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NYFF62 HOT PICKS

Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn) and Ani (Mikey Madison) set off on a frenetic romance in Anora

MAIN SLATE: ANORA (Sean Baker, 2024)
Film at Lincoln Center
Saturday, September 28, 6:15
Sunday, September 29, noon
www.filmlinc.org

The sixty-second edition of the New York Film Festival is under way, and the first standout is Sean Baker’s Anora.

Winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes, Anora is a nonstop wild ride through the frenetic, unpredictable relationship between a stripper and the scion of a Russian oligarch. It starts out luridly but quickly morphs into a touching and surprisingly human tale.

Mikey Madison, who starred in the 2022 Scream sequel, shows off her mighty pipes in the film, making a career breakthrough as Ani, a stripper living in a Brighton Beach railroad apartment who catches the eye of Ivan Zakharov (Mark Eydelshteyn), who buys her for a week, lighting up the nights in a cavalcade of sex and drugs while developing what appears to be turning into a real relationship. But when his parents, Nikolai (Aleksei Serebryakov) and Galina (Darya Ekamasova), find out about it, they sic their guard dogs, Igor (Yura Borisov), Toros (Karren Karagulian), and Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan), on them, leading to hilariously violent scenes as Ani sets out to prove that she is not a hooker and is not ashamed of being a sex worker.

Written, edited, and directed by Baker, whose previous work includes Take Out, Tangerine, The Florida Project, and Red Rocket, Anora is an aggressive, in-your-face trip that races from Coney Island to Las Vegas, with lush cinematography by Drew Daniels, a pulsating score by Matthew Hearon-Smith, and fanciful costumes by Jocelyn Pierce.

Madison, a regular on Better Things and Lady in the Lake, is fearless as Ani, a determined young woman who knows what she wants and is not afraid to say it out loud and fight for it. The coda is disappointing — it would have been much better if the film ended before the final moments in the car — but otherwise Anora is a thrilling cinematic experience.

Anora is screening September 28 and 29, with Baker and Madison on hand for Q&As. The ferocious film will then return to Lincoln Center for a theatrical run in mid-October, with Baker and Madison participating in Q&As October 16 and 18. Keep watching this space for more reviews from NYFF62.

Iris (Isabelle Huppert) takes notes while teaching Isong (Kim Seungyun) French in Hong Sangsoo’s A Traveler’s Needs

MAIN SLATE: A TRAVELER’S NEEDS (Hong Sangsoo, 2024)
Film at Lincoln Center
Wednesday, October 2, 9:00
Thursday, October 3, 6:15
www.filmlinc.org

Longtime New York Film Festival favorite Hong Sangsoo returns to Lincoln Center with two touching works for NYFF62. For nearly thirty years, the South Korean Hong has been making contemplative, character-driven films in which writers or directors develop different kinds of relationships with actors, fans, students, and other admirers amid a lot of drinking, eating, and smoking as they discuss art, love, human nature, and film itself.

In such gems as Oki’s Movie, The Day He Arrives, Yourself and Yours, Like You Know It All, and Right Now, Wrong Then, Hong constructs slow-paced, intriguing philosophical narratives in which not much necessarily happens but nearly every minute is imbued with meaning.

In A Traveler’s Needs, Isabelle Huppert, in her third Hong film (following 2012’s In Another Country and 2017’s Claire’s Camera), stars as Iris, a mysterious Frenchwoman who seems to just appear and disappear; we know almost nothing about her or why she is in Seoul.

When we first encounter her, she is teaching French to a young pianist, Isong (Kim Seungyun), asking her questions using index cards and an old cassette recorder that looks almost like a toy. We soon find out that Iris is not a trained teacher but someone who only recently developed her unique method, which involves asking her students how they feel deep inside, and that she has no idea if it will actually work.

Iris, who dresses like she is on vacation, wearing a flowery dress, green sweater, and wide-brimmed hat, next visits Wonju (Lee Hyeyoung) and her husband, Haesoon (Kwon Haehyo), to teach them French. Wonju is suspicious of Iris and her technique, but as they partake of more of the milky rice wine known as makgeolli, everyone loosens up a bit.

Later, Iris returns home, to an apartment she shares with Inguk (Ha Seongguk), a younger man who is not quite ready to introduce her to his mother, Yeonhee (Cho Yunhee), although the relationship between Inguk and Iris is unclear.

So how does A Traveler’s Needs make you feel? Like many of Hong’s films, it’s a calm tale featuring lots of conversation and long takes, highlighted by another superb performance by Huppert. It might be best exemplified by a scene in which Iris approaches a tiny river, takes off her shoes, steps into the water, looks around while humming, and drops one of her shoes. It’s hard to tell if it was supposed to happen, but Huppert lets out an adorable sigh, picks it up, shakes it out, and carries on.

