Monday Night in Williamsburg: Moviehouse's CinemaParque presents JL Aronson's "Last Summer on Coney Island" at Sternberg Park

Tonight we walked a few blocks to Sternberg Park for another one of the wonderful Moviehouse CinemaParque presentations, a documentary by JL Aronson, Last Summer on Coney Island,

which Gothamist called "a timely analysis of the redevelopment of Coney Island that delineates fact from rumor in the future of this American landmark, while documenting the relationships and culture that have influenced it."

Monday Night in Williamsburg: Moviehouse's Cinema Parque presents "Sternberg Dances" at Sternberg Park

We've just walked up Lorimer Street from Sternberg Park, where we went to Moviehouse's final Cinema Parque presentation of this summer, Sternberg Dances, featuring the site-specific work of choreographer Ann Robideaux and her friends.

Here's the description of this fascinating project:

Local park-goers of all ages, encouraged by choreographer Ann Robideaux, participate in a community dance collaboration resulting in a montage of movement and other talents for the camera. Open to everyone, this site-specific dance film celebrates Sternberg Park’s unique personalities and social community in one of Williamsburg’s most historic parks.

The final project, to be edited by Chris Carlone features a fortuitous and spontaneous collaboration between Ann and Samantha Jakus who also dances for powerhouse dance company: Streb.

Also look for Megan Sipe, Rosa Maria Torres (pictured above), Musicworks, and a few other amazing dance improvisers on the camera.

Ann Robideaux has choreographed in numerous venues, and for film/television for many years and has recently been the co-artistic director of ann and alexx make dances, where she choreographed aboard two World War II lightships, on the steps of the Eldridge Street Synagogue and amongst the audience seating at Dance New Amsterdam. Working with various communities, Ann is loving the chance to meet new people while behind the camera in NYC through the Sternberg Dances.

It was really fun to watch, especially with some of the park's kids in the film sitting in the audience. There was popcorn, too.

Here is some raw footage of an awesome playground dance:

There was also a film of an expressive dance done at Dead Horse Bay, back in the neighborhood where we grew up back in the late '50s and '60s.

Jesse Neuman has this, mostly stills, from the footage:

After the films were shown, Chris Henderson led a Q & A with the filmmaker, choreographer and dancer.

It was a valuable project, and we're grateful we got to see it on such a beautiful night in Sternberg Park. Thanks so much to everyone involved.

Monday Night in Williamsburg: Moviehouse's Cinema Parque presents Four Films on Bushwick Artists at Sternberg Park

Tonight we walked the fourteen blocks down Lorimer Street to Sternberg Park, where Moviehouse launched its 2010 Cinema Parque series at the handball courts with the premieres of four new films featuring the life and work of the artists of Bushwick as captured during Arts In Bushwick's massive and entertaining Bushwick Open Studios.

Negesti Cantave, Isaac Shrem and Yanil Santana from Reel Works Teen Filmmaking

paired with Moviehouse favorites - filmmakers Graham Meriwether, Manuela Viera-Gallo, Leat Klingman and Albert Beniada - to produce movies about performance artist Jill Sigman/Thinkdance, painter Noa Charuvi, and the Merzbush installation at venerable gallery Norte Maar, as well as a short documentary film about female American and immigrant artists in Bushwick.

It looked as if it would rain - we took an umbrella - and the forecast of an impending bad thunderstorm caused a delay in the start by Moviehouse's Chris Henderson, who did a great job on the evening, introducing the films at the beginning and bringing on most of the filmmakers and artists at the end for a question-and-answer question.

While we were waiting, we watched a fast-moving basketball game through the chain-link fence.


The first film we saw was The Merzbush: elegies to Kurt Schwitters by Albert Beniada

For Bushwick Open Studios 2010, Norte Maar presented The Merzbush featuring the creative genius of several artists who revisited the ideal of the great Kurt Schwitters - whose work we've loved since a Midwood High School contemporary art class (yes, Schwitters was considered "contemporary" in 1967!) -

to "make connections between everything in the world." The project transformed rooms of an apartment into living sculpture.

Next up, Dragon Critic: Noa Charuvi via Monsieur Cheri by Leat Klingmann & Yanil Santana, made us think and laugh.

Born in Jerusalem, Israel, Noa moved to New York City to pursue a Master’s degree in Fine Arts at the fabulous School of Visual Arts (did we mention we started teaching there in 1979?). After completing her studies, Noa stayed in Brooklyn where she currently lives and works. She was interviewed by the esteemed art dragon critic Monsieur Cheri.

