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

HOWL! FESTIVAL 2012

Street artists will surround Tompkins Square Park with colorful murals during the Howl! Festival (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Tompkins Square Park
Ave. A to Ave. B between Seventh & Tenth Sts.
June 2-3, free
www.howlfestival.com

The Howl! Festival returned last night to Tompkins Square Park, where it continues this weekend with a flurry of music, poetry, dance, theater, art, and “madness.” Today, as 140 artists create murals on canvases that surround the park, such groups as the Disco Monkeys and the Bowery Tones will play on the south stag. On the north stage, Honeybee House, the TriBattery Pops, Tap City, and Lydon will perform for children. Also for little ones, the Great Howl! Out Loud Kids’ Carnival will feature carnival games, arts and crafts, storytelling, and other activities. At the basketball court area, Bandera Fever! celebrates Puerto Rican heritage with Dao Y El Grupo Cemi, BombaYo, Elani Rodriguez, John Acevedo AKA Chance, J. F. Seary, Dinamicas, Senior Bomba & Plena Dancers from Grand Street Settlement, and a domino tournament. Super DJ Johnny Dynell will lead the Hot Howl! Disco Tea Dance near the General Slocum Memorial from 2:00 to 5:00, the Vangeline Theatre will perform The Raft of the Medusa, and Derrick Pendavis Xtravaganza will lead the unpredictable “Men in Skirts” dance presentation at 5:30. On Sunday, Hip Hop Howl, the Deans of Discipline, the Sic Fucks, and Bear 54, will be on the main stage, Rosie’s Theater Kids, Danny Hartig, Honeybee House, and Jack Skuller will be on the kids’ north stage, Bandera Fever! will continue with a Cultural Rumba Jam, and the festival will conclude with “Low Life 6: East Village Others,” paying tribute to the Fugs song “Nova Slum Goddess (from the Lower East Side),” Jack Smith, the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, the Fillmore East, Allen Ginsberg, and other old standards from the East Village circa 1966-72.

BROOKLYN FILM FESTIVAL: DECOY

James Yaegashi’s LEFTY LOOSEY RIGHTY TIGHTY, which will be shown at the Brooklyn Film Festival, is set in Park Slope

indieScreen, 285 Kent Ave.
Brooklyn Heights Cinema, 70 Henry St.
June 1-10, individual tickets $12, 4-pack pass $30, full festival pass $150
www.brooklynfilmfestival.org

Despite its theme, “Decoy,” the 2012 Brooklyn Film Festival is the real thing, ten days of film screenings and special events taking place at the powerHouse Arena, IndieScreen, and the Brooklyn Heights Cinema. More than one hundred shorts, features, and documentaries from around the world will be shown, including Chel White’s Bucksville, about a young man who belongs to a secret militia group known as the Lodge; Lisa Duva’s Cat Scratch Fever, about two women who can look into a parallel universe; Pema Tseden’s Old Dog, in which a father tries to get back the family dog after his son sells it; Wojtek Smarzowski’s Rose, a Polish tale set just after the end of WWII; and Tolga Ornek’s Labyrinth, centered around a deadly terrorist attack in Istanbul. The opening-night party takes place June 1 at the powerHouse Arena, with a DJ set by SVN’s Nature; other special events include the KidsFilmFest on June 2, the BFF Exchange on June 9, and the awards ceremony on June 10. In addition, many of the filmmakers will be on hand to participate in Q&A sessions following screenings of their work.

FIRST SATURDAYS: BROOKLYN BLOCK PARTY

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, JUne 2, free, 5:00 – 11:00 (some events require free tickets distributed in advance at the Visitor Center)
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

