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A very special presentation of a fascinating poetry/video/trace your roots kind of show from our friends at vvitalny. Join us for an evening of re-invention, interaction and some really good poetry. Oh, and there will be borscht. Because you can’t host a remotely Polish event without it.

Featuring

Po Prostu Milosz by vvitalny

“I am a problem…I am problem. Like the bear and the shark and the wind.”

– Bob Holman

Po Prostu Milosz is a series of videos in which vvitalny explores the politics of writing and the “Polish school of poetry” through conversations – about legendary Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz – with leading American poets Bob Holman, Jane Hirshfield and Robert Pinsky. These videos form the nucleus of a larger multimedia project where the anxiety of influence is a legacy we celebrate. It begins with the poetry of Miłosz, which echoes in the work of following generations of American poets. Their work, in turn, informs our work in video, as well as the work of Warsaw Philharmonic’s Tomek Januchta, whose original music accompanies these videos. The project itself is actually an online “art game”, which serves as a platform to explore the use of (new) media to remix these influences, and to create collaborations were none existed before.

3rd Ward (map)

Parents. These two projects turn their cameras on the stories, knowledge and insight passed down from the people who brought us into this world. Every Day Is A Holiday follows Theresa Loong’s quest to find out about her father’s journey from Malaysian teenager to Chinese POW in a Japanese camp to US citizen. And Cooking By Heart shares the joy that happens when family recipes find their way from one generation to the next. Cooks from the Cooking By Heart videos will prepare a special plate from two distinct traditions: a masala from India and a joloff rice recipe from Nigeria. With a special collaborative performance from Moviehouse’s own Shantell Martin’s work with a live cellist.

Featuring

Every Day Is A Holiday by Theresa Loong

Growing up, filmmaker Theresa Loong knew that her father, Paul Loong, was older than most of her friends’ parents. Throughout her youth and young adulthood, Theresa recalls a cheerful father who loved to laugh and play pranks on his kids. But underneath all that laughter, he would show occasional flashes of anger and sadness.

One day, young Theresa asked him innocently about a curious scar on his back. “Everyone has secrets,” he would say.

She knew this much: His road to becoming an American citizen was anything but direct. As a Chinese Malaysian teenager serving in the British Royal Air Force, he spent three years at hard labor as a
prisoner of war in Japan. But it wasn’t until Theresa discovered a hidden diary her father kept while imprisoned, that she uncovered other family secrets.

This work-in-progress showing of “Every Day Is a Holiday” draws upon his experiences to explore contemporary issues of war, immigration, and family.  It celebrates the freedom that comes with confronting the past and facing the future with resilience, forgiveness, and love.

Cooking By Heart by Alana Lowe and Paul Helzer

Cooking by Heart is a series of short videos that document recipes as they are shared across generations. We are learning from extraordinary home cooks as they prepare family favorites with a loved one in the comfort of their own kitchen. We preserve food traditions and document family stories. Or you could say we are telling recipe stories and recording kitchen memories.

MNP

Without giving so much of the performance away… we make a strong point that we and you are HERE, unlike a lot of shows that want to take you on a journey or an escape to a distant place, we want to create the opposite space. We start with an image of a door that we all walked through and slowly bring in some sound, some recorded conversation that was going on before the show – so people are like – hang on, I know that door/space I came through it to get here, hang on that’s thingy bobs voice…. People are instantly but in a very subtle way brought into that place called now and here - then we really begin. I will start with my voice looper repeating some spoken words, normally a question I heard someone say or the longitude and latitude of our current location …… I/my noise fades out Anna with her awesome cello come in and the live drawing also begins…

3rd Ward (map)

Join us for a sneak peak at the amazing documentary about the potential death of the acoustic by Josh Granger, Maxine Trump, & Kurt Wallin. Plus catch a live acoustic performance by Halina Larsson mixed with Shantell’s visuals and some yummy kale, apple and Parmesan or roasted duck with orange ricotta ravioli from Holland & Grey Ravioli.

