The Pass It On Project is a documentary film by Melissa Nicolardi and Kalim Armstrong about education, race, and the relevance of the Civil Rights movement in America today. A three-year labor of love, it is finally being screened this weekend through Filmwax. There will also be a Q&A with the featured students, teachers, and filmmakers.

The Pass It On Project will be screened this Saturday, February 4, from 6 – 8 pm at The Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture, 53 Prospect Park West.

Tintin is a god to me.

Surely this imaginary globetrotter seems real to most of us. He is also the most beloved of all comic-book heros worldwide – except in America, where he is inevitably confused with the dog, Rin Tin Tin - as well as the first literary boho “backpacker.”

Too, Tintin’s second book, Tintin Au Congo, proved misaligned with Yankee tastes with its racist-seeming stereotypes of large-lipped “negroes.” I’m afraid they’re much worse than Al Jolson in blackface singing My Little Mammie or Little Black Sambo turning tigers into ghee, although the amusingly obsolete and offensive tome is still wildly popular in Africa.

Indeed, the cowlicked androgynous-looking (but supposedly not gay, even considering the dearth of dames in the series) boy reporter represents wanderlust in the first degree, inhabiting an extreme alt universe grounded in graphic colorized geography, both real and imagined.

Tintin, a native son beloved by the weepy Walloons of Belgium (but known in Germany with typical Teutonic efficiency as “Tim”), has stumbled upon the Incas in Peru, smoked cigars with the Pharoahs in Egypt, played cowboy in America, and even rocketed to the moon. Also, he uncovers a smuggling ring in The Crab with the Golden Claws, goes hunting for “booty” in Red Rackham’s Treasure, and wows us in the imaginary kingdom of Syldavia (loosely based upon any Balkan country).

No doubt, there is nothing that this young millionaire adventurer, once he departs the luxurious safety of his beloved mansion Marlinspike Hall, that is, can’t do — especially with the help of his loyal cronies Snowy (known as “Minou” in France), Captain Haddock, Professor Calculus, and the Thom(p)son Twins.

In fact, so big a fan am I, one of my proudest possessions is a carved wooden Tintin statue with a fey smile I acquired in Grand Bassam, Cote d’Ivoire, which I deemed perfect for smuggling diamonds or heroin. Hence, I was keenly interested on getting the skinny on his somewhat sketchy creator, the Belgian artist Georges Remi (a.k.a, Hergé). Despite his success as a cartoonist – the Tintin series comprises twenty-four books and has sold millions of copies in dozens of languages – Hergé was often criticized during World War Two for being a “collaborator” with the Nazis only after Belgium was occupied, though in fact the false accusation is assuredly apocryphal.

Pierre Assouline’s recent biography Hergé: The Man Who Created Tintin, though simple, even sketchy (perhaps because the translator Charles Ruas might have rushed it to press to beat the Ruas rushed to beat the clock on the new Spielberg/Jackson Tintin film adaptation) still answered many of my questions. But the elegantly weird Francophone diction, as well as the wealth of extraneous detail, is nevertheless somewhat distracting.

But boring the book is not.

Born in Brussels in 1907, Hergé started his career, like Tintin, as a cub reporter. For all his accolades, Hergé nevertheless maintained meekly, “I was just happy drawing little guys, that’s all.” But Assouline asserts Hergé used his alter ego to champion some of his so-called sociopolitical causes: his love for the Boy Scouts, Catholicism, and the Monarchy, countered by his distrust of Communism and the Soviet Union. Hergé’s first book Tintin in the Land of the Soviets was both a surprising commercial success and a scathing critique of totalitarianism.

Sure, Hergé was also a raging alcoholic who suffered from painful bouts of depression, miserable meals of “moules frites,” and “disappearances” for extended periods of time without explanations, but what artist doesn’t?

Dead as a dodo in 1984, Hergé was self-consciously oblivious to his fame while alive, not only among schoolchildren dreaming of impossible adventures in exotic climes (I initially discovered the series as a youngster in Bermuda), but among adult artistic fantasists such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. As we all dust off our collected Tintin oeuvre – with its paternalistic patina of “comic” (funny ha-ha) neo-colonialism and unadulterated intrigue (but hardly any women) – we wonder if the “little guy” in all of us will stand up to wrong and cry out in a cartoon bubble, like Tintin’s uber-“British” seafaring saltydog Captain Haddock, “Bashi Bazouks!”

Here’s hoping that the “surreal” Hollywood film, which Hergé’s wife Fanny helped negotiate, doesn’t negate our subconscious myths and isn’t an egregious flop in DVD sales.

Hergé: The Man Who Created Tintin, written by Pierre Assouline and translated by Charles Ruas, is available through Oxford University Press.

Psychologist Erik Erikson once noted, “It is human to have a long childhood; it is civilized to have an even longer childhood. Long childhood makes a technical and mental virtuoso out of man, but it also leaves a life-long residue of emotional immaturity in him.”

In other words: Youth is crucial. It’s fragile and complicated. It surrounds us, and not benignly: youth “preoccupies” and “haunts.” Youth “scars,” and it also “defines.” It’s our past—and yet youth is the future.

