Ronni Thomas, a filmmaker and oddity enthusiast, has created a new web series documenting the darkness, eccentricity and mystery of the uncharted and unimaginable happenings of New York City.

Fittingly named The Midnight Archive, these videos boast an eclectic class of characters such as Sue Jeiven, a tattoo artist at East River Tattoo, and Madame Cagliastro of Brooklyn. Jeiven, who is featured in episode three, specializes in anthropomorphic taxidermy, creating lifelike tableaux from dead animals that she guts, stuffs and lovingly clothes in vintage human attire. Madame Cagliastro also deals with animals, performing mummification for pets weighing 20 pounds or less—she mummifies a dead toad in the first episode.

Episode eight, the latest on the Midnight Archive website, is entitled “Wax.” Sigrid Sarda, an artist who started making hauntingly human wax sculptures after the death of her father, hosts with her spooky collection of wax figures that line every inch of her house.

Other members of the odd ensemble who work on the series include Mitch Horowitz, author of Occult New York; Jere Ryder, conservator for the Guiness Automata collection at the Morris Museum in New Jersey; and professor Paul Koudounaris, who traveled the world photographing ossuaries and charnel houses, places constructed of human bones.
In his IKA Collective office at 15 E. 32rd St. in Midtown, Thomas sits among a giant Grim Reaper, scary child dolls and other spine-chilling items as he edits a new episode of the show.

The episode features Thomas himself discussing his collection of stereoviews, a late 19th century entertainment consisting of 3-D images projected through a stereoscope—a much older and intricate ancestor of 3-D View-Masters.

“The lecture was on my collection of macabre stereoviews, in particular my set of diableries, which are French stereo tissues from the 1860s that depict Satan’s daily life in hell. I always kind of sat on these macabre demented things, these private fetishes. When I saw the variety of people who showed up for my lecture, from Harvard professors to gutter punks to people I didn’t even know from my old high school, I decided, let’s make a film out of this stuff.”

Many of the eclectics filmed for The Midnight Archive are lecturers at the Brooklyn Observatory, an event space at 543 Union St. in Brooklyn that serves as a multipurpose room for artists. That’s where Thomas met Joanna Ebenstein, the curator of Morbid Anatomy at the Observatory and now the producer of the series.

Thomas said that after the first episode, TV networks were offering to air the show, but it would have meant less creative control for Thomas and the guys at IKA Collective, whom he says have “fostered a very artistic environment” for him to pursue his work. Television might also “exploit these people or make them look stupid,” and even though the money would be good, Thomas remains speculative about selling out his perverse brainchild.

“I want people to see these everyday people doing extraordinary things, and I wanted to give them a view from an insider, myself, who has had a lifelong fascination and respect for these things. There is a dark underside to all things, and I want to open up that side to those who are outwardly interested and to those who live two lives,” he said.

To watch, visit themidnightarchive.com.

By Mark Peikert

In the pantheon of New Yorkers—Dorothy Parker, Andy Warhol, the Ramones—photographer Weegee may not be the first to spring to mind, but he may symbolize the contradictions of New York City better than anyone else. Driven, self-mythologizing and morbidly curious about the curiously morbid, Weegee spent a decade, from 1936 to 1947, chronicling the violence and urban beauty of life in the Big Apple.

Currently on display at the International Center of Photography, Weegee: Murder Is My Business (running through Sept. 2) collects some of the best of Weegee’s mostly nighttime work, from a body stuffed in a trunk to the crowds at Coney Island. What strikes the viewer almost immediately isn’t just the classic, violent aspects of these photos—bodies splayed awkwardly on sidewalks, pools of blood congealing—but the flipside, the almost embarrassingly sentimental glimpses at beachgoers or the melancholy of a Santa balloon being inflated for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

That Santa photograph is indicative of why Weegee’s work still exerts such a magnetic pull; these images are frozen in time, capturing a New York City that is long gone and still mourned (there are only a few stragglers surrounding that balloon, unlike the hordes who descend upon the Upper West Side the night before Thanksgiving now). From a distance, the gangland killings that Weegee followed so avidly thanks to his police scanner have a glamour that we can’t assign the random acts of violence we live through today.