Hong also incorporates an oddly endearing repetition in the film, in dialogue, character traits, and Iris’s movement, particularly how she walks when she exits a scene. She practically floats in and out of her world, innocent and carefree, like a child. Hong’s camera loves her — he wrote, directed, photographed, produced, and edited the film in addition to composing the score — and so will you.

A Traveler’s Needs is screening October 2 at 9:00 and October 3 at 6:15, with Huppert participating in Q&As after each show; she will also return to Lincoln Center November 21 for a Q&A when the film opens at the Walter Reade Theater.

Jeonim (Kim Minhee) and her uncle, Chu Sieon (Kwon Haehyo), reunite at a university in By the Stream

MAIN SLATE: BY THE STREAM (Hong Sangsoo, 2024)
Film at Lincoln Center
Friday, October 4, 9:00
Friday, October 11, 6:45
www.filmlinc.org

“I’ll light the smallest lamp in the corner and protect it until I die,” a college student tells Chu Sieon (Kwon Haehyo) when he asks four young women what they want to do in the future in Hong Sangsoo’s By the Stream. It’s a subtle admission in a subtle film filled with small lamps in corners, literally and figuratively.

Hong wrote, edited, produced, directed, photographed, and composed the score for the film, another intimate, eloquent drama about people just going about their daily lives, eating, drinking, and talking about creativity and love. It takes place on a lovely campus at a woman’s university in Seoul, where it’s time for the annual skit contest, when the various departments put on ten-minute shows. Art professor Jeonim (Kim Minhee) is in a jam when the director in charge of the script for her department has been kicked out after sleeping with three of the students.

Jeonim makes a desperate call to her uncle, Chu, a onetime popular actor who was canceled for unstated reasons and has been running a small bookstore on a remote lake for decades. Niece and uncle have not spoken for ten years, but Sieon accepts the offer, returning to the school where he got his start forty years before. While the four art students are not exactly psyched about the script he has written for them, the head of the department, Jeong (Cho Yunhee), is instantly smitten with him, an adoring fan who wants to spend more and more time with him — and he doesn’t seem to mind all the attention.

With skit night approaching, Jeonim, Sieon, and Jeong do a lot of eating, talking, and drinking, enjoying eel and the milk rice wine known as makgeolli, as relationships grow more complicated and characters reexamine who they are and what they want.

By the Stream is Hong’s thirty-second film since his debut, 1996’s The Day a Pig Fell into the Well. It’s also the thirteenth Hong film Kim has starred in; they began an affair in 2015 — they are both separated from their spouses, with whom they have children, which caused a scandal in South Korea — and Kim, an award-winning international star, has not worked for another director since Park Chan-wook’s 2016 The Handmaiden. Hong is twenty-two years older than Kim; Kwon is seventeen years older than Cho. That is not to imply that By the Stream is autobiographical, but it appears to have personal elements that add intrigue to the gentle magic of the storytelling and characterization.

Kim won the Best Performance award at Locarno for her role as Jeonim, who spends much of her time drawing the ripples in a stream, the water ever changing and constantly moving, like life. She then re-creates the patterns on her loom, finding solace in making art. Chu is reenergized by his decision to direct the skit, interacting with people as he hasn’t since isolating himself at his bookstore. And Jeong shows a different side of herself as she becomes a fan girl forming a connection with the object of her affection.

Hong often leaves his camera fixed as the action unfolds, particularly when the three protagonists are at tables, eating, drinking, and talking, composing a kind of flowing, ever-changing portrait. Water has been a leitmotif throughout Hong’s career; several of his films have the words water, river, beach, and stream in them, and in others, water plays a part, like the beautiful scene in A Traveler’s Needs when Iris (Isabelle Huppert) steps into a small stream.

As in so many of Hong’s works, By the Stream proceeds at its own hypnotic pace, offering profound if understated treatises on the little things in life, like that small lamp in the corner.

Larry Cotton (Andrew Robinson) and his daughter, Kirsty (Ashley Laurence), have their hands full in Hellraiser

REVIVALS: HELLRAISER (Clive Barker, 1987)
Saturday, October 5, 9:15
Wednesday, October 9, 1:00
www.filmlinc.org

“What’s your pleasure?” an unseen character asks at the beginning and end of Clive Barker’s Hellraiser, now screening at NYFF62 in a 4K restoration. Adapted from his novella The Hellbound Heart, the horror film made quite a splash when it was released in 1987, and its legacy as a genre classic has only grown over the years, despite, not because of, nine sequels, none of which Barker wrote or directed. The film faced bans and censorship, so Barker had to make some concessions, editing certain ultraviolent and S&M scenes, but there are still plenty in there to justify its cult status.

