Tribeca in Astoria
34 JUNE 2 0 2 1
Photo courtesy of NYC Parks
Photo: Jun Miki
A $400 million film studio is not the only thing that
legendary actor Robert De Niro is bringing to Astoria.
Tribeca Film Festival, which De Niro co-founded
in 1989, will present free community screenings in
Astoria Park next month using a traveling 40-foot,
state-of-the-art LED cinema screen.
“Our founding mission is even more relevant today
and we wanted to ensure that we could reach all
corners of New York,” Tribeca Festival Co-Founder
and CEO Jane Rosenthal said. “Tribeca was started
to bring people together, and that’s what we aim to
do again this year: to connect communities across
all five boroughs and share our festival experience,
safely, while supporting local businesses.”
De Niro is building his Wildflower Studios at 87
19th Ave., a former piano storage facility for Steinway
& Sons. In addition to Astoria Park, the Tribeca
Film Festival is also coming to two other Queens
parks: Flushing Meadows Corona Park and the 30th
Street Playground in Far Rockaway. There will also
be screenings in Brooklyn and the Bronx.
Tribeca’s Astoria Park film screenings are as follows:
• Saturday, June 19: “Selma,” 2:30 p.m.
• Saturday, June 19: “Just Another Girl on the IRT,”
5:30 p.m.
• Saturday, June 19: “Daughters of the Dust,”
8 p.m.
• Sunday, June 20: “James and the Giant Peach,”
3 p.m.
• Sunday, June 20: “Love and Basketball,” 5 p.m.
For more information and a list of the screenings,
visit the Tribeca Film Festival website at
tribecafilm.com.
“There is no greater hub for diversity, culture or
the arts than the ‘World’s Borough,’ making it the
perfect host for a festival as significant and as quintessentially
New York City as Tribeca,” Queens Borough
President Donovan Richards said. “Queens
is thrilled to celebrate 20 years of Tribeca with a
wide selection of fantastic films for our families from
Rockaway to Astoria and beyond to enjoy as one
Queens community.”
ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT
Legends of LIC
Isamu Noguchi
BY GREATER ASTORIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Artist Isamu Noguchi, who
founded and designed The
Noguchi Museum in Long Island
City, had a Japanese father
and an American mother.
Rather this being a source of
confusion and uncertainty, his background
enabled him to be a citizen of
each world. He seamlessly drew from
both cultures to combine the best
that each had to offer.
In traditional Japanese culture, there
is a keen sense of seeing the beauty of
art in nature. “Everything is sculpture,”
Noguchi once said. "Any material,
any idea without hindrance born into
space, I consider sculpture.” Noguchi’s
wide range of talents echoes this as he examined ceramics, ink painting,
woodworking and, of course, sculpture.
Noguchi, who went to school in Indiana, identified as a “Hoosier"
for the rest of his life. His spirit of adventure and curiosity stamped his
personality unquestionably as American.
“We are a landscape of all we have seen,” he said.
Over the next 60 years, he traveled around the world, absorbing experiences
and developing a new understanding of the myriad forms
of human expression. He said, “I am always learning, always discovering.
Art should become as one with its surroundings.”
His endless search on the foundations of modern art and vast
knowledge in so many spheres of his discipline was seldom matched.
He hit his stride when he moved into work with rock, primarily with
granite and basalt. In that medium, Noguchi felt that he could convey
something that was permanent and immortal.
“In my work, I wanted something irreducible, an absence of the gimmicky
and clever,” he once said.
Most of his life held one constant: movement. He traveled from one
atelier to the next, having work rejected as often as it was lauded.
Between major gigs, he did portraiture, drawing upon his vast knowledge
to move ever forward into his art, his passion.
“I perceive my limitations even as work. There are times when I see
nothing but restrictions, barriers. Learning takes time,” he said.
In 1961, he moved to Long Island City and purchased space for a
museum in 1974. After renovations, he opened the location as the
Noguchi Museum in 1985. He died in 1988.
The respected arts organization Public Delivery summed up his work
and the man: “The blend of Western and Eastern cultures, modern and
traditional life, organic and geometric alignment of nature are some of
the efforts Isamu Noguchi made to create tranquility in his work.”
“To order space is to give it meaning. Appreciate the moment,” Noguchi
said.
BY BILL PARRY
Greater Astoria Historical Society
44-02 23RD ST. #219
LONG ISLAND CITY, NY 11101
INFO@ASTORIALIC.ORG / WWW.ASTORIALIC.ORG
718-278-0700
/WWW.ASTORIALIC.ORG
/tribecafilm.com
link
link
