Film Theory

Agenda is Tablet Magazine’s weekly listing of upcoming cultural events.

East Coast: Irene Nemirovsky gets the star treatment with a discussion of her life and works at Barnard College Tuesday (Sept. 27, 7 p.m., free). Vanessa Davis and other female comics artists take center stage in the Yeshiva University Museum exhibition “Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women” (through April 15, free with museum admission). Park 51, the Islamic Community Center in downtown Manhattan, is showing photography of immigrant children living in New York City (free). Yoko Ono’s art, created pre-John Lennon and also in collaboration with the Beatle, is on display at Stony Brook University’s Staller Center gallery (through Oct. 15, free).

The New York Arab American comedy festival kicks off this weekend, with headliner shows Tuesday and Wednesday at the Gotham Comedy Club (Sept. 27 and 28, 8 p.m., $20). Off-Broadway Week runs Monday through Oct. 9.: Don’t miss Long Island native Adam Kantor in Avenue Q. Tovah Feldshuh takes Westchester with her new one-woman show, Aging Is Optional (Sept. 24, 3 p.m. and 8 p.m., $65). Not optional is keeping your regrets bottled up: 10Q hosts a confessional event Tuesday, at Manhattan’s Drom (Sept. 27, 8 p.m., from $7).

Saveur magazine’s Gabriella Gershenson wrangles Dine Out Irene, an eat-out event in and around New York City where a percentage of your check goes to New York farmers (Sept. 25, reservations recommended). Iraqi-Jewish artist Michael Rakowitz, best known for his cooking-slash-teaching-slash-art project Enemy Kitchen, will take up residence at the ever-morphing restaurant Park Avenue Autumn, where he will follow in Marina Abramovic’s creative footsteps and collaborate with chef Kevin Lasko on something that might taste good.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art hosts the excessively titled event, “Interfaith Forum: A Catholic, Jewish, Muslim and Protestant conversation about Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus at the Philadelphia Museum of Art,” presented with the nearby National Museum of American Jewish History and featuring JTS Chancellor Arnold Eisen (a Tablet contributor) as one of the speakers (Sept. 25, 2 p.m., $13.50). Philly also celebrates Oktoberfest (Sept. 24, 12 p.m., free). Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt hits up the Harvard bookstore in Cambridge, Mass., to discuss his new book The Swerve and the rise of humanism (Sept. 26, 7 p.m., free).

West Coast: Steven Spielberg’s epic boy-meets-alien film, E.T., screens at the trendy but controversial Hollywood Forever Cemetery on Saturday night, with a live DJ before and after to minimize the creep factor. Bring your own Skittles (Sept. 24, 8 p.m., $10). The Last Bookstore in L.A. is hosting a “literary vaudeville event” called “5 Jews You Might Not Want to Invite for Passover”—one of whom may or may not be Spielberg (Sept. 25, 2 p.m., free). Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills reveals its new sanctuary and social hall Saturday with a dessert reception (Sept. 24, 7 p.m., free).

In Between: The Art Institute of Chicago exhibits “Bertrand Goldberg: Architecture of Invention,” featuring more than 100 drawings, models, and photographs from the famed architect of Chicago’s Marina City apartment towers (through Jan. 15, 2012, $18). Kansas City, Mo., just unveiled the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, a $413 million downtown anchor project that looks part Dyson vacuum cleaner and part spaceport. The 20th anniversary of 1991’s Slacker gave the Milwaukee Art Center an excuse to finally get around to a Richard Linklater film series, which runs through next month. The cult classic screens Saturday (Sept. 24, 7:30 p.m., $8). Polish band Dikanda plays the Lotus World Music and Arts Festival in Bloomington, Ind., this weekend (Sept. 24, 10:30 p.m., from $37).

Abroad: The Klezmatics continue their 25th-anniversary world tour with a stop in Prague Tuesday at the Plac Akropolis (Sept. 27, 7:30 p.m., $26). The Tel Aviv Museum of Art brings the work of well-known local graffiti artists to a more institutionalized setting for “Inside Job: Street Art in Tel Aviv” (free). The Jerusalem Post weighed in on burgers and determined that one of Tel Aviv’s five best are to be had at Wolfnights. Jerusalem’s Eden Hotel hosts a pre-Rosh Hashanah market, where vendors will be selling olive oil, organic fruits, and cakes, with live jazz (Sept. 26, 5-8 p.m., free).

Anywhere: Suburgatory, the latest TV show to depict the horrors of suburban life—vampire free, we can only hope—stars Jeremy Sisto, formerly that creep Elton of Clueless, as the father of a ripped-from-Manhattan teen, played by rising star Jane Levy (premieres Sept. 28, 8:30 p.m., ABC). It’s no longer your grandfather’s Jewish eyewear operation, now that the hip Moscot spectacles company releases new retro-inspired, cheekily-named frames the Bissle and the Mensch. The trailer for the film version of the graphic novel The Rabbi’s Cat looks more promising than the film version of Les Mis, even if Hugh Jackman stars.

Comic book writer Scott Snyder discussed the dark future of his popular creations, a student at the University of Pennsylvania honored Claudia Gould, who is set to take over at the Jewish Museum after 12 years at the school’s Institute of Contemporary Art, and Maurice Sendak talked Bumble-Ardy, his lastest book, on NPR’s Fresh Air. Don’t forget that tomorrow is National Punctuation Day, which is, apparently, a thing.

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Stephanie Butnick is deputy editor of Tablet Magazine and a host of the Unorthodox podcast.