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rgurung-me · 5 years

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Ten Interesting Nepali Novels

1)Palpasa Café (narayan wagle)

Palpasa Café tells the story of an artist, Drishya, during the height of the Nepalese Civil War. The novel is partly a love story of Drishya and the first generation American Nepali, Palpasa, who has returned to the land of her parents after 9/11. It is often called an anti-war novel, and describes the effects of the civil war on the Nepali countryside that Drishya travels to.

2)Unlikely Storytellers (bikash sangruala) The book focuses on a central character Deepak, a journalist and the stories are woven around the characters during the insurgency period of Nepal. The book has themes of lost childhood, love, sex, marital infidelity, war, guilt and more.

“https://publicationnepalaya.com/book/unlikely-storytellers”

3)Titled earth (manjushree thapa)

Startlingly original and closely observed stories that capture the dynamism and diversity of Nepali society in a time of great flux In Tilled Earth several compressed, poetic and deeply evocative micro-stories offer fleeting glimpses of small, private dramas of people caught midlife: an elderly woodworker loses his way in a modern Kathmandu neighbourhood; a homesick expatriate nurses a hangover; a clerk at the Ministry of Home Affairs learns to play Solitaire on the computer; a young man is drawn to politics against his better judgement; a child steals her classmateâ€™s book . . . The longer stories in the collection, too,span a wide course, taking subjects from rural and urban Nepal as well as from the Nepali diaspora abroad. In â€˜Tilled Earthâ€™ a young woman goes to Seattle as a student, and finds herself becoming an illegal alien. â€˜Love Marriageâ€™ is an inner narration by a young man whoâ€”defying family pressureâ€”falls in love with a woman of the wrong caste. In â€˜The Buddha in the Earth-Touching Postureâ€™, a retired secretary visits the Buddhaâ€™s birthplace, Lumbini, only to find his deepest insecurities exposed. With their unexpected, inventive forms, these stories reveal the authorâ€™s deep love of language and commitment to craft. Manjushree Thapa pushes the styles of her stories to match the distinctiveness of their content, emerging confidently as a skilled innovator and formalist.

“ https://vajrabookshop.com/categories/nepalese-fictions/products/tilled-earth”

4)While the Gods were Sleeping: A journey Through Love and Rebellion in Nepal (Elizabeth Enslin)

The Constituent Assembly of Nepal, in its very first meeting, abolished the monarchy in May 2008. After that watershed event, however, the way forward has been stalled by vexing questions. How is power in such a fractious polity to be shared? Which form of governance is best suited to the country - republicanism? federalism? How are the excesses of the decade long civil war to be reckoned? How is the People's Liberation Army to be integrated with the Nepal Army? To what extent should neighbours be allowed to interfere in the internal politics of the nation? And why is it that the Constituent Assembly, years after it was elected, cannot draft a Constitution that is acceptable to all? In The Lives We Have Lost, Manjushree Thapa asks these vital questions and many others. In seeking answers, finds the nation still muddling its way from crisis to crisis, in desperate search of a centre that will hold.

“https://vajrabookshop.com/categories/nepalese-fictions/products/the-lives-we-have-lost-essays-and-opinions-on-nepal”

5)Buddha's Orphans( samrat upadhyay)

Called “a Buddhist Chekhov” by the San Francisco Chronicle, Samrat Upadhyay’s writing has been praised by Amitav Ghosh and Suketu Mehta, and compared with the work of Akhil Sharma and Jhumpa Lahiri.

Upadhyay’s new novel, Buddha’s Orphans, uses Nepal’s political upheavals of the past century as a backdrop to the story of an orphan boy, Raja, and the girl he is fated to love, Nilu, a daughter of privilege.Their love story scandalizes both families and takes readers through time and across the globe, through the loss of and search for children, and through several generations, hinting that perhaps old bends can, in fact, be righted in future branches of a family tree.

Buddha’s Orphans is a novel permeated with the sense of how we are irreparably connected to the mothers who birthed us and of the way events of the past, even those we are ignorant of, inevitably haunt the present. But most of all it is an engrossing, unconventional love story and a seductive

and transporting read.

“https://vajrabookshop.com/categories/nepalese-fictions/products/buddhas-orphans-a-novel”

6)Blue Mimosa(parijat) Shirish ko Phool is one of the best Nepali Nobel

of Parijat. Shirish is the beautiful flower, shirish is also known as Mimosa.

Parijat originally known as Bishnu Kumari Waiwa is great Nepali Novelist who

has won prestigious Madan Puraskar for her great Nepali Novel Shirish ko Phool

in 2022. Blue Mimosa is the translated version of the novel Shirish ko Phool

which has also been adapted in the literature curriculum of some colleges in

some English-speaking countries. This program was recorded from Ujayalo FM

(Shruti sambeg ) with a very beautiful voice of Achyut Ghimire .I can't forget

to that Achyut Ghimire's contribution for his talented voice.

“https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10579671-blue-mimosa”

7)The City Son: A Novel(Samrat Upadhyay)

In The City Son, acclaimed and award-winning author Samrat Upadhyay has crafted a spare, understated work examining a thorny subject: a scorned wife s obsession with her husband's illegitimate son.

When Didi discovers that her husband, the Masterji, has been hiding his beautiful lover and their young son Tarun in a nearby city, she takes the Masterji back into her grasp and expels his second family. Tarun s mother, heartsick and devastated, slowly begins to lose her mind, and Tarun…

“https://vajrabookshop.com/categories/nepalese-fictions”

8)Other side of the Paradise(Kenny Pandey)

Sadhu predicts the end of the world. As the East and West come together, a young boy longs to taste cheese. A monsoon thunderstorm awakens memories of a flood. A young man returns from India and encounters the New Buddha. And a hungry policeman steals some vegetables. Amidst desire, longing and the awareness of suffering, these stories ask the common question: What is the nature of existence? Why do we suffer? Can we ever fulfill the hunger of the human heart?

“https://vajrabookshop.com/categories/nepalese-fictions/products/the-end-of-the-world-a-collection-of-short-stories”

9)The Lazy Conman and Other Stories: Folktales from Nepal(Ajit Baral)

Do you not have eyes? Canâ€™t you see that I am watering my tree?â€™ The merchant said, â€˜But there are clothes on the branches.â€™ â€˜Yes, I would expect a clothes-tree to grow clothesâ€”wouldnâ€™t you?â€™ Kakaji is a lazy man, much given to sitting around, until, one day, his wife kicks him out in a rage. After a series of adventuresâ€”which involve a tree that bears clothes and a dancing bear that shits silver coinsâ€”Kakaji comes home rich and resumes his…

“https://vajrabookshop.com/categories/nepalese-fictions/”

10)Summer Love(subin Bhattarai) here was crowd to see the entrance result in Central Department of Environmental Science, Kirtipur. In the notice board Atit saw the name - Saya in the number one. He did not see Saya but just her name. He was impressed by her name, and when he met the beautiful and talented Saya, he fell in love with her. And their two-years-collage-romance starts…

“https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17371265-summer-love”

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heartofoshun · 7 years

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This is a micro-essay and a banner created as an extended introduction to a fic-rec list pulled together to celebrate Maglor’s Day on the Fëanorian Week celebration on Tumblr and initially inspired by the SWG Strength and Beauty March 2017 challenge.

In her summary introduction to the first story on the list below, Dawn Felagund writes: “The Noldolantë seems to be one of those Must-Write Silmarillion Stories.” Here is my quick and dirty effort to collect a random selection of fanfiction featuring the Noldolantë. The Noldolantë is, of course, Maglor’s famous epic work of the Fall of the Noldor, beginning with the first Kinslaying at Alqualondë. One usually presumes it continues through the building of the kingdoms of the great Noldorin princes in Middle-earth and their heroic feats against Morgoth in the North, their tragic defeats, and perhaps unconscionable missteps on the part of the Fëanorians in their attempts win back the Noldor’s greatest artifact the Silmarilli, created by Fëanor and stolen by Morgoth.

There is no reason to presume, however, that the tale could not have started much earlier, even in the Golden years of Valinor with the seeds of that tale, or that the story we know lacks certain key aspects that call into question our most common assumptions about that history.

A Tale Written from Strength Rather Than Weakness?

"Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, but it often bestows it; and in everything imposingly beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic." ~Herman Melville, Moby Dick

Tolkien names it a lament. A lament can be a song or poem of grief, anguish, anger, or pain. It does not necessarily mean an acknowledgement of wrongdoing and expression of guilt. It might be a railing against the gods in outrage at being falsely accused. You decide. A lament might be sung more in anger than in sorrow.