If the overlogging of the world’s forests continues, countless species face extinction and our carbon emissions will skyrocket. But there is about to be another casualty in this war on wood…the acoustic guitar. If things don’t change, in less than 10 years the guitar as we know it will be no more…

Musicwood follows a Coalition of the world’s foremost guitar makers as they attempt to save the old-growth trees of the Tongass National Forest in Alaska. To do this they will have to deal with a logging company of Native Americans who have been in the area for 10,000 years. Native Americans who’ve notoriously been given a raw deal from the US government. So cultures will clash. To get them to change won’t be easy; it’s their livelihood that’s also at risk.

Musicwood tells this story by joining the Coalition on their journey to Alaska, getting behind the scenes in the negotiations, and framing it all with a soundtrack of major acoustic guitar performances. Interviews with leading experts, a rare chance to hear the Native American perspective, and some of the most dramatic scenery in the United States. Musicwood is an ecological investigation, a cultural history and an adventurous journey to the heart of primeval forest.

Halina Larsson

Halina Larsson has a diverse sound and a variety of influences including Janis Joplin, Nina Simone, Erykah Badu, Feist and Elliot Smith. She is a trained jazz vocalist who on this ep (Fires & French Horns) falls somewhere between indie folk songstress and new soul chanteuse.

Dance New Amsterdam (map) & Gibney Dance Center (map)

The Dance Film Lab (DFL) is a community-building, monthly series for dance filmmakers to gather; share information, methods, and tools; and address technical, practical and artistic challenges. In partnership with Moviehouse, Dance Film Lab presents two curated screenings of dancefilm work created by its participants including Zena Bibler, Anna Brady Nuse, Cory Nakasue, Run Shayo, GK1 Productions, Sophie Kuller, Victoria Murphy & Chisa Hidaka. DFL is a project of Dance Films Association, hosted by Dance New Amsterdam, organized and directed by Zach Morris of Third Rail Projects and receives support from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

Part of Open City, Moviehouse’s new traveling series.

Featuring

Becoming Be-Going by Run Shayo

An everyman alone in a vacant all lost survivors world of a cataclysmic event, protected by a glass bubble on his head and a rain suit, on a pilgrim’s journey to nowhere only to find out his salvation is out side of his bubble, which is the root to our salvation, people and creatures of planet earth.

Rest by Cory Nakasue

Rest is a study of fragmentation of time, experience, and perception. A found sound score from the outside world intrudes on the solitary confines of a place that is completely anonymous, yet made extremely personal through movement.

Windings by Zena Bibler

Fallen limbs, gray skies, hushed whispers, silent houses. A dance for the winds left behind. Windings is part of a series of site specific films that aims to capture something from a particular place without much premeditation or planning. These dances serve as postcards or snapshots—preserved views of places that are often in a state of constant change.

What Comes Between Fear and Sex (Part 1: Vier/ Fear) by Anna Brady Nuse

What Comes Between Fear and Sex depicts the emotional turbulence of a teenage couple. In this excerpt, teenagers twist the night away under the authoritarian rule of a stern matron and the looming shadow of war.

Director/Choreographer: Anna Brady Nuse
Music: J Why
Starring Donna Costello & Matt Sweeney

photo credit: P. Roussetzki.

(re)Action by Victoria Murphy

(re)Action investigates the poetic boundaries, passages and portals of what we call positive and negative space, and, as well, it creates a conversation between image and score. (re)Action is an intuitive journey that sparkles with surprise and resolves unexpectedly, thatencourages true attentiveness, and enlivens as it restores.

Together by Chisa Hidaka

Recognized as Best Experimental Film at its world premiere at the Big Apple Film Festival, ʻTogether: Dancing with Spinner Dolphinsʼ is the debut film of the Dolphin Dance Project. It portrays Chisa and wild Spinner Dolphins forging a tender relationship through the graceful language of dance in the deep blue waters of the Pacific Ocean. While directing and performing in the film, Chisa used principles of dance improvisation to work with dolphins that are completely wild, participating voluntarily without feeding or any other coercion. To watch ʻTogetherʼ is to see the unfolding of a rare artistic collaboration between a human and completely wild animals. ʻTogetherʼ is a true innovation in dance and inter-species communication. It is also a poetic portrayal of the simple beauty of a human in harmony with Nature.

Transformation by Sophie Kuller

For this piece, I have gathered different dance students from Juilliard, Tisch, and the Joffrey Ballet School together and asked them to listen to the music, and improvise movement as a way of exploring who they are and how they interact with one another.

