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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

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      Luke Parker Bowles, the Queen Consort’s Nephew, on Life in New Jersey

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      The film and television producer, who works with the British Consulate, is also committed to saving small-town movie theaters in the United States.Last month in New York City, the outpouring of grief over Queen Elizabeth II’s death mostly happened in a handful of English specialty shops and inside many, many apartments. But there was at least one public memorial service, which took place at the Queen Elizabeth II Garden in Lower Manhattan.“Long live the king,” proclaimed Luke Parker Bowles, a film and television producer and one of a few individuals who helped create the garden in 2005 to honor members of Commonwealth nations who died on Sept. 11.As a New Jersey resident and the nephew of Camilla Parker Bowles, Mr. Parker Bowles suddenly finds himself a diplomat, of sorts, for the crown in the metropolitan area. “I do like being an ambassador for her and His Majesty in New York,” he said. “I am the Parker Bowles who is here.”Besides his day job — he works with the British Consulate to promote British talent and owns a film-production company, Odd Sausage — he and Patrick Wilson, the actor, started and now help to run Cinema Lab, an initiative that rescues struggling small-town movie theaters and turns them into sophisticated venues for eating, drinking and taking in the latest blockbuster. The group currently owns five theaters, including several in New Jersey and one in New Canaan, Conn. “These theaters are metaphorically and literally the heart beats of certain towns,” Mr. Parker Bowles said.Mr. Parker Bowles, 44, lives with his wife Daniela Parker Bowles, 47, and their three children in Montclair, where he helps oversee the town’s film festival, scheduled this year for Oct. 21-30.Ahead of the Montclair Film Festival, Mr. Parker Bowles spoke with The New York Times about his work and mission. The following interview has been edited and condensed.What inspired you to move to New York?I was visiting New York City from London for a long weekend with two friends. We went to this club named Spa that was located right next to Union Square. That night P. Diddy jumped onstage and started playing this impromptu performance. I thought this is just how New York is and this happens every night.Some Key Moments in Queen Elizabeth’s ReignCard 1 of 9Becoming queen. More

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      Music Festivals Try to Go Green and Carbon Neutral

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      A handful of festivals are striving to become carbon neutral by reducing waste, using high-tech dance floors and offsetting emissions.In Nashville this past August, about 5,000 revelers in neon chaps, gothic chains and kaleidoscopic crop tops descended on Bicentennial Park for an electronic music festival. They gyrated to pulsating sets by the British D.J. Chris Lake and the electronic duo Snakehips. They watched choreographed light shows and got massages in a healers’ village.And when they raised their arms in the air, many of them flashed a green wristband, signifying a commitment to partying in a way that was carbon neutral.Billed as the “greenest festival” in the country, Deep Tropics had no trash cans (though there were plenty of recycling and compost bins), and single-use plastics were banned. Festival organizers said that all the carbon consumed for the two-day event (including the fuel used by all the festivalgoers) will be offset by the planting of some 23,000 trees.“We’re the next generation of festivals,” said Blake Atchinson, 39, who founded Deep Tropics in 2017 with his twin brother, Joel Atchinson. “We are trying to be on the cutting edge of technology and culture and sustainability and art.”The festival was founded by Blake and Joel Atchison. “We are trying to be on the cutting edge of technology and culture and sustainability and art,” Blake said. Taylor Baucom for The New York TimesTraditional music festivals consume a lot of resources. The sound systems and lights alone guzzle tons of power. Bigger festivals like Lollapalooza and Tomorrowland draw hundreds of thousands of revelers, who use energy to get there and leave behind mountains of waste. What isn’t carried in by hand needs to be trucked in.And that’s not counting the D.J.s. A 2021 report by Clean Scene, a climate collective in Berlin, found that 1,000 of the top D.J.s together took more than 51,000 flights in a single year, emitting 35 million tons of carbon dioxide — equivalent to the amount of power consumed by 20,000 households.But there is a novel push by eco-minded organizers to make festivals greener, sometimes through smaller, feel-good initiatives like compost toilets and vegan food trucks. Others are striving for bigger impact by offsetting their carbon emissions, or tapping dancers’ body heat to power their heating and cooling systems.