Highlights
HOWL! FILM FESTIVAL 2004
AUGUST 18-24
LIKE A FULL-LENGTH blowup of the first few minutes of Fahrenheit 9/11, Richard Ray Perez and Joan Sekler's Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election dives headfirst into the national nightmare known as Bush vs. Gore. Perez and Sekler escort us through every twist and turn, every hanging chad, dimpled chad and James Baker appearance of the post-electoral dust-up. Executive produced by Robert Greenwald (of recent Outfoxed note), Unprecedented is a thoroughly partisan documentary being shown as part of this year's Howl! Film Festival. Unprecedented is a reminder that while it perhaps may be going too far to say that the Republicans stole the 2000 election, it is assuredly not to state that a series of highly biased decision-makers (Jeb Bush, Katherine Harris, the Supreme Court) did everything in their power to prop up W. and not uphold the law.
Other politically themed films are less successful. Mark Wojahn's What America Needs follows the director on a cross-country trip, asking Americans, well, what they think America needs. It's a good idea, but too many respondents give television news-worthy answers, full of meaningless clichés. The Carlyle Connection shows the tight relationship between defense contractor the Carlyle Group and powerful politicians (George H.W. Bush was at a Carlyle meeting on the morning of September 11, 2001). Unfortunately, a thick miasma of paranoia leaves little room for fine-brushed exposition.
The festival also includes the new Ramones documentary End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones (See Jim Knipfel's review on page 27).
For full schedule info, see www.howlfestival.com.
SAUL AUSTERLITZ
ROSENSTRASSE
OPENS FRI., AUG. 20
PERHAPS DUE TO a feeling of impropriety, most German filmmakers in the post-World War II era have chosen not to explore the horrors of the Nazi regime on film, leaving it to their American and French compatriots. Veteran director Margarethe von Trotta's (The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum) latest film documents a little-known event in German history: the protests, led by gentile women, in front of the makeshift prison on the Rosenstrasse in 1943, agitating for the release of their Jewish husbands.
Rosenstrasse is bookended by a plot strand about Hannah (Maria Schrader), a German-American Jew who travels to Berlin to learn the truth about her mother's wartime experiences. She finds Lena Fischer (Katja Riemann), who, in a series of interviews, tells her the story of the Rosenstrasse women, and that of her mother as well.
The film shifts around restlessly, from the present to the 1940s to the 30s and back again, providing a pungent sense of the past's hold on the present. Hannah grows increasingly estranged from her Nicaraguan boyfriend Luis, implicitly questioning whether he would stand up for her as Lena had for her husband were some future cataclysm to strike. Rosenstrasse wrestles with the question of German complicity in the Nazi genocide, showing both tyrannical, power-hungry soldiers, and good souls like Lena and her decorated-veteran brother, wounded in Stalingrad. The film implies that ordinary Germans fought back against the Nazis in whatever small ways they could, but also that the success of the Rosenstrasse protests indicates that the Nazis were susceptible to public pressure.
In one exceptional scene, Lena and Lizzy, her brother's girlfriend, are called upon to perform for Goebbels and other assorted dignitaries at a swanky cocktail party. Lena accompanies Lizzy on the piano as she sings about loyalty being a silly trait, happiness being more easily found in flitting from one joy to the next. Lena's struggle, and the film by extension, is a hymn to the potency of loyalty. Both Hannah and her mother are shown in their apartment in New York attaching a new candle to the nub of a still-burning older one, singeing the bottom of the fresh candle and pressing firmly to create a cohesive unit. Loyalty grows to be a many-faced symbol here, from loyalty to one's love to loyalty to one's traditions. Like the two candles, Hannah attaches herself to her mother's experience, one generation joining itself to what has come before it, once she is singed by the flame of history's horror. So, too, has Berlin created itself anew. Rosenstrasse is now a construction zone, ringed by cranes and scaffolding, but the new edifices are built on the nub of Jewish history and experience, preserving the past as a means of coming to terms with its nightmares.
