brothers.
Ren: We just do this.
Fumio: I could have learned to sail.
So: I have no skills.
Fumio: It’s just this.
Akio: How did you come here?
Fumio: My father trained me from when I was a boy.
Ren: Because my body needs it.
So: My family had too many mouths to feed.
Shinta: This was the path that opened before me, so I walked it.
Mitsuo: Because I’ve always been the best.
All: But only here.
Ren: And when I leave here /
Shinta: When I retire from here /
So: I’ll never leave here.
Fumio: When I get kicked out of here, I’ll be /
All: Screwed.
Akio: Then why do you do it?
Ren: Hatakikomi. Because I can.
Fumio: Tsuppari. Need.
Shinta: Tsuri-otoshi. Beauty.
So: Kote-nage. Devotion.
Mitsuo: Uwate-nage: You do it to win.

The strong cast is a mix of established actors, such as Shih (Once Upon a (korean) Time, KPOP) and Tolson (The Knight of the Burning Pestle, The Wind and the Rain), and performers making their New York City debuts; all handle themselves well, with a bonus nod to Kamal as Ren, perhaps the most complex of the characters. Shih-Wei Wu provides thrilling live taiko drumming throughout.

As the story continues, it occasionally resembles a special episode of Cobra Kai, the entertaining streaming series that is an extension of the Karate Kid movies, but while that show, in which Ralph Macchio and William Zabka reprise their 1980s roles, has its tongue in its cheek while dealing with teen issues, Sumo takes itself too seriously. Ultimately, Dring (Hungry Ghost, Kairos) and Obie-winning director Ralph B. Peña (The Romance of Magno Rubio, The Chinese Lady) paint themselves into a corner, throwing too much information at the audience and getting bogged down in exposition.

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t much to admire in the play, especially if you are sitting ringside.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

DOOM, HOPE, AND THE BARD AT PARK AVE. ARMORY

Anne Imhof reimagines Romeo and Juliet in Doom: House of Hope at the armory (photo by Nadine Fraczkowski / courtesy the artist, Galerie Buchholz, Sprüth Magers, and Park Ave. Armory)

DOOM: HOUSE OF HOPE
Park Avenue Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
March 3–12, $60
212-933-5812
www.armoryonpark.org

“What less than doomsday is the prince’s doom?” Friar Laurence asks Romeo in William Shakespeare’s tragic tale Romeo & Juliet.

Because of its massive 55,000-square-foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall, Park Ave. Armory has been home to numerous unique theatrical productions and art installations, involving such unusual elements as thirty tons of clothing (Christian Boltanski’s No Man’s Land), wooden swings hanging seventy feet from the ceiling (Ann Hamilton’s The Event of a Thread), one hundred bleating sheep (Heiner Goebbels’s De Materie), and a dark, mysterious heath (Kenneth Branagh’s Macbeth).

Now Berlin-based Golden Lion winner Anne Imhof has transformed the hall into an enormous prom gym, filling the space with more than fifty actors, dancers (ABT, modern, flexn, line), skateboarders, and musicians, twenty-six Cadillac Escalades, a Jumbotron, and other inspiring elements for Doom: House of Hope, a three-hour multidisciplinary reimagining of Romeo and Juliet, running March 3–12. Curated by Klaus Biesenbach, the durational performance features Sihana Shalaj, Levi Strasser, and Devon Teuscher as Romeo; Talia Ryder and Remy Young as Juliet; assistant director and costumer Eliza Douglas, choreographer Josh Johnson, Cranston Mills, and Connor Holloway as Mercutio; Jakob Eilinghoff, Arthur Tendeng, and Daniil Simkin as Benvolio; and Efron Danzg, vocalist Lia Wang, and Simkin as Tybalt. Among the other characters are Vinson Fraley and Toon Lobach as angels, Perla Haney-Jardine as the critic, Tess Petronio as the photographer, Casper von Bulow as the director and the revolutionary, Coco Gordon Moore as the poet, Tahlil Myth as the storyteller, and Henry Douglas as the gamer, offering yet more twists on the traditional tragedy.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Anne Imhof (@anne_imhof)

The band, under the musical direction of Ville Haimala, consists of Sharleen Chidiac on guitar, Eilinghoff on bass, Eva Bella Kaufman on drums, and James Shaffer on guitar, with vocals by Lia Wang. The score ranges from Johann Sebastian Bach, Gustav Mahler, Franz Schubert, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky to the Doors, Radiohead, and Frank Sinatra, along with original compositions by ATK44, Douglas, Haimala, Imhof, Lia Lia, Jacob Madden, and Strasser. In addition to Shakespeare, the text collects quotes from Jean Genet, Heinrich Heine, and Raymond Moody and writings about George Balanchine, John Cranko, Dieter Gackstetter, Bruce Nauman, Jerome Robbins, Tino Sehgal, and others.