Matt Wolf is an independent filmmaker. His first feature, Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell, was released in 2008 to significant acclaim. The New York Times’ Nathan Lee called it “a tender, fascinating documentary,” which he predicted would “delight the cult and instantly convert new members.” It was a film that not only reflected but also contributed to the legacy of the enigmatic musician.

But my opening question to Matt is not about Wild Combination and it’s not about what he’s working on, which is what we’re here to talk about. My opening question to Matt is about the first film he ever made—about Matt’s youth and his concurrent roles as a teenager, student and son. (In case you are wondering, Matt’s first film starred his friend, “a butch lesbian with wiry blonde hair,” making out with a piece of Plexiglass in a burnt grass field in California. He can’t remember the name of the film, but it wasn’t Ruby Heat.)

It is exactly this preoccupation with beginnings that Matt will explore in Teenage, his cinematic collaboration with Jon Savage (author of England’s Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and Beyond and Teenage: The Creation of Youth Culture.) Drawing inspiration from Jon’s seminal writings on the subject, the film will trace what Matt terms the “pre-history” of the teenager, and its timeline will culminate just prior to the identification of the age group as a consumer market after World War II.

“We wanted to make a film that had a feeling of being definitive about youth culture,” Matt says, “the way Dick Hebdige’s book Subculture: The Meaning of Style was. But once you get into youth culture after World War II, it gets incredibly dense. There’s so much activity and such explosive teenager visibility that it almost becomes impossible to get into it in a substantive way. We thought it was just a provocative strategy to focus on the pre-history of youth and to tell a story about how the idea of teenagers as we know it was born. It kind of sets up the model of youth that still exists today.”

“I think that’s the potency of the film: In one way you see how much has changed, and that’s significant, but I think what’s more powerful is to see what never changes. The dynamics between adults and youth, between the state and governments and adolescence… Those dynamics don’t really change. But in this period, before we knew what a teenager was, the stakes were that much greater.”

Where Wild Combination was a portrait in nature as in name, Teenage will address identity from a broader angle. The aim is not to profile the teenager as an entity, but to explore it as an idea—in a way that transcends one face or another (although a handful of individuals will have their stories told). The challenge, Matt says, will be to achieve the acute sense of intimacy that gave Wild Combination its power.

“With Arthur Russell, I felt an incredible draw to all the people in the film and to him, and I could just trust that my interest in and emotional connection to them would translate. With this, it’s always a question of how you make the emotional come across. Being a teenager is the most emotionally intense period of everybody’s life—but how do you make the ideas about youth culture and the role of youth and the birth of teenagers an emotional experience?”

When Matt was 14, he thought he’d grow up to be a “professional gay.” He trained other kids to start activist groups at their schools and lobbied State Representatives to change discrimination laws. It was the older sister of a friend who introduced him to music, another word for The Smiths, and showed him how to make zines. His was called Goat Dreams. Perhaps best not to forget that the man making the film about youth had one himself.

“Every decision I make is something that relates to my interests, my tastes, my point of view,” he says. “But at the same time, the film isn’t about me. Jon Savage has said that I’m 28, he’s in his early 50s, we’re both kind of going through our “Saturn return,” that astrological idea that you go through a period of transition and self-doubt every 28 years of your life. So maybe that’s why we’re making a film about teenagers. At the same time, it’s a process that goes beyond why you’re making the film. I couldn’t tell you why I’m making the film. I just know that I’m completely in it and I live in it, and I made that decision at some point and there’s no turning back.”

All stills from Teenage courtesy of Matt Wolf.

He may wear a suit and speak politely to each fan at length, but make no mistake, the well-mannered actor/director, Crispin Hellion Glover (most widely known for his role as George McFly in 1985‘s highest grossing film, Back to the Future) does not leave much room for social graces in his artistic approach to film.

For the past six years, the pioneer director has been touring with his feature films, What is it? and It is Fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE., two viciously honest reactions to what American culture has long tried to avoid.  The self-financed, unapologetic masterpieces tap into a wide range of taboo topics long shunned by corporate culture via slug slaughter, blackface, sex lives of the disabled, swastikas and songs of Satan with a cavalier disregard for repercussion. However disturbing and strangely hilarious the scenes may be, Glover’s work is not meant to shock or enrage audiences but instead prompt discussion regarding corporate restrictions foisted onto contemporary filmmakers.

Glover has forever balanced his appetite for the strange and unusual alongside working in the mainstream film industry, successfully profiting off of both. Dressed in full drag playing an unforgettable Olivia Newton John impersonator in Trent Harris’ short film The Orkly Kid, Glover was simultaneously playing father to a spry little actor with softly feathered hair and a puffy, burnt orange vest in the biggest film of the year, if not decade. During his presentations in New York City, I voyeuristically watched as a man, nestled inside the hollows of a giant clam, was “pleasured” by a buxom woman holding a watermelon and wondered how much of this he conjured up while on set rehearsing with the (Charlie’s) Angels. Between scenes of rape, murder and Shirley Temple, my thoughts reflected over the fascinating diversity of his extensive career.

