Film Socialisme

Taking reading and movie-watching literally
Summer used to be the time people caught up on the reading they had always meant to do. In Goodbye, Columbus, Philip Roth parodied the ritual pulling out of Tolstoy’s War and Peace around the pool or on the beach. Roth observed an ideal situation—not beach fiction but great fiction on the beach—that should inspire movie lovers as well.

With the increased availability of movies in various delivery formats following their initial theatrical runs, when people simple don’t have the time to get out to theaters, summer relaxation offers the opportunity to catch up.

Thanks to tablets and smart phones, this summer’s reading doesn’t have to be limited to Tolstoy, Robert Caro or those James Brown and Nile Rodgers biographies; summer reading ideal can include movies, too, especially movies where you literally need to read—the subtitles.

Conversation Piece
Burt Lancaster stars in Luchino Visconti’s quasi-autobiographical story of an dying professor assessing his appetite for life when a greedy, narcissistic family invades his estate. Many of the themes Visconti explored in his film version of Mann’s Death in Venice are re-examined in this mostly interior-set film, which goes both deeper yet lighter. It‘s a wise man’s view of sexual folly unlike any other.
Each close-up of each ravishing face (Lancaster, Helmut Berger, Silvana Mangano) is worth several pages of great prose. Visconti‘s 1974 masterpiece is one of the New York Film Festival premieres left out of this year’s NYFF retrospective. It’s rarely shown, but this new DVD offers it in an aspect ratio that preserves its widescreen beauty. (Raro Video)

Film Socialisme
Jean-Luc Godard turns the ends of both film and of socialism as we know it into a provocation, going into the bold cinematic and political territory of the present as no other filmmaker can. This film contains some of Godard’s most perplexing yet charming études: two parent and child sequences—one jazz, one classical—that symbolize cultural and spiritual indoctrination.
Godard plays with the idea of a “readable text” by creating special subtitles in “Navajo English” that poetically fracture language into verbal codes. Simultaneously analyzing people, the world and the media between them, he teases sound and image. The visual experiments confirm Godard’s pitch-perfect compositional and color skills. An opening sequence aboard a cruise ship symbolizes the state of the world, afloat/adrift between new media and old means of conveyance. Prophetically, the ship is named Costa Concordia. (Kino Lorber)

Going Places
Bertrand Blier’s debut comedy is as outrageous now as it was back in 1974. Newly released on DVD, it shames contemporary sex comedies as timid and juvenile expressions of sex and romance. Gerard Depardieu and Patrick Dewaere, at their physical peaks, portray a pair of louts who roam a small town looking for sexual release at the expense of available women (or each other, if the mood hits).This contemporary surrealist sex farce is perched between erotic daydream and pre-Viagra nightmare. Blier tests social conventions as well as the fragile if bodacious male ego—especially when the unarousable Miou-Miou achieves fulfillment the alpha male duo cannot provide. Going Places shocks, amuses and makes you think. (Kino Lorber)

The Clowns
Fellini’s examination of the circus and clown tradition pays tribute to conventions of comedy and caricature that are at the core of his “serious” films. This rarely shown documentary offers a trove of the “Felliniesque”—from outrageous faces and acrobatic movement to universal pathos. It also predates what came to be thought of as the “mockumentary,” through Fellini’s ingenious way of making his documentary investigation as absorbing and fascinating as a fully scripted drama. Instead of mocking narrative convention, Fellini expands the storytelling boundaries of filmmaking, all the time expressing his unique sensibility. Not just for fans of Fellini but for cinema and performing arts enthusiasts, too. (Raro Video)

No Subtitles Necessary: Laszlo & Vilmos
For cineastes, this is the year’s worthiest documentary, a look back at the twin careers of great cinematographers Vilmos Zsigmond and Laszlo Kovacs. These Hungarian immigrants came to the U.S. in the 1960s, bringing New Wave experiments with natural lighting and mobile cameras that changed the look of American cinema. Between them, Zsigmond and Kovacs shot most of the best and important films of the 1970s’ American Renaissance period—McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Deliverance, The Long Goodbye, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Easy Rider, Paper Moon, Five Easy Pieces, Nickelodeon, Shampoo, The Deer Hunter and more.