For its June First Saturday program, the Brooklyn Museum will be hosting a Brooklyn Block Party, getting under way at 5:00 with live music from Son de Madre, community performers throughout the museum, and Laura Nova and Theresa Loong’s Feed Me a Story project, in which visitors can share their memories of food. At 6:00, Angelo Boyke’s 2010 documentary Hands to the Sky will be screened, followed by a Q&A with the director; Blue Marble Ice Cream founders Alexis Miesen and Jennie Dundas’s will give a lecture about Blue Marble Dreams, their nonprofit organization that is helping Rwandan women open the first ice-cream shop in Butare; and a museum guide will lead a tour of the museum’s unique architecture. At 6:30, Hands-on Art will teach attendees how to make a Brooklyn-style wrap for the 8:00 dance party, Society HAE’s “Beats, Blocks & Brooklyn,” featuring DJ crew the Ahficionados with Jasmine Solano. At 7:00, a museum guide will lead the tour “Summer Fun,” and “Raw/Cooked artist Heather Hart will talk about her installation, “The Eastern Oracle: We Will Tear the Roof Off the Mother,” and invite visitors to take part in various activities. In addition to the dance party at 8:00, visitors can pose for a portrait taken by photographers Jamel Shabazz, Lafotographeuse, Delphine Fawundu-Buford, and Laylah Amatullah Barrayn. And at 9:00, Suleiman Osman will discuss her book The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn: Gentrification and the Search for Authenticity in Postwar New York. As always, the galleries will be open late, giving everyone plenty of opportunity to check out “Connecting Cultures: A World in Brooklyn,” “Keith Haring: 1978-1982,” “Playing House,” “Rachel Kneebone: Regarding Rodin,” “Newspaper Fiction: The New York Journalism of Djuna Barnes, 1913–1919,” “Question Bridge: Black Males,” “Aesthetic Ambitions: Edward Lycett and Brooklyn’s Faience Manufacturing Company,” and “Body Parts: Ancient Egyptian Fragments and Amulets.”

ALL THE NEWS THAT’S FIT TO SCREEN

SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS is part of journalism series at New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, Bruno Walter Auditorium
40 Lincoln Center Plaza (111 Amsterdam Ave. & 66th St.)
Thursdays at 6:30 from May 31 to June 28
www.nypl.org

Playing off the New York Times motto “All the News That’s Fit to Print,” the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts is honoring the career of journalist Helen Bernstein Fealy with the free film series “All the News That’s Fit to Screen.” Celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the NYPL’s Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism, the institution will be presenting five films set in the world of newspaper and magazine publishing, taking place on successive Thursday nights in the Bruno Walter Auditorium, with each program including a postscreening discussion. The festival begins May 31 with Shattered Glass (Billy Ray, 2003), which tells the story of disgraced New Republic reporter Stephen Glass; professor Adam L. Penenberg, who broke the story for Forbes, will be on hand to talk about it. On June 7, New York Times golf writer Karen Crouse will discuss female sports reporters following a screening of the classic Katharine Hepburn / Spencer Tracy battle of the sexes Woman of the Year (George Stevens, 1942). On June 14, gossip columnists George Rush and Lindsay Powers will dish it out after Sweet Smell of Success (Alexander Mackendrick, 1957), the Walter Winchell-inspired tale starring Burt Lancaster as columnist J. J. Hunsecker and Tony Curtis as his protégé, Sidney Falco. On June 21, Marina Goldovskaya will talk about and screen her 2011 documentary, A Bitter Taste of Freedom, which tells the tragic story of Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya. The series concludes on June 28 with one of the most famous bombs ever made, The Bonfire of the Vanities (Brian De Palma, 1990), with Julie Salamon, author of The Devil’s Candy: The Bonfire of the Vanities Goes to Hollywood, ready to share some inside tidbits following the screening.

POST PLASTICA

POST PLASTICA is a multimedia collaboration between PS 122 and El Museo del Barrio

El Teatro, El Museo del Barrio
1230 Fifth Ave. at 104th St.
May 31 – June 3, $20, 7:30
212-352-3101
www.ps122.org

PS 122 and El Museo del Barrio have joined forces to present the multimedia performance Post Plastica, a virtual fantasy that imagines the future of art as well as the world itself. Created by sisters Ela Troyano and Alina Troyano, who is also known as Carmelita Tropicana, Post Plastica stars Tropicana as a woman who gets a Botox injection that puts her in a coma, sending her off on an adventure that includes a woman-bear scientist played by Becca Blackwell (Untitled Feminist Show) and the title character, played by Erin Markey (Green Eyes). A mix of video and live performance, Post Plastica features production design by Aliza Shvarts, costumes by Yail Romagoza, lighting by Chris Hudacs, and projections by Uzi Parnes. Each evening will be preceded by a special event at El Museo beginning at 6:00, including an exhibit of stereoscopic imagery by Richard Pell on May 31, the lecture/demonstration “Meet the Celebrity” with Fufurufu and Nao Bustamente on June 1, an “Urban Beekeeping” discussion with Guillermo Fernandez and Jennifer Monson on June 2, and the “Normal Is Good” interview between Shvars and Romagoza on June 3.