The set is by sub, with sound by Mark Grey and lighting by the masterful Urs Schönebaum, who has dazzled audiences with his work on such previous armory productions as Inside Light and Doppelganger.

As its title states, the immersive show recognizes the doom so many feel now, the increasing anxiety over the state of the planet, while also seeing a potentially bright future.

Romeo (Levi Strasser) and Juliet (Talia Ryder) face doom and hope in Anne Imhof extravaganza at the armory (photo by Nadine Fraczkowski / courtesy the artist, Galerie Buchholz, Sprüth Magers, and Park Ave. Armory)

A few moments after Friar Laurence predicts the worst, Romeo tells him, “Hang up philosophy. / Unless philosophy can make a Juliet, / Displant a town, reverse a prince’s doom.” Perhaps there is a way out of this mess we’re in, although the Bard’s original play does not exactly end happily.

On March 11 at 5:30, Imhof, whose other works include Sex, Natures Mortes, and Angst I–III, will participate in an artist talk about Doom: House of Hope with writer and curator Ebony L. Haynes.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

NORDIC UTOPIA: BLACK ARTISTS FINDING FREEDOM IN SCANDINAVIA

William Henry Johnson paintings are a highlight of “Nordic Utopia?” show at Scandinavia House (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

NORDIC UTOPIA? AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE 20th CENTURY
Scandinavia House
58 Park Ave. at 38th St.
Tuesday – Saturday through March 8, free
212-847-9740
www.scandinaviahouse.org

One of the best gallery shows right now in New York City is the small but revelatory “Nordic Utopia? African Americans in the 20th Century” at Scandinavia House, which explores the surprising connection between African American jazz musicians and Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. Continuing through March 8, “Nordic Utopia?” comprises painting, drawing, photography, ceramics, sculpture, music, and video by and about Black artists who left the United States for calmer pastures in Scandinavia.

“It was the first time in my life that I felt a real, free man,” visual artist and collector Howard Smith said in a 1976 interview about moving to Finland in 1984 after teaching at Scripps College in California. “So much so that one day I was walking down the street, I panicked because I suddenly realized that I had no further need for armor. I felt absolutely naked. In the United States you could not possibly walk down the street feeling free, spiritually unclothed, because you always felt that you are subject to attack. Well, here I am walking and I suddenly realize I have no armor whatsoever. I felt light as a feather — and it was frightening.” Smith, who died in 2021, has ten works on view, including several depictions of flowers, the small stoneware sculpture Female, the white porcelain Frida, and the 1986 Calligraphy Plate.

Sweet jazz floats in the air as visitors make their way through the three sections: “Creative Exploration & Cross Pollination,” “Lifelong Residency & Lasting Careers,” and “Travels & Sojourns,” encountering photos of Josephine Baker (including one by Helmer Lund-Hansen of the Black Venus in a white fur, cradling black and white baby dolls), Babs Gonzales, Fats Waller, Coleman Hawkins, and Dexter Gordon, who settled in Scandinavia from 1962 to 1976; “Since I’ve been over here, I felt that I could breathe, you know, and just be more or less a human being, without being white or black, green or yellow,” the LA-born saxophonist told DownBeat magazine.

Dexter Gordon at Jazzhus Montmarte, silver gelatin print, 1964 (photo by / courtesy of Kirsten Malone)

In Hans Engberg’s 1970 two-part documentary Anden mands land, an ex-pat writer explains, “I’m in a new man’s land. Here, I’ve found friends, buddies, and allies.” Eight surrealist paintings by New York City native Ronald Burns take viewers on a fantastical journey involving floating women, complex grids, a carousel, “Mental Costumes,” and a pair of dizzying renderings of “The Triumph of Nature.” The highlight of the show are six oil paintings by William Henry Johnson, three portraits, two gorgeous landscapes (Sunset, Denmark and A View Down Akersgate, Oslo), and the captivating Boats in the Harbor, Kerte-minde.

