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      ‘The African Desperate’ Expands the Movies’ Narrow View of the Art World

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      Most films set adjacent to studios and galleries lampoon unfathomable pretension, but Martine Syms takes a more nuanced approached in her look at art schools.Martine Syms’s “The African Desperate” begins on the last day of art school for a Master of Fine Arts student named Palace. She’s facing the final critique from a committee of four instructors who sit in her studio, lobbing comments about her work — some earnest, some passive-aggressive, altogether a bit bewildering.“It’s been interesting having you in the sculpture department.” “Where are you going to go with this?” “You’re afraid of your own appetite. It’s all a bit polite, isn’t it?” “Where’d you grow up? West Side Chicago?”Palace — played by the artist Diamond Stingily, with bright orange hair and a deadly deadpan — holds her own. She calls out problematic questions, quoting Saidiya Hartman and others. Then, at a seemingly arbitrary moment, it’s all over: She passed.“That’s it?” Palace asks quietly. “You’re free,” one examiner says, meaning well. But the comment also implies that art school wasn’t always liberating.“The African Desperate” stakes out new terrain in the rarefied niche of movies featuring art schools. Unlike many films set adjacent to the art world, it focuses on a Black protagonist and avoids the cliché of “making it big” amid unfathomable pretension — a satirical staple of movies like “Velvet Buzzsaw,” “Pecker” and “The Square.”Stingily, right, opposite Erin Leland in “The African Desperate,” which draws on the director’s time as a Bard College student.Dominica, Inc.Syms, a thriving artist who currently has multiple shows on, drew upon her time as an M.F.A. student at Bard College and years of teaching in universities and other settings. Syms remembers both feeling invisible and sticking out in white-dominated professional spaces at the upstate institution.“It’s not even impostor syndrome, because you’re doing the stuff and you’re there,” she said in an interview. “But even now I get people I went to school with who were like, ‘You weren’t even making art when we were in school.’ And I’m like, ‘No, I was literally in film class with you!’ So I wanted to capture this feeling of not being seen sometimes,” Syms said last month, in advance of the film’s streaming release Friday on Mubi.Her portrayal of art school pulses with the energy and humor of Palace and her friends, but it’s also a story of emotional survival.“It’s a brilliant lampooning of art schools, but it also felt like a catharsis in a way,” David Velasco, editor in chief of Artforum, told me. “Some of the greatest art is someone who’s working through something they experienced that they have contradictory feelings about it.”Syms, who co-wrote “The African Desperate” with Rocket Caleshu, created the part with Stingily in mind. The two connected at a Chicago bookstore and arts space Syms was running called Golden Age, and the director has cast the performer in other works. Syms, Stingily and Caleshu all drew on their experiences navigating professional spaces, and Palace, like Stingily at the time, also has the family responsibility of an ailing mother.Syms and Stingily would talk and laugh about how they would respond to situations.“She was like, ‘Man, I don’t know what I would have done in that program!’ Because some of the things that I experienced were really out of pocket,” Syms said.Instead of a traditional dramatic arc, “The African Desperate” exists in the moment with Palace. She’s ready to leave, but people keep coaxing her into hanging out. Her closest friend drives her to a lake to decompress; another friend buzzes with anticipation for the big graduation party; and there are last-chance flirtations with a guy who hasn’t made a move all summer.The film’s style zigs and zags with Palace’s conversations. It captures her very funny shorthand with friends and colleagues, using pop-up memes and head-on shots for phone dialogues. Syms said she had wanted to show “how talkie talkie talkie everything is” in art school. Max Minghella in “Art School Confidential” (2006), which leans into satire.Suzanne Hanover/United Artists and Sony Pictures ClassicsIt’s a sharp contrast with the style of “Art School Confidential,” the 2006 feature directed by Terry Zwigoff and written by Daniel Clowes (“Ghost World”). Clowes adapted the story of a starry-eyed art student, Jerome (Max Minghella), from a 1991 comic, loosely based on experiences at the Pratt Institute. The film is set on a cruddy, crime-ridden urban campus where a killer is on the loose.Zwigoff and Clowes’s acerbic satire leans into caricature: a horn-dog roommate, a pretentious instructor (John Malkovich) who draws only triangles (“I was one of the first”), an overbearing wannabe director with a “Film Threat” T-shirt. There’s a simmering skepticism about idolizing anyone, from a once-great alcoholic recluse (Jim Broadbent) to an arrogant art-star (Adam Scott).“Art School Confidential” was partly shot at Pasadena City College, which Syms attended. She liked the comic — and remembers getting caught in middle school reading Clowes’s books — but the movie “is not my favorite.”“I think it’s in the canon,” Syms said. “But it’s also about a white guy, which almost every art movie is about.” In her own time at art school, Syms said she saw precious little work by Black artists and filmmakers, like Edward Owens. “I remember really leaving school feeling — and not in any dejected way, just as a fact — I just don’t think I’m an artist,” Syms said.“The African Desperate” centers on Palace’s experience and subjectivity. The title comes from a verbal slip in conversation with Syms when Stingily meant to say “the African diaspora.” Syms remembered the accidental phrase and found it “evocative of the mood and what it feels like sometimes to be part of the diaspora in those spaces.”Palace does go to the party everyone’s talking about. It’s a happily spacey affair in a cavernous half-empty studio space. It might not look like much, but that’s also part of Syms’s realism. (“That was one scene I really didn’t want to be movie-fied, because it’s not a cool party! You’re upstate and there’s maybe 10 people you hang out with.”) Palace’s studio in the opening scene, for example, is a collage of life and art in progress, populated with books and Tarot cards and art materials (including long locks of hair she works with).Perhaps because it’s Diamond’s last day on campus, we see fewer artists at work than in another film featuring an art school: Kelly Reichardt’s “Showing Up,” which recently screened at the New York Film Festival.Michelle Williams as a ceramist who works at an arts college in “Showing Up.”A24Michelle Williams plays a Portland ceramist, Lizzy, who is finishing a collection for her imminent show at a gallery in town. The camera traces her gaze as she considers the pieces in her home studio. We also see the hive of student activity at the arts college, where she works as an administrator.