Visual Art

Shuttered Too: Steel Falls Beyond Baltimore

J.M. Giordano’s images chronicling the fall of the steel industry in Baltimore are currently on view at the Baltimore Museum of Industry, but take a trip around the harbor to Fells Point to the newly refocused Luann Carra Gallery and you’ll find this companion show highlighting the resilience of the communities steel built across Ohio and West Virginia. These stark black-and-white images both haunt and hearten. Through Oct. 10. Luann Carra Gallery, 1918 Fleet St.

Literature

Grand Reopening of the Central Library

Celebrate the return of the Central Library with a full day of music, art, lectures, games, food, and dancing along Cathedral Street and in the newly renovated library’s updated digs. Highlights include a conversation with Chris Wilson, Kondwani Fidel, and D. Watkins in Wheeler Auditorium and performances by the Black Cherry Puppet Theater in the Weinberg Children’s Library. Sept. 14. Enoch Pratt Free Library, 400 Cathedral St.

Unscripted: A Celebratory Evening with Patti Smith

Punk icon Patti Smith’s memoir Just Kids earned accolades for its delve into the decades-long relationship between Smith and photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. Now, Smith returns to her own past to recall the dreams and realities of a transformative year spent wandering the country. Join Smith at Goucher College for what’s sure to be an unforgettable evening of stories, song, and sage wisdom. 7-8:30 p.m. Sept. 25. Goucher College, Kraushaar Auditorium, 1021 Dulaney Valley Rd.

Music

Maryland Piano Masters: Daryl Davis & Lafayette Gilchrist

One of these two local legends on the bill would be enough, but the two together are a can’t-miss event. Join boogie-woogie pianist Daryl Davis and self-taught jazz-funk artist Lafayette Gilchrist for a night of dueling keys and styles from both past and present. 8 p.m. Sept. 27. Creative Alliance, 3134 Eastern Ave.

FIYAH Power Tour

Adbu Ali is a creative force to be reckoned with, and their latest album, Fiyahh!!, is chock-full of both poignance and power. Experience one of their singular live performances this month at the Ottobar as Ali celebrates this genre-blending release on home turf with guest Grace Ives. 8 p.m. to 12 a.m. Sept. 27. Ottobar, 2549 N. Howard St.

Theatre

BIG Monsters: An Improv Puppet Extravaganza

Bring your nostalgia for the days of Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, but leave the kids at home for this improvised puppet show for adults put on by the folks at Baltimore Improv Group. Expect musical numbers, felted faces, and lots of laughs at this BIG Lab experiment. 7:30-8:30 p.m. Sept. 25. The BIG Theater, 1727 N. Charles St.

Film

InFusion East Baltimore Film Festival: Are We Loud Enough?

Art, film, and conversation will come together to highlight East Baltimore voices at this two-day festival. View works by dozens of local artists at the opening night East Baltimore: Her Artists and Her People exhibition, or stop by Saturday for a full day of selected short films, documentaries, and performances. Sept. 20-21. MICA PLACE, 814 N. Collington Ave.

The Black Femme Supremacy Film Fest is coming to the Parkway Theatre this weekend, kicking off this Friday night with a screening of Jezebel, followed by a Q&A with writer/director and co-star Numa Perrier. (Back when the an all-shorts version of BFS Film Fest was at the Creative Alliance, we wrote about it here.) Below is my review of the opening night title.

Reading the plot synopsis of Jezebel, you might think it’s a tragedy: After the death of her mother, a 19-year-old woman is forced to become an online sex worker to make ends meet. But Jezebel, which is a semi-autobiographical account of writer-director Numa Perrier’s own life, is actually full of wit and candor, and it has a very matter-of-fact (and sometimes even joyful) approach to the work that young Tiffany (an excellent Tiffany Tenile) does.

When we first meet Tiffany, she’s living in a cramped apartment with her older sister Sabrina (played by Perrier), her brother, her young niece, and Sabrina’s layabout boyfriend (Bobby Field). Sabrina herself is a phone sex operator, which can be a bit awkward in the small space (the walls aren’t soundproof). So when their mother, whom we never meet, dies in hospice care, it’s time for Tiffany to do her part. Sabrina finds an ad for online sex workers—basically a live streaming video chat room, where women take off their clothing and writhe around on a mattress for the titillation of watching men who pay by the minute—and tells Tiffany to sign up. She even gifts Tiffany a long wig—named “the Jezebel”—and instead of being disgusted or scared, Tiffany proudly sports the wig, feeling somewhat empowered by this new mane of hair.