THE FESTIVAL OF RUSSIAN ARTS

Yuri Kara’s adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s THE MASTER AND MARGARITA is part of Russian festival examining literature, film, and more

Multiple locations throughout Manhattan
Through June 6
Admission: free
causaartium.org

The inaugural Festival of Russian Arts is under way, comprising special events around the city through June 6. Officially subtitled “New York’s Entry into the Rich and Dynamic World of Russian Art and Culture,” the festival includes film screenings, literary readings, panel discussions, and receptions. On Saturday, May 26, at 4:00, playwright Yaroslava Pulinovich, translator John Freedman, and director Tamilla Woodard will participate in “I Won! A Staged Reading and Open Discussion” at the Little Times Square Theatre, featuring a pair of one-act, one-woman shows, I Won! and Natasha’s Dream. On May 29 at 5:30, Pulinovich will join Irina Bogatyreva, Polina Klyukina, and moderator Jenny Lyn Bader for the talk “Shattered Icons: The Demise of Heroes in America and Russia” at the New York Public Library’s Berger Forum. On May 31, Cathy Nepomnyashchy will lead the discussion “Writers at the Flashpoint: New Russian Writing & the Riddle of the Caucasus” at the Connor Room at the Mid-Manhattan Library with Arslan Khasavov, Alisa Ganieva, and Sergei Shargunov. From June 1 to June 6, “Diverging Perspectives: Filming Russian Literature in Russia and in the West” will screen various versions of such literary classics as Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov (by Richard Brooks, Petr Zelenka, and Ivan Pyryev), Nikolai Gogol’s The Overcoat (by Alberto Lattuada, Grigori Kozintsev & Leonid Trauberg, Aleksey Batalov, and Michael McCarthy), and Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita (by Yuri Kara, Paul Bryers, and Andrzej Wajda) at the Tribeca Grand Cinema and the NYU Cantor Film Center, with talks before and after most presentations. On June 2, Martin Amis and Olga Slavnikova will discuss “Side by Side: A Conversation with Writers from Different Worlds” in the NYPL’s South Court Auditorium, moderated by Leonard Lopate. All events are free and open to the public.

DANCEAFRICA: ONE AFRICA/MANY RHYTHMS

The inimitable Baba Chuck Davis will once again lead the BAM DanceAfrica celebration on Memorial Day Weekend (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Brooklyn Academy of Music
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
May 25-28, free – $50
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

For some people, it isn’t summer in New York City until the beaches and pools open, or half-day Fridays begin, or the free outdoor music series kick off all over town. For us, summer doesn’t get under way until BAM’s annual DanceAfrica returns, four days of dance, film, music, fashion, food, and one of the best street fairs of the year. The thirty-fifth annual cultural celebration starts in the Howard Gilman Opera House on May 25 with performances by the Adanfo Ensemble, Farafina Kan: The Sound of Africa, United African Dance Troupe, and the BAM/Restoration DanceAfrica Ensemble. On Saturday, Adanfo and Restoration will be joined by the Forces of Nature Dance Theatre and the Oyu Oro Afro-Cuban Dance Company, on Sunday by Illstyle Peace Productions and Creative Outlet, and on Monday by Hamalali Wayunagu Garifuna and Asase Yaa. The inimitable Baba Chuck Davis will participate in an Iconic Artist Talk on May 27 at 6:00 with Kariamu Welsh in the Hillman Attic Studio. The Mason-Jam-Ja Band will play BAMcafé Live on Friday night at 10:00, while the Black Rock Coalition Orchestra Salute to Don Cornelius & Soul Train takes place on Saturday night, followed by a late-night dance party with DJ Idlemind. BAMcinématek will be screening such films as Fabio Caramaschi’s One Way, a Tuareg Journey, Zelalem Woldemariam Ezare’s Lezare (For Today), Abdelkrim Bahloul’s A Trip to Algiers, Akin Omotoso’s Man on Ground, Lionel Rogosin’s Come Back, Africa, Andy Amadi Okoroafor’s Relentless, Daniel Daniel Cattier’s 50 Years of Independence of Congo, Claus Wischmann & Martin Baer’s Kinshasa Symphony, and Michel Ocelot’s Tales of the Night, with Omotoso, Cattier, and Okoroafor on hand for Q&As. Through June 3, BAM will be hosting the exhibition “Waiting for the Queen,” highlighting works on paper by U.S.-based Nigerian artists Njideka Akunyili and Ruby Onyinyechi Amanze, curated by Dexter Wimberly. And on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, the DanceAfrica 2012 Bazaar will transform Ashland Pl. into a global marketplace rich with African and Caribbean cultural heritage, including great food, clothes, art, jewelry, books, music, and so much more. “Ago!” “Amée!!”