Young Directors Research Articles

Corporate Governance of Banking Institutions: A Descriptive Study of Boards of Directors in Latin America

The present work is a study on boards of directors of Latin American banks in the period between 2001 and 2007 with two main objectives: to shed light on the characteristics of directors and boards in the Latin American banking industry and to introduce a new aspect to the study of boards: directors´ background. While boards of directors´ size and composition are topics well explored by international research, directors´ educational and professional background has received almost no attention. Furthermore, Latin American banks have been neglected by international research on corporate governance. This paper calls for more research in the topic in order to understand what constitutes an effective board, being a first attempt to shed light on boards of directors of banks in that region regarding the traditional elements of board size and composition, and especially the new element of directors´ educational and professional background. In a sample of 17 banks and 198 directors in the period between 2001 and 2007, it was observed a low proportion of female directors (5,6%), high proportion of directors with previous banking experience (76.5%) and with previous education in finance, economics or accounting (52.5%). It was also observed that younger directors (up to 60 years old) were more likely to have higher levels of education and to have studied abroad. Latin American banks´ boards had an average of 9.62 directors (in comparison to 18 in Europe and UK, according to Adams and Mehran, 2003), and an average proportion of 41.05% independent directors (in comparison to 68,7% in Europe and US according to Adams and Mehran, 2003). However, it was observed a trend toward more independent boards as the proportion of independent directors increased from 2002 to 2007.

Hepatitis C Prevention for Young Adults: Understanding Gender Differences and Risk Factors

Purpose: Physicians, residents, and medical students at Emory, George Washington University, University of Arizona, and the University of Virginia recently organized a new national health education campaign aimed at teaching adolescents and young adults about Hepatitis C prevention. We hoped to determine whether any gender differences existed with respect to Hepatitis C knowledge, IV drug use, self-made tattoos and razor sharing, condom usage, or preferences for multimedia health education techniques. We sought to create Hepatitis C prevention programs that would resonate with adolescents and young adults through the use of multimedia messages delivered by rock and hip-hop musicians. Methods: A national online survey was created and administered on www.surveymonkey.com between 2006-2008. We conducted internet and paper surveys at both public and private universities, movie theaters, and bars to identify which music celebrities young adults trust to present accurate health information about Hepatitis C prevention. We also determined the most preferred multimedia education methods for each gender. Survey items were written by medical students, physicians, and public health experts on our national medical advisory board. Recruitment of 3,468 survey responders occurred via posters and emails to entire university student bodies. All paper and online survey responders in the study agreed to an informed consent form and filled out demographic info. Survey response options were jumbled at random to prevent order bias. A sampling of the college campuses that participated included: University of Georgia, Georgia State, Morehouse, Spelman, University of Florida, Virginia Commonwealth University, University of Virginia, University of Maryland, NYU, University of Texas, University of Arizona, UCLA, and UC Berkeley. Results: Dave Matthews, U2, and Will Smith were selected as the most trusted rock and hip-hop musicians to teach the public about Hepatitis C prevention. Short films and flash animation were selected as the two most preferred multimedia strategies. Survey responders also suggested compelling storylines about Hepatitis C prevention for us to film. Eighty-two percent of responders believed that entertaining short films should be used to empower adults to avoid IV drug use, use condoms, and find safe tattoo parlors. Conclusion: This research fine-tuned plans for our national health education concert tour, health education website, prevention posters, and short films created by young directors in Hollywood. We better understand gender differences in Hepatitis C risk factors among young adults. This research revealed which multimedia prevention interventions will empower each gender to avoid IV drug use, razor sharing, and tattoo needle sharing.

An indelible mark

Twenty-three years ago, I attended the inaugural address of the Clifton J. Latiolais Award at the ASHP Midyear Clinical Meeting in New Orleans. At that time, I was a young assistant director of pharmacy and a recent graduate of the master’s program in clinical pharmacy at The Ohio State University

Women's rights in Serbian cinema after 2000

A preoccupation with urban life and culture is present in most films by the young directors of the so‐called ‘Belgrade school’. In this study it is argued that the majority of Serbian films after 2000 show a tendency towards re‐traditionalization and the re‐establishment of patriarchal values in terms of male–female gender roles and women's rights. This can be traced not only in popular comedies and historical dramas, but also in contemporary urban cinema.