“There’s pressure on festivals, especially because they’re such large events,” said Fallon MacWilliams, 37, a D.J. and promoter in Berlin who is one of the three founders of Clean Scene. “This year while touring I saw a lot of festivals changing the way they’re doing things when it comes to plastic and encouraging artists to take trains to the festival.”Vision: 2025, a nonprofit in Bristol, England, has gotten more than 40 festivals in Britain to pledge to cut their emissions in half and double their recycling rates by 2025. Daybreaker, which organizes sober dance parties worldwide, hosts a series of morning raves where single-use plastics are prohibited and public transportation is encouraged.Some festival organizers say the changes need to be more systemic. Music festivals are “completely dependent on cheap flights and therefore the consumption of fossil fuels,” said Eilidh McLaughlin, 35, a founder of Clean Scene. “Any effort to advance sustainability is essentially greenwashing unless you are working to actively break the cycle and reduce your carbon footprint by touring more sustainably.”The festival took place in Nashville in August.Taylor Baucom for The New York TimesThe lights and sounds will be offset by the planting of trees.Taylor Baucom for The New York TimesIn 2020, DGTL, an organization in Amsterdam that produces electronic music festivals, pledged to be climate neutral. “We are trying to create a new festival landscape where sustainability will be the norm,” said Mitchell van Dooijeweerd, 31, the sustainability manager for DGTL. “It’s become a business model, because we are experts in this and everybody wants to change.”For this year’s Deep Tropics, the organizers teamed with Green Disco, a company in New York that helps events become environmentally friendlier. During the festival, its founders Jonah Geschwind, 22, and Jacob Chandler, 21, stood at the entrance and sold $20 “eco-bands”: green wristbands that funded the planting of trees and other environmental causes.“If you make sustainability easy and as cool as possible, people are going to naturally adopt it,” said Mr. Chandler, who said they sold about 500 bracelets, which he estimates will offset 400 metric tons of carbon dioxide.A group called Green Disco sold “eco-bands” that will offset carbon emissions. Taylor Baucom for The New York TimesBigger festivals are also making efforts: Coachella has increased vegan food options, urged its attendees to car pool and pledged to slash emissions; Burning Man announced a 10-year sustainability road map in 2019.And some music acts are trying, too. Coldplay has pledged that its current tour will create half as much greenhouse gas emissions as its previous one. The band is also touring with a kinetic dance floor that uses human movement to create electricity. The floor was a previous attraction at Club Watt, a dance club in Rotterdam that’s now closed.Still, real-world practicalities sometimes get in the way. At this year’s Burning Man there were 12-hour traffic jams, leaving ravers stuck in hot, idling cars while Nevada temperatures crept above 100 degrees. And at Deep Tropics, some vendors used plastic packaging despite signing pledges.There were no trash cans at the festival (though plenty of recycling and compost bins).Taylor Baucom for The New York TimesThat doesn’t mean progress isn’t being made, said Heather White, 49, an environmental scientist in Bozeman, Mont., and founder of the nonprofit One Green Thing.“From a 30,000-foot level, does all this matter?” she said. “It absolutely matters. These electronic music festivals are drivers of culture change. We have to have these living laboratories, where people can see zero waste at a concert, because without culture change, big policy solutions are not going to work.” More

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      Film Festival Season Comes to New York

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      Wanda ProductionsIn the mood for something shorter? The New York Shorts International Film Festival has over 300 films, including “Booksmart” (shown here, 3 minutes, France), “Quico” (12 minutes, United States), “Genius Artist” (8 minutes, China) and “Bienvenidos A Los Angeles” (15 minutes, United States). More

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      Sundance Liked Her Documentary, ‘Jihad Rehab,’ Until Muslim Critics Didn’t

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      The film festival gave Meg Smaker’s “Jihad Rehab” a coveted spot in its 2022 lineup, but apologized after an outcry over her race and her approach.Meg Smaker felt exhilarated last November. After 16 months filming inside a Saudi rehabilitation center for accused terrorists, she learned that her documentary “Jihad Rehab” was invited to the 2022 Sundance Festival, one of the most prestigious showcases in the world.Her documentary centered on four former Guantánamo detainees sent to a rehab center in Saudi Arabia who had opened their lives to her, speaking of youthful attraction to Al Qaeda and the Taliban, of torture endured, and of regrets.Film critics warned that conservatives might bridle at these human portraits, but reviews after the festival’s screening were strong.“The absence of absolutes is what’s most enriching,” The Guardian stated, adding, “This is a movie for intelligent people looking to have their preconceived notions challenged.” Variety wrote: The film “feels like a miracle and an interrogative act of defiance.”But attacks would come from the left, not the right. Arab and Muslim filmmakers and their white supporters accused Ms. Smaker of Islamophobia and American propaganda. Some suggested her race was disqualifying, a white woman who presumed to tell the story of Arab men.Sundance leaders reversed themselves and apologized.Abigail Disney, a grandniece of Walt Disney, had been the executive director of “Jihad Rehab” and called it “freaking brilliant” in an email to Ms. Smaker. Now she disavowed it.The film “landed like a truckload of hate,” Ms. Disney wrote in an open letter.Ms. Smaker’s film has become near untouchable, unable to reach audiences. Prominent festivals rescinded invitations, and critics in the documentary world took to social media and pressured investors, advisers and even her friends to withdraw names from the credits. She is close to broke.