“Three days Oliver Stone spent with Cuban dictator Fidel Castro for an HBO documentary may have been for nothing. HBO has shelved the project because Castro recently imprisoned 75 dissidents, some with terms of 28 years, and had three others executed after they hijacked a ferry in a failed attempt to reach the United States, refreshing an image of the Cuban president not seen in the film. Comandante was scheduled to air May 5, but has been pulled; no future airdate has been set.”
Blog
The Inevitable Tragedy of Urban Memory Lapse
It happens in every city, particularly in North America: things disappear. They become other things, or sometimes they become nothing. But they disappear, either because no one wanted them, or they were dated, or dilapidated, or just plain ugly. Eventually, you walk past something that was once something else, and you can’t even remember what it used to be. And that moment, says Geoff Pevere, is one of the saddest aspects of modern urban existence.
A Thoroughly Modern Quartet
The setup is a familiar one: talented young string quartet is heard by wealthy donor who, taken with their skill and enthusiasm, sets the foursome up with priceless old Italian instruments which they could never otherwise afford. But in the case of the Miró Quartet, one of a small number of headline-grabbing young quartets vying to be the next Juilliard or Guarneri, their benefactor was a North Carolina musician who wanted to see if a collection of specially crafted modern instruments could elevate the group in the same way that four Strads could. The result was a specially commissioned set of two violins, viola, and cello, tailored to meet the Miró’s needs. And the results? Well, it depends on which player you ask.
To Merge Or Not To Merge
A group of some 50 film actors gathered in Los Angeles yesterday to protest the proposed merger of the Screen Actors’ Guild with the union representing television and radio performers (AFTRA). Merger proponents say that a unified union would be stronger, and in a better position to prevent “runaway” productions in Canada. But the protesters claim that the merger is being railroaded through by a small group of union execs, and worry about having to compete for the union’s attention with soap opera actors and radio personalities.
Bush Advisers Resign Over Iraq Looting
“Three White House cultural advisers have resigned in protest at the failure of US forces to prevent the looting of Iraq’s national museum.” The advisers were all members of the President’s Advisory Committee on Cultural Property. The three advisers had sharp words for the Bush administration’s failure to have in place any sort of contingency plan for dealing with such foreseeable problems, and committee chair Martin Sullivan, who is one of those resigning, added that the looting was doubly preventable, since the United States was the nation in control of the timetable of the war. “In a pre-emptive war that’s the kind of thing you should have planned for,” he said.
The Fog Of Washington Arrogance
“Let’s be serious. Is anybody really surprised that Baghdad’s great civic art museum didn’t rate a measly tank? That the treasures of ancient Mesopotamia sat unguarded and exposed, ripe for the picking by local scavengers either amateur or professional? The horrendous event was not, after all, a dire outcome of ‘the fog of war.’ It was instead a routine example of the fog of the Bush administration, when it comes to matters cultural.”
San Antonio To Cut Season Short
The cash-strapped San Antonio Symphony will end its season more than a month early, and attempt to retool its finances in order to have the funds to mount a full 2003-04 season. The orchestra has been in dire straits for months, with its musicians frequently playing without pay. Orchestra officials say they are optimistic about plans for next season, but acknowledge that the new season may be a shorter one, and might not happen at all if new sources of local funding can’t be found.
The Problem Is The Donors
In many ways, the San Antonio Symphony has long been considered a model of what a small, regional orchestra should be. So what could be preventing the orchestra’s leaders from reviving their gasping organization? Mike Greenberg says the problem is simple: San Antonio’s big-money types are flatly refusing the symphony’s advances, and ignoring its pleas for relief. “The doors have slammed so consistently that some observers inside and outside the symphony have suspected a coordinated effort by donors to force the symphony to reconstitute itself as a smaller or part-time ensemble.”
Museum Looters Were Pros
The looting of Baghdad’s National Museum of Antiquities was no mere grab-and-go act by a desperate citizenry. According to UNESCO, the vast majority of the museum thefts were perpetrated by professional art thieves who knew exactly what to take, and where to find it. “Museum officials in Baghdad told UNESCO that one group of thieves had keys to an underground vault where the most valuable artifacts were stored. The thefts were probably the work of international gangs who hired Iraqis for the job, and who have been active in recent years doing illegal excavations at Iraqi archaeological digs.”
The Real Cost of the Baghdad Looting
Although Americans may find it convenient to think of the Middle East as a land of barbaric, uncultured souls prone to unstoppable violence, the recent horrific and systematic destruction of Iraq’s cultural firmament points up how wrong these misconceptions truly are. When Baghdad’s central library burned to the ground last week, centuries of irreplacable cultural scholarship were lost to the world. Iraq has always taken great pride in its culture and its history, and has catalogued both with a meticulousness which ‘cultured’ Americans have never matched. “Since 1967, the country has had stringent laws preventing the export of antiquities. One of the saddest ironies of the destruction is that Iraq’s defense of its cultural heritage was considered a model for the region.”