The impact of a change in ticket price on the demand for university live theatre: an illustrative case study of the Young Directors' season at Rhodes University

This article examines the effects of an increase in the price of tickets at the Rhodes University Theatre on both students and others who attended the Young Directors' Season over a two-year period. Contrary to what most of the literature suggests, students were not found to have a very great responsiveness to a change in price (price inelastic demand) compared to others who attended. In this case, a rise in ticket price actually increased box office revenue. It is suggested that the greater level of information about the productions available to students reduced the various risks associated with the consumption of cultural products and overshadowed the effect of price.

Noor eesti teater ja Noor-Eesti. Young Estonian Theatre and Young Estonia

This article begins by examining points of intersection between two professional theatres, ”Estonia” and ”Vanemuine” (both established in 1906), their young directors – Karl Menning, Paul Pinna, Theodor Altermann, and Karl Jungholz, and the literary movement Young Estonia. Subsequently, we will consider Young Estonia’s theatrical ideals and the influence of these ideas on later Estonian theatrical life. Since not much information has survived regarding direct personal contacts between ”movers and shakers” in the theatre world and Young Estonians, the main focus here shall be on indirect creative connections and influences. One such context is education: like the Young Estonians, theatre activists of the younger generation aspired to place themselves on the larger map of European culture. Thus, their artistic beliefs and goals shall be examined in relation to those of Young Estonians’ quest for modern culture. Pinna, Altermann, Menning, Jungholz, and others went on study tours to Germany and France, where they were energized and inspired by innovative German and Russian theatres, by naturalistic staging, and by psychological realism, both in acting and in performance style. Among their models were A. Antoine’s Théâtre- Libre in Paris, K. Stanislavski’s Art Theatre in Moscow, O. Brahm’s Lessing-Theater, and M. Reinhardt’s Deutsches Theater in Berlin. These models were likewise known to the Young Estonians, but if theatre activists oriented themselves more fundamentally to German naturalist and realist dramatic art, Young Estonians were more taken with ”theatrical theatre” with its symbolist and impressionist influences. The Young Estonians attended performances at both theatres, ”Vanemuine” and ”Estonia”, and wrote numerous theatre reviews. Yet in the Young Estonia albums (yearbooks) and in the magazine Young Estonia, theatre topics have a relatively modest representation. Young Estonians did not have direct connections with either theatre: none of them worked at ”Estonia” or ”Vanemuine”, nor did they hold positions in the respective Societies or boards of directors; neither did they have direct influence as creators of a new dramaturgy.Indirectly, however, Young Estonia’s relations with the theatre were very strong: they might even be regarded as the creators of a new idea of the theatre. The Young Estonians’ manifesto for the theatre was Teatri-raamat (Theatre-Book), published on the occasion of the opening of ”Estonia’s” new building in 1913. The authors represented in the volume were Bernhard Linde, Johannes Barbarus, Johannes Semper, Jaan Kärner, Anton Hansen Tammsaare, and Gustav Suits. In Teatri-raamat, Young Estonians critically analyze the development of Estonian theatre, and its place in Estonian culture in light of modern European currents in the arts (psychological realism, symbolism, impressionism, and expressionism). In this article, the ideals of the authors of Teatri-raamat are closely examined and compared with the counterarguments published in newspapers 1916 by Karl Menning, who had by then left the position of director of the Vanemuise theatre. Finally, we will consider the connections between the Young Estonia movement and the dramaturgy of its time, more specifically that of three writers for the theatre: August Kitzberg, Oskar Luts, and Eduard Vilde. Kitzberg interacted intensively with the Young Estonians without sharing their ideals concerning modern art. His plays Tuulte pöörises (In the Whirlwind), ”Enne kukke ja koitu” (Before Cock’s Crow at Dawn), Libahunt (Werewolf), and Kauka Jumal (The God of Kauka) were highly esteemed by the Young Estonians. A more indirect influence of the Young Estonians can be seen in the case of young Oskar Luts, who like his contemporaries, was influenced by newer, more modern currents, especially symbolism, along with models such as Hamsun, Strindberg, and Maeterlinck. Luts wrote his plays Laul õnnest (Song of Happiness) and Mahajäetud maja (Abandoned House) in this new symbolist style. Eduard Vilde’s play Tabamata ime (Elusive Miracle) paradoxically seems very ”Young Estonian”, considering that Vilde, as an older-generation prose writer, was very far removed from Young Estonia as a movement. With the staging of Vilde’s Tabamata ime, the question of language reform finds its way into Estonian theatre, and Altermann begins his polemic in support of language reform in the daily newspaper Päevaleht. Looking back at the young men of the theatre who were active 100 years ago, and then across at the Young Estonians, one can conclude that together they created a moment of fresh beginning, an atmosphere of birth – fraught with intensity and conflict, and aimed energetically into the future.

