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

NYFF50 HBO DIRECTORS DIALOGUE: ABBAS KIAROSTAMI

The always engaging Abbas Kiarostami will talk about his life and career in a special Directors Dialogue at the fiftieth New York Film Festival (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Film Society of Lincoln Center, Bruno Walter Auditorium
111 Amsterdam Ave. at 66th St.
Saturday, October 6, $15, 6:00
Festival runs through October 14
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com

A decade ago, master Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami was denied a visa to come to the New York Film Festival to present his latest film, Ten. “It’s a terrible sign of what’s happening in my country today that no one seems to realize or care about the kind of negative signal this sends out to the entire Muslim world,” festival director Richard Peña said at the time. Ten years later, Kiarostami (Close-Up, Taste of Cherry) will be making a special appearance at the fiftieth New York Film Festival, the last one organized by Peña, who is stepping down after twenty-five years. Kiarostami will be speaking with Brooklyn-born writer Phillip Lopate at the Bruno Walter Auditorium on October 6 at 6:00 as part of the HBO Directors Dialogue series. A visual artist who had an exceptional dual show at MoMA and PS1, “Image Maker,” in 2007, Kiarostami has brought the remarkable Like Someone to Love to this year’s festival; the film, set in Japan and featuring outstanding performances by Tadashi Okuno and Rin Takanashi, will have its second and final screening October 8 at the Francesca Beale Theater. Kiarostami is a fascinating figure, a stylish cool cat in ever-present dark glasses who has an engaging knowledge of art and cinema that always makes for a lively discussion. The series continues October 7 with David Chase in conversation with Scott Foundas and October 13 with Robert Zemeckis speaking with Peña.

FIRST SATURDAYS: MICKALENE THOMAS’S ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE

Mickalene Thomas, “A Little Taste Outside of Love,” acrylic, enamel and rhinestones on wood panel, 2007 (© Mickalene Thomas)

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, October 6, free, 5:00 – 11:00 (some events require free tickets distributed in advance at the Visitor Center)
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The Brooklyn Museum will celebrate Brooklyn-based artist Mickalene Thomas in the October edition of its free First Saturdays program. Thomas, who explores the concept of female beauty and power in sparkling works that incorporate rhinestones, acrylic, and enamel into 1970s-style tableaux, recently received the Asher B. Durand Award from the museum, along with Martha Rosler and Amy Sillman, for their contribution to Brooklyn culture. The First Saturdays programming is built around Thomas’s “Origin of the Universe,” her first museum exhibition, which continues through January 20. Visitors are encouraged to come dressed in 1970s clothing as they check out musical poet Candice Anitra; a multidisciplinary performance by Latasha Diggs, Beatrice Anderson, and Jaime Philbert, followed by a Q&A; an artist talk with G. Lucas Crane, who will create a live sonic collage and place it in context with Thomas’s work; a curator talk by Eugenie Tsai about Thomas’s painting “A Little Taste Outside of Love”; an art workshop showing how to make a Thomas-like collage; an interactive performance and discussion with poet and conceptual artist Harmony Holiday; “Betty’s Story,” a musical tribute to Betty Mabry Davis (Miles Davis’s ex-wife and singer in her own right) by Nucomme and the Curators; and a fashion show, open to all, hosted by Raye 6, Marcus Simms, and Gizmovintage Honeys Beeline.

NYFF50: SOMETHING IN THE AIR

The cultural revolution on the early 1970s is back in Olivier Assayas’s SOMETHING IN THE AIR

NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL MAIN SLATE: SOMETHING IN THE AIR (APRÈS MAI) (Olivier Assayas, 2012)
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Friday, October 5, Alice Tully Hall, 9:15
Monday, October 8, Alice Tully Hall, 12 noon
Friday, October 12, Francesca Beale Theater, 6:30
Festival runs through October 14
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com