“In my naïveté, I kept thinking people would get the anger out of their system and realize this film was not what they said,” Ms. Smaker said. “I’m trying to tell an authentic story that a lot of Americans might not have heard.”Battles over authorship and identity regularly roil the documentary world, a tightly knit and largely left-wing ecosystem.Ms. Smaker wanted to explore what leads men to embrace terrorism. But Arab American filmmakers say that framing was all too familiar. Meg SmakerMany Arab and Muslim filmmakers — who like others in the industry struggle for money and recognition — denounced “Jihad Rehab” as offering an all too familiar take. They say Ms. Smaker is the latest white documentarian to tell the story of Muslims through a lens of the war on terror. These documentary makers, they say, take their white, Western gaze and claim to film victims with empathy.Assia Boundaoui, a filmmaker, critiqued it for Documentary magazine.“To see my language and the homelands of folks in my community used as backdrops for white savior tendencies is nauseating,” she wrote. “The talk is all empathy, but the energy is Indiana Jones.”She called on festivals to allow Muslims to create “films that concern themselves not with war, but with life.”The argument over whether artists should share racial or ethnic identity and sympathy with their subjects is long running in literature and film — with many artists and writers, like the documentarians Ken Burns and Nanfu Wang, arguing it would be suffocating to tell the story of only their own culture and that the challenge is to inhabit worlds different from their own.In the case of “Jihad Rehab,” the identity critique is married to the view that the film must function as political art and examine the historic and cultural oppressions that led to the imprisonment of these men at Guantánamo.Some critics and documentary filmmakers say that mandate is reductive and numbing.“What I admired about ‘Jihad Rehab’ is that it allowed a viewer to make their own decisions,” said Chris Metzler, who helps select films for San Francisco Documentary Festival. “I was not watching a piece of propaganda.”Ms. Smaker has other defenders. Lorraine Ali, a television critic for The Los Angeles Times who is Muslim, wrote that the film was “a humanizing journey through a complex emotional process of self-reckoning and accountability, and a look at the devastating fallout of flawed U.S. and Saudi policy.”She is dismayed with Sundance.“In the independent film world there is a lot of weaponizing of identity politics,” Ms. Ali said in an interview. “The film took pains to understand the culture these men came from and molded them. It does a disservice to throw away a film that a lot of people should see.”From Firefighter to FilmmakerMs. Smaker was a 21-year-old firefighter in California when airplanes struck the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. She heard firefighters cry for vengeance and wondered: How did this happen?Looking for answers, she hitchhiked through Afghanistan and settled in the ancient city of Sana, Yemen, for half a decade, where she learned Arabic and taught firefighting. Then she obtained a master’s from Stanford University in filmmaking and turned to a place Yemeni friends had spoken of: the Mohammed bin Nayef Counseling and Care Center in Riyadh.The Saudi monarchy brooks little dissent. This center tries to rehabilitate accused terrorists and spans an unlikely distance between prison and boutique hotel. It has a gym and pool and teachers who offer art therapy and lectures on Islam, Freud and the true meanings of “jihad,” which include personal struggle.Hence the documentary’s original title, “Jihad Rehab,” which engendered much criticism, even from supporters, who saw it as too facile. “The film is very complex and the title is not,” said Ms. Ali, the Los Angeles Times critic.To address such concerns, the director recently renamed the film “The UnRedacted.”The United States sent 137 detainees from Guantánamo Bay to this center, which human rights groups cannot visit.But reporters with The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic and others have interviewed prisoners. Most stayed a few days.Ms. Smaker would remain more than a year exploring what leads men to embrace groups such as Al Qaeda and the Taliban.Saudi officials let her speak to 150 detainees, most of whom waved her off. She found four men who would talk.A film still of the guard tower. Ms. Smaker envisioned the documentary as opening with accusations facing the men — bomb maker, bin Laden driver, Taliban fighter — and peeling layers to find the human.Meg SmackerThese conversations form the core of the movie and cut far deeper than earlier news reports. That did not dissuade critics. Ms. Disney, a titan in the documentary world, picked up on a point raised by the film’s opponents. “A person cannot freely consent to anything in a carceral system, particularly one in a notoriously violent dictatorship,” she wrote.This is a debatable proposition. Journalists often interview prisoners, and documentaries like “The Thin Blue Line” give powerful voice to them, without necessarily clearing this purist hurdle of free consent.Ms. Disney declined an interview request, saying she wished Ms. Smaker well.Lawrence Wright wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning book “The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11” and spent much time in Saudi Arabia. He saw the documentary.