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Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Alma Har'el: Conceptual Art

Absichtlichen Denken


(Alma Har'el)

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Verflucht und Zugenäht


Ich habe eine Liebste, die ist wunderschön,
sie zeigt mir ihre Äpfelchen, da ist's um mich gescheh'n.
Doch als mir meine Liebste der Liebe Frucht gesteht,
da hab' ich meinen Hosenlatz verflucht und zugenäht.

Prima oară am auzit expresia asta, Verflucht und Zugenäht, pe când aveam mai puţin de zece ani. O folosea din când în când o doamnă care locuia împreună cu noi. Era mai în vârstă decât părinţii mei, se născuse în 1893. Țin minte anul pentru că odată mi-a dăruit o carte, care avea să fie unul din tovarăşii mei buni ani de-a rândul. Cartea se numea Pe drumuri nebătute de la Polul Nord la Polul Sud, şi era scrisă de Sven Hedin. De fapt primisem numai trei din cele şase volume în care apăruse cartea în ediţia românească, restul de trei volume se rătăciseră. Ei bine, primul capitol al primului volum din cartea pe care o primisem vorbea despre expediţia spre Polul Nord a suedezului Andrée: Hedin se întâlnise cu Andrée pe când acesta din urmă îşi pregătea expediţia cu balonul în care avea să dispară fără urme. Iar întâlnirea avusese loc în anul 1893, an în care se născuse şi Doamna Paranici. Mai târziu, aveam să leg anul acesta şi de altă dată istorică: în sinuoasa traiectorie a relaţiilor noastre cu Iugoslavia, după ce Tito fusese înjurat zdravăn şi acuzat de toate crimele posibile, se produsese împăcarea. Mă uitam la ziare, îi vedeam poza şi nu îmi venea să cred că nu mai vedeam caricatura cu satârul din care picura sânge. Iar Tito se născuse în 1892, adică era cu un an mai bătrân decât Doamna Paranici.

Doamna Paranici era bucovineancă, se născuse în Vatra Dornei. Ca orice bucovinean de vârsta ei, vorbea bine germana, ucraineana şi poloneza. Aşa că m-a ajutat mult şi la lecţiile mele de limba rusă pentru şcoală. Aveam de făcut exerciţii de gramatică, stătea şi se gândea cum se conjugă verbul respectiv în ucraineană şi apoi deducea cum trebuie să fie în rusă.

De fapt avea o pasiune pentru limbi străine, şi cred ca ea mi-a transmis pasiunea aceasta şi mie.

Am întrebat-o odată ce înseamnă Verflucht und Zugenäht, cum zic, o auzeam cu exclamaţia asta când ceva nu mergea cum trebuie.

Evident că o doamnă atât de vârstnică nu putea să îmi spună că era vorba de o înjurătură, aşa că mi-a povestit o istorie cu un domn care îşi făcuse un costum la croitor. Cu costumul nou s-a dus în prima duminică la biserică. În timpul slujbei, a simţit nevoia să facă pipi. A răbdat cât a răbdat, dar nevoia devenise imperioasă, aşa încât a ieşit din biserică şi s-a apropiat de un zid să îşi desfacă şliţul, când, oroare, croitorul uitase să îl descoasă! Aşa încât bietul om a exclamat cu năduf, Verflucht und Zugenäht!

Au trecut anii, zeci de ani, şi nu am uitat-o pe Doamna Paranici, nici cum mă ajuta la lecţiile mele de rusă pentru şcoală folosind cunoştinţele ei de ucraineană, nici de spiritul ei viu şi iscoditor, care o făcea să stabilească rapid legături între anul ei de naştere şi date din istorie, şi în primul rând nu am uitat-o pentru dragostea pe care mi-a purtat-o.

Dar exact ce înseamnă Verflucht und Zugenäht tot nu am reuşit să aflu, mulţi ani. În primul rând că auzisem doar expresia, nu o văzusem scrisă, aşa încât îmi închipuiam că este Verflucht und Zugenet. M-am gândit şi la variaţii, de genul Zugenecht sau Zugennecht. Sau chiar Zugerrecht! De fapt era Zugenäht. Este o înjuratură foarte blândă, ceva de genul, ei, fir-ar să fie! În engleză exclamaţia echivalentă este Damn and Blast!

