Liz Berger fights for her community as the president of the Downtown Alliance

By Susan Armitage

On the morning of 9/11, Liz Berger had just dropped off her oldest child for kindergarten at P.S. 234 and was on her way to work. Though she had already been active in civic life, she said, that devastating day reaffirmed her dedication to the community she loves.

“My first thought was about all we had done in the past 20 years and how it had been destroyed in 18 minutes,” said Berger, a native New Yorker who has lived south of Fulton Street for three decades and now heads the nonprofit Alliance for Downtown New York.

Berger served on the local Community Board at the time, but says 9/11 motivated her to deepen her involvement and take on new formal roles. She was honored to be asked to represent residents at the Senate Field Hearing.

“I think what you realize in those kind of crises is that your troubles and problems are really everybody’s,” Berger said. “And what that does is make them more urgent, rather than less urgent.”
In 2007, she became president of the Downtown Alliance, which manages the Business Improvement District for Lower Manhattan, after decades of work in government, community affairs and strategic planning.

Berger says the organization plays a key role in convening constituents to understand their needs. Through research, service, information and advocacy, the Downtown Alliance aims to make Lower Manhattan a better place to live, work and visit.

“Liz’s leadership is tremendous,” said Peter Poulakakos, a restaurateur and member of the Downtown Alliance board. “She inspires the board, she inspires the community. She’s got a great energy.”

Berger, whose commute to the office is a handy two blocks, loves living in what she calls a “complete community.”

“It’s a little village with probably the best-known business address in the world,” she said. “It’s that combination of knowing your neighbors and having unbelievable choices.”

She loves the parts of Lower Manhattan that evoke history, like Front Street, Stone Street and the city’s oldest park, Bowling Green. But the neighborhood, Berger said, “is about the past and the future, all together.”

Under her leadership, the Downtown Alliance is charting a forward-looking course. The organization has expanded its social media outreach to better connect with constituents, and the Downtown NYC free mobile app provides tips on places to visit and things to do in Lower Manhattan. The organization also anticipates new initiatives related to Lower Manhattan’s growing tech industry.

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, the Downtown Alliance also recently announced a new grant program to help affected small businesses in the Zone A areas of Lower Manhattan. While some suffered physical damage, Berger said, the bigger issue is a decline in foot traffic while some commercial and residential buildings undergo repairs.

“This is about Lower Manhattan big business supporting Lower Manhattan small business,” she said.

“It’s about business-to-business self-help. That’s really what our organization is about, and it’s a very important element of building this community.”

In addition to her role at the Downtown Alliance, Berger holds a myriad of other community positions. She is president of the Downtown-Lower Manhattan Association and serves on the boards of the Municipal Art Society, Film Forum, Second Stage Theatre, American Museum of Natural History Planetarium Authority, the New York Building Congress and the Trust for Governors Island.
Berger simply says she likes to be busy. “That’s why you live in a city; because you want to participate in public life and do what you can to support the institutions that make urban life worth living,” she said.

Film Forum’s current retrospective series, “The French Old Wave” (through Sept. 13), continues with more classic films and film history that you need to catch up with in order to realize—in this awful era of comic- book frivolity—how great cinema can be.

Though billed as a tribute to the “quality” films that Truffaut and Godard, the revolutionary mid-century directors of the New Wave, disdained, the fact is, these films represent the heritage that was also the French New Wave’s foundation.

Film Forum’s reclamation informs our own era’s habits as cinephilia declines and the cinematic past becomes a morass—disrespected, cluttered, uncategorized and forgotten. Would so many indie films be as vapid if filmmakers (and film critics) knew film history? A highly praised feature like Your Sister’s Sister not only seems uninformed by cultural heritage but downright hostile to it, pretending originality when it’s only sophomoric.

At Film Forum, priceless antiques such as The Earrings of Madame De … , The Story of a Cheat, Under the Roofs of Paris and Forbidden Games carry the secret of all great films—the essence of culture—by offering vivid insights into the complexities of human experience.

There are some obscurities here, but the classics predominate, and these are films that, given this ahistorical period of cultural amnesia, cannot be presented too often. For those seeking an essential film education, the Renoir wing of this exhibition is crucial: Grand Illusion, Rules of the Game and La Bete Humaine are not just landmarks but signposts for living.

