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Why B-Movies Never Won Oscars | How To See B-Movies with Dave Kehr

22 mars 2018 guest 1 min read B-Movies, Dave Kehr, Golden Age of Hollywood, How To See series, MoMA, oscars, vidéo

The term “B” movie has come to mean low-budget films, but originally it meant something very specific in the Golden Age of Hollywood. Although the films were never designed to break the box office or win Oscars, there are many enjoyable and stylistically sophisticated filmmaking techniques to reclaim from this era. Ahead of the Academy Awards this Sunday, MoMA Film Curator Dave Kehr explores the films of the Republic Pictures Library, recently restored by Martin Scorsese and Paramount.

Forum citoyen / Bürgerforum

Racism impacts your health

2 mars 2018 guest 9 min read Black Lives Matter, Colonialism, critical race, Critical Race Theory, Global Perspectives, Health, Indigenous, Islamophobia, Public health, Race, Racism, Roberta K. Timothy

Outside in public: Smiling, dressed real fine, manners on point. I am well schooled on how to be respectful, how to take up space, how to use silence when necessary. Travelling home on transit listening to music to drown out my day — filled with injustices from the minute I left my “sanctuary” ten hours earlier. Fumbling for keys, nearly pushing the door down to my home. All I experienced outside threatens to crash down my door and engulf my insides and swallow me whole. My breath struggles to calm itself. Grief shadows me through the hallway. I self-talk my way into the kitchen, slipping my armour off; my thick silver bangle hits the floor, the sound awakening me to reality. I am home. I sit still for a minute and contemplate how I will go out again to face the monster of anti-Black racism. I drink my tea quickly, and begin to make dinner. – Feb 9, 2018, author’s journal.
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Culture / Kultur Forum citoyen / Bürgerforum Musique / Musik

Remembering Hugh Masekela: the horn player with a shrewd ear for music of the day

28 janvier 2018 guest 7 min read apartheid, Gwen Ansell, Hugh Masekela, Jazz, Miriam Makeba, modern African jazz, Sixties counterculture, social activism, South Africa, trumpeter

Trumpeter, flugelhorn-player, singer, composer and activist Hugh Ramapolo Masekela has passed away after a long battle with prostate cancer.

When he cancelled his appearance last year at the Johannesburg Joy of Jazz Festival, taking time out to deal with his serious health issues, fans were forced to return to his recorded opus for reminders of his unique work. Listening through that half-century of disks, the nature and scope of the trumpeter’s achievement becomes clear.
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Culture / Kultur Forum citoyen / Bürgerforum Littérature / Literatur

La « cli-fi », une nouvelle façon de parler du changement climatique

15 janvier 2018 guest 7 min read changement climatique, Claire Perrin, cli-fi, climate fiction, climato-scepticisme, environnement, Etats-Unis, fiction climatique, genre littéraire, géo-ingénierie, nature writing, science-fiction

Au tournant des années 2010, la presse américaine relatait l’apparition d’un nouveau genre littéraire, la « cli-fi » (pour climate fiction), terme inventé en 2008 par l’écrivain et blogueur Dan Bloom. Les romans de « fiction climatique » prennent généralement la forme de récits post-apocalyptiques où des personnages évoluent dans un monde ravagé par les effets du changement climatique.

Si les romans de cli-fi sont encensés par la presse américaine aux sympathies écologistes, ils restent cantonnés en France à un public de niche.
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Culture / Kultur Forum citoyen / Bürgerforum Musique / Musik

African voices raised in support of people with albinism

16 octobre 2017 guest 5 min read Africa, albinism, East Africa, Ian Brennan, Ikponwosa Ero, In the Shadow of the Sun, Jean Burke, Keisha, Ras Six, Salif Keita, Tanzania, Tanzania Albinism Collective, Ukerewe, White African Power, Yellowman

On the remote East African island of Ukerewe in the middle of Lake Victoria, people with albinism whose voices have been largely unheard, are now writing and voicing their experiences into songs. Ukerewe is the largest inland island in Africa and is part of Tanzania.
This East African country has the highest prevalence of albinism in the world: about one in every 1,400, compared to the US’s one in 17,000. In Africa the prevalence is estimated to range between one in 1100 to one in 15,000.
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Cinéma / Kino Culture / Kultur Geek

