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

SEE IT BIG! INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS

Veronica Cartwright can’t take any more in chilling remake of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS

INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (Philip Kaufman, 1978)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Saturday, April 28, free with museum admission, 6:00
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us

Based on a magazine serial by Jack Finney, Don Siegel’s 1956 classic, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, was the ultimate thriller about cold war paranoia. Twenty-two years later, in a nation just beginning to come to grips with the failure of the Vietnam War, Philip Kaufman (The Right Stuff, Quills) remade the film, moving the location north to San Francisco from the original’s Los Angeles. When health inspector Matthew Bennell (Donald Sutherland) and lab scientist Elizabeth Driscoll (Brooke Adams) suspect that people, while they sleep, are being replaced by pod replicas, they have a hard time making anyone believe them, especially Dr. David Kibner (Leonary Nimoy), who takes the Freudian route instead. But when Jack and Nancy Bellicec (Jeff Goldblum and Veronica Cartwright) seem to come up with some physical proof, things begin to get far more serious — and much more dangerous. Kaufman’s film is one of the best remakes ever made, paying proper homage to the original while standing up on its own, with an unforgettable ending (as well as an unforgettable dog). It cleverly captures the building selfishness of the late 1970s, which would lead directly into the Reagan era. As an added treat, the film includes a whole bunch of cameos, including Siegel as a taxi driver, Robert Duvall as a priest, and Kevin McCarthy, who starred as Dr. Miles Bennell in the original, still on the run, trying desperately to make someone believe him. The sc-fi thriller is screening at the Museum of the Moving Image as part of the institution’s See It Big! series and will be introduced by Columbia professor and author Annette Insdorf, who will also be signing copies of her latest book, Contemporary Film Directors: Philip Kaufman (University of Illinois Press, March 2012, $22).

INVENTING OUR LIFE: THE KIBBUTZ EXPERIMENT

Compelling documentary examines the history of the kibbutz movement in Israel

INVENTING OUR LIFE: THE KIBBUTZ EXPERIMENT (Toby Perl Freilich, 2012)
Quad Cinema
34 West 13th St.
Opens Wednesday, April 25
212-255-2243
www.quadcinema.com
firstrunfeatures.com

Inspired by her eighteen-year-old sister’s move to a kibbutz back in 1968, Toby Perl Freilich has written, directed, and produced the compelling documentary Inventing Our Life: The Kibbutz Experiment. Freilich (Secret Lives: Hidden Children & Their Rescuers) traces the hundred-year history of the kibbutz movement in Israel by meeting with three generations of current and former kibbutzniks, who discuss what life was like on such collectives as Degania, Hulda, and Sasa. Mixing in archival footage and black-and-white and color home movies that include some of the very people she is speaking with, Freilich delves into the daily life of the kibbutz, beginning with the earliest immigrants settling a vast wasteland and organizing socialist communes in which most everything was shared; there was no separation of wealth, children were reared and educated together mostly outside the home, and food was eaten in large dining halls that served as the center of the community’s social life. Although critical to the success of the new state of Israel in 1948, the kibbutz grew out of favor by the 1980s as the younger generation began to leave, government support waned, and privatization beckoned. Such historians and philosophers as Avishai Margalit, Moshe Halbertal, and Menachem Brinker place the kibbutz in historical context as men, women, and children talk about what they loved — and hated — about living on a kibbutz. Freilich will be at the Quad for Q&As following the 7:10 screenings on Friday and Saturday and the 5:00 show on Sunday.