What Murder Is My Business reveals, however, is that the famously gruesome Weegee wasn’t always interested in the details of the deaths he covered. Sometimes his photographs were of gawping onlookers, the body an indistinct detail. ICP has helpfully put these seemingly atypical shots in context, surrounding them with photos by police officers of the same scene that are more insistent on the corpse than Weegee’s. As it turns out, crime wasn’t necessarily Weegee’s business, but the business of capturing the filthy, rain-slicked city he loved in all its rubbernecking glory was.

For more of Weegee’s ceaselessly fascinating work, Chelsea’s Steven Kasher Gallery is holding its own exhibit, Weegee: Naked City, through Feb. 25 at 521 W. 23rd St.

Weegee: Murder Is My Business
ICP, 1133 6th Ave. (at 43rd St.), 212-857-0000, www.icp.org.

By Susan Reiter

Now in its 40th year, Dance on Camera is at a new level of maturity. The annual event at the Walter Reade Theater that once fit into a three-day weekend has expanded to fill five days, Jan. 27–31, and within its brief duration has its own opening night, centerpiece and closing night films.

This year’s festival also takes advantage of the recently opened Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center (across 65th Street from the Walter Reade), which will host free screenings of short films as well as conversations and panel discussions with filmmakers on Saturday and Sunday. Many of the regular screenings will also include appearances by directors and participants.

With 14 programs packed into its five days, the festival includes films exploring a wide variety of dance styles, artists and institutions. For New Yorkers, the opening night documentary, Joffrey: Mavericks of American Dance, is an expansive reminder of the rich and often turbulent history of what was once a mainstay of the local dance scene before the company relocated to Chicago.

The film’s opening strikes a jarring note: While proclaiming the Joffrey’s record of innovation and originality, it starts off with scenes of Lar Lubovitch’s Othello in rehearsal. A ponderous ballet already performed by ABT and San Francisco Ballet at the time, this is hardly the type of work that made the Joffrey’s reputation.

But once the 90-minute film gets going, the performances—and voices—of many talented and personable Joffrey dancers and the company’s never-a-dull-moment history makes for riveting viewing.

Coming of age during the 1960s, the Joffrey also had its finger on the pulse of the times as the counterculture emerged and the Vietnam War dominated the news. The documentary rightly gives significant attention to Joffrey’s choices of Kurt Jooss’ The Green Table and Léonide Massine’s Parade in 1973—painstakingly detailed revivals that made these seminal works live for a new generation.

Another American dance institution with an even longer history—Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival—is the subject of Never Stand Still. The Ron Honsa documentary’s choppy approach takes some getting used to as it interweaves the history of this influential festival and school—giving due attention to Ted Shawn and his male dancers of the 1930s—with what amount to substantial mini-documentaries on such worthy and fascinating subjects as Mark Morris, Paul Taylor, Suzanne Farrell, Shantala Shivalingappa and Gideon Obarzanek, who speak not only about Jacob’s Pillow but about their own artistic and esthetic philosophies.

An intriguing festival documentary is The Space in Back of You, about the influential but relatively unsung Japanese dancer and choreographer Suzushi Hanayagi. She became part of New York’s earliest postmodern dance scene and made significant contributions to several of Robert Wilson’s elaborate productions.

For fans of ballet competitions and their inherent drama, there is First Position, focusing on a particularly interesting and varied selection of contestants at a recent Youth America Grand Prix. Still Moving: Pilobolus at 40 is fun as it chronicles the launch of that distinctive collaborative troupe, offering a glimpse of its founders as shaggy-haired Dartmouth jocks and a touching tribute to the late co-founder Jonathan Wolken.

And for the closing night, there is the truly special—and long-awaited—Check Your Body at the Door, which profiles the New York City club dance scene of the 1990s. It offers a full and vibrant portrait of a number of important dancers, displaying their amazing physical skills in both club and stark studio settings.

Dance on Camera 2012
Jan. 27–31, Walter Reade Theater, 165 W. 65th St. (betw. Broadway & Amsterdam), and Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, 144 W. 65th St., www.filmlinc.com; $12.

