Theater: Nivelli's War, at New Vic Theater 2017

From Cahoots NI in association with the Lyric Theatre, Belfast

At the end of WWII, Ernst, a young evacuee from Frankfurt, finds himself alone and far away from home when he meets the mysterious Mr. H, a stranger with a trick or two up his sleeve. Fast friends, they set off down a road fraught with danger, hunger and uncertainty to return the young boy to his family. Original music and dreamlike stage effects help tell this dramatic story of two survivors who become each other's ally, protector and confidant. Inspired by a true story, NIVELLI'S WAR is a vivid and moving theatrical account of an incredible journey and magical friendship.

Co-founded by Mc Eneany and Zoe Seaton in 2001, Cahoots NI counts illusion and visual intrigue as essential to their storytelling. They collaborate with theater artists from across Northern Ireland to craft high-quality and inventive theatrical experiences for kids and families, expanding young imaginations and sparking creativity in the process.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/05/nyregion/auschwitz-magician-nivelli-war-play.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

Film: Another Year

Director: Shengze Zhu
2016 China Chinese (Hubei dialect) with English subtitles
181 minutes

Thirteen meals shared by a family of migrant workers over 14 months. Through this simple premise, Shengze Zhu’s film speaks volumes about life in contemporary China. Shot in leisurely long takes with a static camera amid cramped living quarters, Another Year constantly finds something new and unexpected to focus on, magnifying small physical and psychological details and capturing subtly shifting family dynamics. Zhu uses her subjects as a microcosm for China’s broader socioeconomic realities, but her compassionate commitment to patient observation does justice to their specificity and dignity.

https://www.filmlinc.org/films/another-year/

Film: CHASING TRANE: THE JOHN COLTRANE DOCUMENTARY

CHASING TRANE: THE JOHN COLTRANE DOCUMENTARY is a thought-provoking, uplifting, powerful and passionate film about an outside-the-box thinker whose boundary-shattering music continues to impact and influence people around the world.

This rich, textured and compelling portrait of a remarkable artist reveals the critical events, passions, experiences and challenges that shaped the life of John Coltrane and his revolutionary sounds. It is a story of demons and darkness, of persistence and redemption. But, above all else, it is the incredible journey of a spiritual warrior who found himself, found God, and in the process, created an extraordinary body of work that transcends all barriers of race, religion, age and geography. It is a film for anyone who appreciates the power of music to entertain, inspire and transform.

The beauty, poignancy, energy, pain, joy and inspiration heard in nearly 50 Coltrane recordings from throughout his career brings alive the artist and the times in which he lived. Even those familiar with his music will be able to hear and appreciate the music of John Coltrane in a new and exciting way.

Although Coltrane never participated in any television interviews (and only a handful for radio) during his lifetime, he has an active and vibrant presence in the film through his print interviews. These words—spoken by Academy Award winner Denzel Washington–illuminate what John Coltrane was thinking and feeling at critical moments throughout his life and career.

Country USA
Running Time 99 minutes
Director John Scheinfeld

http://www.ifccenter.com/films/chasing-trane-the-john-coltrane-documentary/

Film: Citizen Jane: Battle for the City

CITIZEN JANE is a timely tale of what can happen when engaged citizens fight the power for the sake of a better world. Arguably no one did more to shape our understanding of the modern American city than Jane Jacobs, the visionary activist and writer who fought to preserve urban communities in the face of destructive development projects. Director Matt Tyranuer (Valentino: The Last Emperor) vividly brings to life Jacobs’ 1960s showdown with ruthless construction kingpin Robert Moses over his plan to raze lower Manhattan to make way for a highway, a dramatic struggle over the very soul of the neighborhood.

Country USA
Year 2017
Running Time 92 minutes
Director Matt Tyranuer

http://www.ifccenter.com/films/citizen-jane-battle-for-the-city/

Theater: Vanity Fair

Adapted by Kate Hamill (Sense & Sensibility) from William Thackeray’s masterpiece, Vanity Fair exposes a society that cares more for good birth and good manners than for skill. But Becky Sharp, poor, plain, and devilishly clever, is determined to defy the odds through risky romantic entanglements, shady business practices, and social climbing at any cost; she won’t stop until the world lies at her feet.

From: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/03/theater/vanity-fair-broadway-review-kate-hamill-eric-tucker.html

From left, Joey Parsons, Debargo Sanyal, Kate Hamill and Tom O’Keefe in “Vanity Fair,” at the Pearl Theater. 

Credit Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

Ms. Parsons with Mr. Sanyal; Ms. Parsons plays the self-denying Amelia, who mostly exists to be virtuous. 

Credit Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

Film: Pow Wow

Director: Robinson Devor  2016 USA 72 minutes

Robinson Devor (Police Beat, Zoo) returns to documentary after a 10-year hiatus with Pow Wow, a visually striking series of vignettes. Showcasing the many environmental contrasts of the Coachella Valley in Palm Springs, CA, the film has an equally diverse array of subjects, including legendary Las Vegas comedian Shecky Greene, an elderly Austrian heiress, trust-funders, Native Americans, and white golfers who participate in their club’s annual “pow wow” party by wearing feather headdresses. These slices of life gradually come to illustrate the story of Willie Boy, a Paiute youth who escaped a mounted posse on foot across 500 miles of desert in 1908.