ERNIE KOVACS AND EDIE ADAMS

The lasting influence of television innovators Ernie Kovacs and Edie Adams will be celebrated at Museum of the Moving Image

Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Friday, April 27, $15, 7:00
Series runs through May 27
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us

Last April, the Paley Center paid tribute to Ernie Kovacs, one of television’s earliest pioneers, a comedic innovator who created such all-time-great characters as Percy Dovetonsils, Wolfgang Von Sauerbraten, Matzoh Hepplewhite, Pierre Ragout, and Eugene. The cigar-chomping Kovacs’s sketch comedy, which often included his wife, Edie Adams, was way ahead of its time, parodying Madison Ave., classical music, and television itself, all done with a sly wink and a nod. Tragically, the Trenton-born Kovacs died in a car accident in Los Angeles in 1962, just short of his forty-third birthday. The Museum of the Moving Image is honoring Kovacs and Adams, who went on to host her own well-regarded variety shows following her husband’s death, with the first-ever dual retrospective of the remarkable team on the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of Kovacs’s television debut. Curated by Ben Model, the archivist for the Kovacs and Adams estates who is best known in New York for his live piano accompaniment to screenings of silent films, the series begins April 27 with a panel discussion that examines the continuing influence that Kovacs and Adams have had on the medium, with Broadway legend Harold Prince, comedy writer Alan Zweibel, television critic David Bianculli, journalist Jeff Greenfield, and Model, moderated by comedian Robert Klein. The tribute continues at the museum through May 27 with archival material playing in the TV Lounge, “Kovacs for Kids” presentations on May 19-20, and an artwork by Jim Isermann added to the permanent exhibition “Behind the Screen.”

CHUNKY MOVE: FAKER

Chunky Move founder Gideon Obarzanek wonders what it’s all been about in FAKER (photo by Heidrun Lohr)

Joyce SoHo
155 Mercer St. between Houston & Prince Sts.
April 25-29, May 2-6, $22
212-242-0800
www.joyce.org
www.chunkymove.com

Since 1995, when he founded the Australian company Chunky Move, artistic director Gideon Obarzanek has been creating unique and unusual pieces that range from the extremely high-tech (Mortal Engine) to the charmingly low budget (I Like This) to the technologically cutting edge (Glow.) As he prepares to hand over the reins of the company to new artistic director Anouk van Dijk this July, he is saying farewell by starring in a production for the first time in ten years, the deeply personal solo show Faker. Beginning with Obarzanek sitting at a desk reading an e-mail he received from a young dancer, he roams about the stage, questions his abilities, looks back at his successes and failures, and wonders what it has all been about. Faker runs Wednesday through Sunday the next two weeks; you can find out even more about Obarzanek when he participates in a Q&A following the April 27 performance.

EARTH DAY 2012: MOBILIZE THE EARTH

The forty-second annual Earth Day, in which people around the world celebrate the planet and stress the importance of environmental wisdom, is taking place all weekend with a spate of activities throughout the metropolitan area. This year’s global theme is “Mobilize the Earth” with the express purpose to emphasize that “the Earth won’t wait,” and indeed it won’t. At Grand Central Terminal on Saturday, there will be storytelling, a food and nutrition panel, a special exhibit, and concerts by the Nightmare River Band, Conveyor, Annie and the Bee Keepers, FlyinFisch, the Whispering Tree, Push Method, and Kinetics & One Love. On Saturday night at 7:45, Rooftop Films will host a free screening of Sir David Attenborough’s widely acclaimed Planet Earth series, followed by the world premiere of the documentary The Making of Planet Earth, at Solar One; be sure to RSVP in advance here. And on the High Line on Sunday, performance artist Alison Knowles will invite visitors to help her make a huge salad at the West Sixteenth St. area from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm; the High Line will also host talks with gardeners, live music by the family-friendly On the Lam Brass Band, and interactive field stations.

ANNUALS, BIENNIALS, TRIENNIALS

Lesley Dill’s “Woman in Dress with Star” and Glenn Ligon’s untitled oil painting are cleverly juxtaposed at 2012 Annual (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

THE ANNUAL: 2012
National Academy Museum
1083 Fifth Ave. at 89th St.
Wednesday – Sunday through April 29, $12, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-369-4880
www.nationalacademy.org