By Mark Peikert

Porgy and Bess has been something like this season’s highbrow Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. Both shows came to Broadway trailing a wake of scandal and op-eds—except Porgy and Bess had Stephen Sondheim and the New York Times weighing in, while Spider-Man had the Post. And in both cases, what finally showed up on stage was…underwhelming.
What else could this revision of Porgy and Bess be? Director Diane Paulus and bookwriter/reviser Suzan-Lori Parks have streamlined the original four-hour work into a matinee-crowd-friendly two and a half hours, during which time most of the characters act incomprehensibly.

Audra McDonald and Norm Lewis in The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess

Set in Charleston’s Catfish Row—designed by Riccardo Hernandez to look like a dank alleyway—Porgy and Bess is the story of the limping Porgy (Norm Lewis), the Bad Woman Bess (Audra McDonald) and the ways in which he causes her to vacillate between being good and snorting cocaine and otherwise being bad with drug dealer Sporting Life (David Alan Grier, who thinks his pimp walk is funnier than it is) and her lover Crown (Phillip Boykin, lacking the sex appeal that would convince us that he has Bess in an erotic thrall).

As she did in Hair, Paulus reveals a weakness for grouping her actors on the stage and then leaving them there. With an array of Catfish Row denizens to work with, she often lumps the men and women into separate groups for their songs, a choice that strips the work of the feeling of community. This isn’t a tight-knit group of neighbors; this is a collection of people who happen to live near one another, which lessens the dramatic tension considerably.

On the credit side, Paulus and team do have Lewis and McDonald, two actor-singers who try valiantly to make their characters something more than archetypes. They have an easy chemistry together that makes Bess and Porgy’s relationship seem organic, a haven for Bess after the turmoil of Crown. But not even these two can surmount the revue-like structure Parks has left the book. All that trimming leaves the songs intact but the recitatives (and supporting characters) mangled. Joshua Henry is mostly wasted as Jake, the ill-fated young father, while the other characters feel like plot-propelling scenery, there to alert the audience as to which Bess is on stage: bad Bess or good Bess.

Still, there is always that lush score—“Summertime,” “I Got Plenty of Nothing”—from George and Ira Gershwin to prop up the faltering, giving McDonald and Lewis the chance to remind audiences how much they’ve both been missed by fans of pure, character-driven singing. When they duet, every misfire in the production slips away, leaving two stars centerstage, giving powerhouse performances that almost transcend the misdirection and wrongheaded ideas that suffuse the rest of this Porgy and Bess.

The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess
Through June 24, Richard Rodgers Theatre, 226 W. 46th St. (betw. Broadway & 8th Ave.), www.porgyandbessonbroadway.com; $75–$150.

American art has made a comeback at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The third and final phase of the museum’s 10-year, $100 million project is complete, and 26 newly designed galleries will be opened to the public this Monday.
First opened in 1924, The Met’s American Wing originally only displayed decorative arts, such as furniture and silverware, through the medium of period rooms. In the 1930s, paintings started coming in, and by the 1980s, galleries were opened to display the paintings.

Emanuel Leutze's original Washington Crossing the Delaware is on display in the new American Wing at the Met.

Before the wing closed for the redesign, the painting galleries were on two levels in a non-cohesive order. Now they are all on one floor and have been expanded to encompass 30,000 square feet.

The French Beaux-Arts-inspired revamp of the second floor of The Met has transformed the American Wing into a bright and open area for art lovers and novices to enjoy and appreciate paintings, sculptures, furniture and silverware, pieces that reflect both the history and patriotic culture of America.

Morrison Heckscher, chairman of the American Wing, described the galleries as “chrono-thematic”—melding time periods and themes to create a story of American life.

“Our vision,” Heckscher said, “was not just to highlight American art but to bring out American life and American culture through these art pieces. After the agony of rethinking and redesigning, architect Kevin Roche and I decided that it wasn’t enough just to expand the gallery west; we had to ‘raise the roof’ in order to create a modern gallery with a historic feel.”

Each gallery has high, vaulted or coved ceilings and natural lighting. The walls are cream-colored and bare save for beautifully maintained masterpieces that hang from thin, barely visible wires. No sculptures are roped off, allowing viewers an up close and personal experience of the artist’s handiwork. Furniture and silverware are delicately displayed as standing works of art and culture that reflect the artistry of early American craftspeople.

