Film: Bolshoi Ballet's "The Nutcracker" 2012/2012 release

Film: The Square, Dir. Ruben Östlund, 2017 Sweden

A precisely observed, thoroughly modern comedy of manners, Ruben Östlund’s Palme d’0r–winner revolves around Christian (Claes Bang), a well-heeled contemporary art curator at a Stockholm museum. While preparing his new exhibit—a four-by-four-meter zone designated as a “sanctuary of trust and caring”—Christian falls prey to a pickpocketing scam, which triggers an overzealous response and then a crisis of conscience. Featuring several instant-classic scenes and a vivid supporting cast (Elisabeth Moss, Dominic West, and noted motion-capture actor Terry Notary), The Square is the most ambitious film yet by one of contemporary cinema’s most incisive social satirists, the rare movie to have as many laughs as ideas.

https://www.filmlinc.org/films/the-square-2/

Theater: Jason Bishop: Believe in Magic, at the New Vic Theater, 2017

"A master when it comes to all things involving the art of illusion"
The Today Show

"There's real elegance and even wit in the precision of his gestures, the agility of each finger."
The New York Times

"With disappearing acts, bar-bending stunts, and card tricks, the show was captivating and entertaining for every age."
Northern Review

The creator of the first (and now second!) magic show to perform at The New Victory Theater, Jason Bishop became enamored with magic as a kid in long-term foster care. He credits local libraries for sparking his interest in magic and helping him become the successful illusionist he is today. Jason isn't returning alone. Both his assistant, Kim Hess, and his canine companion, Gizmo (or Dog #97), are eager to ring in the holiday season at The New Victory Theater!

Theater: Triumph of Love, Juilliard Drama Dept., 2017

Pierre de Marivaux’s Triumph of Love
Stephen Wadsworth, director

Setting: 1730s France, the gardens of the philosopher Hermocrate

Leontine: Brittany Bradford
Leonide: Manon Gage
Dimas: Scout James
Harlequin: Nicholas Podany
Corine: Hadley Robinson
Agis: Philip Stoddard
Hermocrate: Allen Tedder

Adapted by Stephen Wadsworth from the play by Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux.
Marivaux’s 1732 comedy refines the commedia dell'arte style with wit and substance and more than a little cross-dressing. Princess Leonide falls for Prince Agis and dresses as a male philosophy student to gain access to his household. While there, she manages to become engaged to marry much of the household. A hilarious and painful comedy about gender, love, and political machinations.

https://www.juilliard.edu/event/121216/juilliard-drama-presents-pierre-de-marivauxs-triumph-love

Film: Tabu, F. W. Murnau, 1931 USA

Tabu, based on a story conceived in collaboration with Robert Flaherty, was shot in Tahiti with a primarily local cast. The narrative is famously straightforward, concerning the ill-fated romance of a young couple who flee their homeland when their love is forbidden, and it possesses the enduring, elegant force of a fable. Unencumbered, at last, from the burdens of commercial moviemaking—and Western sexual mores—Murnau found tremendous poetic expression in the simplest images, like the breaking of a wave, or the slice of a blade.

https://www.filmlinc.org/films/tabu/

Film: The Other Side of Hope, dir. Aki Kaurismäki 2017, Finland

Having escaped bombed-out Aleppo, Syrian refugee Khlaed (Sherwan Haji) seeks asylum in Finland, only to get lost in a maze of functionaries and bureaucracies. Meanwhile, shirt salesman Wikström (Sakari Kuosmanen) leaves his wife, wins big in a poker game, and takes over a restaurant whose deadpan staff he also inherits. These parallel stories dovetail to gently comic and enormously moving effect in Kaurismäki’s politically urgent fable, an object lesson on the value of compassion and hope that remains grounded in a tangible social reality. [https://www.filmlinc.org/films/the-other-side-of-hope/]

Theater: The Band's Visit, Atlantic Theater Company

Credits Book by Itamar Moses, based on the screenplay by Eran Kolirin; Music and lyrics by David Yazbek; Directed by David Cromer