“We did a version which had some spanking in it and the MPAA was not very appreciative of that,” Barker said in the DVD audio commentary. “[They also] told me I was allowed two consecutive buttock thrusts from Frank but a third would be deemed obscene.”

The film begins with Frank Cotton (Sean Chapman) in Morocco acquiring a puzzle box and, upon solving it in his suburban American home, getting sent to a hell realm where pain mixes with pleasure, a decadent take on the hot nightclub scene of the 1980s. Years later, Frank’s brother, Larry (Andrew Robinson), returns to the family homestead with his second wife, Julia (Clare Higgins), who unbeknownst to him had a torrid affair with Frank. Larry’s daughter, Kirsty (Ashley Laurence), shows up to provide support, but it’s instantly clear that she and Julia are not besties.

When Larry severely cuts his hand while helping the creepy movers bring a bed upstairs, the blood oozes into the floorboards and awakens Frank, who is a skinless terrifying creature (portrayed by Oliver Smith). Frank reveals to Julia, who still has the hots for him, that he can regain his skin and they can have a life together if she feeds him other human beings, so she hits the bars, bringing men home to be devoured by her lover. Larry is completely oblivious to what is going on right under his nose, but Kirsty grows suspicious, leading to an appropriately blood-soaked, out-of-this-world climax.

Hellraiser is most remembered and revered for the Cenobites, ghoulish S&M characters known as the Chatterer (Nicholas Vince), Butterball (Simon Bamford), the unnamed female (Grace Kirby), and their leader, Pinhead (Doug Bradley), who became a breakout star. The general plot is derivative and the acting has a heavy dose of soap opera attitude, but Barker pushes it all beyond the limits of standard genre fare, toying with cliché so you won’t always know what’s coming. Christopher Young’s score, Michael Buchanan’s production design, Jocelyn James’s art direction, and Aileen Seaton’s hair stylings capture the ’80s sensibility and look better than ever in the restoration, as do the special effects and intense makeup and costumes.

All in all, this version of Hellraiser provides the answer to the question “What’s your pleasure?”

Prabha (Kani Kusruti) takes a new look at her life in All We Imagine as Light

MAIN SLATE: ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT (Payal Kapadia, 2024)
Film at Lincoln Center
Monday, October 7, 6:00
Tuesday, October 8, 9:15
Free talk Wednesday, October 9, 4:00
Thursday, October 10, 3:30
www.filmlinc.org

Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia won the Golden Eye at Cannes in 2021 for best documentary for A Night of Knowing Nothing, a film that mixes fact and fiction while telling the story of two lovers trying to stay connected via letters amid student protests in India. Kapadia mixes fact and fiction again in her follow-up, the tender and deeply poignant All We Imagine as Light, which won the Grand Prix at Cannes earlier this year.

The new work opens with gritty shots of the streets of Mumbai, as unseen people share their difficulties trying to make a new life for themselves after migrating from the country. “There’s always the feeling I’ll have to leave,” one person says. Another opines, “The city takes time away from you.” A third argues, “Why would anyone want to move back?”

Kapadia, who was born in Mumbai, then shifts to the fictional tale of two nurses and a third hospital employee fighting loneliness as they care for sick people. Prabha (a heart-wrenching Kani Kusruti) and the younger Anu (Divya Prabha) live together in an apartment in the city. Prabha, who is in an arranged marriage, has not seen her husband, who is working in Germany, for more than a year. Anu, whose family is Hindi, is in love with a Muslim man, Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon), keeping their relationship secret for fear of being discovered and shunned. And Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam) is a recent widow who is being evicted from her home of twenty-two years because her name is nowhere on the paperwork left behind by her husband.

When Prabha receives a brand-new German rice cooker in the mail, she assumes it is from her spouse, perhaps a message that he is not coming back and that she should proceed with her life. But she is tentative to start dating, even as she is pursued by the goofy but sweet Dr. Manoj (Azees Nedumangad), who writes poetry for her.

The three women decide to hit the road, taking a trip to Parvaty’s seaside Maharashtrian hometown, where they take stock of their lives, particularly after a man washes up onshore.

All We Imagine as Light is sensitively shot by cinematographer Ranabir Das, with a soft, jazzy score by Topshe as soft rain falls, trains pass by in the background, and Prabha and Parvaty throw stones at a billboard for a pending skyscraper that proclaims, “CLASS is a privilege reserved for the PRIVILEGED.”