Olivier Assayas’s autobiographical coming-of-age tale Something in the Air is a fresh, exhilarating look back at a critical period in twentieth-century French history. In this sort-of follow-up to his 1994 film about 1970s teenagers, Cold Water, which starred Virginie Ledoyen as Christine and Cyprien Fouquet as Gilles, Something in the Air features newcomer Clément Métayer as a boy named Gilles and Lola Créton (Goodbye First Love) as a girl named Christine, a pair of high school students who are part of a growing underground anarchist movement. Following a planned demonstration that is violently broken up by a special brigade police force, some of the students cover their school in spray paint and political posters, leading to a confrontation with security guards that results in the arrest of the innocent Jean-Pierre (Hugo Conzelmann), which only further emboldens the anarchists. But their seething rage slowly changes as they explore the transformative world of free love, drugs, art, music, travel, and experimental film. Assayas (Les Destinées sentimentales, Summer Hours) doesn’t turn Something in the Air — the original French title is actually Après Mai, or After May, referring to the May 1968 riots — into a personal nostalgia trip. Instead it’s an engaging and charming examination of a time when young people truly cared about something other than themselves and genuinely believed they could change the world, filled with what Assayas described as a “crazy utopian hope for the future” at a New York Film Festival press conference. The talented cast also includes Félix Armand, India Salvor Menuez, Léa Rougeron, and Carole Combes as Laure, both Gilles’s and Assayas’s muse.

Writer-director Olivier Assayas will be on hand October 5 to talk about his latest work, SOMETHING IN THE AIR (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Assayas fills Something in the Air with direct and indirect references to such writers, artists, philosophers, and musicians as Syd Barrett, Gregory Corso, Amazing Blondel, Blaise Pascal, Kasimir Malevitch, Max Stirner, Alighiero Boetti, Joe Hill, Soft Machine, Georges Simenon, Frans Hals, and Simon Ley (The Chairman’s New Clothes: Mao and the Cultural Revolution), not necessarily your usual batch of 1970s heroes who show up in hippie-era films. Writer-director Assayas, editors Luc Barnier and Mathilde Van de Moortel, and cinematographer Éric Gautier move effortlessly from France to Italy to England, from thrilling, fast-paced chases to intimate scenes of young love to a groovy psychedelic concert, wonderfully capturing a moment in time that is too often marginally idealized and made overly sentimental on celluloid. “We’ve got to get together sooner or later / Because the revolution’s here,” Thunderclap Newman sings in their 1969 hit “Something in the Air,” which oddly is not used in Assayas’s film, continuing, “And you know it’s right / and you know that it’s right.” Indeed, Assayas gets it right in Something in the Air, depicting a generation when revolution required a lot more than clicking a button on the internet. A critical thinker who speaks intelligently about his work, Assayas will be at the October 5 New York Film Festival screening of Something in the Air, which is also being shown October 8 and 12 before opening theatrically next spring.

NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL: RHINOCEROS

Théâtre de la Ville, Paris, will present Eugène Ionesco’s classic absurdist tale RHINOCÉROS this week at BAM (photo by Jean-Louis Fernandez)

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
October 4-6
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.theatredelaville-paris.com

As much as Jean-Paul Sartre is associated with the idea of existentialism, playwright Eugène Ionesco is linked with the word absurd. Born in Romania in 1909 and raised primarily in France, Ionesco changed the face of dramatic narrative with such works as The Lesson, The Chairs, The Killer, and Exit the King. One of his most famous plays, 1959’s Rhinocéros, which was turned into a 1973 film starring Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder, and Karen Black, can now be seen in an inventive adaptation by Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota and Théâtre de la Ville, Paris, running at BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House October 4-6 as part of the thirtieth Next Wave Festival. “I like to come back to playwrights who question the place and role of the individual in collective history, on his responsibility, his freedom of thought, beyond any form of individualism,” Demarcy-Mota, who has also recently directed works by Horváth and Brecht, explains on the company website. The allegory about totalitarianism features set and lighting by Yves Collet, music by Jefferson Lembeye, and costumes by Corinne Baudelot, with François Regnault serving as artistic collaborator; Serge Maggiani plays Bérenger, Hugues Quester is Jean, and Valérie Dashwood takes on the role of Daisy. “”Ionesco knows how to depict dialectically every man’s cowardice, conformism and hypocrisy,” Demarcy-Mota adds. Rhinocéros “is a funereally burlesque play that we wish to render with full energy.” As a bonus, on October 5 at 5:00 at the Rosenthal Pavilion at NYU’s Kimmel Center, the esteemed panel of Demarcy-Mota, Edward Albee, Israel Horovitz, and Marie-France Ionesco will participate in the free “Next Wave Talk: On Ionesco,” moderated by NYU French literature professor Tom Bishop.