Actually, there are no subtitles to read here, but director James Chressanthis brings the cross-cultural art movie experience closer through the personalities and creativity of these major artists. (Cinema Libre Studio)

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.

Ask any professional theater critic about the Fringe Fest, and you’re bound to get an eye-roll or a heavy sigh. The sprawling annual theater festival is increasingly a tedious exercise in public masturbation for its performers, most of which isn’t even titillating. The one-person shows are usually pretty dreary, but that’s not to say that shows with casts of two and up are much better. With some of the most reasonably priced tickets in Manhattan (and plenty of press every year), it’s no wonder that theatergoing dilettantes whose only exposure to theater is the Fringe don’t see more shows.

Best Contemporary Art Show: Anne Collier

New York-based artist Anne Collier lands this year’s best gallery show, hands down, for her eponymous exhibition this January at Anton Kern. The show was comprised mostly of photography, with books opened to pages with sunsets lining the gallery. There was also a black-and-white photo of an eye, with a frame resembling a tear duct and an image of a paper cutter slicing that eye. The show is a little aggressive in its demand that the gallery-goer contemplates the act of looking, but it’s an attribute we like. Looking at art shouldn’t always be easy.

Best Off-Off-Broadway Show: Now Circa Then

A comedy about historical re-enactors at the Lower East Side’s Tenement Museum, Carly Mensch’s two-hander is as close to theatrical perfection as you’re likely to find. The production at Ars Nova sparkled, from Jason Eagan’s direction to Lauren Halpern’s densely detailed set design to the hilarious and poignant performances from Stephen Plunkett and Maureen Sebastian. With even Off-Broadway shows increasingly overblown, what a pleasure it was to sit down and find the focus shifted from high concepts to just telling a great tale.

Best Usher: Jack Donoghue at Theatre Row

He’s there almost every night, taking tickets and directing you to your floor, and if you attend shows at Theatre Row with any frequency, chances are Jack Donoghue will remember you. His friendliness is never more welcome than shortly after being forced to interact with the bored and impatient ushers of Broadway theaters—particularly that nasty one at The Schoenfeld.

Best Indie Movie Theater: IFC Center
323 6th Ave., at W. 3rd St., 212-924-7771

Just over five years into its existence, the IFC Center continues to offer some of the best new art house releases along with an ever-expanding schedule of events. The latest addition to its repertoire is a full-on film festival: DOC NYC, a documentary showcase co-founded by Thom Powers, the documentary programmer for the Toronto International Film Festival whose other duties at the IFC Center include its Stranger than Fiction series. Also coming up: The 330-minute Special Roadshow Edition of Olivier Assayas’s terrorist chronicle Carlos and famed director Claude Chabrol’s final film, Inspector Bellamy.

Best Rescue Work: So Help Me God!

Whether Maurine Dallas Watkins’ lost 1920s play So Help Me God! is actually a great play or star Kristen Johnston elevated it to higher heights is beside the point: Few plays last year were as vicious, tart and unrelentingly cynical than The Mint’s production of this show about a bitchy theatrical diva and the up-and-comer who threatens to usurp her. With so many Off-Broadway plays enjoying unnecessary transfers to Broadway, this is the one that got lost in the shuffle. Again.

John Baldessari at the MET.

Best Museum Show: John Baldessari
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 5th Ave., at E. 82nd St., 212-535-7710

This show just opened at The Met last week, but having seen it already at the Tate Modern last year in London, we think this is an easy call. John Baldessari spent a lifetime establishing rules for his own art-making practice, and making art that followed those guidelines. In a time when the criteria for what constitutes good contemporary art seems increasingly vague, this show couldn’t offer a more timely antidote.

