The Red Hook Film Festival opens this weekend featuring movies from Brooklyn filmmakers. The screenings begin at 1pm on Saturday Oct. 3rd, with a special tribute film titled “Robert Guskind: 1958-2009″ by Blue Barn Pictures, followed by a 10th anniversary screening of the seminal Brooklyn documentary “Lavendar Lake: Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal” directed by Alison Prete. The rest of the weekend will feature several blocks of short film gems from Brooklyn, New York City, and beyond. Films include pieces about a Bushwick tailor, rooftop farms in Greenpoint, the Atlantic Yards boondoggle, Coney Island’s lost roller coaster, Williamsburg industry, Urban Explorers under Queens, lesbians in the Bronx, a Manhattan balloon deliveryman, an abandoned Connecticut insane asylum, and a city symphony set in L.A. More info at http://www.redhookfilmfest.com

Looking forward to this weekend’s art festival in DUMBO, always a lot to see and do. More information is available at http://dumboartfestival.org/press_release.html. I’ll be putting together a special photo essay at www.ArtinBrooklyn.com next week. Be sure to stop in and see the work of Randall Stoltzfus who I profiled earlier this year. He’s located at 89 Bridge Street, maps are available on the street during the event.

Just finished reading the book Museum: Behind The Scenes At The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Danny Danziger. Danziger interviews museum employees, from maintenance staff to trustees, creating a uniquely intimate profile of the institution. Many people talk about favorite works and exhibits but they also reveal their personal stories and paths to working at the museum. More than just caretakers, they bring life and vibrancy to one of the city’s most popular venues. Very interesting and absorbing read, great for the subway.

Monet’s Water Lilies are back at MOMA. They’re spectacular pieces. Pollock had to be thinking of Monet while dripping his buckets of industrial paint onto canvas. The scale is comparable – I loved when they used to hang the two paintings facing each other, creating a dialogue across the years. Somehow works of art, while being unique products of their respective eras, also have the ability to transcend time. Monet’s brushwork dazzles. The studies crackle with whips of paint depicting flowers and grass, swirling as if alive. Densely clotted surfaces serve as perfect grounds for shocking strokes of pink outlining flowers adrift on the pond’s surface. The Japanese bridge emerges from a tangle of rust and yellow. Monet elevates the brushstroke to the same level of importance as the subject, beginning the drift towards art for art’s sake.

Water is one of the more challenging surfaces for an artist to depict. The constant shimmer of rippled light does not lend itself easily to a static surface. Movies are another story. Last night I saw the animated film Ponyo by Hayao Miyazaki. The movie is freely adapted from Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Little Mermaid”. Miyazaki’s films inhabit the strange and wondrous space of fairy tales. He draws the ocean as a living being, magical creatures manifest themselves as waves, ancient sea beasts swim freely through the waters of modern Japan. The most beautiful landscapes you could imagine at 24 frames per second.

PBS has a new show in celebration of the 400th anniversary of the Dutch settling New York. It’s by Barry Lewis, the same historian that does the walking tours of various NY neighborhoods. The concept is similar, he walks through various areas pointing places of historic significance. Although this show also travels outside of the city to Albany. If you’re interested in the early history of NY or the US (as various aspects of Dutch culture were essential in the formation of American values) watch this show.

http://www.thirteen.org/dutchny/