I’ve always adored Glover for his distinctive personal projection onto characters such as Rubin “my cat can eat a whole watermelon” Farr in Trent Harris’ Rubin and Ed, the cousin with cockroach crotch in Wild at Heart, my favorite Andy Warhol portrayal in Oliver Stone’s The Doors and, as I was recently reminded, an epic dancer in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. Also, weirdo enthusiasts (like myself) have long garnered Glover with iconic cult status for his roles in River’s Edge, Willard, Dead Man, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues and The People vs. Larry Flynt.

After a fifteen year distance from Back to the Future, a favorite of at least two former (Republican) presidents, the new millennium saw Glover’s surprising return to mainstream Hollywood with significant roles in Charlie’s Angels, Beowulf and Alice in Wonderland. Hardly a sellout, the business minded hero of counterculture began taking on big budget roles with the impetus of funding his personal creative endeavors and distributing his feature films. With two in the can, it appears his parallel enterprises have achieved remarkable synergy.

The Hollywood hustle has allowed for some of the most thought provoking, unrestrained cinematic material from the offbeat character actor turned serious entrepreneur. The eccentric director prefaces each feature a la vaudeville style with a quirky live presentation, Crispin Hellion Glover’s Big Slideshow (a one hour dramatic narration displaying several of his reinterpreted books, available for purchase). Following the slideshow and film, a courteous – but cunning – Glover gives audience members an opportunity to respond to his work during a lengthy Q&A. Viewers have a chance to ask the notable figure anything their heart desires, or, if they wait in line long enough, they can meet one-on-one to have books signed and pose with the enigmatic star.

Photographer Rosalie Knox and I stood for hours to be last in line in hopes of scheduling a full interview and photo shoot. When we finally had the chance to meet Glover, we found an adorably humble, charming and well-mannered man behind the hours of disturbing imagery we had just enjoyed (a sharp contrast to the plethora of spoiled, egotistical, unapproachable artists in the industry). He was warm to our ideas and kindly created space for us in his jam-packed schedule.

While waiting to be interviewed after-hours in the beautiful, spacious Greene Naftali Gallery, one of the oldest and most well-regarded galleries in Chelsea, the debonair auteur curiously wheeled himself around in a soft leather chair, one leg over the next, creeping into the darkened spaces with the gait of a daddy long legs. The cult cinema legend was incredibly patient and allotted us an entire evening, his only free time before leaving New York, to model a few looks worthy of a “perfect gentleman” and speak in straight-forward fashion about the fire that fueled his first two feature length films and the uncompromising conviction it has taken to promote and distribute them.

Jacquelyn Gallo: You look super sharp in that suit, like a real gentleman!  I remember watching this old Johnny Cash prison movie (Johnny Cash in San Quentin, 1969) and all of the inmates in the documentary were so well groomed and extremely well spoken. Even though you make films with very violent and erotic scenes, you come off as very old fashioned and gentlemanly, always in a suit and very polite sort of in that 50s/60s style.  Do you feel a sense of nostalgia for the past?

Crispin Glover: I was born in 1964 at Lenox Hill Hospital. My first memories of life were of the city. There was one memory I have of a Christmas party. I remember how the people looked. I remember what the women were wearing and what the men were wearing, their fashion, the Christmas tree, and I was sitting in a bedroom looking at The Ed Sullivan Show. It was a nice party…the men were wearing dark suits and had short hair with Bryl Cream. It had a very conservative look, kind of like what the 1950s looked like. I remember when I moved to Los Angeles in 1967, or 1968 I guess, it looked, as I recall, what hippies looked like. I didn’t like it, I have to say. I missed New York and I’ve always felt that to a certain extent. I’ve always planned to own property here, but I own property in Los Angeles and the Czech Republic. I’ve made proper business investments in those properties and as much as I love this city, I think there’s a non-cost effective element. If you rent an apartment, even if you buy an apartment, you’re still paying money to a corporation. You kind of have to have enough money to buy a whole building to make it really cost effective.

Jacquelyn: Where did you pick up your well-mannered behavior?  From your parents or your idols?

Crispin: I aspire to be well-mannered and yet I have to admit there have been times where I have gotten angry or lost my temper and I regret those times. That, I think, is just bad business. I read How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie…  Much of it has to do with hearing somebody else’s thought process and not proving people wrong. That was maybe the main thing that I learned…You know, it’s still somewhat in my nature but I avoid it all costs.

Jacquelyn: I like that you can make really good work and stand firmly behind your convictions without having to be standoffish to your fans. You allot so much time to answer their questions and meet them after the show. You even signed like a hundred pictures for that one guy!

Crispin: Oh, well that was an unusual situation. I was supposed to do a show in Brooklyn but there was a conflict of interest so I had to cancel. This guy said that a whole group of guys who had been first responders on 911 were planning on going to the show in Brooklyn.  So he had all of these pictures and like two days from now is like the tenth anniversary. I couldn’t really say, “I can’t sign all these things,” so you know that was an extenuating circumstance. You can kind of understand, if somebody comes up and says that, it’s like, okay, I better do this.