Best Venue For Parties: The Hudson Hotel

The era of the great disco dance palaces is long gone. Lately, some of the best parties have taken up residence at the Hudson Hotel. With the sprawling Good Units down in the bowels of the place, a monthly party like Susanne Bartsch’s Bloody Mary can pack in a huge crowd. Upstairs, there are regular weekly parties in the Hudson Library and the Hudson Bar, on the other side of the hotel. The Private Park is in the courtyard of the lobby and the setting for many a private party during the summer, and even better is the rooftop Sky Terrace on the 15th floor, complete with glittering views of the city. The security staff at the Hudson is over-zealous and even thuggish, but then again, a lot of drunks are wandering the hallways looking for a party.

Best Non-Profit Art Initiative: Triple Candie
500 W. 148th St., at Amsterdam Ave., 212-368-3333

Harlem’s Triple Candie offers perhaps the city’s most direct push back to the dominating force of the art market: Not only does the gallery refuse to sell art, it also no longer exhibits work. Owners Shelley Bancroft and Peter Nesbet focus instead on engaging a lower-income-class community typically located outside of fine art circles. A unique and laudable outgrowth of New York’s vibrant non-profit art scene.

Hudson Hotel

Best Comedy Series: Lasers In The Jungle

Producers Carol Hartsell and Sean Crespo and host Dan Wilbur have certainly outdone themselves with Lasers in the Jungle, their weekly comedy series on Thursday nights at Luca Lounge. Where else can you see SNL’s John Mulaney try out new material, Community’s Donald Glover do a last-minute drop-in set or The Daily Show’s Wyatt Cenac do 15 minutes of comedy in an audience member’s lap? All for free, no less.

Best NYC-Based Film Festival: New York Film Festival

After last year’s firestorm of criticism for offering up an insular program only accessible to diehard cinephiles, NYFF bounced back in style with a healthy blend of high profile premieres (The Social Network, The Tempest, Hereafter) and small-scale discoveries from the festival circuit. It’s still Lincoln Center, which means the prestige factor remains firmly in place with the latest offerings from Jean Luc-Godard and Abbas Kiarostami, but they now share the stage with the likes of Clint Eastwood and Jesse Eisenberg—a healthy cinematic diversity that should help sustain an image for the festival that’s aiming to feel both literate and contemporary.

By Jerry Portwood

The New York Film Festival, the city’s premiere film fest, has been lambasted over the years for being too exclusive, academic and, as A.O. Scott wrote in the New York Times last year, “as the grimmest in memory.” But recent additions to the programming staff—many of whom are now in their thirties—has shown a marked contrast with what appears to be higher-profile and more mainstream titles. This year’s opening night film, for example, is the hotly anticipated The Social Network from director David Fincher, and the closing night film is Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter, which stars Matt Damon. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t many foreign art films, but it does seem to speak to a broadening of the audience the Festival wishes to attract.

Julie Taymor’s The Tempest will be presented at The New York Film Festival.

One of the newest staff members is 32-year-old Scott Foundas, associate director of programming, who is also a recent transplant from Los Angeles, where he had been the film editor and critic at LA Weekly. Foundas downplays the influence of younger members on the selection committee and says the NYFF has always had a reputation for a broad range of excellent films.

“Godard has been screened during the festival something like 25 times,” Foundas says. “We really look for the cream of the crop. You can come every night and see the best films in the world.”

That may be the case, but the Film Society of Lincoln also presents another daylong series this week, “John Hughes: We Can’t Forget About Him,” which may have never been slated without Foundas’ support. The retrospective of the director’s work takes place Sept. 19, and is a significant achievement for Foundas.

“It’s something I’ve been working on pretty much since day one,” Foundas explains. “One of the fascinating things about John Hughes, for all the post-mortem tributes to him, is that in his lifetime he was not recognized by critics or the industry outside of a commercial base. He was not nominated or received any of the major awards. It’s really only in his death that he’s been appreciated.”

As the organization continues to evolve—with two new spaces set to open early next year—and seeks to attract newer and younger audiences, we will have to wait and see how Foundas and the other members of the selection committee continue to program for new generations of film fans. In the meantime, the world’s cinema awaits.

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Sept. 24-Oct. 10, New York Film Festival, Lincoln Center, www.filmlinc.com/nyff; $20-$40.