SCHEDULE
This Week: Thu 9/02 – Sun 9/05

Movie: Women Without Men

Women Without Men, an adaptation of Shahrnush Parsipur's magical realist novel, is Iranian artist Shirin Neshat's first feature length film. The story chronicles the intertwining lives of four Iranian women during the summer of 1953; a cataclysmic moment in Iranian history when an American led, British backed coup d'etat brought down the democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, and reinstalled the Shah to power. The film is dedicated to the memory of those who lost their lives in the struggle for freedom and democracy in Iran - from the Constitutional Revolution of 1906 to the Green Movement of 2009.

Movie: Neshoba: The Price of Freedom

A film by Micki Dickoff and Tony Pagano. NESHOBA: The Price of Freedom tells the story of a Mississippi town still divided about the meaning of justice, 40 years after the murders of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, an event dramatized in the Oscar-winning film, Mississippi Burning. Although Klansmen bragged about what they did in 1964, no one was held accountable until 2005, when the State indicted preacher Edgar Ray Killen, an 80-year-old notorious racist and mastermind of the murders. Through exclusive interviews with Killen, intimate interviews with the victims' families, and candid interviews with black and white Neshoba County citizens still struggling with their town's violent past, the film explores whether the prosecution of one unrepentant Klansman constitutes justice and whether healing and reconciliation are possible without telling the unvarnished truth.

Movie: Joan Rivers - A Piece of Work

This film, by Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg, takes the audience on a 12-month ride with Joan Rivers in her 76th year of life - Joan at home, during holidays, performing stand up and acting in a play she wrote, gossiping with her QVC fans, writing jokes and managing her career -- interweaving them with home movies, stand up routines, book recordings, personal photographs and archival footage to create a lush visual landscape and cinematic backdrop for the narrative as it unfolds. Filmed as a cinema verite documentary, the film reveals a rare glimpse of the comedic process and the toxic mixture of self-doubt and anger that often fuels it, laying bare both the struggle and thrill of living life as a groundbreaking female performer. Filmmakers Stern and Sundberg (The Devil Came on Horseback, The Trials of Darryl Hunt) expose the private dramas of this irreverent, legendary comedian as she fights to keep her career thriving in a business driven by youth and beauty.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Theatre: Making Macbeth Work

Director Linda Mussmann organized a group of young people, ages 17 - 22, who expressed an interest in exploring Shakespeare's Macbeth, from a non-conventional point of view. Linda constructed and deconstructed the text and re hearsed scenes as participants came and went throughout the summer. The process concludes with a performance by two actresses, Amanda Roberts and Nellie Rustick. Claudia Bruce and Ryder Cooley add musical support.

Movie: Enemies of the People

The Khmer Rouge ran what is regarded as one of the twentieth century's most brutal regimes. Yet the Killing Fields of Cambodia remained unexplained, until now. Having lost his own family, the filmmaker Thet Sambath is on a personal quest to discover not how but why they died in the Killing Fields. In doing so, he hears and understands for the first time the real story of his country's tragedy and elicits unprecedented on-camera confessions from perpetrators at all levels of the Khmer Rouge hierarchy. Winner of a dozen top documentary festival awards, including a Special Jury Prize at Sundance and the Grand Jury Award at the Full Frame Documentary Festival, this riveting film is a profound meditation on the nature of good and evil, shedding light on the capacity of some people to commit atrocities and for others to forgive them.

National Theatre of London - NT Live
Live Simulcast: Phedre (Encore exhibition)

National Theatre Live launched in June 2009 with a broadcast of Phedre. Seen by over 50,000 people worldwide, don't miss your chance to see an encore screening of this smash hit production. Helen Mirren takes the title role in this savage play by Jean Racine, translated into muscular free verse by the late Poet Laureate, Ted Hughes.

Consumed by an uncontrollable passion for her young stepson and believing Theseus, her absent husband, to be dead, Phedre confesses her darkest desires and enters the world of nightmare. When Theseus returns alive and well, Phedre, fearing exposure, accuses her stepson of rape. The result is carnage.