Film: Ama-San

Director: Cláudia Varejão 2016 Portugal/Switzerland Japanese with English subtitles 113 minutes

Cláudia Varejão’s intimate documentary focuses on women living in a small town off of Japan’s Shima Peninsula who have carried on the 2,000-year-old tradition of diving for pearls, sea urchins, and abalone. Challenging notions of how Japanese females are supposed to behave, the Ama (“sea women”) dive without scuba gear or oxygen tanks, wearing minimal protection. Like the Ama probing the ocean’s depths, Varejão’s camera examines the minutiae of the women’s day-to-day existence: their hair curlers, the sea salt clinging to their skin, and assorted daily feminine tasks that are all too often taken for granted. Winner of best Portuguese documentary at DocLisboa.

This film was a fascinating look at how an ancient work/fishing profession among Japanese women is integrated with their 21st century lives: these are working women in a modern Japanese community. The details that we see about their daily lives include cell phones and TV, a quiet shack where they sleep beside a fire after diving, singing karaoke and enjoying elaborate feasts of Japanese coastal food. The sea seems to support abundant shellfish harvesting without drawing conflict or competitive emotions from the many fisher-women. Female harmony, self-empowerment and a deepened sense of inter-generational community seem to be the fruits of this ancient fishing tradition.

Theater: A Gambler's Guide to Dying, at 59E59 2017

Gary McNair performs A Gambler’s Guide to Dying

What are the odds of living an extraordinary life?

This is the story of one boy's granddad who won a fortune betting on the 1966 World Cup, and, when diagnosed with terminal cancer in 1998 with weeks to live, gambled all his remaining winnings on living to see the year 2000. An intergenerational tale of what we live for and what we leave behind.

Gary McNair's award-winning solo show opens in New York following highly-acclaimed sell-out runs at Spoleto Festival, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Adelaide Festival and London's Off-West End.

McNair shines in this beautifully-written, deceptively simple, warmly comic piece that accumulates layers of meaning through the act of storytelling itself. Rich and earthily funny--a genuine pleasure. - The Guardian (UK).

The review: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/aug/08/a-gamblers-guide-to-dying-edinburgh-festival-review-gary-mcnair-traverse

The title of the latest one-man storytelling show from Gary McNair has a double meaning. The gambler is the narrator’s grandfather, a man who apparently placed a winning bet on the outcome of the 1966 World Cup. When he was subsequently diagnosed with cancer he placed another bet that, against the odds, he would survive to see the new millennium. But the title refers to us too: we are all gamblers, betting on outwitting death and achieving some kind of immortality through our genes and the stories we spin to our children and grandchildren. 

It’s been a real treat seeing McNair bloom as an artist over the years, and this Gareth Nicholls-directed show is a genuine pleasure – a beautifully written, deceptively simple, warmly comic piece that accumulates layers of meaning through the act of storytelling itself. It’s rich and earthily funny in its depiction of Gorbals in the 1960s, and delicate in its portrayal of the relationship between a grandson and his grandfather, and the desire we all have to be seen as special: the hero or heroine of our own story. 

It is both a celebration of the act of storytelling itself and a sly reminder that fiction and truth are hard to distinguish from each other. Like Sarah Polley’s brilliant movie Stories We Tell, it exposes the unreliability of memory and and the gap between what we know is true and what we want to believe is true. “The details, the facts, they’ve become blurred, like soft focus in an old movie,” says McNair.

This is a light-touch meditation on luck, probability, fate, love and the chances of falling in the Clyde and coming up with a salmon in your mouth. Odds are, audiences who secure a ticket will feel as though they’ve hit the jackpot. 

Theater: Come From Away

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/12/theater/come-from-away-review.html

A thrilling and multi-dimensional performance set in the small town of Gander in Newfoundland. The day is 911 when thousands of airline passengers were diverted/landed/detained in a village of 6,000 inhabitants. For the next five days, there are 16,000 people and the villagers respond with tremendous generosity and care for the emergency conditions required to house, feed and care for this vast number of "guests."  I also deeply appreciated that the show ended with a final musical performance by the musicians - from a fictionalized world, the reality of great music and talented musicians on stage drove the final emotions deftly home.

IRENE SANKOFF AND DAVID HEIN
BOOK, MUSIC, LYRICS

This quote from the review in the NYTimes:

Mr. Ashley and his musical staging director, Kelly Devine, have steered their multicast, 12-member ensemble through a rushing, sung-and-spoken narrative that has them changing parts (and accents) on a Canadian dime.

The performers are required to embody the good citizens of Gander (and nearby villages), a small town with a big airport in Northeast Canada, where 38 planes were forced to land after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The same cast plays passengers and crew members. 

...

“Come From Away,” in other words, is smarter than it first appears. The show starts off in a grating key of deep earnestness, as a chorus of Ganderians step to the edge of the stage to deliver an anthem of hearty regional identity. (“They say no man is an island, but an island makes a man.”)

But as it proceeds, the show — based on interviews with the people who inspired it — covers a vast expanse of sensitive material with a respect for its complexity.

...

Amid the surreal blur of activity, people fall in love, break up, learn of the deaths of loved ones and realize that the world will never, ever look the same again.