If you’re a Beatles fanatic, you’ll be in good company this weekend. Fifty years worth of good company, in fact.
The Fest for Beatles Fans hits town today, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Beatle’s American debut with their appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” It features an all-star lineup of Fab Four friends, fans and scholars.
Guests include singer Donovan, famed radio DJ Cousin Brucie and Prudence Farrow, the inspiration behind “Dear Prudence” — plus panels, music and a ’60s dance party.
“This was the day when there was no MTV, no music videos, no Betamaxes,” says Beatles historian Bruce Spizer, who’s appearing at the event. “‘The Ed Sullivan Show’ put the exclamation point on Beatlemania in America!”
Today through Sunday at the Grand Hyatt, 42nd Street at Lexington Avenue. Tickets start at $65. Info: thefest.com. — Tim Donnelly
Frames the discussion
If the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” holds any truth, the new Guggenheim retrospective “Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video” speaks volumes.
The more-than 120 works by the 2013 MacArthur “genius” grant winner illuminate the plight of African-Americans around the world and addresses concepts of race, gender, love and equality.
Weems wants “people of color to stand for the human multitudes” and to showcase the African-American experience. The striking exhibit also includes a photo story of black starlets Josephine Baker, Lena Horne and Katherine Dunham onstage in their primes.
Fifth Avenue at 89th Street; 212-423-3500, guggenheim.org. Admission is pay what you wish. Saturday evenings from 5:45 to 7:45. — Candace Amos
Wham, bam
A stylish distaff version of “Death Wish,’’ Abel Ferrara’s “Ms. 45’’ (1981) stars the terrific Zoë Tamerlis Lund as a shy, mute garment worker who is raped twice in one day.
She kills the second rapist and, armed with his .45, goes on a revenge spree enticingly dressed in leather — and later as a nun at a memorable, climactic Halloween party.
The Brooklyn Academy of Music is showing this feminist cult classic Friday through Sunday as part of its 12-day “Vengeance Is Hers’’ film series.
BAM Rose Cinemas, Lafayette Avenue and St. Felix Street, Brooklyn. Info: bam.org. — Lou Lumenick
Step up! Taking the fifth
The Fifth Amendment. The Fifth Dimension. A Fifth of Beethoven? They’re colliding tonight, and it took Vangeline — a woman brought up in the French countryside, living in New York and doing avant-garde Japanese Butoh dance — to do it.
Vangeline has worked in jazz, cabaret and burlesque, but found her passion with Butoh. Her new show, “5th,” was born when “A Fifth of Beethoven” became stuck in her head. “When that happens to me, I know it’s the next thing I should do,” she explains.
Like Vangeline herself, the evening of fives is a potpourri, with American Butoh artists, Japanese ballet dancers and a British violinist who’s worked with alt-rock band Smashing Pumpkins. Vangeline’s confident it will stew together. “In Butoh, we all become a bit Japanese!”
Friday through Sunday at 8 p.m. at Triskelion Arts’ Aldous Theater, 118 N. 11th St., Brooklyn. Tickets $15. Info: vangeline.com. — Leigh Witchel
Get a listen! Travelin’ gal
It’s striking to watch folk musician Leyla McCalla sing while strumming her cello like a guitar. It’s a technique, she says, she first saw “at a party when I was 17.”
Born in NYC to Haitian immigrants, raised in New Jersey (with a couple of teen years in Ghana) and now residing in New Orleans, the former member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops incorporates many influences, but the process is simple, she says: “I hear something that could sound cool with a melody over it.”
On McCalla’s rootsy yet modern debut album, “Vari-Colored Songs,” inspiration includes Langston Hughes poetry and Haitian folk songs, and the whole thing was funded on Kickstarter, where it raised more than four times its goal.
“It’s wonderful,” she says, “that a total stranger gives you $500 to make your album, just because they believe in it.”
Tuesday, 7:30 p.m. at BRIC House, 647 Fulton St., Brooklyn; bricartsmedia.org; free. Thursday, 9:30 p.m. at Rockwood Music Hall, 196 Allen St.; rockwoodmusichall.com; $12. — Charlie Heller