Arts Fuse critics select the best in film, dance, and music that’s coming up this week.

By The Arts Fuse Staff

Film

The Happiness of Elza
November 1, 7:00 p.m.
BU Cinematheque, Boston University School of Communication, COM 101, 640 Commonwealth Ave, Boston, MA

A Parisian student returns to Guadeloupe to spy on the wealthy father whom she barely knows. This breathtaking family drama offers an insider’s view of a lush island culture. Gerald Peary’s free series brings Caribbean writer-filmmaker Mariette Monpierre in for a Q&A and to screen her acclaimed feature.

Birth of the Living Dead
Opens November 1, various times
Coolidge Corner Theater, Brookline, MA

Here is a unique Halloween-ish treat, which premiered at the Woods Hole Film Festival.The film features interviews, animamtions, and lots of clips. It shows how Romero gathered an unlikely team of Pittsburghers—policemen, iron workers, teachers, ad-men, housewives and a roller-rink owner—to shoot a revolutionary guerrilla style film that went on to become a cinematic landmark, offering a profound insight into how our society worked at a volatile time in American history.

Seduced and Abandoned
Various Times
HBO

The unpredictable director James Toback (Tyson, Harvard Man, Black and White) has directed a “warm tribute to the art of cinema set within an exploration of the greasy world of film finance.” Currently part of the HBO Documentary Series, the documentary features Alec Baldwin and Toback visiting the Cannes Film Festival for the purposes of acquiring financing for a “sexy ‘n’ political ‘n’ utterly non-commercial film” they want to make inspired by Last Tango in Paris. For film lovers this is a wonderful and humorous look at many aspects of the movie business.

The Boston Jewish Film Festival
November 6-18
Multiple Locations

BJFF celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary with feature films, documentaries, and the third annual Short Film Competition. The festival celebrates the richness of the Jewish experience through film and media. It is carefully put together gathering with films that often are only seen in Boston, others that go on to win awards, or both! Opening night is Wednesday with The Zigzag Kid with Isabella Rossellini. Thursday features One Small Hitch, a romantic comedy, the only screening of the documentary The Ceremony at the MFA, and the third Annual Short Film Competition at the Somerville Theater. The schedule for the remainder of the festival is at the site. Next week we will post some picks and reviews!

Lucky
November 7, 7:00 p.m. – Filmmaker Q&A
UMass Boston Campus Center, 3rd Floor, Ballroom, 100 Morrissey Boulevard, Boston, MA

This free documentary series, hosted by filmmaker Chico Colvard, presents Journalist Laura Checkoway screening her film, an intimate story of survival. The storyline that follows Lucky Torres, a homeless mother in New York City who, masked in tattoos, longs to leave a life of darkness.

— Tim Jackson

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Dance

Paul Taylor Dance Company
November 1-3
Citi Shubert Theatre, Boston, MA

On the cusp of its sixtieth anniversary (!), Paul Taylor’s splendid company returns with a repertory program that includes works from the classic Private Domain (1969) to the fresh off the drawing board Perpetual Dawn (2013).

Way In
November 2, 3:30PM
Tishman Commons in Lulu Chow Wang Campus Center, Wellesley College, Wellesley MA

Former Merce Cunningham colleagues Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener return to the area in a free sneak peek of a collaborative project with dance writer Claudia La Rocco that premiers in New York later this month. It will whet your whistle while anticipating their January 2014 appearances at the ICA in Performance.

And further afield…

Cirque Eloize in Cirkopolis
November 1 and 2
Providence Performing Arts Center, Providence, RI

Bring the family as these gifted Montreal acrobats, contortionists and trapeze artists explore and explode through a video-amplified industrial world of dark portals and menacing gears.

— Debra Cash

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Rock

My Bloody Valentine
November 7
House of Blues, Boston, MA

In February, Irish-shoegaze legends My Bloody Valentine released m b v, the long, long, long awaited follow-up to their 1991 masterpiece Loveless. Despite the wait, the new album received near universal critical acclaim upon its release, and it’s perhaps due in part to this success that leader Kevin Shields has said that the band will start working on a new album next year. In the meantime, you can get your My Bloody Valentine fix live at the House of Blues.

Upcoming…

Elton John (11/12/2013, TD Garden); Kanye West (11/17/2013, TD Garden); MGMT (12/5/2013, Orpheum Theatre); Queens of the Stone Age (12/13/2013, Agganis Arena); Dinosaur Jr. (12/14/2013, The Sinclair); Dinasour Jr. (12/15/2013, The Sinclair); The Breeders (12/18/2013, Paradise Rock Club); Jake Bugg (1/11/2014, House of Blues); Jay Z (1/18/2014, TD Garden); Pixies (1/18/2014, Orpheum Theatre)

— Adam Ellsworth

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Classical

Charles Dutoit at Symphony Hall, Part 1
Presented by the Boston Symphony Orchestra
October 31-November 5, 8:00 p.m. (Friday’s concert is at 1:30 p.m.)
Symphony Hall, Boston, MA

One of the BSO’s favorite guest conductors returns for the first of two programs he’s leading this season. This weekend he conducts Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin and Elgar’s Enigma Variations. In between comes Krzysztof Penderecki’s Concerto Grosso no. 1 for three cellos and orchestra, in honor of Penderecki’s eightieth birthday this year.