“As a reporter, you acknowledge the constraints on prisoners, and Smaker could have acknowledged it with more emphasis,” he said. “But she was exploring a great mystery — understanding those who may have done something appalling — and this does not discredit that effort.”To gain intimate access, he added, was a coup.Ms. Smaker envisioned the film as an unfolding, opening with American accusations — bomb maker, bin Laden driver, Taliban fighter — and peeling layers to find the human.Distrust yielded to trust. Men described being drawn to Al Qaeda out of boredom, poverty and defense of Islam. What emerged was a portrait of men on the cusp of middle-age reckoning with their past.Ms. Smaker asked one of the men, “Are you a terrorist?”He bridled. “Someone fight me, I fight them. Why do you call me terrorist?”Her critics argue that such questions registered as accusation. “These questions seek to humanize the men, but they still frame them as terrorists,” Pat Mullen, a Toronto film critic, wrote in Point of View magazine.Mr. Metzler of the San Francisco festival said a documentarian must ask questions that are on a viewer’s mind.The film in fact dwells on torture inflicted by Americans at Guantánamo Bay. Ali al-Raimi arrived at age 16. “Every day was worse than the last day,” he said.He tried to hang himself.“Nothing,” he said, “was worse than Guantánamo.”The men longed for the prosaic: marriage, children, a job. Khalid, a voluble man, was trained as a bomb maker; in the film, he said he now crafts remote-control car alarms in Jeddah. Ambiguity lingers.Success, InterruptedSundance announced in December that it had selected “Jihad Rehab” for its 2022 festival, held the following month. Critics erupted.“An entirely white team behind a film about Yemeni and South Arabian men,” the filmmaker Violeta Ayala wrote in a tweet.Ms. Smaker’s film had a Yemeni-American executive producer and a Saudi co-producer.More than 230 filmmakers signed a letter denouncing the documentary. A majority had not seen it. The letter noted that over 20 years, Sundance had programmed 76 films about Muslims and the Middle East, but only 35 percent of them had been directed by Muslim or Arab filmmakers.Sundance noted that in its 2022 festival, of the 152 films in which directors revealed their ethnicity, 7 percent were Middle Eastern. Estimates place Americans of Arab descent at between 1.5 and 3 percent.Sundance officials backtracked. Tabitha Jackson, then the director of the festival, demanded to see consent forms from the detainees and Ms. Smaker’s plan to protect them once the film debuted, according to an email shown to The Times. Ms. Jackson also required an ethics review of the plans and gave Ms. Smaker four days to comply. Efforts to reach Ms. Jackson were unsuccessful.The review concluded Ms. Smaker more than met standards of safety.Ms. Smaker said a public relations firm recommended that she apologize. “What was I apologizing for?” she said. “For trusting my audience to make up their own mind?”Prominent documentary executives said Sundance’s demands were without precedent.An executive who has run a major festival went so far as to write an email to Sundance cautioning that its demands of Ms. Smaker might embolden protesters. Festivals, the executive wrote, will ask “two, three, four times what are the headwinds” before extending an invitation.That executive had earlier invited Ms. Smaker to show “Jihad Rehab,” but she had declined as her film was not yet completed. This executive asked to remain anonymous out of concern of offending Muslim filmmakers.“Jihad Rehab” premiered in January; most major reviews were good. But Ms. Smaker’s critics were not persuaded.“When I, a practicing Muslim woman, say that this film is problematic,” wrote Jude Chehab, a Lebanese American documentarian, “my voice should be stronger than a white woman saying that it isn’t. Point blank.”Ms. Disney, the former champion, wrote, “I failed, failed and absolutely failed to understand just how exhausted by and disgusted with the perpetual representation of Muslim men and women as terrorists or former terrorists or potential terrorists the Muslim people are.”Her apology and that of Sundance shook the industry. The South by Southwest and San Francisco festivals rescinded invitations.Jihad Turk, former imam of Los Angeles’s largest mosque, was baffled. In December, his friend Tim Disney — brother of Abigail — invited him to a screening.“My first instinct,” he said, “was ‘Oh, not another film on jihad and Islam.’ Then I watched and it was introspective and intelligent. My hope is that there is a courageous outlet that is not intimidated by activists and their too narrow views.”An Elusive Happy EndingIn June, Ms. Smaker received another screening — at the Doc Edge festival in New Zealand.She hopped a flight to Auckland with trepidation. Would this end in cancellation? Word had leaked out, and Mr. Mullen, the Toronto film critic, tweeted a warning.“Oh wild — controversial Sundance doc Jihad Rehab comes out of hiding,” he wrote, adding: “Why would anyone program this film after Sundance? File under ‘we warned you!’”Dan Shanan, who heads the New Zealand festival, shrugged.“What happened at Sundance was not good,” he said. “Film festivals must hold to their belief in their role.”Ms. Smaker has maxed out credit cards and, at age 42, borrowed money from her parents. This is not the Sundance debut of her dreams. “I don’t have the money or influence to fight this out,” she said, running hands back through her hair. “I’m not sure I see a way out.” More