“I was watching next to a friend of mine I went to RISD with, and we talked about how authentic the scenes felt to us,” Cynthia Lahti, the Portland artist who made Lizzy’s works, said, referring to the Rhode Island School of Design. “The way studio work flowed into the hallway. The painting class, the person throwing on the wheel, the fabric people wringing out cloth and hanging it up.”Syms’s film shares this embrace of the many creative energies in flux at an art school. The “African Desperate” cast includes a number of practicing artists, and the effect is effervescent without feeling gratuitously eccentric.“It’s not portraying this already joke-fied version of the art world,” Velasco said. “‘The African Desperate’ is portraying art school, but it’s doing it as an artwork itself.”Syms’s film doesn’t pretend that Palace emerges unscathed from her experience. “I mean, people out here really want me to get mad,” the character says early on, evoking a whole history of aggravation before the film’s 24 hours. “And it’s like, I don’t want to fight you.”But if the movie doesn’t offer a blandly happy ending, it affirms that a story has begun that only Palace can truly tell. More

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      ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ Barrels Into Awards Season

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      At a screening filled with Oscar voters, Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan and the directors marveled at the way their quirky film has struck a chord.LOS ANGELES — You make a movie because you hope people will respond to it, but no one involved with “Everything Everywhere All at Once” expected all of this, the cast and crew kept telling me in the reception area of a luxe Westwood theater on Tuesday night. The “this” in question was a tastemaker party with Oscar voters and industry veterans meant to reposition the indie hit as an awards contender. But the bigger “this,” the one that really boggled them, was the fact that they were embarking on a monthslong awards campaign to begin with.“We did press all through the summer, and then took a break and thought, ‘This will all die down. The feelings will die down, the excitement will die down,’” said Daniel Kwan, who co-directed the film with Daniel Scheinert. “And then we came back and somehow it’s gotten even stronger. At one of the screenings, someone came up to me and said, ‘This is my 14th time watching the movie!’”Passion counts for a lot during awards season, and “Everything Everywhere” has plenty of it: This sci-fi comedy about a Chinese immigrant and laundromat owner (Michelle Yeoh) who becomes the multiverse’s last hope earned stellar reviews in its March release, played for several months in theaters, and made more than $100 million worldwide on a $14.3 million budget. In doing so, it became A24’s highest-grossing title and reinvigorated a specialty-film market that has been ailing since the pandemic began.When the film was released and an awards campaign was suggested, Scheinert said, “I full-on thought it was a joke.”Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesFrom right, Yeoh, Kwan and Quan. The director said one fan had told him about seeing the movie 14 times.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesThough I expect the film will be nominated in several categories at the Oscars, including best picture, it hasn’t taken a traditional path toward that goal. Instead of debuting at a prestigious fall film festival, “Everything Everywhere” chose a raucous spring premiere at South by Southwest, and it was released in theaters on March 25, a time when awards attention was trained exclusively on the Oscar ceremony held that weekend.The film will also have to win over older voters, who may prove more resistant to its wacky charms, since “Everything Everywhere” is laden with sight gags and traffics heavily in down-market genres like sci-fi, action and gross-out comedy. Could it surmount all of those hurdles and become the first significant Oscar contender to feature a dildo fight scene? (If “Frost/Nixon” happened to have one, please write in to remind me.)“I full-on thought it was a joke when this was coming out and they said, ‘What if it’s awards-y?’” Scheinert said. “It was an ode to ‘Jackass’ and Stephen Chow movies!”Still, there is a potent emotional core to the film that has moved audiences: As Yeoh’s Evelyn explores the multiverse, she comes to better understand the people who used to get on her nerves, including her husband, Waymond (Ke Huy Quan), daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu), and even her tax auditor, Deirdre (Jamie Lee Curtis). And that empathy extends off the screen, to the movie’s stars: Quan, the first actor to show up at the party, was mobbed by well-wishers eager to praise his sensitive performance. “I was so famished for a role like this,” the 51-year-old Quan told me. “Famished!”After breakout child-star parts in the 1980s as Short Round in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and Data in “The Goonies,” Quan’s good fortune quickly evaporated. “I was faced with a horrible reality and I had to step away because the phone stopped ringing,” he said. “Hollywood didn’t write roles for Asian actors.”In 2000, a disillusioned Quan moved behind the camera to work in stunt choreography, though he continued to pay his Screen Actors Guild dues every month without question: “Maybe subconsciously, I was thinking, just be patient.”“How often does a man in his 50s get a chance like this?” Quan asked.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesAfter watching “Crazy Rich Asians” in 2018, he was inspired to return to acting and called an agent friend to represent him; two weeks later, that agent sent him “Everything Everywhere,” which let him play a character who was underestimated, sweet-natured, fierce and romantic all at once.