A polite way to share your annoyance or anger over whatever has just happened. Often used by older, maybe relatively posh people:

man1 - oh damn and blast! I'm late for polo!

man2 - Golly old fellow, you better be off, tally ho!

Acum o să mă întrebaţi ce înseamnă Golly, şi ce înseamnă tally ho. Vă las vouă plăcerea să scotociţi prin dicţionare, cum am făcut şi eu :)

Sau ca aici:

Damn and Blast! They sold out all hotdogs!
Verflucht und Zugenäht! Sie haben alle Hotdogs verkauft!
(http://fotdmike.com/2009/12/24/a-walk-into-town/)


Man sollte den Gesetzen
In Kleinigkeiten
Ein Bein stellen und sie verletzen
Und sie, von Gönnern geldunterstützt,
Überschreiten.

Man sollte den Richter,
Der Künstler, Dichter
Oder nur Mensch ist, unbändig verehren.
Man sollte das andre, konträre Gelichter
Zermalmen und sich selber vermehren.

Man sollte so sein, wie ich es bin.
Man sollte – –
Wenn nicht der liebe Gott es hin
Und wieder ganz anders wollte.
(Joachim Ringelnatz - Verflucht und Zugenäht)


(Bucovina)

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Eve Packer: 303


303, written by Eve Packer, was published in Big City Lit in the fall of 2010. Eve dedicated it to n.j.h.



one minute youre
here
one minute
not
one minute blue sky
the next gone

you left me then
at summers end
i salute you aries
farewell

right now, this very sec,
we are up in the room
with a
view

9/13/10


(Eve Packer)

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The Power of Dreams

uploaded through iPhone by Alma Har'el


(Alma Har'el)

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Out of Business

(an image by Alma Har'el)


(A Life in Books)

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D S-K and the Conspiration Theory


I used to believe that the taste for conspiracy theories belonged to poor or small countries exclusively. Well, it seems to be an European quality at large. D S-K cannot be guilty because he's one of ours. Oh Gosh, how stupid can be the smart ones! Look, if we refer to the merits of D S-K while he was at IMF's helm, they are obvious. But this is not the issue. The issue is his sex behavior. Have you heard about the expression old dirty man? It's about sex, stupid!

Read Roger Cohen's column in today's NY Times:



(Zoon Politikon)

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Monday, May 30, 2011

Memorial Day









(Blogosphere)

Sunday, May 29, 2011

For Office Civility, Cherchez La Femme


Because the alleged sex-story of D S-K came out so brutally and without notice, many people jumped to a huge denial, they saw in the man a victim, forgetting who the victim really was. For Jean-Francois Kahn, D S-K was not trying to rape the woman, he was just engaging in troussage de domestique. It's not like anybody died, thinks Jack Lang.

Now the best thing to happen would be the arrival of Christine Lagarde at the helm of IMF. For office civility, cherchez la femme, says Maureen Dowd in her NY Times column:



(Zoon Politikon)

Eve Packer: Reddress


Reddress is how Eve always starts a performance.



the girl in the red dress is me

this dress is so short.
frm paraphernalia
in ny/ i must be 19.
we're in madrid, the
poet & me, madrid,
so hot, so terrific,
shrimp & tapas,
lotsa traffic, people
tons in the street--
its noon like that
& we're walking,
heading up on the
concrete, & this truck,
the truckdriver calling
out to my skirt, my
reddress my legs me,
the truck goes rightup
on the sidewalk & hits
the wall


(Eve Packer)

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Saturday, May 28, 2011

Bryan Adams: Everything I Do


I dedicate this song to the woman I love.



(Blogosphere)

Theodor Pallady: Toujours du Baudelaire


Toujours du Baudelaire - am putea traduce inca o baudelairiana, sau, vorbim tot despre Baudelaire.

Le beau est toujours bizarre, spunea Baudelaire.