Cast George Abud, Bill Army, John Cariani, Katrina Lenk, Erik Liberman, Andrew Polk, Rachel Prather, Jonathan Raviv, Sharone Sayegh, Kristen Sieh, Tony Shalhoub and Alok Tewari

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/08/theater/the-bands-visit-review.html?_r=0

Theater: ALAXSXA | ALASKA, created by Ping Chong, Ryan Conarro, Justin Perkins & Gary Upay'aq Beaver 2017

Directed by Ping Chong & Ryan Conarro
A Production of Ping Chong + Company
Created by Ping Chong, Ryan Conarro, Justin Perkins
& Gary Upay'aq Beaver (Central Yup'ik)

From the web site (http://lamama.org/alaxsxa/):

ALAXSXA | ALASKA is a theatrical collage of multimedia, puppetry, and Central Yup’ik drum and dance, illuminating striking moments of cross-cultural encounter in the epic, changing landscapes of Alaska. The three performers use movement and puppetry to reveal a series of little-known historical narratives of collisions between people and cultures in Alaska. These histories--at times humorous, at times tragic--juxtapose against Beaver and Conarro’s own personal memories as "insider" and "outsider" in the Last Frontier. 

http://www.ryanconarro.com/ 

Theater: A Sky for Bears, Teatro Gioco Vita, at the New Vic 2017

From Teatro Gioco Vita
Piacenza, Italy

From the web site (http://www.newvictory.org/Show-Detail?ProductionId=8400):

When you're a happy, handsome, well-rested bear, what more could you want? Why, to be a daddy bear of course! With all the courage he can muster, a bear sets out on a quest to find a family of his own to love. In a different forest, a little bear sets off to find the quickest way to the clouds in hopes of reuniting with his dear, departed grandfather. Two sweet stories told through charming shadow puppetry and lyrical movement, A SKY FOR THE BEARS shows us that sometimes when we look to the sky for our hearts' deepest desires, the best answers are found right here on earth.

http://www.teatrogiocovita.it/

Film: The Valley of Salt (La Vallée du Sel), dir. Christophe M. Saber

2016 | 62 minutes
Country of Production: Switzerland
Countries Featured: Switzerland, Egypt

In the wake of the Arab Spring and Egypt’s political turmoil, the young filmmaker Christophe Saber returns to his childhood home in Cairo. While his camera rolls, a typical reunion and family holiday turns into a dramatic and unnerving ordeal as his Christian parents receive death threats from the newly empowered Muslim Brotherhood.

AMNH 2017 Mead Film Festival

Film: Siberian Love, dir. Olga Delane

2016 | 82 minutes
Countries of Production: Germany, Russia
Country Featured: Russia

How do we reconcile who we are with where we came from? At age 16, Olga Delane moved from her family’s small Siberian village to Berlin. Twenty years later, she returns home as a single woman and is forced to confront the cultural differences between her upbringing and those of her current Western community. Back home, age-old attitudes toward love and marriage run deep. Despite her initial distaste for these values, Olga calls into question her own preconceptions about love.

AMNH 2017 Mead Film Festival

Film: Paa Joe & the Lion, dir. Benjamin Wigley

2016 | 72 minutes
Country of Production: United Kingdom
Countries Featured: United Kingdom, Ghana

A fisherman is buried in a fish-shaped tomb. A heavy drinker is buried in a beer bottle. For the Ga tribe of coastal Ghana, funerals are colorful and impressive affairs, with custom-made, stylish coffins for the departed. Ghana Master coffin craftsman Paa Joe and his son work together to keep this tradition alive, and a big commission gives them a once-in-a-lifetime chance to win international recognition for their art.