45th New York Film Festival

New York City, September 28-October 14, 2007 The 45th New York Film Festival had a strong selection from illustrious directors: Sidney Lumet, Bela Tarr, Alexander Sokurov, Catherine Breillat, Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer, Brian De Palma, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Jia Zhangke, John Landis, Wes Anderson, Todd Haynes, Gus Van Sant, and the Cohens, among many others, all showed new work. Dominant themes were faith, women and dead children, comedy, adaptations, and father/son Oedipal fears. The last seamed the work of the older directors-especially Lumet, Chabrol, and Rohmer, now in their seventies and eighties-but it appeared in younger directors' films too-notably that of the Cohens. Their No Country for Old Men was by far the strongest entry, and its first hour was a state-of-the-art blood-and-guts chase story, a perfect killing machine called cinema. The film later dissipated into sophistic, what-is-life-about philosophy-ridden dialogue that carried a new kind of Oedipal subplot. The older man (here Tommy Lee Jones as the baffled sheriff) survived the deadly son (here the Terminator-like killer, Javier Bardem) but, then, forlornly longed for a mythic father's comfort. This narrative-of implacable death and worn-out, nostalgic older men-became a suspicious metaphor for the Iraq war vs. World War II. The Cohens shouldn't waste their art on parables when what we need from them is a direct Iraq war hit. War itself was little addressed except in the settings of Sokurov's almost fablelike, spare Alexandra, set in a Chechnyan desert army camp, and De Palma's unfortunate Iraq film, Redacted, the first war feature from a well-known U.S. director. His fictionalized version of a well-publicized, real rape and killing, structured as clips of videos, international TV reports, and Internet sites, is a morass of the worst army-platoon-gone-crazy cliches. No contribution to the antiwar effort, it trivializes the war as simply a place where psychopathology is acted out. A few films were notable for their directors' pursuit of originality. Todd Haynes, one of American cinema's most interesting talents, lost the mark in his ambitious and ironic attempt at a biographic kaleidoscope of Bob Dylan's life, I'm Not There. Haynes states that we shouldn't be trying to find out who we (which he sees as the philosophy of the last few decades), but rather we should be reinventing ourselves, and he conceptualizes Dylan as the ultimate self-reinventor. The film is a collage of the supposed Dylan inventions-as husband, as cultural icon, as Billy the Kid, as a black runaway child, as folk singer-played by six actors, including an excellent Cate Blanchett. But none of the versions can carry this grand scheme. The film has no center. Haynes's rendition of Dylan's 1960s and 1970s are only gimmicky and, more, he promotes the ingrained prejudices of those eras as the film borders on racism and sexism. I think Haynes's best work is to come and will be in his take on contemporary reinvention, something far truer to his generation than to Dylan's. …