Tickets on sale now: box office hours M-F 10 am - 4 pm. For more information call 518-822-8448 or email fyi@timeandspace.org

Movie: Family Affair

A film by Chico Colvard. At 10 years old, Colvard accidentally shot his older sister in the leg. This seemingly random act detonated a chain reaction that exposed unspeakable realities and shattered his family. Thirty years later, Colvard ruptures veils of secrecy and silence again. As he bravely visits his relatives, what unfolds is a personal film that is as uncompromising, raw, and cathartic as any in the history of the medium. In the end, the film focuses on the motives, accommodations and levels of forgiveness survivors make in order to maintain some semblance of family.

CinemaLux: Queen of the Sun: What are the Honey Bees Telling Us?

From Taggart Siegel the director of The Real Dirt on Farmer John comes a profound, alternative look at the tragic global bee crisis. In 1923, Rudolf Steiner, a scientist, philosopher, and social innovator, predicted that in 80 to 100 years honeybees would collapse. His prediction has come true with Colony Collapse Disorder, where reports continue to surface that bees are disappearing in mass numbers from their hives with no clear single explanation. In an alarming inquiry into the insights behind Steiner's prediction Queen of the Sun examines the dire global bee crisis through the eyes of biodynamic beekeepers, scientists, farmers, and philosophers. On a pilgrimage around the world, the film unveils 10,000 years of beekeeping, highlighting how our historic and sacred relationship with bees has been lost due to highly mechanized industrial practices. Featuring Michael Pollan, Vandana Shiva, Gun ther Hauk and beekeepers from around the world, Queen of the Sun weaves a dramatic story which uncovers the problems and solutions in renewing a culture in balance with nature.

Met Opera: Das Rheingold (Wagner)

James Levine; Wendy Bryn Harmer, Stephanie Blythe, Patricia Bardon, Richard Croft, Gerhard Siegel, Bryn Terfel, Eric Owens, Franz-Josef Selig, Hans-Peter Ksnig

National Theatre of London - NT Live
Live Simulcast: A Disappearing Number

The internationally acclaimed theatre company Complicite's production of A Disappearing Number opened in Plymouth in 2007 and has subsequently toured all over the world. Awards include the Olivier Award for Best New Play (2008), the Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Play (2007) and The Critics Circle Theatre Award for Best New Play (2007).

A Disappearing Number weaves together the story of two love affairs, separated by a century and a continent. The first happens now. The second is set in 1914. It tells of the heartbreaking collaboration between the greatest natural mathematician of the 20th century, Srinivasa Ramanujan, a penniless Brahmin from Madras in South India, and his British counterpart, the brilliant Cambridge don GH Hardy.

With a haunting original score by Nitin Sawhney, this piece of startling visual poetry from Simon McBurney and Complicite is a compelling meditation on love, mathematics and the pain of exile in an age when we think we can belong anywhere and have everything.

Met Opera: Boris Godunov (Mussorgsky)

Valery Gergiev; Ekaterina Semenchuk, Aleksandrs Antonenko, Oleg Balashov, Evgeny Nikitin, Rene Pape, Mikhail Petrenko, Vladimir Ognovenko

Met Opera: Don Pasquale (Donizetti)

James Levine; Anna Netrebko, Matthew Polenzani, Mariusz Kwiecien, John Del Carlo

National Theatre of London - NT Live
Live Simulcast: Hamlet

O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew;
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter. O God, God,
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!

William Shakespeare's canonical tragedy, Hamlet, explores the themes of madness, rage, incest, and corruption through the story of the prince of Denmark who must avenge his father's murder. Hamlet is tormented with loathing and consumed by grief after his uncle Claudius has murdered his father the King and married his widowed mother Queen Gertrude. What he cannot foresee is the calamitous destruction that ensues.

Following his celebrated performances at the National in Burnt by the Sun, The Revenger's Tragedy, Philistines and The Man of Mode, Rory Kinnear plays Hamlet.

Met Opera: Don Carlo (Verdi)

Yannick Nezet-Seguin; Marina Poplavskaya, Anna Smirnova, Roberto Alagna, Simon Keenlyside, Ferruccio Furlanetto, Eric Halfvarson

Met Opera: La Fanciulla Del West (Puccini)

Nicola Luisotti; Deborah Voigt, Marcello Giordani, Juha Uusitalo

National Theatre of London - NT Live
Live Simulcast: Fela!