AMNH 2017 Mead Film Festival

Film: Honey, Rain & Dust, dir. Nujoom Alghanem

2016 | 86 minutes
Country of Production: United Arab Emirates
Country Featured: United Arab Emirates

Aisha, Fatima, and Ghareeb are three of the United Arab Emirates’ leading experts on honey. Follow their work in the mountains against the backdrop of a rising honey crisis as bee colonies cope with climate change and the ensuing survival challenges. Unwittingly, the lives of these three people have become predicated on a very fragile species, and they begin to wonder how long they will be able to continue their work.

AMNH 2017 Mead Film Festival

Film: Gulîstan, Land of Roses, dir. Zaynê Akyol

2016 | 86 minutes
Country of Production: Canada
Country/Culture Featured: Iraqi Kurdistan

Witness a depiction of modern warfare told through the eyes of women soldiers. In the mountains of Kurdistan, a left-wing military force works to keep its territory safe from the aggressive Islamic State. Remarkably, one of the army’s greatest assets is an all-female regiment, made more legendary and fearsome by ISIS’s belief that men killed by women on the battlefield are denied eternal paradise.

AMNH 2017 Mead Film Festival

Film: Brimstone & Glory, dir. Viktor Jakovleski

2017 | 67 minutes
Country of Production: USA
Country Featured: Mexico

Once a year, an annual pyrotechnics festival erupts through the small city of Tultepec, Mexico, transforming it into a blaze of sparks and flames. In the climactic "burning of the bulls," the bravest participants run amid toritos, bull-shaped floats rigged with fireworks that rain burning ash and light on the city.

AMNH 2017 Mead Film Festival

Film: Almost Heaven, dir. Carol Salter

2017 | 75 minutes
Country of Production: United Kingdom
Country Featured: China
US Premiere | Director in Attendance

This heartfelt coming-of-age story follows the life of Ying Ling, a 17-year-old trainee at a funeral parlor in Changsha, China. With a combination of humor and tenderness, the film captures Ying’s universal struggle to adapt to her new life: she calls her parents often, spends a night at the mall, and tries to stave off the boredom of daily work.

AMNH 2017 Mead Film Festival

Film: Lust for Sight (La fureur de voir), dir. Manuel von Stürler

2017 | 86 minutes
Countries of Production: France, Switzerland
Countries Featured: France, Switzerland, Micronesia

What happens when a filmmaker loses his eyesight? Over the last five years award-winning documentarian Manuel von Sturler's vision has gradually faded and the reality of encroaching blindness has set in. Now, von Sturler turns the camera on himself and grapples with the loss of his most essential sense.

AMNH 2017 Mead Film Festival

Film: Brothers (Bracia), dir. Wojciech Staroń (2016)

2016 | 68 minutes
Country of Production: Poland

In 1994, Wojciech Staroń (who was studying cinematography at the film school in Łódź at the time) and his girlfriend Małgosia (now his wife and also the soundwoman and producer of his films) went to Kazakhstan. On this trip they met two brothers, Alfons and Mieczysław Kułakowski, Polish emigrants who were taken by the winds of history first to Siberia and then to Kazakhstan. The former was a painter, the latter, a cartographer who for decades travelled around the furthest corners of the Soviet Union. Ten years after their meeting with Staroń, the Kułakowscy brothers returned to Poland. As repatriates they moved to a small village in the north of Poland. Alfons painted and Mieczysław accompanied him in his everyday duties.  -- http://culture.pl/en/work/brothers-wojciech-staron

AMNH 2017 Mead Film Festival

Film: Dick Verdult: It Is True But Not Here (2017), dir. Luuk Bouwman

The career of Eindhoven-based artist and musician Dick Verdult spans decades. He is seen as an outsider, as 'the last Dada-ist'. But what we experience as elusiveness turns out to be quite controlled and firstly funded on very personal experiences from his childhood as a 'Philips child' in Latin America. Rather than experiencing globalism as a problem, Verdult is like a cheerful, transcultural mutant. We see how, at the age of 60, he has become a cult musician in South America, Russia and Japan and is increasingly recognised internationally as a visual artist. This documentary explores Verdult's multidisciplinary, international art practice. We see Verdult at work in his studios in Bergeijk (The Netherlands) and Calanda (Spain) and on tour in Peru, Colombia and Argentina.