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      New York Drill Rappers Say They Were Removed From Rolling Loud Festival

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      At least three local artists were cut from the traveling rap show, scheduled for this weekend in Queens, at the request of the New York Police Department, their representatives said.At least three rappers with ties to the booming New York drill scene — which has risen in popularity in recent years, even as law enforcement officials and politicians like Mayor Eric Adams have questioned its relationship to local gun violence — have been removed from the lineup of the traveling rap festival Rolling Loud, scheduled for this weekend at Citi Field in Queens, at the request of the New York Police Department, the artists’ representatives said.The rappers included Sha Ek, a 19-year-old from the Bronx; 22Gz, an influential figure in Brooklyn’s drill movement; and Ron Suno, a musician and comedian from the Bronx.Rolling Loud, which is scheduled to run from Friday to Sunday, and the New York Police Department did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the rappers’ removal this week. But the last-minute cancellations matched a similar scenario ahead of the festival’s New York stop in 2019, when five artists, including 22Gz and Pop Smoke, had their performances scrapped.The rappers had “been affiliated with recent acts of violence citywide,” according to a letter sent by an assistant chief at the Police Department to the festival organizers at the time. “The New York City Police Department believes if these individuals are allowed to perform, there will be a higher risk of violence.”Tariq Cherif, a founder of Rolling Loud, said then that the festival had no choice but to comply if it wished to return to New York. A representative for Sha Ek and 22Gz said this week that the artists were paid in full for their performances.But on Thursday, Stanley Davis, a manager for Sha Ek who is known as Noodles, said in a statement that his client had not been charged with any crime that could justify his ban. “The police try to associate what he’s doing with violence and negativity,” he wrote. “They don’t respect that he’s an artist and entertainer trying to better himself and feed his family at 19 years old.”Davis added, “Sha Ek has performed all over the Northeast this year. The crowds at his concerts are full of kids dancing and having fun. He’s excited to keep growing his touring business and proving the police wrong.”Diamond Brown, a manager for Ron Suno who goes by Bo, said via text message: “How can a person who has no criminal record and no gang ties — the kid never even made a diss record — be denied to perform in his hometown after all his hard work?”Suno had been involved in a fight at last year’s edition of Rolling Loud in New York, but he downplayed the incident in subsequent interviews and on social media. No charges were filed.A spokeswoman for 22Gz’s record label, Atlantic Records, confirmed his removal but declined to comment further. 22Gz is currently out on bond after being charged in June with attempted murder for his role in a Brooklyn club shooting that injured three people.Drill, which started as a neighborhood hip-hop sound in Chicago about a decade ago, has since traveled to London, New York, Stockholm and beyond, becoming a dominant mode for rap music. But the proudly hyperlocal artists, whose songs are often a reaction to and a documenting of gun violence, gang disputes and extreme poverty in their hometowns, have also faced heavy scrutiny from community leaders and law enforcement officials, who claim that the music incites more violence.In the United Kingdom, drill artists have said their lyrics and their very existence have been criminalized, resulting in constant scrutiny. Chief Keef, one of drill’s pioneers and a breakout star from Chicago, has also been prevented from performing in his native city, or even nearby, with police once shutting down a concert in Indiana in which Keef was appearing only via hologram from California.In New York, Mayor Adams has questioned whether social networks should ban drill music from its platforms. “Violent people who are using drill rapping to post who they killed, and then antagonize the people who they are going to kill is what the problem is,” he told reporters earlier this year.The mayor then met with a coalition of New York rappers to discuss drill and potential ways to reduce gun violence in the city. Two of the drill artists who sat down with Mayor Adams in February — Fivio Foreign and B-Lovee — are still scheduled to perform at Rolling Loud this weekend.Since its 2015 debut in Miami, Rolling Loud has grown into the defining and farthest-reaching music festival for rap, though it has also been connected to spates of arrests and occasional violence. Headliners this weekend in New York include Nicki Minaj, Future, ASAP Rocky and Playboi Carti. More