Iar Arghezi spunea, se cunoaste ca femeile domnului Pallady ar putea scobori prea bine din cadrul lor in lume, cu bumbul tatei simburiu ca ametistele, cu floarea de crin ridicata catre solduri, concavitatea diafana a pantecelui modelata frumos, proeminentele pieptului, n-ar isca nici pofte, nici trivial (http://autori.citatepedia.ro/de.php?a=Tudor+Arghezi).

(Bucuresti)

Friday, May 27, 2011

Eve Packer

One evening, it was in December 1999, my sister Jill gave me a call and said that we were invited at a party at a very good friend of her, Eve. I left home, took the ferry (I was living in Staten Island), and met in Manhattan with Jill. Together we went to the party, in an apartment not far from Washington Square. Eve opened us, it was the first time I was seeing her: a very nice person with witty eyes and a genuine smile, busy with the refreshments for the partiers. We entered the living room, Jill and me, it was full of people. I think there were twenty or thirty people there, maybe more. Later came also Pola, my other sister, with her husband.

Wine and beer was in abundance, sweets, cheese, grapes, and the like. A guy was gently playing a keyboard, his name was, if my memories are good, Funky Felonious. Steve Dalachinsky was there, along with Yuko, his wife. I made friends quickly with several people in the room, the atmosphere was very open. They all were artists of some kind or another, poets or musicians, or both (like Steve), the artistic milieu of the Village.



A Bronx-born, Eve Packer is a poet and a performance artist. As a poet she's the kind of Weegee poet, it means, as authentic, as provocative, as the New York shot by Weegee is. As a performer she is a spoken word artist, it means, her performances add to poetry the fourth dimension: her art is poetry, and her art is jazz - her jazz is spoken word art, that's it.

I'm going to post here in near future some of Eve's poems, each one is a gem: fun, thrilling, provocative, sharp as a stiletto (Stephen Wolf, the Villager). Here is an interview she gave in January 2011. Enjoy!




(A Life in Books)

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Geamparalele dela Cernavoda


Ion Laceanu la ocarina:




geamparale: joc popular romanesc, cu multiple variante si denumiri (giambaralele, maranghile, zlata etc.), raspandit in Campia Dunarii si Dobrogea. Are forme de desfasurare variate (cerc de mana, in linie, perechi, solistic etc.) ca si multiple prize (lant de brate, de o mana, de ambele maini etc.). Melodii in ritm de trei timpi, cu ultimul alungit, incadrate in doua fraze patrate – inrudite sau nu – mai rar din mai multe fraze. Elementul esential al unitatii variantelor este ritmul asimetric, care isi gaseste expresia coregrafica in diferitele forme cinetice (mers in stil de hora, mers pe diferite directii, invartiri, batai, balansuri, flexiuni adanci etc.). Din tc. çalpara.

(Amintiri din Garla Mare)

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A Pond That's Narrower Than A Channel

It's hard to know where New York ends and London begins, says Roger Cohen. For him, NY and London are the only global cities, with the complete range from science and medicine through finance to the arts, dizzyingly open to the world, confident of their brilliance, with no historical complexes. Well, there are the emerging Mumbay and Shanghai and São Paulo, of course, but they are still adolescents. Young and restless, so to speak.

And the way New York and London are says volumes about the Anglo-American continuum: the Channel is still much wider than the Atlantic.

You should read Roger Cohen's column from today's NY Times:



(Now, Mr.Cohen can say anything: for me, Paris remains the finest place).

(Zoon Politikon)

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Thursday, May 26, 2011

Ca la Cernavoda



Ion Laceanu canta dintr-un pai - Ion Laceanu at wheat straw.



(video by Fabr1s)

(Amintiri din Garla Mare)

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O Poveste C'O Pastrama

Am trecut alaltaieri pe strada Postavarului, am vazut ca s-a deschis un restaurant nou. Acum, sa stiti ca strada asta este plina ochi de restaurante, inainte erau acolo gradini de zarzavat, terenurile s-au vandut bine si cei care le-au luat au deschis terasa dupa terasa.

