“While it might be premature to claim that there is a second New Wave of western Balkan cinema … it can be said that a large group of talented young filmmakers from the region are making an impact on the international film circuit.” Foreign productions are filming in the region as well, and there is growing cooperation among film professionals in the formerly warring republics.
Tag: 12.29.11
Merce Cunningham’s Final Set Designer
“Daniel Arsham was barely aware of Merce Cunningham in 2005, when he got a call telling him that he was being considered as the set designer for the next work by Cunningham’s dance company. Mr. Arsham was 25 and just two years out of art school at the Cooper Union.”
Anger Fizzles Over Cuts In Grammy Categories
“When the group that organizes the Grammy Awards abruptly announced last April that it was cutting nearly a third of the award categories and eliminating trophies for smaller genres like Latin jazz and zydeco, it did not take long for the protests to start. … But with the awards ceremony less than two months away the steam seems to have gone out of the protests.”
Adrienne Cooper, Yiddishe Diva, Dead At 65
“[The] American-born singer, teacher and curator of Yiddish music … was a pioneer in the effort to keep the embers of that language smoldering for newer generations.”
How Helen Frankenthaler And John Chamberlain Changed American Art
The two artists, who died within a week of each other, “brought a new, unfettered approach to materials that pushed their respective mediums toward greater expressive freedom, unabashed physicality and a rough-edged, aggressively color-based beauty. These qualities became identifying hallmarks of American art, especially in the 1960s, but remain crucial to it even now.”