Jacquelyn: It does seem like you have a sort of graciousness about you. Where did you learn it?

Crispin: Well, to be fair, I’m actually being a very good business man. I know it sounds bad, but there’s two sides to that. To be rude is terrible business and I’m very passionate about getting these films out. I mean, I was always nice to people when I did signings. It started from 1993 before I started touring [as an actor] with the films, so I’m being a little bit clinical about it. I believe in being polite, in general, but analytically its very bad business to not be polite. Every person that I talk to has had a genuine interaction with me, and maybe not every single one of them will come back for the next show, but it’s far more likely that they will if I’ve had a genuine interaction with them.

Jacquelyn: Ah, I see. Well, you really did make a good impression on everyone. It’s rare to see an artist who also acts like a gentleman.  My friends and I decided you are the type of guy we should be dating. So I’m hoping in reality you really are this person that I’ve created in my head [Glover laughs] that does have these genuine convictions and that you really care about what you do and it’s not at all contrived.

Crispin: Well, I do very much care about my films and going about doing the tours and doing the shows, mainly to get the films out. I have a very strong conviction to the point where it certainly has affected my life. When you talk about it in terms of what that means in relationships with women, it’s not a good lifestyle for that. I’ve been touring for six years. Last year I took a break for three months and stayed in Los Angeles because I think in the previous five years, definitely in the previous two or three years, I hadn’t been in LA, or any city, for more than two or three weeks at a time. And it’s not just the touring, it’s because I own property in the Czech Republic and I act in other people’s films… I started shooting What Is It? in 1996… I never for a second thought I wasn’t going to finish the film. I always knew I was. I felt that I was going to tour the film with my slide show. I didn’t know the specifics of how it would manifest, but I knew I was going to do this. I was willing to do exactly what I’m doing, meaning take the amount of time that I take. If I had a family, if I had a wife and child, I would not be a good father or husband because I just wouldn’t be around enough. It would be bad.

Jacquelyn: Even the fact that you know – and admit – that is important and really admirable.

Crispin: Right, right, and it’s part of the reason I’m not married, and part of the reason I don’t have children, if not the main reason. You know, it’s something to think about but it’s not my main drive. My main drive is to be doing these films that mean something to me and are important to me and I feel like the only way to do that is to be self financing them, self distributing them.

Jacquelyn: Let’s talk about honesty – how important is that for you?

Crispin: It is important, very much to me, for various reasons. I don’t like lies… and it’s interesting you should ask because it’s actually such a central element in my own psychology. Also it has to do with why I do what I do. I do think corporately funded and distributed film essentially is [lies]. Maybe rather than lies you can call it propaganda. There is a different kind of propaganda that exists in the United States. I would heavily argue that the United States is far, far more advanced and accomplished in it’s propagandistic structures than Communist Russia ever was because in Communist Russia the populace knew they were dealing with propaganda and in the United States… barely anybody realizes how heavily propagandized our culture is.

Really, the best thing I’ve been telling people now is to read the book by Edward Bernays titled Propaganda. Edward Bernays is the nephew of Sigmund Freud and he is the literal father of the public relations industry. He came up with the word combination “public relations” to replace the word “propaganda” which had started to have bad connotations after WWI. He wrote the book in 1928, and what’s fascinating about it is it’s not an expose but an instruction manual on how to make propaganda work for various elements in the US government, US academia, meaning education system, and US media. He goes into the specificity of how education needs to be controlled and how media needs to be controlled. It’s such a clear layout of how things work in the United States, once you read that book you cannot see anything else but what it is… As much as 1984 is a nightmarish novel, Propaganda - I don’t know if you call it a nightmare – but it’s a living blueprint of what our culture does. It’s kind of amazing that it’s open to the public and that it’s not as popularly understood. I feel like it should be tenth grade reading, mandatory for every student. Of course, it wouldn’t happen, it wouldn’t happen exactly because of what is outlined in the book. The education system is controlled so people aren’t asking questions and they are being made to not think about things purposefully so control elements are not being questioned. That’s obviously horrible and I do have strong convictions about this.

Jacquelyn: Last night [at IFC] you were talking about dissatisfaction with the overall morality in Back to the Future because at the end of the story, Michael J Fox’s prize or payoff was money and…

Crispin: [interrupts and laughs] Well, it’s a weird crossover right here, because when I go and I do my shows I speak differently than when I do in published media, and maybe I shouldn’t. I’ve been very, very careful about how I talk about Back to the Future since 1984, I almost never talk about the film. Frankly, it’s very difficult for me to talk about it in a fashion that I think is beneficial to myself in the current mood of the culture. I feel that if I say anything, I have to be very careful about it. [hesitates] I’d like to talk about it more openly then I feel like I can. You see, it’s a weird thing, because I should be able to. I should be able to and it does reflect a bit on what we’re talking about because there’s no question that the experience I have with being in that film definitely has a strong impact on what I think about propaganda within this culture. I don’t know that this interview is the best moment for me to go into great detail about it. But [Dossier’s] probably not the kind of publication that is going to have readers that will get angry or upset.