It’s exciting to visit the “old wave” and see how new it remains. Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast (Sept. 9) shames the shrillness of the Disney animated musical, and other than the recent films of Mexican master Julian Hernandez there is nothing in contemporary cinema like Cocteau’s Orphee (Sept. 9)—not just a modernized version of the Orpheus myth but an examination of the thrill in art and the erotic excitement of cultured sensibility.

One old master who deserves rediscovery is Rene Clair, and a double bill of his masterpieces Le Million and A Nous la Liberte (Sept. 5) will be a revelation to those CGI- and 3D-besotted fanboys who don’t yet know the transcendent qualities of filmmaking that is rhythmed and bursting with good humor. The sanity and buoyancy of Clair’s films was at one time considered the height of the art form (A Nous la Liberte even influenced Chaplin’sModern Times); Clair’s visionary work might be the salvation of new mediamakers who mistakenly confuse “darkness” with creativity. Perfectly named, Clair believed in light.

And surely, those poets and prophets of the French New Wave knew it. The Film Forum program includes lesser lights such as Jean Gremillion, but Gremillion was also part of the same tradition as Renoir and Cocteau and Clouzot and Clement and Ophuls and Guitry; Gremillion just wasn’t as great. But they all contributed to the humanities—to the civilization of filmgoers—and that’s a habit that today’s filmmakers and filmwatchers need to recover. As Jean-Luc Godard said, “There is no new wave, there is only the ocean.”

Follow Armond White on Twitter @3xchair

Jacques Rivette’s Celine and Julie Meta Movie Returns

CITYARTS EXCLUSIVE: LOOKING AT A CLASSIC THAT CONFOUNDS FILM CULTURE

9/11 MEMORIAL Northeast corner of Albany and Greenwich Sts., www.911memorial.org

With free admission to both the 9/11 memorial and museum, it’s nice to give back with a gift shop purchase—net proceeds go toward developing and sustaining the organization. While the museum shop offers everything from FDNY and NYPD ornaments to 10th anniversary jewelry, our favorite picks can be found in the book section, particularly Listening Is an Act of Love ($24.95), a medley of StoryCorpxs’ 30,000- plus recorded interviews arranged to show a portrait of American life. For the shopper looking to give a small piece of the memorial to their loved one, the 9/11 Memorial Lapel Pin ($6) is a good pick.

FILM FORUM 209 W. Houston St. (betw. 6th Ave. & Varick St.), www.filmforum.org

While Downtown is known for its selection of indie movie houses, few know that Film Forum is indeed a not-for-profit. The cinema had humble beginnings in 1970, when it consisted of 50 folding chairs, one projector and a $19,000 annual budget. It has since flourished into a three-screen space that shows a fascinating, out-of-the-ordinary collection of films (see Cullen Gallagher’s piece on Film Forum’s silent film series at OTDowntown.com). For the cinéaste or art lover in your life, consider buying them a Film Forum DVD set on varying themes like fashion or dance. The dance set ($65) includes three carefully curated DVDs: Stormy Weather, The Red Shoes and Ballets Russes. Or grab the Maira Kalman—author of the Max books—T-shirt, with six canine cinephiles watching a 3-D movie ($14.95).

GREENWICH VILLAGE SOCIETY FOR HISTORIC PRESERVATION www.gvshp.org

The name is misleading; the GVSHP fights to preserve the architectural heritage and cultural history of buildings in the East Village and Noho as well as Greenwich Village. Founded in 1980, the GVSHP also offers public lectures, tours, exhibitions, school programs, an oral history project and publications. Tucked on their website is a roster of locally themed wares like the GVSHP porcelain holiday ornament bearing an anthemion ($9.99) or a poster of Tony Sarg’s classic 1934 Village map ($17.99).

HOUSING WORKS

For the location nearest you, visit www.housingworks.org While running thrift stores with amazing bargains and a coffee house/bookstore with great brews and good reads, at the end of the day Housing Works’ main mission is to help homeless and HIV/ AIDS-afflicted New Yorkers. Their various entrepreneurial pursuits, which also include a catering company and screenprinting business, all go to fund their main goal. If you are unable to make it to their brick-and-mortar storefronts, Housing Works also boasts a well-organized website, where you can place bids on some truly remarkable items. Last time we checked, a vintage Gucci cross carry bag was going for $75, along with a monogrammed zip case at $45. You can also purchase art, accessories and even furniture, like an Avery Boardman Sleeper Sofa for $175.