Nowhere is safe in Théâtre de la Ville’s thrilling production of Eugène Ionesco’s absurdist classic (photo by Pavel Antonov)

Update: Théâtre de la Ville director Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota promised a Rhinocéros rendered “with full energy,” and he and the company deliver all that and more in their engaging version of Eugène Ionesco’s 1959 absurdist classic, running October 4-6 at BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House as part of the thirtieth Next Wave Festival. Following a short introductory excerpt from Ionesco’s sole novel, The Hermit, the curtain opens on a group of people in a town square just going about their daily business. Jean (a big, blustery Hugues Quester) bikes in to meet his friend Bérenger (Serge Maggiani), a bedraggled man recovering from a hangover, not able to remember much of what occurred the night before. A rhinoceros suddenly roars through the town like a tsunami, leaving in its wake a stunned crowd not quite sure what it really just saw, instead getting caught up in existential discussions of cats’ paws. Eventually life goes on, with Bérenger, who has a crush on Daisy (Valérie Dashwood), arriving at the publishing house where he works, only to encounter another stampeding rhino. As everyone around him starts turning into rhinos, the hapless Bérenger is determined not to succumb to the mass hysteria. Featuring terrific staging (courtesy of Yves Collet) that includes a raised-level office, collapsing rooms, and a majestically morphing figure in addition to a slowly building score by Jefferson Lembeye that nearly explodes at the end, Théâtre de la Ville’s Rhinocéros cleverly captures the philosophical underpinnings of Ionesco’s tale of the fight for individualism in the face of growing totalitarianism and an ever-increasing conformity that is overwhelming a consumer-driven society. Evoking Franz Kafka’s novella The Metamorphosis, Don Siegel’s sci-fi classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and such recent disasters as Hurricane Katrina and the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami, the show combines humor, pathos, and playful investigations of logic as the community is overcome by a collective consciousness that seems unstoppable. Ionesco might have written Rhinocéros because of what he saw occurring in Eastern Europe in the 1930s, but it still feels as fresh and relevant as ever in this outstanding production.

OPENHOUSENEWYORK WEEKEND

Green-Wood Cemetery is among the many historic locations opening its doors and gates to visitors for free during openhousenewyork Weekend (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Multiple venues in all five boroughs
Saturday, October 6, and Sunday, October 7
Admission: free (advance reservations required for some sites)
OHNY Passport: $150
212-991-OHNY
www.ohny.org

The fabulous openhousenewyork Weekend celebrates its tenth anniversary by once again offering people the opportunity to experience the nooks and crannies of many of New York City’s most fascinating architectural constructions. Among this year’s special programs, some of which require advance reservations even though admission is free, are Designers’ Open House, with such interior designers as Thomas Jayne, Ali Tayar, Paul Ochs, Aizaki Allie, Christopher Coleman, and Lea Ciavarra inviting guests into their private homes; the Peace Bike Ride led by Nadette Stasa of Time’s Up!; a treasure hunt for kid explorers at the Park Avenue Armory; “Dance on the Greenway,” with Dance Theatre Etcetera performing site-specific pieces by four emerging choreographers in Erie Basin Park behind the Red Hook IKEA; “Paseo,” consisting of short works by choreographer Joanna Haigood and composer Bobby Sanabria that take place on fire escapes and stoops at Casita Maria in the Bronx; “Spirits Alive,” with actors in period costumes portraying famous people buried in the Maple Grove Cemetery in Kew Gardens; “Wilderness Plan,” in which costumed dancing creatures lead people through the Elevated Acre in the Financial District; and “Frost Court,” a performance installation featuring dancers Jon Kinzel, Silas Riener, Stuart Shugg, Saul Ulerio, Enrico Wey, and Aaron Mattocks. Although some of the special tours are already booked, plenty of others have vacancies or are first come, first served (unless you buy a $150 front-of-line Passport), so you can still check out the Fading Ads of New York City with Frank Jump, the Manhole Covers of Fourteenth St. with Michele Brody, the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Spaces, the Harlem Edge: 135th St. Marine Transfer Station, the Bronx River Right-of-Way, the Kings County Distillery Tour, Historic Richmond Town, the Noguchi Museum, the New York City Photo Safari for shutterbugs, the Lakeside at Prospect Park Construction Tour, the Mount Vernon Hotel Museum & Garden, the Tenriko Mission New York Center, the Alice Austen House Museum, Fort Totten, the Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden, the Grand Lodge of Masons, the New York Marble Cemetery and the New York City Marble Cemetery, the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace, Scandinavia House, the Morris-Jumel Mansion, Merchant’s House Museum, the Jefferson Market Library, the Little Red Lighthouse, the High Line, the African Burial Grounds, and so many, many more. The annual opendialogue series features talks and tours at such locations as the Brooklyn Navy Yard Center at BLDG 92, Runner & Stone, UrbanGlass, the East Harlem School, the Horticultural Society of New York, the Museum of the Moving Image, New York City Center, and the TWA Flight Center at JFK. Keep watching the official website for late changes, additions, sell-outs, and other updated information.

