Vitro Nasu

An Elephant Sitting Still
I saw An Elephant Sitting Still. 4 hours film, the young filmmaker Hu Bo’ committed suicide right after. He was Bela Tarr’s protege, Tarr was devastated.

Gus Van Sant – Elephant, Part of Death Trilogy

(Elizabeth Taylor replaced Vivien Leigh, years later Peter Finch received a posthumous Oscar with “Network”)

Babar

See two Elephants here We Love New York but the traffic in times Square

In China Elephants Wandering – Nobody Knows Why (June 4, 2021)

Better Days

Destructiveness of School bullying at the forefront (LA times).

Facts about two leading actors Zhou Dongyu and Jackson Yee

1.

Although Zhou Dongyu looks like a teenager, she is actually 28, born in 1992. And Jackson Yee, born in 2000, is 20. When the movie was filmed, he was only 18. And it was his first time playing the first lead role! Can you tell there is an 8-year age difference between them?

(via)

David Hammons

He dedicated an exhibition at the Hauser & Wirth Gallery in Los Angeles to Ornette Coleman, describing him as “the Duchamp of music, the one who changed everything”.[3]
Another one of Hammons key influences is the French artist Marcel Duchamp. Hammons has described himself as the head of the ‘Duchamp Outpatient Clinic'[7] and the company that owns his Yonkers Gallery is called ‘Duchamp Realty

Days End – Whitney Org

See more art here.David Hammons – Artnet. com

Anatahan
Akemi Negishi played the Queen Bee.

Decided to see Anatahan after learning that Dominique De Menil worked as a scriptgirl to assist Joseph von Sternberg.

Land of the lost, Close Up on Josef Von Sternberg’s Anatahan (MuBi)

Mubi film lists – Josef Von Sternberg (May 29 – his birthday today)

Joseph Von Sternberg and Setsuko Hara

Ray Manzarek said.

“I had a class with Joseph von Sternberg at UCLA, which changed my life, if not my attitude towards women, which has always been lustfully wonderfully beautiful, but in terms of style,” he says.

Between 1959 and 1963, Sternberg taught a course on film aesthetics at the University of California, Los Angeles, based on his own works. His students included undergraduate Jim Morrison and graduate student Ray Manzarek, who went on to form the rock group The Doors shortly after receiving their respective degrees in 1965. The group recorded songs referring to Sternberg, with Manzarek later characterizing Sternberg as “perhaps the greatest single influence on The Doors
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_von_Sternberg

Anna Halprin
(Anna Halprin, 2016, Kentfield, CA. Photo: Sarah Beckstrom.)

Anna Halprin 1920-2021 (Artforum)

Known for innovating what is now called postmodern dance in the early portion of her wide-ranging career, and for her participatory choreography involving the audience, Halprin devoted her life to “expanding dance so that it’s part of life,” using it to explore social conditions and the importance of communion as well as healing, teaching the form to senior citizens and AIDS and cancer patients. In 1966

Modern Dance innovator and healer dead at 100 (SF chronicle)

Anna Halprin wiki

Ji Hye Lee

Carlito Carvalhosa died (Art News)

Carlito Carvalhosa, Artist at the Forefront of Brazilian Scene, Has Died at 59

(photo via)

See more from here

Carvalhosa participated in the Biennial of Havana, Cuba (1986 and 2012); of the Mercosur Biennial in Porto Alegre, Brazil (2001 and 2009); of the 18th São Paulo Biennial, Brazil (1985). He performed the Rio action at MoMA in New York (2014) and some of his solo shows: at the Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil (2013); in the Containers Project, Guimarães, Portugal (2012); and at MoMA, New York, USA (2011).

(2 dogs, 2 dead cameras and some colorful empty bottles)

Chipmunk

Photos by Fung Lin Hall

George Carlin (See three videos here)

Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity. George Carlin)

Dorothy Hodgkin (Previous post – Dorothy was born on May 12, 1910

Florence Nightingale click to see large
Florence Nightingale 12 May 1820 – 13 August 1910 was a celebrated English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing.

Sad news of Kevin’s passing came from Scott Bradley on FB on May 10. 2021.

Moose – as his friends called him – was an extraordinary talent and lovely human being. I can’t even process this right now.

Kevin Jackson was an English writer, broadcaster, filmmaker and pataphysician.

About this portrait, Kevin Jackson wrote on FB.

Moose as Hamlet. Portrait by Marzena Pogorzaly, whose talents are so exceptional that she managed to disguise the fact that I am morbidly obese. Her rates are very reasonable, all things considered. Yes, this is a PLUG.

Bruce Robinson – Actor, Director of Withnail and I

Kevin Jackson‘s book Whitnail and I

Bruce Robinson’s first and most famous outing as a writer/director, Withnail & I has gone down in history as the student film…this book is lively with enthusiasm and full to bursting point with anecdotes and analysis…He doesn’t try to come across as anything more than what he certainly is: a die-hard Withnail fan with a keen eye for detail and a delightful nose for a story.

Withnail and I Bruce Robinson Original Unpublished Novel

Kevin Jackson on Toru Takemitsu (Kevin Jackson talked about his encounter with the Nobel prized author Oe Kenzaburo on FB but I did not know
about his encounter with the family of Toru Takemitsu.).

On April 30 Kevin Jackson shared the photo of Maya Deren and her husband Hammid from my FB album. Kevin you’ll be missed by all of us who came to love your wit, generosity and your sharp mind.

(Gary Snyder and Lawrence Ferlinghetti)
Gary Sneider remembers Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Happy birthday Gary Snyder (May 8 1930)

“Range after range of mountains.
Year after year after year.
I am still in love.”
― Gary Snyder

“Clouds sink down the hills
Coffee is hot again. The dog
Turns and turns about, stops and sleeps.”
― Gary Snyder, Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems

Reality Insight (poem on youtube)

Paris Review Interview here.

Poetry foundation

”Poetry a riprap on the slick rock of metaphysics”
“Once Only almost at the equator almost at the
equinox
exactly at midnight from a ship the full moon in the center of the sky.”

(Photo via)

NY Times obit

Jacques d’Amboise, Charismatic Star of City Ballet, Is Dead at 86
He helped popularize ballet with an all-American style, combining the nonchalance of Fred Astaire with the nobility of a classic male dancer. Hollywood came calling, too.

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(Suzanne Farrell, Jacques d’Amboise and George Balanchine)

Rehearsing ‘Move ments for Piano and Orchestra’ with Suzanne Farrell, who was replacing the pregnant Diana Adams, and Balanchine in 1963.

Photo Essay Jaqcues d’Amboise early days National Dance Institute (See many photos here)

I think I did my solo before I was seventeen and I was doing principal roles while I was still quarter ballet. And Freddie Ashton came to the U.S. and did a ballet for me, and then I did my first movie. I turned eighteen on the set. I just did what I wanted and had everything given to me. And in a way that was why I started National Dance Institute: I never had to audition for anything; I never had to pay for a dance class.

Jacques d’Amboise Legacy (See 3 dance videos, two from films)