The film, Rafiki, was banned, and the film classification board even issued threats. “The Kenya Film Classification Board (KFCB) said the film ‘seeks to legitimize lesbian romance.’ KFCB warned that anyone found in possession of the film would be in breach of the law in Kenya, where gay sex is punishable by 14 years.”
Author: ArtsJournal2
Polixeni Papapetrou, Photographer Known For Whimsical And Eerie Images, Has Died At 57
Her images (including one of her young daughter naked, sitting on a rock) often involved her children and her children’s friends in odd and psychologically intense costumes, in the Australian landscape. “Her works were striking in their strange simplicity yet evoked deep emotions and archetypes.”
MoviePass Changes Things Up Right As Marvel’s Long-Awaited ‘Infinity War’ Hits Theatres
First, MoviePass changed its plan so that new subscribers are limited to 4 movies a month instead of one movie per day. Then, on Friday, the day that Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War came out, the “Netflix for movie theatres” changed again – so that you can’t use MoviePass to see the same movie more than once. People were furious. What did the CEO tell The Hollywood Reporter? “Anyone with an issue should call customer service.”
Top AJBlogs Stories From The Weekend 04.29.18
Leonard Bernstein at 100: An American Archetype
My 5,000-word piece on the Leonard Bernstein Centenary, in The Weekly Standard this week, begins with a story you’ve never heard before: “In 1980, at the age of 62, Leonard Bernstein undertook the composition of a … read more
AJBlog: Unanswered QuestionPublished 2018-04-28
Barnes Foundation to Subdivide (& monetize?) 137 Acres; Offloads Costs of Lower Merion Properties
Some six years after it controversially moved to Philadelphia, the Barnes Foundation appears to have decided to monetize the original properties of its founder, the legendary collector Albert Barnes, in both Lower Merion and Chester … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrlPublished 2018-04-27
Replay: Bernadette Peters sings “Broadway Baby”
Bernadette Peters sings Stephen Sondheim’s “Broadway Baby” (from Follies) on The Tonight Show. The performance, originally telecast by NBC on July 27, 1989, is followed by a segment in which Peters is interviewed by Johnny … read more
AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2018-04-27
Homer And His Unique Way of Seeing
Winslow Homer has always been a complicated artist, and now he will be viewed as an even more complicated one. What’s going to do that is an exhibition opening in June at the Bowdoin College … read more
AJBlog: Real Clear ArtsPublished 2018-04-26
Almanac: Solzhenitsyn on Chekhov and the future of Russia
“If the intellectuals in the plays of Chekhov, who spent all their time guessing what would happen in twenty, thirty, or forty years, had been told that in forty years interrogation by torture would be … read more
AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2018-04-26
An Educated Guess: What Did the Lucas Museum Pay for Rockwell’s “Shuffleton’s Barbershop”?
In the two weeks since the announcement of the Berkshire Museum’s widely deplored sale of Norman Rockwell‘s “Shuffleton’s Barbershop” to the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, Los Angeles, none of the parties to the transaction … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrlPublished 2018-04-25
The Women Who Will Run Venice’s Architecture Biennale
The new “queens of Venice” are Shelley McNamara and Yvonne Farrell of Grafton Architects, a practice that’s been doing the work without getting starchitect status – but that could change now. Their philosophy: “The unsolicited ‘spatial gifts’ that architecture can add could be at the scale of city – a free public garden, for example – or at the scale of a surface you touch. It may not involve construction – ‘sitting under a cherry blossom is as happy an architectural space as you’ll find’ – but these ’emotional components’ are what make architecture worth doing.
Brexit Will Hurt Up And Coming British Musicians Who Want To Tour Europe
British musicians will need visas, an approved (and expensive) list of their equipment and personnel, and a lot more tenacity – and fans may stop going to music festivals if their favorite acts can’t get there as well.
On The Centenary Of Jerome Robbins, Master Choreographer Who Reshaped Broadway And Ballet
Robbins, who directed and choreographed On the Town, The King and I, West Side Story, and many more classic musicals, returned to ballet fully in 1969 – and changed American ballet as well. “He weeded out artifice and mannerism where he could. The naturalness he elicited was a particularly American style that then enriched the world of dance.”
The New Lynching Memorial Is ‘Gut-Wrenching And Beautiful’
“That’s the genius of the museum’s design. It neither shies away from nor revels in the horrors it asks you to contemplate. … It grabs you by the throat but makes sure not to choke you. It confronts without condemning. It provides hope through the sculptures, and footprints, of brave women in Montgomery who were the catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement. They overcame and so can we.”
Mississippi Gets A New Writers’ Trail, Stretching From Faulkner To Ward
Eudora Welty and Richard Ford will also be getting markers in a new series stretching across the state. Will Richard Wright make the cut? That’s yet to be decided.
Polish Theatre Directors Push Back Against The Government’s Hard Right Turn
Warsaw just hosted a theatre festival with five women directors and a lot of young, fiery daring. One of the glass-ceiling-breaking women: “I’m trying to sound some kind of alarm—that we should be very careful not to let ideas possess our brains or our souls.”