The Anthony W. and Lulu C. Wang Galleries of 18th Century American Art are devoted to paintings and architecture, furniture, silver and other decorative arts. Thematic groupings, in a broadly chronological order, of paintings and sculpture of the 19th and early 20th centuries are showcased in the Joan Whitney Payson Galleries.

Eras covered range from the Hudson River School to the Ashcan movement. Different themes, such as American life and revolution, highlight political tension and domestic life through the paintings of John Singleton Copley, Cecilia Beaux and Mathew Pratt, among many others.

The main attraction is in the Peter Jay Sharp Foundation Gallery, where Emanuel Leutze’s original Washington Crossing the Delaware hangs in its beautifully recreated gilded frame. This vast, majestic work of art is surrounded by breathtaking landscapes crafted during the Hudson River School era, making the gallery a patriotic emblem of American art and identity.

“The curators did a great job representing American art,” said Mike E. List, a staffer at The Met. “There are a lot of visitors who come here and really enjoy seeing everything we own, and now that we have nearly 90 percent of our American artwork displayed, visitors will get a better perspective of early American landscapes, lifestyles and our patriotic nature.”

Other timeless American works of art displayed in the galleries include John Singer Sargent’s Madame X¸ Charles Willson Peale’s George Washington, and Thomas Cole’s View from Mount Holyoke.

By Aspen Matis

Columbia University psychiatry professor Galina Mindlin, MD, PhD, studies neuron connections and how such brain links can be strengthened by listening to the right music. Her new book, Your Playlist Can Change Your Life (co-authored by Joseph Cardillo and Don DuRousseau), distills her brain-training findings into playlists for the mood you want to be in. West Side Spirit spoke with Mindlin about music’s potential to alter mood, productivity and happiness, the existence of side-effect-free medicine and the North Pole’s hold on her mind.

West Side Spirit: We’ve all resolved to be better versions of ourselves in 2012. What role can music play in that resolution?
Galina Mindlin: Positive stimuli affect the brain in a positive way. You can use music as positive stimuli to improve your mood or relieve stress. First, you choose the piece you like and you think of the mind-state you desire. For instance: Do you want to relax, study, get motivated, focus—think first about what you want. Second, you really need to practice, play and play the piece, so your brain will remember it. Your brain is like a muscle.

What if I get sick of the song?
Then you have to leave it for a while, find something else. Stop playing it. Start gently replacing it with something else. Encourage your brain to withdraw from it.

What’s the value of playing the same song again and again?
To train the brain, help the cells forge more connections. But then you do have to update your playlist. Our brains respond to variation.

If you really want to train your mind, you have to stimulate your brain in unpredictable ways—unpredictable frequencies. You want to check the beats per minute—you want to synchronize your brain waves with those of the music, the beats per minute. You become your own boss with this prescription. We can practice personalized medicine.

Do you think the use of music as medicine will grow popular?
All New Yorkers go for the quick fix. A pill. Want to fall asleep faster? Benzo. These things have side effects. Instead: Push the button. You can be your own doctor.

How did you first become interested in music’s effect on the brain?
I went to music school. Now, I record brain waves and translate them into musical frequencies, so your brain plays the music. I give you a CD with your brain’s music.

And what happens when someone listens to her own brain music? What’s the effect?
It’s like listening to your mom’s voice, your daughter’s voice.

How does someone determine the frequency of music that is best for what he is trying to do?
If you’re very nervous and you want to calm yourself down, you want to listen to something of a lower frequency. To get motivated or excited—to stimulate your brain—listen to something of higher frequency, generally.

If you want to determine the ideal frequency for you and what you’re trying to do—something more accurate than just “I like this”—buy the book.

What is your song? What do you listen to to train your brain?
I was born in the North Pole, I moved to Moscow when I was 5. You’re a little kid, and everything is white—whiteness and white noise. I’d get confused; kids would sometimes wander outside in the night, because it was always light. I and the other kids would play with a little white fox and a baby polar bear.

For me, to focus, I have to go back to my childhood, into that white-noise space. Silence. Complete silence. And then I can go into my playlist.