All We Imagine as Light is an engaging and touchingly lyrical look at womanhood in contemporary Mumbai, as the city threatens three women with potential isolation and alienation until they bind together. The youngest, Anu, instills new energy into the others to reevaluate their situations and take action. “Do you ever think of the future?” Anu asks.

The film appropriately provides no firm answers in the end, but it is clear that Kapadia’s future is a bright one.

All We Imagine as Light is screening at NYFF62 on October 7, 8, and 10, with the writer-director participating in Q&As following the first two showings. She will also be at the Amphitheater at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center on October 9 at 4:00 for a free talk with Portuguese director Miguel Gomes, whose Grand Tour is screening October 8, 9, and 11 at the festival.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

N/A

Ana Villafañe and Holland Taylor portray familiar but unnamed characters in Mario Correa’s N/A (photo by Daniel Rader)

N/A
Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater
150 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through September 1, $72-$200
www.lct.org
natheplay.com

Holland Taylor for president!

On June 27, I saw Mario Correa’s potent N/A, making its world premiere at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center through August 4. The eighty-minute play is a series of fictionalized conversations, based on actual text and dialogue, between two unnamed but obvious political figures: two-time Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, splendidly portrayed by Taylor, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, fully embodied by Ana Villafañe.

When I got home, I watched the debacle of a debate between former president Donald J. Trump and the incumbent, Joseph R. Biden. Afterward, I decided to cast my vote for Taylor.

N/A begins with A, having just won the Democratic primary for a House seat representing parts of Queens and her home borough, the Bronx, livestreaming from the office of the minority leader, N. Referring to her opponent as “a total corporate shill,” she says, “So you look in the mirror and you say to yourself, be the change you wanna see in the world, right? Also, fuck those motherfuckers!”

N then enters the room and asks if she’s interrupting.

“Where did you come from?” a shocked A says. “Baltimore. Where did you come from?” N responds seriously. “Were you there the whole time?” A wants to know. N replies, “In my office, you mean?”

Thus, the generational battle lines are immediately drawn, the old guard against the new. Over several talks, N explains how things happen in the House, that it’s not so simple to get a bill passed there, then in the Senate, and finally signed into law by the president. A Baltimore native, she is a pragmatist with decades of experience — she was first elected to serve in the House in 1987, two years before A was born, and became the first woman Speaker in 2007.

The newly elected A wants to effect change instantly, ready to implement her Green New Deal, end the militarization of the border, provide affordable, universal health care and free college tuition, and other plans. When A says that N is “on record against most of this agenda,” N answers, “Agenda? That’s an Amazon wish list. Load it up!”

N also points out that her favorite number is 218 — the number of Democrats needed to have a majority in the House. She states that without that, they essentially cannot get anything done, no matter now necessary it appears. Many of their discussions follow this kind of trajectory:

N: I’m going to say something to you, and I don’t want you to take it the wrong way. This isn’t college. I’m not Plato, you’re not Aristotle, and we’re not here to contemplate the Republic. We have real work to do, urgent work — right now. You can be a part of it.
A: We should contemplate the state of the Republic. It’s dire.
N: And I’m happy to do that. After we win back the House.
A: Our country’s problems are systemic. Not by accident — by design. Foundational inequities built into the organizing principles of this nation. And until we reckon with them head-on, it doesn’t matter how many elections we win. We will never fill a leaky bucket.
N: And yet that is our work, for it’s the only bucket we’ve got.
A: Or . . . we get a new bucket.

What becomes clear as they continue to hold these mini-debates is that their goals are not very different; what separates them is the method of getting there.

N: We have much in common, you and I . . . Relentless, persistent, dissatisfied. That is our nature; we are outsiders —
A: You’re an “outsider”?
N: If the Framers walked through that door right now and saw me sitting here, how happy do you think they’d be?
A: A lot happier than if they saw me.
N: Nah. They’d see a woman and keel over. That’s it.
A: Well . . . A white woman of wealth. With a few smelling salts, I bet they’d come around.
N: And soon, they’d learn she didn’t come from wealth.
A: But then they’d remember that she came from whiteness.
N: And then someone would remind them of the concept of a wop. A dago.
A: And someone else would inform them that this lady’s father had been a Member of Congress.
N: To which one of them would undoubtedly ask, “What does that matter?”
A: To which another would answer, “The most common route to privilege in this country is generational transfer.”