AMNH 2017 Mead Film Festival

Film: Lucky, dir. John Carroll Lynch, 2017

LUCKY follows the spiritual journey of a 90-year-old atheist and the quirky characters that inhabit his off the map desert town. Having out lived and out smoked all of his contemporaries, the fiercely independent Lucky finds himself at the precipice of life, thrust into a journey of self exploration, leading towards that which is so often unattainable: enlightenment. Acclaimed character actor John Carroll Lynch's directorial debut, "Lucky", is at once a love letter to the life and career of Harry Dean Stanton as well as a meditation on mortality, loneliness, spirituality, and human connection.

Why Harry Dean Stanton Is The G.O.A.T. Character Actor: https://youtu.be/HfFyoNdgwn4

Theater: 'No Longer Without You' by Adelheid Roosen, FIAF NYC 2017

'No Longer Without You' by Adelheid Roosen

This fall Le Skyroom is hosting the US Premiere of "No Longer Without You" as part of Crossing the Line Festival. The theatre show is a searing, outrageous, hilarious conversation between a real-life mother and daughter. Havva Oral is a traditional Muslim immigrant living in the Netherlands; her westernized daughter Nazmiye Oral is a journalist and modern Dutch woman. In the intimate circle of a staged living room, they confront each other’s faith, sexuality, and values, with both love and anger. Directed by Adelheid Roosen and set to live music by Seval Okyay, No Longer Without You is a theatrical look at an important rite.

Out of love for her progressive daughter Nazmiye, the Islamic, traditional, headscarf-wearing mother Havva Oral (68) goes on stage week after week to talk through, in the presence of the audience, everything they haven’t spoken about with each other for years: the hymen, marriage, sex, children, faith and homosexuality. “My mother is prepared to risk the condemnation of the Dutch Islamic community to fight with me, her daughter, in public. There is nothing I wouldn’t dare tell my mother anymore. Saying everything to each other on stage has become a kind of experiment, the exploration on no two nights the same. To me, this is a majestic act of her love”, says Nazmiye.

Theater: Inanimate, at the Flea Theater 2017

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/theater/review-inanimate-flea-theater.html?_r=0

Inanimate
By Nick Robideau
Directed by Courtney Ulrich

Erica, shy and more than a little socially awkward, is in love with Dee. The problem is that her politician sister, her only and equally awkward new friend, and the nosy residents of their small town in Massachusetts don’t understand at all, because Dee… well, Dee is a Dairy Queen sign. Inanimate is a play that explores objectum sexuality, feeling like an outsider, listening to your heart and finally, finding your tribe.

CAST
Lacy Allen
Maki Borden
Philip Feldman
Tressa Preston
Artem Kreimer
Nancy Tatiana Quintana
Michael Oloyede
Marcus Jones
Alexandra Slater

Film: This Is Not What I Expected - Hay foon nay

Derek Hui  2017 Mandarin with English subtitles 106 minutes

This pastiche of the contemporary Chinese romcom and the old-school screwball comedy delights all the senses. Mousy and accident-prone Gu Shengnan is a brilliant chef, the best-kept secret in her fancy hotel; Lu Jin is a reserved yet rude megalomaniac millionaire. In an antagonistic antithesis of the meet-cute, the two have an unfortunate yet hilarious run-in that makes them mortal adversaries. In a comic twist of fate, die-hard foodie Lu ends up a guest of the hotel and becomes hopelessly obsessed with Gu’s intoxicating dishes. An all-consuming love-hate relationship blossoms—with food standing in for sex—amidst a succession of laugh-riot hi-jinks, as stars Zhou Dongyu and Takeshi Kaneshiro prove as effortless a comedy duo as Hepburn and Grant (Bringing Up Baby), while wryly nodding to Ge You and Shu Qi (If You Are the One). A dish to be savored.

