Arts and Entertainment
September 28, 2023
From: Real Art WaysThank you to everyone who attended and supported our fall fundraising event, Get on Board. We loved being able to celebrate Real Art Ways and the community with you all!
Congratulations again to our four Realie Award recipients, and thank you for all that you do for our community!
Cinema
Opens Friday, 9/29!
Stop Making Sense
For its 40th anniversary, experience/re-experience the (arguably) greatest concert film of all time. Director Jonathan Demme captures the frantic energy and artsy groove of Talking Heads in this concert movie shot at the
Hollywood Pantages Theatre in 1983.
“Truly captivating.” – Empire Magazine
“It’s a treat for fans…and a chance for the uninitiated to tune in to the band that has come to personify postmodernist rock ‘n’ roll.” – Washington Post
“Stop Making Sense successfully captures almost everything that was great about the Talking Heads, and there’s no better endorsement of a concert film than that.” – Austin Chronicle
100% on Rotten Tomatoes
Opens Friday, 9/29!
Exhibition on Screen:
Mary Cassatt: Painting the Modern Woman
Presenting her astonishing prints, pastels and paintings, this film introduces us to the often-overlooked Impressionist whose own career was as full of contradiction as the women she painted. She printed, sketched and painted dozens of images of mothers and children yet she never married or had children herself. She was a classically trained artist but chose to join a group of Parisian radicals – the Impressionists – a movement that transformed the language of art. She was as much a part of the group as Degas, Monet or Renoir.
The world’s most eminent Cassatt curators and scholars reveal a riveting tale of great social and cultural change; a time when women were fighting for their rights and the language of art was completely re-written. Mary Cassatt and her modern women were at the heart of it all.
“A luminous, fascinating look at the life and times of Mary Cassatt.” – Sydney Arts Guide
Opens Friday, 9/29!
Piaffe
Introverted and unqualified, Eva is unexpectedly tasked with foleying the sound for a commercial featuring a horse. As she slowly acclimates to the new job, her obsession with creating the perfect equine sounds grows into something more tangible. Eva harnesses this new physicality, becoming more confident and empowered, and lures an unassuming botanist into an intriguing game of submission.
In German with English subtitles.
“The occasional exposure flares and soundtrack sync pops reminds us this is a movie, but also that we’re watching what’s raw and possible in art and life, that it’s good to be open to wherever images and sounds may take us.” – Los Angeles Times
“The film’s provocations have a playfulness and generosity that are enormously appealing.” – The New York Times
“A narrative that maintains a stolid demeanor even as it takes the oddest turns.” – RogerEbert.com91% on Rotten Tomatoes
Last Days Wednesday 9/27 and Thursday 9/28!
The Miracle Club
Starring Maggie Smith, Kathy Bates, & Laura Linney.
“The Miracle Club is a sincere and meritorious effort, enhanced by John Conroy’s beatific cinematography that vividly captures the quiet stoicism of rural Ireland.” – Observer
“…it does a fine job of dramatizing the healing power of forgiveness.” – The Wall Street Journal
Last Days Wednesday 9/27 and Thursday 9/28!
Scrapper
This vibrant and inventive father-daughter comedy follows Georgie, a resourceful 12-year-old girl who secretly lives alone in her flat in a working class suburb of London following the death of her mother. Out of nowhere, her estranged father Jason arrives and forces her to confront reality.
“Watching these two mutually suspicious strangers stumble toward forming a family makes Scrapper an invigorating treat, like finding wild flowers bursting out of broken pavement.” – Wall Street Journal
“Scrapper, which seeks to parse through the fears felt in grief, change, and maturation, is full of rare heart, a spunky embrace of ambitious empathy.” – RogerEbert.com
“A smart, sensitive debut and a promising arrival for its talented director [Charlotte Rega].” – indieWire
93% on Rotten Tomatoes
Last Days Wednesday 9/27 and Thursday 9/28!
Jules
“…reminds us that the tribulations of getting old are more natural than sad, and best done in the company of loved ones.” – Washington Post
“Featuring sterling performances from an uncharacteristically underplaying Ben Kingsley alongside Harriet Sansom Harris and Jane Curtin, Jules emerges as a low-key delight.” – Hollywood Reporter
Last Days Wednesday 9/27 and Thursday 9/28!
Exhibition on Screen: Hopper: An American Love Story
Combined with expert interviews, diaries and a startling visual reflection of American life, Hopper – An American Love Story brings to life one of America’s most influential artists, Edward Hopper. Countless painters, photographers, filmmakers and musicians have been influenced by his art – but who was he, and how did a struggling illustrator create such a bounty of notable work?
This new film takes a deep look into Hopper’s art, his life, and his relationships. From his early career as an illustrator; his wife giving up her own promising art career to be his manager; his critical and commercial acclaim; and in his own words – this film explores the enigmatic personality behind the brush.
Save the Date!
Friday, 10/6 6pm
Mark Your Calendars!
CT Lit Fest
Saturday, 10/14
10am-6pm
A free literary festival that includes readings, panels, open mic, a book fair, food trucks, music, and a type writer gallery!
Featuring more than 30 writers including:
Wally Lamb, Victoria Buitron, Sean Frederick Forbes, Catina Bacote,
Steve Ostrowski, Frederick-Douglas Knowles II, Lara Ehrlich,
Margaret Gibson, Julien Strong, José B. Gonzalez, Hirsh Sawhney,
Janae Marks, Susan Campbell, Sarah Darer Littman, Natasha Grambell, Bessy Reyna, Ryan Parker, and Connecticut Poet Laureate
Antoinette Brim-Bell, plus readers from the 2023 CT Literary Anthology and a live recording of Writer Mother Monster Podcast.
In Our Galleries:
Burn the Midnight Oil
This installation from Chinese-American artist Ying Ye incorporates ingredients from her family's restaurant, China Eagle in Ellington, including soy sauce, soy bean paper, tofu skin, soy beans, along with a bicycle sculpture. As an immigrant to the United States, Ye explores her Chinese-American identity through painting, sculpture, and performance.
Ying Ye will be delving deeper into this work and her artistic practice during an artist talk with Billie Lee from the Hartford Art School on Thursday, October 5th at 5:30pm.
Ying Ye is the recipient of a 2022 Real Art Award.
Ayiti, I Saw It In A Dream
This photographic exhibition spotlights the diversity and complexities of Haitian identity and communities. Originally from Port-au-Prince, Steven Baboun cherishes his homeland of Haiti as a playground for self-exploration, an arena for political analysis and dissection, and a space for world-building outside of the Western gaze. This installation allows the viewer to enter Baboun's Haiti, a state between dreaming and consciousness, between Haiti today and the dream of a utopian Haiti for all Haitians.
Steven Baboun is a recipient of a 2022 Real Art Award.
El Disco Es Cultura
Adrian Martinez Chavez's exhibition focuses on labor, love, celebration, and migration, and what it looks, sounds, and feels like to experience Mexican culture in the Northeast of the United States, using images of his father in his family's restaurant, Monte Alban Restaurant, in Hartford.
Adrian Martinez Chavez is a recipient of a 2022 Real Art Award.
We Love Our Members!
When you become a member of Real Art Ways, you become part of an ever-growing and immersive arts community right here in Hartford.