Model of Photoville by Dave Shelley of United Photo Industries (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Pier 3 Uplands, Brooklyn Bridge Park
June 22 – July 1, free
photovillenyc.org
Following hot on the heels of last month’s New York Photo Festival in DUMBO, the inaugural Photoville begins today, held in a collection of shipping containers across sixty thousand square feet on Pier 3 in Brooklyn Bridge Park. Sponsored by United Photo Industries, the show will feature exhibits from around the world, a series of workshops and talks, a dog run surrounded by a photo fence, an interactive greenhouse with camera flowers designed by André Feliciano, and a beer garden where visitors can down Brooklyn Brewery selections while watching nighttime projections and eating food from a rotating group of trucks. Getting there will be part of the fun, with a display on board the East River Ferry of shots either of the various vessels in the fleet or taken from them. Among the more than two dozen exhibitions are analog photos from Lomography, the multimedia presentation “2084” from SVA, Russell Frederick’s “Dying Breed: Photos of Bedford Stuyvesant,” Bruce Gilden’s “No Place Like Home: Foreclosures in America,” Sim Chi Yin’s “China’s Rat Tribe,” Wyatt Gallery’s “Tent Life: Haiti,” 2012 Pulse Prize winner Sigrid Viir’s “Routine Crusher,” Josh Lehrer’s “Becoming Visible” series of portraits of homeless transgender teens, Lorie Novak’s multimedia installation “Random Interference,” and Candace Gaudiani’s “Between Destinations” photos taken from inside train windows. Advance registration is recommended for such panel discussions and artist talks as “Li Hao: ‘Worshippers’” and “Cruel and Unusual: The Prisons, the Photography or Both?” on June 23, “The New Documentary” and “Human Rights Through Visual Storytelling” on June 24, “The Art of Fashion Portraiture” on June 28, “Photographs Not Taken” on June 29, and “Janelle Lynch: ‘Los Jardines de Mexico’” and “Photography as Activism” on July 1.
Kirby Dick’s The Invisible War is one of the bravest, most explosive investigative documentaries you’re ever likely to see. Dick (This Film Is Not Yet Rated) busts open the military’s dirty little secret, revealing that episodes of horrific sexual abuse such as the Tailhook scandal are not an aberration but a prime example of a rape epidemic that seems to an accepted part of military culture. Dick speaks with many women and one man who share their incredible stories, describing in often graphic detail the sexual abuse they suffered, then faced further abuse when they reported what had happened. Their superiors, some of whom were the rapists themselves, either looked the other way, laughed off their allegations as no big deal, or threatened the victims’ careers. Dick includes remarkable Defense Department statistics — the government admits that approximately one out of every five female soldiers suffers sexual abuse and that there were nineteen thousand violent sex crimes in 2010 alone — even as such military officials as Dr. Kaye Whitley, Rear Admiral Anthony Kurta, and Brigadier General Mary Kay Hertog make absurd claims that they are satisfied with the way they are handling the alarming trend. The central figure in the film is Kori Cioca, a former member of the Coast Guard whose face was broken when she was raped by a superior and now keeps getting denied necessary medical services from the VA. Such courageous women as USAF Airman 1st Class Jessica Hinves, former Marine Officer Ariana Klay, USN veteran Trina McDonald, USMC Lieutenant Elle Helmer, USN Lieutenant Paula Coughlin, and even Special Agent Myla Haider of the Army Criminal Investigation Command also open up about the physical and psychological damage the abuse has left on their lives and careers. 
For forty years, Belgrade-born performance artist Marina Abramović has been presenting cutting-edge, often controversial live works that redefine what art is. For her highly anticipated major career retrospective at MoMA in 2010, 
Douglas Sirk and Thomas Mann would be proud. In Todd Haynes’s wonderfully retro Far from Heaven, Oscar-nominated Julianne Moore is amazing as 1950s housewife Cathy Whitaker, who thinks she has the perfect idyllic suburban life — until she discovers that her husband (Dennis Quaid) has a secret that dare not speak its name. Mr. & Mrs. Magnatech they are not after all. When she starts getting all chummy with the black gardener (Dennis Haysbert), people start talking, of course. Part Imitation of Life, part Death in Venice, and oh-so-original, Haynes’s awesome achievement will have you believing you’re watching a film made in the 1950s, propelled by Elmer Bernstein’s excellent music, Edward Lachman’s remarkable photography, and Mark Friedberg’s terrific production design. Far from Heaven is screening at the Museum of the Moving Image on June 14 at 7:00, with Haynes in person to talk about the film in conjunction with the opening of the exhibition “Persol Magnificent Obsessions: 30 stories of craftsmanship in film,” which focuses on artifacts from works by Ed Harris, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Alfred Hitchcock, Douglas Trumbull, Ennio Morricone, Dean Tavoularis, Clint Eastwood, Haynes, and others.