An Ostrich Proudly by Alex Springer & Xan Burley

An Ostrich Proudly, a new film by alex|xan: the Median Movement, features a woman defined by a space. The space is an empty barn, the floor of which is brittle with debris underneath her feet. A man loiters. He draws nearer and nearer until she is well within his reach. He takes hold of her and she fights this; she is always fighting restraint to no avail. Her freedom is limited. Even from without, the man positions himself to thwart her efforts to flee. It is a piece of unrelenting captivity and the woman’s own dismal and futile attempts to escape, or not. It is reminiscent of bygone times and bygone motivations. It is melancholy, beautiful, and crushing. Shot at Kirkland Farms as a part of Dancenow[NYC]’s Silo residency, the score is sound captured during the filming.

Pinking by GK1 Productions

Pinking is a short film we created to celebrate the varied landscape of our new home in NYC.  Five women in pink dresses run across Brooklyn to ultimately reunite at the far edge of the borough in Coney Island.

3rd Ward (map)

We’ve invited our friends at Kinetic Cinema over for some dance films and deep conversation. Be part of the launch of a very special project, plus catch the debut of our new resident VJ, Shantell Martin.

Kinetic Cinema is a screening series that explores the intersection of dance and film through the lens of guest curators that are artists themselves. For Moviehouse, choreographer Aynsley Vandenbroucke will present a program that delves into the relationship between personal partnership and artistic practice. Through documentaries and interviews of primarily New York based artists, we’ll look at questions of freedom and commitment, presence and absence, public and private, mobility and stability. We’ll discuss and debate these sometimes contradictory human impulses, and the dialogue that ensues will be recorded and used to form the foundation for a new performance piece Vandenbroucke is making surrounding these questions.

Aynsley Vandenbroucke is passionate about the role of movement in every aspect of our lives.  She divides her time between New York City and the Catskill Mountains where she and her husband founded and direct Mount Tremper Arts, a center for contemporary performance and visual art. Her choreographic work has been performed in many wonderful New York City theaters as well as in Brazil and San Francisco. A Laban Movement Analyst, Aynsley currently teaches at Princeton University and Lehman College.

This Kinetic Cinema screening is a co-presentation of Pentacle’s Movement Media and Moviehouse. For more information on other Kinetic Cinema workshops and screenings please visit our website.

Pentacle’s Movement Media programs are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council, and are made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.

3rd Ward (map)

The heartfelt thought-provoking documentary that previewed at Moviehouse in 2010 returns for a very special screening.

American Meat explores the complexities embedded in the highly debated practices of the American meat industry. As the economy drives a contraction of conventional chicken, pork and beef operations, we hear the innovative methods of the charismatic, Virginia-based farmer, Joel Salatin. Joel, who is a leader of the growing niche of people who are opting for animals raised outside and without the use of antibiotics, believes that if more people become sustainable farmers, the movement could fracture centralized commodity production. Conventional farmers argue that small-scale farming can’t expand production enough to adequately meet the demands of the nation. As the dialogue ensues, Salatin signs a deal with fast-food chain Chipotle in a surprising move, with widespread implications for the industry.

105 Metropolitan Avenue (map)

Itziar Barrio‘s Blue Wall Project is a public video installation that explores the sense of time, history and place by converting an ordinary blue construction fence into a live blue screen. It examines the impermanent and historical notions of the city as well as New York’s constantly shifting landscape as a physical manifestation of impermanence.

The project deals with the temporality of the city landscape as well as our daily interaction with the urban fixtures as well as the fine line between public and private space.

A site specific video has been created for the project that generates a new fiction based on the historic memory of the place and the plans for the future of the space.

Seven different versions of Blade Runner have been shown.

The ending title sequence in the theatrical cut of the Blade Runner contains unused footage from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.

These were extra shots of the main title sequence, although none of the shots contain the road that was seen in The Shining.