But, that’s the thing that I have to be careful about, [Back to the Future] does have some resonance within this culture, and I’m a part of it, so I have to be careful with my words, because it can have negative impact if I’m not careful. And, to be fair, there are positive aspects about the story structure. Those writers understood story structure well. I have a great fascination for The Hero’s Journey story structure [a basic pattern found globally in narratives]. It is truly powerful and when you’re talking about religion and about government, it is no question one of the most powerful, persuasive forms of communication. If used properly, it’s one of the most beautiful things there can be, and if used improperly, it’s one of the most horrific things there can be.

I’ve had arguments about that kind of thing and I do have strong convictions about that and, like I say, this is probably not the proper place to go into too much detail. But, I feel that Back to the Future definitely had an impact on my thought process about how things should properly or not properly be used in The Hero’s Journey story structure. Now, something that’s very interesting is, I worked with Robert Zemeckis [director and cowriter of Back to the Future] many years later on a film [Beowulf] written by Roger Avary and Neil Gaiman, who are really both very excellent writers who also understand The Hero’s Journey story structure in a very good way. When you were talking about lies and truth it was a very interesting thing to me because the moral of that film did have to do with truth telling and lying. I strangely have a strong affinity for that film, I think it’s a very well written film. The moral actually has to do with truth and lies. Basically, it’s not a good idea to lie which I think is a very good moral.

Jacquelyn: What are your feelings on gentlemanliness and art, can you be both a true gentleman and a true artist?

Crispin: One can be a gentleman in their private life, but sometimes, and perhaps often, there is nothing gentlemanly about good art. In fact, it could be said that good art may seldom be gentlemanly.

Jacquelyn: Spoken like a true gentleman!

More information on Crispin Hellion Glover’s films, books and live performance dates can be found on his website.

Photographer: Rosalie Knox
Stylist: Jenni Hensler 
Stylist’s Assistant: Sheyna Imm
Grooming: Staci Child 

Special thanks to Greene Naftali Gallery 

Anthology Film Archives will be screening two programs of films by Richard Kern this weekend. Shot in the 1980′s on Super-8 and originally distributed on VHS , the films are described by Anthology as as “darkly comedic, shocking, sexy, disturbed, debauched, violent, and really quite wonderful.” They feature the likes of Lydia Lunch, Nick Zedd, David Wojnarowicz, Karen Finley, Lung Leg, Henry Rollins, and Kembra Pfahler, with original soundtracks by musicians such as Foetus and Sonic Youth. The films have been remastered and preserved with funds from The Warhol Foundation and Anthology Film Archives. Screenings are at 7 and 9 pm, Friday, September 23 and Saturday, September 24. Kern will be there to answer questions at tonight’s screenings.

Wassaic Project takes place August 5-7 at The Maxon Mills, 37 Furnace Bank Road Wassaic, NY. Admission is free, overnight camping is $60.00.

Images: The Strange Ones, Directed by Chris Radcliffe and Lauren Wolkstein; Frank and Cindy, Directed by G.J Echternkamp; The Substitute, Directed by Tayla Lavie.

In conjunction with his month-long residency at The New Museum, Wu Tsang’s New York solo debut is showing at Clifton Benevento. The exhibit features work based on Tsang’s experiences with the Silver Platter, a Los Angeles bar that serves a community of predominately trans Latina women, and where Tsang also co-organized the performance night/party Wildness. He plans to release a feature film by the same name documenting the party.

The exhibition uses the decorative elements of  a bar to create a space that both physically recalls the Silver Platter and constitute a queer space on it’s own. A gold lame curtain masks the white walls of the gallery space, a long bar circles a tv monitor, disrupting the typical art viewing experience in favor of one that brings the viewer into context. Perhaps the installation’s most striking feature is the large blue neon sign which illuminates the space, altering the bar’s name from the “Silver Platter” to “The Fist Is Still Up.” By recreating and reclaiming the sign the artist both transposes the architecture of the space once again on to the gallery, as well as acknowledges the revolutionary nature of a queer-trans space and life, while giving a nod to the intersection of politics and pleasure.

The main focus of the exhibit is the video piece Damelo Todo (Give Me Everything). Based on a short story of the same name by Raquel Gutierrez, the video combines documentary footage and experimental narrative to tell the story of a young Salvadorian refugee who finds community and support in the bar.

You can see a schedule of related events going on at the New Museum here.

Wu Tsang is on view through August 5 at Clifton Benevento, 515 Broadway, NYC.

Directed by Lynn Hershman Leeson and scored by Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein, !Women Art Revolution traces the history and influence of modern feminist art as a collective movement, from its incubation in the 1960s to its artistic and political evolution in the following decades. Featuring interviews with and works by seminal artists, historians, curators and critics such as Judy Chicago, The Guerrilla Girls, Marina Abramovic, Yoko Ono, Cindy Sherman, Tammy Rae Carland, and Dossier contributor Miranda July, !Women Art Revolution illuminates the efforts to both politicize and educate women in the arts and challenge and subvert hegemonic standards of gender, race, class, and sexuality within culture at large.