Ultimately, N tells A that the key is, “Know your friends. Know your enemies. Know the difference,” whereas A’s motto is “Más que menos . . . Literally, ‘more than less.’ In essence . . . ‘Leave it better than you found it.’”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (Ana Villafañe) and Nancy Pelosi (Holland Taylor) get down to business in world premiere play (photo by Daniel Rader)

In addition to “N/A” referring to Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, it can mean “not applicable,” “not available,” “no account,” and “no answer,” all of which relate to Correa’s well-written play, astutely directed by Tony winner Diane Paulus (Little Jagged Pill, The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess), who is a much better “moderator” than most debate hosts, allowing each side to speak their peace and support their claims.

Myung Hee Cho’s set features Lucite furniture, including a case with a Speaker’s gavel in it, echoing A’s declaration that public officials must be transparent; meanwhile, Cho’s costumes capture the characters to a T, N in a white blouse, buttoned pink jacket and knee-length skirt, and high heels, A in a white shirt, unbuttoned black jacket, black pants, and black flats that later become heels. Possible and Lisa Renkel’s red, white, and blue projections focus on the evolving makeup of the House as it shifts between Democratic and Republican control. Mextly Couzin’s lighting effectively indicates the passage of time between scenes, although the interstitial music is cloying. (The sound design is by Sun Hee Kil and Germán Martínez.)

Villafañe (On Your Feet, Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Betties), who is the same age as AOC, more than holds her own with Taylor, capturing her character’s determination, aggressiveness, and refusal to compromise. Villafañe stands tall as AOC is not afraid to hit back and say what’s on her mind.

But Taylor shines as Pelosi; it’s as if she has a glow as she tries to educate the younger congresswoman in the ways of politics, and the world itself. She exhibits Pelosi’s confidence, intelligence, and understanding of the tactics of negotiation in her every movement.

Pelosi might have stepped down from her position as minority leader in January 2023, but, at the age of eighty-four, she is still ably representing her California district. Philly native Taylor (The Morning Show, Two and a Half Men), at eighty-one — born two months after President Biden — is still at the top of her game, regularly appearing onstage, on film, and on television. I have no doubt that she could stand behind a podium and lay any political opponent to waste; she certainly has my vote.

In 2013, Taylor starred as Texas governor Ann Richards in her one-woman show Ann at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater. When Taylor-as-Richards stood at the podium, discussing her battle with cancer and her hope for the future of America, it was easy to see why Richards was considered a possible vice presidential running mate for John Kerry — or a presidential candidate herself.

In 2015, Taylor put on the boxing gloves in Pulitzer Prize winner David Lindsay-Abaire’s Ripcord at City Center, a hilarious battle of wits between two elderly roommates in a suburban New Jersey nursing home. Abby Binder (Taylor) is a nasty, mean-spirited, and spiteful woman filled with vitriol that she pours on everyone and everything, while Marilyn Dunne (Marylouise Burke) is a kind, sweet-natured soul who loves life and wants only happiness for all.

Sound familiar?

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

THE EPHEMERAL CINEMA OF SAM GREEN

Sam Green and Yo La Tengo will team up for live documentary at Alice Tully Hall

LINCOLN CENTER’S SUMMER FOR THE CITY: THE EPHEMERAL CINEMA OF SAM GREEN
Alice Tully Hall
1941 Broadway at Sixty-Fifth St.
June 13-16, choose-what-you-pay ($5 minimum)
www.lincolncenter.org
32sounds.com

Lincoln Center’s Summer for the City heads indoors for the three-part series “The Ephemeral Cinema of Sam Green,” consisting of a trio of documentaries by the American filmmaker featuring on-site narration by Green and live music.

On June 13 at 7:30, JD Samson and Micheal O’Neill will be performing Samson’s score to 2022’s 32 Sounds, with the audience listening on headphones that will be distributed at the theater. On June 14 at 4:00 and 8:00, Kronos Quartet (David Harrington, John Sherba, Hank Dutt, Paul Wiancko) will be on hand to accompany 2018’s A Thousand Thoughts, which Green wrote and directed with Joe Bini about the history of the group. And on June 16 at 7:30, local faves Yo La Tengo (Ira Kaplan, Georgia Hubley, James McNew) will play along with 2012’s The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller, which explores the career of the twentieth-century futurist.

Sam Green delves into how we listen and connect with humanity and nature in 32 Sounds

32 SOUNDS (Sam Green, 2022)
Alice Tully Hall
Thursday, June 13, choose-what-you-pay ($5 minimum), 7:30
www.lincolncenter.org
32sounds.com

Sam Green’s 32 Sounds might be about how we hear the world, but it’s also filled with a barrage of stunning visuals that, combined with the binaural audio, creates a unique and exciting cinematic journey.

