Bitter controversy has broken out over a documentary about Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who created modern Turkey from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire. The filmmaker says: “I wanted to present Mustafa Kemal in a more intimate, affectionate light. All those statues, busts and flags have created a chief devoid of human qualities.” One critic thunders: “Atatürk raised up a people about to be excised from world history, and here he is presented as a drunken debaucher. Would you accept such a portrait of Churchill?”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Bassoons And Beer (It Works!)
The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s “Night Shift” concerts are pulling in that much-sought-after younger audience. “It’s been running for a couple of years, and the idea is simple: after a full-scale concert, the OAE players and their conductor for the evening perform an hour-long concert for a more relaxed clientele (who, mercifully at 10pm on a Friday night, were allowed to bring a drink into the auditorium).”
‘100 Years Of Queer Theater’
A festival at San Francisco’s Theatre Rhinoceros presents a series of short plays with gay or queer themes from the entire span of the 20th century – from a 1907 Russian “mini-musical” through Tennessee Williams and Joe Orton to a Tony Kushner one-act from 1998. The selection “poses some fascinating then-and-now questions about how gay life is seen in a culture that keeps rotating the lens to sharpen the view, blur it or blot it out altogether.”
Britain Needs Ballet Dancers
The art of the dance sits near the top of the list of professions favored under a new points system for admitting non-EU immigrants announced by the UK’s Home Office. Other sought-after workers include sheep shearers, chemical engineers, horse trainers, math and science teachers, physicists and frozen fish filleters (Scotland only).
Transcendent Technicolor Textiles
In San Diego, “Kimono as Art: The Landscapes of Itchiku Kubota” showcases the work of the late Tokyo artist whose medium was the traditional Japanese robe. Robert Pincus says that photos “don’t capture the vibrancy of the color in these objects – or the way Kubota used texture and layers to make them virtually sculptural.” (The magnum opus is a series of 40 kimonos that form a continuous panorama.)
Banned Satyajit Ray Film Restored
Sikkim, a 1971 documentary about the tiny Himalayan kingdom, was suppressed by Indian censors because it was found to glorify monarchy. (The statelet was a sensitive subject: India went on to annex Sikkim in 1975.) A print of the film, thought to have been destroyed, turned up at the British Film Institute in 2003 and “was restored digitally frame-by-frame by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.”
The Original Miss Manners
That would be Erasmus of Rotterdam, whose 1530 Handbook on Good Manners for Children has been published in a new translation. Some things never change: “His basic tenet is that good manners will spring from ‘the ability to ignore the faults of others and avoid falling short yourself’.” On the other hand, among his prescriptions are “Do not indulge in hysterical mirth, [and] do not stagger in the theatrical manner favoured by bishops and Swiss soldiers.”
They’ll Be Burning This Book In Cooperstown
“Jane Austen wrote about baseball 40 years before its official invention, according to a new book. But evidence of the game’s British origins was erased from history by the American sports magnate Albert Spalding.”
Colorado Ballet Names New Executive Director
Jack Lemmon, a widely-experienced dance administrator who has managed the Louisville Ballet, Tulsa Ballet, Ballet Idaho and the Joffrey Ballet, takes the reins of the recently stabilized Denver company as of Jan. 1.
Down With The Poor, Suffering Poet!
“This skinny eighteenth century Emo kid with a penchant for self-harm and a dodgy taste in cornflower blue pantaloons still epitomises most people’s notion of what a poet should be. The stereotype may be romantically appealing, but it’s also alienating and disempowering. In a time when we have such a diverse and modern poetry scene, why does it still have such an abiding hold?” Molly Flatt has a couple of ideas about the reason – and a remedy.