In an artistic convergence that occurs only once every six years, the National Academy’s annual, the Whitney’s biennial, and the New Museum’s triennial are all on view at the same time. And in a perhaps unexpected convergence, all three reveal that less is more with shows that avoid jam-packing galleries with brand-name artists and instead concentrate on fewer works with a focus on installation. At the National Academy, a mix of cross-generational academicians and invited non-academicians makes for an effective examination of contemporary American art, albeit through a more traditional lens than at the biennial and the triennial, using juxtaposition as a means to an end. Figurative paintings by Burton Silverman, Daniel Bennett Schwartz, Gillian Pederson-Krag, and Philip Pearlstein are seen alongside abstract works by Dorothea Rockburne, Richard Mayhew, David Driskell, and Eric Aho. Sculptures by Barbara Chase-Riboud, Jeffrey Schiff, and Arlene Shechet line the center of a hallway of paintings. Lesley Dill’s “Woman in Dress with Star” stands in front of Glenn Ligon’s untitled oil painting, each incorporating text. The annual also includes a trio of video installations: Joan Jonas’s “Lines in the Sand,” Kate Gilmore’s “Break of Day,” and Carrie Mae Weems’s three-channel “Afro-Chic,” which keeps the funk pumping on the second floor. The 2012 Annual is the best the National Academy has put on in several years.

Gisèle Vienne with Dennis Cooper, Stephen O’Malley, and Peter Rehberg, “Last Spring: A Prequel,” mixed-media installation, 2011 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

WHITNEY BIENNIAL 2012
Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Fifth Ave. at 75th St.
Wednesday – Sunday through May 27, $12, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm (pay what you wish Fridays 6:00 -9:00)
212-570-3600
www.whitney.org

“Art discourse serves to maintain links among artistic subfields and to create a continuum between practices that may be completely incommensurable in terms of their economic conditions and social as well as artistic values,” Andrea Fraser writes in “There’s no place like home,” an essay that serves as her contribution to the 2012 Whitney Biennial. “This may make art discourse one of the most consequential—and problematic—institutions in the art world today, along with mega-museums that aim to be all things to all people and survey exhibitions (like the Whitney Biennial) that offer up incomparable practices for comparison.” As it turns out, curators Elisabeth Sussman and Jay Sanders have not turned the biennial into all things for all people, instead putting together a manageable collection of contemporary American art that leans heavily toward performance and installation, showing off the space of the Marcel Breuer building instead of cluttering every nook and cranny with anything and everything. Visitors can walk through Oscar Tuazon’s “For Hire,” Georgia Sagri’s “Working the No Work,” and Wu Tsang’s “Green Room” and watch the New York City Players get ready for Richard Maxwell’s new site-specific play in an open dressing room. Gisèle Vienne’s “Last Spring: A Prequel” features a young animatronic teen standing in a corner, mumbling text by Dennis Cooper. More traditional art forms like painting and photography tend to get lost in these kinds of shows, but the disciplines are well represented by Nicole Eisenman’s uneasy figures, Andrew Masullo’s eye-catching small canvases filled with bright colors and geometric patterns, and Latoya Ruby Frazier’s photographic examination of her hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania. If you’re thirsting for some music, there’s Lutz Bacher’s “Pipe Organ,” Lucy Raven’s “What Manchester Does Today, the Rest of the World Does Tomorrow” player piano, and Werner Herzog’s “Hearsay of the Soul,” a four-channel video installation that brings together Hercules Segers’s etchings with music by Ernst Reijseger. And then there’s Robert Gober’s exploration of the career of Forrest Bess, which has to be seen to be believed. For a closer look at the myriad live performances, talks, and workshops, visit here.

Triennial visitors can take a seat on Slavs and Tatars’ “PrayWay” while contemplating Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s oil paintings (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

THE UNGOVERNABLES: 2012 NEW MUSEUM TRIENNIAL
New Museum
235 Bowery at Prince St.
Wednesday – Sunday through April 22, $12, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm (free Thursdays 7:00 -9:00)
212-219-1222
www.newmuseum.org