Shakespeare's Improbable Journey to Inner Mongolia

DURING the last week of December 2006 the Inner Mongolia Normal University presented its first-ever production of a Shakespeare play. With just eight weeks of preparation, Romeo and Juliet nonetheless proved to be a gratifying success for the school's English department, the talented cast of ethnic Han and Mongolian English majors, and the two young directors, Shang Xiuling and Wang Xinxin. However, in an improbably indirect way, the triumph really belonged to a long-deceased teacher. In the 1960s William Teunis was the most revered--and feared--English teacher at Kennedy High School in Montgomery County, Maryland. He was the first man I had ever met with a full beard, and he had honed to razor sharpness intellectual and verbal repertoire at Harvard and Iowa State. While he was not physically imposing, he had a presence that commanded instant respect. Though he rarely raised voice, diction was so clear and precise that it could easily be heard across a noisy auditorium, especially when he admonished someone with the threat of serving his head up on a platter. His methods were a strange brew of traditional and innovative practices. We were always seated in a boy/girl checkerboard pattern and lectured regularly on avoiding carefully prepared list of odious We were all eager to please him, but terrified when we were actually assigned to one of classes. But most of all Mr. Teunis was a Shakespearean. Each year, he took a group of gangly suburban adolescents and turned them into passionate, brooding, swashbuckling characters. King Lear, Hamlet, Richard III--somehow he was able to draw great characters out of a bunch of ordinary high school kids. It was quite remarkable, and he was very much a local legend for it. His career and life were cut short by a tragic accident in the spring of 1970, the year of my graduation. I was never part of the group of bohemian intellectuals who gravitated toward Mr. Teunis and populated the English office. Quite the contrary, I was a quiet jock and spent most of my time avoiding English in any form. Because I grew up dyslexic in the days before special education, I had learned well how to avoid exposure--and how to live down embarrassment. The kind of intellectual rigor represented by Mr. Teunis was what I spent most of my time trying to dodge. However, I was not entirely successful, and consequently he was able to slip me two gifts of immeasurable value. The first was in eighth grade, when he required students to read outside books. I was essentially a nonreader who struggled even with the required texts. Whether or not he recognized it as such, Mr. Teunis' gift was to allow me to read something I was interested in, regardless of its literary status. For me, that turned out to be the fantasy paperbacks with garish covers that were becoming popular at that time. I started with the short stories of Robert E. Howard (creator of the Conan character) and worked my way up to Tolkien. These were the first books that I had ever been encouraged to read that could sustain my interest long enough for me to undertake the laborious effort of reading them. Mr. Teunis somehow knew that, for students like me, reading anything was better than reading nothing. His second gift to me didn't come until my senior year. Students like me spent most of our time learning to write as little as possible, thus minimizing our mistakes. Somehow Mr. Teunis was able to discern the faintest whisper of a voice between the spelling errors in my writing. He was the first teacher in my school career who valued what students had to say, rather than simply the mechanics of saying it. He encouraged us to think first and clean up the errors later. His focus on meaning made the dozens of subsequent trips to the dictionary worthwhile. So my school experience was saved pretty much at the last minute, in large part because of a little bit of attention and encouragement that came my way from Mr. …

From Underground to Independent: Alternative Film Culture in Contemporary China (review)

Reviewed by: From Underground to Independent: Alternative Film Culture in Contemporary China Andreas Steen (bio) Paul G. Pickowicz and Yingjin Zhang, eds. From Underground to Independent: Alternative Film Culture in Contemporary China. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006. 268 pp. Hardcover $82.50, ISBN 0-7425-5437-6. Paperback $29.95, ISBN 0-7425-5438-4. In 1990, Wu Wenguang's movie Bumming in Beijing: The Last Dreamers gave birth to a new film genre in the People's Republic of China (PRC). Wu, like many young directors of what was soon labeled "underground film," had studied at the prestigious Beijing Film Academy and developed his career along a path quite different from that of the successful filmmakers of the Fifth Generation (e.g., Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige). The genre of underground film has undergone changes, as have its directors and official or governmental attitudes toward alternative film culture in the PRC. The trends have been documented in the Western press, but only recently have scholars in the West and in China attempted to examine this cultural field critically. From Underground to Independent, edited by two experts on Chinese film, intends to advance research on the PRC's underground film and to enhance scholarly knowledge of these films. In accordance with this purpose, the book contains a very useful appendix, consisting of a list of the holdings of the Chinese Underground Film Collection at the University of California, San Diego (with short summaries); a filmography; a bibliography; and a list of online resources. It should also be mentioned that the filmography lists about a hundred titles referred to in the book. Based on this film material and a broad set of sources such as personal observations and interviews and Chinese articles and ethnographic field work, the eight articles of the book employ different methodological approaches to explore China's underground film culture. One crucial problem is introduced in the preface, namely, the question of how to define this film genre: underground, independent, avant-garde, personal, newborn generation, urban generation, Sixth Generation? It is convincingly argued that "underground" is the best term; furthermore, the Chinese directors use it themselves. However, readers may find it confusing that several terms are used throughout the book. In the first article, Paul G. Pickowicz focuses on the political and social dimensions and thereby points at certain key issues that are also explored by other authors in the volume. He takes the recent shift of director Jia Zhangke from underground to aboveground as a starting point in analyzing the meaning and concepts associated with the term "underground." Underground filmmaking, it is said, has very little to do with artistic innovation, and in this respect the films "are quite disappointing" (p. 6). Underground filmmakers are most innovative in terms of content, because "they explore topics that are not treated [End Page 291] in mainstream productions." These topics evolve out of a "complex dance with the state" (p. 8), a dance that allows actors and directors to move between "under" and "above" grounds, but often denies them access to film distribution and exhibition networks within the PRC. Therefore, many directors "are busy chasing global fame" (p. 18) and concentrate on challenging topics (political, social, individual). Pickowicz criticizes this economically motivated new Occidentalism and the films' lack of historical depth. He is convinced that "the best underground work is far more interesting and vastly superior to anything that is being produced in the sterile state socialist sector" (p. 19). Since underground movies are made to attract foreign audiences, this evaluation is hardly surprising; it is, nevertheless, not entirely clear why official filmmaking should always be "sterile." Nowadays, a straightforward comparison of official and unofficial filmmaking seems to be inappropriate, especially if we consider the various networks between them. These surely encouraged the transformation from "underground to independent" and are frequently referred to in the other articles, which emphasize general aspects such as truthfulness, amateurism, independence, film content, criticism, and consumption. Zhang Yingjin looks into the filmmakers' claim that "my camera doesn't lie," which was the title of a book (2002) and of a documentary on independent filmmakers (2003). In his critical analysis, Zhang addresses complex issues of...

