As a warm-up for his production company’s staging of Fences in Woodstock this spring, Jarvis Antonio Green screens the Oscar-nominated film adaptation of August Wilson’s drama at the Briggs Opera House in White River Junction on April 8.
At 6:30 p.m., Green, who over the coming decade plans to produce each of Wilson’s Century Cycle of 10 plays exploring the lives of working-class African-Americans in Pittsburgh during the 20th century, will lead a discussion of the film, which stars best supporting actress winner Viola Davis and best actor nominee Denzel Washington, who also directed. The lights go down at 7. For advance tickets ($15) and more information, visit JAGProductionsVT.com. Light refreshments will be served starting at 6.
The local production of the play, at the Woodstock Town Hall Theatre, begins with previews on April 27 and 28. After the official opening night on April 29, seven more performances will follow, the last on May 7. Leading the cast will be Brian Anthony Wilson, who played Detective Vernon Holley in the acclaimed TV series The Wire, as Troy Maxson, and Broadway veteran Danielle Lee Greaves as Troy’s wife Rose.
Coming Attractions
The New Hampshire Jewish Film Festival concludes on Sunday afternoon at 4 in room 013 of Dartmouth College’s Carpenter Hall, with the showing of On the Map, a dramatization of the story of an Israeli team of underdogs who beat a series of European basketball powers during a 1977 tournament. While admission to all screenings is free, donations are welcome.
The Woodstock Vermont Film Series lowers the curtain on its seventh season on Saturday afternoon, with two screenings at the Billings Farm and Museum of Sonita, the 2016 German documentary about an Afghan refugee in Iran who turns to music in rebellion against her family’s efforts to sell her into marriage.
The screenings are at 3 and 5 p.m., and tickets tend to go fast. To reserve tickets ($6 for museum members, $11 for others) call 802-457-2355.
Eyewash, the film and music collaborative at Dartmouth College, will present Sixty-Six, a 90-minute film by the Los Angeles filmmaker and animator Lewis Klahr, on Monday night at 7 at the Black Family Visual Arts Center in Screening Room 001.
Sixty-Six is a digital collage that pulls from the rich pop culture vein of 1960s and 1970s America in an homage to, and sardonic take on, the Hollywood dream factory and American myth-making. Klahr’s films have been screened at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Biennial, the New York Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival, and the LA County Museum of Art.
Klahr will be on hand to introduce and discuss the film. The free presentation is a collaboration between Eyewash and “Cine Salon @ 20.” To learn more, visit film-media.dartmouth.edu.
Second Chances
If you arrived at the box office too late to buy tickets for the sold-out screening earlier this month, Dartmouth’s Hopkins Center is showing the documentary Kedi again on Saturday afternoon at 4, in Loew Auditorium at the Black Family Visual Arts Center in Hanover.
The movie follows several of the hundreds of thousands of Istanbul’s free-roaming cats on their rounds in neighborhoods of Turkey’s largest city. While its depiction of the felines’ relationships with the people of the city is mostly touching, you may find yourself wondering throughout whether saying the words “spay” and “neuter” is an act more blasphemous in the city than speaking up against Turkey’s authoritarian president.
Admission is $5 to $8. If the previous screening at Loew is any indication, you’ll want to buy tickets ahead of time by visiting hop.dartmouth.edu, calling 603-646-2422 or visiting the box office across from the Courtyard Cafe in the Hopkins Center.
And if, somehow, you missed La La Land during its sneak preview during Telluride at Dartmouth and its long theatrical release, you can catch director-screenwriter Damien Chazelle’s much-decorated musical at two different venues this weekend and next week.
Dartmouth College’s Hopkins Center screens it at Loew Auditorium, at 7 tonight and at 7:30 on Sunday night. On Thursday, the Hop was warning of a possible sellout of tonight’s screening. To reserve tickets ($5 to $8) and learn more, visit hop.dartmouth.edu or call 603-646-2422.
And La La Land also is still screening at Entertainment Cinemas on Lebanon’s Miracle Mile.
If you’re going to see the movie, better on a big communal screen than on your tablet or your phone. Starring Ryan Gosling and best-actress Oscar winner Emma Stone as young performing artists trying to make their way in the music, stage and screen worlds while maintaining some of their principles, the movie is entertaining enough (in the way of, say, Titanic), but for me it paled next to the other seven Oscar nominees I saw. I breathed a sigh of relief when the Best Picture statue, after the infamous mix-up at the Academy Awards, went to Moonlight.
David Corriveau can be reached at dcorriveau@vnews.com and at 603-727-3304.
Staff writer Nicola Smith contributed to this report.