She goes to the address in the ad and is met by Chuck, a bland-looking type who runs the operation with his sister, who is also a sex worker. The apartment where the business is headquartered is a little seedy, but not dangerously so. What makes the whole thing funny is how normal it all is: Chuck could literally be a middle manager at a Walmart. Tiffany chooses the name Jezebel and is on her way. She finds that some of the men don’t even want simulated sex—they just want conversation or physical manifestations of whatever fetish they might possess. (One sex worker is told to lie back on the bed and literally do nothing for the duration of her session; she often falls asleep.) Tiffany gets a regular customer named Bobby (Brett Gelman), who likes to be dominated and has a foot fetish. Tiffany actually is fond of him.

Jezebel is not without its flaws. It’s not particularly good at masking its low budget. The film has an unfortunate habit of announcing that people are off to do something—visiting mom at the hospice, going to the laundromat, etc.—and then cutting directly to a scene of them returning to the apartment. But Jezebel feels authentic, because it is: a different kind of coming-of-age film and a non-judgmental look at an industry that is often shrouded in secrecy. So does Tiffany emerge unscathed from this chapter of her life? Well, based on this promising debut by Perrier, it seems she did more than survive, she thrived.

Hey film fans, the MdFF is back, back, back again, May 8-12, with another great lineup. Here are some reviews to whet your appetite.

Well Groomed
4 stars

I have a theory that, assuming their basic human needs are met, everyone is obsessed with something. Maybe it’s scrapbooking. Maybe it’s yoga. Maybe it’s the whacky bedhopping antics of the cast of Vanderpump Rules. The colorful women featured in Rebecca Stern’s delightful new documentary, Well Groomed, are obsessed with dog grooming. But not just any old dog grooming, something called “Creative Grooming,” where poodles are brightly dyed and shaved into kitschy and elaborate works of art. (To give you a sense, some of the grooming concepts featured in the film include Pokemon, mermaids, dinosaurs, and Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland.) The film focuses on four women in particular—two old pros, an up-and-coming striver, and a novice. Most of them have legit dog grooming businesses on the side. One, Angela Kumpe, gives workshops on grooming and sells non-toxic dye and stick-on gems so you, too, can “furjazzle” your pup. For these women, creative grooming is their world—an artistic outlet, a source of pride, a way to make friends, and, perhaps most importantly, a competition. Well Groomed has the structure of a Big Game movie. In this case, the Big Game is the Hershey dog grooming competition, referred to as “the Super Bowl of creative grooming.”

But even though these women are competing fiercely against each other, they love and support each other, too. After all, who else can possibly understand the source of their passion? The film gives brief voice to the naysayers—those who think it’s cruel or exploitative to paint and primp these dogs. The women insist the dogs love it—and all the wagging tails, kisses, and proud struts would suggest so. (It’s notable that even at the oh-so-snooty Westminster Dog Show, poodles—with their endlessly sculptable fur— are always subjected to elaborate grooming.) One of the groomers suggests people should take a live-and-let-live approach to her hobby and compares it to being a nudist—nudism is not for her, she notes, but she would never judge someone else who was into it. That being said, the dogs are ridiculous, especially when they’re just being dogs, and Stern has some fun showing hot pink and purple poodles in nature—standing on a craggy rock overlooking a river, romping in a barn, or tussling with other dogs in the dog park. The film has lots of deadpan jokes—“Ironically, I’m allergic to dogs,” sighs the daughter of one of our heroines—but it will also make you cheer and cry. All of this is aided tremendous by a whimsical and joyful score by Baltimore’s own Dan Deacon. Well Groomed makes you care deeply about a pastime you’ve probably never heard of and people you’ve never met. And that, folks, is what great film is all about.