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      A Last Taste of Summer Theater, as Paris Heads Back to Work

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      As offices and schools reopen, ParisOffFestival brings a carnival atmosphere to an area of low-income housing in the city.PARIS — “Dear neighbors!” an affable puppet called out from a third-floor window here last week. In the packed street below, a mix of theatergoers, local families and passers-by looked up. As more puppets appeared in the windows of an apartment building in the city’s south and addressed the crowd about loneliness and the “bitter pills” of daily life, the spectators murmured in approval.The strangely uplifting spectacle was part of ParisOffFestival, an annual event that began two years ago, but which already occupies a special niche in the Paris theater calendar. Run by the Théâtre 14 over three days in early September, it strives to keep the spirit of summer festivals going, even in the midst of “la rentrée,” the reopening of offices and schools that signals the end of the lengthy summer holidays in France.Seven theater productions, as well as readings, were performed during daytime hours in the courtyards of subsidized apartment buildings, in the Théâtre 14’s garden and at a local stadium, all a short walk apart. Also close by, the small pedestrian street where the puppets made their appearance acted as a welcome area for the public to hang out, with beer, cotton candy and loungers at the ready.All of the festival’s performances were free, a big investment from the small Théâtre 14, a city-run playhouse inaugurated in 1982, whose annual budget of around $800,000 is just a fraction of what the biggest stages in Paris receive.The Théâtre 14 used to keep a low profile, but since 2020, a new management team — the actor-director Mathieu Touzé and the arts administrator Édouard Chapot — has found creative ways to insert the institution into the national conversation, from partnerships with high-profile playwrights to yearly events like ParisOffFestival and Re.génération, a spring festival devoted to site-specific work.The first edition of ParisOffFestival, in the summer of 2020, was a quick-thinking response to the coronavirus pandemic. After the cancellation that year of the Avignon Festival, French theater’s biggest event, Touzé and Chapot offered their help to 15 companies that had been due to perform in the Avignon Fringe. The Fringe is known as “le Off” in French, hence the name of the festival, which has stayed, even as Avignon reopened for business.That first edition, Chapot said recently, allowed the new team to meet locals who had never set foot inside the Théâtre 14. While the red brick buildings in the area near the playhouse look, at first glance, like standard bourgeois Paris dwellings, the neighborhood is primarily composed of low-income housing developments. For many there, going to the theater is an unnecessary luxury, even when it’s just a few yards away.Florence Janas and Mathias Bentahar in “Florence & Moustafa.”Théâtre 14So ParisOffFestival takes theater to them instead, with additional funding coming this year from Paris Habitat, the city’s social housing authority. Last Saturday, two of the shows were staged in the courtyards of apartment complexes that Paris Habitat runs. As the mock wedding depicted in Guillaume Vincent’s “Florence & Moustafa” unfolded, a few people stepping out of their homes were stopped in their tracks and watched a scene or two, looking startled. (Others sped past, headphones firmly on.)For those paying attention, the selected shows proved engaging, with “Florence & Moustafa” an especially witty choice. It was designed as an offshoot of a much larger production, Vincent’s sprawling and extravagant “One Thousand and One Nights,” first seen at the Odéon playhouse in 2019. Like that show, “Florence & Moustafa” puts a contemporary spin on Arabic folk takes, but it requires only two actors, a table and a few props.The action started at the housing project’s gate. In full wedding attire, the performers, Florence Janas and Mathias Bentahar, welcomed audience members as the bride and groom might greet guests at a slightly unhinged reception. As they directed people to their seats, they traded thinly veiled barbs between declarations of love — and then asked someone in the first row to help them butter slices of toast.The audience didn’t get to share the food, but the interplay between Janas’s over-the-top unpredictability and Bentahar’s quiet confidence kept the proceedings lively. Like “One Thousand and One Nights,” “Florence & Moustafa” constantly slips between modern references and folk tales, which are interwoven as the characters’ back stories. Florence, we hear, tricked a former husband who had already married and disposed of seven wives; Moustafa found a magic lamp and squandered his three wishes, in a case of penis enlargement gone very wrong.That surreal energy carried over to some of ParisOffFestival’s other offerings. “Crust,” a one-man show starring the juggler Guillaume Martinet, made delightful use of the event’s backdrop. As the audience waited for him near the edge of a street, he peeked at us from behind parked cars, then sheepishly came closer wearing just white underwear and moon boots, like a curious alien, at once eager and scared.His supple juggling came as an extension of his loose-limbed stage character, catching props even as he spun, hung from window rails and crawled on the floor. When a photographer attempted to snap him up close, he played hide and seek, then climbed on top of a construction site container and continued his act there.Other productions felt more haphazard in their attempts to craft an overall narrative, including “The Windows,” the puppet show, which was designed by the company Les Anges au Plafond. Leaning out from the casements of a single building, the various characters — lonely inhabitants, a care services worker for the elderly and, inexplicably, some birds and a goat — never really made sense in relation to one another.