Featured: Week of June 3 (Film Criticism)
This week, our contributors take a probing look at film, featuring: Radmila Djurica’s write-up of the Gijon International Film Festival Alexandra Coker-Schwimmer’s essay about the process for finding movie extras, “I Am Iron Fan” Stephen Lee Naish’s essay about the metaphorical meaning of night in the city, “The Nighttime Metropolis on...
Read MoreThe Nighttime Metropolis on Film
WARNING: Plot spoilers below for Collateral In daylight, the cities we inhabit take on a very different function and feel to that of nighttime. At sunrise, the city becomes a place of labour and socialization, of culture and community. The constant movement of raucous transportation and talkative commuters offers a distraction to the surroundings and an immersion into the frantic flow of the city. Our senses become numbed by the intense over-stimulation that the squeal of subway trains, the hum of tall buildings, the exhaust fumes of continuous traffic and the hustle that crowds of people...
Read MoreI Am Iron Fan
We are wedged in between Michael Angelo and a man who laughs a lot at his own jokes. He is young but bald and wearing a brown tweed jacket with elbow patches and jeans — he resembles a professor. His wife and kids are in line too and, apparently, the boy who looks to be about six can play “Iron Man” on guitar already. When his father tries to get him to tell the nice strangers, the boy breaks off with his sister to lie on the patch of sunny grass nearby and read Harry Potter. He is too young to care about fame. In his mind there is no doubt he will live forever. He leaves the adults to...
Read MoreGijon International Film Festival
The Festival Internacional De Cine De GIJÓN, also known as FICXixon in Spain, is a wonderful festival in Spain that this year celebrated its golden jubilee, or 50th anniversary. On November 16-24, 2012, the festival celebrated in a suitably grand manner, starting with a red carpet event. The festival opened with Spanish actress Leticia Dolera, and during the opening ceremony, the famous Asturian Spanish casting director Luis San Narciso was awarded the Nacho Martínez Award for his special achievements. Narciso found casts for such films as By My Side Again (Gracia Querejeta, 1999), The Sea...
Read MoreFeatured: Week of May 27 (World War 2)
On this week of Memorial Day, our contributors pay homage to both members of the military and civilians who lost their lives during World War II. Keith Moul’s poem, “The Axis,” is a tribute to his father’s fallen brothers in arms. Freddy Frankel’s poem, “Elegy,” is an ekphrasis on an evocative painting about the Holocaust. Kimberly Gladman’s poem, “Kaddish for Mr. Rosembaum,” sings a song of grief for a beloved...
Read MoreKaddish for Mr. Rosenbaum
Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’mei raba I am Rivka, a convert, bat Avraham ve Sarah also daughter of Heidi, whose first memories are of craters made by English bombs in Hamburg streets granddaughter of Lotte, who died in Marburg the day the Wall came down adopted niece of Hilde, Lotte’s childhood friend who decades later became my own. b’alma di v’ra khir’utei, v’yamlikh malkhutei Lotte, my Oma, came to New York every summer Bringing strange toothpaste and lotion and chocolates I loved Speaking to my mother a language I didn’t understand And telling me stories, always the same...
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