Big Bird rides on a crescent moon on Met roof (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Who:Alex Da Corte, Shanay Jhaveri What: In-person discussion of Alex Da Corte’s Roof Garden Commission Where: The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, the Met Fifth Avenue When: Friday, October 29, free with museum admission and advance RSVP, 5:30 (installation on view through October 31) Why: In previous works, Camden-born, Philadelphia-based artist Alex Da Corte has embodied such famous real and fictional figures as Eminem, Mr. Rogers, and the Wicked Witch of the West. For his commission on the Met’s Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden, As Long as the Sun Lasts, Da Corte took on the persona of Jim Henson in creating a work that melds childhood memories with visions of the endless sky, inspired by Alexander Calder’s mobiles and sculpture, Little Tikes plastic outdoor activity gyms, Donna Summer’s Four Seasons of Love album cover, the blue Garibaldo character from the Brazilian version of Sesame Street that he watched as a kid in Venezuela, the song from the 1985 movie Follow That Bird in which Big Bird gets painted blue, and the Italo Calvino titular short story.
Alex Da Corte’s As Long as the Sun Lasts continues through Halloween (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
The result is a playful and colorful kinetic sculpture that moves with the wind as Big Bird, covered in more than seven thousand handmade feathers, rides around on a crescent moon, holding on to a ladder of hope. Referring to his transformation into Henson, Da Corte says in a Met interview with curator Shanay Jhaveri, “It stems from thinking about characters I loved or didn’t understand and wanted to understand more. And I see Jim as quite a thoughtful maker.” For those who want to understand more about the installation, which is on view through October 31, Da Corte — likely in costume as Henson — and Jhaveri will sit down for another talk, in the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium at the Met on October 29 at 5:30.
River L. Ramirez will discuss their latest project, GhostFolk, in a live BAC Zoom talk
Who:River L. Ramirez, Lou Tides, Sarah Galdes, Morgan Bassichis What: Streaming performance and live virtual discussion Where:Baryshnikov Arts Center online When: Live Zoom discussion October 26, free with RSVP, 7:00; performance available on demand through November 1 at 5:00, free Why: “This is a piece about life and living and celebrating the innate ability that we all have here on Earth to love, even if there’s nothing to love sometimes, even if it’s just for you, even if it’s, you know, a feeling that’s kind of cavernous and feels so lonely,” River L. Ramirez says in their introduction to the virtual piece GhostFolk, streaming for free from the Baryshnikov Arts Center through November 1. In the forty-minute work, the Queens-based musician and comedian plays guitar and tells stories in a contemporary song cycle that explores everyday life, joined by Teeny Lieberson/Lou Tides on bass and background vocals and Sarah Galdes on drums, looking like a hip Halloween trio, with costumes by Peter Smith, makeup by Angelo Balassone, and spooky lighting by Devin Cameron. “A new day begins,” Ramirez declares in the first tune.
Hello! A video I made for baryshnikov Art Center is out now. It’s haha, it’s lalalaaa, and other stuff. Go see it! It’s up u til November 1st. :,)
Over the course of forty minutes, they explore quarantine, read personal poems, find the face of Jesus in a plantain, call for babies to help us out of the mess we’re in, search for what’s next, explain that trolls are real, scream and screech, and listen to an animated frog as, occasionally, a figure in a sheet with holes dances in solitude. GhostFolk was filmed and edited by Tatyana Tenenbaum at BAC’s Jerome Robbins Theater; Tenenbaum, a star of the pandemic lockdown, has also shot such BAC works as Landrover and Holland Andrews’s Museum of Calm. On October 26 at 7:00, Ramirez, whose social media name is Pile of Tears and who used to do standup as Lorelei Ramirez, will discuss GhostFolk and more with comedian Morgan Bassichis in a live Zoom Q&A.