“To have this as my comeback movie and to get this recognition and warm embrace? I’ve cried so much in the last six months from reading the comments or from people coming up to me,” Quan said.Inside the World of ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’In this mind-expanding, idiosyncratic take on the superhero film, a laundromat owner is the focus of a grand, multiversal showdown.Review: Our film critic called “Everything Everywhere All at Once” an exuberant swirl of genre anarchy.The Protagonist: Over the years, Michelle Yeoh has built her image as a combat expert. For this movie, she drew on her emotional reserves.A Lovelorn Romantic: A child star in the 1980s, Ke Huy Quan returns to acting as the husband of Yeoh’s character, a role blending action and drama.The Costume Designer: Shirley Kurata, who defined the look of the movie, has a signature style that mixes vintage, high-end designers and an intense color wheel.Aiming for the Oscars: At a screening meant to reposition the indie hit as an awards contender, actors and directors marveled at the way their quirky film has struck a chord.The most meaningful interaction came in September at Disney’s starry D23 convention, where Quan went to promote his role in the coming season of the Marvel series “Loki.” Harrison Ford was there touting the fifth “Indiana Jones” film, due next year, and though Quan worried his old co-star wouldn’t recognize him, the actor turned, pointed and said, “Are you Short Round?”“Yes, Indy,” Quan replied. And as they embraced, memories came flooding back from the beginning of Quan’s career, which has now regained its initial promise.“How often does a man in his 50s get a chance like this? How often do actors get a second act?” Quan asked. “I really hope that if people are reading my story, it gives them hope, it gives them courage to give voice to that dream they once had. It’s so difficult to be an actor in this business, and I want those people who are doubting themselves or have dreams fading away because they think it’s not going to happen …”Quan grew too emotional to finish his thought and swallowed, collecting himself. “Anyway,” he said.Recent awards-season events for the film have often ended in tears, according to Scheinert: “In a weird way, we’re finally getting to debrief with our cast and crew about what this really meant to us.” It all began with a viral GQ video when Yeoh cried as she discussed reading the “Everything Everywhere” script, which asked her to play so many more modes than she was used to. “To be funny, to be real, to be sad — finally, somebody understood that I could do those things,” she said in the clip.That touched her directors and also took them by surprise, since on set Yeoh was more likely to affectionately razz them than to confess her innermost feelings. “Some of the stuff she said in interviews, she had never said to us,” Kwan said. “Michelle’s a very guarded woman, and she has to be.”The costume designer Shirley Kurata was among the crew members at the screening.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesOne academy voter paid tribute to the film’s hot dog fingers.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesRight on cue, Yeoh finally arrived, a vision in yellow Gucci. “I’m the canary, nice to meet you,” she said, shaking my hand. The very busy actress, who will soon be seen in “Avatar: The Way of Water” and the Disney+ series “American Born Chinese,” had hotfooted it to the party from the nearby premiere of “The School for Good and Evil,” a Netflix fantasy film where she plays one of the teachers at an enchanted boarding school. That red carpet had been packed with ingénues and TikTok stars, and Yeoh was surprised when a young girl recognized her and passed her an appreciative note.“I thought, ‘I’m out of my league here, nobody’s going to know who you are,’” Yeoh said.“Michelle, you are huge,” Kwan replied. He recalled a San Francisco screening of “Everything Everywhere” where the heavily Asian crowd, which had revered Yeoh since her start in Hong Kong action movies, cheered so loudly that the actress was afraid to go onstage, lest she become too emotional in public.“For a long time, they would say, ‘You have to tell everybody about your experiences,’ and I couldn’t, because it would overwhelm me,” Yeoh said, turning to Kwan and Scheinert. “And the one time I listened to you — the one time — I did an interview and I was blubbering! Oh, I was so embarrassed.”Was she referring to that GQ clip? “Yes,” said a mortified Yeoh, burying her face in Kwan’s shoulder. “See, everyone knows!”Yeoh told me the reason she has trouble articulating what “Everything Everywhere” means to her “is because when you really talk about it, suddenly it comes crashing in that you have waited for so many years for something like this. And as the years go by, you see it slipping away from your fingers, and you can’t get it back because you are aging. But even though I’m 60, I can still do a lot! Don’t put me in a box.”Yeoh seen through a chandelier at the theater. She said she had a hard time talking about the film’s success because each time she is reminded that she “waited for so many years for something like this.”Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesRecent supporting roles in “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” and “Crazy Rich Asians” were meaningful, Yeoh said, but on “Everything Everywhere,” being listed first on the call sheet gave her a sense of ownership she’d never really felt before. She hopes that Hollywood will continue to consider her for lead roles, though she’s well-aware of whom those parts are traditionally written for.“I read scripts and it’s the guy who goes off on some big adventure — and he’s going off with my daughter!” she said. “I’m like, no, no.”Yeoh excused herself to greet Roger Spottiswoode, who directed “Tomorrow Never Dies,” the 1997 James Bond film that help introduced her to American audiences; meanwhile, the “Star Trek Into Darkness” screenwriter Roberto Orci greeted Quan with a deferential bow. Later, as the cast and directors gathered in a theater to introduce the film — alongside a huge cohort that included its fight choreographers, composers, visual effects artists and costumers — a man from the audience yelled, “You rock!”This sort of unalloyed success is a new sensation for Kwan and Scheinert, who recently signed a lucrative five-year pact with Universal but got their start making odder fare like face-melting music videos and a debut feature, “Swiss Army Man” (2016), that involved Paul Dano riding a dead Daniel Radcliffe like a jet ski powered by flatulence. How does it feel when their avowedly left-of-center sensibility happens to score a cultural bull’s-eye?“It’s unsettling,” Scheinert said.“It makes us feel like we messed up somewhere,” Kwan joked. “The whole world likes it? What did we do wrong?” More

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      Guillermo del Toro Opens His ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’

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      For the first season of his horror anthology for Netflix, the filmmaker handpicked eight directors to tell a series of strange and macabre tales.When Guillermo del Toro was a child in Guadalajara, Mexico, he used to stay up late watching TV with his older brother. One night they happened upon an episode of the 1960s science fiction anthology series “The Outer Limits” called “The Mutant.” In it, Warren Oates plays an astronaut who gets caught in radioactive rain on another planet.“There’s a moment where he removes his goggles and his eyes are as big as the goggles,” del Toro recalled in a recent video interview. “And I started screaming. My brother put me to bed. You could say the rest of my life has been a counterphobic reaction to the fear I felt seeing that episode.”Today, del Toro, 58, elicits screams from others, with movies like “Pan’s Labyrinth” and TV series like “The Strain.” And now he has his own anthology series, “Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities.” The first season, which debuts Tuesday on Netflix, is a collection of eight hourlong horror tales, each from a different director. Del Toro handpicked the eight directors featured in the first season: some of the world’s brightest horror minds, including Ana Lily Amirpour (“The Bad Batch”), Panos Cosmatos (“Mandy”) and Jennifer Kent (“The Babadook”).Two episodes are based on original stories written by del Toro, who created the series. Another two are based on classic tales from the macabre master H.P. Lovecraft. All have sky-high production value.“I got to spend all that Netflix money,” Amirpour said in a recent video interview; her wickedly funny chapter, “The Outside,” tells the story of a woman (Kate Micucci) who develops an unhealthy relationship with a new beauty product.“With Guillermo, when you work with someone who has that level of power, you can really thrive and make something cool,” she added.Del Toro entered the project as a curator and a fan, with the goal of highlighting stories, storytellers and filmmakers he loves.“I was hoping to select some stories that I like, that have not been adapted, or have not been adapted with a very protected production environment,” he said. “And I wanted to find directors that I was curious about. I wanted to almost collect and curate a group of directors and stories and then give them all the support and freedom, final cut, the chance to feel that the resources were there.”Kate Micucci’s character develops an unhealthy relationship with a beauty product in “The Outside.”Ken Woroner/NetflixPeter Weller (“Robocop”) plays an eccentric wealthy recluse in “The Viewing.”Ken Woroner/Netflix There were major challenges. In practical terms, the “Cabinet” really contains eight one-hour films, with settings including rustic 1909 Massachusetts (“Pickman’s Model,” directed by Keith Thomas) and a late-1970s version of future shock (“The Viewing,” Cosmatos). The directors were essentially their own showrunners.“This really does feel like a movie of mine,” Amirpour said. “It was a whole and total creation, from having my hand on the script to completion. It felt so completely and totally mine.”Multiple cinematographers and editors worked on the series, but there was only one industrious production designer, the del Toro regular Tamara Deverell (“Nightmare Alley,” “The Strain”), who embraced the task of designing everything, such as a giant animatronic rat (for “The Graveyard Rats,” Vincenzo Natali) and a sketchy storage facility (for “Lot 36,” Guillermo Navarro).In a video interview, Deverell recalled that “Cabinet” had reused a set from del Toro’s 2021 film “Nightmare Alley” for both “Lot 36” and “Graveyard Rats.” She also noted the complexities of carrying out the vision of eight different filmmakers. But she’s not complaining. She sees del Toro as the perfect collaborator, an artist who knows that storytelling is visual as well as verbal.“He understands space and things like ceiling heights and square footage and the shapes of things in a way that a lot of directors don’t,” Deverell said. “He makes it so easy. The set is of equal importance as the actors or the story. It’s part of the same world that he’s trying to create.”Describing an episode of “The Outer Limits” he watched as a child, del Toro said, “You could say the rest of my life has been a counterphobic reaction to the fear I felt.”Austin Hargrave/NetflixDel Toro is an avid collector of books and comics; as he spoke from his office in Santa Monica, Calif., stacks and stacks of volumes loomed in the background. He’s a particular fan of anthologies, those that come between two covers — the first book he ever bought with his own money was a horror anthology edited by the science fiction writer Forrest J. Ackerman — and onscreen. When he wasn’t screaming at “The Outer Limits,” he was watching “The Twilight Zone,” “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” “One Step Beyond,” “Night Gallery” and “Ghost Story,” among others.“They were my favorite things to watch,” he said. “It’s the same way I loved reading short stories, more than any other form. I just find them immersive and self-contained and incredibly attractive. If you come to the library of my horror wing, most of what I collect is anthologies.”He worships the material and its history, a fact that isn’t lost on the actor Tim Blake Nelson. Nelson, also featured in del Toro’s “Nightmare Alley” and the coming “Pinocchio” movie, is the star of “Lot 36,” the story of a racist scavenger who swoops in on delinquent customers’ storage containers and sells their belongings. Yes, he receives a ghoulish — and many tentacled — comeuppance.To Nelson, del Toro’s passion for the macabre pushes his work beyond the realm of genre.