"Let Rome in Moskva Melt": Antony and Cleopatra at Sovremennik

Let Rome in Moskva Melt: Antony and Cleopatra at Sovremennik After famous Moscow Arts Theatre, Sovremennik (in Russian name means the contemporary) is probably most prestigious theater in Moscow. In its current repertory Sovremennik boasts several productions by Kiryll Serebrennikov, young director who, after emerging less han decade ago as an enfant terrible of Moscow stage, has rapidly evolved into one of most admired directors in country, famous, among other things, for his uncompromising modernizations of classics, riotously inventive staging, and wickedly post-modern sense of humor. Recent years have seen Serebrennikov's rise to status of brand name of sorts; theater mangers across country vie for his Midas touch: his taking charge of production has been proven to guarantee combination of artistic sophistication and, despite his flair for shocking, resounding commercial success. His contribution to Sovremennik's 2006 playbill was greatly anticipated production of Antony and Cleopatra. The project was Serebrennikov's first direct foray into Shakespeare. Probably in an attempt to forestall accusations of too-extravagant departures from Shakespeare, both program and playbill bore unnecessarily coy subtitle a version. This version of Antony and Cleopatra was set against backdrop of an unspecified location in contemporary Middle East, which occasionally also looked like present-day Chechen Republic. This staging bristled with all things Muslim and was iconically evocative of everything television viewer is likely to associate with more fundamentalist elements of Islamic world. The costumes varied from motley hijabs to black burkas for women, and from kaftans to military camouflage or black commando/terrorist outfits for men. In contrast, Rome's representatives looked decidedly western and projected corporate efficiency and sober imperturbability. Caesar, every inch ruthless CEO, wore an austere suit and comported himself with frigid reserve. The stage was framed by booth on each side (at end, booths were turned into pair of museum sarcophagi in which heroes found their final rest). A female figure in Muslim attire inside one of booths was in charge of soundtrack of sorts: lesson in Arabic that intermittently accompanied action. With placidity of tape recording, voice first introduced audience to simple locutions and their translation; as play progressed, innocuous salam aleikums gradually gave way to more complex and disturbing ones, such as I have lost my wife and other disconcerting appeals for help and exclamations of despair. Translation, or rather untranslatability and miscommunication--whether between east and west or love and duty--turned out to be one of production's extended metaphors. As for spoken text itself, it appeared to be reasonably modernized blend of prose and verse--a synthesized version of several standard translations. At times more colloquial, even folksy (though not unpalatable) diction disturbed decorum. Philo's report about dotage of our General was delivered to accompaniment of video transmission from Cleopatra's bedroom: two interlocked bodies, busy at making beast with two backs, for some time writhed on giant screen, before rolling, minimally dressed, from behind scenes onto stage, dusting themselves off, and assuming roles of Antony and Cleopatra. Serebrennikov cast his favorite, Chulpan Hamatova, Sovremennik's most accomplished, versatile young actress as his Cleopatra. Of small stature, still wisp of girl at thirty-two, Hamatova only for moment seemed an unusual match for production's Antony, veteran of silver screen Sergei Shakurov, twice her age. The inventiveness of opening was but foretaste of Serebrennikov's imagination, which is famous for never running dry. …