Pahokee
3 stars

One of the reasons there are so many films and TV shows about high school is because the rituals have built in drama: There’s homecoming and the big game and prom, not to mention dealing with your parents and the pressure of getting into college. And no matter where you live, these rituals are more or less the same, although in some communities, they might take on more urgency than in others. In the documentary, Pahokee, set in the rural farming town of Pahokee, FL, these events take place against a backdrop of poverty and familial sacrifice. Directors Patrick Breson and Ivete Lucas essentially park their cameras in the hallways, cafeterias, playing fields, places of work, and shack-like home of their subjects, and let us watch as the year unfolds. They focus on four kids, Na’Kerria Nelson, who’s campaigning hard for homecoming queen and who just wants to get the heck out of Pahokee; Jocabed Martinez, a dutiful daughter, the school’s salutatorian, who works at her family’s taco joint and gets emotional when she reflects on all her parents have done for her; BJ Crawford, an offensive lineman on the high school’s excellent football team who wants to go to a Division I college; and Junior Walker, a talented drum major and skateboarder who is raising his one-year-old daughter on his own. In Pahokee, as is the case in many small towns, the football team is the center of community life, with the unique ability to raise the spirits of the entire town after a victory. It’s particularly fun to watch the Pahokee team play, partly because they are so good, but partly because the cheerleaders, step dancers, and marching band that support them are so wildly talented. The film is quite entertaining, and often more hopeful than sad, although at times the extreme cinema verite style can be a bit frustrating. I had questions that were never addressed: Why is BJ raising his daughter? What’s the deal with the pretty girl in the wheelchair who gets a prom invite from that handsome jock? What happened in the aftermath of an Easter Egg hunt disrupted by gunfire? (That scene, by the way, shows the fortitude of Breson and Lucas; they don’t run from the bullets but keep their cameras focused on scrambling young men and mothers frantically falling on their their children as they urge them to “get down.”) All in all, the film is an excellent portrait of a town fueled by collective dreams of living elsewhere.

The Mountain
2.5 stars

Picture an early Yorgos Lanthimos film slowed down to about half speed and you have at least a basic sense of Rick Alverson’s The Mountain. It’s a strange, idiosyncratic film, not for all tastes (certainly not for mine) but its own brand of pretentious arthouse creepiness might work on you. I will say that its visuals—painstakingly composed, mostly monochromatic images shot in desaturated whites and greys—are undeniably arresting. The film takes place in the early 1960s. Our hero is a stolid and largely taciturn young man named Andy (Tye Sheridan) who works as a Zamboni driver at the ice rink owned by his father (Udo Kier). His mother, we find out, is out of the picture, a captive patient at a mental institution.

Through a series of events I won’t spoil here, Andy ends up becoming the photographer for the courtly Dr. Wallace Fiennes (Jeff Goldblum, basically giving us Jeff Goldblum slowed down to half speed) who travels from hospital to hospital performing lobotomies. The scenes at the mental hospitals are straight from the One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest playbook—lots of patients in white staring into space, howling like monkeys, or banging their heads against a wall. Of course, as we watch this play out, we worry for Andy: Will he, too, fall under Fiennes’ eager knife? This would be an absolutely chilling prospect if Andy had any sort of personality that could be lobotomized, or if the film even took a stance one way or the other on the controversial (and now outlawed) procedure. (All the characters walk around in such a trance, it’s hard to distinguish between the befores and afters.) The film really lost me by its third act when Denis Lavant (!) showed up as the father of a would-be female patient, who also becomes something of a romantic interest for Andy. By the time Lavant goes on a semi-nonsensical monologue in French about hermaphrodites (another persistent, if mystifying, recurring image in the film), I had pretty much checked out. Maybe you’ll have more patience than I did.

Cold Case Hammarskjöld
3.5 stars

Cold Case Hammarskjöld manages to perform two sleights of hand. The first is keeping me interested in a nearly 60 year old mystery about the death of the Swedish UN General Secretary Dag Hammarskjöld, whose plane crashed under suspicious circumstances in Zambia. I literally had a Venti coffee perched on my desk as I launched into the screener, but it turned out to be completely unnecessary. Director Mads Brügger—picture a cross between Louis CK and Moby—adopts a jaunty, stylized, hyper-meta tone to keep audiences engaged as he searches for the truth. But even he admits that the documentary is a bit of a lark, an opportunity for cosplay (he dresses in the white safari-style garb of his suspected supervillain), travel, and adventure. But the second half of the film takes a rather startling turn, and suddenly we’re dealing with a racist global conspiracy almost too sickening to contemplate. The film delivers a gut punch that I never saw coming.

Mike Wallace is Here
3 stars

Avi Belkin’s documentary on the notoriously pugnacious 60 Minutes interviewer starts on a curious note: It runs footage of Wallace interviewing former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly. In the clip, O’Reilly essentially credits—or blames, if you prefer—Wallace with creating the kind of confrontational news interrogation that Fox specializes in. “I’m your son,” he says ominously. From there, the film chronicles Wallace’s fascinating broadcast life and uniquely brash style in a clever way, alternating between Wallace interviewing subjects—Arthur Miller, Barbra Streisand, famously the Ayatollah Khomeini—and being interviewed himself. (Once 60 Minutes became a huge hit, he was a subject of endless fascination.) While giving interviews, Wallace was direct, on-the-ball, pointed. But when the tables were turned, he hemmed and hawed, often dodging the very kinds of questions he asked himself. What emerges is a compelling portrait of a game-changing journalist, who battled personal demons (including the death of his eldest son and almost crippling depression), but never had a political agenda to promote and never shied away from the truth.