As the exhibition approaches its final weeks, there are a handful of special programs happening. On February 22 at 3:00, cocurators Ethelene Whitmire and Leslie Anne Anderson and scholars Denise Murrell and Tamara J. Walker will gather for a free two-hour symposium. On February 25 at 2:00 ($5), Sámi author and journalist Elin Anna Labba will discuss her book The Rocks Will Echo Our Sorrow!, about the expulsion of the Sámi from northern Norway and Sweden, in a virtual talk with moderator Mathilde Magga. On February 26 at 6:30 ($13), Scandinavia House will screen Bertrand Tavernier’s 1986 film about Dexter Gordon, ’Round Midnight, followed by a conversation with New Yorker film critic Richard Brody and Gordon’s widow, Maxine, author of Sophisticated Giant: The Life and Legacy of Dexter Gordon. And on March 5 at 5:30, ASF’s Emily Stoddart will lead a free guided tour of the show.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

THE ROAD TO FREEDOM: FAITH RINGGOLD’S FOR THE WOMEN’S HOUSE

Formerly incarcerated women Enid “Fay” Owens, Nancy Sicardo, and Mary Baxter check out Faith Ringgold’s For the Women’s House in Paint Me a Road Out of Here

PAINT ME A ROAD OUT OF HERE (Catherine Gund, 2024)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Opens Friday, February 7
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

“No one and nothing is safe at a prison, including the guards, the inmates, the walls, the furniture, and especially that painting,” author and activist Michele Wallace says in Catherine Gund’s moving and passionate documentary Paint Me a Road Out of Here, opening February 7 at Film Forum.

Author of such books as Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman and Dark Designs and Visual Culture, Wallace is the daughter of children’s book writer, painter, sculptor, and performance artist Faith Ringgold. The work she is referring to is her mother’s 1972 For the Women’s House, an eight-foot-by-eight-foot mural that was commissioned for the New York City Correctional Institution for Women on Rikers Island.

Before starting the mural, Ringgold visited the institution and met with some of the women. “I knew that each one wanted to be inspired, to renew their life,” she says in the film. “They wanted to be out of there, of course. And it was obvious to me that the reason why many of them were there was because they had a lack of freedom. I asked the women, ‘What would you like to see in this painting that I’m going to do to inspire you?’ And one girl said, ‘I want to see a road leading out of here.’”

The large canvas is divided into eight triangular sections depicting women in nontraditional roles, including as professional basketball players, a bus driver, a police officer, a priest, a lawyer, a construction worker, and US president, accompanied by quotes from Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King.

“Almost every single profession in that painting was not open to women in 1971,” curator Rujeko Hockley points out. She also equates prisons with museums, noting, “Black people were held captive in one institution and excluded from the other.”

Gund traces the history of For the Women’s House, delving into its conception, detailing how it was painted over in white by prison employees in 1988, and examining its restoration and the very strange journey it took as the Brooklyn Museum attempted to acquire it in order to save it from potential oblivion. She also places it in context within Ringgold’s career, looking at her seminal 1967 breakthrough gallery show, featuring such powerful and important works as Die, The Flag Is Bleeding, and The American People Series #19: US Postage Commemorating the Advent of Black Power. She meets with Ringgold in her studio, on her porch, and at the New Museum, which eventually hosted her revelatory career retrospective, “American People,” in 2022.

The director balances that narrative with the inspirational tale of Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter, who gave birth while incarcerated and fought to right her life through art and activism after serving time. Baxter returns to the Riverside Correctional Facility in Philadelphia in 2022 and installs a mural comprising multiple affirmations, providing hope for the women there through art. She also developed a friendship with Ringgold.

Gund (Born to Fly: Elizabeth Streb vs. Gravity, Chavela), who participated in freeing the painting after first encountering it in late 2021, speaks with Michael Jacobson, who was the commissioner of the Dept. of Corrections in the mid-1990s when the painting virtually disappeared; artist and author Michelle Daniel Jones, who teamed up with Baxter to put on an exhibition; curators Hockley and Catherine Morris, who staged “We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85” at the Brooklyn Museum in 2017; Rikers corrections officer Barbara Drummond, who led the fight to preserve For the Women’s House; and ACA gallerist Dorian Bergen, who explains about Ringgold’s early work, “These are among the most important paintings of the twentieth century. History had to catch up with Faith.”