Private Equity and the Culture of Value Extraction

Private Equity and the Culture of Value Extraction

PIERRE BOULEZ AND THE PROJECT OF ‘L'ORESTIE’

Among the passengers on the ocean liner Provence, as it disembarked from the Argentine capital Buenos Aires on 30 July 1954 at the outset of its 18-day voyage to Marseilles, were members of the theatre company Renaud-Barrault, returning home after a lengthy tour during the course of which it had performed in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. If there was general fatigue at the end of such a gruelling schedule, during which the Company had given over 80 performances, there must have been an accompanying sense of exhilaration, and for perhaps the first time since leaving France on 24 April, an opportunity to relax. (Even the outward journey on Bretagne, the sister ship of Provence, had been taken up with a full schedule of rehearsals for the coming tour.) The joint directors, Jean-Louis Barrault and his wife Madeleine Renaud, as well as the young musical director, Pierre Boulez, joined their colleagues on board Provence a few days later at the Brazilian port of Salvador de Bahia, having opted to return to Brazil for a few days, during which there was an opportunity to witness a candomblé ceremony. For Jean-Louis Barrault, it was evidently a joyous return to the country which was the scene of the Company's first and perhaps greatest triumphs on a tour which had been as successful in every respect as the Company's first visit to South America in 1950.

Iberian Influences on Pan-American Bioethics: Bringing Don Quixote to Our Shores

In early 2005, at the same Academy Awards ceremony in which Clint Eastwood's Million-Dollar Baby was named best film, a Spanish movie called Mar adentro (The Sea Inside) by the young director Alejandro Amenábar received the Oscar for best foreign film of 2004. Though worlds apart esthetically, both films explore the themes of paraplegia and lives deemed not worth living, a cinematic coincidence that speaks of the enduring importance of issues such as these.The authors thank The Hastings Center for beginning our collaboration, Diego Gracia for having fostered it, and the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York and Doha for sustaining it.

The Fifth Annual Tribeca Film Festival

The Fifth Annual Tribeca Film Festival New York City, April 25-May 7, 2006 Some of the best work of the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival (TFF) was in documentaries. A few films made by young directors took inquisitive, non-narcissistic approaches to history, an exciting trend. Freedom's Fury (US, 2006), on the Soviet invasion of Hungary and subsequent hatreds played out in the 1956 Olympic water polo competitions, is made by the sister/brother team The Sibs, produced by Quentin Tarantino and Lucy Liu, and brilliantly edited by Michael Rogers. Concepts of occupation and freedom, so languidly discussed in American politics, are brought bloodily home, subtly paralleling our current war. Billy Corben's Cocaine Cowboys (US, 2006), about the 1980s Miami drug trade, avoids hyping the dealers and poses questions about drug money's economic place-from its revitalization of a dying Miami to its bolstering of Columbia's GOP. TFF Best Documentary Award winner The War Tapes (US, 2006) is compiled by Deborah Scranton from video diaries of National Guardsmen on duty in Iraq in 2004. In it, the soldiers filmed themselves and even mounted cameras on their guns to give the viewer an unprecedented sense of the war's violence, emotions, and exploitation by firms such as Halliburton. Lech Kowalski's unusual East of Paradise (FR, 2005) audaciously compares the suffering endured by his Polish mother during her brutal WWII Soviet experience (her face filmed in a Claude Lanzmann-like close-up) with that of people in New York's impoverished, drugged out East Village in the seventies. The very much-liked Viva Zapatero! (IT, 2005), by Italian comedian Sabina Guzzanti, fearlessly savages Silvio Berlusconi and his grip on the media. Vicky Funari and Sergio De La Torre's Mexican MAQUILAPOLIS (US/MX, 2006), about women factory workers, often single parents, living on poisoned land in minimal housing, uses set tableaus inventively. Dorothy Day: Don't Call Me a Saint (Claudia Larson, US, 2006), an uneven film about Day's founding of the Catholic Worker movement, nonetheless brings Day's name out of obscurity. Ben Lewis' Hammer and Tickle-The Communist Joke Book (FR/CA, 2006), cleverly charts the subversive, survivalist potency of political humor in the USSR MandanHidatsa-Arikara Native American J.Carlos Peinado's Waterbuster (US, 2006) recounts the Garrison Dam project that forced his tribe into a destructive diaspora, but attempts to lay to rest its pain. The frightening but humane Jesus Camp (Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, US, 2006), follows children's lessons at a fundamentalist evangelical camp. American Cannibal: The Road to Reality (Perry Grebin and Michael Nigro, US, 2006), covered recent ideas for reality television so bizarre-desert island survivor-type cannibalism-that it seemed a parody. Mary Jordon'syacA Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis (US, 2006) honors Smith's aesthetics with baroque graphics, split screens, and torrid music as it tracks Smith's germinal work, especially Flaming Creatures, and its many profilees, be it Andy Warhol (who called Smith the only artist he would ever imitate) or Jonas Mekas. Its one failing is that it doesn't examine Smith's craftsmanship enough, which is a shame since his framing could rival D.W. Griffith's and his use of color could rival Teinosuke Kinugasa's. …