TIFF 2017: Movie magic from math and science

22 septembre 2017 guest 4 min read Anthony Bonato, engineering, mathematics, science, STEM, STEM-centric movies, technology, The Current War, The Shape of Water, TIFF, Toronto International Film Festival

Math and science are hot topics with contemporary filmmakers. Think of the brilliant portrayal of African-American mathematicians and scientists in 1960s NASA in Hidden Figures or the tale of mathematical genius, Srinivasa Ramanujan, and his groundbreaking work with Godfrey Hardy at Cambridge University in The Man Who Knew Infinity.
The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), underway this month, is not immune to the charms of math and science, with past crowd-pleasers such as The Theory of Everything and The Martian. As a mathematics professor with a love for film and a Patron’s Circle membership that offers access to many of the festival’s premieres, I go on an annual search for STEM-centric movies.
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Culture / Kultur Exposition / Ausstellung

Bojan Golija – a retrospective in Maribor, Slovenia

14 septembre 2017 guest 3 min read Bojan Golija, exhibition, Gaja Golija, graphic artist, Jan Hecl, Japan, Maribor Art Gallery, photographs, rétrospective, Slovenia, UGM, woodcuts

Golija’s art evolved from the early, socially charged figurative prints from the 1950s that were created under the influence of his mentor and close friend Božidar Jakac, to increasingly abstract compositions, in which the realistic starting point is first replaced by the stylized dynamics of sharply delineated surfaces in black and white and colour woodcuts. Golija perfected his woodcutting technique during his stay in Japan. He travelled there in 1957 at the invitation of the later chairman of the International Art Education Association and the assistant director of the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, and thus became the first student from the Academy in Ljubljana to visit Japan after World War II.
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Forum citoyen / Bürgerforum Press release

Open letter: Urgent Need for Independent International Inquiry on Yemen

29 août 2017 guest 5 min read antipersonnel landmines, child soldiers, Houthi armed group, Human Rights, Human Rights Council, international investigation, joint letter, NGO, OHCHR, open letter, Saudi Arabia, United Nations, war crimes, Yemen

Joint NGO letter to Permanent Representatives of Member and Observer States of the United Nations Human Rights Council
Urgent Need for Independent International Inquiry on Yemen

We, the undersigned nongovernmental organizations, urge you to support the creation of an independent international investigation into violations and abuses of international human rights law and international humanitarian law in Yemen since the start of the current conflict. This is a call that has been made since 2015 by national, regional, and international civil society organizations, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the Security Council Panel of Experts on Yemen. The number of abuses, and the need for credible international investigations, has only increased since 2015.
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Culture / Kultur

Rural America: Where Sam Shepard’s roots ran deepest

7 août 2017 guest 7 min read american dream, John J. Winters, nature, rural America, Sam Shepard, théâtre, tribute

When Sam Shepard died on July 27 the world lost one of the greatest playwrights of the past half-century. He was an artist renowned for bravely plumbing his own life for material, spinning much of his own pain into theatrical gold. His best work revealed the hollowness behind the idea of the happy family and its corollary, the American dream. Subversive and funny, Shepard had the soul of a poet and an experimental streak that never faded.
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Forum citoyen / Bürgerforum

Liu Xiaobo: a voice of conscience who fought oppression for decades

15 juillet 2017 guest 5 min read china, dissidence, Hermann Aubié, Human Rights, Liu Hui, Liu Xia, Liu Xiaobo, Nobel Peace Prize, prison

Only a few weeks after being diagnosed with a late-stage liver cancer in late May 2017, the world learned that China’s most prominent dissident, Liu Xiaobo, died at 61 in a hospital in the north-east region of China, where he was born. As the poetess Tang Danhong wrote, he departed as “an innocent prisoner into the eternal light” (无罪的囚徒，融入永恒的光芒). What a tragedy for a man who fought most of his life for freedom to live out his last days in a hospital bed under lock and key.