The artworks shown in the film will be eye-opening to viewers who are not familiar with Ringgold’s oeuvre, from the aforementioned pieces to Childhood, The Fall of America, Sojourner Truth Tanka: Ain’t I a Woman, Uptight Negro, and Flag Is Bleeding. “I became an artist so that I could tell my story,” Ringgold, who dressed in splashy outfits with sparkling accoutrements, says, and what a story it is.

A New York City native, Ringgold passed away in New Jersey in 2004 at the age of ninety-three. Her remarkable legacy will live on in the hearts and minds of her many fans, fellow artists, and incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women who find freedom in what she stood for.

As curator and author Nicole R. Fleetwood declares, “I think art is disruptive, and I think art disrupts lazy thinking.”

There is no lazy thinking when it comes to Faith Ringgold.

[There will be a series of postscreening discussions at Film Forum, presented by the New Museum and the Women’s Community Justice Association on February 7 at 7:00, the Center for Art & Advocacy on February 8 at 7:00, the Vera Institute of Justice and Silver Art Projects on February 13 at 7:00, the New York Women’s Foundation and the Center for the Study of Women and Society at the Graduate Center on February 18 at 6:30, and the Guggenheim on February 20 at 6:30.]

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

GONE FISHING: ROB TREGENZA BRINGS UNIQUE WWII DRAMA TO MoMA

Anna Kristiansen (Ellen Dorrit Petersen) and Adam Honderich (Andreas Lust) are caught up in WWII intrigue in Rob Tregenza’s The Fishing Place (courtesy Cinema Parallel)

THE FISHING PLACE (Rob Tregenza, 2024)
MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art
The Debra and Leon Black Family Film Center
11 West Fifty-Third St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
February 6-12
www.moma.org

Rob Tregenza’s The Fishing Place is a tour de force of filmmaking, and the writer-director isn’t shy about making sure the audience knows it. The movie, divided into three sections that Tregenza refers to as “flows,” opens with a shot of a boat out at sea, shown in the negative, a ghostly white in a gray, gloomy seascape that slowly reverses into color over Earecka Tregenza and Jason Moody’s melancholic score. We are then introduced to the three protagonists via superimpositions and fades that point toward memory, as well as through mysterious, virtually impossible camera movements forward.

It’s 1945 in a small Norwegian town, and Anna Kristiansen (Ellen Dorrit Petersen) is a Nazi prisoner working as a housekeeper for Klaus (Eindride Eidsvold), a wealthy collaborator. Adam Honderich (Andreas Lust) is a newly arrived German Lutheran priest. Nazi officer Aksel Hansen (Frode Winther) orders Anna to work for Honderich for three days and spy on him, as it’s suspected that the priest is part of the resistance.

Anna becomes the focus in a stunning six-and-a-half-minute scene at a small party being thrown by Klaus for Aksel; Anna works with the cook (Lena Barth-Aarstad) and a maid (Ingvild Holthe Bygdnes), serving Klaus and Aksel in addition to Willie (Peder Herlofsen), a young man who would rather be reading his book; a man (Jonas Strand Gravli) trying to convince Klaus to invest in his electronic gadgets; the elegant, wheelchair-bound Margit (Gjertrud L. Jynge) and her doctor (Ola Otnes); among others. It’s intense and almost interminably slow-paced; every sound — a footstep, a glass being put on a tray, background music — feels as if we’re on a precipice, every element desperate to break free. The stunning sound design, also highlighted by boots in the snow, a crackling fire, and gunshots, is by Øyvind Rydland.

Soon after the party, Anna finds a frightened child named Ada (Ella Maren Alfsvåg Jørgensen) hiding out in a shack on Honderich’s property. Later, a local man visits Honderich, bringing him a fish that seems to be more of a threat than a gift, and comments on his priestly dress. Honderich says, “Unfortunately, I didn’t have much choice.” The man responds in an ominous tone, “We all have a choice, don’t we?”

Margit makes a surprising confession to the priest. The doctor takes Anna for a ride in his automobile and shares his suspicions of who she is and what she is doing there. In his church, which bursts with colors that stand out in the otherwise bleak but beautiful snowy winter landscape, Honderich suddenly is filled with fire and brimstone. As the camera circles an old fishing boat where Honderich and Aksel have cast out their lines, the colors morph into a hellish red. “Are you happy with yourself?” the priest asks. The Nazi officer replies, “No. And you know it.”