Ray & Liz
3 stars

Quiet lives of desperation are depicted with unflinching honesty in British photographer Richard Billingham’s semi-autobiographical debut film. Jumping a bit through time, he first shows us the elderly Ray (a stand-in for his own father), living in a one-room flat, wasting away in bed all day, visited only by the occasional roach and a neighbor who supplies him with jugs of alcohol. Flashing back to the early 80s, we see Ray and his chain-smoking wife Liz raising two sons in a joyless, grimy home. Little Jason, at first just a neglected toddler; later a curious and empathic little boy who loves animals, is all but ignored by his parents, who do little more than sleep, drink, and smoke. His older brother counts the days until he can leave home. The settings are vivid—dingy lace curtains, peeling wallpaper, a chest of dusty curios—and Billingham frames each ugly-beautiful scene with a keen and empathic eye. For fans of slow cinema, still photography, and social realism, Ray & Liz is as depressing as it is ultimately rewarding.

Knives and Skin
3 stars

A teenage drum majorette is missing and presumed dead, sending shockwaves through a small town. With its gallows humor, nods to surrealism, and haunting synth score, Jennifer Reeder’s Knives and Skin draws inevitable comparisons to Twin Peaks, an obvious influence. But in some ways, this film is the antithesis of—or perhaps even a direct response to—the “dead girl in the woods” genre, as the teenage female characters here take center stage and have agency over their own lives. One sells her mother’s panties to a horny teacher; another is coming into her own as a lesbian; a third wears elaborate face paint and headpieces to school. (The fact that the two of the main three protagonists are black is simply a nice, not-fussed-over detail). The adults in the town are mostly messes, albeit some more well intentioned than others. The mother of the missing girl, the school’s choral coach, walks around in a daze and, in one disturbing scene, seduces the young man who was the last person to see her daughter. A “cool guy” teacher lures one of his pupils to his apartment. Another mother spends most of her day in bed. At times, I think the film leans too hard into the “quiet lives of desperation in suburbia” trope and the songs the chorus sings—dirge-like version of 80s New Wave hits—while undeniably cool, don’t make much thematic sense. Still, this is a feminist and refreshing take on a high school drama. Laura Palmer would approve.

Ham on Rye
3 stars

The Twilight Zone meets Dazed and Confused in this funny, unsettling film from newcomer Tylor Taormina. As the film starts, a bunch of teenagers, many dressed up as though for prom, make their way to the neighborhood sandwich joint, Monty’s. For most, the pilgrimage is filled with giddy, jangly, hormonal teenage nerves and typical high school banter, but there is a creeping dread that washes over the proceedings as well. One girl, Haley (Haley Bodell), expresses concern about where they are going. Another boy freezes up completely and has a panic attack. The camera drifts from one group to the next—a boy on crutches, a boy in a too-big suit, three girls making a point to arrive fashionably late. But why is this event happening in broad daylight? And why does the burger flipper at Monty’s look so worried? Ham on Rye’s best quality is the absolute naturalism of the kids—we really feel like we’re drifting in and out of their random, often amusing conversations. (One boy proposes a theory that “porking” is the ultimate human activity; his friend counters that emergency room doctors serve a greater purpose.) What the film is actually driving at is a little less clear, although I think Taormina is saying something the sheep-like way we adhere to systems and about teenage conformity, in particular. When you’re 16, you follow the crowd, no matter where it takes you. But FOMO, it seems, has consequences.

For showtimes and information on other films playing the fest go here!

Home Game

July 15, 2017
Herring Run Park

With the game still scoreless after a dozen minutes, Fiona Guinan snatches a baseball-sized white sphere skittering across the grassy field with her bare hand. She quickly tosses it a few inches above her waist, and then, in a single motion, like a right-handed Chris Davis, but on the run, swings her open-faced wooden stick and bashes a long, rising fly ball through the uprights for the game’s first tally. Minutes later, Guinan does it again—this time from 35 yards away—and suddenly, the Baltimore Gaelic Athletic Association’s camogie team and their Irish ringer are on their way to an easy win over their Washington, D.C., rivals. “I’ve been playing since I was six,” Guinan, the visiting 21-year-old Dublin college intern, says with a smile afterward.

