Chantal Akerman says 'a film is a film is a film,' but hers really are different:
Belgian director Chantal Akerman introduced a documentary film last night, and explained a bit about her process and perspective on filmmaking
Bio: Miranda Popkey is on the editorial staff of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
“They need to talk” Akerman said of the people she had interviewed for De l’autre côté, many of whom had lost relatives to the deserts of the borderlands, or had attempted the border crossing only to be arrested and returned to Mexico. The urgency of these narratives is inextricably linked to their lack of exposure elsewhere; turning a camera on and allowing the marginalized to speak into it when others do not, just like utilizing camera and actors in the ways her dramatic films do, constitutes a political action. More
Posted on May 4th, 2012 4:05pm
"Make a Salad" is a decidedly less controversial piece, though its creator, New Yorker and Fluxus artist Alison Knowles believes it does have a political "flavor that would not be interesting to the right wing." There are rough guidelines—there is often music; Knowles and her collaborators chop salad ingredients (a massive quantity; on the High Line there was enough salad made for up to 1,000 people); everything is tossed together and then served up to the audience—but every staging is open-ended, unique. The point—or one the of the points—is not in the details of the execution, but in the democracy of the form, of the radical equality that it enforces on its participants, as it did on Sunday on the High Line. More
Posted on April 24th, 2012 3:46pm
On Saturday, both were at BAM for a pair of Q&As with fans; the first following a screening for the new Heckerling-helmed Vamps, which stars Silverstone and Krysten Ritter. The second following a screening of Heckerling's 1995 classic Clueless, which launched Silverstone's career and, judging from the packed theater—audience members cheered, called out lines of dialogue, and audibly gasped when Heckerling revealed she was working on a musical version—remains a cultural touchstone. Both films were being screened as part of BAM’s "Hey, Girlfriend!" series, co-curated by Lena Dunham and the BAM's own Nellie Killian (who also moderated the Q&As), which focused on films that, in Dunham’s words, depict "realistic female relationships … inspiring in their tenacity and unparalleled in their complexity." These Q&As, then, were a chance to get a look at such relationships as they exist offscreen as well. More
Posted on April 9th, 2012 12:01pm
The Strand’s rare-book room, located on the bookstore’s third floor, houses a $45,000 copy of Ulysses, complete with illustrations by Matisse, and signed by both the artist and the author. It’s the most expensive book in the room, and on Saturday night, Michelle Tea kicked off the first New York City benefit for RADAR Lab, a free, “queer-centric” retreat for writers and artists which has been held for the past three summers in Akumal, Mexico, by asking the forty or so audience members in attendance not to steal it. More
Posted on March 26th, 2012 12:18pm
The concept of Maris Kreizman's tumblr, Slaughterhouse 90210, which celebrated its third anniversary last night at the Housing Works bookstore with a set of hilarious readings, is fairly simple: Kreizman pairs screen grabs of television shows—from the acclaimed ("Mad Men") to the ironically beloved ("Jersey Shore")—with quotes from great literary works. More
Posted on March 21st, 2012 1:38pm
"This is DCP," a set of screenings including such Film Forum perennials as The Red Shoes and Rear Window, was meant to encourage regulars that they wouldn't be losing anything with a switch to digital projection—the "DCP" stands for "Digital Cinema Package." This seems like precisely the kind of technological advancement that a venerable repertory house can be counted upon to stand against. Which explains the rather defensive language: "[W]e're more than ever committed to showing classic films on film," Film Forum reassures its patrons. More
Posted on March 5th, 2012 3:00pm
The Center for Fiction event last night was billed as a reading of Gregor von Rezzori's An Ermine in Czernopol, a dark, manic novel set in the fictional village of Czernopol just after World War I. But it seemed that more than a few people in the almost at-capacity audience were there not for the reading but for the readers: Eisenberg, and her longtime partner, Wallace Shawn. More
Posted on February 23rd, 2012 11:52am
The event at Word bookstore in Greenpoint was billed as "Dirty Words in the Dictionary," but Jesse Sheidlower's presentation—his talk was supplemented by a slide-show—gave the title more bluntly: "Sex in Dictionaries." And certainly, the lexicographer delivered on his prurient promise—though without losing the high-minded, academic flavor one would expect from a clean-cut gentleman associated with the OED. More
Posted on January 25th, 2012 2:09pm
What an addict means when they talk about hitting bottom is indicative; it's the worst part standing in for a lousy whole. And so it was appropriate that the first thing professor and journalist Susan Shapiro asked the four authors at last night's Housing Works event—which centered on memoirs of addiction and recovery—to describe, was his or her own personal bottom. Shapiro, who has written several books on addiction—both tell-alls about her own vices, and how-tos for readers looking to kick—was moderating a panel of illustrious ex-users: people who had experienced many dark nights of the soul and lived to tell their tales. More
Posted on January 19th, 2012 12:16pm
Enforced etiquette isn’t very rock and roll either, but that’s perhaps fitting for Cameron Crowe, who started out his career as the youngest-ever writer for Rolling Stone and now directs family-friendly Christmas movies starring Matt Damon. Then again, that progression hasn’t necessarily diluted his musical taste; his description of Sigur Rós’s music as that of “clear-eyed optimism” seems as good a description as any of the weirdly painful beauty of their otherworldly sound.
Posted on December 14th, 2011 4:45pm