TENEMENT MUSEUM 103 Orchard St. (betw. Delancey & Broome Sts.), www.tenement.org

The Tenement Museum aims to preserve and interpret the history of immigration to the Lower East Side by telling the personal experiences of immigrants past and present. While the museum is known for its neighborhood tours, exquisitely restored apartment exhibitions and thought-provoking talks, it also boasts a large selection of funky and chic merchandise at college student prices. Pick up the Tenement tote bag ($8.95) for your farmers market fanatic friend or the gold Skyline desk organizer ($25.95) for your officemate. For those family and friends who celebrate Chanukah, how could you say no to a set of four glasses of the “Heroes of the Torah” ($22.95)?

THE MOTH www.themoth.org

While The Moth, a live storytelling series that started in NYC but is now aired on select NPR stations, might not have a physical store, the not-for-profi t is based in Soho. If you aren’t able to make it or get into the live show—they often sell out—we suggest giving the gift of The Moth by purchasing their Best Of box sets (Volume 1 or 2, $55 each). The stories on these CD compilations are told by some familiar voices, like Jonathan Ames, Malcolm Gladwell and Dan Savage. For a Moth-related present that won’t leave a dent in your wallet, take a peek at their line of “I Moth Stories” T-shirts ($20).

By Cullen Gallagher

While the silent era may have ended in 1927 with the introduction of sound, for the next three months, this form of cinema will live again in Downtown Manhattan. Now through Feb. 6, Film Forum pays homage to that bygone epoch—and the most glamorous and extravagant of classic Hollywood studios—with The Silent Roar: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer 1924-1929. As an added treat, each film will feature live music by leading accompanist Steve Sterner.

From adulterous lovers (The Kiss, Jan. 30) to malformed murderers (The Unknown, Jan. 16), everyman soldiers (The Big Parade, Dec. 12) to debauched royalty (The Merry Widow, Dec. 19), there’s plenty in these movies to surprise, delight and even shock modern audiences. They may be over 90 years old, but these silent movies still have a lot to say, and they’ve lost none of their rapturous command.

Screening Nov. 28, Flesh and the Devil (1926) was Greta Garbo’s second American film, and it cemented her popularity as the preeminent silver screen siren. Is there anything in theaters right now to rival the raw sensuality of that unforgettable close-up of Garbo and John Gilbert nestled beneath the moonlight, passing a cigarette between their lips?

As famous for its magnificence as for its troubled backstory is Erich von Stroheim’s would-be masterpiece Greed (1924) (Jan. 2). Based on Frank Norris’ McTeague, Greed tells the story of a dentist (Gibson Gowland) and his wife (ZaSu Pitts) whose desire for wealth ultimately leads to their demise.

Outraged with von Stroheim’s excess, MGM took control and cut the film down from its original 10 hours to just 90 minutes. What remains, however, is a stunningly grim portrayal of obsession and corruption. Considering the current financial crisis and Occupy Wall Street, von Stroheim’s film is just as relevant as ever.

Also not to be missed are two films starring the first lady of the silent screen, Lillian Gish. In the 1910s she was the embodiment of Victorian purity, but in the 1920s, Gish recast her persona through a series of complex roles, the best of which are The Scarlet Letter (1927) and The Wind (1928), both directed by Swedish émigré Victor Sjöström.

In The Scarlet Letter (Jan. 9), Gish brings intense spiritual strength and poetic grace to American literature’s most famous adulteress, Hester Prynne. Gish’s greatest performance, however, is in The Wind (Dec. 5), a psychosexual cyclone set in the Mojave Desert that still astonishes with its surreal imagery and dreamlike structure. Gish plays an eastern transplant who moves west to live with her cousin only to find herself unwelcomed by his suspicious wife. After reluctantly accepting a local farmer’s proposal, Gish is increasingly tormented by his sexual advances and goes insane under the hypnotic powers of “the wind.”