Cinema Village, 22 E. 12th St. (betw. University Pl. & 5th Ave.), 212-924-3363; call for times, $9.
Lincoln Plaza Cinema, 1886 B'way (betw. 62nd & 63rd Sts.), 212-757-2280; call for times, $9.50.
SAUL AUSTERLITZ
HAMELL ON TRIAL
TUES, AUG 24
PHIL OCHS WAS often one man with a guitar, but he could also be the nightly news and Johnny Carson's monologue. Ed Hamell is closer to a really good blog. His major-label days are nicely summed up on the import Mercuroyale album, capturing his frequent brilliance as an acoustic solo act in the truest sense. The new Tough Love finds him on Ani DiFranco's label, and his former sharp insights have become as blurred as his punk/folk stance. Still, a solo Ed is often one of the best live bands around. His August series of Tuesday-evening shows at Fez has been reaffirming an impressive backlog of songs, as Hamell recently discussed from his Brooklyn home.
Are you using any of the guest musicians on Tough Love for these local shows? It's just me solo. The records are fleshed out, but I've never performed live with a band. It sort of dilutes the sound. Maybe I'd try it in small doses, maybe adding a turntable or a stand-up bass. I just toured with Ani DiFranco, who was finally going solo for a while after her large band. That reminded me of how some of her songs were also better without a band. I humble at the comparison, but live Hendrix didn't sound anything like his records, and people weren't disappointed.
And while it wasn't Dylan on his motorcycle, you cracked your skull open in a car accident a few years ago. You know, it's less the skull and more these three vertebrae. They're up high toward the nerves, which are all exposed, and all the muscle has been torn from them. I'm like Gene Vincent. At least, I think he was constantly in pain. I don't feel it onstage. I really don't. It's cathartic. With the exception of hanging out with my wife, the stage is the most pleasant place for me to be. And I fly a lot more, but that's mainly because Europe has really opened up for me in the past couple of years.
Is that a perk of being a good leftist folkie? Oddly enough, the record which took off had nothing to do with politics. It was Coochtown, which was more of a Pulp Fiction kind of record. Uncut magazine over in England really championed me. It became brutally apparent that one great review could far surpass a bunch of okay reviews. I suddenly had this career in Europe. It's not built on trashing America. I'm not a Bush supporter, and I don't make any bones about that, but I know the people I admire-Richard Pryor, Bill Hicks-could have never said the things they said in any other country. I'm fully aware of how lucky I am to be in America.
Fez Under Time Cafe, 380 Lafayette St. (Great Jones), 212-533-7000, 7:30, $10.
J.R. TAYLOR
DO
THROUGH FRI., AUG. 27
TEASED OR TANGLED, bald or bearded, your hair is full of symbolism. Investigating the might of the mane, "DO," Pace/MacGill Gallery's amusing summer show, is on now through Aug. 27.
The curators obviously had a good time pulling together the show's 42 photos, which range from a shot of Nancy Reagan on Mr. T's knee-his Mohawk, her helmet hair-taken by Mary Anne Fackelman, to Guy Bourdin's seductive tresses photographed for French Vogue, to the dimly lit scene of a woman dressing her waist-length hair in Portrait of the Eternal by Manuel Alvarez Bravo.
Hung thematically, each grouping of two to four images considers an aspect of hair. Ethnic identity, youth and aging, political statements and other topics are cleverly examined with juxtaposed images. For example, Alexander Rodchenko's brutal depiction of the shaven-headed Mayakovsky with Cigarette hangs next to Lucas Samaras' psychedelic self-portrait as a smiling, long-haired hippy.
Connecting us visually to animals, our body hair arouses both disgust and desire. John Coplans' hairy torso is compared to a photo of a dog's chest taken by William Wegman. And pubic hair is considered, waxed and unwaxed.
Vanity, of course, threads throughout the show as comb-overs meet whipped-up waves. Yosemite, taken by Bruce Davidson in 1965, caught three women teasing and spraying to get that natural look at an outdoor picnic table turned makeshift beauty parlor. And a morality poem penned next to a photo by Duane Michals of an enchanting little Goldilocks warns her not to use the beauty of her magical hair to fulfill evil wishes.