!Women Art Revolution is currently enjoying an extended run at the IFC Center, 323 6th Avenue at West 3rd Street, NYC.

Dirty Old Town is a fairy tale set on the Bowery, the story of a man about to lose his business and his mind. That man, William Leroy, is the curmudgeonly owner of Billy’s Antiques and Props on Houston Street, a shop within a tent that is a throwback to another New York. That Billy’s has managed to stay open despite ever encroaching development is a feat in and of itself, and filmmakers Daniel B. Levin, Jenner Furst and Julia Willoughby Nason have created a narrative that imagines the end has finally come. Leroy plays a version of himself in the film, which starts with a visit to his landlord. He is told he has 72 hours to pay the rent or his circus tent of freaks will be razed for something new, perhaps a Starbucks. He needs $10,000 fast and has no idea how to come up with it.

Inside his shop day-to-day are his real-life daughter, the college-age Celina, who is seldom without her tube of bright red lipstick; his friend and confidante Nicky (Nicholas de Cegli), the self-styled sheriff of Mott Street; and Rachel (Janell Shirtcliff), a lovely street urchin who hangs on Leroy like a stale perfume. The corrupt cop Scotty (Scotty Dillin), is never far from the tent, and like Leroy’s landlord, seems poised to blot him from the landscape.

The film was shot in all natural light, and one of its most striking features is its cinematography. Nason and Levin lingered on what they found beautiful: Celina putting on her lipstick, the animated faces of statues for sale, Rachel in a sequined mask reflected in one of the shop’s many mirrors.

Rachel, a junkie, gets high with the larger-than-life, half-naked Ronnie Sunshine, but is instantly humanized later when she visits her son, played by Shirtcliff’s own son, Bowie. The moment happened unplanned, as did several other scenes in the film: Nicky bantering with a woman who approached him at the San Gennaro festival thinking he was a singer; Leroy fighting loudly with his daughter. Using non-actors along with actors led to a certain “wildness of performance,” says Nason. “It took time to break down the barriers with the non-actors, to warm them up, but it was refreshing to know that they are real people,” she says. “There was a lot of humor going on at times because of that.”

There was also a natural tension in the tent on occasion. Dirty Old Town was shot over three weeks in the summer of 2009, a hot, sticky season. The project was made more challenging by the limitations of a low budget and the fact that the crew was filming – without permits – on one of Manhattan’s busiest intersections.

The film came out of Captured, Levin and Furst’s 2008 documentary with Ben Solomon about Clayton Patterson, a photographer who chronicles life on the Lower East Side. In that film, Leroy is Patterson’s neatly groomed agent, and while making that film, Levin and Furst realized he would make a fine subject on his own. Patterson appears briefly in Dirty Old Town as himself. At one point, he scolds Leroy as the shop owner sits, morose, with a bust of Hitler: “You worked so hard to put all of this together, Billy. You wanted to get a three-ring circus. Now you don’t even have a circus. You’ve got a lion’s cage with no lion. You’ve got a stuffed lion, you’ve got nothing. It’s like garbage. What’s wrong with you?”

Levin and Furst joined up with Nason and first considered making a documentary about Leroy. But the more time they spent in his shop, the more they wanted to write their own story. ”It was more exciting to think of it in terms of a narrative,” says Furst. “This tent became sort of a playground, a canvas for something fictional.” It was also, in a sense, a chance to document something that hasn’t happened yet, says Levin.

Change can happen quickly, as Levin knows from experience. He grew up in Chelsea, and came home from college several years ago to find seven new high-rise buildings on a two-block radius near his parents’ loft. As with Nason, whose parents were the first to move into a converted warehouse on a desolate block in Tribeca, he has seen the old and the new. The two have been friends since elementary school and met Furst, who grew up in Boston, at Hampshire College. Furst and Levin have also worked together on the Peabody Award-winning documentary series Brick City, which looks at life in another rapidly changing city: Newark. “The idea of gentrification washing over the last remnants of bohemian life was the theme of Captured, and Billy’s story, even though we made it up, it’s going to happen at some point,” says Levin. “That tent is
not going to be there forever.”

Dirty Old Town screens Wednesday, May  23 at 4:30, 6:50 and 9:30 p.m. as part of Brooklyn Academy of Music’s BAMcinématek series. There will be a Q&A with the filmmakers after the 6:50 p.m. screening.

Listen to songs from the soundtrack, by bands A.R.E. Weapons, Slowdance, Elvis Perkins, Chelsea Crowell and others, on the film’s website.

