For three years, Italian artist Andrea Mastrovito and a dozen assistants have slaved away on NYsferatu: a Symphonie of a Century, a remake of the 1922 vampire classic Nosferatu, but made out of 35,000 hand-drawn pictures. “This movie is my second wife right now,” Mastrovito told us. “We are always together, me and NYsferatu. And even if I love it, I love and hate it. NYsferatu has sucked my blood.”
At last, this Monday, the film will premiere at Pier 63.
With the 50th anniversary of the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair upon us, the Queens Museum has unveiled a new exhibit featuring everything from one of the animatronic brontosauruses from GM’s “Futurama” attraction to a Bell System Picturephone that was created way before FaceTime.
If you’re a fan of Mad Men–era NYC you should definitely see the exhibit, on view till Oct. 18, along with the museum’s long-term display of over 900 smaller artifacts from the fair. But let’s face it, all of the ephemera can’t do justice to what was truly a mind-blowing extravaganza made up of 150 fantastically designed pavilions offering everything from utopian visions of the future, to Jurassic Park-style dinosaur battles, to canoe rides through replicas of exotic island paradises — not to mention, of course, the Unisphere and the Panorama, among the few attractions that outlasted the fair.
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Not all puppets sit around downing booze and pills; some aspire to art and activism! And this month, you’ll have a few opportunities to hang with those high-minded puppets.
First, tonight, Anthology Film Archives plays tribute to Bread & Puppet Theater on the occasion of the troupe’s 50th anniversary. Fittingly enough, the company was based out of Anthology’s building on Second Avenue back in the ’60s, when its 20-foot-tall papier-mâché puppets, masked actors, and brass band music were fixtures at anti-war protests. Tonight at 7:30, the troupe’s founder and director, Peter Schumann, along with past and present members, will present live performances as well as films and recently unearthed footage featuring the B&P.
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