DUMBO ARTS FESTIVAL

“Codex Dynamic” is a highlight of the sixteenth annual DUMBO Arts Festival

Multiple venues in DUMBO
September 30, free
www.dumboartsfestival.com

The sixteenth annual DUMBO Arts Festival concludes on Sunday, with another diverse collection of live performances, multimedia exhibitions, interactive installations, and more, continuing into the night. Musicians such as the Well-Informed, Joseph Brent, the Soulfolk Experience, Church of Betty, and WYATT will perform in Brooklyn Bridge Park. The White Wave Dance Company will lead a grand finale at Fulton Ferry Landing. Iviva Olenick turns people’s tweets and Post-it confessions into embroidered musings. Martin Janicek will play his unique Metal Bow. Visitors can participate in Wildbytes’ “Superhero,” making it look like they can fly across buildings. Nathaniel Lieb’s “Tidal Voyage” floats on the East River. Shaun El C. Leonardo and Gabriele Tinti present The Way of the Cross, their book about boxer Arturo Gatti. Leo Kuelbs and John Esnor Parker have curated “Codex Dynamic,” mapped projections that will be beamed onto the Manhattan Bridge Anchorage and Archway. Will Scott will play the blues, while Howard Brofsky will host the jazz program Dr Bebop and Glocals. Jimmy O’Neal and Rebecca Parker will clog around the neighborhood in “Transporting Location.” Frank Viva will read from his children’s book A Trip to the Bottom of the World with Mouse. Entasis Dance will incorporate sculpture into performance. Amisha Gadani will make her way around the area in “Animal Inspired Defensive Dresses.” Josephine Decker will be at the forefront of a fish-headed “School Evacuation.” The Friendly Falcons will roam about with musical architectural interventions. A simple touch sets Michael Rosen and Eszter Osvald’s “Neurime” instrument into action. Alan Ruiz’s “Heist” uses a red laser and mirrors to alter perception. Stacy Scibelli’s “Sabotage I, II, & III” invites people to wear tickle machines. And that is only some of what is going on at such locations as Brooklyn Bridge Park, Empire Stores, the powerHouse Arena, 111 Front St., Tobacco Warehouse, East River Cove, 81 Washington St., and galleries along Jay, York, and Adams Sts.

NYFF50 — MASTERWORKS: THE KING OF MARVIN GARDENS

An intense Philly DJ (Jack Nicholson) doesn’t exactly find the American dream in THE KING OF MARVIN GARDENS

NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL: THE KING OF MARVIN GARDENS (Bob Rafelson, 1972)
Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Sunday, September 30, $20, 8:30
Festival runs September 28 – October 14
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com

Steeped in 1970s Vietnam War-era angst, Bob Rafelson’s The King of Marvin Gardens examines nothing less than the impending demise of the American dream. Rafelson’s follow-up to Five Easy Pieces stars Jack Nicholson as David Staebler, a Philly DJ who is introduced in a long, dark scene, shot in one take, in which he delivers a fascinating monologue about his grandfather (Charles Lavine) choking on fish bones, setting the stage for this unusual tale about family. David is contacted by his older brother, Jason (Bruce Dern), a small-time hustler caught in a jam in a decaying Atlantic City. Jason has big plans for them, hoping to open a resort casino in Hawaii, along with his girlfriend, Sally (Ellen Burstyn), and younger companion, Jessica (Julia Anne Robinson), whom they are grooming to become Miss America. But a local gangster, Lewis (Scatman Crothers), might have something to say about their future. Nicholson plays David with a calm, introspective, intensely creepy demeanor that provides fine contrast to Dern’s Jason, a loud, up-front, far more outgoing figure. But as brash as Jason is, Dern sometimes has him make major statements with just a quick move of his eyes. Written by Rafelson and journalist and lyricist Jacob Brackman, the film is beautifully shot by master cinematographer László Kovács, who bathes the Atlantic City boardwalk in luridly depressing colors as four unique characters come together in rather strange ways. The King of Marvin Gardens is screening in DCP on September 30 as part of the New York Film Festival Masterworks sidebar, with Rafelson in person to talk about the film, which is now celebrating its fortieth anniversary.