Friday, August 27, 2010

Belarus Free Theatre, Comedy: Miriam Elia and The Fix, DJs from Panik


Go East! Sun 29 Aug: Belarus Free Theatre, Comedy: Miriam Elia and The Fix, DJs from Panik

Friday, August 27
Index on Censorship presents…

Go East! Sun 29 Aug

Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club , E2 6NB

Belarus Free Theatre * Comedy: Miriam Elia , The Fix * DJs from Panik.com

A day and night of cabaret, comedy and DJs, with a performance from the sensational underground Belarus Free Theatre!

Join Index on Censorship, the UK ’s leading freedom of expression organisation, and the Belarus Free Theatre at the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club, for a packed night of cabaret, comedy from Sony award short listed Miriam Elia and The Fix - and all-night mischief. Come and see a mischievous mix of Belarusian funk DJs, live music, cabaret and comedians - all for the exceptionally brave people who dare to speak up, and challenge Belarus’s dictator Lukashenko.

24 hours left to get £5 tickets:

http://go-east.eventbrite.com/

The multi-award winning Belarus Free Theatre, banned in their native Belarus , is renowned for staging underground and uncensored performances that draw attention to the continuing problems faced by Belarusians in “ Europe ’s last dictatorship”. Their recent performances, including at the Soho Theatre, London and the Under the Radar Festival, New York , have won widespread acclaim. On July 13 the troop performed a rendition of ‘Numbers’ in an event hosted by Index on Censorship and presented by Tom Stoppard at the Free Word Centre in London .

Confirmed DJs: Panik, Mr. Chips, DJ Perry Stroika and the Tblisi Sound Machine & DJ Gaz Nost.

Reviews of the Belarus Free Theatre:

"Intensely dramatic and extremely well acted… they are truly gifted, devoted, utterly focused… I feel humbled… these are people are on the barricades, they're brave"

Sir Tom Stoppard

‘This dazzling production... shows a spiritual resilience that makes dictatorship look even more inflexible and absurd.’

The Guardian *****

‘As gripping and accomplished a piece of theatre as you’ll find in London this year… this is world class theatre, built on the raw guts of experience’

The Telegraph *****

24 hours left to get £5 tickets:

http://go-east.eventbrite.com/

Michael Harris
Public Affairs Manager
Index on Censorship

mike@indexoncensorship.org

m: 07974 838468

t: 0207 324 2534

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

New PEN Reads Post by Jaime Manrique Now Online‏

PEN American Center


PEN READS: THE HOUR OF THE STAR

A new entry has been posted at PEN Reads, an online reading group that brings together readers and writers to discuss works of literature relevant to PEN's mission. In this third post, Jaime Manrique examines the movie adaptation of Clarice Lispector's The Hour of the Star, the first book chosen for PEN Reads. Read earlier posts by Colm Tóibín and Ben Moser.

Susana Amaral's The Hour of the Star
by Jaime Manrique

Great novels are seldom, if ever, successfully translated to the screen (Luchino Visconti's film adaptation of Giuseppe di Lampedusa's The Leopard is the one exception that immediately comes to mind). Wonderfully accomplished novels fare better (just to mention a few recent adaptations, think of Ang Lee's The Ice Storm and Mira Nair's The Namesake, fine movies made from eponymous novels). Still, more good novels fail than succeed in the attempt. In fact, it is a commonplace to say that, in general, minor novels make the best movies. Then what about Clarice Lispector's The Hour of the Star? It is a novel that is short on narrative but big on interiority, peppered with goofy philosophical musings, and has at its center the character, Macabea, who is described by the novel's narrator as "simple minded," and as "a creature from nowhere with the expression of someone who apologizes for occupying too much space."

Though The Hour of the Star, Lispector's final work, is hardly the stuff out of which good movies are made, Amaral's film adaptation comes as a refreshing surprise to the readers acquainted with the novel. I will not go as far as to say that I prefer the movie to the original novel, but I would like to argue that Susana Amaral's film expands the confines of the novel and enriches the narrative, adding layers of feeling that the novel doesn't have. It achieves this, I think, by turning the "unformed" Macabea into an unforgettable movie creation. I would even go as far as to say that thanks to Amaral's movie, Macabea has finally come fully to life.





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