Maglor is the guy who sought out on the field of battle and personally killed Uldor, the one who had betrayed them at the Nirnaeth Arnoediad. These characters are complex. One ought not assume too quickly that Maglor is the sweet, gentle Fëanorian. Most importantly, Tolkien wrote the story of the Noldor at length in The Silmarillion but from other points of view. Yet, he gave us not a line, not a word of the Noldolantë, despite the fact that it was composed by the greatest singer of the Noldor and the one loremaster in a position to have had the most intimate familiarity with the facts of their history.

We know there is another perspective on this history. History is usually written by the victors and yet the Noldolantë tantalizingly enough contains the version of that grand history as experienced by the vanquished, through the words of its greatest bard. It is the ultimate challenge for a Tolkien fanfiction writer to take a stab at writing any small part of this chronicle.

A few stories concerning the Noldolantë (The Fall of the Noldor).

Noldolantë by Dawn Felagund–For Oshun, how Maglor devised the Noldolantë. (2008) Noldolantë by Nelyafinwe Feanorian–In poetic form. (2004) Noldolantë by Epilachna–From a longer story, this chapter recounts a performance in Valinor by Maglor of the Noldolantë. (2008) The Artistic Temperament by tehta–They don’t all have to be somber; the Noldolantë with humor. (2013) The End of All Things by Marta–They don’t all have to accept the Silmarillion view, but this one more or less does, with a special twist. (2013) Faraway Voices by ncfan–Nerdanel becomes aware of the Noldolantë. (2013) The Tale Of The Telerin Flute Player by Himring–Maglor’s wife becomes aware of the Noldolantë. (2012) Bard Rising by Rhapsody–Maglor picks up the Noldolantë and decides to write a more personal prequel. (2007) Unfinished but reads well as is.

How do you imagine the Noldolantë? What are some of your favorite fan fic versions of this epic? Do you intend to write a Noldolantë story? I suppose I do. Actually, I imagine that is more or less what the body of my Silm fic is as a whole (with a few exceptions)—the story told from the perspective of the Noldor. Aside from that, I mention it from time to time in the context of my other stories. In my ongoing interpretation, Maglor’s brothers and cousins have been hearing bits of it from him since his adolescence.

#feanorianweek #day 2 Maglor #maglor #noldolante #silmarillion fic recs

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limejuicer1862 · 4 years

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Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger.

The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.

Don Beukes

(According to his Amazon author page)

was born in Athlone in Cape Town, South Africa. He spent his childhood in Elsies River and Belhar and graduated at the University of the Western Cape with a BA Degree in English and Geography in 1992 where he also studied Psychology. He then qualified as a teacher with a Higher Diploma in Education (Post-Graduate) in 1993.

He is a retired teacher of English and Geography and taught for Twenty years in both South Africa and the United Kingdom.

Don’s debut collection of poetry, ‘The Salamander Chronicles’, was published in December 2016 by Creative Talents Unleashed, dealing with a range of themes such as oppression, bullying, politics, globalism, sexism, abuse, birth, death, refugees, as well as racism, having been born, raised and educated during the last two decades of Apartheid.

His second book ‘Icarus Rising – Volume One’ is a collection of Ekphrastic poetry with most of the poems based on original artwork and close collaboration with artists from South Africa, America and the UK.

His South African publication debut of fourteen exclusive poems was published in August 2018 with three other prominent SA authors Bevan Boggenpoel, Leroy Abrahams and Selwyn Milborrow in a unique anthology ‘In Pursuit of Poetic Perfection’, which upon release went to number 1 in ‘African Literature’ on Amazon Kindle.

https://donbeukes.wordpress.com/

The Interview

When and why did you start writing poetry?

My first experience of poetry actually was in my first language, Afrikaans both at school and visits to the local library. As a second language, English appealed to me as well and I found myself able to read and write efficiently in English inspired by my English teachers and family to do the best I could in both languages.

Towards the end of my secondary education, I started to write micro poems on pieces of paper and started giving these to close friends even when I started university studies. I guess it came naturally to me but it would be years later in 2009 when I started to keep a dedicated journal of poetry in both languages, dealing with my years in South Africa under Apartheid (1972-1994) and my professional career as a teacher in England. It felt natural to start archiving my writing and it would all come to fruition in 2016 when my first collection, ‘The Salamander Chronicles’ was published by Creative Talents Unleashed (Raja Williams).

2. Who introduced you to poetry?

My early experience of poetry was purely academic. We had a set list of poems to study in high school each year both in Afrikaans and English, so my teachers although in a formal way, guided me into the obvious and hidden magic of poetry.

At home, my much older sisters, Ruth and Joan, introduced me to their reading material, including poetry in both languages.

2.1. What poets you were introduced to showed you the obvious and hidden magic of poetry?

South Africa:

Adam Small Breyten Breytenbach Ingrid Jonker Tatamkula Afrika Zakes Mda

Nigeria: Chinua Achebe

UK: Thomas Hardy Wilfred Owen John Donne Dylan Thomas Benjamin Zephaniah

US: Charles Bukowski Laurence Ferlinghetti

2.2. What was that hidden magic?

Breytenbach’s free verse displaying a powerful visual imagination and richly eclectic use of metaphor, mixing references to zen with surrealistic images, idiomatic speech and recollections of the South African landscape as a dissident Afrikaans exiled poet ending up in Paris.

Adam Small’s persisted theme of depicting the lives of oppressed people, especially the so-called ‘coloured’ people classified as such by the racist divisive white South African Apartheid government, as well as the working class; using his writing as an existential weapon in the struggle for freedom.

Wilfred Owen’s use of half-rhyme gave his poetry a dissonant and provoking quality, which shadowed his recurrent themes. Also his use of assonance created a quiet tone and different sounds prevalent to war.

Benjamin Zephaniah’s battle for social justice through his writing incorporating humour, thereby highlighting the underlying seriousness of the struggle of black people and giving them a voice.

Charles Bukowski dabbling in conscious art and craft, mostly writing about ‘the sense of a desolate, abandoned world’ and well known for caustically indicting bourgeois society, whilst celebrating the desperate lives of alcoholics, prostitutes and other disreputable characters in and around L.A, USA.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s use of everyday language, which articulates his themes, offering a personal voice through his delivery of words. His figurative, honest and raw poetry presents things that are actually before us in the visual world, thereby presenting writing that could be understood by the average person on the street.

3. How aware are and were you of the dominating presence of older poets traditional and contemporary?

Currently I can mention poets like Alan Britt, Michael Johnson and Duanne Vorhees and Beau Blue.

My tertiary studies in English exposed me to the works of John Donne, Shakespeare and Chaucer.

As an English teacher in the UK I taught the poetry of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, John Agard, Simon Armitage and Gillian Clarke also Benjamin Zephaniah and Carol-Anne Duffy.

3.1. Would you say they were a dominating presence?

Not all of them. Certainly Wilfred Owen, Chinua Achebe, Dylan Thomas, Adam Small, Breyten Breytenbach, Ingrid Jonker and Benjamin Zephaniah and Charles Bukowski

3.2. How were they dominating?

I refer You back to Q4 , highlighting the ‘hidden magic of the selected poets, specifically singling out their ‘dominance’ at the same time… Furthermore, any poets I was expected to teach, revealed their ‘dominance’ through the interpretation of each and every student who individually reacted in response not just to any exam question, but also challenged me as a teacher to judge them on their unique interpretation of poets they’ve never even heard of but bravely dived into their words and literary worlds…

4. What is your daily writing routine?

Catching up on current and breaking news, jotting down key words, ideas and associations. Any theme that makes me sit up and take notice morphs into a storyline, character development and alternatives but mostly I am inspired by art, photography and moving images. I might even research ideas from films, articles or any breaking story in the world for possible poems, Ekphrastic responses and short fiction.

5. What is your work ethic?

As a visual learner, I need to be moved by imagery, art or any visual stimulus to ignite my writing planning. Sometimes it takes me days to interpret a painting or image before a pattern or writing plan emerges. I then find myself spilling ink until I look up at what I’ve written and then astonish myself with what I’ve managed to write. If I am forced to limit myself to any structure limit, it challenges me to focus and be more creative than usual. If I don’t believe in what I’ve written, I would delete it and start all over again. Sometimes I just stop and pick up stalled writing when I’m ready to focus all my attention to it, without any interruptions.