“Divine Wind,” a one-man show directed by Cécile Bernot, brought a virtuosic performance from David Jonquières, a gifted mime who can also mimic cartoonish sound effects. While his imitation of a plane going down is uncanny, his attempt to retell a part of World War II history — the events of 1941 in the South Pacific — felt repetitive and came uncomfortably close to offensive caricature in its depiction of Japanese characters.Adrian Saint-Pol and Elsa Guedj in “Infinity Minus One.”Théâtre 14On the other hand, Luna Muratti’s “Infinity Minus One,” also staged in a housing project courtyard, never lost its sense of grace, despite being drowned out at times by gusts of wind and passing cars. The show was inspired by a young French poet, Alicia Gallienne, who died at the age of 20; her work was published posthumously in 2020 by her cousin Guillaume Gallienne, a star actor in France.Gallienne’s poetry is a lovely discovery, full of dreamlike visions and suspended non sequiturs addressed to an elusive other, and here it was ideally delivered by the actress Elsa Guedj, seen recently in the Netflix series “Standing Up,” with help from the flutist Adrian Saint-Pol. Guedj has that rare ability to convey emotions bubbling up without yet being fully formed.“I have eyes in the shape of departure,” she whispered early on, before addressing Saint-Pol, who doubles as the love interest in Gallienne’s poems. By the time she covered his eyes with her hands and closed hers, at the end of “Infinity Minus One,” the surrounding noise was forgotten. The summer festival season may be over, but this was a welcome encore. More

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      Italian Jewelry Houses Shine on Venice’s Red Carpet

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      Small independents emphasize their strengths at the film festival.Some of the biggest jewelry houses raise their public profiles as major sponsors of film festivals, like Chopard at Cannes, Cartier in Venice, and Bulgari, which is supporting the Toronto festival for the first time in September. But what are the options for small independent jewelers that can’t afford such expensive affiliations?Several Italian brands, including Nardi and Vhernier, have found opportunities on the red carpet at the Venice International Film Festival. The event, scheduled this year from Aug. 31 to Sept. 10, is also called Venice Mostra (in English, Show) and is part of the Venice Biennale art exhibition.“Big brands have monopolized film festivals,” said Alberto Nardi, a third-generation member of his family’s jewelry business. “We cannot compete, so we have to play with our strengths, which are, firstly, that we are here in Venice and, secondly, that we do something original, different.”Last year, for example, Cécile de France, a Belgian actress in the cast of “Illusions Perdues,” wore Nardi earrings to a festival photo call for the movie. The set was made of yellow gold and enamel, accented with turquoises and pink sapphires, and called Maschera (in English, Mask). Its design was inspired by rings decorated with masked faces in enamel that were popular in the 1700s in Venice.The actor Cécile de France wearing Nardi earrings accented with sapphires and turquoises at a photo call for the film “Illusions Perdues.”Yara Nardi/Reuters“We get close to talents we respect and who appreciate us and genuinely enjoy wearing our jewels,” Mr. Nardi said.The Milan-based brand Vhernier takes a similar approach. “We do not have any contracts, and we do not pay anyone. Celebrities who wear Vhernier do so simply because they like it,” Isabella Traglio, the brand’s deputy general manager, said in a video call.The house’s sculptural pieces — such as the rose-colored Verso ear clips worn by the English-French actress Stacy Martin at the festival in 2018, and the white gold Giunco bracelet worn by the Italian actress Matilde Gioli in 2016 — reflect the orientation of the house, which was founded by a sculptor and a goldsmith in 1984.Vhernier has had some big-screen exposure, too: Jane Fonda wore its styles in the 2018 movie “Book Club.” Usually, film producers ask jewelers to pay for such placement, but Ms. Traglio said the opportunity arose thanks to Ms. Fonda, who has often worn the brand, and there was no monetary transaction.The actress Stacy Martin wears Vhernier’s sculptural ear clips at the 75th Annual Venice Film Festival in 2018.Mondadori Portfolio, via Getty Images“We can’t and don’t play the game of big brands that usually go for big celebrities,” Ms. Traglio said. “We lean to emerging talents.”But sometimes such emerging talents can push a brand into the spotlight.