By Doug Strassler

Certain universal questions arise in every generation: What is the meaning of life? What lies in the Great Beyond? And perhaps most important of all: Are you gonna take me home tonight?

James Kautz, Anthony Rapp and Dee Roscioli in Dedalus Lounge

That last question might be the most pertinent of the three to the denizens of Dedalus Lounge, Gary Duggan’s new music-infused play embarking on a run at Midtown West’s Interart Theater Annex, at 500 W. 52nd St., through Jan. 30. This trio of lost souls—Danny, Daragh and Delphine—connects at the titular Dublin drink joint during the holiday season, a time that would be happy if only these people weren’t so at sea. Delphine is dealing with a sick grandparent and a complicated love affair; Danny, meanwhile, is a devoted Freddie Mercury fan who struggles to mount a successful new Queen tribute band.

According to the playwright, his inspiration comes not so much from what he knows but who he knows. “A lot of Irish theater has traditionally dealt with families and parent/child relationships,” Duggan explained.

Not that Dedalus—making its American bow after a run at Ireland’s Pageant Wagon Theatre Company—is an outright drama. Amid the debauchery and despondence, there is also plenty of humor, which proved to be a winning tone in last year’s acclaimed Trans-Euro Express, also performed at Interart. This production also features new music and choreography not found in the Dublin iteration.

Dedalus reunites Duggan with Trans-Euro director Chris Henry. The Dublin-based writer first met Henry over Skype, where, he avowed, “We developed a quick and easy rapport during the rehearsal period. I was very pleased with Chris’ inventive production, and after that we decided pretty quickly that we’d like to collaborate again. The themes and characters of Dedalus and Trans-Euro have a fair bit in common so I thought that would be a natural follow-up.”

According to Henry, the affection is mutual. “I am drawn to a script with heart and edge, a script where I can give an audience a visceral experience,” she said. In fact, the director and writer are so simpatico by now that the only topic on which they seem to disagree is their favorite Queen song.

Henry was also attracted to the musical elements of Dedalus. She said that while she and the rest of the production were initially disappointed they were not able to acquire the rights to any Queen songs, that turned out to be a blessing in disguise. The “Queen-inspired songs” penned by co-stars Anthony Rapp and Daniel A. Weiss, she said, “are lively, fun, campy and wild to watch.”

The re-teaming of the creative forces may have been a no-brainer, but Dedalus has also attracted a top-notch cast that includes original Rent star Rapp, Wicked alum Dee Roscioli and James Kautz, best known as a founding member of the estimable downtown theater company The Amoralists. That’s an impressive roster for Interart, given that the Off-Off venue has very limited seating. Why the actorly vote of confidence in Dedalus?

“The play is quite a crazy mash-up of tones, themes and emotions,” Duggan said. “I think that’s appealing to great performers—they get to play with a dynamic range of colors in one piece.” The playwright added, “I think good people like to work intensively with other good people, and there’s a lot of opportunity to do that in this. Plus, the way Chris directs is very dynamic and imaginative, which makes it a very satisfying show to be a part of.”

It’s shows like this that make the rockin’ world go round.

For information, please visit www.royalfamilyproductions.org.

By Susan Reiter

Following a brief winter hibernation after its five-week Nutcracker onslaught, New York City Ballet returns to its primary business Tuesday, Jan. 17, when it opens its six-week winter repertory season. While the company’s repertory has been opened up to an increasing variety of choreographers in recent decades, the vast archive of George Balanchine’s exceptional ballets remains its mainstay.

Sara Mearns and Chase Finlay in Christopher Wheeldon's Polyphonia

The season’s first week culminates with a day celebrating Balanchine’s Jan. 22 birthday (happy 108th, George!). Its centerpiece is the 3 p.m. performance of two of the master’s most expansive and appealing works.

Who Cares, a 1970 ballet set to a delectable array of Gershwin songs, celebrates the brash energy and romance of New York and alludes to Balanchine’s brief heyday as a major Broadway choreographer.

The second half of the birthday program offers Union Jack, Balanchine’s majestic—and sometimes cheeky—1976 tribute to all thing British. With its cast of 72 arrayed in kilt-clad regiments choreographed with thrilling precision and dramatic vigor, it is unlike anything else in the repertory. The military-style discipline gives way to an all-too-human music hall couple whose urge to entertain is sometimes greater than their actual finesse. The large cast then return in sailor suits to dance the go-for-broke Royal Navy section, which mocks every possible cliché and is a rambunctious delight.

