Filmmaker Ingmar Bergman has a very poor opinion of his own talents, according to diaries in his personal archive, opened this week. “Somewhere in the depths of my foolish soul I nurture one conceited notion: “One day, perhaps – one day – something shining will be prised out of all this wretchedness,” he wrote of himself in 1938.
Month: August 2003
Network Failures Are For Arts Too
Network failures don’t occur just in electrical power grids, writes Andrew Taylor. “Just think of the network of organizations, funders, and associations that create, present, support, and deliver the arts across America. These organizations and individuals are mostly running at over-capacity (long hours, low pay, bad computers, etc.). They are more interconnected than they know. Many are showing signs of burning out. And most of the generators that kept them going are cutting back or cutting out (state arts agencies, national foundations, individual donors, earned income, volunteer labor, etc.).”
The Inflatable Actors
The thousands of extras required for the movie “Seabiscuit” aren’t people. Nor are they computer generated. They’re blow-up dolls – not that you could tell… “At a time when filmmakers are increasingly relying on digital imaging and special effects, the blowup extras represent something of a low-tech throwback. It recalls an earlier Hollywood era when production problems were solved through old-fashioned ingenuity, not high-tech trickery. Like so many interesting innovations in movie history, the inflatable dolls were born out of filmmaking necessity.”
Searching For Older Women
Movie roles for older women are almost non-existant. A new documentary explores the problem. “There’s more dignity in aging in France and England and Europe. You see many more women having better careers in their 50s and 60s. Here it’s Gene Hackman, Al Pacino, Sean Connery. Name three women of that age that are still working.”
Festival Music As Badge Of Honor
The core audience at the BBC’s Proms concerts come for reasons other than the music. “The origin of these summer traditions is a primal herd instinct, the urge to join with others in a festive act. When asked in a 2001 BBC survey why they chose to stand, most Prommers (38%) replied ‘because of who I was with.’ Others cited the ‘atmosphere’. These are herd reactions, innocent as chewing cud. But mass ritual can turn sinister when combined with feats of endurance that engender a sense of superiority – of being part of an elite that embraces pain.”
More Of Our Own…
We all pay lip service to the idea of diversity – of ideas, of people. But David Brooks writes that most people want to stick to their own. “Maybe somewhere in this country there is a truly diverse neighborhood in which a black Pentecostal minister lives next to a white anti-globalization activist, who lives next to an Asian short-order cook, who lives next to a professional golfer, who lives next to a postmodern-literature professor and a cardiovascular surgeon. But I have never been to or heard of that neighborhood. Instead, what I have seen all around the country is people making strenuous efforts to group themselves with people who are basically like themselves.”
Korean Movies Make Inroads On Korean Audiences
Korean cinema is making a comeback with Korean audiences. “Last month, 45.9 percent of all moviegoers went to see Korean movies. This level is an all-time high for the month of July since the government removed the restrictions on foreign movie imports in 1985.”
Getting Creative About Earning Money
Faced with a downturn in government funding for the arts, arts organizations are getting more creative in their fundraising. “On a national level, nonprofit entrepreneurship can be a big business. But wave of the future or not, entrepreneurship is hardly foolproof. Where it is possible to make money, it is almost always possible to lose it.”
Merce Cunningham – Adventures In Radiohead Land
Merce Cunningham has always been an experimenter, willing to try new things. “So it’s no surprise that he has chosen experimental rock bands, Radiohead from Britain and Iceland’s Sigur Rós, to co-create the score for his next work, ‘Split Sides,’ premièring in October at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.”
Orchestra Joke Has Audience Running For The Exits
The audience for a Sydney Symphony concert was clapping between every movement of a Tchaikovsky symphony. As a joke, the conductor also began applauding, then bade the orchestra rise for a bow. “But rather than creating an embarrassed silence for Tchaikovsky’s tragic finale, the cheers swelled, the bravos grew, some took their coats and ran for trains, and it looked for a moment as though Tchaikovsky’s most tragic work had become his most optimistic, its hidden program, of which he spoke but which he never revealed, rewritten with a happy ending…”