Save the Date!
11th Annual Harlem Book Fair & Arts Festival:
This is the largest annual African American book fair and it’s free!
Featured, on Saturday 7/18/09, will be 250 exhibit booths, 4 stages with music, story telling and children’s activities.
Harlem Book Fair, Sat. July 18, 2009, 11am – 6pm
Jacob Javits Center
655 W. 34th Street, NYC
“BUILDING READERS, EMPOWERING COMMUNITY”
For event information: (212) 348 – 1681
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Summer is almost here – time to make plans.
Atlanta is hosting its National Black Arts Festival again this year. Starting 7/29, music, dance, film, theater, poetry, literature – the Conga Kings, “Growing the Dream” at the Children’s Education Village, “Brazilian Cool” Gala – all presented courtesy of the NBAF. Their aim is to celebrate the vibrant life and art of people of color.
NBAF *Atlanta
July 29 – August 2, 2009
Woodruff Arts Center * Atlanta
1280 Peachtree St., NE, Atlanta, GA
“The mission of NBAF is to engage, cultivate and educate diverse audiences about the arts and culture of the African Diaspora and provide opportunities for artistic and creative expression.”
Brooklyn playwright Lynn Nottage has won the 2009 Drama Pulitzer Prize for “Ruined” – a powerful play set in the African Congo at the height of its civil war. It follows the plight of a group of women amidst the brutality and the chaos – a celebration of endurance.
Ruined – Manhattan Theater Club, 131 West 55th Street, NYC
Other plays by Ms Nottage:
Crumbs from the Table of Joy
Mud, River, Stone
Poof
Por’Knockers
Las Meninas
Intimate Apparel
JANUS FILMS, a distributor of foreign and classic films, fed “Art” movie houses around the country that were brave enough to show films with *sub titles*!
If it weren’t for them, I would not have seen Ingmar Bergman’s “Seventh Seal” (1957), Truffaut’s “Jules and Jim” (1962), Fellini’s “La Strada” (1954) and classic English films like the romantic “Brief Encounter” (1945). The yearly showing of the Russian “Alexander Nevsky” (1938) at the west village Art Theater on 8th Street in NYC was always an event.
Janus Films celebrated their 50th anniversary with the issue of a 50 DVD box set. This is a fun assortment, something for everyone – from to “M” to “Rashomon”. A great purchase of course, but, you can always rent! Look at the list of films included in the set, pick your favorites, or the one’s you might have missed and enjoy!
This is a love story – backwards, but a love story none-the-less. Instead of a passion that grows and then atrophies, this story follows a dead relationship on its road to vitality and a wondrous respect.
I wasn’t quite sure why I liked “The Painted Veil”(2006). Did I fall into it so easily because of watching so much of PBS’ Masterpiece Theater “Upstairs, Downstairs”/ “Britain between the Wars” -like offerings?
Nah. I liked it because it did what I want movies to do – tell me a story, take me to time and place and make me care about how it all ends.
Beautifully filmed, this adaptation of a Somerset Maugham story takes place during the 1920s in the middle of a cholera epidemic in a small, beautiful, lush village in China.
The green of the countryside covers the spreading disease just as the British Edwardian façade of manners covers the sham of a marriage.
The English doctor and his wife drop into the middle of the ugliness of sickness and the unease of the rising Chinese nationalist fervor and as they adapt and deal with challenges, they discover and accept one another for who they are – not who they should be, wish to be, hope to be – but the reality of who they are.
And they both turn out to be much bigger than the other thought – both are truly worthy, different, but worthy. Acceptance. Love.
The actors were lovely – Naomi Watts and Edward Norton are wonderful as the husband & wife. Liev Schreiber plays the dashing fly in the ointment – the wife’s former lover. And all were tightly directed by John J. Curran.
“The Painted Veil” – good love story.
Are you still lucky enough to live in a 2 + newspaper town? Local papers are folding, no pun intended, all over the country. My San Francisco Chronicle is supposed to be on its last legs (but, true, this is being reported by T.V. news anchors) and the Colorado Rocky Mountain News just closed its doors. Many papers are choosing other options to daily publishing, like becoming internet only.
This sad scenario is being repeated everywhere. Has the “daily” become obsolete due to technology? Is it because of short attention spans, due to video games, to all day cable news talking heads, to just plain lack of interest? Well, if newspapers go the way of the 8 track, we still have movies that show “newspapering” as not only necessary and vital, but sometimes a very noble profession. I’m sure there are tons more, but I’ve seen and liked the films below:
”His Girl Friday”, 1940 – Editor tries to keep ace reporter from leaving (film adaptation of 1930’s comedy by MacArthur & Hecht)
”The Front Page”, 1974 – same plot, but this time with Jack Lemmon & Walter Mathau, directed by Billy Wilder
”Call Northside 777”, 1948 – .James Stewart and Richard Conte in a true story, told in documentary style, about a newsman racing to save an innocent man on death row.
“Deadline – USA”, 1952 – Humphrey Bogart as a crusading editor, of a closing newspaper, on a mission to expose a local gangster
“All The President’s Men”, 1976 – Robert Redford & Dustin Hoffman (Watergate and the Washington Post reporters Woodward & Bernstein)
I like newspapers – I like turning pages and getting ink smudges on the tips of my fingers.