When NYCB’s autumn season began in mid-September, considerable advance hype was focused on Ocean’s Kingdom, a new Martins ballet set to a score (and based on a concept) by Paul McCartney, which became a hot ticket. If you couldn’t get in and the largely negative reviews haven’t scared you off, there will be five more performances beginning Jan. 19.
This season’s major premiere sounds a lot more promising. Christopher Wheeldon, while no longer the company’s resident choreographer, remains a regular contributor to the repertory and continues to be one of the ballet world’s most significant and in-demand choreographers.

During a Monday event that is part of City Center’s intimate Studio 5 series, Wheeldon offered a brief advance look at a trio from the ballet that showed him working with refined musicality and fluency.

The new work will be part of an all-Wheeldon program (Jan. 28 and Feb. 4) that includes his 2001 Polyphonia and the company’s premiere of DGV (Danse à Grand Vitesse), which he created for the Royal Ballet in 2006. Polyphonia has been in exceptionally fine shape as danced by its current casts last fall, and this brilliant, intricate work for four couples has already staked its claim as a classic of 21st-century ballet.

DGV, set to a score by Michael Nyman, is a surging, propulsive work for a cast of 26, which had its New York premiere when Corella Ballet Castilla y Leon performed it at City Center two years ago.

On Monday, Wheeldon remarked that he had created the still-untitled premiere provide the ideal contrast with the two earlier works on the program. “I wanted to make something gentler, more romantic and classical to balance out the Ligeti and the driving, athletic world of DGV,” he said. He also noted that he was still toying with the program order, contemplating having the new ballet open the program. Arrive late on Jan. 28 at your own risk!

New York City Ballet: Jan. 17–Feb. 26, David H. Koch Theater, 20 Lincoln Center (63rd St. & Columbus Ave.), www.nycballet.com; $29+.

By Armond White

Guy Ritchie’s calculations in his sequel Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows are so low-down they’re almost diabolical. He has retooled the famous fictional detective character with no respect for either Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s literary creation or the ticket-buying audience. Against tradition (previous incarnations of Holmes emphasized mystery and deduction), Ritche panders to the current, degraded taste for blatancy and violence.

A scene from Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

This time, Holmes’ (Robert Downey Jr.) clash with arch villain Moriarty (Jared Harris) evokes 9/11 and Afghanistan along with the previous film’s kung fu anachronisms, over-done F/X and Ritchie’s brand of macho banter between the disguise-crazy Holmes and his fusty sidekick Watson (Jude Law). It’s what Brits call lad humor, but Americans understand it as thuggish. So Downey’s fake British accent suits Ritchie’s concoction for a facetious, half-Hollywood hit.

The period setting recalls Jonah Hex, which apparently was too sophisticated to be popular. Ritchie reboots Holmes for a market unaccustomed to thinking, impatient with suspense but eager for relentless, if monotonous, visual stimulation—and massive promotional hype. Adapting his Brit-Tarantino thuggery for the video game demographic, Ritchie often slows down the fighting and gunfire as if relaying the thought  processes behind Holmes’ actions. The narrative constantly backs up as if on rewind. Ritchie does our perception for us, creating no sense of history or emotion, just jovial machismo, brandishing close-ups of Holmes’ facial bruises, wounds and scars.

A Game of Shadows is ready-made for Xbox; its plot is a mess of contiguous chaos in drinking dens, theaters, forests, waterfalls, mountaintop castles, on trains and in great English halls. Holmes and Watson tangle with anarchist bombs, Romany rebels (led by Noomi Rapace, here the girl with the gypsy tattoo) and the dastardly Moriarty spouting nonsense like: “You’re not fighting me, you’re fighting the human condition and the tendency toward moral ignorance.” Ritchie should know.

Ritchie should also know better. His RocknRolla was one of the best action-comedies of the past decade—a funny, sexy, heartfelt play with modern British identity. The only justification for this Holmes hackwork would be to finance the sequel promised by RocknRolla’s cliffhanger ending. Instead, Ritchie abandons his own cultural creation to ruinously imitate the James Bond franchise—he’s closer to Will Smith’s Wild Wild West fiasco.