6. How do the writers you read when you were young influence your work today?

Good question! Aside from poetry, my first Stephen King book I was introduced to as a teenager by an older neighbour, was ‘It’. I was stunned by the page turning experience. It is King’s choice of characters however flawed, which made me start writing short fiction. My first published story was ‘The Trilogy of Em’ (Scarlet Leaf Review), a story of a genetically engineered girl who ends up in an institution for ‘the gifted&talented’, where she uncovers many secrets about her ‘creators’. King also inspired me to think of creating characters with a flawed past, subdued memories and psychological problems.

My favourite teenage ‘horror’ go to read still remains ‘The Rats’ by James Herbert. He inspires me to tap into the darker side of my imagination and to push the boundaries.

Peter O’ Donnell’s ‘Modesty Blaise’ inspirés me to create exceptional resourceful female characters with dubious pasts and many talents.

As for a great South African poet, Adam Small inspired me to speak from the heart, not holding back in pointing the finger to autocratic racist governments, which I try to reflect in my resistance poetry and political articles dealing with race, culture and identity.

I know you have already mentioned Alan Britt, Michael Johnson and Duanne Vorhees and Beau Blue. Please can you expand on why you enjoy these writers and who else in today’s writers you admire, and why?

Michael Lee Johnson writes in a conversational.style, almost with familiar imagery and references; “I drink dated milk/sip Mogen David concord wine with diet 7Up/My neighbors’ parties/loud blast language” from ‘Missing of the Birds’.

Duanne Vorhees’ metaphorical poetry speaks directly to the reader; “Come find me in some brick and vinyl Inn/when your soul is frozen in hard winter” from ‘The Poet’. His galloping rhyming style of writing makes you willingly trot along, “history is the mystery of mud and bones/how many of me, me, me have died or grown since yesterday”, from ‘Mean Time’.

Beau Blue’s no-nonsense and straightforward, honest writing, using familiar scenes or situations; “And when I asked where they kept The Cummings and Pounds/she pointed lemon lips at me/Paperbound poets are on the backside of humor”, from ‘Reviewing the Bookstore Massacre’.

Although its becoming very author heavy at this point, I only want to give a special mention of two voices of these modern literary times, although quite uniquely different, they have become booming legendary poetic loudspeakers –

Scott Thomas Outlar for his ‘fluxing and flowing’ sweepingly honest and almost prophetic writing, commenting on the good, the bad and the ugliness of humanity, somehow sometimes making us uncomfortably shift in our seats when we admit to ourselves we actually know what he wants to remind us of and what he suggests we do about it.

Heath Brougher for his visionary and increasingly intergalactic premonitional utterings of literary galaxies we can only try to imagine. His spectral visions take us onto a far flung comet hurtling us to far flung stars not even born yet.

Both Scott and Heath for me epitomise contemporary written creativity and that’s just my honest opinion.

7. What would you say to someone who asked you “How do you become a writer?”

I would say you must have some inkling that you are able to write, be it in diary form or in a formal setting like a language exam at school, or writing a letter (in my younger days posting to pen friends).

If thoughts keep bubbling in your head and you need to pen it down in whichever form and you feel a surge of creativity and feel good afterwards, then you are a writer.

If reading inspires you and you are moved by words and the magic of language, which stirs a passion within you and flips your emotions, then you are a writer… You just have to believe and trust in your unknown destiny. Pour out your heart, frustrations and inner voice onto paper or a screen!

8. Tell me about the writing projects you have on at the moment.

Well I have written a chapbook entitled ‘The Girl in the Stone/La Chica en la Piedra’, inspired by an image of the face of a girl in a stone from the Bronze age, which I found in my summer home in Spain, near a UNESCO world heritage mountain site. The poems deal with the surrounding people, the vineyards, the earth and the mountain, as well as folklore and the African migrant seasonal workers, as well as the surrounding areas. I hope to get it translated into Spanish. Know anyone perhaps?

My new full collection is entitled ‘Sic Transit Gloria Mundi’/Thus Passes the Glory of the World with the book cover painted by Janine Pickett. It also contains a few short fiction pieces. Watch this space!

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews: Don Beukes Wombwell Rainbow Interviews I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me.

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learningrendezvous · 5 years

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Cinema Studies

VIVIAN OSTROVSKY - PLUNGE

16 films by Vivian Ostrovsky made between 1982 and 2014.

"An intimate - yet humorous - act of cultural resistance, the cinema of Vivian Ostrovsky is a gesture, implying the filmmaker's entire body - as she travels around the world, carrying the gear, framing with a camera-eye. She digs in archival footage for an immense repertory of cinematic gestures performed by others - and playfully edits them with her own Super-8 shots. Multi-culturalism and polyglotism are woven into this poetics of displacement." - Berenice Reynaud

2 DVDs (With Subtitles Subtitles) / 2019 / 215 minutes

AROUND INDIA WITH A MOVIE CAMERA

By Sandhyu Suri

Award-winning filmmaker Sandhya Suri (I for India) skillfully weaves together archival footage - including hand colored sequences - with a new score by composer Soumik Datta to create an emotionally resonant story about life across India from 1899 to 1947.

Drawn exclusively from the BFI National Archive, Around India features some of the earliest surviving film from India as well as gorgeous travelogues, intimate home movies and newsreels from British, French and Indian filmmakers. Taking in Maharajas and Viceroys, fakirs and farmhands and personalities such as Sabu and Gandhi, the film explores not only the people and places of over 70 years ago, but asks us to engage with broader themes of a shared history, shifting perspectives in the lead up to Indian independence and the ghosts of the past.

DVD (Color, Black and White, Closed Captioned) / 2018 / 72 minutes

CENSORED

Directed by Sari Braithwaite

By Chloe Brugale

Deep in the vaults of the Australian National Archives lie thousands upon thousands of celluloid scraps: scenes that were cut by government censors from films imported into the country between the years of 1958-1971. Peppered through this collection are banned scenes from some of the most influential directors in history, including Godard, Polanski, Bergman, Varda and Fellini. But censorship extended to hundreds of forgotten films - from avant-garde and documentary films to Hollywood B-movies.

When Sari Braithwaite gained unprecedented access to this mysterious collection, she though she could create a work to liberate this censored archive, to honour these displaced frames, and condemn censorship. But, after years of bearing witness to these fragments of film, this archive became challenging and unnerving. It felt almost impossible to celebrate or reconcile.

[CENSORED] is a work stitched entirely from these never-before-seen artefacts of censorship: it is the story of how one filmmaker confronted an archive to reckon with film, censorship, and the power of the gaze.

Featuring an acclaimed soundtrack by Munro Melano and the End, [CENSORED] is an entertaining and provacative polemic, challenging audiences with questions that defy easy answers. Just as the censor and the filmmaker are amde complicit, so is the audience, who bear witness to this ambitious work.

DVD (Color, Black and White, Closed Captioned) / 2018 / 66 minutes

MARCELINE. A WOMAN. A CENTURY

By Cordelia Dvorak

MARCELINE. A WOMAN. A CENTURY is a fascinating portrait of the persevering French filmmaker, writer, and Holocaust survivor Marceline Loridan-Ivens (1928-2018).

Marceline was only 15 when both she and her father, a Polish Jew from Lodz, were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. She survived but her father didn't, and Marceline had to find radical and unconventional ways to heal after the tragedies of the war. In 1961, she appeared in Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin's landmark film Chronicle of a Summer, which gave birth to the term cinema verite. Later she married the legendary Dutch documentary director Joris Ivens, traveled with him to Vietnam, and co-directed films such as 17th Parallel: Vietnam in War (1968) and How Yukong Moved the Mountains (1976).

Filmed as she was nearing 90 years old and living in Paris, MARCELINE. A WOMAN. A CENTURY spans the broad arc of her life from Holocaust survivor to political activist to combatively critical filmmaker. Looking back on the momentous events she experienced and filmed such as the Algerian and Vietnam Wars and the Chinese Cultural Revolution, MARCELINE is a thought-provoking chronicle of a remarkable witness of the 20th century.

DVD (French, Color, Closed Captioned) / 2018 / 58 minutes

OBSERVER, THE

Directed by Rita Andreetti By Rita Andreetti, Matteo Bosi

In August 2014, the 11th Beijing Independant Film Festival was shut down after repeated threats from local authorities. The government wouldn't tolerate the screening of some 'sensitive' works, particularly a historical documentary called "Spark". The news shook filmmakers and public opinion alike and filmmaker Rita Andreetti couldn't help but begin on a search for the man whose work had pushed the government to the edge of tolerance.