In another dazzling sequence, the camera goes down a horizontal row of characters who one at a time share brief thoughts and then appear again at the other end, with no cuts. “Don’t look back,” the priest prophetically warns us.

Later, after a fadeout, we can hear talking behind-the-scenes as a scene is readied; a man claps the slate and we see the cast and crew in action in a virtuosic twenty-minute crane shot that starts with indoor close-ups before heading outside and almost flying away. Tregenza is the cinematographer, but camera operators Pål Bugge Haagenrud and Art Eng deserve huge kudos, as does editor Elise Olavsen.

Kansas native Tregenza (Talking to Strangers, Gavagai) mixes in a little Ingmar Bergman and Jean-Luc Godard in The Fishing Place, which was partly inspired by the work of philosophers Henri Bergson and Gilles Deleuze. “The self is only a threshold, a door, a becoming between two multiplicities,” the latter wrote in A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, as well as “Bring something incomprehensible into the world!”

The Fishing Place is making its North American theatrical premiere February 6–12 at MoMA; Tregenza will be at the museum for a Q&A following the 6:30 show on opening night.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

SILENCE IS GOLDEN: PICO IYER AT ASIA SOCIETY

Who: Pico Iyer, William Green
What: Book launch and conversation
Where: Asia Society, 725 Park Ave. at Seventieth St.
When: Wednesday, January 22, $15, 6:30
Why: Pico Iyer dedicates his new book, Aflame: Learning from Silence (Riverhead, January 14, 2025, $30), to “the monks and nuns, in every tradition, who have sustained so many of us, visibly and invisibly, through so many lifetimes.” The Oxford-born Iyer, who has written such books as The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere, The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise, and The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto, will be at Asia Society on January 22 to launch Aflame, in conversation with William Green, author of Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World’s Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life. In the book, Iyer traces three decades of silent retreats at a Benedictine monastery in Big Sur as he faces the ups and downs of life, from glorious successes to personal tragedy. His Holiness the Dalai Lama has praised the work, offering, “Reading Aflame may help many to lead lives of greater compassion and deeper peace of mind.” Tickets for the event, which is copresented with the South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA), are only $15. Below is an excerpt from chapter two.

—————————————————————————

The silence of a monastery is not like that of a deep forest or mountaintop; it’s active and thrumming, almost palpable. And part of its beauty—what deepens and extends it—is that it belongs to all of us. Every now and then I hear a car door slam, or movement in the communal kitchen, and I’m reminded, thrillingly, that this place isn’t outside the world, but hidden at its very heart.

In the solitude of my cell, I often feel closer to the people I care for than when they’re in the same room, reminded in the sharpest way of why I love them; in silence, all the unmet strangers across the property come to feel like friends, joined at the root. When we pass one another on the road, we say very little, but it’s all we don’t say that we share.

***

Coming out one afternoon into the singing stillness, I pass a woman, tall and blond, looking like she might be from the twenty‑fifth‑floor office in Midtown where my bosses await my essays. She smiles. “You’re Pico?”

“I am.”

“I’m Paula. I wrote you a letter last year to see if you could come speak to my class.”

She’s a novelist, I gather—complete with agent, good New York publisher, grant from the National Endowment for the Arts—and she teaches down the road, two hours to the south. She fled Christianity as a girl, growing up in Lutheran Minnesota, but now—well, now she’s been brought back into silence and a sense of warm community.

“Do you write while you’re here?” she asks.

“All I seem to do is write! But only for myself. This is the one place in life where I’m happy not to write in any public way.”

She smiles in recognition. The point of being here is not to get anything done; only to see what might be worth doing.

***

The others I pass along the way, or see in the shared kitchen, are not at all the solemn, stiff ones I might have expected. One greets me with a Buddhist bow, another with a Hindu namaste. On the cars outside the retreat‑house I read i brake for mushrooms, notice a fish that announces, darwin. We’re not joined by any doctrine, I realize, or mortal being or holy book; only by a silence that speaks for some universal intimation.

“What do you think of this?” an older man asks as we pass one another near a bench.

“Nothing,” I say, and he looks puzzled until he sees what I’m about.

“That’s the liberation, don’t you find?” I go on. “There’s nothing to think about other than oak tree and ocean. Nothing to smudge the wonder of . . .” and then I say no more.

We look out together at the tremble of light across the water.