Tribeca In Review: Maintenance Artist, Little Monsters, The Hicks Happy Hour
An NYC doc gets its hands dirty and two effervescent shorts embrace change.
MAINTENANCE ARTIST
It takes a certain confidence to approach a crew of New York City sanitation workers at dawn and tell them you're an artist who believes their labor is a form of expression, but that's exactly what Mierle Laderman Ukeles did one morning in 1979. No surprise, her pitch — to show New York what life looks like from the perspective of "the people that keep it alive every single day" — was met with bleary stares. These men weren't necessarily hostile to the idea, just unaccustomed to appreciation.
To the uninitiated (like me), the remarkable beauty of Ukeles' work, as the only artist-in-residence for the New York City Department of Sanitation, lies in recognizing that its impact endures after forty years. Her projects invite participation; she assumes responsibility for our mess, joins those who clean it up, and elevates the process to an artistic endeavor. Her more notable pieces — which range from a gigantic Polaroid mural of janitors polishing a Manhattan high-rise to offering a handshake to every sanitation worker in the city to a mechanical ballet of municipal trucks that spans continents — showcase her dedication to the often-overlooked forces that keep society humming along every day.
Toby Perl Freilich's documentary Maintenance Artist finds Ukeles on the cusp of submitting her life's work to the Smithsonian Institution, a milestone that the artist feels indifferent about. It signifies a precursor to retirement, which feels off; in fact, the film sees the artist in mid-stride with her latest piece, "Landing," a cantilevered structure designed to reconnect New Yorkers with the marshes surrounding the Fresh Kills Landfill (since retired and rechristened Freshkills Park).
With co-writer Anne Alvergue, Freilich explores Ukeles' artistic philosophy. Her work, which props up labor done by the few and undervalued by the many, is the central theme of her oeuvre, which Freilich underscores with archival footage of sanitation workers expressing their astonishment at finally being seen and given a chance to air their frustrations. Their resentment about the city's "stopwatch" mentality that has long been imposed on their toil — shut up, do the work, and disappear — resonated with her then and still does.
Ukeles is a singular person and a terrific subject. Maintenance Artist explores this outlier among outliers: a mother among the nonconformists; an Orthodox Jew who skipped Friday night gallery openings to observe the Sabbath; a feminist who believed that second-wave feminism overlooked blue-collar women and women of color; and whose work appeared perpendicular to the provocative anti-male gaze movement pervasive at the time. It also examines her work as both a form of protest and critique, challenging the marginalization of the working class and criticizing the titans of the art scene who rely on this labor to create their great works. (Richard Serra captured her attention with his monolithic structures, which required anonymous workers, eclipsed by his grandeur, to haul and assemble them. "That's what bugged me," she says.)
Ukeles' work reached a new apex with the "Touch Sanitation" performance piece (from 1979 to 1980), where she shook hands with over 8500 sanitation workers, helping to humanize the public servants quietly toiling to keep the city clean. From dump to depot, from street sweeper to trash hauler, she shook hands with all of them; the film revisits those incredulous fellas at the beginning, who looked at this tall blonde in a jumpsuit reaching out to create communal art with both wariness and awe. They remind her that real change requires more than a handshake, and she agrees.
That ability to shift public and personal perception brings us back to Freshkills Park, which, fittingly, has Ukeles in a creatively reflective mood. "How does a place switch its meaning and become something else?" she asks. Perhaps the artist is too immersed in the work to see it, but the answer is people like Mierle Laderman Ukeles, who improve our lives for the better, often without us even realizing it, with creativity, persistence, and no small amount of elbow grease.
7.5 / 10
Maintenance Artist premiered at the Village East at Angelika on Sunday, June 8. For more info, click this.
Directed by Toby Perl Freilich.
Written by Toby Perl Freilich and Anne Alvergue.
95 mins. / Unrated. Archival NYC gets wonderfully salty.
LITTLE MONSTERS
A sweet and not-too-sentimental short about allowing the grace to be messy no matter how the world looks at you, Pablo Léridon's Little Monsters puts us in a small space where big things are afoot. Its events unfold almost entirely within the confines of a van — The Friendship Van, as lovingly dubbed by the hippie chauffeur, Agathe (Alice de Lencquesaing) — where Erwan (Samuel Kalambay Kunda), a teenage rapper with albinism and limited sight, has chosen to confess his crush on a popular girl at school. It's a big day, although he's too cool to show it. Now, if only Agathe would put the pedal to the metal! Love awaits.