https://www.filmlinc.org/films/this-is-not-what-i-expected/

Documentary Film: Lost in Lebanon, dir. Sophia Scott, Georgia Scott

Lost in Lebanon
Sophia Scott, Georgia Scott
2016 Arabic, English 80 minutes

As the Syrian war continues to leave entire generations without education, health care, or a state, Lost in Lebanon closely follows four Syrians during their relocation process. The resilience of this Syrian community, which currently makes up one fifth of the population in Lebanon, is astoundingly clear as its members work hard to collaborate, share resources, and advocate for themselves in a new land. With the Syrian conflict continuing to push across borders, lives are becoming increasingly desperate due to the devastating consequences of new visa laws that the Lebanese government has implemented, leaving families at risk of arrest, detention, and deportation. Despite these obstacles, the film encourages us to look beyond the staggering statistics of displaced refugees and focus on the individuals themselves.  https://www.filmlinc.org/films/lost-in-lebanon/

Documentary Film: The Force, dir. Peter Nicks

Director

Peter Nicks 

2017
93 minutes

The Force presents a deep look inside the long-troubled Oakland Police Department in California as it struggles to confront federal demands for reform, civil unrest in the wake of the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and layers of inefficiency and corruption. A young police chief, hailed as a reformer, is brought in to complete the turnaround at the very moment the #BlackLivesMatter movement emerges to demand police accountability and racial justice in Oakland and across the nation. Despite growing public distrust, the Oakland Police Department is garnering national attention as a model of police reform. But just as the department is on the verge of a breakthrough, the man charged with turning the department around faces the greatest challenge of his career—one that could not only threaten progress already made, but the very authority of the institution itself.

https://www.filmlinc.org/films/the-force/

Documentary Film: The Good Postman, by Tonislav Hristov

Tonislav Hristov  2016 Bulgarian 80 minutes

A quiet Bulgarian community on the Turkish border finds itself in the middle of a European crisis. This otherwise unremarkable village has become an important loophole for asylum seekers making their way through Europe. But Ivan, the local postman, has a vision. He decides to run for mayor and campaigns to bring life to the aging and increasingly deserted village by welcoming the refugees and their families. While some of his neighbors support the idea, it meets with resistance from others, who want to make sure the border stays shut. With surprising warmth, humor, and humanity, The Good Postman provides valuable insight into the root of this timely and internationally relevant discussion.

“How amazing to find a little forgotten town where all the European Union and US discussions and politics about refugees and immigration are distilled so clearly. The Good Postman has great characters and surreal moments – genuine and moving.”

—Bill van Esveld, senior researcher, Middle East and North Africa Division, Human Rights Watch

Documentary Film: Muhi - Generally Temporary, by Rina Castelnuovo-Hollander and Tamir Elterman

Rina Castelnuovo-Hollander, Tamir Elterman  2017 Arabic, Hebrew 87 minutes

For the past seven years Muhi, a young boy from Gaza, has been trapped in an Israeli hospital. Rushed there in his infancy with a life-threatening immune disorder, he and his doting grandfather, Abu Naim, wound up caught in an immigration limbo that made it impossible for them to leave. With Muhi’s citizenship unclear, and Abu Naim denied a work permit or visa, the pair reside solely within the constraints of the hospital walls. Caught between two states in perpetual war, Muhi is being cared for by the very same people whose government forbids his family to visit, and for him or his grandfather to travel back. Made by two filmmakers from Jerusalem, this documentary lays out the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in human terms, documenting the impact these paradoxical circumstances have on individual lives. Screening followed by discussion with filmmakers and Omar Shakir, Researcher, Middle East and North Africa division, HRW.

“A beautiful, haunting film about a man and a child who find themselves sheltered and also trapped in an absurd, extraterritorial corridor between Israel and Palestine, at war with each other…This story challenges the notion of enemies and shows ordinary human beings trying to be human in a world that has betrayed humanity.”

—Sari Bashi, Israel/Palestine advocacy director, Human Rights Watch

https://www.filmlinc.org/films/muhi-generally-temporary/