Philip Johnson (1906–2005) and the Importance of Resilience

Previous articleNext article No AccessAppreciationPhilip Johnson (1906–2005) and the Importance of ResilienceFranz SchulzeFranz Schulze Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Art Volume 19, Number 3Fall 2005 Sponsored by the Smithsonian American Art Museum Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/500234 Views: 23Total views on this site PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Stéphane Braunschweig's Theatre-Machine: Structuring Space on the Contemporary French Stage

Braunschweig is one of the young European directors developing innovative scenographic techniques that interrogate the relationship between space, body, and text. Braunschweig's uses three-dimensional theatre-machines to explore ambiguities and contradictions, even as he confronts spectators with the materiality of the stage and the performative body.

The confused image of le jeune cinéma

The concept of le jeune cinéma as it was established in the years after 1995 is no longer applicable. French cinema is certainly a cinema of young directors making their first films, but does not recognize itself in the kind of civic movement that occurred in 1997. Many of the young directors are making ephemeral commercially-oriented films as a response to US blockbusters. Others are innovating by using new technologies. Young directors are opening new avenues in animated films, and especially in a revitalized documentary genre, transformed by auteurs who implicate themselves in ways that bring these films closer to fiction.

The Life of Jesus (La Vie de Jésus)

Abstract Though virtually unknown in America, Bruno Dumont is among France's most provocative young directors. Using his award-winning first feature as a case study, this essay analyzes Dumont's deconstruction of commercial cinema, denial of the complacent pleasure it offers spectators, and transformation of the viewing experience into an ethical challenge.

Doing Things with Words: Directing Dario Fo in the UK

By the early 'eighties, Dario Fo seemed to have achieved a unique place in British theatre, with both Accidental Death of an Anarchist and Can't Pay? Won't Pay! enjoying long West End runs, while he himself retained the respect of the alternative and fringe community for his radical politics and championship of popular theatre forms. Yet although he was subsequently awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, interest in Fo's work seems to have gone into a steady decline in Britain. This is only in part attributable, argues Marco Ghelardi, to a less favourable political and theatrical climate: it has also to do with the topicality and adaptability which is integral to Fo's approach to playwriting, and more especially with an acting style apparently inimical to British traditions – a style based in the collective and the situational rather than the individual and the psychological. Marco Ghelardi is a young playwright, director, and producer whose career has involved him in both the British and Italian traditions. He has also been an assistant director in opera (notably at Covent Garden), and with his theatre company, Outlaw Theatre, he has recently managed to bring a Fo production, Johan Padan and the Discovery of America, back to the Riverside in London, where it opened in May of this year.

Nostalgia for an Imaginary Home: Memory, Space, and Identity in the New Turkish Cinema

Since the mid-1990s we have been witnessing the emergence of a “new Turkish cinema.” A number of young directors, among them Zeki Demirkubuz, Derviş Zaim, Yeşim Ustaoğlu, Serdar Akar, and Nuri Bilge Ceyhan, made their first feature films during this period and have proved to be quite prolific since then. Acclaimed by critics in Turkey and abroad, recent Turkish films have received invitations from major international festivals and have won prestigious awards. The new Turkish cinema has also generated its own brand of audience. While Turkish films had largely disappeared from theaters for most of the 1980s due to severe economic adversities in the film industry, local viewers had, in any case, distanced themselves from Turkish cinema on the grounds of its presumed “banality,” the term “Turkish film” having become almost synonymous with “bad taste” for a decade prior to the arrival of the new Turkish cinema. Since the 1990s, however, Turkish films have once again begun to attract audiences to theaters, signaling that the long lost reputation of Turkish cinema may have been restored.