Restaurantul asta nou e pe locul unui bufet pe care il stiam de cativa ani, pe langa Catedrala Sfantul Ilie - Titan. Un bufet intr-un soi de cosmelie, cu clientela lui de fiecare zi. Bufetul s-a inchis acum vreo luna si au venit niste muncitori ca sa ii dea o fata noua. Ma intrebam daca vor ramane aceiasi clienti, ca probabil preturile vor fi un pic mai mari. Sau poate ca nu?

In fine, uite ca s-a deschis. Treceam pe acolo, cum zic, si mirosea a mici. Gandul m-a dus la o pastrama. Asa ca i-am intrebat. Baiatul dela gratar mi-a zis ca or sa aduca si pastrama. Ma gandeam sa raman, sa vad cum le iese pastrama, insa eram grabit. Da' zau ca imi parea rau. Sa fi stat la o pastrama cu niste muraturi si un pahar de vin rosu la sfarsit. Ca lumea! Dar, cum zic, eram grabit, trebuia sa ajung undeva neaparat.

Cand deodata trece pe langa mine Ion Laceanu! Mi-a zambit, mi-a intins mana, ii zic, buna ziua domnu' Laceanu! Acum nu am inteles daca restaurantul asta nou e chiar al lui, sau era doar invitat, fiind prima zi. Insa emotionat am fost!



Imi parea acum rau si ca nu mai pot ramane sa il ascult. Il admir de foarte multi ani (nu spun de cati, ca sa nu ii ghiciti varsta, nici pe a mea): este intr-adevar omul orchestra; dela caval, cimpoi, ocarina, pana la solz de peste si pai, totul este stapanit de artistul asta cu har dela Dumnezeu!

Asa ca daca nu am apucat sa raman sa il ascult (ca de pastrama uitasem, dar as fi vrut sa stau sa il vad cum canta), uite ca va pun aici un video cu maestrul Laceanu. Nu e un video muzical, nu. O sa va pun si din astea, mai incolo. Aici insa este o poveste de-a lui, cum s-a dus odata la niste prieteni la o cumetrie, si a vrut sa manance o pastrama! Hai, pofta buna!




(Bucuresti)

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Arvid: Laissez Les Bons Temps Rouler!



Ready for the Arvid-Revana dinner at the Ritz New Orleans: let the good times roll!

(P&C Art)

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Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Reading Further Black Milk

Istanbul, Haydarpasha Terminal, the last train station in Asia
it has its own djinn and fairies
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/jcarillet/503654322/)


Reading further Black Milk, I'm startled to find a description that's not far for what I'd say about me: someone split inside, half East, half West, who loves the world of imagination more than the real world; who, year after year, has been worn down by useless paradoxes..., who cares too much about what other people think... in short a personality under construction.

When Elif Shafak says that about her, she completes, you must accept the universe as an open book that is waiting for its reader; one must read each day, page by page.

And a splendid change of replicas, two pages later:

With a sudden urge and zest, I flag down a passing taxi - Come on, let's go - Where to? - To the train station - Did you decide to go to America by train? - No, I just want to go to smell the trains.



(Elif Shafak)

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Duminica la Bookfest


Eveniment la Bookfest Bucuresti, scena Agora (C5) duminica 29 mai, ora 17: lansarea ultimelor aparitii din colectia Stiinta, Spiritualitate, Societate (Ionesco, Barbu, Vintila Horia). Moderator va fi doamna Magda Stavinschi, coordonatorul colectiei.

(A Life in Books)

Sylvia Plath


The image is kind of provocative. I found it on a website that deals exclusively with literary tattoos:http://www.contrariwise.org/.

So, it's a tattoo, and it's reproducing a quote from The Bell Jar, the only novel written by Edith Plath:

I listened to the old bray of my heart: I am, I am, I am...

Sylvia Plath... she was the girl who wanted to be God so that she could create the entire universe from scratch. Splendid phrase! I have just read a chapter from Elif Shafak's book, Black Milk: this chapter is telling the life of Sylvia Plath. It starts with that phrase. I will quote a little bit more from this chapter (Of Poets and Babies):

To her close friends she was Syl, to her family, Sivvie. To the rest of the world she was Sylvia Plath. Her marriage to Ted Hughes has been the subject of numerous heated debates among scholars, feminists and non-feminists alike. The essays and books written about her - even after all these years - tend to be as emotionally charged as she was. Perhaps somehow all her biographers end up falling in love with her.