Photos by Julia Willoughby Nason

This Friday, The Imperialists are Still Alive! opens at the IFC Center. Written and directed by London-born Zeina Durra, who is of Bosnian, Palestinian, Jordanian and Lebanese descent, the film pulls from Durra’s life, focusing on a female artist of the same background, named Asya, living in New York after 9/11. Dealing with issues such as race, community, class and globalism- through everything from wiretaps, machine guns, Margiela and crappy gift bags at parties, the film manages to highlight a global connectivity while having elements of a love story and comedy at the same time. Starring French actress Elodie Bouchez, the film is both visually stunning and controversial- the opening shot of the film is of Bouchez naked with her head wrapped in a scarf- yet Durra manages to trust her audience instead of forcing her opinions on them. In one of my favorite scenes, Asya draped in a mink coat, pulls up a milk crate to sit and listen to the news on the radio with Arab workers in a deli. Just the amount of languages that are subtitled in the film is impressive- there’s Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Arabic, French and probably some more that I’m missing. Also, Asya falls in love with a Mexican. Although Durra is not from New York, she gets the city pretty good here, as well as the feeling that at the end of the day, no matter what our background is, we all just want a hug. I sat down with Durra and Bouchez to ask them a few questions about the film and the purpose of art in this heavy political climate.

Katherine Krause: How long did it take to shoot the film?

Elodie Bouchez: 23 days. It was fun, energetic. Very exciting.

Katherine Krause: How long did it take to conceptualize the film?

Zeina Durra: Oh, forever. It is something that has always been on my mind that I always wanted to talk about. Film school gave me five years to experiment with ideas. I knew I wanted to make this film and I made a thesis film that was related to this called The Seventh Dog and then I wrote the script (for Imperialists) in 2006, got the money in 2008, got Elodie in 2008 and then shot early in 2009. The casting was in Sept 2008 and that was a really thoughtful five month process because it was a really elaborate cast. I was a real stickler on details.

Katherine: When you wrote it did you have Elodie in mind?

Zeina: I was really worried that I wouldn’t be able to find an actress who could do it. I spoke to my casting agent and I knew I wanted a French actress and he suggested Elodie- and I was like: ‘that’s perfect.’ I just didn’t think we could get her and then she kindly read the script and agreed to do it, so that was really lucky. The film really would have flopped I think if it hadn’t been her because I needed an actress that understood how I was making the film, because it was all in the script, but she really had to trust me because it was this kind of new character that people really hadn’t seen on screen before. She had to be beautiful yet sympathetic and partly because of misogyny, a lot of very beautiful women come across as either sex objects or they are really strong, ball busters and what’s really nice about this character is she is a feminist but she is soft yet powerful, she can change tones, and I think that’s what is really hard to do. I don’t think a lot of young actresses could do that.

Katherine: What was it specifically that drew you to the script?

Elodie: I guess the entire thing. When I think about it whenever I commit to a project, its more like a global thing like I feel like I want to be part of this adventure or this story, more than maybe the character specifically. I just felt that was a good continuity of my work and what I like to do so that whole thing, globally, attracted me a lot. I’m pretty instinctive in my choices so I trust it whenever I feel that. But then after that, there are many things that I specifically love.

Katherine: Was the script completely written or was it improvised at parts?

Zeina: It’s really written. That comes up a lot. We both agree that when things come across as natural, is because they’re well-written, I know I wrote it myself (laughs) but there’s a trick to writing well that makes the dialogue seem effortless. What we did do was, for example, if Elodie or another actor had a problem with a word we would change it.

Elodie: Most of the time you get that (improvised) feeling for movies that are really well written. One of the movies that I’ve done The Dream Life of Angels (also has) that very natural realistic vibe with the actors and whenever that happens its always when it is super well written and super structured, because that’s where you can become very free as an actor, whenever you have this structure, then you can really improvise within it.

Zeina: What you give to it, how you pace it..

Elodie: I like when I have a perfect frame and then I can be very free inside that frame.

Katherine: Why did you choose to set this film in New York?

Zeina: ‘Cause I lived here for ten years. I kind of had my adult life here from 23 to 33. When 9/11 happened a year into me living here- my parents really wanted me to leave but I decided to stay because all the themes that were happening here really obviously had been happening latently throughout my life but everything became so intense and so full-on and I decided to stay and analyze that. I knew my work was around these themes and how these themes linked.

Katherine: The opening scene, visually is very shocking and throughout the film are images of naked women, prostitutes, models and other conceptions of how women are portrayed in the media- was that purposeful?

Zeina: It wasn’t necessarily purposeful but it was definitely present, as in any feminist film- feminism meaning basic equality. I come from an extremely feminist education where these things are just obviously present in my mind that you’re constantly dealing with all the time.
That first image is how I wanted to introduce people to (the character, Asya) because you’ve never seen this character before and its so easy to dismiss a pretty girl as just like this thing, where as she is this strong working artist, she’s got all that stuff going on, there’s some 60’s guerilla politics going on, yet its sexy but its sexy in an intellectual way as opposed to pin-up. And also, how people see us as Arabs, I mean how many times do people see kids with their faces covered throwing rocks? Granted it is against tanks, but everyone seems to forget the tanks. You forget that these kids are maybe even as young as twelve or eight. You forget that they are human, but by putting a naked body there and having a woman’s naked body there- the image subverts everything you’ve ever thought in a very subtle way. So I started with that image and the beauty about cinema is that you’re intelligent enough not to have to work it out like “this happened because of this” and that’s the problem with Hollywood, or cinema nowadays is it’s like link the dots and they think that people are stupid but they don’t realize that people are really intelligent, our brains are such that film is wonderful because you watch something and it stays with you and it lives with your mind and it works, and that’s why I love it as a medium. You start with that image and then you have this whole other story, but that image is with you throughout. And somehow you put it together in a non-verbal way which is the strength of cinema, through images–you have communicated non-verbally that which is too complex to deal with in the way that we speak in our language.

Katherine: There are a bunch of moments in the film that I love that maybe would have been edited out in a traditional Hollywood film that you choose to keep in, like the woman with the Margiela bag.

Zeina: Some people saw that and they were offended by that moment and some people saw that and they were like ‘that’s boring’ and some people saw it and thought that was the best ever thing in the movie, and for me that was really one of the best moments in the film- it just sums everything up of how we live especially in a metropolis like New York or London or Paris, where you’re part of a scene and there is a lexicon of almost manners, the way that you behave, there’s like a code and Margiela was the chicest code at that time, sadly its kind of not what it used to be but, you know those who knew, or acceptance from a handbag or the street cred you get, I was recently interested in that. So this little old lady who was going to the theater, dressed in her Sunday best, was asking about this bag, and its always ladies like that, it just happened to me in London – I had on these amazing Robert Clergerie woven wedge brogues, they’re like the craziest shoes ever, and this Indian train conductor saw my shoes and was like, ‘Where did you get them from?’ When you do get interesting things, people do respond to them and from characters you would never imagine. In New York I constantly get stopped by these old ladies, who are dressed really like: ‘honey, you must be an artist, I love the way artists dress.’ That scene was really important to me. It was one thirty second scene, yet so many things are touched upon, they bonded on aesthics, even though they are from completely different worlds, then the woman asks her where she got it, she tells her where cause why shouldn’t she tell her and how do you know this woman isn’t going to go to Margiela? You have no right to judge that. Then its awkward like why are you spending all that money on a bag and writing it down for the woman seems kind of stupid cause you kind of know she would go there and get disappointed but you do it out of principle, its like this loaded minefield of so many different topics built out of this old woman asking about your handbag. The bit I love is that people thought she was putting a bug on the bag. Which is great, like a CIA bug, like around 9/11 when some really weird shit was happening and phone lines were breaking off and everyone was clearly being listening on, and still are, but it was really obvious then. So what was nice was that people watching the film got into my mindset- like if that had happened to me I’d be like ‘did she put something in my bag, who is this lady?’

Katherine: I also love the moment when she runs out of the bedroom and he doesn’t chase her and she gets back in bed fully dressed. What that taken from real life?

Zeina: That actually is me and my husband and he was laughing- he watched it again the other day and he was like ‘his delivery was not how I delivered that line. I did not say it like that.’ That’s my interpretation. I’ve had that in numerous different relationships, I’ve heard it from friends, everyone has stories about their wives or their girlfriends doing that, leaving or being pissed off at the guy and its too late at night and the guy wants you to stop having a drama. Men don’t understand that fundemantly you can just hug a woman, as long as you haven’t done something terrible, but if you just hug them, its ok, you can even talk about it in the morning. 99.9% of men don’t get that.

Katherine: Art and music seem to be an escape for Asya, yet she questions that decision at some point and says she should have been a doctor. How do you feel about that conflict?

Zeina: If you’re an analytical person than art is a great way of dealing with stuff. Like if I have a bad day for example I’m like ‘this would be great for a movie,’ I almost feel like film helps me work out things in real life which is what I really enjoy about it. My existence and my work are really linked and I’m the kind of person that really needs that but there’s always moments when bigger political situations happen and you start to doubt and wonder if you’re self-indulgent because when you’re constantly exploring your existence and how you relate to things, as an artist does, you have moments like right now whats going on in Libya and I’m here being interviewed about my movie but ultimately, we need people to think so we progress as a society so its a really fundamental part of our fabric but I think that tension will always be there when something in your face like a war or a natural disaster comes along. (Asya) says she wants to be a medicin sans frontier doctor because she would be working in the field and get instant gratification. It’s also about oneself and self-gratification and what you’re doing, especially when you’re in pain that would be a really easy way to deal with it because you’re helping but you can also help with art and music. All these things are fundamental to the way that we exist but its just a longer time frame and that’s frustrating. Music is really important in the film, I didnt realize this so much but its almost like a religous experience, you know? That place Nick’s, I used to call it my church- I’m very secular- but I would go there every Saturday ‘cause its just the most spiritual, awesome place to go dance there and lose yourself- thats why I chose that place for the film- I felt like the music there can be kind of holy. Being alive and loving life even though you’re struggling it’s tough sometimes but you’ve got to love being alive.

Photos by Tara Israel

The Imperialists Are Still Alive! opens this Friday, April 15 at The IFC Center, 323 Sixth Avenue, NYC. Director Zeina Durra will be on hand for a Q+A after the 7:55pm showing. You can buy tickets here and see the trailer here.