Green was inspired by his relatively new friendship with experimental composer and musician Annea Lockwood, which blossomed over Skype during the pandemic, and by François Girard’s 1993 biographical anthology Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould, in which Colm Feore portrays the Canadian classical pianist most famous for his interpretations of such Bach works as the Goldberg Variations. In 32 Sounds, Green teams with composer, DJ, and musician JD Samson, from such bands as Le Tigre and MEN, to present ninety-five minutes of remarkable delicacy and insight.

The film is best experienced on headphones, which is how it is being shown at Alice Tully Hall, with specially customized headphones with the audio mixed live inside the theater. The sound was recorded binaurally, so the audience can hear speech and movement as if it’s to your left or right, behind you, far away, or close up.

In 32 Sounds, Princeton professor and scientist Edgar Choueiri introduces us to Johann Christoff, a recording device shaped like a human head that “captures sound exactly how you hear it.” Similar technology has been used for such theatrical presentations as The Encounter and Blindness. Hollywood veteran and two-time Oscar winner Mark Mangini (Dune, Mad Max: Fury Road) designed the sound for the film, immersing the viewer into what feels like a three-dimensional universe.

The film kicks off with Green and Samson in a playful scene that sets the stage for what is to follow. “This is a little bit of an odd movie in that we’re going to ask you to do some things,” Green explains. “Simple things, like close your eyes. If you don’t want to do them, don’t worry about it. But the truth is, the more you give yourself to the experience” — Samson then cuts in, finishing, “the more you get out of it.”

The first sound Green explores, appropriately enough, is of the womb, recorded by former midwife Aggie Murch, whose husband is Oscar-winning film editor and sound designer Walter Murch (Apocalypse Now, The English Patient, The Conversation). Over a purplish white screen with no figuration, Green discusses Walter Murch’s 2005 essay “Womb Tone,” in which Murch writes, “Hearing is the first of our senses to be switched on. . . . Although our mature consciousness may be betrothed to sight, it was suckled by sound, and if we are looking for the source of sound’s ability — in all its forms — to move us more deeply than the other senses and occasionally give us a mysterious feeling of connectedness to the universe, this primal intimacy is a good place to begin.”

Green then jumps from birth to death, taking out old cassette tapes of voice messages he has saved from decades past, telling us how “they hold the voices of so many people I’ve loved who are gone. I was wondering, How does that work? How does a little piece of eighth-of-an-inch magnetic tape hold a person? Make it seem like they are alive and in front of you more than any photo or piece of film ever could. I was wondering if sound is somehow a way to understand time, and time passing, and loss, and the ephemeral beauty of the present moment, all the things that I keep coming back to in my movies.”

He meets with Cheryl Tipp, curator of Wildlife and Environmental Sounds at the British Library Sound Archive, who shares the poignant and heartbreaking story of the mating call of the Hawaiian bird the moho braccatus. Lockwood, the subject of a short companion film Green directed, demonstrates how she has recorded the sound of rivers for fifty years, after gaining notoriety for her burning-piano installations.

Foley artist Joanna Fang reveals how she creates sound effects for films using unusual items in her studio, from a bowling ball to a wet cloth. “Art can elevate a truth beyond what is feasibly there,” she says. “And if we pull it off right, hopefully the emotional experience of hearing it and being part of it is enough to make you fully accept the poetry of what you’re hearing. Because isn’t that what we’re all trying to do, trying to take what we’re feeling on the inside and show it to somebody else, or let them listen to it, and have them feel the same way we do?”

Black revolutionary and fugitive Nehanda Abiodun listens to a tape of McFadden & Whitehead’s “Ain’t No Stopping Us Now,” transporting her to another place and time. Poet and cultural theorist Fred Moten marvels about “ghost sounds” of his relatives. Bay Area military veteran and environmental journalist Harold Gilliam postulates about sleep and foghorns in the context of “being part of this total community of life and nonlife on Earth.” Lebanese artist and musician Mazen Kerbaj recalls being able to make sound art during bombings when others were trapped in their homes or dying.

Green gives examples of recording “room tones,” a documentary process in which the subject is silent for thirty seconds as the sound recordist grabs the natural sound in order to help with later editing. It’s fascinating watching Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, Rebecca Solnit, and others sit or stand uncomfortably as they wait, and we wait; we are not used to seeing such stagnation in a motion picture.

Annea Lockwood has been recording rivers for more than fifty years

Deaf sound artist Christine Sun Kim uses ASL to describe vibration and how she was taught when she was a child that sound was not part of her life, a concept that infuses her art. “I realized that sound is like money, power, control; it’s social currency,” she explains.