Grant Llewellyn conducts Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven
Presented by the Handel and Haydn Society
November 1 at 8:00 p.m. and November 3 at 3:00 p.m.
Symphony Hall, Boston, MA

The Handel and Haydn Society’s former music director returns with a concert of Classical era staples: Mozart’s Haffner Symphony, Beethoven’s Symphony no. 2, and Haydn’s Sinfonia concertante for Violin, Cello, Oboe, and Bassoon. But there’s rarely anything commonplace about H&H’s approach to this repertoire – if anything, they remind you what’s so great about it to begin with – and it’s especially hard to pass up a concert of theirs that features such a terrific roster of soloists (all drawn from the orchestra, by the way): violinist Aisslinn Nosky, cellist Guy Fishman, oboist Stephen Hammer, and bassoonist Andrew Schwartz.

200th Anniversary Opera Gala
Presented by Commonwealth Lyric Theater
November 3, 5:00 p.m.
Center Makor, Brighton, MA

Last season, perhaps the most impressive local opera production of the year was CLT’s presentation of Rachmaninoff’s Aleko. This year, the company begins its season with a bicentenary birthday bash that focuses on one usual suspect and two unusual ones: Giuseppe Verdi and the, respectively, Russian and Ukrainian composers Alexander Dargomyzhsky and Semyon Hulak-Artemovsky. As usual, the singers are drawn from a host of impressive venues (the Metropolitan Opera, the Bolshoi Theater, and so forth) and Lidiya Yankovskaya, who conducted that marvelous Aleko orchestra, again directs the proceedings.

Jeffrey Kahane conducts Mozart and Adams
Presented by New England Conservatory
November 6, 8:00 p.m.
NEC’s Jordan Hall, Boston, MA

The NEC Philharmonia has a number of programs well worth checking out over the course of this season. This one pairs Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 25, with Mr. Kahane as soloist, and John Adams’s extraordinary, slightly trippy Harmonielehre. What’s more, it’s free.

Charles Dutoit at Symphony Hall, Part 2
Presented by the Boston Symphony Orchestra
November 7-9, 8:00 p.m.
Symphony Hall, Boston, MA

Dutoit wraps up his appearances with the BSO this season with a performance of Benjamin Britten’s epic War Requiem. In keeping with the tradition begun by the composer, the three soloists hail from Russia (soprano Tatiana Pavlovskaya), England (tenor John Mark Ainsley), and Germany (baritone Matthias Goerne). Also appearing are the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and American Boy Choir. Shostakovich once called this the most important piece written in the 20th century, a difficult judgment with which to argue – come hear it for yourself and decide.

— Jonathan Blumhofer

András Schiff
Presented by Celebrity Series
November 1, 8:00 p.m.
NEC’s Jordan Hall, Boston, MA

The pianist András Schiff performs Bach’s Goldberg variations AND Beethoven’s Diabelli variations.

MIT Affiliated Concert
November 1, 8:00 p.m.
Elizabeth Parks Killian Hall, Rm. 14W-111, MIT Hayden Library Bldg, 160 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA

The MIT Music Department presents Heng-Jin Park, piano; Gabriela Diaz, violin; and Jing Li, cello. They will perform Beethoven’s Sonata for violin and piano, #4 in A Major, Mozart’s Duo for violin and viola in B flat, arranged for violin and cello, Beethoven’s Sonata for piano and cello #4 IN C MAJOR, OP. 102, #1, and Dvorak’s Piano Trio #3 IN F minor. Free.

Chameleon Arts Ensemble
November 2 (8:00 p.m.) and 3 (4:00 p.m.)
First Church in Boston, 66 Marlboro Street, Boston, MA

Chameleon Arts Ensemble presents “a vision so composed” works of Schumann: Märchenerzählungen for clarinet, viola & piano, Op. 132 “Fairy Tales”; Gary Kulesha, Bagatelles from The Devil’s Dictionary for wind quintet; Poulenc Trio for Oboe, Bassoon and Piano; Arensky Piano Trio in d minor; Laura Schwendinger: High Wire Act for flute, violin, viola, cello, and piano.

Beethoven Chamber Series
November 3, 4:00 p.m.
Emmanuel Church, Boston, MA

Pianist Sergey Schepkin plays Beethoven Sonata Op. 110 and Bagatelles, Op. 126. Pianist Katherine Chi plays Beethoven Diabelli Variations, Op. 120.

American Voices
November 3, 3:00 p.m.
West Parish Church, Andover, MA

Mistral (formerly known as Andover Chamber Music) presents American Voices featuring “Dover Beach” for Baritone and String Quartet, popular songs by George Gershwin and Cole Porter, and “Tough Turkey in the Big City” for ensemble and narrator.

Miroslav Kultyshev
November 5, 8:00 p.m.
Tsai Performance Center, 685 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA

Pianist Miroslav Kultyshev, Winner of the 2007 Tchaikovsky Competition, plays Beethoven Bagatelles, Op. 119; Schumann Fantasy in C Major; Chopin 24 Preludes, Op. 28. Free.

— Susan Miron

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Jazz

B.Mez
November 7, 8:00 p.m.
Outpost 186, Cambridge, MA

The Birdsongs of the Mesozoic trio of saxophonist Ken Field, guitarist Michael Bierylo, and synth man Rick Scott are joined by former Birdsongs bandmate (and Mission of Burma guitarist) Roger Miller. Everyone in the band is credited with “loops” or “computer,” so expect a heady night of electronic improv.

— Jon Garelick