Still other works use hair to reveal the subject's state of mind, such as Ruth, Danville, Virginia by Emmet Gowin. Standing against the wind, Ruth, a young woman in an old house dress, has a far-away expression, but it's her veil of wild curls that signals despair. Loretta Lux has captured the look of demonic possession with Hidden Rooms 1, her photo of a carefully poised child. The various elements in the picture set us up, but again, it's the hair, pulled tightly into two wrapped knots on top of her head that confirms the uneasy feeling.
Since hair is something we all know well, it's easy for even the artistically uninitiated to follow the curator's edits, the photographer's use of style and symbolism-in fact the whole process of thematic investigating becomes evident thanks to the topic.
JULIA MORTON
LANDSCAPES
THROUGH FRI., AUG. 27
LAND EQUALS POWER: power over the elements, over hunger, over security. So it's not surprising that even people who don't particularly like landscapes can still respond to them emotionally.
Considering the value of land, two art galleries-Forum and Jen Bekman-are presenting fictional and non-fictional landscape exhibitions. Both shows are short and to the point. Uptown the paintings and drawings are generally fictional. Downtown the work is photography-15 images of the Midwest.
People buy landscapes because, "more than anything else [the landscape is] a memory trigger," says Robert Fishko, Forum's director.
We connect to things as everyday as Scott Prior's Tomatoes (1994) ripening on a porch rail, or as common as Robert Cottingham's drawing of street signs at Fifth and Oxnard (1985).
When examining landscape art, one tends to think of real photographs as social critics and an artist's fantasy as more self-reflective, but within these works the lines are blurred; truth becomes a wishful dream, and visions speak directly to world issue.
For example, Turquoise House (2003) is a photo-realist painting by Linden Frederick. His tiny cube-home, a vivid saltbox engulfed in trees and sky, seems so real, it instantly conjures up inhabitance and narratives. Tema Stauffer's photograph Reindeer (2003) shares a similar layout, except this real saltbox yard is cluttered with plastic deer and a worn-out Santa scene. In this image, the true owner is not as important as the wish to see nature cleared of human debris.
Uptown, Forum has hung the art to exercise focus. The eyes jump back and forth in space as one canvas has the viewer staring out into a deep field-the next image, investigating a near-accident.
On another wall, three paintings echo the rhythmic elements of natural and urban space. Alfred Leslie's two black and white horizons, both titled Study for the Killing (1967), boldly flank Israel Hershberg's dense horizontal City Center, Jerusalem (1990-91).
Downtown, Bekman's gallery, opened little more than a year ago, is focused on emerging photography and painting, and this show presents artists from the Midwest. The works displayed are refreshing and direct, and while often ironic, they express the photographers' pride of place felt by the photographers.
Alec Soth has found a symbol of determination in his photograph Casino, Red Wing, MN, (2002). On the edge of a mall parking lot, a mobile trailer-home has grown roots. No sad ruin, this tin house has a barbecue, bikes, a front porch, a yard-ish area, an American flag mailbox and a lit-up deer with a bucking head.
Landscapes are generally human-lite, but people are the show in Susan Boecher's Twin-O-Rama (2002) and Box Car Girl (2004). Her photos record culture being created in new suburbs.
Back uptown, clouds of smoke and sparkling ash, the dreams of factories, rise from a gray painting of angular buildings and stacks. Looking like the Hubble telescope's recent pictures of star formation, Tula Telfair's large canvas is titled Early Utopian Ideals (2003).
In recent years, science fiction has also found a place in the landscape scene. Creating art and an object of art, painter and woodcarver Holly Lane places her eerie images like The Long Awaited Day Finally Came (2004) into her intricately carved wooden shrines, creating landscapes for her landscapes.
"Contemporary Landscapes," Forum Gallery, 745 5th Ave. (57th St.), 212-355-4545; 10-5:30, free.
JULIA MORTON