Along the way Green also looks at inventor Thomas Edison, polymath Charles Babbage, electronics engineer Alan Blumlein, and a classic Memorex commercial starring Ella Fitzgerald. We see and hear Glass playing piano, church bells ringing in Venice, Don Garcia driving through the city in his red Mazda blasting Phil Collins’s “In the Air Tonight,” and John Cage performing 4’33” outdoors. A Zamboni cleans the ice at a hockey rink. A cat purrs. Evel Knievel jumps over obstacles on his motorcycle. Samson blasts away on a whoopee cushion. Danny drives his Big Wheel through the empty halls of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining. Different groups dance to Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love.”

Oscar nominee Green (The Weather Underground, A Thousand Thoughts) edited the documentary with Nels Bangerter; the new, sharp cinematography is by Yoni Brook. The visuals range from a deluge of quick cuts of archival footage to nearly blank screens when Green asks the audience to close their eyes and just listen.

While the film is a technical marvel, it also becomes deeply emotional, as Green and several subjects listen to recordings of friends and family no longer with us, something you can’t get out of a photo album. It made me think of the messages I had saved on my answering machine of my mother, who passed away in 2017; while I try to avoid hearing them — they used to pop up after I went through new messages, sending me screaming into another room — it is comforting to know that they exist, that I can hear her whenever I need to. Such is the power of sound.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

VISHNIAC

Documentary explores life and career of twentieth-century photographer Roman Vishniac

VISHNIAC (Laura Bialis)
Quad Cinema
34 West Thirteenth St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Opens Friday, January 19
quadcinema.com
vishniacfilm.com

After screening at the New York Jewish Film Festival at Lincoln Center, Laura Bialis’s Vishniac is opening January 19 at the Quad for a one-week run. The documentary tells the story of Russian-American photographer Roman Vishniac, who captured Jewish life in shtetls and ghettos in the 1930s while also pioneering photomicroscopy. Vishniac was born in St. Petersburg in 1897, moved to Berlin in his early twenties, and eventually settled with his family in 1940 in New York City.

“He had enormous chutzpah,” his daughter Mara Vishniac Kohn says in the film. “He regarded himself as a mixture of Moses and Superman.”

Bialis first met Kohn at an Elie Wiesel lecture more than two decades ago. “The encounter made a deep impact,” she noted while making the film. “It’s a story that feels more important to me now than ever, in the face of rising antisemitism and fading ties to the Holocaust. As more survivors pass away, we’re losing those who experienced it firsthand. However, one thing we’ll never lose are the faces portrayed in Vishniac’s photographs, faces that could be those of our grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. They speak to us across time and space and compel us never to forget.”

Vishniac was written and coproduced by Sophie Sartain and edited by Chris Callister; it combines archival footage and new interviews with many of Vishniac’s sixteen thousand photos and reenactments of scenes from his life.

“Despite Vishniac’s monumental contributions to Jewish history and culture, a full-length, retrospective film about his life and work has never been produced. Our film will be the first,” Bialis said.

Bialis (Rock in the Red Zone, Refusenik) will be at the Quad for Q&As at the 7:15 show on January 19 and, joined by executive producer Nancy Spielberg, the 7:15 screening on January 20 and the 2:45 show on January 21.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

JUNGLE BOOK REIMAGINED

JUNGLE BOOK reimagined
Rose Theater, Frederick P. Rose Hall
Broadway at 60th St.
November 16-18, pay-what-you-wish (suggested price $35), 7:30
www.lincolncenter.org
www.akramkhancompany.net

“We are now living in unprecedented and uncertain times, not only for our species but for all species on this planet,” artistic director, dancer, and choreographer Akram Khan notes. “And the root cause of this conundrum is because we have forgotten our connection to our home, our planet. We all inhabit it, we all take from it, and we all build on it, but we have forgotten to return our respect for it.”

Khan takes a new look at The Jungle Book, which was first an 1894 collection by Rudyard Kipling and then a popular 1967 Disney animated musical film, in Jungle Book reimagined, a two-hour show that focuses on colonization, refugees, gender, and climate change. The story is written by Tariq Jordan, with music by Jocelyn Pook; Khan is the director and choreographer, with sound by Gareth Fry, lighting by Michael Hulls, visual stage design by Miriam Buether, art and animation direction by Adam Smith, and video design by Nick Hillel.

The work is performed by Maya Balam Meyong, Tom Davis-Dunn, Harry Theadora Foster, Filippo Franzese, Bianca Mikahil, Max Revell, Matthew Sandiford, Pui Yung Shum, Elpida Skourou, Holly Vallis, Jan Mikaela Villanueva, and Luke Watson.

Tickets are pay-what-you-wish, with a suggested price of $35, to see this multimedia production appropriate for children ten and up.

