When I started attending the New York Film Festival, in the nineteen-eighties, it was a sprint to watch as many films as I could afford because many of them would never see a U.S. release. In this year’s edition (Sept. 26-Oct. 13), several of the films will come out soon after the festival ends, thus replacing urgency with sheer festivity. With its many sections and venues, the N.Y.F.F. seemingly turns Lincoln Center into a cinema city. This year, the festival’s glow is even more self-reflective than usual: some of its best offerings were made just a short jaunt from where they’ll be screened.
About Town
Avant-Pop
The Anglo-French experimental-pop group Stereolab—spearheaded by the co-founders Tim Gane and Lætitia Sadier—reunited in 2019 after nearly a d…
When I started attending the New York Film Festival, in the nineteen-eighties, it was a sprint to watch as many films as I could afford because many of them would never see a U.S. release. In this year’s edition (Sept. 26-Oct. 13), several of the films will come out soon after the festival ends, thus replacing urgency with sheer festivity. With its many sections and venues, the N.Y.F.F. seemingly turns Lincoln Center into a cinema city. This year, the festival’s glow is even more self-reflective than usual: some of its best offerings were made just a short jaunt from where they’ll be screened.
About Town
Avant-Pop
The Anglo-French experimental-pop group Stereolab—spearheaded by the co-founders Tim Gane and Lætitia Sadier—reunited in 2019 after nearly a decade away, and has not toured America since 2022. In February, the band announced that it would reissue seven of its albums and hit the road again, but the big news was a long-awaited new LP called “Instant Holograms on Metal Film,” its first in nearly fifteen years. The early Stereolab albums, from “Transient Random-Noise Bursts with Announcements” (1993) to “Dots and Loops” (1997), built a seamless yet boundary-pushing sound that transformed music of the sixties and seventies into neoclassical post-rock. The new album slots neatly into this lineage, as a heady kind of retro-futuristic easy listening that can put a spell on any room.—Sheldon Pearce (Brooklyn Steel; Oct. 1-2.)
Off Broadway
In the musical “Saturday Church”—directed by Whitney White—Damon Cardasis and James Ijames adapt Cardasis’s film from 2017: a lonely teen-ager, Ulysses (Bryson Battle), finds acceptance at a queer youth service despite the badgering of his homophobic aunt (Joaquina Kalukango). Repurposed songs by Sia and Honey Dijon pulse with ballroom energy, and Battle and Kalukango’s voices soar like larks, but the script sashays desultorily along as if it plans to add details later. Only when J. Harrison Ghee appears, playing a double role as a fan-snapping Black Jesus and a sympathetic pastor, do we sense the radical possibilities of a trans gospel. What if Christ said this is my body? What rapture!—Helen Shaw (New York Theatre Workshop; through Oct. 19.)
Art
“Här Steichen Version I,” from 2025.Art work by Lisa Oppenheim / Courtesy the artist / Tanya Bonakdar Gallery
Lisa Oppenheim pays homage to the artist Edward Steichen with a series of what appear to be solarized and psychedelically tinted studies of iris flowers. Since there are no photographs of the variety that inspired the work—the Monsieur Steichen iris, created in 1910 and now extinct—Oppenheim’s blooms are A.I. dreams, realized as dye-transfer prints with a decidedly acidic bite. With their flared, fringed petals, the flowers have a carnivalesque presence, but Oppenheim’s spare installation cuts the comedy. Freestanding screens, covered in fabrics printed in a nature-themed style that Steichen favored, are hung with framed prints appropriating or echoing his work, including several elegantly gesturing female hands. There’s magic here: Oppenheim brings a flower back to extravagant life, tricking and entrancing the viewer, who’s only too glad to fall under her spell.—Vince Aletti (Tanya Bonakdar; through Oct. 23.)
Classical
When Franz Liszt was at the zenith of his fame in the nineteenth century, his fans were so enthralled by his good looks and talent that his mere presence created an atmosphere of mass hysteria. Some devotees fainted at the sight of him. Others fought over locks of his hair. Will the winner of this year’s New York Franz Liszt International Piano Competition have the same effect? We’ll have to wait and see. The grand finale will take place this month, with four finalists vying for the twenty-five-thousand-dollar prize. The repertoire is limited to Piano Concertos No. 1 and No. 2, with accompaniment by the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. The next star may be rising.—Jane Bua (Carnegie Hall; Oct. 3.)
Off Broadway
Julia McDermott stars in “Weather Girl.”Photograph by Emilio Madrid
In Brian Watkins’s breathless one-woman play “Weather Girl,” directed by Tyne Rafaeli, the extraordinary Julia McDermott plays Stacey, an immaculately coiffed (but secretly alcoholic) morning-show personality, who cheerily informs her Central Valley audience about rising temps and falling air quality. After smiling through forecasts for a burning Los Angeles, Stacey’s shellacked surface cracks, and her storytelling spirals into a bizarre shaggy-dog story, in which she encounters her own estranged mother on the street, a lost woman who may know the miraculous answer to California’s killing dryness. Inevitably, the show’s end is apocalyptic, but it’s the beginning that hits harder. No supernatural fantasy can be as frightening as the hell we already know.—H.S. (St. Ann’s Warehouse; through Oct. 12.)