“I believe that Guillermo’s reverence for horror is so deep that it’s no longer horror,” he said in a video interview. “You’re dealing with someone who’s able to see the macabre as reality, not fear-driven fantasy. You no longer think of it as occult or genre; you think of it as reality, and that makes it all the more terrifying.”Tim Blake Nelson (left, with Sebastian Roché) plays a racist scavenger in “Lot 36.”Ken Woroner/Netflix“Pickman’s Model,” starring Ben Barnes, is set in 1909 Massachusetts.Ken Woroner/NetflixDel Toro was originally supposed to direct an episode, but the pandemic delayed production of both “Nightmare Alley” and “Pinocchio.” So, instead, he offered to host. At the beginning of each installment, he saunters out of the darkness up to what appears to be an elaborate model mansion with drawers.He pulls out a miniature ivory figurine of each director and offers an introduction. (Originally, cabinets of curiosities contained anatomical specimens, talismans and the like, all reflecting the curator’s tastes and instinct for showmanship.) These introductions play like the classic openings of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents.”But if “Cabinet of Curiosities” has a spiritual forbear, it is someone more sinister. The writer H.P. Lovecraft, who lived from 1890 to 1937, has inspired memorable movies (“Re-Animator”) and television (“Lovecraft Country”). The episodes of “Cabinet” his stories inspired are “Dreams in the Witch House,” directed by Catherine Hardwicke, and “Pickman’s Model,” about a painter (Crispin Glover) with dark and devilish muses. (“Pickman’s Model” was also the basis of a 1971 “Night Gallery” episode that gave this reporter childhood nightmares.)Known for what del Toro called “overwrought prose and arcane adjectives,” Lovecraft is also terrifying in his dark view of humanity.“He was cosmically misanthropic,” del Toro said. “He was the outsider of the outsiders. It’s very hard to imagine anyone overtaken by more fear. His idea was that the cosmos is malevolent by the mere notion of how large it is. You cannot encompass it, and that alone is madness. That resonates through the ages.”Del Toro, by all accounts, is no Lovecraft. He is a jovial guy and supportive colleague who is nonetheless drawn to the darkness. He is on the side of the artists, and the monsters. He’s the happy frightener.“He’s never imposing his will on anybody,” Amirpour said. “He’s just trying to help you find the best way to do what you’re trying to do. What truly sets him apart is his generosity of spirit. I’m ruined now. It’s like having courtside seats and then having to go sit somewhere else.” More

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      Kevin Spacey Is Cleared of Anthony Rapp’s Battery Claim

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      A jury found Mr. Spacey not liable in a civil trial. Mr. Rapp, an original cast member in “Rent,” had filed a lawsuit accusing Mr. Spacey of making a sexual advance when Mr. Rapp was 14.A federal jury in Manhattan found Kevin Spacey not liable for battery on Thursday after the actor Anthony Rapp filed a lawsuit accusing Mr. Spacey of climbing on top of him and making a sexual advance in 1986, when Mr. Rapp was 14.Mr. Rapp’s claim was one of the most prominent in the early days of the #MeToo movement, as accusers started to come forward with allegations against high-profile men in the entertainment, political and business worlds. Mr. Spacey, a star of the political drama “House of Cards” and a lauded actor who had hosted the Tony Awards months earlier, quickly experienced career blowback.The disclosure by Mr. Rapp, which BuzzFeed News published in October 2017, was followed by more than a dozen other sexual misconduct accusations against Mr. Spacey. He has pleaded not guilty to sexual assault charges in Britain, and outside the courthouse on Thursday, one of his lawyers, Jennifer L. Keller, said he would be proven innocent in all cases.The civil trial to consider Mr. Rapp’s claim of battery hinged on his account of a night in 1986, when, he said, he attended a party at Mr. Spacey’s New York apartment during a Broadway season in which both of them were acting in plays. Mr. Spacey, who was 26 at the time, denied that such an encounter ever occurred.After less than an hour and a half of deliberation, an 11-person jury in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan decided in favor of Mr. Spacey, whose lawyers had hammered Mr. Rapp with questions that challenged his memory of events said to have occurred more than 36 years ago.Following the verdict, Mr. Spacey stood up with tears in his eyes and hugged his lawyers. He was silent during his exit from the courthouse, but Ms. Keller told reporters, “We’re just grateful that the jury saw the truth.”Anthony Rapp sued Mr. Spacey, accusing him of making a sexual advance when Mr. Rapp was 14.Eduardo Munoz/ReutersMr. Rapp was straight-faced in response to the decision. In a statement later posted to his Twitter account, Mr. Rapp said he was “deeply grateful” for the opportunity to have his case heard before a jury.“Bringing this lawsuit was always about shining a light,” the statement said, “as part of the larger movement to stand up against all forms of sexual violence.”Mr. Rapp, an actor on “Star Trek: Discovery” and who is best known for his originating role in the musical “Rent,” was able to bring his claim under a New York State law, the Child Victims Act. The law included a temporary “look-back” window during which old claims that had already passed the statute of limitations could be revived.The jury determined that there was not enough evidence to prove that Mr. Spacey had touched one of Mr. Rapp’s “sexual or intimate” parts, meaning the claim could not be revived under the law. Mr. Rapp testified that when Mr. Spacey picked him up, one of his hands “grazed” his buttocks.Mr. Rapp’s lawyers presented testimony from three men who said he had told them in the mid-1990s or earlier about an encounter with Mr. Spacey. The defense focused on inconsistencies and picked at vagueness in his account, highlighting that Mr. Rapp, 50, presented no third-party corroboration of the gathering on the night that he said the encounter had occurred. Midway through the trial, the judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, dismissed a claim against Mr. Spacey, 63, of intentional infliction of emotional distress.“There is no evidence that this happened and plenty of evidence that it didn’t,” Ms. Keller said in closing arguments.Both actors took the stand to testify, presenting disparate accounts about what happened in the spring of 1986, when Mr. Rapp was a teenage actor in the play “Precious Sons” and Mr. Spacey was in “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.”Mr. Rapp testified that he had withdrawn to the bedroom to watch late-night TV during Mr. Spacey’s party because he did not know any other guests. Once the party wound down, Mr. Rapp testified, Mr. Spacey approached him, picked him up, laid him on the bed and climbed on top of him, pressing his groin into Mr. Rapp’s hip.