Who: Lebert Sandy Bethune, Herb Boyd, Milton Allimadi, Lubangi Muniania, more What: Thirteenth annual Congo in Harlem festival Where:Maysles Documentary Center, 343 Lenox Ave. / Malcolm X Blvd. between 127th and 128th Sts. When: Saturday, October 23, and Sunday, October 24, $12 (virtual screenings free) Why: The Maysles Documentary Center’s thirteenth annual Congo in Harlem festival, part of Congo Week, concludes its hybrid presentation this weekend with a trio of in-person screenings, two of which are followed by live discussions. On October 23 at 7:30, Maysles will show Bill Stephens’s raw, recently rediscovered, untranslated, and unfinished 1971 film, Congo Oyé, made in collaboration with Chris Marker, Paul and Carole Roussopoulas, and Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver, consisting of forty-five minutes of remarkable footage of Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver’s visit to Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of the Congo. At the same time, the Harlem-based theater will screen Lebert Bethune and John Taylor’s 1966 doc, Malcolm X: Struggle for Freedom, with Bethune, scholar and activist Herb Boyd, and journalist Milton Allimadi on hand to talk about the film, which was shot in Paris shortly before the controversial leader’s assassination.
Bill Stephens’s recently rediscovered Congo Oyé, is part of Maysles Documentary Center’s Congo in Harlem festival
On October 24 at 4:00, Congolese art educator Lubangi Muniania will moderate a discussion after a screening of Mark Kidel’s 1989 film, New York: Secret African City, in which scholar Robert Farris Thompson, who has been writing and teaching about African art and culture since 1958, shares his iconographic studies of the diaspora in New York, beginning with a trip across the Brooklyn Bridge in which Thompson explains, “We’re undergoing a ritual moment because we’re leaving Wall Street, we’re leaving Madison Avenue, we’re leaving white New York, and we’re entering one of the blackest of the cultural segments of New York.” Tickets to the events are $12 each. In addition, free virtual screenings continue through October 24 of Jihan El-Tahri’s L’Afrique en Morceaux (Africa in Pieces), Douglas Ntimasiemi and Raffi Aghekian’s Kinshasa Mboka Té (Kinshasa Wicked Land), Mathieu Roy’s Les Creuseurs (The Diggers), Kidel’s Pygmies in Paris, Sammy Baloji and David Bernatchez’s Rumba Rules: New Genealogies, Moimi Wezam’s Zero, and the above-mentioned works as well as more than a dozen shorts.
SONGS FOR ’DRELLA (Ed Lachman, 1990)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
October 22-27
212-727-8110 filmforum.org
In December 1989, Velvet Underground cofounders John Cale and Lou Reed took the stage at BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House and performed a song cycle in honor of Andy Warhol, who had played a pivotal role in the group’s success. The Pittsburgh-born Pop artist had died in February 1987 at the age of fifty-eight; although Cale and Reed had had a long falling-out, they reunited at Warhol’s funeral at the suggestion of artist Julian Schnabel. Commissioned by BAM and St. Ann’s, Songs for ’Drella — named after one of Warhol’s nicknames, a combination of Dracula and Cinderella — was released as a concert film and recorded for an album. The work is filled with factual details and anecdotes of Warhol’s life and career, from his relationship with his mother to his years at the Factory, from his 1967 shooting at the hands of Valerie Solanis to his dedication to his craft.
Directed, photographed, and produced by Ed Lachman, the two-time Oscar-nominated cinematographer of such films as Desperately Seeking Susan,Mississippi Masala,Far from Heaven, and Carol, the concert movie has just undergone a 4K restoration supervised by Lachman that premiered at the New York Film Festival a few weeks ago and is now running October 22-27 at Film Forum, with Lachman participating in Q&As following the 5:45 screenings on October 22, 23, and 24. (Producer Carolyn Hepburn will introduce the 5:45 show on October 27.) Songs for ’Drella is an intimate portrait not only of Warhol but of Cale and Reed, who sit across from each other onstage, Cale on the left, playing keyboards and violin, Reed on the right on guitars. There is no between-song patter or introductions; they just play the music as Robert Wierzel’s lighting shifts from black-and-white to splashes of blue and red. Photos of Warhol and some of his works (Electric Chair,Mona Lisa,Gun) are occasionally projected onto a screen on the back wall.
“When you’re growing up in a small town / Bad skin, bad eyes — gay and fatty / People look at you funny / When you’re in a small town / My father worked in construction / It’s not something for which I’m suited / Oh — what is something for which you are suited? / Getting out of here,” Reed sings on the opener, “Smalltown.” Cale and Reed share an infectious smile before “Style It Takes,” in which Cale sings, “I’ve got a Brillo box and I say it’s art / It’s the same one you can buy at any supermarket / ’Cause I’ve got the style it takes / And you’ve got the people it takes / This is a rock group called the Velvet Underground / I show movies of them / Do you like their sound / ’Cause they have a style that grates and I have art to make.”
