I have this hanging in my apartment. It’s nice to have a bit of DC here in NY.
It should totally be the next movie you see! I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Also, Reading Lolita in Tehran is definitely an entertaining read, I just have a lot of issues with its politics. I actually haven’t read Nafisi’s second book, I should probably check it out and see if I feel the same way about that.
A Separation was extraordinary. I’ll admit that I was suspicious that this was another simplistic depiction of Iranian society (like Reading Lolita in Tehran) and that was the main reason its been so celebrated. Fortunately, this is not the case. Asghar Farhadi, the film’s writer and director, masters a perfect balance of subtlety and complexity. The film’s plot evolves so naturally and gradually that the monumental developments in the narrative feel perfectly intimate and understated. If you can, see the movie before it deservedly takes home the Oscar for Best Foreign Film.
“Exhalation” by Narendra Patil
‘Merely an exhalation’
Circumstances
have slapped down a suit
on the burning thoughts in my mind!
They’ve put all burning minds
in custody.
Incarcerated
all gardens of dreams.
But how long can this bird
remain in thei dungeon
whose very walls tremble
with his very exhalation?
Translated from by Marathi by Shanta Gokhale, this poem is featured in Poisoned Bread: Translations From Modern Marathi Dalit Literature. For those interested in this neglected body of work, this collection is great!
I saw this in the window of a music shop in the village. As a fan of Hindi horror films, I’m glad to see the genre get some recognition.
The Museum of Modern Art is currently showing a retrospective called Raj Kapoor and the Golden Age of Indian Cinema.
From the film exhibition’s description: Largely unknown in North America—except, of course, to millions of fans of South Asian descent—actor, director, and mogul Raj Kapoor (1924–1988) is revered not only in India but throughout the former Soviet world, the Middle East, and beyond for the films he made during the Golden Age of Indian cinema. This exhibition of eight legendary Kapoor films, presented in newly struck 35mm prints, offers an introduction to one of the most ravishing and influential periods of world cinema. Kapoor founded RK Films in 1948, and it became the most important Hindi studio of the post-Independence era—and the one most commonly associated with that nebulous and often misunderstood expression, “Bollywood.”
I can’t wait to go to some of these screenings!
Professor Caitlin Zaloom assigned a class to do an ethnographic study of Occupy Wall Street. One student, Sara Ackerman—who objected to being “forced,” in her words, to interview “criminals, drug addicts, mentally ill people, and of course, the few competent, mentally stable people”—did not like this. She seems to have complained several times, eventually attempting to confront NYU President John Sexton at Bobst Library; and when he (according to Ackerman) sent her to the “Mental Health exchange,” she let fly with the early-morning “open letter.”
After sending several emails through the listserv for NYU’s department of Social and Cultural Analysis, Ackerman began making slanderous threats to reveal misconduct and ethics violations among the various professors and administrators involved in the growing “scandal.”
Though the focus of the initial email is ostensibly the Occupy Wall Street assignment, there’s a lot more going on: at one point, Ackerman complains that a guest lecturer refused to call on her despite her hand being raised for a minute and 15 seconds (“a long time to keep one’s arm raised”); at another, she claims to have placed an op-ed at one of four “reputable papers” (the Washington Post, The New York Times, the New York Observer and the Wall Street Journal) where she has “close family friends” in employment, ready to be published on Thursday. (I asked Observer editor Elizabeth Spiers if she was aware of this; “we don’t do op-eds,” she told me.)
It is truly saddening to see these types of libelous attacks on the professional careers of members of the NYU academic community. I also find it appalling that Ackerman conflates her refusal to engage with the course material with an issue of academic freedom. This type of encounter is disturbingly indicative of a mentality where undergraduate students see their university education as a service that comes with various entitlements. I can only hope that this controversy brings to light the way that the term “academic freedom” is often co-opted in the name of the degradation of higher education.
