To begin with, the Academy announced the plan for a new category before there was even any agreement on what the criteria for it would be. (Why? They were afraid someone would leak to the press.) That decision “allowed everybody to piss on it from a great height,” as one source said; another lamented, “I knew we were gonna get nailed.” Rebecca Keegan reports.
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Ravel’s Heirs Sue To Pull ‘Bolero’ Back Under Copyright
The composer’s heirs raked in up to €100 million from his greatest hit before Ravel’s music went into the public domain in 2016. Now those (rather distant) heirs have filed a lawsuit against SACEM (France’s ASCAP) arguing that Alexandre Nikolaievitch Benois, the set designer for the ballet for which Bolero was composed, should legally be considered a co-creator of the score. (Why? Because Benois didn’t die until 1960.)
Two Family Foundations Launch Program To ‘Capitalize’ Arts Groups
The goal of the Barr-Klarman Massachusetts Arts Initiative is to increase arts organizations’ “adaptive capacity” (because the arts landscape is changing and the next recession could hit anytime) by building capital (in terms of both cash and staff) and “cultural competence.”
Chinese Author Sentenced To 10 Years In Prison For Gay Erotic Novel
“The writer, surnamed Liu but better known by her internet alias Tianyi, was handed a 10-and-a-half year jail term for ‘producing and selling pornographic materials’ last month, according to a television report on Friday. The book that landed her into trouble was a 2017 novel named Occupy, … about a forbidden love affair between a teacher and a student.” Police assert that the book is full of “graphic depictions of male homosexual sex scenes.”
Damien Hirst’s Outdoor Sculptures Of Fetus Unveiled At Qatar Hospital
The series of 14 sculptures, each well over 40 feet tall, depicting the development of a fetus inside a uterus is titled The Miraculous Journey and installed outside a new medical center for women and children. (Yes, of course they’re controversial.)
Last Classical Record Store In Vancouver To Close
Sikora’s Classical Records has been operating for 40 years, but it’s now succumbing to what co-owner Ed Savenye says are “‘the five dirty D’s’: digitization (downloading and streaming), downsizing (people no longer have room for record collections), distribution (getting access to imports is increasingly challenging), desertion (people leaving for Amazon and other online sellers), and the saddest, demise — that is, the deaths of classical music lovers who continued to buy CDs and LPs.”
Taiwan’s Film Industry Can No Longer Ignore Mainland Chinese Sensitivities (Not Even On Awards Night)
This past weekend in Taipei, at the Golden Horse Awards (which cover Chinese-language cinema worldwide), the winner of the Best Documentary prize called for Taiwan to be recognized as independent — whereupon censors in the PRC cut the broadcast off. Writer Lauren Teixeira recounts the other Taiwan/PRC drama at the ceremony and explains why the Taiwanese movie industry has to take it seriously.
Esi Edugyan Wins Her Second Giller Prize
Edugyan secured the top prize after a season flush with acclaim for Washington Black, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Writers’ Trust fiction award.
American Ballet Theatre’s New Skunkworks
“In the studio we’re so often created on,” David Hallberg, the American Ballet Theater principal who dreamed up the workshop, said recently. “I really wanted to give the dancers a chance to have a more inclusive part in the creative process.” Mr. Hallberg first introduced the idea of a choreographic workshop in 2010, but after a few tries it didn’t stick and he was too busy with his international career (and a major injury) to help keep it going. Now, he’s determined to make the Incubator a yearly fixture at Ballet Theater.
Writers Union: Canadian Writers Earn 27 Percent Less Than Three Years Ago
When the Writers’ Union of Canada recently surveyed its members about their incomes, the results were sobering: an average writer made $9,380 a year from his or her writing. That’s 27 per cent less than what writers made three years ago, and a whopping 78 per cent less than they made in 1998. The report comes in stark contrast to the glossy literary awards season, where champagne flows and prizes that sound lucrative are given out, culminating with the $100,000 Giller Prize.