A provocative and wholly unique hybrid of dance, theatre and music, FELA! explores the world of the Nigerian Afrobeat legend Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. Using his pioneering music, a blend of jazz, funk and African rhythm and harmonies, FELA! reveals Kuti's controversial life as an artist and political activist. Featuring many of Fela Kuti's most captivating songs and Bill T. Jones' visionary staging, FELA! comes to us via Broadway where it was a top hit in 2009.

Winner of three 2010 Tony Awards including Best Choreography (Bill T. Jones)

"There should be dancing in the streets. There has never been anything like this."
-Ben Brantley, New York Times

National Theatre of London - NT Live
Live Simulcast: King Lear

"Who is it that can tell me who I am?"

An ageing monarch. A kingdom divided. A child's love rejected. As Lear's world descends into chaos, all that he once believed is brought into question. One of the greatest works in western literature, Shakespeare's King Lear explores the very nature of human existence: love and duty, power and loss, good and evil.

The Donmar's Artistic Director, Michael Grandage directs Derek Jacobi as King Lear.

Met Opera: Nixon In China (Adams)

John Adams; Kathleen Kim; Janis Kelly; Robert Brubaker; Russell Braun; James Maddalena; Richard Paul Fink Peter Sellers (Production), Mark Morris (Choreographer)

"All of my operas have dealt on deep psychological levels with our American mythology," says composer John Adams, who conducts the Met premiere of his most famous opera. "The meeting of Nixon and Mao is a mythological moment in world history, particularly American history." Acclaimed director and longtime Adams collaborator Peter Sellars makes his Met debut with this groundbreaking 1987 work, an exploration of the human truths beyond the headlines surrounding President Nixon's 1972 encounter with Communist China. Baritone James Maddalena stars in the title role.

Met Opera: Phigenie En Tauride (Gluck)

Patrick Summers; Susan Graham, Placido Domingo, Paul Groves, Gordon Hawkins

National Theatre of London - NT Live
Live Simulcast: Frankenstein

Oscar winning director Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) returns to theatre "after being distracted for 15 years by the movies," with his production of Frankenstein, a play by Nick Dear, based on the novel by Mary Shelley. The idea first conceived a decade ago by Boyle, is finally being realized as an ambitious, large-scale visual event.

Shelley's gothic novel, Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus, a keen allegory and commentary on the Industrial Revolution, explores early sci-fi topics such as galvanism, and themes of horror that have had a lasting influence on literature and films that followed.

Met Opera: Lucia Di Lammermoor (Donizetti)

Patrick Summers; Natalie Dessay, Joseph Calleja, Ludovic Tezier, Kwangchul Youn

Met Opera: Le Comte Ory (Rossini)

Maurizio Benini; Diana Damrau, Joyce DiDonato, Susanne Resmark, Juan Diego Florez, Stephane Degout, Michele Pertusi

Met Opera: Capriccio (Strauss)

Andrew Davis; Renee Fleming, Sarah Connolly, Joseph Kaiser, Russell Braun, Morten Frank Larsen, Peter Rose

Met Opera: Il Trovatore

James Levine; Sondra Radvanovsky, Dolora Zajick, Marcelo Alvarez, Dmitri Hvorostovsky

Met Opera: Die Walkure (Wagner)

James Levine; Deborah Voigt, Eva Maria Westbroek, Stephanie Blythe, Jonas Kaufmann, Bryn Terfel, Hans-Peter Konig

National Theatre of London - NT Live
Live Simulcast: The Cherry Orchard

Chekhov's last play concerns an aristocratic family's final visit to their country estate just before it is sold to pay off debts. Initially written as a comedy, but first directed as a tragedy, the play embodies the dual nature of such familial obstacles. The Cherry Orchard explores apt social and political themes of its time, such as the sense of cultural futility felt in both the fall of the aristocracy, as well as in the new materialism of the growing bourgeoisie.

Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, directed by NT Associate Director Howard Davies, whose recent productions of Russian plays (including Philistines, Burnt by the Sun and The White Guard) have earned huge critical acclaim. Zoe Wanamaker will play Madame Ranevskaya.