(A Life in Books)

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Fanus Neagu



Pentru mine, limba romana e distanta dintre inima si umbra ei, care se numeste suflet.

Fanus Neagu
(in Intamplari aiurea si calatorii oranj)

(A Life in Books)

Monday, May 23, 2011

Simon Norwalk got Hired by Express Jets



I have just got a message from my friend Jay Norwalk: his son Simon got hired by Express Jets Airlines. He will start 2 months training at Express Jets in Houston, TX on June 6th. He will be flying Embraer ERJ-145, that has all glass cockpits. Great news, Jay!


(Maine)

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Friday, May 20, 2011

Jafar Panahi: This Is Not a Film (2010)


An image speaking volumes: Jafar Panahi waiting to be sentenced and sent to prison, in front of an image with the main character of his Crimson Gold; the hellish universe of his movies mirrored in his hellish universe, his infernal world mirrored in the infernal world of his movies.

Iranian director Jafar Panahi is one of world's most important moviemakers nowadays, while also a victim of the oppressive regime in his country. Arrested, together with other artists, during the events following the Iranian presidential elections in 2009, he spent several months in prison. He was freed then on bail while the judicial procedure against him was going on. Mr. Panahi was eventually sentenced to 6 years of prison and 20 years ban to make movies.

It was during the period spent at home in 2010 that Jafar Panahi made this movie, with the title This is Not a Film (In Film Nist). A friend, documentary producer Mojtaba Mirtahmasb (the author of Lady of the Roses, 2008), came with a consumer-grade camera and shot the footage for a 75 minutes video, having Mr. Panahi as co-director, screenwriter, film editor and star. The video was eventually smuggled outside Iran on a flash drive and screened at the 2011 Cannes Festival.


It's just that: 75 minutes in a day spent by Jafar Panahi at home, waiting for the result of the trial. He talks to the phone with his lawyer, then feeds his pet (who is a very nice iguana), then talks with the cameraman shooting the footage about a project for a new film, rejected by the censorship, memories from some of his movies come and go, suddenly a terrible noise of explosions is heard - it's nothing than fireworks, and Mr. Panahi goes to the window to shoot them with his cell phone.

A movie that is not a movie, says Mr. Panahi. It's just mundane reality. Well, it's not that simple: this movie is a non-movie while this non-movie is a movie. Because it's his reality, his universe, which is sending us to the universe of his movies. All his movies talk actually about him, about his universe, and it becomes obvious here, in this non-movie which carries all the tension between image and reality - reality sublimated in cinematic image. Like Mozart, this moviemaker thinks only in artistic constructions. For Mozart any fact of life was musical sound, musical rhythm, for Panahi every fact of life is cinematic image, cinematic rhythm. Look, even his concerns for the sentence to come become art! However, the strongest association should be made to Beethoven! This moviemaker carries all the tension between reality and art, all his creation is fully aware of the paradoxical relationship between reality and art: reality mirrored in art, art mirrored in reality, art suffering that reality struggles to keep its autonomy, reality suffering that it is taken for art.




(Jafar Panahi)

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Thursday, May 19, 2011

HERE ONE DAY

(in the editing room: Kathy Leichter and Pola Rapaport)


HERE ONE DAY is a movie in the making. It was shot by Kirsten Johnson and edited by Pola Rapaport. It is the personal story of the film director (Kathy Leichter): her mother committed suicide in 1995, victim of a bipolar disorder. The way the family recovered from the grief caused by this terrible loss is the subject of the movie.

Through this movie, director Kathy Leichter intends to:

# Reduce the stigma surrounding suicide and people with mental illness, increase understanding, break the silence, and create empathy;
# Give voice to those who have, or know someone with, bipolar disorder and mitigate the isolation these families can feel;
# Provide a forum for discussions about mental illness, suicide, loss, family history, mother-loss, and motherless mothers.




In order to finish the movie, Kathy Leichter started a Kickstarter fundraising campaign. She is more than 2/3 of the way to her goal of raising $25,000, and she has until June 1st to raise the rest. There are so far 125 backers who have pledged with $20,618. The making of the movie will be funded only if at least $25.000 will be pledged till Wednesday June 1st, 9:29 am EDT.