The Observer is the portrait of the extraordinary and undetected work of Chinese dissedent artist, Hu Jie. Despite making huge contributions to historical research by uncovering essential testimonies from China's past, his body of work hasn't been recognized the way it deserves.

Carefully ducking away from the spotlight, he has managed to make more than 30 documentaries throughout his career. The content of his work is vital to understanding Chinese society and the preservation of the memory of its past; he is the first artist to dare talk about the Great Famine, the labor camps (Lao Gai) and the Cultural Revolution in an uncompromised way. For that, he is commonly considered the first historical documentary maker of China, despite his blacklisted status.

Rita Andreetti, director and young Italian film critic, allows viewers to discover Hu Jie's humanity and social commitment as she searches herself for Chinese identity. Inspired by the tenacity and the inner strength of Hu Jie himself, the documentary shows how his prolific activity has recently turned into a more intimate pictorial production. Although under increasing pressure, Hu Jie continues today, with different means, to tirelessly fight for the truth.

DVD (Mandarin with English Subtitles, Color) / 2017 / 78 minutes

GIRL FROM GOD'S COUNTRY: THE HISTORY OF WOMEN IN FILM AND OTHER WAR STORIES

By Karen Day

GIRL FROM GOD'S COUNTRY is the untold story of the first female independent filmmaker and action-adventure heroine, Nell Shipman (1892-1970), who left Hollywood to make her films in Idaho. An unadulterated, undiscovered adventure tale of a pioneering woman who rewrote the rules of filmmaking, and, in so doing, paved the way for independent voices-especially prominent female voices in today's film industry. Her storylines of self-reliant women overcoming physical challenges in the wilderness and often, rescuing the male lead, shattered the predictable cinematic formulas of large studio productions. Featuring rare archival footage by early pioneers, including minority filmmakers, Zora Neale Hurston and Miriam Wong, the first Chinese-American filmmaker in 1914 and present day interviews with Geena Davis and the Director of Women in Film, GIRL FROM GOD'S COUNTRY discuss how gender-inequities that Shipman and her counterparts faced perpetuate in today's film industry. Emblematic of an entire lost generation of female producers and directors in silent film, Nell Shipman's legacy has remained a buried treasure in film history for nearly 100 years.

DVD (Color) / 2016 / 66 minutes

MARIE LOSIER - HELLO HAPPINESS!

10 short films by Marie Losier.

French-born New York filmmaker Marie Losier learned the 16mm Bolex camera from George and Mike Kuchar and made a series of "Dream Portraits" of New York filmmakers, theatre, music and performance artists.

Marie Losier is the most effervescent and psychologically accurate portrait artist working in film today. Her films wriggle with the energy and sweetness of a broken barrel full o' sugar worms!!! No one makes pictures like Marie, Edith Sitwell's inner Tinkerbell!!! - Guy Maddin

Marie Losier's movies are as sweet and sassy as her name and well worth a gander or goose by all off beat cineastes. So beat off to a different drum and marvel at the wad of wonders that only a French woman could generate. Take a trip down a sprocketed spiral of celluloid strips into a glory hole of impressive dimensions. What pops through will surely enlarge with persistent, ocular manipulation. - George Kuchar

SELECTED SHORTS IN 16 MM: L'Oiseau de la Nuit 20', 2016 Bim, Bam, Boom, las Luchas Morenas! 13', 2014 Alan Vega, Just a Million Dreams 16', 2014 Byun, Objet Trouve 7', 2012 Slap the Gondola! 15', 2010 Manuelle Labour 10', 2007 Eat My Make-up! 6', 2005 Electrocute Your Stars 8', 2004 Bird Bath and Beyond 13', 2003 The Ontological Cowboy 16', 2005

DVD (With French Subtitles) / 2016 / 124 minutes

MINUTE BODIES: THE INTIMATE WORLD OF F. PERCY SMITH

By Stuart A. Staples

Music by tindersticks

This meditative, immersive film by tindersticks' Stuart A. Staples is a tribute to the astonishing work and achievements of naturalist, inventor and pioneering British filmmaker F. Percy Smith (1880-1945).

Based in a studio in north London in the early years of the 20th century, Percy Smith developed the use of time-lapse, animation and micro-photographic techniques to capture nature's secrets in action. He worked in a number of public roles, including the Royal Navy and British Instructional Films, Smith was prolific and driven, often directing several films simultaneously, apparently on a mission to explore and capture nature's hidden terrains.

Minute Bodies: The Intimate World of F. Percy Smith is an interpretative work that combines Smith's original film footage - preserved within the BFI National Archive - with a new contemporary score by tindersticks with Thomas Belhom and Christine Ott. It creates a hypnotic, alien yet familiar dreamscape that connects us to the sense of wonder Smith must have felt as he peered through his own lenses and saw these micro-worlds for the first time.

DVD (Black and White) / 2016 / 55 minutes

GOLDEN GATE GIRLS

By S. Louisa Wei

In GOLDEN GATE GIRLS author and professor S. Louisa Wei tells the story of filmmaker Esther Eng, the first woman to direct Chinese-language film in the US, and the most prominent woman director in Hong Kong in the 1930's. A San Francisco native and open lesbian, her contribution to film history is sadly overlooked - her 11 feature films mostly lost. After the retirement of director Dorothy Arzner in 1943 and before Ida Lupino began directing in 1949, Eng was the only woman directing feature length films in the US.

Wei's documentary paints a fascinating picture of how Eng's career in filmmaking broke through gender and racial boundaries in Hollywood and Hong Kong, at a time when opportunities for Chinese women in the industry were few and far between. With a captivating archive of newly discovered images and interviews with those who knew her, Wei uncovers a rich chapter of film history that challenges both gender hierarchies and national narratives. Essential viewing for Cinema Studies and Asian American Studies.

DVD (Chinese, Color) / 2014 / 90 minutes

THANHOUSER STUDIO AND THE BIRTH OF AMERICAN CINEMA

The Thanhouser Company was a trail-blazing studio based in New Rochelle, New York. From 1910 to 1917 it released over 1,000 films that were seen by audiences around the globe.

This 53-minute documentary reconstructs the relatively unknown story of the studio and its founders, technicians, and stars as they entered the nascent motion picture industry to compete with Thomas Edison and the companies aligned with his Motion Pictures Patents Corporation (MPPC).

Ned Thanhouser, grandson of studio founders Edwin and Gertrude Thanhouser, narrates this compelling tale, recounting a saga of bold entrepreneurship, financial successes, cinematic innovations, tragic events, the launching of Hollywood careers, and the transition of the movie industry from the East Coast to the West and Hollywood.

DVD / 2014 / 53 minutes

BILL MORRISON: COLLECTED WORKS (1996 - 2013)

16 films by Bill Morrison

This five-disc set comprises 16 works by filmmaker and multimedia artist Bill Morrison, called "one of the most adventurous American filmmakers" by Variety. Morrison's work is characterized by his sensitive approach to found, often decaying film footage, and his close collaboration with contemporary conmposers, including Vijay Iyer, Johann Johannsson and Bill Frisell. Among other shorts and features, this set includes his acclaimed DECASIA (2002), "the most widely acclaimed American avant-garde film of the fin-de-siecle." (J. Hoberman, The Village Voice).

DISC 1: Blu-Ray (75 minutes) Decasia 67 minutes, 2002 Light is Calling 8 minutes, 2004

DISC 2: DVD (107 minutes) City Walk 6 minutes, 1999 Porch 8 minutes, 2005 Highwater Trilogy 31 minutes, 2006 Who by Water 18 minutes, 2007 Just Ancient Loops 26 minutes, 2012 Re-Awakenings 18 minutes, 2013

DISC 3: DVD (107 minutes) The Mesmerist 16 minutes, 2003 Ghost Trip 23 minutes, 2000 Spark of Being 68 minutes, 2010

DISC 4: DVD (86 minutes) The Miner's Hymns 52 minutes, 2011 Release 13 minutes, 2010 Outerborough 9 minutes, 2005 The Film of Her 12 minutes, 1996

DISC 5: DVD (80 minutes) The Great Flood 80 minutes, 2013

5 DVDs (Color, Black & White) / 2013 / 455 minutes

BIRTH OF THE LIVING DEAD

Director: Rob Kuhns

In 1968 a young college drop-out named George A. Romero directed "Night of the Living Dead," a low budget horror film that shocked the world, became an icon of the counterculture, and spawned a zombie industry worth billions of dollars that continues to this day.