The real hidden gems of the series, however, are two films starring the criminally underrated Marion Davies, an immensely talented actress equally adept at slapstick comedy and subtle characterization. Her spirited portrayal of the “ugly duckling” younger sister hopelessly in love with her older sister’s beau in The Patsy (1928) (Feb. 6) is utterly delightful, and the film’s unpretentious charm is a surefire bet even for those new to silent cinema.

Davies’ parodic expertise it at its peak in Show People (1928) (Jan. 23), a backstage satire about an aspiring actress trying to break into movies. Released in the middle of Hollywood’s transition to sound, Show People is a final glimpse at the silent empire at its height. Within a year, the talkies would have permanently conquered the industry. This series, however, is proof that sound didn’t fully kill silent cinema; these talk-less pictures continue to entertain new generations of filmgoers.

Film Forum is located at 209 W. Houston St. (betw. 6th Ave. & Varick St.).

Greta Garbo and John Gilbert in Clarence Brown’s Flesh and the Devil (1926), playing Nov. 28 at Film Forum. Photo Courtesy of Photofest

In 1967, one year before the historic Left uprisings of May 1968, Godard produced a pair of prophetic masterpieces (La Chinoise and Weekend) as if to provide cognitive, and aesthetic, sustenance for the coming revolution. So perfect was their historical tie in that, at their American premier—during the 1968 New York Film Festival—they were advertised with the slogan “Imagination is seizing power,” as a nod to the previous May’s insurrection. 

Once again, cinema and history are in sync: this time at the dawn of the Occupy Wall Street (or 99%) Movement, with Film Forum’s timely screening of Weekend in New York; about a mile north of the protest’s epicenter in Zucotti Park. Godard’s searing and absurdist critique of bourgeois values—symbolized by the film’s most famous scene: a surreal and carnivalesque 8 minute traffic jam (complete with singing children, a sailboat, and a llama) that’s caused by the sportive, celebratory viewing of a bloody car wreck—remains as startlingly subversive as ever. Weekend offers proof of art’s continued essential role in naming brutalities and injustices in our social order; shattering silences that pave the way for repair.

My recent encounter with Weekend was deeply enhanced—brought into vivid relief—by my awareness of the boldly resurging Left (that Occupy Wall Street represents) now exploding in glorious, colorful pockets of drum banging protest in NYC; and beginning to spread throughout the world. It also felt like a great validation for Godard: whose radical Left leanings, which once got him ostracized, might now be viewed as prescient. As well, it’s a timely reminder that a cultural Left ought to accompany, and strengthen, a political Left. Though this idea is nothing new, of course, an argument can be made for the vital need to re-educate a generation raised on fluffy corporate media, and de-politicized in dumbed down school systems denuded of art, history, and philosophy; where high stakes testing reduces students to robotic drones who are taught to hate learning, or, if the real truth be told, are never introduced to the notion of authentic learning in the first place. That would be too dangerous!

Godard, who might have easily followed his great commercial success with Breathless in 1960 by churning out less politically jarring (i.e. popular) work, chose the more difficult moral high ground by allowing his politics to shape his emerging aesthetics. This alienated him from his one time close friend François Truffaut, who Godard accused of being a sellout, and it also put him front and center during France’s tumultuous May ‘68. Richard Brody, who wrote the definitive biography of Godard, devotes a whole chapter to a brilliant, near novelistic rendering of this almost-revolution—which Godard took full gleeful participation in. Hopefully, more American artists (including filmmakers) will follow the example of Michael Moore and Susan Sarandon and Russell Simmons and get involved in what theOccupied Wall Street Journal, in its premier headline, called “The Most Important Thing in the World.”

Bio

The author is a writer whose previous essays have appeared in the Brooklyn Rail, NY Press, and Evergreen Review. He also has a weekly TV show, the Public Voice Salon (a progressive dialogue on culture, politics, and the critical issues of our time) that airs on Manhattan Neighborhood Network.

DIRECTOR, FILM FORUM

Film Forum (209 W. Houston St., between Sixth Avenue and Varick Street) is the only autonomous, full-time nonprofit cinema in New York City and is a stronghold of Downtown culture. Karen Cooper, director of the theater since 1972, reflects on Film Forum and the importance of independent cinema to New York and New Yorkers.

You’ve been with Film Forum for 39 years; that’s a long time.