(scene from the movie: director Kathy Leichter and her father)

In order to make a pledge, please go to:




(Pola Rapaport)

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I Started to Read Black Milk


The Sufis believe that every human being is a mirror that reflects the universe at large. They say each of us is a walking microcosm. To be human, therefore, means to live with an orchestra of conflicting voices and mixed emotions. This could be a rewarding and enriching experience were we not inclined to praise some members of that inner orchestra at the expense of others. We suppress many aspects of our personalities in order to conform with the perfect image we try to live up to. In this way there is rarely -if ever - a democracy inside of us, but instead a solid oligarchy where some voices reign over the rest.
(Elif Shafak, Black Milk, pages 11 - 12)


I have been very interested to read this book, Black Milk, hoping to better understand such an experience as the one Elif Shafak went through when she gave birth to her first kid. It was a painful experience and in most cases it leaves deep scares in the mother, as well as in the people who love her. I have just started to read the book: has the author liberated herself from that experience by exorcising it in writing? I will see.

It will be the fourth book of Elif Shafak that I read. I had in mind for each book to comment it on the blog; each time I postponed writing my comments as I was eager to read the next one. Maybe this will give me the advantage to consider each book in the perspective offered by the other ones.

What is Elif Shafak? Like any of us she is many things. She is a Turkish writer and an American writer, a Sufi lover and a modern woman, a mother of two kids with the terrible taste of wandering throughout the world: she is a story teller and maybe this explains all the others.


(Elif Shafak)

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Wednesday, May 18, 2011

The Void


The things that are present through their absence
(The Forty Rules of Love, page 245)


(Elif Shafak)

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Mircea Horia Simionescu


In aceasta dimineata ne-a parasit pentru totdeauna Mircea Horia Simionescu, creatorul Ingeniosului Bine Temperat. Cand moare un scriitor se stinge o parte din frumusetea lumii. Dumnezeu sa il odihneasca in pace!

Sunt alaturi de Diana, fiica sa, in aceste clipe atat de grele.


(A Life in Books)

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

The Mosque of all Prophets


Nothing should stand between yourself and God. Not imams, priests, rabbis, or any other custodians of moral or religious leadership. Not spiritual masters, not even your faith. Believe in your values and your rules but never lord them over others. If you keep breaking other people's hearts, whatever religious duty you perform is no good. Let God and only God be your guide. Learn the Truth, but be careful not to make a fetish out of your truths.
(The Forty Rules of Love, page 213)

There is no God but God

(Elif Shafak)

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Monday, May 16, 2011

Times and Winds (2006)

Reha Erdem, director of Times and Winds, photographed in his home village of Kozlu, Turkey
(http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703959704575453443139818692.html)

Bes Vakit (Times and Winds), made by Reha Erdem in 2006.

A tiny poor village of a few hundreds, surrounded by rocky cliffs. Goats and olive trees, as everywhere in the region. The Black Sea can be seen from the cliffs, having the changing color of the sky, gray when it's windy, blue when it's sunny. Poverty of the place continuing in the majesty of the landscape, village life mastered by the moods of nature. The five times of prayer, midnight, morning, noon, afternoon, evening, are just brief moments to realize that you are at the mercy of what time brings.

This is Kozlu, the birthplace of Turkish director Reha Erdem, and Bes Vakit (Times and Winds, made in 2006) is about this village and these cliffs, about the moods of weather and the times of prayer, and about these people.

It is a movie full of love for this universe while devoid of any sentimentalism. The magnificent surroundings, the cliffs and the sea in close distance, pictured with awe, the poor village pictured with love, you feel this tenderness flowing from the screen; where the movie becomes unsentimental is when picturing the moods of people. They are his people, the guys of his village, the director is one of them, it is his universe. It is here love and lucidity. From the elders to the young, they are too challenged by these times and winds, to find space for kindness to one another. The elders are authoritative to the point of arbitrariness, the children grow up feeling the unfairness of the elders, hating them, childishly wishing their death. Three children of some eleven, twelve years are the main characters of this movie. On the threshold of puberty, a coming of age through frustration and resentment, balanced eventually by the miracles of nature they are witnessing. The unexpected coming and going of storms and winds will slowly teach them about the relativity of everything. The animal mating will be an abrupt lesson about the ultimate simplicity of love. The birth of a baby will show them the beauty of life despite all odds. The approaching of death of the father will make the boy suddenly and painfully realize what fear means, the terrible fear of loosing his father, how stupid his hate has been, his wish to see him dead.