Birth of the Living Dead 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 in a singular time in American history.

DVD / 2013 / 76 minutes

ROBERT TODD - INTERIOR LANDSCAPE

6 short films by the Robert Todd.

Having made over 60 films over the past two decades, Robert Todd has a mastery of 16mm filmmaking that eschews categorization. As effective with the clarity and efficiency of the documentary form as he is with the mysterious shapes and shadows of the lyrical mode, Todd records the world with a sympathetic eye. Feathers and fields, stones and skin are rendered with sculptural accuracy, emerging from darkness into light, from focus to blur, refreshing and refining our own sense of vision. From prisons to playgrounds, streetscapes to landscapes, interiors to underbrush, there seems to be no place or object that resists transformation through the deft manipulations of Robert Todd's lens. - LIFT, Toronto

EVERGREEN 15', 2005, 16mm, color INTERPLAY 6', 2006, 16mm, color HABITAT 9', 2012m 16mm, color UNDERGROWTH 11', 2011, 16mm, color WITHIN 8', 2012, 16mm, color THRESHOLD 13', 2013, 16mm, color

DVD / 2013 / 63 minutes

TO CHRIS MARKER, AN UNSENT LETTER

By Emiko Omori

TO CHRIS MARKER, AN UNSENT LETTER is a cinematic love letter to Chris Marker, the notoriously private filmmaker and artist--director of LA JETeE, SANS SOLEIL, LE JOLI MAI and many other films, and self-described "best known author of unknown works".

Directed by Emmy-award winning cinematographer and filmmaker Emiko Omori, whose credits include Marker's THE OWL'S LEGACY, the film is a contemplative essay whose form is inspired by Marker's signature style.

Alongside Omori's thoughts and recollections of the filmmaker, and her examinations of some of his key works, the film incorporates interviews with Marker associates and admirers including film critic David Thomson, film programmers Tom Luddy and Peter Scarlet, filmmakers Marina Goldovskaya and Michael H. Shamberg, 12 MOKNEYS screenwriters Janet and David Peoples, computer scientist Dirk Kuhlmann, and many others.

Their warm reflections join Omori's to examine the legacy of a filmmaker as beloved as he was enigmatic.

DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2013 / 78 minutes

TO TELL THE TRUTH: THE STRATEGY OF TRUTH

By David Van Taylor

THE STRATEGY OF TRUTH: DOCUMENTARY GOES TO WAR (1933-1945)

Government propaganda is often said to reflect a society's dominant values. But it can also reveal what officials feel they need to convince a skeptical public of. In the first major war to unfold on celluloid, documentarians around the globe were enlisted to make some tough sells.

How would you convince Germans, for example, that "the Jewish problem" requires a "Final Solution"? Or bring class-bound Britons together as equal partners to endure and combat an unprecedented Blitz? And what would galvanize traditional isolationist Americans to go defend a patch of land thousands of miles from home?

In Germany, Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will not only promoted the Nazi ideals but was also posed to become a landmark of propaganda filmmaking. In England, as film historian Brian Winston explains, an argument erupted between the new English documentary newsreel and traditional documentarians.

Last into the war, the US launched perhaps the biggest and most sophisticated campaign. A mix of seasoned documentarians and Hollywood heavy-hitters, such as Frank Capra, discovered how to use Nazi propaganda against itself, in an effort that became known as the "Strategy of Truth."

But even when the cause is just, it can be a tall order making the truth fulfill the mission. On one particularly thorny assignment-a film designed to reconcile African-Americans to strict military segregation-the collision of strategy and truth yielded some surprising and momentous results.

DVD (Color / Black & White, Closed Captioned) / 2012 / 56 minutes

TO TELL THE TRUTH: WORKING FOR CHANGE

By Calvin Skaggs

WORKING FOR CHANGE: DOCUMENTING HARD TIMES (1929-1941)

To expose the worst effects of the Great Depression, documentarians developed a new form, the social documentary. The left-leaning Film and Photo League sounded the alarm on economic conditions, at a time when mainstream media were still insisting prosperity was just around the corner. Police night-stick blows often added shakiness to their footage as they captured evictions, breadlines, and mass protests.

After FDR's election, Pare Lorentz convinced the New Deal administration to pay for a film about the Dust Bowl. Working-and arguing-with veterans of the Film and Photo League, he crafted the classic Plow That Broke the Plains. Lorentz's films had it both ways, parlaying a strong (and government-funded) social critique into a box-office hit.

English pioneer John Grierson likewise found backing from the government, and produced enduring and original portraits of the working class. In keeping with his Tory sponsor's agenda, though, these films all showed a well-oiled, highly-functional social machine-fulfilling Grierson's aim as a Social Democrat to unite British society.

Back in the US, documentarians formed Frontier Films, the first independent, non-profit film production company in the U.S. Their mission was to investigate some of the major American labor struggles of the 1930s-until Pearl Harbor changed everyone's focus.

DVD (Color / Black & White, Closed Captioned) / 2012 / 56 minutes

ANNA MAY WONG: IN HER OWN WORDS

By Yunah Hong

Anna May Wong knew she wanted to be a movie star from the time she was a young girl - and by 17 she became one. A third generation Chinese American, she went on to make dozens of films in Hollywood and Europe . She was one of the few actors to successfully transition from silent to sound cinema, co-starring with Marlene Dietrich, Anthony Quinn and Douglas Fairbanks along the way. She was glamorous, talented and cosmopolitan - yet she spent most of her career typecast either as a painted doll or a scheming dragon lady. For years, older generations of Chinese Americans frowned upon the types of roles she played, today a younger generation of Asian Americans sees her as a pioneering artist, who succeeded in a hostile environment that hasn't altogether changed. Yunah Hong's engrossing documentary is an entertaining and imaginative survey of Wong's career, exploring the impact Wong had on images of Asian American women in Hollywood, both then and now. Excerpts from Wong's films, archival photographs and interviews enhance this richly detailed picture of a woman and her times.

DVD (Color) / 2011 / 56 minutes

GOLDEN SLUMBERS

By Davy Chou

Between the early 1960s and 1975, Cambodia was home to a vibrant film industry that produced more than 400 features. When the Khmer Rouge seized control of the country, they halted production, demolishing the industry along most of the rest of the country's cultural life. Cinemas were closed, prints destroyed, and the filmmakers, actors, and screenwriters who were not able to flee the country were slaughtered.

Davy Chou's GOLDEN SLUMBERS resurrects this cinema's heyday. Though very few of the films from this period have remained intact, Chou uses the soundtracks, advertisements, posters and lobby cards to recreate his subjects' shared memories of a golden era.

The film contains interviews with the era's surviving artists, including directors Ly Bun Yim, Ly You Sreang, and Yvon Hem, and actor Dy Saveth. Two dedicated cinephiles-one of whom says he can remember the faces of film stars better than those of his brothers and sisters-recall plotlines and trade film trivia. Chou also takes us inside Phnom Penh's shuttered movie palaces, now transformed into karaoke bars, restaurants, and squats.

These reminiscences and recreations testify that while the most of the films of this era have vanished, their memory endures for an entire generation of Cambodians, leaving a complex legacy for today's youth to inherit.

DVD (Color, Black & White ) / 2011 / 96 minutes

WALKING DEAD GIRLS, THE

An intriguing rarity for those seeking to study and understand a sub-genre of horror filmmaking, The Walking Dead Girls! is a behind the scenes look into zombie culture in the United States and the obsession with sexy female zombies. What is it about zombie bimbos, or "zimbies", that are starting to gain the world's interest? Why are zombies now in mainstream culture and seen in advertising from JCPenney to Sears?

With interviews with zombie master maker George Romero, cult filmmaker Lloyd Kaufman, scream queen Linnea Quigley and cult movie star Bruce Campbell.

Includes a rare look into the making of a zombie pinup calendar and behind the scenes of "Stripperland", The Walking Dead Girls! is a look into the zombie phenomenon created by Romero that is 40 years in the making.

DVD / 2011 / 90 minutes

BUHAROV BROTHERS, THE - SLOW MIRROR

3 short films from the inimitable Igor and Ivan Buharov.

