Pencil This In

FILM/MUSIC: Jennifer Reeves’s new 16-mm film When It Was Blue will be screened tonight with live musical accompaniment performed with guitar, organ, clarinet, accordion, and piano. Described as "an ode to the beautiful and endangered natural world," the hour-long work consists of two films projected one atop the other on a single screen, featuring footage from fragile ecosystems around the world. By superimposing nuanced, hand-painted film over her landscape footage, the film takes on "a flickering, phantom depth," according to this profile in Art Forum. "The optical thickness combines with the strumming, susurrant soundscape to create an alluring, enveloping journey." – John Del Signore

8 p.m. // The Kitchen [512 West 19th Street] // $10

STORIES: Lower East Side Stories gets creepy tonight, with a focus on Death in New York. "Professional tellers focus on everyone’s favorite Halloween topic… death, dying, ghosts and ghouls, all set in New York City." Along with the scheduled readers, the audience is also invited to get up and tell a 3-minute-tale.

6:30 p.m. // Tenement Museum Shop [108 Orchard St] // Free

DISCUSSION: Tonight the AMNH presents "Physics for Future Presidents," an evening with Richard A. Muller, who asks "what should the president know about physics?" The subjects will include "fundamentals about the physics of terrorism and counterterrorism (what really happened on 9/11?), about energy independence (is clean coal an oxymoron?), about nukes (both bombs and power), about spying and space (will drones supersede satellites?), and climate change (what is real and what is exaggeration?)."

7:30 p.m. // Museum of Natural History, Hayden Planetarium [Central Park West at 79th St]// $15

EVENT: Rooftop Films presents an Indie Horror Night at Chelsea Market, screening 10 scary shorts from around the world. "There will be surreal shorts about creepy drifters, terrifying thrillers about devious science experiments, nightmarish films featuring practical jokes gone bad, and also a few amusing films about ghostly Shetland Ponies and undead mariachi bands." Bonus: music will be provided by Shilpa Ray and Her Happy Hookers before the screening begins AND there will be free beer! That's not scary at all.

7:30 p.m. // Chelsea Market [75 9th Ave] // Free