The women’s version of the ancient Emerald Island game known as hurling, camogie is akin to a smash-up of lacrosse and field hockey, but with both soccer-like goals and American football uprights for scoring. The game’s roots, explains Isadore Beattie, the sixtysomething Irish coach of the Baltimore squad, date back several thousand years to when villages settled scores with daylong matches. “The annual All-Ireland Hurling Championship is bigger than the Super Bowl,” he explains. “The whole county goes to watch if their team makes the final. You won’t find a dog in the street that day.”

The Baltimore club was formed in 2003 by Lucy Prendeville, who was inspired to take up the game after visiting her ailing Irish grandmother. “She told me to forget field hockey and start playing camogie,” Prendeville says. “So I did. I guess I was anxious to connect to my Irish heritage.”

“She’s 40 and runs around like a teenager out there,” marvels her Ireland-born husband Tadgh, who has retired to the sidelines. “She hasn’t said it as such, but I think she intends to keep playing until our 7-year-old, Patricia, is ready to carry on.”

Prendeville’s daughter, however, will likely have help keeping the Gaelic sporting tradition alive here for another generation.

“So far, there have been four marriages, another is in the works, between the men’s and women’s teams, with nine children altogether,” Prendeville says. “That would definitely make my grandmother happy.”

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Home Spun

July 15, 2017
Eastern Avenue

As the dreadlocked,  pierced, and skirt-wearing Coffin Nachtmahr picks his way through the buffet at the Creative Alliance, awaiting the results of the first-ever Born in Baltimore film festival, a lanky teenager approaches with a question: “How did you do that?”       

As if on cue, Nachtmahr pulls a yo-yo from his pocket and begins to gently dance what’s known as “the stack” back and forth on a string between his chest-high hands. “I’ll show you,” Nachtmahr responds, turning for his backpack. “I’ve got another one with me.”

A Mid-Atlantic champ and national yo-yo competitor, Nachtmahr—a nom de guerre used by the 25-year-old East Baltimore native—is the star of the documentary Throw that screened here this afternoon. “I wasn’t like all the rest of the kids. People would pick on me just for being me,” says Nachtmahr in the 10-minute film’s opening as he looks into a mirror and applies make-up across the bridge of his nose and around his eyes. “‘This kid is weird. He stutters. He’s probably like a retard or something.’”

Not surprisingly, the film, which recently won a regional Emmy, wins the judge’s nonfiction and audience awards. 

Throwing his yo-yo behind his back, twirling it around his fingers and neck, Nachtmahr makes the seemingly simple novelty toy sing in a way that is startling—“like a whimsical high-wire artist,” says David Larson, who spotted him playing one day while walking through Patterson Park and made the film with Early Light Media partner Darren Durlach.

Nachtmahr, who works as a handyman part-time, also plays guitar and makes art, juggles, skateboards, and passes time with a Japanese cup-and-ball game called Kendam. But none of it does what the yo-yo does for him.

“There’s always music in my mind when I yo-yo and, together, that puts me in a certain headspace that helps me just ‘be’ day to day,” Nachtmahr explains. “I can’t explain it. I can’t really function without it.”

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Kill Joy

July 21, 2017
Maryland Avenue

“Who would like this game?” a twentysomething man with dyed blonde hair asks Cole Pritchard, co-inventor of “Mister Mart,” a virtual reality game in which a retail clerk at a badly run store punches annoying customers trying to return their purchases. (Players rack up points by successfully refunding merchandise, and relieve “stress” by smacking customers and hitting them with store items.)

“Anybody who likes violence,” Pritchard deadpans.

In fact, there has been a line to play Mister Mart—which began as Pritchard and Karen Chang’s thesis project at the Maryland Institute College of Art three years ago—since the opening of the Gamescape pavilion at Artscape. Set to launch via Steam, the online gaming platform, Mister Mart is one of two dozen indie, professional, and throwback games available for play at Gamescape.

“The old-school Nintendo games like Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros. are popular,” says Ben Walsh, who founded Gamescape in 2010 and is the owner of the Highlandtown-based company Pure Bang Games. “But it’s great to see independent games getting so much interest.”

Another popular, still-in-development indie game is “Rock, Paper, Scissors,” which brings the basics of the classic contest into a fast-paced, multi-player gaming space where all three competitors try at once to “prey” upon their various targets—paper for scissors, for example—while scurrying away from their own predator.

For game makers, the tweaking process takes years, with Gamescape proving valuable, real-time user feedback. Some, like Pritchard and Chang, have brought their games back more than once for public pleasure and scrutiny.

“I love it,” says 8-year-old Jackson Limmer after pulling his Oculus virtual reality headgear off, following a long turn bashing Mister Mart virtual customers. “It’s better since last year, too. You can see everything better,” he says. “Last year, I punched a real person by mistake.”