John Cale and Lou Reed reunited to honor Andy Warhol in Songs for ’Drella
Cale and Reed reflect more on their association with Warhol in “A Dream.” Cale sings as Warhol, “And seeing John made me think of the Velvets / And I had been thinking about them / when I was on St. Marks Place / going to that new gallery those sweet new kids have opened / But they thought I was old / And then I saw the old DOM / the old club where we did our first shows / It was so great / And I don’t understand about that Velvets first album / I mean, I did the cover / and I was the producer / and I always see it repackaged / and I’ve never gotten a penny from it / How could that be / I should call Henry / But it was good seeing John / I did a cover for him / but I did it in black and white and he changed it to color / It would have been worth more if he’d left it my way / But you can never tell anybody anything / I’ve learned that.”
The song later turns the focus on Reed, recalling, “And then I saw Lou / I’m so mad at him / Lou Reed got married and didn’t invite me / I mean, is it because he thought I’d bring too many people? / I don’t get it / He could have at least called / I mean, he’s doing so great / Why doesn’t he call me? / I saw him at the MTV show / and he was one row away and he didn’t even say hello / I don’t get it / You know I hate Lou / I really do / He won’t even hire us for his videos / And I was so proud of him.”
Reed does say hello — and goodbye — on the closer, “Hello It’s Me.” With Cale on violin, Reed stands up with his guitar and fondly sings, “Oh well, now, Andy — I guess we’ve got to go / I wish some way somehow you like this little show / I know it’s late in coming / But it’s the only way I know / Hello, it’s me / Goodnight, Andy / Goodbye, Andy.”
It’s a tender way to end a beautiful performance, but Lachman has added a special treat after the credits, with one final anecdote and the original trailer he made for Reed’s 1974 song cycle, Berlin. In addition, Songs for ’Drella is an excellent companion piece for the new Todd Haynes documentary, The Velvet Underground, which is also screening at Film Forum.
Lynn Cohen uncovers a secret about her late husband in Emma without Edmund
BUSHWICK FILM FESTIVAL
Online, Lot45, Regal Cinema, Circa Brewing Co.
October 20-24, $5-$7 per virtual film, $60-$250 per bundle, $15 in-person screenings www.bushwickfilmfestival.com
One of my favorite shorts in the fourteenth annual Bushwick Film Festival, running online and in person October 20-24, is Nicolas Minas’s thirteen-minute heart-tugger, Emma without Edmund. Part of the “Defining Stages” program, the film stars Lynn Cohen as a widow who discovers that her recently deceased husband had an affair when they were much younger and insists on finding out more about it. Her husband is played by her real-life spouse, Ronald Cohen. I used to see the two of them regularly at the theater, always making sure to say hello. I saw her many times onstage and onscreen as well; she appeared in such television shows as Law & Order,Damages, and Sex and the City, such films as Vanya on 42nd St.,Munich, and The Hunger Games, and such plays as Hamlet with Kevin Kline, Macbeth with Liev Schreiber, and I Remember Mama with an all-star cast of older actresses.
With theaters opening up again, I miss Cohen, who passed away in February 2020 at the age of eighty-six; she and Ronald had been married for fifty-five years, so seeing them together in Emma without Edmund is a special moment. The touching film is being shown October 23 at the Regal Cinema on Court St. with Erica Eng’s Americanized, Naaji Sky Adzimah’s 27 Candles, Ashley Paige Brim’s The Goldfish, and Sarah Kamaras and Harry Spitzer’s The Two Bees, an adorable documentary about longtime roommates Bette and Bonnie, who are ninety-five and recount details from their seventy-year friendship.
The film festival gets under way with an opening-night reception on October 20 at Lot45 and is highlighted by several in-person shorts programs on October 23 at Regal, including “Defining Stages,” “Art as Resistance,” “Family Lies,” and “Campy Comedies” in addition to Kate Beacom and Louis Legge’s full-length Rehab Cabin and a BFF Happy Hour from 2:00 to midnight at Circa Brewing Co. All films are also available online, either individually or in packaged bundles, including all 133 shorts and features from more than two dozen countries for $250. On October 24 from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm, the free, online Movie Industry Conference consists of such panel discussions as “Dive into Development/Production/Distribution,” “Heard City Presents Uplifting Underrepresented Voices,” “Meet the Producers,” and “NFTs and the Creative Future.”
