Making a short film is hardly a quick, low-cost enterprise. But for countless young filmmakers, the short is a chance to learn the craft, to get a toehold in an industry notorious for high costs and fickle moneymen. Unfortunately, once a short does get made, usually on the strength of donated equipment, actors working for nothing, and sets designed and built by the director and her friends, there’s still little chance that anyone will see it, or pay attention to it. Tani Hansen knows the frustrations firsthand, and wonders if the form itself isn’t on the way to the dustbin of film history.
Month: August 2003
Mapping The Brain
The study of the human brain is one of the most fascinating and frustrating branches of science. Brains are as diverse as snowflakes, which makes it exceedingly difficult for scientists to assign a categorization to the ‘average’ brain. “Researchers are now trying to better understand what constitutes a ‘normal’ brain by studying a newly compiled atlas that contains digitally mapped images of 7,000 of the organs. A decade in the making, the brain mapping project quietly debuted this summer.”
Harvard’s Substandard Museums
Rumors are swirling about the coming layoffs at Harvard University’s art museums, but Christine Temin points out that staff cuts are only a symptom of a larger sickness. “The university had already canceled plans for a major new riverside museum designed by Renzo Piano and lost a great director, James Cuno, to London’s Courtauld Institute. It has also put plans for a multimillion-dollar overhaul of the Fogg on hold until a new director arrives and starts a capital campaign. The Fogg’s galleries aren’t even climate-controlled, which makes it difficult to impossible to borrow works from other museums.”
The Chicago Way
The venerable Chicago Manual of Style comes out with a new edition – its fifteenth. “Still decked out in the familiar, tomato-orange wrapping, and spiffed up inside with two tones of ink and an antic sans-serif font for the examples, the Manual has been launched into the Internet Age. It wants to be as relevant to mainstream publishers of books and magazines, both on- and offline, as it has always been to academic presses. The nine selling points listed on the back cover have been phrased, thank goodness, in tidily parallel form. And most important, the Manual has at last given us a chapter on grammar and usage. At 93 pages, the chapter is by far the longest in the book.”
‘Virtual’ Orchestra Debate Heats Up
For the Brooklyn-based opera company which found itself in a hurricane of bad publicity last week after announcing that it would use a computerized orchestra for an upcoming production of Mozart’s Magic Flute, things just keep getting worse. At least one singer has quit the production for fear of being blacklisted in the opera world, and an e-mail campaign by the American Federation of Musicians is causing untold headaches. But the opera’s director insists that he would hire a real orchestra if he had the budget, and can’t understand why the musicians’ union would stand in the way of the development of young opera singers.
Good News/Bad News For German Orchestras
In Germany, where orchestras are largely financed by public dollars, many orchestras are reeling from unprecedented budget cuts imposed by their host cities. “Thousands of towns and cities across Germany have been slashing discretionary spending as tax revenues have shrunk. Many are facing their worst financial crisis in 50 years. Relief could be at hand, however, in the shape of a tax reform package unveiled by Germany’s ruling coalition yesterday… The core of the reform is a recasting of the Gewerbesteuer, a tax on corporate profit set and levied by Germany’s 13,800 municipalities, and which, in most cases, constitutes their largest source of revenues.”
Sorting Your Hyphens From Your Dashes
“Heads are spinning among those authors, editors and publishers who regard the Chicago Manual as the bible of printing style, grammar and punctuation. Well, not everyone’s head. But still, it has been 10 years since the last edition of the manual, which is published by the University of Chicago Press. That one has sold 500,000 copies. The new one is the most significant revision since the 12th edition in 1969.”
SPAC May Back Away From Symphony, Ballet
The Saratoga Performing Arts Center in upstate New York has been a popular summer destination for decades, hosting the Philadelphia Orchestra and the New York City Ballet for several weeks each summer. “However, while the ballet and orchestra were at the core of SPAC’s creation in 1966 and have become a SPAC tradition, they are not money-makers. Each lose about $1 million a year.” At the same time, Clear Channel, the 800-lb gorilla of concert promotions, pays SPAC handsomely for the right to book summer shows at the venue. It’s a dangerous equation, and SPAC is now openly discussing the possibility of scaling back or dumping the ballet and the orchestra.
New Era For Poetry Magazine
A new era is beginning at Chicago-based Poetry Magazine. “After twenty years as editor, Joseph Parisi is stepping down to become executive director of the new Poetry Foundation, established through a recent bequest of around one hundred and fifty million dollars from pharmaceuticals heiress, Ruth Lilly. Poetry’s new editor is Christian Wiman. He’s 36 years old and his poems and essays appeared frequently in the magazine.” The magazine gets 90,000 poetry submissions each year.
Louisville Orchestra Exec Trades Beethoven For Bulbs
The executive director of the Louisville Orchestra has announced his resignation, just one month after the orchestra ended a bitter stalemate with its musicians and settled on a plan to avert bankruptcy. Tim King, a 44-year-old who has worked in the arts since 1981, insists that the decision to leave is his own, and came only in response to a job offer he couldn’t refuse. “A self-described passionate gardener, he’ll be going into sales at a nursery and landscaping company operated by former orchestra development director Michael Oppelt.”