The anarchic, fractured and extremely surreal films by Ivan and Igor Buharov (Korne?l Szila?gyi and Na?ndor Hevesi) might seem like a perfect fit for this "outsider" paradigm. Darkly playful hallucinations that share the aura of having been discovered in a granny's attic like a book of now troubling childhood drawings, they reveal in precise terms a world perhaps subconsciously suspected but hitherto indescribable. They have in common an improvised quality and a sense of the homemade. This not only stems from their beautifully rough-hewn visual textures but often from the people, objects and spaces that appear before the camera. The casts are composed of extraordinary ordinary people rather than film star types: lived-in faces bringing their own stories to the films. The props, which sometimes conspicuously reappear in different films, can likewise seem to have a real-world existence of their own carried over into the picture. This helps lend the films the weird intimacy of children's games, in which familiar people and places are made alien and the weirdly alien becomes immanent to the everyday. The feverish and disorienting experience of watching a Buharov film was probably best described in the 2008 Offscreen Film Festival catalogue as "getting lost in someone else's dream". - Maximilian Le Cain

DVD (Hungarian, With English, French Subtitles) / 2009 / 108 minutes

CAPTURING REALITY: THE ART OF DOCUMENTARY

Director: Pepita Ferrari

From cinema-verite pioneers Albert Maysles and Joan Churchill to maverick moviemakers like Errol Morris, Werner Herzog and Nick Broomfield, the world's best documentarians reflect upon the unique power of their genre in this comprehensive and eye-opening two-disc box set.

Featuring interviews with 38 directors and 163 film clips from classics such as Grey Gardens and The Thin Blue Line, as well as recent work like Darwin's Nightmare and Touching the Void, Capturing Reality explores the complex creative process that goes into making non-fiction films. Deftly charting the documentarian's journey, it poses the question: can film capture reality?

DVD-R / 2009 / 98 minutes

FOR THE LOVE OF MOVIES: THE STORY OF AMERICAN FILM CRITICISM

Directed by Boston Phoenix critic, Gerald Peary

For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism is the first documentary to dramatize the rich saga of American movie reviewing.

For the Love of Movies offers an insider's view of the critics' profession, with commentary from America's best-regarded reviewers, Roger Ebert (The Chicago Sun-Times), A.O. Scott (The New York Times), Lisa Schwarzbaum (Entertainment Weekly), and Kenneth Turan (The Los Angeles Times). We also hear from young, articulate, Internet voices, including Harry

Knowles (ainitcoolnews.com) and Karina Longworth (spout.com). Their stories are entertaining, humorous, and personal. Those who hear them may gain new respect for the film critic profession, knowing the faces and voices, and also the history.

From the raw beginnings of criticism before The Birth of a Nation to the incendiary Pauline Kael-Andrew Sarris debates of the 1960s and 70s to the battle today between youthful on-liners and the print establishment, this documentary illuminates the role that film criticism has played in the evolution of American film.

DVD / 2009 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 80 minutes

TALES FROM THE SCRIPT

Director: Peter Hanson

Shane Black (Lethal Weapon), John Carpenter (Halloween), Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption), William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver), and dozens of other Hollywood screenwriters share penetrating insights and hilarious anecdotes in Tales from the Script, the most comprehensive documentary ever made about screenwriting. By analyzing their triumphs and recalling their failures, the participants explain how successful writers develop the skills necessary for toughing out careers in one of the world's most competitive industries. They also reveal the untold stories behind some of the greatest screenplays ever written, describing their adventures with luminaries including Harrison Ford, Morgan Freeman, Stanley Kubrick, Joel Silver, Martin Scorsese, and Steven Spielberg. The film was produced in tandem with the book of the same name published by IT Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers available in stores January 26, 2010.

DVD / 2009 / 105 minutes

SNUFF: A DOCUMENTARY ABOUT KILLING ON CAMERA (SPECIAL EDITION)

The Ultimate Cinema Taboo.

Explore the disturbing, pervasive urban legend of the "snuff" film, an alleged film where someone is purposely murdered on camera. This compelling, educational documentary features interviews with film professionals, FBI profilers and academics who all help examine the myths and evidence of snuff films, and its relationship to cult horror films, serial killers and pornography in our culture.

DVD / 2008 / 76 minutes

WHO IS HENRY JAGLOM?

Director: Henry-Alex Rubin & Jeremy Workman

Genius? Fraud? Egomaniac? Maverick?

Hailed by some as a cinematic genius, a feminist voice and a true maverick of American cinema, dismissed by others as a voyeuristic, egomaniacal fraud and the "world's worst director," Henry Jaglom obsessively confuses and abuses the line between life and art.

Featuring scores of interviews (with notables including Orson Welles, Dennis Hopper, Milos Forman and Peter Bogdanovich) and behind-the-scenes footage, this hilarious documentary about the director of such films as Hollywood Dreams, Festival in Cannes, Eating and Babyfever has grown into an underground cult hit.

With: Orson Welles, Candice Bergen, Dennis Hopper, Karen Black, Milos Forman, Louis Malle, Andrea Marcovicci, Martha Plimpton, Sally Kellerman, Peter Bogdanovich, Bob Rafelson, and John Landis.

DVD / 2007 / 84 minutes

ELECTRIC SHADOWS

Director: Xiao Jiang

From one of China's newest cinematic voices comes a charming tale set into motion by a disastrous encounter: delivery man Dabing crashes his bike into the mysterious Ling Ling. From her hospital bed, Ling Ling asks Dabing to go to her home and feed her fish; while there, Dabing discovers an astonishing diary. In its pages he reads stories of a little girl's passion for the movies, which re-ignites his own longing for the days when the cinema enchanted China's masses, and audiences breathed and dreamed as one.

DVD (Mandarin with English Subtitles) / 2004 / 95 minutes

SUFFRAGETTES IN THE SILENT CINEMA

By Kay Sloan

In the days before movies could talk, silent films spoke clearly of sexual politics, and in Suffragettes in the Silent Cinema, historian and writer Kay Sloan has assembled rare and wonderful footage that opens a historic window onto how women's suffrage was represented in early American cinema.

Taking advantage of the powerful new medium, early filmmakers on both sides of the contentious issue of suffrage used film to create powerful propaganda and images about women. Suffragettes in the Silent Cinema contains clips from many films from the era, including: A Lively Affair (1912); A Busy Day (1914), which stars a young Charlie Chaplin in drag portraying a suffragist; and the pro-suffragist film, What 80 Million Women Want (1913), which includes an eloquent speech from president of the Women's Political Union, Harriet Stanton Blatch.

Silent films may have passed into history, and their representations of feminists abandoning babies or stealing bicycles to attend suffragette meetings may now seem outrageous, but the struggle for gender equality and the issues surrounding representations of women in the media remain as fascinating, engaging, and relevant as ever.

DVD (Color, Black and White) / 2003 / 35 minutes

LIGHT KEEPS ME COMPANY

Director: Carl-Gustaf Nykvist

Twice an Oscar Winner and considered one of the foremost cinematographers in the history of film, Sven Nykvist is best known for his work with Ingmar Bergman, with whom he created some of the most important films of modern cinema.

Despite a tumultuous personal life that included the tragic suicide of his oldest son and a sweeping love affair with Mia Farrow, Nykvist continued to collaborate on projects with filmmakers such as Woody Allen, Louis Malle, Andrei Tarkovsky, Roman Polanski and many others. In 1998 he was diagnosed with Aphasia, an affliction that would end his career.

Lovingly directed by his son Carl-Gustaf, Light Keeps Me Company includes film clips, rare home movies, family photographs, behind-the-scenes footage, and interviews with some of the legends who've worked with him, including Ingmar Bergman, Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, Liv Ullman, Susan Sarandon, and many others.

DVD / 2000 / 76 minutes

LAVENDER LIMELIGHT: LESBIANS IN FILM

Director: Marc Mauceri

From Go Fish to Paris is Burning to The Watermelon Woman, Lavender Limelight: Lesbians in Film goes behind the scenes to reveal America's most successful lesbian directors. These talented movie-makers enlighten and entertain as they explore their sexual identity, growing up gay, inspirations and techniques, Hollywood vs. Indie, and of course, love and sex, on screen and off. The conversations are intimate, the topics unlimited, and the clips from their work enthralling.

Featuring: Cheryl Dunye, Rose Troche, Jennie Livingston, Monika Treut, Maria Maggenti, Su Friedrich & Heather MacDonald

DVD / 1997 / 57 minutes

SINS OF THE FLESHAPOIDS

3 films by Mike Kuchar.