“I knew something was really wrong now,” Mr. Rapp said, recalling feeling frozen in place.He testified that he was able to wriggle out from under Mr. Spacey, who appeared intoxicated, and escape to the nearby bathroom. Mr. Rapp recalled that before he exited the apartment, Mr. Spacey said, “Are you sure you want to leave?”The defense contended that Mr. Rapp had fabricated the claim to get attention for himself and his career, which he denied.“Does it look like he is enjoying the attention of this?” a lawyer for Mr. Rapp, Richard M. Steigman, said in closing arguments. “He is doing this to hold Kevin Spacey accountable.”Despite issuing an apology shortly after Mr. Rapp made public his allegation, Mr. Spacey testified that the encounter never happened, that he had never been alone with Mr. Rapp and that he had not had a party at his apartment in the time frame Mr. Rapp described.Peter Gallagher and Mr. Spacey in the Broadway show “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” in 1986.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesMr. Spacey said he did recall that Mr. Rapp had attended with a friend a performance of “Long Day’s Journey,” and that afterward, Mr. Spacey had invited them to dinner, then to a nightclub and then back to his apartment.Mr. Spacey said he had flirted with Mr. Rapp’s friend, John Barrowman, who was 19 at the time. Back at Mr. Spacey’s apartment, he said, he pushed Mr. Barrowman gently back onto the bed when Mr. Rapp left for the bathroom. Feeling that Mr. Rapp was too young to see them in a romantic situation, Mr. Spacey said, the two men sat up when Mr. Rapp returned.“I had no interest in Mr. Rapp joining us,” Mr. Spacey testified.Mr. Rapp testified that on the night they all went to the nightclub — which he described as his second time meeting Mr. Spacey — they did not go back to the apartment. In a videotaped deposition, Mr. Barrowman, an actor known for his role in the TV show “Doctor Who,” recalled the series of events that night as Mr. Spacey had.Mr. Rapp called the alleged encounter with Mr. Spacey the most traumatic event of his life. Mr. Rapp testified about moments when he later saw Mr. Spacey onscreen — in films like “American Beauty” and “Working Girl” — and felt startled, sometimes feeling as if “poked with a cattle prod.”Mr. Spacey’s lawyers suggested throughout the trial that Mr. Rapp was motivated to fabricate the accusation because he was envious of Mr. Spacey’s career or frustrated that Mr. Spacey was not public about his relationships with men.Mr. Rapp denied those motivations, asserting that he had come forward to seek belated justice for himself. But during a lengthy and tense cross-examination, he acknowledged that he might have been mistaken about a couple details, including that the alleged encounter had occurred in a separate bedroom in Mr. Spacey’s apartment.Mr. Spacey’s lawyers also questioned Mr. Rapp on similarities between his account and moments of staging in “Precious Sons.” In the play, the character of Mr. Rapp’s father, who was played by Ed Harris, had picked up the character of Mr. Rapp in the same manner that he described Mr. Spacey picking him up — like a groom carrying a bride. Mr. Harris also climbed on Mr. Rapp twice during the play.Mr. Rapp dismissed the idea that there was any connection, saying the staging had been done “with care and consent.”Mr. Rapp’s lawyers pointed to Mr. Spacey’s initial response to Mr. Rapp’s accusation, in which he did not categorically deny the encounter, as supporting evidence for their client. In a statement Mr. Spacey posted after the BuzzFeed article, he said he had no memory of the encounter, adding, “But if I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior.”In his testimony, Mr. Spacey said he regretted making that apology, attributing the decision to advisers who feared that people would call Mr. Spacey a “victim blamer” if he denied the allegation outright.“I’ve learned a lesson,” Mr. Spacey testified, “which is, never apologize for something you didn’t do.”One additional accuser, Andy Holtzman, testified during the trial that Mr. Spacey had groped him in an office in 1981, when Mr. Holtzman was 27 and Mr. Spacey was several years younger. Mr. Spacey denied doing so. No other accusations were discussed in front of the jury, and Judge Kaplan instructed the jury to disregard two instances when Mr. Rapp had alluded to other allegations against Mr. Spacey during his testimony.As a result of the sexual misconduct allegations against him, Mr. Spacey — who has won two Oscars and a Tony — lost major roles, with an arbitrator ordering him to pay $31 million to the “House of Cards” studio for breach of contract.But the jury’s verdict on Thursday adds to the list of legal victories for Mr. Spacey. Prosecutors dropped a sexual assault charge in Massachusetts, and an anonymous accuser who had originally sued alongside Mr. Rapp decided not to continue his claim when Judge Kaplan ruled that the plaintiff would need to identify himself publicly.“What’s next,” Ms. Keller said outside the courthouse on Thursday, “is that Kevin Spacey is going to be proven innocent of anything he’s been accused of.” More

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      ‘Face’ Review: Close Encounters

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      Commissioned by the Louvre, the film brings together two of cinema’s unforgettable faces, Lee Kang-sheng and Jean-Pierre Léaud.There are some filmmakers whose cinema can be distilled into a single face. François Truffaut is one of them: Jean-Pierre Léaud’s roguish mien became, through Truffaut’s films, synonymous with the spirit of the French New Wave. The Malaysian Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang, a devotee of Truffaut, is another. His films double as a record of the face of his muse, Lee Kang-sheng, captured closely in all its gradations over time.Commissioned by the Louvre Museum, Tsai’s 2009 film, “Face,” brings Lee and Léaud’s great visages together. Lee plays a director, Kang, who is in Paris to film a movie in the Louvre about the biblical story of Salome. Léaud plays an aging actor named Antoine — like his character in Truffaut’s films — while Fanny Ardant (Truffaut’s partner until his death in 1984) appears as a vexed producer.Time is the narrative principle in “Face.” Scenes of extended duration invite us to explore details within the frame, as one might with a painting, while the impending death of Kang’s ailing mother (Lu Yi-ching) casts a shadow of mortality over the film — particularly over Léaud and Lee, who appear at times like past and future reflections of one another.The film unfolds as a series of tableaux whose preciousness is tempered by hints of perversity: lust, incest, slapstick and, above all, the strange labor of filmmaking. At one point, we see Laetitia Casta, who plays Salome, in extreme close-up as Kang’s crew debates how to make her look colder. His assistants wipe her cheeks and rub ice on them while she remains uncomfortably silent. Her face is both a decorative mask and a fragile container of roiling emotion, encapsulating the wry duality of Tsai’s cinema.FaceNot rated. In French, Mandarin and English, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 18 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Voodoo Macbeth’ Review: A Tiresome Curse