“Brands that throw a piece of jewelry on someone will most likely never recover the investment,” Daniel Langer, chief executive of the brand development and strategy company Équité and a professor of luxury strategy at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif., wrote in an email. “However, if it is done smartly — if values align and enough content can be created and used on social media — then a single event is amplified into a bigger communication opportunity.”The Milan-based brand Rubeus said that was what happened last year when the house lent its Hexagon earrings and Cabochon ring set with sapphires, emeralds and diamonds to the Italian actress Benedetta Porcaroli for the Venice festival debut of “The Catholic School.”The buzz surrounding the controversial film, inspired by the 1975 kidnapping and murder of two young girls in Italy, attracted attention to the actress, who played a leading role, and to the jewelry on social media, as well as in Italian versions of Vogue and Elle. “Social media are taking the event closer to everyone and potential clients,” Nataliya Bondarenko, the company’s creative director, wrote in an email.As a result, the brand said, interest was revived in its inaugural high jewelry collection, which was introduced in 2019, but had little opportunity to be highlighted during the early days of the pandemic.Rubeus’s presence in Venice during such a prominent occasion also inspired the brand to create a set of fragrances and to continue a series of capsule collections of accessories and clothing begun in 2017 in collaboration with Tessitura Luigi Bevilacqua, a company specializing in fabrics that was founded in the 19th century in Venice.The Italian actress Benedetta Porcaroli at the 2021 Venice festival debut of “The Catholic School.”Claudio Onorati/EPA, via ShutterstockOf course, Venice has been a muse for large luxury houses, too. Last year, for example, Dolce & Gabbana showcased its high jewelry and haute couture collections in the city.And this year, to celebrate a philanthropic donation to restore a pulpit in St. Mark’s Basilica that was damaged by devastating floods in 2019, Pomellato is presenting a collection of rings made in porphyry, which will be available only in its Venice boutique (In 2021, the brand dressed Tiffany Haddish for the film festival’s red carpet.)“Venice is the most magical festival, but it is logistically tough,” the London-based stylist Aimée Croysdill wrote in an email. She has dressed Laura Haddock for Venice, and also has experience with the Oscars, the Cannes Film Festival and the British Academy Film Awards, commonly known as the BAFTAs.“Getting on and off jetties into bobbing boats means you cannot do huge heavy gowns that go on for meters,” she wrote. “That kind of opulence is usually kept for Cannes.”Such logistical difficulties are a boon for some Italian jewelry houses, like Crivelli, that know how to cope with the city’s complexities — and have earned reputations that ensure their creations won’t be replaced at the last minute.“Being close to Venice has allowed us to be present on the red carpet constantly, and this continuous engagement has strengthened our relationships with the talents and their entourage, who know that they can count on us,” Alessia Crivelli, marketing manager of the family business, wrote in an email. The house, known for its gold heart-shaped pendants, was founded by her father in the 1970s in the jewelry-making town of Valenza, between Milan and Turin, and has a flagship store in Milan.For the Venice festival, Crivelli accessorized the Norwegian film director and actress Mona Fastvold in 2020 and 2021, as well as Naomi Watts and Raffey Cassidy in 2018.Crivelli accessorized the Norwegian film director and actress Mona Fastvold for the 78th Venice International Film Festival in 2021.John Phillips/Getty ImagesThe relationship between the festival and small Italian jewelry brands may seem unusual, considering Cartier’s sponsorship role, but the French house appears to be more interested in the festival’s cultural connections than its red carpet opportunities. “Our partnership with La Mostra goes beyond the red carpet,” Arnaud Carrez, Cartier’s chief marketing officer, said in a video interview. He stressed how film is an art form that is close to Cartier, and how the festival provides a culturally rich platform to entertain clients and friends of the jewelry house.Roberto Cicutto, president of the Venice Biennale, echoed the comment in an email: “We are working together not only in terms of communication and hospitality for their guests, but also thinking about content,” referring to the Cartier Glory to the Filmmaker Award, a prize given to someone who is considered to have made a significant contribution to contemporary filmmaking. It was first awarded in 2007, but Cartier began presenting it in 2021.It is not unusual for brands to want to associate themselves with the art of film, Luca Solca, a luxury analyst at the research firm Sanford C. Bernstein, wrote in an email: “Art is seen as a blueprint for personal luxury goods, given its universal language and its disconnect to cost.”But Cartier undoubtedly was pleased last year when Jennifer Lopez appeared at the festival, draped in Cartier diamonds and Ben Affleck. According to an email from Alison Bringé, chief marketing officer of the media analytics company Launchmetrics, Ms. Lopez’s social media post about the visit was worth $2 million in media impact to Cartier.Yet, Mr. Nardi expressed sadness at how marketing machines have overwhelmed the magic of cinema — and of the jewelry world. “I think it debases our products,” he said.“I grew up listening to the stories of Elizabeth Taylor and Grace Kelly coming to Venice and buying jewelry in our store, but that world has now gone.” More