I had the great pleasure and fortune for the second year in a row to host and to teach at the Art for Progress Summer Music and Art Program. The program was made possible by a grant from the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation, and was open to young people seeking to pursue careers in creative fields. Music and art were made, and a great and enlightening time was had by all this summer. The program consisted of workshops held on four consecutive Sundays in July and August. For each week’s session, we created a unique, interactive space where creativity seemed to be seeping from the walls. Curiosity was inspired and mysteries demystified. Each week featured a professional guest artist in a different creative discipline. Our guest artists shared with us the experiences they each encountered on their journey toward becoming a fully realized professional artist.

The focus of the of the program, in addition to developing specific skills, was once again centered on questions and situations that a professional artist might encounter. The kind, for instance, that might not be intuitive or often addressed in traditional academic settings. Basically, the stuff they don’t tell you in school. We discussed finding your audience, vetting creative ideas, being band-mates as well as friends, and checking your attitude. There were also break out music sessions on topics including electric guitar tone, taught by returning teacher’s aide Franklin Santiago; songwriting, taught by Jason McFarlane, also a returning teacher’s aide and a host of other topics relevant to gigging musicians. For two of the sessions, Jerrell Battle taught digital music production, which was a huge hit. His setup included several different playing surfaces which made it possible for four or five people to jam together on keyboards and beat pads. The music that was being spontaneously created, mostly by people who had never met before, was unreal! It was like we were the hottest club in town on a Sunday afternoon! Jerrell’s sessions were in the same room as Paula Walters Parker’s visual art portion of the program, which is always about incorporating the setting and sound and movement into the art-making process. This created a very cool symbiosis in the room. That symbiosis is inherent to Paula’s approach and was just as fluid and inspiring when the room was animated by guest dancers/models. On top of all this creative interchange, our very special group of guest artists were so gracious to visit us this summer and to give us a window into their lives.

For this year’s inaugural session, we were joined by drummer and philanthropist Billy Martin, who encouraged us to find our own paths to excellence and mastery. His opening “speech,” on pandeiro (a type of Brazilian tambourine), had the whole group engaged and inspired. The piece was a fantastic demonstration of how many different sounds and musical ideas can be articulated on even the smallest, most unassuming instrument. Billy talked to us about finding his way as an artist, and about how he was able to carve a unique path to success by staying true to his own sensibilities.

The following week’s guest artist was jazz bassist Dezron Douglas, who improvised a solo version of the “Game of Thrones” theme. He then invited students to jam with him. He even passed his beautiful upright bass to teaching aide Jason McFarlane. Dezron told us stories of his time coming up in the NYC jazz scene and emphasized the importance of playing as many styles of music as possible in order to always be ready to play what is appropriate for any gig.

For the third workshop of this summer’s program, we welcomed visual and performance artist Michael Alan who shared stories with the group about the unorthodox path he followed toward notoriety as an artist. He shared some beautiful work from his prolific career, and encouraged us to look for opportunities everywhere and most of all to word hard and create work no matter what.

This philosophy was mirrored by our fourth and final guest, photographer Kymbreli Francis, aka Handsome Cupcakes, who explained to us how her career grew organically from her noticing and chronicling the style and flavor of her group of friends through photography. She showed us how her work evolved as her setting changed and as her skills developed. From there, we learned about the nuts and bolts of her technical process.

Being exposed to the natural progression of work these artists shared with us, it is clear how each of their unique creative voices has always been the driving force behind their efforts, and has continued to become more refined and pronounced over time.

AFP wrapped up the summer with a fantastic rooftop party, “Labor Of Love,” at The Crown, Bowery 50 Hotel. The band 5!Alive performed which features a member of our summer staff, Franklin Santiago. Gatto, among others, rocked the proverbial decks with energetic DJ sets as we watched the summer end over the glimmering city around us.

