|
Kora and Hamdan: A musical blend of great personality
|
|
May 19, 2012 12:06 AM
|
|
BEIRUT: When Kandjha Kora stepped on stage at the Democratic Republic of Music Thursday evening it was his Beirut debut. It was immediately obvious, though, that the Guinean singer-songwriter is a natural performer, with a stage presence well beyond his tender 24 years. Over the course of his...
|
|
|
|
|
Documenting a world of many truths
|
|
May 18, 2012 12:03 AM
|
|
BEIRUT: Documentary is pervasive in Lebanon. Fledgling filmmakers the world over cut their teeth on documentary before moving on to feature-length fictions. In Lebanon, though, younger filmmakers are as likely to experiment with documentary as to “graduate” to fiction. Experimentation...
|
|
|
|
|
Organic, witty and gently rude
|
|
May 12, 2012 12:03 AM
|
|
BEIRUT: Lalo Schifrin’s 1966 theme for the iconic television spy series “Mission Impossible” deployed a jazz flute to carry its solo. When, several decades later, two U2 members updated Schifrin’s number, they rolled in a range of instruments. None of them was a bouzouki....
|
|
|
|
|
The quest for the amusingly profound
|
|
May 10, 2012 12:05 AM
|
|
BEIRUT: During Israel’s 34-day siege of Lebanon in 2006, someone calling himself “Idarat Israel” took to calling Lebanese telephone numbers to explain in polished Arabic that, sorry, you had this coming. In an effort to reach a broader audience, Idarat Israel also briefly jammed...
|
|
|
|
|
Painted photos, photographed paintings
|
|
May 05, 2012 12:07 AM
|
|
BEIRUT: When it comes to discussing the intent behind his work, Gerhard Richter is affably taciturn. Anyway that seemed to be the case at the opening of “Gerhard Richter – Beirut,” the artist’s first solo exhibition in the Middle East, nowadays up at the Beirut Art Center....
|
|
|
|
|
Ghosts of manly battle in a Persian desert
|
|
May 03, 2012 12:11 AM
|
|
BEIRUT: It’s still intriguing to spend a couple of hours in Valerio Zurlini’s desert. Since it was released in 1976, critics have noted the incongruity embedded in Zurlini’s “The Desert of the Tartars.” With a critically acclaimed source text (Dino Buzzati’s...
|
|
|
|
|
Challenging, provocative, entertaining
|
|
May 01, 2012 12:06 AM
|
|
BEIRUT: One of the eccentricities in the way films are distributed and exhibited hereabouts is that many award-winning Lebanese works seldom get a theatrical release. A bystander might be forgiven for assuming that the only Lebanese feature to be released in the last two years was Nadine...
|
|
|
|
|
The comic power of a facial tick
|
|
April 27, 2012 12:10 AM
|
|
BEIRUT: It would be interesting to know how Marcello Mastroianni devised the character of Ferdinando Cefalù. The narrator and main character of the 1961 comedy “Divorce Italian Style” is a masterful conflation of hair cream, indolently limp-lidded eyes and, dangling from the...
|
|
|
|
|
The movement of the de-bowled goldfish
|
|
April 20, 2012 12:06 AM
|
|
BEIRUT: The stage is dominated by a concave screen of 40 translucent squares. Backlighting reveals the silhouette of a young woman falling to the stage with a clatter. She flops about concussively behind the screen, not unlike a tropical fish that’s leapt out of her bowl and found the new...
|
|
|
|
|
Hilarious, outrageous, lyrical and oddly optimistic
|
|
April 14, 2012 12:02 AM
|
|
BEIRUT: When Alan Bishop and his diminutive sidekick Tony stormed onto the stage of the Masrah al-Madina and began to heave dishes at the floor, it was unexpected. Even Sam Shalabi – the credited half of this duet performance with Bishop – seemed taken aback, not least when a chunk of...
|
|
|
|
|
The aesthetics and politics of a glass door
|
|
April 10, 2012 12:13 AM
|
|
BEIRUT: Collaborations within the same discipline can be challenging. When a multi-disciplinary work operates in several media, the challenges are all the greater. If the artists set out to make a work at once politically direct and aesthetically strong, you may wonder whether they’ve...
|
|
|
|
|
The clicking of cockroach mandibles, carnivore indigestion
|
|
April 07, 2012 12:05 AM
|
|
BEIRUT: “Your mobile phones should be switched off,” implored musician and visual artist Mazen Kerbaj. Irtijal’s habitual emcee gestured to the equipment arrayed beside him on the stage of the Metro al-Madina cabaret. “Not on silent, please. There’s lots of opportunity for feedback up here.”The...
|
|
|
|
|
Grabbing new music by both ends
|
|
April 05, 2012 12:02 AM
|
|
BEIRUT: For anyone familiar with the bouquet of summertime music events littering Lebanon’s cultural landscape, it may be a surprise to learn that the oldest music festival in Beirut is Irtijal, the International Festival for Experimental Music. “Unless you can prove otherwise,”...
|
|
|
|
|
A melodramatic narrative of sanctioned bad behavior
|
|
March 31, 2012 12:06 AM
|
|
BEIRUT: Any number of legitimate responses could come to mind after spending a bit of time with Jean-Claude Codsi’s “A Man of Honor.” One of these is to wonder about the best narrative path to follow with a feature-length film with a self-conscious moral agenda – a fair...
|
|
|
|
|
Shooting what you don’t want to show
|
|
March 29, 2012 12:11 AM
|
|
SHARJAH: A rundown-looking beach picnic area is populated by a pair of tables, both of them adjacent something resembling a charcoal oven for grilling meats. Both tables are surrounded by fixed seating, topped by large umbrellas and what appear to be four miniature advertising hoardings, bereft of...
|
|