New York: At New Directors/New Films, Stories About People Struggling to Heal

“When you do things with your hands, it heals you in places lower than where you cry from,” recounts

Dec 9, 2020 • View in browser

“When you do things with your hands, it heals you in places lower than where you cry from,” recounts Dimples, a character in Keisha Rae Witherspoon’s T. One of the most moving shorts I’ve seen all year, T is currently streaming as part of New Directors/New Films. Ela Bittencourt highlights a string of favorites that makes for cathartic viewing, including The Metamorphosis of Birds, which she calls “one of this year’s most memorable debuts.”Also worth checking out: Dani Brito’s take on A Sidelong Glance, the Brooklyn Museum debut of photographer John Edmonds, which “complicat[es] questions of possession, and provenance.”– Dessane Lopez Cassell, Editor, Reviews

Stories of People Struggling to Heal

From T (2019), dir. Keisha Rae Witherspoon (all image courtesy Film at Lincoln Center)

New Directors/New Films is one of New York’s most exciting film festivals. This year’s edition, running online through December 20, is no different. We reviewed our favorite selections, including movies about mourning rituals, reenactments of family history, cult survivors, and more.

SPONSORED Message from the Library with Molly Crabapple Join award-winning artist, writer, and author Molly Crabapple as she presents Brooklyn Public Library’s next Message from the Library

Latest Reviews

John Edmonds’s Intimate Gaze In his meticulously posed photographs, Edmonds conjures new avenues for imaging relationships between Africa and its diasporas today. Daniella Brito

Black Artists Claim Their Birthright of Abstraction The artists at False Flag Gallery demonstrate the through line between art of the African continent and modern abstraction. Seph Rodney

Anne Truitt’s Spiritual Quest As her death approached, was the artist starting fresh or beginning to let go? John Yau

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Andrew Cuomo Got an Emmy for Literally Just Showing Up The New York governor receiving the Founders Award for his COVID-19 press briefings marks a new nadir in politics as style over actual results. Dan Schindel

Mexican Filmmakers Are Documenting Indigenous Resistance and Feminist Issues Cinema Tropical and New York University’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies have teamed up to present a new online film program featuring a curated selection of recent Mexican documentaries. Dan Schindel

Closing Soon

Eric Fischl: Meditations on Melancholia at Skarstedt, through December 18Fischl finds a visual bond between the seclusion of the affluent white world and the pandemic’s enforced isolation. – John Yau Etel Adnan: Seasons at Galerie Lelong, through December 19Etel Adnan once described memory as a “sanctuary of infinite patience.” Looking at her new work, it’s easy to see why. – Billy Anania Theaster Gates: Black Vessel at Gagosian, through December 19Gates reminds us of the many hidden, unacknowledged, and under-recognized histories of Black culture in America. – John Yau

What's Happening?

A devastating six-alarm fire last week destroyed the Middle Collegiate Church, a 128-year-old Gothic Revival church in Manhattan’s East Village neighborhood. Over 200 literary figures have signed an open letter to Poets House after the nonprofit abruptly laid off its entire staff. Artists and architects are openly denouncing Philip Johnson’s white supremacist legacy and calling on institutions to take down his name from their spaces. Harvard has already committed to changing one of its building’s names. A new Brooklyn Museum exhibition pairs costume designs from the Netflix shows Queen’s Gambit and The Crown with related objects from its collection.

From the Store

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