LINCOLN CENTER SUMMER FOR THE CITY: THIRD ANNUAL BAAND TOGETHER DANCE FESTIVAL

Who: Ballet Hispánico (BH), Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (AAADT), American Ballet Theatre (ABT), New York City Ballet (NYCB), Dance Theatre of Harlem (DTH)
What: Free dance festival
Where: Damrosch Park, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
When: July 25-29, free, workshops 5:00, performances 7:30 [ed note: The July 28 workshop and performance have been canceled due to extreme heat]
Why: The third annual BAAND Together Dance Festival once again brings together Ballet Hispánico, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, American Ballet Theatre, New York City Ballet, and Dance Theatre of Harlem for five nights of free contemporary dance performances on the Damrosch Park stage as part of Lincoln Center’s Summer for the City programming.

Dancers rehearse Pas de O’Farill for BAAND Festival at Lincoln Center this week (photo by Lawrence Sumulong)

From July 25 to 29 at 7:30, the troupes will present one work apiece: BH’s Línea Recta by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa (a unique take on flamenco, set to music by guitarist Eric Vaarzon Morel), ABT’s Other Dances by Jerome Robbins (choreographed for Natalia Makarova and Mikhail Baryshnikov, set to works by Frédéric Chopin), DTH’s Nyman String Quartet No. 2 by Robert Garland (a mix of styles and cultures), the world premiere of the BH/NYCB collaborative duet Pas de O’Farill by Pedro Ruiz (a tribute to Arturo O’Farill), an excerpt from AAADT’s Dancing Spirit by Ronald K. Brown (a tribute to Judith Jamison, with music by Duke Ellington, Wynton Marsalis, and War), and NYCB’s The Times Are Racing by Justin Peck (a sneaker ballet set to songs from Dan Deacon’s 2012 album, America). In addition, each show will be preceded by a workshop at 5:00 led by members of one of the five companies.

“The BAAND Together Dance Festival is a testament to the vibrancy and diversity of the New York City dance community,” the five artistic directors said in a group statement. “We are thrilled to be returning with a spectacular program that features the city’s most internationally revered repertory companies. This year’s program highlights the innovative visions that have made New York City our nation’s dance capital.”

KOREAN ARTS WEEK AT LINCOLN CENTER: ONE DANCE BY SEOUL METROPOLITAN DANCE THEATRE

SUMMER FOR THE CITY AT LINCOLN CENTER: ONE DANCE
David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
20 Lincoln Center Plaza
July 20-22, $24-$190 (use code KCCNYOD for 20% discount)
Korean Arts Week runs July 19-22, free
www.davidhkochtheater.com
www.lincolncenter.org

“All on the same line, in the same shape, with the same heart, it’s a heartfelt piece that brings us together,” Seoul Metropolitan Dance Theatre artistic director and choreographer Hyejin Jung says in a promotional video for One Dance (Il-mu), making its North American premiere at the David H. Koch Theater during Korean Arts Week, part of Lincoln Center’s Summer for the City program. The four-act, seventy-minute work, which melds traditional and contemporary Korean dance in stunning re-creations, debuted in May 2022 at the Sejong Grand Theater in Seoul.

One Dance is choreographed by Jung, Sung Hoon Kim, and Jae Duk Kim, with music by Jae Duk Kim and mise-en-scène by Ku-ho Jung, incorporating dazzling costumes and such props as bamboo sticks, swords, poles, and ritual objects. “I don’t think the beauty of Korea is an intricate technique but rather a symbolism of emptiness and abundance,” Ku-ho Jung explains in the video. “It’s really important to show the symbolism of the nuances. In fact, the process of staging One Dance was to show the Korean nuances by emptying out a lot of the material and focusing on the moves.”

One Dance is divided into four sections — “Munmu”/“Mumu,” “Chunaengmu,” “Jungmu,” and “New Ilmu” — with fifty-four dancers paying homage to courtly processions, ancient martial arts traditions, and contemporary styles through movement, music, and song. Ticket prices begin at $24; you can use code KCCNYOD for a 20% discount.

Korean Arts Week runs July 19-22 and also includes a bevy of free events: the digital artwork WAVE by d’strict, a K-Lit symposium, a family-friendly showcase by KTMDC Dance Company, Musical Theatre Storytime with KPOP composer Helen Park, silent discos with BIAS NYC and DJ Peach, a guided meditation set to Korean traditional music, a screening of Bong Joon Ho’s horror favorite The Host, and concerts by Crying Nut, Say Sue Me, Yerin Baek, Dongyang Gozupa, and Gray by Silver.