Sunday, September 13, 2009
A long-form poet of political cinema, Robert Kramer (1939-1999) may be the greatest American filmmaker we hardly knew. His unique alloys of fiction and documentary chronicle the doings and undoings of the revolutionary Left from the Sixties through the Eighties. Yet the perspectives offered in his films are prismatically personal: the hesitations of a militant […]
Filed in Cambridge, Film, Labor, Politics
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Also tagged American Left, americana, anthology film archives, bridgeport CT, cinema, Documentary, films, Grace Paley, ice, jesse jackson, leftism, milestones, movies, Newsreel, radicalism, Robert Kramer, route one / usa
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[A still from Земля] Chinese National Symphony Orchestra at Boston’s Symphony Hall. Kiarostami’s A Taste of Cherry and Dovzhenko’s Земля [Earth] at the Harvard Film Archive. Labor and land preoccupy both; and in each, a visual symphony of tractors. One is reminded of Russian cinema’s obsession with the sun-baked, dirt-caked, beard-bristling face — eyes always […]
Filed in Asiana, Film, Labor, Music
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Also tagged dovzhenko, earth, faces, kiarostami, land, orchestras, russia, symphonies, taste of cherry
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Fidelio at the Met. Karita Mattila sang Leonore’s role gorgeously, and she was impressively spry as Fidelio, too, scampering around the stage with boyish aplomb, scooting up and down ladders, bearing groceries. Apart from the limpid quartet in the opening act and the arpeggiated vocal mountaineering of the ‘Abscheulicher!’ duet in the final act, it […]
Filed in Film, Love, Music, Opera, Philosophy
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Also tagged alex ross, beethoven, ben heppner, brattle theatre, claire denis, drama, fidelio, florestan, french films, heldentenors, james levine, karita mattila, leftism, leonore, peter watkins, richard margison, the left, theatre, zizek
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