As the new school year begins, we are proud to announce a new music program at Harvest Collegiate High School. AFP is providing three guitar classes each day. We have also reinstated a visual arts program at Landmark High School, which provides four visual art classes a day. Our Forsyth High School visual arts program is also going strong. Our music program at Humanities Preparatory Academy is entering it’s eighth year, and we are currently gathering funding to implement a campus wide after school music program at the Bayard Rustin Educational Complex. the complex houses six schools. We aim to provide three days per week of after school programs focusing one day each on vocal work, instrument lessons, and digital music production.

We look forward to the year ahead, and to meeting new opportunities to serve New York City’s public high school students with much needed music and arts programming.

-Barry Komitor – AFP Arts Education Program Manager

Though the phrase “cinematic experience” is somewhat overused and should generally be met with suspicion, Victor Kossakovsky’s Aquarela can hardly be called anything else. This startling documentary about the earth’s most versatile element, water, is a mind- and eye-boggling trip, evoking both sadness and exhilaration, among other strong emotions. Shot at 96 frames per second, as opposed to the usual 24 (though theaters are only equipped to show it at 48 fps, at most), its rich visuals are so smooth they sometimes seem like CGI, but there is nothing artificial about this film.

Filmed in seven different countries, Aquarela opens on frozen Lake Baikal in Siberia, where several men are attempting to retrieve something from under the surface. Amid amplified sounds of cracking, groaning ice, it soon becomes apparent that a car has fallen into the lake. As dramatic as this seems, it’s not the last time it happens. We see two more cars speeding along the river as voices yell out “Stop, stop!” to no avail. Turns out that the lake is thawing early this year. This is our introduction to one of the film’s main themes, climate change, though it’s never discussed or openly addressed. It’s also the only scene in the movie with actual dialogue. Human beings, clearly at the mercy of the film’s subject, are not the main focus here. Adding to the strangeness of the scene is a wildly incongruous element of slapstick, as people keep falling through the ice.

The film next moves to Greenland, where there are towering glacier formations, the camera lingering on sparkling, geometrical ridges and fantastical shapes. The peacefully majestic setting is constantly interrupted by ice bergs breaking off and collapsing into the sea. The eerie boom and crash of this glacial calving is somehow deeply melancholy, as the bergs float and bob helplessly like slowly dying monsters. Knowing what we know about the polar ice caps, it’s like watching the planet (literally) die, albeit in a spectacularly beautiful fashion.

Next two furiously toiling sailors attempt to tame a schooner that is making its precarious way through thrashing winds and ocean waves. Not for the first time, we wonder about camera placement, realizing that the film crew is in the thick of it. Kossakovsky obviously went the extra mile (or a thousand) to create his astounding vision. The water is now overwhelming—mighty and terrible.

Aside from the constant tinkling, cracking, rushing, crashing water sounds, Aquarela features intermittent musical accompaniment by Finnish composer Eicca Toppinen and his “cello-metal” band Apocalyptica. Both harsh and beautiful, the music is a fitting counterpart to the dramatic visuals.

The film also visits flooded communities in California in the aftermath of the overflowing Oroville Dam, shown dominated by gushing water. There’s an eerie scene of a partially submerged graveyard, with egrets picking their way around the tombstones as if it’s the most natural thing in the world, which it kind of is.

Aquarela also lands in Miami in the midst of Hurricane Irma, with a slow, punishing drive down wind- and rain-lashed streets, palm trees bending unnaturally. Once again, the death-defying matter of camera placement becomes apparent.

Amidst these locations are hallucinogenic sequences of endless, crashing waves and rushing water; almost vertigo-inducing, they could literally cause seasickness. Long abstract clips of the ocean, both over- and under-water, in color and black and white, are like moving tapestries that have an almost narcotic effect. The movie has a definite impact on the nervous system; trippy for sure, but it’s not always a good trip, nor is it meant to be.

