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

CONGO WEEK: CONGO IN HARLEM 13

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

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.

BUSHWICK FILM FESTIVAL 2021

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.”

THEATER OF WAR: TAPE

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.

THE CITIES SUMMIT: A LOOK AT THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN CITIES IN A POST-PANDEMIC WORLD

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

CROSSING THE LINE FESTIVAL 2021

CROSSING THE LINE FESTIVAL
FIAF and other locations
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
October 20 – November 6, free – $25
212-355-6100
fiaf.org

Igbo-Nigerian American multidisciplinary artist Okwui Okpokwasili has not let the pandemic lockdown slow her down. After appearing in the Public’s outstanding revival of Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf in the late fall of 2019, Okpokwasili has taken part in Danspace Project’s Platform series, the New Museum exhibition “Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America,” and numerous online discussions and special presentations. Her 2017 film, Bronx Gothic, was screened virtually by BAM. In June, she led a procession through Battery Park City for the River to River Festival. And in May, I caught her captivating project On the way, undone, in which she and a group of performers walked across the High Line wearing futuristic head gear made of light and mirrors, vocalizing as they headed toward Simone Leigh’s Brick House sculpture.

Okpokwasili is now the centerpiece of FIAF’s 2021 Crossing the Line Festival, taking place at multiple locations from October 20 to November 6. Throughout the festival, her video installation Before the whisper becomes the word, made with her regular collaborator, director, and husband, Peter Born, will be on view in the FIAF Gallery, exploring remembrance, community mourning, and history. On October 20 at 7:00, she will speak with festival curator Claude Grunitzky in the FIAF Skyroom about the show. “This installation is a crossroads, a midpoint, a caesura. A place caught between worlds,” she said in a statement. “Can we remember what came before while imagining the shape of a future landscape? We enter mid-song, a song that marks a singular moment in time while also expressing an entire lineage. The song is a container for an unreliable memory. From whose mouth is history born? Whose words are trusted when it comes to the telling of what happened? If the history we learn is that which is spoken aloud, what is learned by listening to the whispers that have not been written?”

Christopher Myers’s Fire in the Head will make its world premiere at FIAF’s Crossing the Line Festival

Okpokwasili will also be presenting On the way, undone at the Weeksville Heritage Center in Brooklyn October 21-23 ($25). In a High Line video, she says about the work, “I hope it’s a kind of medicine . . . an architecture of sound, light, that is in some way trying to imagine a portal, an opening through space and time, and it’s imagining a woman’s future self, a young girl’s future self singing back to her.”

In addition, the festival includes nora chipaumire’s Nehanda, an opera that was excerpted for River to River at the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center and for FIAF will be broadcast in two cycles both online ($15) and in person ($25) at FIAF’s Tinker Auditorium, divided into eight “days”: natives, whites, pungwe, thinkers, komuredhi judhas nemajekenisheni, white verdict, killings, and manifesting, with an artist talk on October 30 at 5:00; a concert by Grammy nominee Somi in Florence Gould Hall on October 28 ($25); Christopher Myers’s Fire in the Head, a tribute to Vaslav Nijinsky with shadow puppets taking place October 29 and 30 ($25, 7:30) at the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association; and Kaneza Schaal’s work-in-progress KLII, November 4-6 in Florence Gould Hall ($25), an exorcism of colonialism and the ghost of King Leopold II, incorporating archival footage and texts by Mark Twain and Patrice Lumumba.

PERICLES 2021

Who: Red Bull Theater
What: Online reading and discussions about Shakespeare’s Pericles
Where: Red Bull Theater YouTube and Facebook
When: Livestreamed events October 4, 11, 18, 25, 28, free with advance RSVP
Why: Last year Red Bull Theater presented “Othello 2020,” a deep dive into the Shakespeare tragedy through performances and discussions. This year Red Bull is digging into one of Shakespeare’s lesser-known works, Pericles, about the Prince of Tyre, who sets out on a series of adventures when the answer to a riddle goes awry. In a statement, Red Bull founding artistic director Jesse Berger explains, “Shakespeare’s Pericles is at the heart and soul of Red Bull in many ways: our founding play, Jacobean in period, hopeful in spirit, and about the power of imagination at its core. ‘It hath been used as restoratives,’ the poet Gower says right at the beginning of the play. To me, this play is about restoring hope and peace after a period of turmoil and tragedy. I’ve always loved the idea of this play as a hero journey, and a play about the healing power of storytelling itself. As the play that began the life of our theater company, it seems most appropriate that we explore this play anew, continuing our journey — toward our twentieth year of existence as a company, reemerging out of the pandemic shutdown, and inviting new voices to be in creative conversation with the play and the Western classical canon.”

Red Bull’s inaugural production, in 2003, featured Daniel Breaker in the title role, with Raphael Nash Thompson as Gower and Cerimon; on October 4, Thompson, who also portrayed Gower in Sir Trevor Nunn’s version at TFANA in 2016, performed the prologue “To sing a song that old was sung” and discussed the play in a RemarkaBULL Podversation with Red Bull associate artistic director Nathan Winkelstein that you can watch here. “Exploring Pericles in 2021” began on October 11 and continues October 18, with BIPOC artists Grantham Coleman, Kimberly Chatterjee, Callie Holly, Mahira Kakkar, Jordan Mahome, Anthony Michael Martinez, Clint Ramos, Kenny Ramos, Madeline Sayet, and Craig Wallace delving into what Pericles means today. On October 25, Kent Gash will direct a livestreamed benefit reading of the play, with Coleman as Pericles. The programming concludes October 28 with an interactive Bull Session featuring Gash, scholar Noémie Ndiaye, and members of the company.

“Over the last two decades, Pericles has been produced around the world more often than in the entire twentieth century,” writes Ndiaye, an assistant professor of English at the University of Chicago. “The play was wildly popular in its own time, and it is now poised to become one of the twenty-first century favorite rediscovered Shakespearean plays. It may have caught the attention of contemporary theatermakers invested in diversifying Shakespeare in part because its geographical location, which moves between ancient Lebanon, Turkey, Libya, and Greece, makes it suitable for cross-cultural multiracial casting. And, certainly Pericles is a fertile terrain for racial investigation. Yet at the same time, the play’s consistent characterization of ‘fairness’ (a word used twenty-three times) as the feminized object of Pericles’s desire and the curative means of his salvation frames his journey as a romantic quest for whiteness and white world-making at the dawn of modernity. It is that fraught and complex racial terrain with which contemporary theatermakers must reckon when they stage Pericles today, finding new creative ways of doing Shakespeare better, Shakespeare with us and for us.”