And the five times of prayer will go on, alternating day and night, storm and beautiful weather, birth and death, good and bad.



(Turkish Cinema)

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Alma Har'el in Front of a Bombay Beach Poster



The rusting relic of a failed 1960s development boom, the Salton Sea is a barren Californian landscape often seen as a symbol of the failure of the American Dream. First-time director Alma Har'el revisits this poetically fruitful terrain in her distinctive documentary Bombay Beach, and finds there a motley cast including a bipolar seven-year-old, a lovelorn high school football star, and an octogenarian poet-prophet. Together they make up a triptych of American manhood in its decisive moments, populating the Salton Sea's land of thwarted opportunity.

True to her roots as a photographer, video artist, and music video director, Har'el crafts here an adamantly atypical and artistically innovative film—a dreamlike poem that sets the personal stories of these distinctive yet familiar characters to a stylized amalgam of observational documentary and choreographed dance, with music by Beirut and Bob Dylan, all cast against the atmospheric scenery of the titular ghost town. The result is a moving and surreal documentary experience—an evocative, symbolic portrait of rural America and its inhabitants.

Bombay Beach was named World Documentary Competition Award Winner at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival.


(Alma Har'el)

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Friday, May 13, 2011

The Remains of the Day (1993)



After several years I watched again The Remains of the Day, the movie made in 1993 by James Ivory. A sad story: after a life of total dedication to your work, you realize that it wasn't worth. During all your life you suppressed your self to leave the room for the job only. And now it is too late. All you have from now on will be the remains of the day, walked through by recurring ghosts: loves that you have ignored, all those occasions to be just yourself that you have passed over.



The novel of Kazuo Ishiguro embeds this story in an elegant wrapping: the action takes place at the estate of a British aristocrat, noble guests come to participate at hunting parties, to attend great dinners, to discuss international affairs. It is the beginning of the thirties, the master of the place is actually a sympathizer of Nazi Germany, advocating for them, while his butler is simply too loyal, too committed to his work, to make a judgment.

Based on the novel, James Ivory made a movie that is exquisite. The director is considered as being influenced in his style by the works of Satyajit Ray and Jean Renoir. He had great masters!

The two main characters are flawlessly played by Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson. The butler, as perfect as a Swiss watch, as perfect and as inhuman. And the maid, trying to discover the hidden humanity behind his cold perfection, fighting with him to pull out his secret kindness that he is not aware of. And giving up after too many years .

The two of them are surrounded by an impeccable cast: James Fox, Christopher Reeve, Hugh Grant, Michael Lonsdale, among others.




There is an interesting scene at the end. A pigeon is suddenly emerging from the chimney, aimlessly flying through the large room. They will eventually leave it outside. It was a pure coincidence: the pigeon appeared while they were shooting and the director decided on the spot to use it. It is to meditate if there can be actually coincidences in this world! The flight of the pigeon inside the room like in a gigantic cage, an unexpected symbol for what the life of the butler has been. Or a reminder maybe, of the maid, with her attempts to make him human and get his love. Or a message, about what their lives could have been.



trailer
(video by micarone)



book scene
(video by sasha7d)



pier scene
(video by bluebell1225)


(Filmofilia)

(Kazuo Ishiguro)

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Monday, May 09, 2011

The Windows of Paul Delvaux

Paul Delvaux - La Fenêtre, 1936
oil on canvas
Private Collection, on loan to the Musée d’Ixelles, Brussels
currently on a Magritte-Delvaux Exhibition at Memphis Brooks Museum
(http://www.pbart.com/paul-delvaux-starting-points-bruxelles-belgium/)




(Avangarda 20)