“[Filmmaker] Jean-Claude Brisseau, 62, was convicted by a court in Paris last December of forcing actresses to masturbate during casting ‘test’ shots to ‘satisfy his own sexual impulses’. He was given a one-year, suspended jail sentence and fined €15,000. In a movie shown all this week on the fringes of the Cannes festival, M. Brisseau tells the story of a director whose life and career are ruined after he asks actresses to perform erotic acts during auditions.” The film has been generally well-received, but many critics have remarked on the surreal nature of it all.
Tag: 05.23.06
Warum Nicht Sind Sie Lachend?
Contrary to popular belief, Germans do have a sense of humor, as any native speaker can tell you. But translating English humor to German never seems to work, and the language itself may just be the reason. “At a rough estimate, half of what we find amusing involves using little linguistic tricks to conceal the subject of our sentences until the last possible moment, so that it appears we are talking about something else… But German will not always allow you to shunt the key word to the end of the sentence to achieve this failsafe laugh… The German language provides fully functional clarity. English humour thrives on confusion.”
The Woman Who Brought Black Dance To The Fore Dies At 96
Katherine Dunham, who died this past weekend aged 96, “was one of the first American artists to focus on black dance and dancers as prime material for the stage… Though Miss Dunham’s academic credentials as an anthropologist were impeccable, including a doctorate from the University of Chicago, it was her gift for seduction that helped most to pave the way for choreographers like Donald McKayle, Talley Beatty and Alvin Ailey.”
Is Book Fashion Going Over The Top?
“The latest trend in book design is similar to fashions in clothing and decor. There is an abundance of lyrical, embellished covers with elaborate vintage typefaces. Almost an overabundance…”
The New Libraries
Not so very long ago, libraries housed books, microfiche, frequently impenetrable card catalogs, and not much else. And it was fine, really. No one complained. But as the internet age came and flourished, libraries had a hard time keeping up, and many of the services they provided became easier to find online. But today, libraries around the world (or at least, those lucky enough to have the resources) have begun to reinvent themselves as multipurpose facilities that are once again relevant to students, scholars, and anyone looking for an answer.
The Tate’s New Art Org Chart
“The first major rehang of Tate Modern’s collection formally opens today. The four suites of galleries housing the collection were until recently divided into unwieldy, catch-all themes – Landscape/Matter/Environment, Nude/Action/Body, Still Life/Real Life/Object, and History/Memory/Society. These have been replaced by Poetry and Dream, Material Gestures, Idea and Object, and States of Flux. All this is a tad snappier, but more than the labels needed to change. The new displays are a major improvement. At times, they are spectacular… But from today, who will notice these fine-tuned alignments, the worried-over niceties and accidental pleasures?”
Finally, We Can See The Big Picture
The Tate’s grand rehang amounts to an admission that it was a mistake, when the museum first opened in 2000, to abandon all reliance on chronology in organizing the collection. And interestingly, now that some semblance of linear time has been restored, Rachel Campbell-Johnston says that we can finally see how non-linear the art of the last 100 years has actually been. “The narrative of art history, [the re-hung collection] reminds you, is seldom a single linear progression. Modernism is not a single movement but a struggling protean force.”
Expected To Be A Huge Hit With 18-to-34-Year-Old Nerds
A UK game show has obtained permission to film episodes in the British Museum, and producers say they hope to “conquer the Louvre, the Cairo museum, [and] the Smithsonian” next. “Each episode of the show is built around a period of history, starting with ancient Mesopotamia, and the series uses some of the museum’s most famous artefacts, including the 2,700-year-old Flood Tablet, a cuneiform-inscribed clay tablet with an Assyrian version of the Old Testament story of Noah’s ark.”
The Rebirth Of Classical Recording
Self-produced recordings are the hottest thing in classical music these days, and artists and orchestras around the world are embracing the concept as a more than viable alternative to dealing with disinterested major labels. Even more promising is that fact that there doesn’t appear to be any one road to self-produced success, and musicians are quite literally tailoring their recording process to suit their needs.