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      A historical look back at Orson Welles’s production of “Macbeth” with an all-Black cast in Harlem in the 1930s.When the theatrical production featuring the first all-Black cast of “Macbeth” opened in Harlem on April 14, 1936, it was quite the event. According to an article on the Library of Congress website, “At 6:30 p.m., 10,000 people stood as close as they could come to the Lafayette Theater on Seventh Avenue near 131st Street, jamming the avenue for 10 blocks and halting northbound traffic for more than an hour.”The film “Voodoo Macbeth” tells the story of how this groundbreaking production came to be, from the perspective of a then 20-year old “genius” Orson Welles (Jewell Wilson Bridges), who adapted and directed the play, switching out Shakespeare’s Scotland for Haiti.From its opening scene, a P.O.V. shot of the theater producer John Houseman watching the Broadway actress Rose McClendon rehearse — to its final scene, Welles taking a victory walk into the night in a cloud of cigarette smoke, “Voodoo Macbeth” proves itself to be a textbook white savior film and not much else. Welles and Houseman (Daniel Kuhlman) are the heroic subjects and McClendon (Inger Tudor) and the other Black cast members are stilted objects forever in need of their saving.Interestingly, the film’s writing and directing credits belong to 18 people, eight screenwriters and 10 directors, all of whom are either current graduate students or recent alumni of the University of Southern California. And with this many cooks in the kitchen, the film’s flatness is hardly surprising. But the movie’s repetition of mirror shots are an appealing, if not derivative, visual through-line in the film.With such a gross misinterpretation of the source material (why invent Welles onstage in blackface?) it’s fitting that the most engaging part of “Voodoo Macbeth” turns out to be the archival footage of the real-life production that plays alongside the credits.Voodoo MacbethNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Descendant’ Review: The Fates of a Ship and its Captives

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      This documentary recounts the salvaging of the Clotilda, the last known ship to bring enslaved Africans to America, and tracks down their progeny.If you’ve ever wondered what “holding space” looks like in practice, the director Margaret Brown’s deeply attentive documentary “Descendant” provides moving examples. The film tells the entwined stories of the search for and salvaging of the Clotilda, the last known ship to bring enslaved Africans to the United States, and the experiences of those people’s descendants, many of whom live in Africatown, Ala., an enclave north of Mobile.And so, holding space looks like: the way Kamau Sadiki, a scuba diver with the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture’s Slave Wrecks Project, holds a small shell as part of his ritual of listening to “ancestral voices.” Or the way the folklorist Dr. Kern Jackson gazes with affection at a videotaped interview with the descendant Martha West-Davis, as she recounts how Africatown got its name. Or the sight of Emmett Lewis walking with his young children to the tombstone marker of Cudjoe Kazoola Lewis, who had been the last living captive and Emmett’s direct relative. Or the way the film threads the stirring motif of residents reading “Barracoon: The Story of the Last ‘Black Cargo’” by Zora Neale Hurston who interviewed Lewis in 1927 and recounted his story in his own loamy parlance. An anthropologist, folklorist and filmmaker, Hurston wrote the book in 1931; it was published in 2018.According to the descendants, the Clotilda came to lie at the bottom of the Mobile River because the human trafficker Timothy Meaher had made a bet that he could bring enslaved people into the country after transports had been outlawed. He did in 1860 and then tried to destroy the evidence.Indeed, a river of exploitation and mendacity runs through “Descendant,” which draws connections between slavery, post-Reconstruction land grabs and Africatown’s pollution from nearby industries. And the film is rife with sympathetic and insightful subjects: Ramsey Sprague, a Native environmental organizer, sits in front of a computer screen pointing to parcels of land surrounding Africatown that were zoned for heavy industry and are owned by the Meahers. (Family members did not respond to the director’s requests but did issue a statement in 2021.) Veda Tunstall, a descendant and one-time real estate agent, wonders what new version of exploitation will arise out of the ship’s discovery. Joycelyn Davis, a cancer survivor, and another of Lewis’s descendants, initially admits to her disinterest in the search for the wreck; she’s focused on the local polluters.Brown’s critically acclaimed 2008 documentary “The Order of Myths” told the stories of Mobile’s segregated Mardi Gras celebrations. Here, Brown, who was born and raised in Mobile and is white, prioritizes the stories not only of the Black people who live in Africatown but also other stewards of a fuller American history that is still being brought to light, like the Smithsonian’s Sadiki and the curator Mary Elliott. She gently reminds a couple of descendants that even with the physical evidence of the schooner, the community must keep passing along their stories, must keep making an oral history.DescendantRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 49 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      Animal Lovers, Rejoice: The NY Cat and Dog Film Festivals Return