Who: Tracie Thoms, David Denman, Nyasha Hatendi, Bryan Doerries, more What: Livestreamed play reading followed by community discussion Where:Theater of War Productions Zoom When: Thursday, October 21, free with advance RSVP, 7:00 Why: Theater of War’s live presentations of play readings followed by community discussions continue October 21 with an investigation into consent, power dynamics, and sexual assault. The evening begins with a dramatic reading of scenes from Stephen Belber’s 1999 play, Tape, about two friends who meet with a woman one of them might have date raped back in high school; it was made into a 2001 film by Richard Linklater starring Ethan Hawke, Robert Sean Leonard, and Uma Thurman. The reading will be performed by Tracie Thoms, David Denman, and Nyasha Hatendi, helmed by Theater of War artistic director Bryan Doerries. Immediately following the reading, Doerris will facilitate a discussion held in conjunction with Go Purple Day.
“Awareness is the first defense against domestic violence, and every year, with NYC Go Purple, we keep this important issue in front of New Yorkers,” Mayor’s Office to End Domestic and Gender-Based Violence commissioner Cecile Noel said in a statement. “Domestic violence awareness and prevention is not confined to one day of the year. NYC Go Purple reminds us that, every day, every New Yorker can play an important role in ending domestic violence.”
On October 28, Doerries will speak with author Margaret Atwood about social activism and his new translation of the Oedipus Trilogy; on October 27, David Patrick Kelly, Glenn Davis, Amy Ryan, David Strathairn, Marjolaine Goldsmith, and Jumaane Williams will perform Oedipus the King, followed by a discussion on the pandemic and the climate crisis hosted by the University of Notre Dame as part of its “Care for Our Common Home: Just Transition to a Sustainable Future” forum.
Who: Frank Gehry, Eric Garcetti, Vishaan Chakrabarti, Kunlé Adeyemi, Angela Hsu, more What: Livestreamed discussion Where:92nd St. Y online When: Wednesday, October 20, free, noon – 3:00 Why: On October 20, the 92nd St. Y is convening a three-hour summit on the future of American cities in light of health crises, climate change, growing income inequality, transportation complications, and other critical matters. The seven panels and two keynotes will feature prominent architects, designers, urban planners, arts leaders, and others offering ways to face numerous problems, including architect Frank Gehry, LA mayor Eric Garcetti, Citizen University cofounder and CEO Eric Liu, Practice for Architecture and Urbanism founder and creative director Vishaan Chakrabarti, BAM president emerita Karen Brooks Hopkins, architect and professor Kunlé Adeyemi, UNC public policy assistant professor Angela Hsu, and New York City Employment and Training Coalition CEO Jose Ortiz Jr.
“The role of cities in American life has remained essential throughout the pandemic, notwithstanding early predictions to the contrary,” 92Y CEO Seth Pinsky announced in a statement. “That said, it is clear that as a result of the pandemic, the fundamental changes that our cities were undergoing even pre-COVID have only accelerated. Adapting to climate change, investing in infrastructure, including open spaces and parks, distributing prosperity more evenly, while ensuring that business, including the arts and entertainment, thrive — those are just some of the big issues of the day.” Virtual admission is free; below is the full lineup.
Opening Keynote: “Frank Gehry on the Future of Cities,” moderated by Alex Ross
“The Renewal of the American City,” with Anne-Marie Slaughter, Eric Liu, and Ai-Jen Poo
“Arts and the City,” with Karen Brooks Hopkins and Seth Pinsky
“The Future of New York City,” with Vishaan Chakrabarti, Bruce Katz, and Julie Samuels
“Jane Jacobs’s Big Ideas,” with Rana Foroohar
“Cities on the Frontlines of Climate Change,” with Angel Hsu, Rohit Aggarwala, Kunlé Adeyemi, and Emily Tisch Sussman
“The Equitable City: A Design for Fairer Living,” with Ifeoma Ebo, Jose Ortiz Jr., and Jennifer Rittner
Closing Keynote: “How Do Megacities Confront Their Biggest Challenge, Climate Change?” with Eric Garcetti