Yes, it certainly is. I became the director of Film Forum in 1972, back when we had just 50 folding chairs in a space uptown. We’ve been in a total of four different locations over the years. We moved into our space on West Houston in 1990.

Have you seen your demographic change as you’ve moved around Manhattan?

Certainly. Movie houses are all parts of a community, so neighborhoods definitely affect the demographic. Where we are now we tend to attract people from the nearby neighborhoods—SoHo, The Village, Tribeca. That said, we are a destination theater. Sooner or later, you find your way to West Houston.

How have you seen audiences change over your 39 years at Film Forum?

Like every audience based in the arts, it’s harder to draw folks into the cinema now. It’s a matter of fact that moviegoing has gone down, even though revenue has gone up. The revenue is only going up because ticket prices do.

People have many, many more ways to invest their time than they did 20 years ago. Computers have had a profound impact on our society. These days, people can download and stream most films onto their computers. They can sit at home checking email after work instead of going to the movies.

So why go to the cinema?

Oh, there’s a huge difference in terms of experience. To be in a social setting like that, surrounded by people, and to be in a dark room without interruption—there’s a great deal of concentration to that, to the experience of being in a movie house. But beyond that, the films we premiere at Film Forum are not films you can download. They’re films that you haven’t seen and can’t see anywhere else. Your only option is Film Forum, really; we premiere films exclusively, for the most part.

What do you look for when you’re selecting films to premiere?

Well, I try not to look for anything in a film. I think that’s dangerous. There are so many ways that a film can be good—if it has something new or something old, it doesn’t really matter. If it touches you, moves you, entertains you, then it does what it’s supposed to do.

I think, in general, entertainment is much more complicated than the way Hollywood sees it. People don’t just want car chases and girls and explosions. I believe entertainment is much more oblique and complex than that. We want to see something much closer to the way we live our own lives. New Yorkers do, at least.

Could this explain why documentaries have been such a passion for you?

Probably. They really show us to ourselves. Since the early ’70s, I have been focused on politically and socially vital issues. Right now, through October 18, we’re screening a wonderful documentary called Hell and Back Again, about a young marine returning home to North Carolina after being seriously wounded in Afghanistan. It’s an incredible achievement in cinema verité filmmaking and it’s a film that can’t be seen anywhere else.

What do you love most about your job?

Discovering new work, most definitely. That’s the best moment. I would say that my colleague Mike Maggiore [co-programmer of premieres] and I see nine films that don’t work theatrically for every one that does work theatrically. So when you see that one film that grabs you, it’s like winning a treasure hunt. It’s incredibly exciting.

And what do you love least about your job?

Raising money is a constant challenge. I probably like that least. Showing movies is an expensive business, particularly as an independent movie house. It’s sort of like the difference between being the mom-and-pop shop and the supermarket. The basics can always be had at the supermarket, but if you’re the specialty store, you have the best or you have nothing at all. And we do have the best—the best films and the best service—but there’s a lot of cost involved in having the best. We’ve got 22 full-time employees and more than 40 part-time employees.

As a nonprofit organization, we’re always looking for corporate, private and individual donors. We raise approximately 37 percent of our operating income from public and private sources, which allows us to take risks on emerging filmmakers and challenging films.

Really? Film Forum is a 501(c)3 nonprofit?

Yes—to my knowledge, we’re the only free-standing nonprofit movie house in New York City. It’s probably my fault that more people don’t know that. In the early days, I didn’t really emphasize it because it seemed so important to be a lovely, comfortable and professionally run movie house, and I didn’t want to undermine that with focus on being a nonprofit. But now there are so many for-profit independent movie houses looking like nonprofits that are definitely for profit that it seems we should really let people know that we’re a dyed-in-the-wool nonprofit, the real thing.

So, after 39 years, what’s next for you and Film Forum?

Keeping up with the technology, most definitely. We’ve always prided ourselves on keeping up with that. We’ve just invested $70,000 in a DCT digital projection system. Now we need to raise another $140,000 to get another two systems for the other two theaters. So, what’s next? Raising money to keep the theater on the cutting edge, that’s what!

For current and upcoming Film Forum premieres, visit www.filmforum.org.