Follow Armond White on Twitter @3xChair.

January marks the beginning of a new film festival season—and what better way to kick it off than with the 21st annual New York Jewish Film Festival, Jan. 11–26? Presented in partnership with The Jewish Museum and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the festival promises to provide a diverse global perspective on the Jewish experience with 35 features and shorts from 11 countries, many of which will be followed by post-screening Q&As with filmmakers and special guests in attendance. 

The opening night kicks off with the New York premiere of Guy Nattiv’s Mabul (The Flood). Nominated for six Ophir Awards (Israeli Academy Awards), Mabul follows 13-year-old Yoni on the eve of his bar mitzvah. Facing bullying from his classmates, an institutionalized older brother living with autism and parents who are barely on speaking terms, Yoni’s bar mitzvah becomes the catalyst for buried family secrets to come to light.

For those who have harbored a soft spot for Catskills resorts ever since they first saw Dirty Dancing, be sure to see the closing night film, the world premiere of Caroline Laskow and Ian Rosenberg’s Welcome to Kutsher’s: The Last Catskills Resort, a documentary about the last surviving Jewish resort in the Catskills and its overarching influence on sports, entertainment and “Borscht Belt” comedians.

The festival’s world premiere documentaries scan the globe, from Africa to the streets of Paris. Jonathan Gruber and Ari Daniel Pinchot’s Follow Me: The Yoni Netanyahu Story presents a moving portrait of Jonathan “Yoni” Netanyahu, who was killed at the age of 30 leading Israeli special forces in the 1976 hostage rescue mission at the Entebbe Airport in Uganda.

Avishai Yeganyahu Mekonen and Shari Rothfarb Mekonen’s 400 Miles to Freedom documents the 1984 escape from Ethiopia to Israel of the Beta Israel, a secluded, 2,500-year-old community of observant Jews in the northern Ethiopian mountains.

Filmmaker Joel Katz explores what it means to be white in America in White: A Memoir in Color. Katz examines his father’s role as a white professor at Howard University during the civil rights era and the influence it had on his and his wife’s decision to adopt a mixed-race child. Sam Ball’s fascinating Joann Sfar Draws from Memory details the life of graphic novelist and filmmaker Joann Sfar, author of the popular The Rabbi’s Cat series and director of the recent film, Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life. The film follows Sfar as he visits his favorite Parisian neighborhood spots and muses on his artistic process and the influence of his Algerian and East European family heritage.

For musical fans, Eytan Fox’s New York premiere, Mary Lou, promises to be “a cross between the television series Glee and the musical Mamma Mia! by way of La Cage aux Folles.” It follows a young man who finds himself in the Tel Aviv gay community, performing as a drag queen while searching for his estranged mother.

Gili Gaon’s Iraq ‘N’ Roll bridges the past and present with the story of acclaimed Jewish musicians (and brothers) Salah and Daud al-Kuwaiti. Considered the fathers of modern Iraqi music in the 1930s, the documentary follows Salah’s grandson, popular Israeli rock musician Dudu Tassa, through the process of remixing their original tunes for contemporary listeners.

Richard Oswald’s 1933 musical My Song Goes Round the World showcases the talents of the great tenor Joseph Schmidt, known as the Jewish Caruso, who faced challenges in both career and love while standing less than 5 feet tall.

Dramatic features include Adrian Panek’s dazzling period drama Daas, about the influence of 18th-century false messiah Jacob Frank. Branko Ivanda’s Lea and Darija tells the story of 13-year-old stars Lea Deutsch, known as the Croatian Shirley Temple, and her dancing partner Darija Gasteiger in pre-World War II Croatia. Katia Lewkowicz’s romantic comedy, Bachelor Days Are Over, follows a groom-to-be grappling with the conflict between marriage and following his heart.

Single screening tickets for The New York Jewish Film Festival are $13, $9 for students and seniors (62+) and $8 for Film Society and Jewish Museum members. For tickets, more information and a full schedule, visit www.filmlinc.com or www.thejewishmuseum.org or call 212-875-5601.