Dance
Gerald Arpino, a co-founder of the Joffrey Ballet, for which he served as house choreographer for more than two decades, did not get much respect from critics during his lifetime. His work, however, is having something of a comeback. Arpino’s interest in popular culture, athletic technique, and unapologetic emotionalism has found a new audience in the post-Balanchine world. His dances are particularly pleasing to those who find classical ballet stiff and unrelatable. The fortnight-long Arpino Dance Festival offers two programs, including the mournful “Round of Angels”—created in the early days of AIDS—and more classically inclined pieces such as “Birthday Variations” and the hippy-dippy (and very popular) “Light Rain.”—Marina Harss (Joyce Theatre; Sept. 30-Oct. 12.)
Bar Tab
Taran Dugal hits happy hour in Williamsburg.
Illustration by Patricia Bolaños
Sometimes names are misleading. Arabic numerals originated in India, Chinese checkers are German, white chocolate isn’t chocolate at all. The same does not hold for Pokito, a cozy dive in Williamsburg whose name is a misspelled version of the Spanish word for “little.” On a recent Monday, two patrons walked in during happy hour to find the place empty. An abundance of kitschy wall decorations (fuzzy dice, fake flowers, party streamers) gleamed under flashing lights, casting the room in lurid shades of pink and green. Behind the bar, a creaking dumbwaiter transported dishes up from the basement kitchen. Yelling over the jaunty wails of “Davy Crockett,” by Thee Headcoatees, the guests ordered from a menu of Latin- and Asian-inspired cocktails and small plates and, under sensory attack, opted to sit outside. First came the Toki Highball, a tart mix of Japanese whiskey, plum wine, and lemon-basil tea, topped with a lip-shaped ginger gummy. Thirst piqued, the duo stepped back in to request the Frozen Yuz + Me, a smoky, salt-and-cayenne-rimmed margarita, and chips with a zingy, carrot-based hot sauce. As the sun set and happy hour waned, the dedicated customers raced to the bar for a thirteen-dollar combo of Orion, a refreshing Okinawan lager, and a shot of Suntory whiskey. The drinks settled—perhaps too quickly—and the pair remembered that they had work the next morning. Groaning, they made yet another pilgrimage for one final, cautionary order: hummus, with tangy slices of sourdough from the Brooklyn-based Howling Bread bakery. Licking their fingers, they were soon joined by the bartender, on a smoke break. “Before you run back in,” he smirked, “can I get you anything else?” Red-cheeked and reticent, the duo shook their heads and took their sheepish leave.
This Week With: Kelefa Sanneh
Our writers on their current obsessions.
Chappell Roan at Forest Hills Stadium.Photograph by Ragan Henderson
This week, I loved seeing Chappell Roan at Forest Hills, on the first night of her eight-night, three-city mini-tour—and, apparently, the first night of Halloween. In front of what looked like a haunted house, she sang, strutted, slithered, caught an unexpected view of her own backside on the video monitor (“Oh, my God, I forgot my bottom was just a thong,” she said), and generally acted like the most entertaining pop star on the planet.
This week, I cringed at the uncomfortable face-off between Gervonta (Tank) Davis, the virtuosic lightweight boxer, and Jake Paul, the social-media star who has built a lucrative boxing career by having a punchable face, and also by being a better puncher than you might think. Davis is about five feet five and weighed 133.8 pounds before his most recent fight, while Paul is six-one and weighed 199.4, but no matter: they are scheduled to meet in November for a boxing match that is officially just an “exhibition,” to be aired on Netflix. Paul, shirtless, hulked over Davis, who had his hands in his jacket pockets and feigned boredom, as if the whole thing were beneath him. Maybe it is.
This week, I’m listening to “PACIFIC MODE mix003,” a mix by the Tokyo-based d.j. known as YELLOWUHURU, which is the musical equivalent of that emoji with two spirals for eyes and a squiggly-line mouth. For more than two hours, YELLOWUHURU cycles through warm and woozy variants of house music, with an emphasis on echoing sound, gentle cacophony, and noises that seem to be melting. Apparently, this mix was recorded at 5 A.M., but it’s perfect for any time you feel like getting lost.
This week, I’m still thinking about “Interesting Times,” the mesmerizing podcast from Ross Douthat, the New York Times columnist, which also earns that spiral-eyes emoji—but for very different reasons. Douthat talks to a wide range of guests, nudging them toward unexpectedly cosmic discussions of good and evil and the future of humanity. He asked Noor Siddiqui, the founder of a company that does genetic testing on embryos, what the human race might lose if we stop making babies the old-fashioned way. And he asked the technologist Peter Thiel if he ever worried about hastening the arrival of the Antichrist.
Next week, I’m looking forward to YoungBoy Never Broke Again—also known as N.B.A. YoungBoy—the Baton Rouge rapper whose mournful and sometimes beautiful tracks evoke a reckless life; videos of the chaotic atmosphere at his concerts have been going viral. I’ll be out of town when he hits New York (Saturday, Sept. 27), but I’m hoping to make it to the Prudential Center, in Newark, on Monday, Sept. 29.
P.S. Good stuff on the internet: