German Currents Film Festival a glimpse into latest & best European cinema

Film

We are fans and supporters of the Goethe-Institut’s spectrum of wonderful German/American cultural activities in Los Angeles, but since it’s Los Angeles we especially love the movies. That’s why we so anticipate a fun weekend at the annual German Currents Film Festival, lively ads for which you see posted on artsmeme now. Click on ’em to find a film and go. It is always a high-quality selection, this year from October 13 – 16.

This year’s German Currents takes place in two venues, both on the easterly side of town, with screenings at the outpost of the American Cinematheque in Los Feliz and at the cool Goethe-Institut headquarters downtown.

German Currents 2023 opens Friday, October 13th, at the Los Feliz 3 Theatre, with the exclusive US premiere of director Birgit Möller’s multi-award-winning festival favorite, FRANKY FIVE STAR, starring Lena Urzendowsky (COCOON, Netflix’s DARK, and HOW TO SELL DRUGS ONLINE (Fast). A discussion with Ms. Urzendowsky will follow the screening. Opening night event continues with the LA premiere of veteran German Filmmaker Fatih Akin’s German box office smash, RHINEGOLD (RHEINGOLD).  

The theater is smallish. Get tickets now!

The festival weekend continues with the US premiere of David Wnendt’s SUN AND CONCRETE (SONNE UND BETON), adapted from Felix Lobrecht’s best-selling novel. David Wnendt (COMBAT GIRLS, WETLANDS) will be present to discuss his film. Additional screenings include the US premiere of the popular short film showcase NEXT GENERATION SHORT TIGER, the US premiere of Axel Ranisch’s ORPHEA IN LOVE, and the LA premiere of the retro-futuristic THE ORDINARIES, directed by Sophie Linnenbaum. To complete the festival program, German Currents will bring back its popular family matinee with a screening of MISSION ULJA FUNK, winner of the German Film Award for Best Youth Film.


German Currents Film Festival 2023 | American Cinematheque & Goethe-Institut | Oct 13-16

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REVIEW: When opposites attract, Bridgewater & Charlap at CAP UCLA

Music · Reviews
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It was a provocative entry to a fall jazz season: singer Dee Dee Bridgewater and pianist Bill Charlap, performing in a duo format at Royce Hall for UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance. Like a pro wrestling match between a pile-driving heel and a gymnast babyface, it was a potential mismatch too tantalizing to miss.

On paper, the two could hardly be more dissimilar. Bridgewater is one of the more extroverted jazz singers. Brash and brassy, she has a musical theater background (she was Glinda the Good Witch in “The Wiz”). If scat singing was a crime—as it often should be—Bridgewater would draw a life sentence. Singing like a horn, twisting and turning lyrics to suit her whims, and neglecting the meaning of a song have been some of her crimes. She’s unpredictable, and a Bridgewater concert can be like a day at the circus.

In contrast, pianist Charlap is one of the deeper of the elite jazz pianists with a firm connection to the Great American Songbook (his father was songwriter Morris ‘Moose’ Charlap and his mother is singer Sandy Stewart). Charlap’s a thoughtful player who can lead an attentive audience through jazz tunes and worthy standards, exposing seldom-heard harmonic and melodic possibilities. He can also make familiar material sound new.

Whatever else she is, Bridgewater enjoys a challenge. Last year she selected tap dance virtuoso Savion Glover for a series of intensive duo summits. This year, she’s briefly teaming with Charlap. At Royce, she perched at the treble end of the piano, close to Charlap. He rarely took his eyes off her, as though he didn’t really know where that ride would take them.

Though this was obviously not their first performance together, there were indications that their collaboration is still under construction. They chose material that every sentient jazz musician should know–Ellington, Fats Waller, the Gershwins and Cole Porter–nothing too far away from the fake books. In sunglasses and a low-crowned panama, Bridgewater wasn’t too long away from eye-to-eye contact with Charlap. No written music could be seen, and it appeared they were just calling tunes. She introduced the ballad “Here’s That Rainy Day,” in remembrance of a New York friend she recently lost. Her voice broke in the middle of the tune, and she walked behind Charlap, deep in her emotions. She stood for a time with her back to the audience, and after a moment to compose herself, Bridgewater returned to the front and continued.