PHOTO COURTESY OF FILM FORUM

Thirty years ago, Every Man For Himself was hailed as Jean-Luc Godard’s comeback. So its revival this week at Film Forum should be viewed as the same. After the confounding, insincere semi-honor from Hollywood’s Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and a recent front page smear in the New York Times, it is good—and necessary—to contemplate Every Man For Himself and renew our understanding that Godard matters. We need to know more than ever why he is one of the true giants of filmmaking and, perhaps, one of the last thinking, emotionally-engaged humanists.

Jacques Dutronc thinking about Isabelle Huppert.

The desperation expressed by the title Every Man For Himself is felt by three Swiss citizens: Denise (Nathalie Baye), an itinerant novelist who bikes between jobs; Isabelle (Isabelle Huppert), a prostitute exploring her options; and Paul Godard (Jacques Dutronc), a director at the crossroads between film and video and wavering between fatherhood, an ex-wife and his disenchanted mistress. Each character crosses borders from what they know to searching for the uncertain satisfaction they desire—in love, work and life.

Godard’s French title Sauve Qui Peut/La Vie translates as “Save the Man Who’s Afraid/Life,” contrasting panic and possibility, anxiety and hope. He made the film after a decade in the “wilderness”—creating video experiments that explored his own political consciousness and documenting the social realities of contemporary Europe. This return to cinema demonstrated Godard’s new-found aesthetic: In Every Man For Himself he is more inventive and idiosyncratically witty than ever (though without the glamorous 1960s romanticism that critics prefer, forgetting that Godard was always rigorously conscientious). But here, his imagery acquires a fresh, grave elegance (cosmic nature, not pop art, takes prominence) while staying radically committed to deconstructing movie narrative. Even in the same year as Raging Bull, Melvin and Howard, Dressed to Kill and The Long Riders it was still the freshest, most thrilling movie to behold. Thus, the movie remains as startlingly beautiful—and challenging—as it was 30 years ago.

The film’s British release title is Slow Motion, referring to Godard’s occasional emphasis on retarding the action into increments, especially images of Denise biking across borders through the exquisitely peaceful Swiss countryside (critic Andrew Sarris likened the technique to “instant replay” of sports events). Godard draws attention to what he called “the emotion in motion,” never taking cinema’s visual pleasure and complexity for granted. One motif is highlighting the “invisible” use of background music, even, at a key moment, showing the source of an especially emotive orchestral theme.

Clever as ever, Godard got back into 35mm cinema in 1980, announcing an intense, if somber, flowering of his aesthetic curiosity. His exquisite, openly spiritual films made after this one (Passion, Detective, Hail, Mary, King Lear, Prenom: Carmen and the capstone Nouvelle Vague in 1990) now look like cinema’s last epiphany before video’s take-over. Godard, always a student excited by the poetics of popular art, was responding to cinematic breakthroughs he had missed during his “wilderness” sojourn. In a 1980 interview with Jonathan Cott, Godard praised the slow motion death sequence in DePalma’s 1978 The Fury, and Every Man For Himself repeatedly pays homage to Marguerite Duras’ 1977 Le Camion, emulating its hypnotic shots of trucks and cars on eerily quiet roads. Through these citations, Godard pursued the essence of cinema as the recording of life.

In a scene where Paul (his sardonic alter ego) resists giving a classroom lecture, a formula scrawled on the blackboard proposes CINEMA + VIDEO, CAIN + ABEL. It seemed waggish at the time, but now looks prophetic. Every Man For Himself warns how changing morality and human relations are reflected in artistic technique and modes of communication (long before The Social Network). The infamous scene of Isabelle’s participation in an orgy with a businessman and his lackey plays out the decadent development. Not just a spoof on cruel, brutal, naked capitalist exploitation, this twilight daisy chain also seems to have predicted the upcoming Reagan revolution and particularly its deceptive afterglow—Bill Clinton’s Oval Office debauchery.

During this sequence, Huppert’s impassive face gives the illusion of coolness, but she also conveys Godard’s contemplative manner—observing chaos with humane forbearance. This is wisdom Godard earned from the unsettling exploration of political fractiousness in movies like the 1975 Here and Elsewhere (Ici et Ailleurs)—the one carelessly cited by the New York Times as an example of Godard’s bigotry. Typically brilliant, Godard looks on politics as expressions of human will. Here and Elsewhere is not, in the end, about Palestine or Israel, it’s about Complication. “Very soon you don’t know what to make of the film,” Godard narrates. “Very soon the contradictions explode including you.” He pursues a circle of meaning: images become history, reflection, consequences, politics, humanity.

