The Canadian Broadcast Museum Foundation says the public broadcaster’s English service earlier this month began destroying acetate transcriptions, as well as audio and video recordings that span eight decades, after converting the master copies into a digital format. The foundation asked the CBC earlier this year for time to find a suitable space to archive and preserve the material, but says it was turned down.
Tag: 04.19.18
Does Literature Matter?
Only in America do we ask our writers to believe they don’t matter as a condition of writing. It is time to end this. Much of my time as a student was spent doubting the importance of my work, doubting the power it had to reach anyone or to do anything of significance. I was already tired of hearing about how the pen was mightier than the sword by the time I was studying writing. Swords, it seemed to me, won all the time.
‘Albee Would Never Have Allowed This’ – Joe Mantello Talks About Directing ‘Three Tall Women’
“I also think that he was a playwright who was very confident in his interpretation of the play. I once heard him say, ‘No actor or director has ever shown me anything in one of my plays that I didn’t intend to be there.’ I think what he meant by that was not that he had all the answers, but that if you found it, on some unconscious level he meant it to be there. I found that statement – there was something very sad about that statement to me. Because one of things I like most about rehearsal is when somebody brings something to it that I’ve never thought of.”
NYC Will Move “Fearless” Girl” Off Wall Street
The statue known as “Fearless Girl” will soon be moved from its spot at the southern tip of Broadway to a spot facing the New York Stock Exchange, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Thursday. And if the city has its way, the bull will eventually go with her.
In A Florid Suit, Collector Sues Jeff Koons For Not Delivering
In the 53-page complaint that includes lines that reference Shakespeare (“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”) and that are almost Dickensian, New York litigator Aaron Richard Golub charges, “Behind the ostensible façade of Jeff Koons’ art world triumphs and record-breaking auction prices . . . lurks a well-oiled machine, more specifically an established, archaic System as old as the hills applied to the art world to exploit art collectors’ desire to own Jeff Koons sculptures.
Marcia Hafif, Painter Of Exuberant Monochromes, Dead At 89
“By the mid-1960s, it was assumed in some circles that all of the possibilities for painting were exhausted – that the medium had, more or less, died. But some painters pushed back against that idea, arguing that painting could reset itself, and one was Marcia Hafif. … [She] was overlooked by many art institutions for much of her career, only to be recently rediscovered and hailed as one of the essential painters working during a time when her chosen medium was considered highly unfashionable.”
Russia Can’t Let Go Of Fight Over Movie About Tsar Nicholas II And The Ballerina He Loved
“The reaction to Matilda represents, in microcosm, many of the contradictions of contemporary Russian culture. It should have been a flagship Russian movie, … [and] originally had Oscar ambitions. Instead, the film’s reception was derailed by religious purists. Part of Vladimir Putin’s narrative is that he, too, is part of Russia’s imperial legacy. Some think that he believes he has been divinely ordained to play his role. In some ways, this has been an embarrassment for the government: they part-funded the film. But they couldn’t defend it, as the protesters were articulating one of the key tenets of Putin’s presidency: Russia needs to return to the greatness of the tsars and to its Orthodox church roots.”
Embattled Director Kirill Serebrennikov Gets A Film Into Cannes – So Russia Extends His House Arrest
The director of Moscow’s acclaimed Gogol Center theater, Serebrennikov has been under house arrest since last August, awaiting trial on embezzlement charges that his allies call absurd and trumped-up. Seemingly in response to the news that Serebrennikov’s latest film, Summer, will be screened in competition at the Cannes Festival next month, authorities in Moscow extended his house arrest into July.
Bolshoi’s Controversial ‘Nureyev’ Leads Nominations For Russia’s Top Dance Awards
“Both the creators of the ballet and its performers have been nominated for the Benois de la Danse, nicknamed the ballet’s Oscars, in four professional categories: Ilya Demutskiy for Best Composer, Yuri Possokhov for Best Choreographer, Kirill Serebrennikov for Best Stage Design, and dancer Vladislav Lantratov for Best Performance in the title role of the ballet Nureyev.” Serebrennikov, whose recent film Summer will be in competition at Cannes next month under house arrest in a case many observers consider trumped-up, just had his detention extended into July.
‘There Is No Going Back From Here’: Saudi Arabia’s First Female Filmmaker On The Kingdom’s Lifting Of The Ban On Cinemas
“Five years ago, Haifaa al-Mansour made history with her moving and critically-acclaimed drama Wadjda, making her not just the first female Saudi filmmaker, but the first director to have shot a feature film in the kingdom. At the time, the idea of Wadjda being released on home soil was ludicrous: its cinema and theaters had long since been closed following the country’s adoption of strict ultra-conservative Islam in the early ’80s. On April 18, 2018, however, a new cinematic dawn broke over the kingdom with the opening of Saudi Arabia’s first cinema since the movie theater ban was lifted in December … [Al-Mansour] wrote to The Hollywood Reporter with her thoughts on the cinema opening, the “seismic shift” now sweeping over her home nation and why nothing will be the same again.