We were really impressed with Noa's work and the thoughtfulness, particularly dealing with the political aspects of art, involved in creating it. Sometimes the hand puppet's thick French accent made the dragon's words hard to understand for us, but we loved the concept. (But then we once taught a class in consitutional history with the help of a sock puppet.)

After that portrait of an Israeli-American artist, we were fascinated by Immigration, Women & Art by Manuela Viera-Gallo and Isaac Shrem, which looked at the lives and work of a couple of innovative Bushwick artists. Unfortunately, we didn't write down their names that quickly, but some of them were present. But we weren't sure if the typo in the shot above was deliberate or just a problem of lack of proofreading. (This is what happens when you've taught first-year comp for 35 years.)

We've also taught classes in immigrant literature, so it was instructive for us to see how visual artists who come here out of different cultures, like that of Korea, use the differences in their lives in their work.

Finally, we liked jill sigman/ thinkdance by Graham Meriwether and Negesti Cantave,

about choreographer Jill Sigman, who in 1998 founded jill sigman/thinkdance, which presents conceptual dance that asks questions through the medium of the body. Following in the tradition of European dance theater, Sigman creates work rich in bold images and multi-media elements.

She transforms simple actions like walking on eggshells, sliding down the stairs, and eating hot pink roses into complex statements about self, society, and human experience.

Monday also began Moviehouse's new DIY film production experiment with The Filmshop Collective, whose members brainstormed ideas with the Moviehouse audience to pick a setting, characters, and genre of a short film which to be produced by the FilmShop and a selected audience member in time for the August 9 Moviehouse event. After audience suggestions, the film will be a romantic comedy about an undertaker and a census taker set in a candy store.

Moviehouse collecting footage of the park for inclusion in Little Dances Everywhere's interactive multi-media time capsule that will debut at Cinema Parque on August 23 here at wonderful Sternberg Park. Thanks to Moviehouse and all the filmmakers and artists involved in making this a great event. And, walking back up Lorimer Street with our umbrella, we were glad we never had to open it tonight.

Tuesday Afternoon in Williamsburg: Fun at Sternberg Park

We walked down Leonard Street on this gorgeous afternoon to Sternberg Park to just enjoy the great weather and watch people playing football (on the basketball court, with a miniature ball),

basketball (on the basketball court, where this kid shooting hoops was soon joined by others in a pickup game),

handball (on the Lorimer Street side)

baseball

(with the towers of Most Holy Trinity in the background),

and soccer (on the Leonard Street side), and

swinging,

sliding,

texting,

buying ices

and ice cream,

and sitting on benches asking us if we wanted to read the Bible with them.

We politely declined and found that there was still room for us to sit and read Shakespeare.

From the park's website:

The City of New York acquired this property on May 15, 1919. Although the Board of Aldermen (predecessor to the City Council) approved the site for a park that year, it was not without some controversy. New York City was suffering a housing shortage and the block between Boerum, Leonard and Lorimer Streets was described as one of the most congested in Brooklyn, being occupied by “187 families, 43 stores, 2 factories, 1 garage, 1 stable, and 1 candy store.” After much debate, the City Comptroller’s Office decided in 1924 that the playground was a much needed addition to this densely populated area and demolition of the existing buildings occurred.

Originally known as the Williamsburg Park, in 1925 the Board of Aldermen officially named it Lindsay Park, in honor of George H. Lindsay (1837-1916), a congressman representing Williamsburg from 1901 to 1913. The area surrounding the park underwent massive reconstruction, with the creation of the Lindsay Park Houses and the rebuilding of the George H. Lindsay School (P.S.250) in 1964. The original 1.84-acre park was expanded by local law in 1964 adding over two acres to the park in connection with the Urban Renewal Plan.

In October 1990, a local law renamed this park and playground for Frances Hamburger Sternberg (1920-1990), a New York native and active Brooklyn community member who contributed extensively to the social and political life of the Greenpoint and Williamsburg neighborhoods. Her life of philanthropy included chairing the Friends of Lindsay Park (this park’s previous name) Committee.

Having been active in civil defense in World War II, Frances Hamburger became an accountant and bookkeeper, making her professional skills available to many neighborhood groups. Among the numerous positions she held in community organizations were chairmanship of the Anti-Crime Committee, and membership on the boards of the Lindsay Park Houses, the Greenpoint Hospital, and the Greenpoint-Williamsburg Coalition. Her political activities included serving as chairperson of Community Board 1 from 1977 to 1978, and working as a campaign advisor to State Assemblyman Joseph Lentol and City Council Member Isaac Noel Robles. Frances Hamburger married Dr. Henry Sternberg, another active community member.

We'll be back to Sternberg Park, and we hope that the dog run construction is done soon and that Moviehouse and Open Space Alliance will again be showing some CinemaParque films on summer nights.