Along with Anger's Scorpio Rising and Warhol's Chelsea Girls, Mike Kuchar's Sins of the Fleshapoids remains one of the most influential films of the '60s American Underground. Mike and his brother George (who co-wrote Fleshapoids), were the godfathers of bargain basement cinema, pioneering a hilariously campy, lurid style between Ed Wood exploitation and Douglas Sirk melodrama.

Set a million years in the future, after "The Great War" has scourged the planet, mankind has forsaken science for self-indulgence in all the carnal pleasures afforded by art, food, and lust. Work is left to a race of enslaved androids. One rebellious male robot (Bob Cowan) tires of pampering his lazy masters, and joins the humans in sin. The future never seemed so ridiculous...

As a bonus, we present two classic featurettes from the Kuchar catalog. The Secret of Wendel Samson stars Pop artist Red Grooms in a dark, surreal psychodrama of sexual desire and the entanglements of intimacy. The Craven Sluck tells a torrid tale of adultery and flying saucers.

DVD (With French Subtitles) / 1966 / 97 minutes

http://www.learningemall.com/News/Cinema_Studies_1904.html

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afjjamika052-blog · 6 years

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Mini Album Scrapbooking Suggestions.

Memory is a difficult point. A search on social networks services like Facebook and twitter promptly exposes a variety of surprise Road View memories uncovered by customers. And afterwards along came micro-blogging - as well as, with a limited quantity of time and also effort offered, the blog site generation turned into the Twitter (or Facebook) generation. For the time being however, allow's recap the features that Facebook rolled out (apparently a bit too swiftly). However what happens if you could create an animated slideshow of kinds that would include an interactive map of your itinerary with pictures, videos, Tweets, as well as Foursquare check-ins from your trip? • Break images of any family members minute, such as recitals, days, memorials, reunions, and also college graduations, as well as add them to your ancestral tree. 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David C Rubin is a specialist in autobiographical memory and also oral customs as well as in his ground-breaking publication Memory in Oral Traditions he clarifies how legendary tales like Homer's The odyssey and the iliad were given verbally utilizing poetic devices. Hearing songs, as well as remembering various experiences, could help them keep in mind the much more complex experiences." It's not that these are always favorable, he keeps in mind, but they could be a lot more rounded." Music can not cure, yet possibly it could assist heal. Today Facebook claimed a billion individuals utilize Carrier on a monthly basis. Pictures instantly creates Memories-- however you're the very best manager of your images and also the stories behind them. JotJournal takes your most recent blog posts and also photos and also loads a 32-page shiny soft-cover 8-inch square book. 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And more: a batch of finely detailed programmes of swimming as well as various other sporting activities events he had scheduled troops behind the cutting edge in the quieter times; an unopened packet of tobacco and also another of cigarettes, a present to all troops at Christmas 1914 from Princess Mary, the child of George V and Queen Mary, with a card wanting them "A Pleased Xmas and also a triumphant New Year"; and pictures of the barren scenes in and around Ypres and Passchendaele, where Cyril Helm would certainly serve later on in the battle. Sir Roger had actually currently composed a bestselling autobiography and the brand-new book is a rather classic recall at a really various globe He was 11 when battle burst out and describes rationing and also life throughout the Strike, along with bemoaning modern woes such as fiddling with phones throughout mealtimes as well as the failure to order a straightforward mug of coffee. In one study, initial performed around 50 years back as well as repeated because, people are revealed 10,000 photographs and also, a couple of days later on, one more 1,000 - fifty percent from the original batch and fifty percent brand-new. In her book "The Female Brain," neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine created that females, along with varying from guys in degrees of dopamine, estrogen, and also cortisol, have 11 percent a lot more nerve cells dedicated to feelings and also memory.

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nofomoartworld · 7 years

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Hyperallergic: The Black American Women Who Made Their Own Art World

Faith Ringgold, “For the W omen’s House” (1971), oil on canvas, 96 x 96 in, courtesy of Rose M. Singer Center, Rikers Island Correctional Center (© 2017 Faith Ringgold / Artists Rights Society, ARS, New York)

On the heels of the Civil Rights movement, in a 1971 New York Times article, Toni Morrison made a terse assessment of the downstream effects of second-wave feminism, as observed by black women:

What do black women feel about Women’s Lib? Distrust. It is white, therefore suspect. In spite of the fact that liberating movements in the black world have been catalysts for white feminism, too many movements and organizations have made deliberate overtures to enroll blacks and have ended up by rolling them. They don’t want to be used again to help somebody gain power- a power that is carefully kept out of their hands. They look at white women and see them as the enemy- for they know that racism is not confined to white men, and that there are more white women than men in this country, and that 53 percent of the population sustained an eloquent silence during times of greatest stress.

Jan van Raay, “Faith Ringgold (right) and Michele W allace (middle) at Art Workers Coalition Protest, Whitney Museum” (1971), digital C-print, courtesy of Jan van Raay, Portland, Oregon (© Jan van Raay)

Morrison’s indictment of the exclusionary politics of white feminists seems eerily prescient for today’s times, especially in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s election. Black women, as the novelist recounts, “had nothing to fall back on; not maleness, not whiteness, not ladyhood, not anything. And out of the profound desolation of her reality she may very well have invented herself.” What Morrison gets at here is that black women have held and will continue to hold space for each other as a mode of survival. What comes to light in We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85 at the Brooklyn Museum, perhaps the most important exhibition New York has seen in recent years, is that in spite of an art world that tried to keep them on the margins, black women artists fostered individual and collective modes of expression through self-determination and networks of care.

This sterling exhibition, historicizing two decades of black women artists’ cultural production, begins in the three galleries surrounding Judy Chicago’s magnum opus of feminist art, “The Dinner Party” (1974–79). Each section is so dense that it could be its own exhibition. Viewers begin in the 1960s, encountering the Spiral artist collective and the wider Black Arts Movement that followed. In ensuing galleries, co-curators Rujeko Hockley and Catherine Morris present a range of artist collectives and alternative spaces formed in New York at the height of Women’s Liberation in the ’70s. The final galleries chronicle postmodern photography, performance, and multimedia art created in the wake of multiculturalism in the ’80s. Quite poetically, one can’t get to Chicago’s “The Dinner Party,” a permanent fixture of these galleries, without seeing some part of We Wanted a Revolution.

Greeting visitors upon entry to the show is Faith Ringgold’s mural for a Rikers Island women’s prison, “For The Woman’s House” (1971), and Maren Hassinger’s sprawling constellation of wire rope sculptures, “Leaning” (1980). Together, these works foreshadow the show’s inter-subjective lens on black women’s identities, their friendships, and their political realities. “Leaning” is about a kind of unified presence, across space and time, quietly illuminating the power of collectivity. More than tempered anger at a racially exclusionary art world, a theme of bold refusal is present in the 242 artworks and pieces of archival ephemera on display.

Keen visitors will quickly discover points of connection between the artists on view and an overall ethos of care permeating each gallery, which is supported with vitrines of rich historical documents. For example, not only is Lorraine O’Grady a conceptual artist, but We Wanted a Revolution reveals that she was also a publicist for other artists, as shown in a press release announcing Senga Nengudi’s performance of “Air Propo” (1981) at Linda Goode Bryant’s black avant-garde gallery Just Above Midtown. Documentary photographs of Nengudi and Hassinger in the Los Angeles-based Studio Z collective’s performance “Freeway Fets” (1978) hang in the same space. The curators arrange artworks and archival objects to sharply narrate the ways black women artists persevered by way of their practices, despite how inhospitable the art world could be.

Works by Lorraine O’Grady in We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85 at the Brooklyn Museum (© Jonathan Dorado)

Through reams of historical documents and papers, the curators unflinchingly recount instances of racism and exclusion, from the feminist cooperative AIR Gallery to Donald Newman’s controversial 1979 Nigger Drawings show at Artists Space and even the Brooklyn Museum itself. During a town hall event at the institution in 1971, its director at the time, Duncan Cameron, appeared open to criticism yet ostensibly defended the Museum’s exclusionary practices regarding the women and minority artists who were vying for representation; there was widespread outcry. Ringgold, leading members of the Women Students and Artists for Black Liberation, initiated the meeting. Amid budgetary and administrative struggles, Cameron resigned in 1973. Forty-four years later, we finally have a show centering the recent history of black women artists — and not one relegated to the Brooklyn Museum’s long-shuttered community gallery.