Architectural and Plan Renderings: MDIM Arquitecture
Text: Mark Hage
Music: Jamuel Saxon
Lighting: Paul Clay
Video Editor: Hector Bragado
Production Assistant: Erin Smith

Sponsored in part by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by the Brooklyn Arts Council, Inc. (BAC) and Etxepare, Basque Institute

In collaboration with MDIM Architecture

Special thanks to Rami Metal, Councilmembers Steven Levin & Diana Reyna, and Ayton Performance.

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Somewhere between the serene stand-still and the turbulent turns of life lie these two masterworks. Blue Muse Dance‘s The Other Side and Nathan Punwar‘s Prologue to a Cyclops explore the two sides of the every day thoughts that rattle around our heads. Both artists will be on hand for a delicious after screening q and a.

Featuring

The Other Side by Blue Muse Dance with Hyunsuk Kim, Kyoungin Jung,  & Peter Lew

In everyday life, when facing certain situations, conflicts occur in the head-we’re swimming between common sense and insane, between calm and chaos. The Other Side mixes dance, sound, and video to create a landscape of the mind.

Prologue to a Cyclops by Nathan Punwar

First created for Moviehouse in 2010 as a silent film to be scored by three composers, Prologue to a Cyclops has now been passed on the many more musicians each creating their own unique soundtrack for the film. In it, Francis, a modern-day cyclops embarrassed of his single eye, hides away from the world until he is lured out of seclusion by Lina Rae, delivery girl and photographer extraordinaire. Inspired by her camera, he becomes obsessed with creating a two-eyed device to make him appear normal, but it threatens to sacrifice his unique vision.

Sternberg Park (map)

Local park-goers of all ages, encouraged by choreographer Ann Robideaux, participate in a community dance collaboration resulting in a montage of movement and other talents for the camera. Open to everyone, this site-specific dance film celebrates Sternberg Park’s unique personalities and social community in one of Williamsburg’s most historic parks.

The final project, to be edited by Chris Carlone features a fortuitous and spontaneous collaboration between Ann and Samantha Jakus who also dances for powerhouse dance company: Streb.  Also look for Megan Sipe, Rosa Maria Torres (pictured above), Musicworks, and a few other amazing dance improvisers on the camera.

Ann Robideaux has choreographed in numerous venues, and for film/television for many years and has recently been the co-artistic director of ann and alexx make dances, where she choreographed aboard two World War II lightships, on the steps of the Eldridge Street Synagogue and amongst the audience seating at Dance New Amsterdam. Working with various communities, Ann is loving the chance to meet new people while behind the camera in NYC through the Sternberg Dances.

Sternberg Park (map)

Spontaneity sneaks in with three films that take public performance from the street to the screen. There’s the terror and bliss of Heartocalypse by Matt Silver, the random romance of John Bonafede’s (International) Kiss A Stranger With A Scale Day, and the sheer joy of Free Hugs from Zach Timm and Matt Rivera.

Featuring

Heartocalypse by Matt Silver

Heartpocalypse is the story of a crazed ranting doomsayer, takes place underneath an elevated subway track in the heart of Brooklyn. He’s got the cardboard sign scrawled with nonsensical ramblings and the wild-eyed hysteria. The passers-by give him dirty looks or no looks at all. Suddenly, the preacher has visions of giant, menacing creatures coming for him. An internal battle that seems to never end. Fortunately an Angelic spirit gives this lonely fool compassion, which triggers an emotional epiphany.

K.A.S.W.A.S.D. by John Bonafede

(International) Kiss A Stranger With A Scale Day was an impromptu performance/holiday invented on May 11, 2006. Bonafede received a phone call from long time collaborator/friend Nataraj informing him that there was a Dr.’s scale being thrown out on 2nd Ave near St. Mark’s Place. Right from a job interview, Bonafede hustled down to take a look at it, along with cameraman Dallas Pesolla. The idea to play upon the taboo topic of announcing women’s weight and kissing a stranger in public formulated en route downtown. The result was a variety of responses (a sliding scale ranging from sheer terror/disdain to more-than-welcome), a variety of guesses at weight and a variety of kisses received. Those who agreed to give their permission to be filmed puckering up were compiled in this light-hearted look at what it is our society looks at as a very touchy subject for art’s sake.

Free Hugs by Zach Timm and Matt Rivera

A wondrous video about Hugs and Humans and so many other things. Music courtesy of Hooray For Earth.