Three years ago, the New Museum’s inaugural triennial featured international artists who were all younger than Jesus was at his death at age thirty-three. The 2012 edition, “The Ungovernables,” comprises sculpture, painting, video, and installation that challenge the status quo often in subtle ways, commenting on world economics, corporatization, and politics through creative methods. In Amalia Pica’s “Eavesdropping,” a group of drinking glasses stick out from a wall, referencing both the surveillance and the digital age. Danh Vo’s “We the People” consists of sheets of pounded copper that are actually re-creations of the skin of the Statue of Liberty, a different way to look at freedom. Pratchaya Phinthong’s “What I learned I no longer know; the little I still know, I guessed” is a square collection of Zimbabwean paper money whose specific value continually decreases. Cinthia Marcelle and Tiago Mata Machado’s O Século (The Century) shows debris being thrown from a building, resulting in a visual and aural cacophony of chaos. The Propeller Group’s multichannel “TVC Communism” details the creation of a modern advertising campaign selling communism. Slavs and Tatars’ “PrayWay” is a folded prayer carpet on which visitors are invited to sit and get lost in contemplation that need not be religious. Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s oil paintings examine race and gender. Hassan Khan’s short video, Jewel, depicts two men dancing using signifiers set to a propulsive Cairene song. José Antonio Vega Macotela’s “Time Exchange” details a four-year collaboration with Mexican prisoners in which tasks are exchanged instead of money. Pilvi Takala’s riotous “The Trainee” follows the Finnish-born artist’s intervention as she pretends to be working in a Deloitte office. And Gabriel Sierra’s interventions involve placing such objects as a ladder and a level, which he refers to as devils, directly into the walls of the museum. As with the National Academy’s Annual and the Whitney Biennial, “The Ungovernables” avoids clutter and overt political statements, steering clear of the obvious and instead offering a varied and intriguing look at the contemporary art world

IMAGES FROM THE EDGE: JAR CITY

Tense thriller based on award-winning book is part of Icelandic film series at Lincoln Center

CLASSIC & CONTEMPORARY ICELANDIC CINEMA: JAR CITY (MYRIN) (Baltasar Kormákur, 2006)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Friday, April 20, 6:15; Tuesday, April 24, 2:00
Series runs April 18-26
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com

Writer-director Baltasar Kormákur’s adaptation of Arnaldur Indriðason’s award-winning novel Jar City (Myrin) is a bleak but compelling police procedural that focuses on a fact-based controversial government initiative that is cataloging genetic research on all Icelandic families. When an aging man named Holberg (Thorsteinn Gunnarsson) is murdered in his home, brooding inspector Erlendur (Ingvar E. Sigurdsson) heads the investigation into the death, leading him to a thirty-year-old rape, a dirty cop, a trio of criminals (one of whom has been missing for a quarter century), a woman who killed herself shortly after her four-year-old daughter died, and a doctor who collects body parts. The divorced Erlendur also has to deal with his troubled daughter (Augusta Eva Erlendsdottir), a pregnant drug addict who hangs out with some very sketchy company. Meanwhile, a mysterious man (Atli Rafn Sigurdarson) is up to something following the traumatic death of his young daughter. Kormakur weaves together the story line of the two fathers side by side — in the book, the unidentified man appears only near the conclusion, although who he is still remains a mystery for most of the film — centering on the complex relationship between parents and children and what gets passed down from generation to generation, both on the outside and the inside. Sigurdsson plays Erlendur with a cautious seriousness, the only humor coming from the way he treats his goofy partner, Sigurdur Oli (Bjorn Hlynur Haraldsson). Iceland’s entry for the 2007 Foreign-Language Oscar and winner of the Crystal Globe at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, Jar City is a dark, tense intellectual thriller. Indriðason has turned Erlendur into a continuing character in such follow-ups as Silence of the Grave and Voices; here’s hoping Kormákur and Sigurdsson do the same. Jar City will be screening on April 20 and 24 at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s “Images from the Edge: Classic & Contemporary Icelandic Cinema” series, comprising nineteen works from Iceland ranging from Loftur Guðmundsson’s 1949 Between Mountain and Shore and Ævar Kvaran’s 1950 The Last Farm in the Valley to Árni Ásgeirsson’s 2010 Undercurrent and Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurðsson’s 2011 Either Way, with the directors present for many of the screenings, including Kormákur following the 6:15 showing of Jar City on April 20.