The exhibition’s archival vitrines present blunt reminders of painful and contested histories, but they also exhume buried stories waiting to be told. Correspondence between Howardena Pindell and Goode Bryant reveals an intimate tenderness and warmth. In a letter to her gallerist sent from Rio de Janeiro, Pindell wrote: “I’m spoiling myself rotten — doing nothing much but going to the beach and walking around the most beautiful people … the climate is fantastic — even bought myself a string bikini and almost let it all hang out.” These words were written by the same hands that sewed and stitched together the intricate, unstretched canvas of “Carnival at Ostende” (1971), which hangs on an adjacent wall. To think of these letters in relation to Pindell’s video piece “Free White and 21” (1980), also on view, humanizes the artist. In “Free White and 21,” Pindell interrogates, through witnessing and autobiography, the psychic violence of racism and the slow degradation of one’s spirit in the face of constant micro-aggressions; this juxtaposition drives the point home that the political is also deeply embedded in the personal, and that taking a moment of reprieve in Rio could be just as radical as publicly calling out the art world’s complicity in perpetuating racism and inequality.

The subtitle of We Wanted a Revolution is “Black Radical Women, 1965–85,” evoking the question of what constitutes radicalism. Is it an artist’s engagement with protest, activism, and community organizing? Is it the subject matter the artist takes up? Or is radicalism persistence in the face of a constant threat of erasure and silencing? One has to approach these questions with a healthy sense of skepticism here, as art institutions attempt to become more inclusive in their curating, staffing and collecting practices. As a fellow culture worker, I’m saddened at the ways in which the race, gender, sexuality and other identity categories of artists often become politicized with a sweeping lack of criticality inside the space of the museum. But there are no clear-cut or neatly defined answers in We Wanted a Revolution.

Where We At Collective, “Cookin’ and Smokin'” (1972), offset printed poster, 14 × 11 in, Collection of David Lusenhop (photo courtesy of Dindga McCannon Archives, Philadelphia, PA; © Dindga McCannon; photo by David Lusenhop)

Visitors will see that artists’ and artist collectives’ political and philosophical concerns shifted across generations, a reflection of intersectional identities and subject positions. The Spiral artist collective, founded in the midst of the social and political upheavals of the 1960s, is evoked in an installation that features a self-portrait by Emma Amos. Spiral, first established by Romare Bearden in Harlem in 1963, had loose aesthetic alignments. The group had famously divergent opinions about what defined black art, and was not inclusive of women — Amos was the lone female member. Around the corner from this section, we see artworks made by members of the Where We At collective, founded by Dinga McCannon, Ringgold, and Kay Brown in McCannon’s Brooklyn apartment in 1971. Their work addresses the perennial issue of black women’s double exclusion from male-dominated black art collectives like Spiral and AfriCoBRA as well as from the white mainstream art world. For Where We At, the solution was for the artists to establish support systems for each other and to eliminate the barriers keeping their art and ideas from entering the world. Where We At’s bylaws outline the group’s aspiration to eventually open an arts academy exclusively for black women.

Meanwhile, activist Barbara Smith’s Boston-based queer black feminist group, the Combahee River Collective, was emphatically intersectional from its founding in 1974. “Although we are feminists and Lesbians, we feel solidarity with progressive Black men and do not advocate the fractionalization that white women who are separatists demand,” the collective proclaimed in its manifesto. “We struggle together with Black men against racism, while we also struggle with Black men about sexism.” Ana Mendieta, desiring to make space for artists of color to articulate the critical terms and contexts for their works, took to curatorial practice, including Pindell, Nengudi, and other artists like Beverly Buchanan and Janet Henry in her groundbreaking 1980 exhibition at AIR Gallery, Dialectics of Isolation, part of which is restaged here.

Beverly Buchanan, “Untitled (Frustula Series)” (ca 1978), cast concrete, private collection (© Estate of Beverly Buchanan, courtesy of Jane Bridges)

Betye Saar, “Liberation of A unt Jemima: Cocktail” (1973), mixed-media assemblage, 12 x 18 in, private collection (© Betye Saar, courtesy the artist and Roberts & Tilton, Culver City, California; photo by Jonathan Dorado, Brooklyn Museum)

A shared desire for change doesn’t always signal shared political sentiments and positions within and across generations of artists. For Ringgold and her daughter, the writer Michele Wallace, the art of protest was a family affair; they practiced it together at the Whitney Museum, as we see in photographs of the two picketing with the Art Workers’ Coalition in 1971. When taken together, the assemblage works of Betye Saar and her daughter Alison Saar provide a rich intergenerational dialogue about the departures and liberties younger artists took with their artworks as a result of earlier generations’ protests. One sees such a transition of focus from racism to sexism in the black liberatory aesthetics of Betye Saar’s “Liberation of Aunt Jemima: Cocktail” (1973) and her daughter’s concerns with the politicization of black women’s bodies in “Sapphire” (1985). “In some ways, I myself felt that maybe I didn’t need to fight that same fight,” Alison Saar said in a recent symposium with Hockley at the Brooklyn Museum, “because I didn’t have hand grenades and hip-slinging mammies with Uzis and stuff like that I thought that maybe my work was less political … just in terms of telling our own personal stories it becomes political.”

A quiet but equally powerful takeaway from this show is that many of the women represented worked fiercely to champion and safeguard the field of black art history through publishing and establishing their own collections and foundations. The artist and art historian Samella Lewis and the artist and filmmaker Camille Billops both collected and documented African American art and archives while pursuing their own practices. I was touched to know that Los Angeles-based black collector and philanthropist Eileen Harris Norton had loaned to the exhibition O’Grady’s iconic bullwhip and the dress she made of 180 white gloves for her “Mlle Bourgeoise Noire” (1980) performance. The costume accompanies O’Grady’s documentary photographs taken at the New Museum and Just Above Midtown. Kellie Jones, the esteemed art historian and curator of Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960–1980 (an important precursor to We Wanted a Revolution), appears in some of Lorna Simpson’s earliest portraits of the 1980s. These moments reaffirm Hockley and Morris’s commitment to telling the narrative of black women’s advocacy, patronage, collection, and promotion of each other’s work.

Lorna Simpson, “Rodeo Caldonia (Left to Right: Alva Rogers, Sandye Wilson, Candace Hamilton, Derin Young, Lisa Jones)” (1986), photographic print, 8 x 10 in (courtesy of Lorna Simpson; © 1986 Lorna Simpson)

Concerns about the art historical canon aside, the artworks on view here are both stunning and revelatory. Blondell Cummings’s dance performance “Chicken Soup” (1981), shown here as a video projection, is hauntingly good. In it, Cummings (who died in 2015) appears alone on a stage sparsely equipped with a green scarf, a cast iron skillet, a scrub brush, and chair, and proceeds to transform the space into a volatile environment of domesticity and labor. At moments, Cummings combines virtuosic leaps and dancerly lunges with writhing convulsions and repetitive movements as if cleaning a floor or tending to a hot meal on a stove. There is a riveting dissolution of the dance’s legibility as dance with each intensifying gesture. Ming Smith and Coreen Simpson’s expansive photographs of Harlemites deserve their own surveys. Simpson, for instance, portrays queer club-goers and church ladies alike through a luscious, empathetic lens.

Part of what makes We Wanted a Revolution so impactful is its consideration of the entire scope of black women’s cultural and political work in its two-decade span. In addition to artists, gallerists, curators, art historians, and dancers, it highlights the work of literary figures like Toni Morrison, Audre Lorde, and Alice Walker, Ms. Magazine co-founder Dorothy Pitman Hughes, congresswoman and the DNC’s first black woman candidate Shirley Chisholm, filmmaker Julie Dash, and playwright Lisa Jones. When taken together, these women surpassed any specific art historical milieu, but were at the forefront of a persistent, forceful, and diasporically-minded cultural paradigm shift led by and for black women.

We Wanted a Revolution is a part of “A Year of Yes,” a year-long examination of feminism and feminist art marking the 10th anniversary of the Brooklyn Museum’s Sackler Center. The success of Hockley and Morris’s show is a testament to the power of examining narratives with cultural specificity and inclusivity, and what Morrison pointed to as black women’s perpetual self-invention and self-definition. These works and their histories are worthy of prime real estate in major museums and art institutions. How moving it was for me to see black women, young and old, photographing themselves in front of the exhibition’s opening text and seeing themselves in relation to the art on view. If you build it, they say, the people will come — and perhaps then the revolution finally will, too.

We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85 continues at the Brooklyn Museum (200 Eastern Parkway, Prospect Heights, Brooklyn) through September 17.

The post The Black American Women Who Made Their Own Art World appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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