Little visual miracles. For more than forty years that most American of photographers,
Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters Lee Friedlander, has recorded
modern American urban life -- with its
jumble of
people,
signs,
buildings, and
cars, and
television sets. He likes to turn
a common blunder of amateurs -- photographing something nearby
with one's back to the sun -- into a
leitmotif.
His shadow plays the role of alter ego, sticking to the back of a woman's fur collar, clinging to a lamppost as a parade of drum majorettes passes by, reclining like a stuffed doll on a chair. Clever jigsaw puzzles, his pictures frequently reveal themselves to be
laconic, austere poems to what
Friedlander has termed "
the American social landscape',' meaning mostly ordinary places and affairs. "Friedlander,"
an exhibition of more than 480 photographs and 25 books covering decades of work, runs at MoMA through Aug. 29, before traveling to Europe until 2007. More inside.
posted by matteo
on Jun 14, 2005 -
8 comments
"I am an American, so that is why I make films about America. America is sitting on our world, I am making films that have to do with America (because) 60% of my life is America. So I am in fact an American, but I can't go there to vote, I can't change anything. We are a nation under influence and under a very bad influence… because Mr. Bush is an asshole and doing very idiotic things."
Lars Von Trier introduces his new film at the
Cannes Film Festival:
«Manderlay» picks up where «
Dogville» left off, with the character originated by Nicole Kidman -- now played by Bryce Dallas Howard --
stumbling onto
a plantation that time forgot, where slavery still operates in the 1930s.
The film (5 MB .pdf file, official pressbook) ends, as Dogville did, with David Bowie’s Young Americans played over a photomontage of images that range from a Ku Klux Klan meeting to the Rodney King beating, George Bush at prayer and Martin Luther King at his final rest, American soldiers in Vietnam and the Gulf, the Twin Towers. More inside.
posted by matteo
on May 16, 2005 -
69 comments
"The people of Dogville are proud, hypocritical and never more dangerous than when they are convinced of the righteousness of their actions" (NYT link) "
The movie is, of course, an attack on America—its innocence, its conformity, its savagery—though von Trier is interested not in the life of this country (he’s never been here) but in the ways he can exploit European disdain for it." (The New Yorker).
Lars Von Trier's new movie,
Dogville, is under attack from critics who consider it anti-American. Von Trier, of course, has never been to the US but
he counters that he knows more about U.S. culture through modern media than, say, the makers of "Casablanca' knew about Morocco. Kafka
hadn't been to Amerika either.
Should non US-ian artists leave America alone if they've never been there? Von Trier says that
"in my own country, I'm considered anti-Danish - again, that's more about politics than issues of nationality."
(more inside)
posted by matteo
on Mar 22, 2004 -
42 comments
Levi Strauss to Shut Last Plants in U.S. Levi Strauss & Co. said that it would close the last of its North American manufacturing plants, laying off almost 2,000 workers. San Francisco-based Levi, which is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year, said it would shutter two plants in San Antonio by the end of the year, displacing 800 workers there and marking the end of its U.S. manufacturing operations. And Cone Mills Corp., the world's largest denim fabric maker,
has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and accepted a letter of intent from W.L. Ross & Co to purchase all of its assets in a $90 million transaction (more inside)
posted by matteo
on Sep 26, 2003 -
18 comments