Some singers serve the song, focusing on interpreting the lyrics, and telling the story contained therein. Bridgewater uses the song to dress her own caprices. She made a burlesque out of “Love For Sale,” singing in a little girl’s voice. And the brisk “Just One of Those Things” brought out her robo-scat: channeling Ella Fitzgerald’s “ee—eee-e-eee” that imitated the bowed solos of bassist Slam Stewart. The first bar of her improv didn’t vary appreciably than the last.

Typically, she sang the first chorus of a tune—staying faithful to the lyrics—and then launching into an improvisation. Charlap supported her, answered her phrases, and anticipated where she would go. Beyond the razzle dazzle and the too-hip mannerisms, he could catch her in the middle of a stream-of-consciousness scat line, and match her notes. Or, as she dipped into an impressive upper contralto strata on “Mood Indigo,” the piano discreetly quoted Gershwin’s “Prelude No. 2.” They were particularly playful on “In the Still of The Night,” where she unsheathed a strong soprano for a soaring line, and then she put it away–one of the happy accidents nestled into almost every tune.

Ultimately, Charlap’s musical rectitude and cunning empathy reigned in some of Bridgewater’s more untethered flights. She, in turn, evinced a jocular side to his playing that few of his fans have heard. And while Charlap and Bridgewater may have missed a full musical embrace, the Royce concert was a more-than-respectable handshake.   

photo credit: jason williams   


Kirk Silsbee publishes promiscuously on jazz and culture.

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Boy, uninterrupted: Choreographer Alexei Ratmansky in new biography 3

Dance · Reviews
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alexei ratmansky, center, rehearses the sleeping beauty: from rosalie o’connor photo The Boy from Kyiv: Alexei Ratmansky’s Life in Ballet, Marina Harss’s biography of one of the world’s most active choreographers, is just exactly that: a beautifully written, close examination of the many ways in which the 55-year-old artist’s work and life are intertwined. Moreover, her ...

SoUNDz’ of Savion, at The Soraya

Dance
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Ed. note: This story by Susan Reiter, commissioned and published by the Younes & Soraya Nazarian Center for the Arts, is reprinted with permission. Savion Glover has been in the spotlight on stage and screen since an impossibly young age. In his third appearance at The Soraya, on October 7, the one-of-a-kind tap virtuoso brings ...

artsmeme to glimpse CAP-UCLA ‘Nimoy’ the erstwhile Crest Theatre

Architecture & Design · Dance · Music · Theater
photo courtesy chris nichols for los angeles magazine Named in honor of artist, actor, director and philanthropist Leonard Nimoy, The Nimoy is a reimagining of Westwood’s historic Crest Theatre, acquired by UCLA in 2018 and since renovated into a flexible 300-seat off-campus performing arts space. The show artsmeme will attend features performances by Grammy Award-winning ...

Movin’ & groovin’: Black teen dance shows of ’50s, early ’60s

Dance
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Teenage dancers on the set of Teenage Frolics (Raleigh, NC), ca. 1960. Courtesy of Yvonne Lewis Holley. Ed. note: artsmeme is delighted to share the second of three excerpts from an marvelous new book by author Julie Malnig. Dancing Black, Dancing White: Rock ‘n’ Roll, Race, and Youth Culture of the 1950s and 1960s (Oxford ...

To the Tetons with Lear: loving memories of Christopher McHale 2

Theater
It was April 2008, and a glorious time to be in the region of the Grand Teton mountains of Utah. I was there, of course, for the majestic scenery but also to hunker down, indoors, in a dark theater, watching my longtime friend Chris McHale (1954-2023) scale his own high peak playing the titular role ...

Opening the floodgates of early-cinema disaster movies at Laemmle Theatres

Film
Irving Cummings’ THE JOHNSTOWN FLOOD (1926), a pioneering disaster and special effects movie, starring Janet Gaynor and George O’Brien, re-creates one of the greatest disasters in American history, when, in 1889, over 2,000 people in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, lost their lives. In her first major role, Gaynor plays a teenage girl smitten with dashing engineer O’Brien, ...

Home to world-class museums now address of Jack Rutberg Fine Arts

Visual arts
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A.I.M. by Kyle Abraham, in third foray to Long Beach’s Carpenter Center

Dance
a choreographer of our timekyle abraham, courtesy u.s.a. today That the MacArthur Genius Award-winning choreographer Kyle Abraham could bring his dance wares to any stage in Los Angeles — as he has in the past — is an understatement. We’ve seen him at UCLA; last year at The Soraya; and at The Wallis. This season, ...