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      The programs feature many surprises, including a cat that plays Wordle and a lone man’s odyssey to feed Turkish strays.Tracie Hotchner still doesn’t offer tissues.During her early years as the director and founder of two animal film festivals, audience members would occasionally confront her and say, “‘Why don’t you give Kleenex?’” Hotchner recalled. While her programs have never included “Old Yeller”-style tear-jerkers, she acknowledges that her first festivals were too long and emotional. Even a steady string of uplifting tales could cause sentimental overload.But when Hotchner’s seventh annual NY Dog Film Festival and fifth annual NY Cat Film Festival arrive on Sunday at the Village East by Angelika Theater in Manhattan — before a monthslong tour of the United States and Canada — they will be as sleek and compact as a prizewinning Abyssinian or a champion greyhound. Featuring international short films, each festival now runs under two hours and intersperses serious works with the purely comic. (The 16-film cat festival screens at 11 a.m., the 17-film dog festival at 2 p.m.)This year, moviegoers can witness the challenging lives of feral cats in Malta and abandoned dogs in Mexico. Yet they can also see a feline parody of “America’s Got Talent,” fancifully animated dog and cat crime capers and a documentary about golden retrievers that served as the legitimately elected mayors of Idyllwild, Calif.With each festival, “I’ve tried to make it more balanced and something that is a magic carpet ride,” said Hotchner, an author and radio host in Bennington, Vt., whose Radio Pet Lady Network features online talk shows. During a telephone interview, she added, “There’s lots of short films, but you don’t have several in a row that slam you emotionally.”The programs have transformed in other ways, too. The 2022 editions are the most global, including films from Chile, France, Ireland, China, India, Israel and Sweden. Hotchner is also extending the projects’ reach: A film distributor is booking both festivals in other cities well into 2023. And for the first time, she is hosting a 20-minute question-and-answer session with a few filmmakers after each festival’s Manhattan screening.“I’ve never had a theater that would let me do that before,” Hotchner said. “It costs them money.” She explained that the Village East was donating the time, a gesture that is very much in the spirit of her feel-good, do-good mission: Ten percent of the $20 ticket price for each festival goes to a local animal charity in every city hosting the programs. On Sunday, the beneficiary is NYC Second Chance Rescue, whose co-founder, Lisa Blanco, will help greet audiences.But what may distinguish this year’s festivals most is the element of surprise. “Many of the films were not like anything I’d seen before,” Hotchner said.Consider “Kopecki” (“The Dog God”), Hayrettin Alan’s 11-minute documentary about a lone man feeding homeless dogs near Van, Turkey. Lacking narration or dialogue, the film simply follows this self-appointed savior, as packs of startlingly beautiful dogs greet him with unanticipated affection.Clockwise from top left: Scenes from “Jade & Trubs,” “Kopecki,” “Duet” and “Please Rescue Me.”Clockwise from top left: Mutual Rescue; Hayrettin Alan; Yadid Hirschtritt Licht; Kim BestHotchner also found a live-action fictional work among her entries — these are rare, as they tend to have high budgets. This selection, “Adam,” by Hope Elizabeth Martinez, focuses on a teenage girl whose sole companion is an ailing 14-year-old dog.Among the animated submissions, Hotchner discovered an unusual variety of styles and unexpectedly serious themes. In Yadid Hirschtritt Licht’s lyrical “Duet,” for example, a cat’s loving legacy continues after its original owner dies.But the humorous films offer surprises, too. Ever see a cat play Wordle? Kim Best, a filmmaker in Durham, N.C., created “Cat of Letters” with her own pet, Nube. (Pronounced NOO-bay, the word is Spanish for “cloud.”) Although a cat lover, Best admits that her stars don’t take direction.“They’re very insubordinate and churlish,” she said in a phone interview.Nube was churlish enough to reject the fingerlike extensions Best tried to attach to his claws, so she used a stuffed animal’s paw affixed to a stylus to portray the cat tapping letters on an iPad. (It’s convincing.) But she also gave herself a challenge: Nube, whose thoughts are conveyed via subtitles, chooses only cat- or dog-related words for his opening Wordle efforts, so Best had to use those to solve the puzzles in real time. There was “no cheating,” she said.A director who has contributed to every NY Cat Film Festival so far, Best also has a documentary spotlighting a more typical feline talent: getting stuck in trees. “Please Rescue Me” follows Patrick Brandt, a kindly North Carolina biochemist and arborist who has volunteered his skills and equipment to extract some 250 trapped cats — and one pet coatimundi.As he says in the film, “I’m not so much rescuing the cat as I’m rescuing the person.”Animals, of course, frequently save the people who save them. Mutual Rescue, a global nonprofit initiative that creates documentaries about these relationships to encourage pet adoption, delivered “Kimo & Jazz.” This film concerns a young gay man from a conservative religious background who finally felt able to come out to his parents after adopting a shelter dog. The pet, Jazz, then helped sustain him as his father was dying.Another Mutual Rescue documentary, “Jade & Trubs,” chronicles how Double Trouble — a toothless, sickly and thoroughly unsociable feline shelter resident — uncharacteristically responded to Jade, a little girl with autism visiting the organization. Jade had sensitivities that turned every bedtime into long bouts of tears and screams. But once the family adopted the animal, nicknamed Trubs, both child and cat blossomed in unexpected ways.Perhaps the most surprising interplay of rescuer and rescued, however, takes place in “Underdogs,” an independent project by Alex Astrella. His documentary unfolds at the California Men’s Colony, a prison in San Luis Obispo where the inmates train service dogs for veterans and emergency workers with post-traumatic stress disorder. The prisoners’ dark histories — several on camera are convicted murderers — contrast starkly with their tender devotion to the dogs and their purpose.“I took a life,” one says. “Now I want to save a life.”Astrella said in a phone interview that he intended to illustrate the program’s effects on the men and “the change it’ll hopefully enact on their lives going forward.” The film, he added, is a testament to the “spiritual power that dogs have on humans.”Such connections are the thread that runs through the festivals. As Hotchner said, their mission is “to celebrate that human-animal bond, however and wherever it occurs.”So prepare to celebrate. And maybe pack a few tissues.NY Cat Film Festival and NY Dog Film FestivalOct. 23; the Village East by Angelika Theater, Manhattan; catfilmfestival.com, dogfilmfestival.com. More