Maybe Godard is under attack after all these years because his principled filmmaking has always been an attack on the tyranny of bourgeois culture. But get this straight: Here and Elsewhere’s title refers to a spiritual exchange and state of being: Compassion. Godard works in the highest humanist tradition, which is why the current smear campaign against him won’t succeed. See Every Man For Himself: Save the Artist Who Feels/Life.
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Every Man For Himself
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard
At Film Forum Nov. 12-25
Runtime: 87 min.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 1

Forbidden Passion—A highly theatrical adaptation of the classic weepie Brief Encounter (itself based on a Noel Coward short play), this production has prestige and theatrical magic written all over it. Studio 54, 254 W. 54th St., 212-719-1300; times vary, $37-$127.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 2

The Heist Festival— Film Forum’s caper-centric series features an exciting selection of diffuse features, from Walter Matthau as a parachuting bank robber in Don Siegel’s Charley Varrick to The Wrong Trousers, Nick Park’s best Wallace & Gromit short film. Be sure to take advantage of Film Forum’s two-for-one double feature ticket special to catch such inspired pairings as Blue Collar, Paul Schrader’s directorial debut, and Robert Wise’s Odds Against Tomorrow, which stars Ed Begley, Gloria Grahame, Robert Ryan and Shelley Winters. Also don’t miss Un Flic, Jean-Pierre Melville’s masterfully tight-lipped final film and Richard Fleischer’s demented Armored Car Robbery. 209 W. Houston St., 212-727-8110, www.filmforum.org.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 3

Batsheva Dance Company—The extraordinary, instinctive dancers of this Israeli company perform a mix of familiar and new material in this bare bones adaptation of Ohad Naharin’s Project 5, the newest being “B/olero,” a hypnotic duet. Alternating male and female casts perform during the run. The Joyce Theater, 175 8th Ave., 212-691-9740; 2 p.m., tickets start at $10.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 4

Six Degrees of Marvin Hamlisch—This won’t be a cheap concert, but it’s sure to be a fun night. Hamlisch’s quirky personality and his place as a social fixture and sometime companion of the beautiful at gilded events have obscured his actual accomplishments. Yes, he wrote the James Bond song “Nobody Does It Better.” He also composed the underrated score to A Chorus Line. Most of the surviving stars of that show join up with Robert Klein, Liz Callaway, Victor Garber and Lesley Gore in a benefit for the Actors Fund. Symphony Space, 2537 Broadway, 212-864-5400; 7:30 p.m., $50-$250.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 5

Derrick Guild: After Eden—After Eden is a collection of fastidiously imagined botanical fictions. These impossible plant forms, meticulously realized, owe themselves to the artist’s 22 months on Ascension Island. A British dependency in the mid-Atlantic with only three indigenous plants, the island’s lush rain forest has been an ongoing work of human ingenuity since the mid-18th century. What British botanists achieved in real life, Guild mimics on canvas. These are the botanical equivalent of capriccios, fantastical species of flowering plants instead of invented architectural ruins. Allan Stone Gallery, 113 E. 90th St., 212-987-4997; 10 a.m.-6 p.m., Free.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 6

Drawings from Ribera to Goya—While we’ve seen plenty of Goya, this is the first museum exhibition to be held in New York City devoted to the broad tradition of Spanish draftsmanship, and includes works on loan from the Met, the Hispanic Society of America and extraordinary sheets from The Morgan Library & Museum, the Princeton University Art Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and individual collectors. The Frick, 1 E. 70th St., 212-288-0700; 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; $18.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 7

The Last Newspaper—Curious why every newspaper is going gaga over this exhibit? Well, it’s built into the title, so we all feel we must give it some ink. The artwork in this exhibit will be from William Pope.L, Wolfgang Tillmans and Aleksandra Mir. But most everyone seems excited about the working “newsroom” that produces a weekly printed paper. See? Now you can appreciate all of our hard work by seeing the process of creating it. The New Museum, 235 Bowery Street, 212-219-1222; 11 a.m.-9 p.m., $12.