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

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.

LAST CHANCE: GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE

Richard Hamilton, “Man, Machine and Motion,” exhibition reconstruction, 1955/2012 (photo by Benoit Pailley)

New Museum of Contemporary Art
235 Bowery at Prince St.
Friday – Sunday through September 30, $12-$16
212-219-1222
www.newmuseum.org

“From a contemporary perspective, the distance between our machines and our selves has never been closer,” writes Gary Carrion-Murayari in “The Body Is a Machine,” one of several marvelous essays in the catalog of the fascinating New Museum show “Ghosts in the Machine,” which runs through this Sunday. Curated by Carrion-Murayari and Massimiliano Gioni, the exhibit examines the intersection between man, motion, art, and machine in a consumer society growing more and more obsessed with pop culture. Spread across four floors, “Ghosts in the Machine” features painting, sculpture, film, and installations focused on a time before the personal computer, when a developing technology was not as all-pervasive as it is today. In Stan VanDerBeek’s 1960s “Movie-Drome,” visitors can lie down inside a dome and watch myriad images projected onto the curved ceiling, an early version of the internet. A reconstruction of Richard Hamilton’s seminal 1955 “Man, Machine and Motion” follows humanity’s pursuit of going faster, farther, and higher, even foreseeing space travel. “The Medium Is the Medium” is a 1969 public television program in which Allan Kaprow, Nam June Paik, Otto Piene, and Aldo Tambellini create short films using cutting-edge technology. Paul Sharits makes the film projector itself the key element in “Epileptic Seizure Comparison.” Harley Cokeliss’s “Crash!” video, Claus Oldenburg’s “Profile Airflow,” and Thomas Bayrle’s “Madonna Mercedes” examine the world’s growing love affair with the automobile. Works by Channa Horwitz, Bridget Riley, Victor Vasarely, and Emma Kunz play with perception in mathematical, scientific, and architectural patterns. Otto Piene’s “Hängende Lichtkugel” and Gianni Colombo’s “Spazio Elastico” use light to alter reality. Hans Haacke creates a bit of magic in “Sphere in Oblique Air Jet” and “Blue Sail.” Among the more contemporary pieces, Henrik Olesen pays homage to Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Alan Turing, and outdated machines in such works as “Apple (Ghost) (1),” an old apple computer wrapped in plastic, and “Imitation/Enigma (2),” a sewing machine tied up in a blanket, while Seth Price repurposes licensed images in “Film/Right” and Philippe Parreno investigates an automaton in the miniature “The Writer.” Other artists represented in the show are J. G. Ballard, Eduardo Paolozzi, Rube Goldberg, Robert Smithson, Konrad Klapcheck, and Herb Schneider. In today’s crazy, fast-paced, constantly connected world, “Ghosts in the Machine” offers an intriguing, involving look back at a different era, one that, knowingly or not, paved the way for today’s consumer-driven digital age. (Also this weekend at the New Museum, the “Propositions” series continues with writer and curator Fionn Meade presenting “When Genealogy Becomes Critique,” a two-day seminar [Friday at 7:00 and Saturday at 3:00, $8 plus half-gallery same-day admission] dealing with art criticism, cinefication, and historiography.)

INVESTIGATION OF A CITIZEN ABOVE SUSPICION

Gian Maria Volontè stars as a man seemingly above the law in Elio Petri’s 1970 Italian absurdist farce

INVESTIGATION OF A CITIZEN ABOVE SUSPICION (INDAGINE SU UN CITTADINO AL DI SOPRA DI OGNI SOSPETTO) (Elio Petri, 1970)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
September 28 – October 4
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

As Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion begins, a man (Gian Maria Volontè) kills a woman (Florinda Bolkan) in the midst of some rather kinky sex. The man then goes out of his way to leave behind evidence tying him to the brutal crime, including making sure he is spotted as he exits the woman’s building complex. It is soon revealed that he is the former head of homicide in Rome who has just been promoted to chief of political intelligence, his victim a married lover of his who enjoyed acting out real murder cases with him. “How will you kill me this time?” she asks in a flashback, not knowing where their games will ultimately lead. For the rest of Elio Petri’s (A Quiet Place in the Country) absurdist farce, the man practically dares his colleagues to catch him as he continues to build a case against himself and rails against criminal and political terrorists and subversives in neo-fascist romps, filmed in daring close-up, that emphasize the importance of keeping the masses repressed. Shot in broad colors and featuring a playful score by Ennio Morricone, Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion is an enticing police procedural — in which the culprit is the man in charge of the case — as well as a satiric look at the state of Italian politics in 1970, as social unrest and sexual freedom grew throughout Europe and America. “Repressing all those evils is to cure them,” the man declares in a fiery speech to his department. Volontè (A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More) clearly has a ball as a man who either wants to be caught or is out to prove that he is indeed above the law, Petri carefully keeping his motive ambiguous in this wonderful black comedy. Winner of the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and the Grand Prize at Cannes, Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion will be screening in a new DCP restoration at Film Forum September 28 through October 4, with Sony restoration expert Grover Crisp on hand to introduce the 7:30 screening on opening night.