But revelation, not arrival, is the function of Little Monsters. Erwan's posturing is a defense mechanism: he bristles at any reminder of his impairment and reserves special resentment for fellow traveler David (Oscar Bloess), the relentlessly chipper mush in a wheelchair, for all the right things he always says to Agathe, making him look like a grump by comparison. Erwan also resents how David seems so at ease about his life, even though he catches hell from bullies at school. "Be normal," is Erwan's unsolicited advice. Normal, as Erwan will soon learn to his sorrow, is subjective; trying to fit in is but a quick path to misery.
I won't spoil Léridon's short, and encourage you to see this marvelous little film as soon as you can. It's enough to say that David's monkeyshines during their trip soon lead to a personal revelation for Erwan and a subsequent change in itinerary for the Friendship Van; school becomes a distant thought, and the thrilling immediacy of now becomes paramount. Erwan won't woo that girl, and David won't be dunked in the school pool by his enemies, at least not today. Later, Agathe will have much to explain to her superiors, but that's a story for tomorrow. Today, Little Monsters run amok, gloriously themselves.
8 / 10
Little Monsters premiered as part of the “Mind & Body” series at the Shorts Theater at Spring Studios on Friday, June 6. For more info, click this.
Written and directed by Pablo Léridon.
Starring Samuel Kalambay Kunda, Oscar Bloess, Alice de Lencquesaing, and Gloria de Paris.
13 mins. / Unrated. Someone flips the bird.
THE HICKS HAPPY HOUR
The TV variety hour of yesteryear gets a bracing kick in the bell bottoms in Kate McCarthy’s The Hicks Happy Hour, a whirl-a-gig dramatic short in which a proto-Partridge clan appears to disintegrate before their live studio audience. The sense of familial and televisual stability feels off almost from the jump during the Hicks’ jubilant opening number, when a cut reveals where patriarch Richard (Adam Marchand) should be standing, playing keyboard with the same grin on his mug as the rest of his family. Thing is, Richard’s missing.
This alarming turn of events isn't news to co-star, mother, child wrangler, and crisis mitigator Jill (Phoebe Kuhlman), who powers through the first act before making a flurry of phone calls to locate her MIA husband. Meanwhile, her daughters (Ella Victoria and Charley Rowan McCain) sardonically take bets on whether Dad will show up at all while the plucky younger son (Tristan Wilder Hallett) frets over a loose front tooth. The immediate future of The Hicks Happy Hour, in every literal sense, is withering before her eyes, yet Jill remains sanguine. Will that be enough to get through the hour? More questions: How will Jill and Richard's precarious relationship affect her professional one with Gene (David Zaugh), the troubadour with hearts in his eyes who makes their onstage duet, "I Can Love You (Just Not Today)," land heavier than she can handle? Will there be a fourth season? How are the kids doing?
The film's fleet 17 minutes offer much to unpack, exploring professional, familial, and emotional responsibility, gender roles (one line, "Mom will take care of it," stings big-time), and fraught interpersonal relationships, all while maintaining its convincing throwback energy. Then there is its ticking-clock structure, exacerbated by a fed-up producer (Andre Hotchko) threatening to pull the plug, which McCarthy keeps at a tight simmer. Co-written with Michael Kefeyalew, the script juggles as much as Jill, deftly charting her path from panicked to righteously pissed, giving Kuhlman a substantial role that she embraces with a million-dollar smile. ("Stars stay smiling!" is her typical refrain, which takes on a mordant edge as her son's tooth continues to wiggle.)
McCarthy teases additional stakes at the very last minute — a lifeline tossed to Jill, who, despite frayed nerves, knows she and the kids deserve better. I won't reveal whether she takes it or not, but I will say that The Hicks Happy Hour shows wisdom in the face of disappointment. Here, failure isn't a setback but a feeling as sweet as ice cream.
8 / 10
The Hicks Happy Hour premiered as part of the “Showtime!” series at the Shorts Theater at Spring Studios on Thursday, June 5. For more info, click this.
Directed by Kate McCarthy.
Written by Kate McCarthy and Michael Kefeyalew.
Starring Phoebe Kuhlman, Ella Victoria, Charley Rowan McCain, and Tristan Wilder Hallett.
17 mins. / Unrated. Backstage patter becomes momentarily hostile.