It all ends at Angel Falls in Venezuela, a gorgeous and relatively peaceful evocation of water, and a welcome end to what has been a thrilling, sometimes overwhelming ride. It will take a little while to get back your land legs afterwards.

Aquarela opens on Friday, August 16, at the Landmark at 57 West, AMC Empire (at 48 frames per second), and the Angelika Film Center (also at 48 fps).

—Marina Zogbi

“I Do Not Care if We Go Down in History as Barbarians.” So said Romanian military dictator Marshal Ion Antonescu to the Council of Ministers in 1941, in an infamous speech that kicked off a program of ethnic cleansing on the Eastern Front. 

Romania’s role in the WWII holocaust is one that is often conveniently forgotten (or outright denied), but director Radu Jude wants to make sure that we remember, as does the main character in his audacious new film—which is titled “I Do Not Care if We Go Down in History as Barbarians,” complete with quotes.

The movie’s fictional stage director Mariana Marin (an electric and believable Ioana Iacob) is mounting a spectacular re-enactment of the 1941 Odessa massacre, in which Romanian soldiers allied with the Nazis to kill tens of thousands of Jews. She encounters resistance from a variety of people, including cast members, government officials, and her own boyfriend, many of whom think it’s either a bad idea to bring up old memories or simply anti-Romanian. She also has increasingly frustrating personal issues with her already-married partner. None of it stops her.

Because this is Radu Jude, however, the film’s themes are couched in scenes that are as playful and audacious as they are dark and disturbing. (The jokey tone is similar to his equally singular 2015 film Aferim!, about another shameful period in Romanian history.) 

“I Do Not Care…” clocks in at a leisurely 140 minutes, which gives Jude plenty of time to build up to Mariana’s actual staged performance. In preparation, she reads aloud relevant book passages and quotes from witnesses and public figures including Hannah Arendt; she also argues at length with other characters, especially Movila (Alexandru Dabija), a local official with whom she engages in almost affectionate banter. Though sometimes overly didactic, these debates carry considerable weight, especially one about the relative hierarchy of the world’s massacres (“the Darwinism of massacres — only the fittest survive in the public conscience”). 

Meanwhile, there are droll scenes set in Bucharest’s National Military Museum, where Mariana and her crew research weapons; and rowdy, chaotic rehearsals take place on the museum grounds, amid vintage tanks. There is one chilling and hilarious scene in which she and crew member dispassionately weigh the merits of different human screams recorded during actual atrocities. Jude plays up the dichotomy between the grim details of historic events and the casual, lighthearted rehearsals, which include use of horrific props.

There is also much black and white footage from WWII, including the actual 1946 trials of Antonescu, as well as scenes from the controversial 1994 Romanian film Oglinda, which is mocked by Mariana and her boyfriend. (The movie is stuffed with pertinent details.)  Working hard to keep her project and crew on track, she is alternately amused and saddened by the old footage and other wartime evidence.

Eventually some cast members rebel and quit (mainly due to laziness), but their true beliefs also surface: “Only the Germans killed the Jews.” Mariana just becomes more and more determined to stage her vision, as Movila tries to talk her out of it.

When the pageant finally takes place in public square, it truly is a grand and moving spectacle, shown in great detail. However, the audience’s response isn’t exactly what Mariana expected.

“I Do Not Care…” is an odd and powerful film—absurd, yet all-too-real. With the rise of nationalism and fascism in Europe and, yep, in our own backyard, it is sadly a movie for our time.

“I Do Not Care if We Go Down in History as Barbarians” opens at the IFC Center in NYC on Friday, July 19.

Also out now at the IFC Center is The Sweet Requiem, an understated yet moving film by Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam about Tibetan refugees living in Delhi, India.

— Marina Zogbi

An intriguing new entry in the still-alive zombie-apocalypse genre, the German-language Ever After (Endzeit), from Swedish director Carolina Hellsgård, goes deeper than most screen depictions of the undead. It’s also gorgeous-looking, thanks to cinematographer Leah Striker, which adds to the film’s captivating quality.

A horror/road movie/eco-drama hybrid, Ever After focuses more on the relationship between its two main characters than on inventive portrayals of guts and decaying flesh, though there’s some of that too (but probably not enough to satisfy diehard gore fans).

At the heart of the film, which is based on the screenplay by Olivia Vieweg (who adapted it from her own graphic novel) is an unlikely alliance between two young women — the fragile, weak-seeming Vivi (Gro Swantje Kohlhof) and badder-assed Eva (Maja Lehrer).

The setting is post-plague Germany, two years into the apocalypse, where there are human survivors in only two cities: Weimar, where the infected are killed immediately, and Jena, where people are researching a cure. Vivi and Eva meet as stowaways on a self-driving supply train from the former to the latter city. Though temperamentally and emotionally very different, they’re both searching for something lost in their former lives. It’s a setup that could have led to a more conventional apocalypse survival story, but Ever After ultimately winds up veering into an entirely different direction.

Forced to ditch the train at one point, the mismatched duo are often at odds, but they keep circling back to each other. As they discuss their former lives, we see flashbacks that hint at what’s haunting and driving each of them. On the way through an enchanted-looking Black Forest, bathed in beautifully diffuse light, they run into various zombie types — including a grossly decaying bride who owes something to Dickens’ Miss Haversham — that are closer to the fast-moving 28 Days Later variety than traditional Living/Walking Dead foot-draggers. They also come upon a mysterious older woman (Danish actress Trine Dyrholm, star of the recent Nico, 1988), who lectures them about the apocalypse as part of a bigger world shift. An earthy being in every sense of the word, she has embraced the fact that humankind will never be the same.

Though a bit vague and scattered-seeming at times, Hellsgård’s film is refreshing for its character development, tone and overall message. Kohlhof and Lehrer are excellent as its flawed, complicated protagonists.

“The good thing about the apocalypse: you can see all the stars again,” says Vivi toward the end of the film. It’s a nice sentiment, but also kind of a warning. How long can the world we have created last?

Ever After (Endzeit)opens on Friday, June 21, at the IFC Center in Manhattan.

Opening the same day on the other end of the cinematic spectrum is Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’ documentary Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am. This engrossing portrait is narrated by Morrison herself, an engaging presence who describes growing up in a family that appreciated the power of words and language.

Through the course of the film, Greenfield-Sanders weaves Morrison’s autobiographical narration with testimonials from admirers and friends including Angela Davis, Hinton Als, Walter Mosley, Oprah Winfrey, Fran Lebowitz and Robert Gottlieb, her longtime editor. Criticized early on by white critics for “only” writing about the Black experience, Morrison rejected the notion that her (or any) writing should be geared to a particular audience. She recalls her days as an editor who fought for her writers, a teacher who exhorted her pupils not to write what they know, and a supportive mother of two sons, all while writing her own fiction. (She only became a full-time writer in her 40s after the success of Song of Solomon.)

The Pieces I Am shows how throughout her career, Morrison has bucked the traditional (white, male) literary establishment, eventually winning the 1993 Nobel Prize for Beloved — though that too ruffled some critics.

At the age of 88, however, she has clearly attained a lofty place in the literary firmament. The film is a celebration of a prolific and groundbreaking career.

Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am opens Friday, June 21, at Film Forum and Film at Lincoln Center.

Join us in celebration of AFP’s 15 YEAR ANNIVERSARY.

LIVE MUSIC: Statik Vision, Big Sweater
DJ’s: Frank Gatto, Brian Burnside

Plus, a special all star jam featuring Celeste Pasian, Tom Rocky Meyer, Danny Rivas, Vianca Vega, Danny Espitia

+++ members of Statik Vison and Big Sweater.

LIVE MUSIC = 9:30pm, DJ’s = Midnight

NO COVER!! Let’s party! Starr Bar, 214 Starr Street, Brooklyn