When we look at an image — a photograph or a filmed scene — what do we see? Do we see reality, or do we see what the photographer or the filmmaker wants us to see? Can we trust any photograph, either still or moving, to be an objective record, or are all manufactured images inherently unreliable, dependent on the choices of their creator?
Yael Hersonski, the young Israeli director of “A Film Unfinished,” wants us to consider these conundrums when viewing her brave and thought-provoking documentary, which opened in New York this week at the Film Forum and Lincoln Plaza.
In the talkback after a performance of his play “The Punishing Blow,” Randy Cohen, who writes The Ethicist column in The New York Times Magazine, acknowledged that it was only after Mel Gibson had his infamous anti-Semitic meltdown that Cohen conceived of a dramatic way to tell a story that fascinated him — the history of 18th-century Jewish boxer Daniel Mendoza. That history is still the most vital part of “The Punishing Blow,” a one-man production by the York Shakespeare Company at the Clurman in New York’s Theatre Row, but the frame that Cohen has contrived adds dimension to the issue of anti-Semitism and its manifestations in the 21st century.
One of the most startling facts in the award-winning political documentary “Neshoba: The Price of Freedom” is that when they dragged the Mississippi River to recover the bodies of three civil-rights workers in 1964, they recovered nine other bodies as well. That’s how commonplace murder was in Neshoba County, Mississippi, in the 1960s — people disappeared routinely enough that pulling a dozen bodies out of the river was no big deal. That many of the people interviewed in the film don’t find that past reality disturbing may be the film’s most sobering conclusion.
More than 50 years have passed since a group of Klansmen killed James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner during a 1964 voting-rights drive called Mississippi Freedom Summer. Anyone old enough to remember that time will recall the shock and revulsion much of the country felt about the murders, and the fear that spread through Jewish households.
The first Lebanon war is to a generation of Israelis what the Vietnam War was to a generation of Americans — a searing military defeat that engendered doubts about the nation’s military might and provoked anguished debate about the country’s moral nature. Before the Lebanon War in 1982, there were few anti-war activists in Israel; after the war finally ended in withdrawal decades later, many regarded Israel’s superior military power as irrelevant to solving its international disputes.
Several highly regarded Israeli films recently have focused on this war — “Beaufort” in 2007, and the extraordinary animated feature “Waltz with Bashir” in 2008.
Remember “The Bad News Bears,” that 1975 comedy of a kids’ baseball team composed of misfits and nerds, which miraculously goes on to win, thanks to a gruff-but-lovable coach and a hard-boiled phenom? Even 30-plus years ago, this was not a new plot, but despite the clichés, the movie worked well enough to be remade in 2005. “The Concert” is firmly in that bunch-of-misfits tradition, and it too works, even though it’s studded with stereotypes and basted with schmaltz. Good performances, a bittersweet approach to its subject, and some glorious Tchaikovsky music make for emotionally satisfying viewing.
Thirty years ago in the Soviet Union, renowned conductor Andrei Filipov was fired mid-concert for using Jewish musicians, and now he is working as a janitor for the Bolshoi, where he once led the orchestra. When Filipov accidentally intercepts a faxed invitation from the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris to fill in for an unexpected cancellation, he decides to round up his old orchestra and take the gig.
The origins of the new production of “The Adventures of Hershele Ostropolyer” of the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene are almost as intriguing as the show is entertaining. The original “Hershele Ostropolyer” was written and produced in the 1950s by a group of women, mothers of the students at a Workmen’s Circle folkshule in the Amalgamated Houses in the Bronx. A kind of Yiddish PTA, they got together to put on shows for the neighborhood and presumably for the students. Fortunately, professional actors and directors from the Warsaw Yiddish theater were among the group, so the productions, complete with sets and costumes, must have been pretty good.
Director Suzanne Barabas seems as confused about the tone of “The Housewives of Mannheim” as the central character May Black is about who she wants to be. May, played by Pheonix Vaughn, is one of the four women featured in the play currently at the 59E59 Theaters, all neighbors in a Flatbush apartment building in 1944. On her own for the first time in her life, May is uncertain how much freedom she can tolerate, and veers between longing for an idyllic suburban life in Woodmere once her husband Lenny returns from the war and relishing the chance to visit the Metropolitan Museum by herself — something that one does only on Sundays, her friend Alice Cohen (Wendy Peace) soberly informs her. Barabas, too, seems to be torn between presenting a tart comedy with lots of one-liners and a searing social drama about bigotry and narrow-mindedness. The result is a play that has a lot of interesting ideas, but lacks self-confidence.
In Mark Altman’s play “Sin,” at the Baruch Performing Arts Center’s Rose Nagelberg Theatre, Satan, played by Grant James Varjas, describes himself as “the party not in power.” As the loyal opposition, he displays a Republican determination to bring things to a screeching halt. He’s furious at human beings for monopolizing God’s attention, and contemptuous of their piffling sins. Where are the real sinners like Cain, who wasn’t afraid to lie to God’s face, Satan demands.
If you live long enough, you see everything. In 1968, when “The Producers” came out, the idea of a musical about the Holocaust was so absurd as to form the comic heart of Mel Brooks’ satire about two bumbling Broadway producers who put on a show so outrageous as to guarantee failure. Now, we have “Signs of Life,” a musical about Theresienstadt, and more Holocaust musicals to come. We’re getting very close to “Springtime for Hitler” here, folks.
“Signs of Life,” which is now at the Deane Little Theatre on West 63rd Street, opens in a culturally vibrant Czechoslovakia just before the Nazis take over. In short order, we meet the central characters: Lorelei, a pretty young artist; her gay artist pal, Jonas; the sexually ambiguous cabaret singer Kurt Gerard; Lorelei’s uncle Jacob; her younger brother Wolfie (played by Haworth resident Gabe Green); the Communist agitator and Lorelei’s soon-to-be beau, Simon; Berta, who was abandoned by her Christian husband; and the two Nazis, Heindel and Raum.
Naomi Levine snapped the black-suited attendees to attention at the inaugural conference on charity governance hosted by NYU’s George H. Heyman Jr. Center for Philanthropy and Fundraising when she announced, “The boards of foundations [that were defrauded] were accessories to the [Bernard] Madoff disaster.” Levine, the founding executive director of the Heyman Center, was one of the organizers of the conference, as well as a speaker. The conference was presented against a background of swelling criticism of nonprofit governance from Congress, from judges, and from the nonprofit sector itself.
