Film
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Experiments in Opera Delivers A Podcast Series
Aqua Net and Funyums
By: - Dec 09th, 2020Experiments in Opera (EIO) is the company that gives most hope for the future of the form. They are fleet, inclusive and steeped in the history of the opera. Most importantly, they have extended the camp story-telling which characterizes the form. For all the beauty of classic operas, let’s face it: they are camp. A new podcast series has just been released by the group.
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August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
Astonishing Netflix Production with Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman
By: - Dec 19th, 2020Previously, Denzel Washington produced and co-starred (with Viola Davis) in August Wilson's "Fences." Now he has produced Wilson's "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" with the late Chadwick Boseman. Washington plans to film the other eight plays in Wilson's iconic Pittsburgh or Century Cycle. For the decade of the 1920s Wilson took a side trip to Chicago and a recording session with the Mother of the Blues the great Ma Rainey. The best news is that the new release is available to stream on Netflix. The production is destined for a bundle of nominations during awards season.
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Song for 2001:A Space Odyssey, Just Released
52 years later
By: - Jan 13th, 2021Mike Kaplan is a producer, documentary director, actor, award-winning poster designer and marketing strategist. He is known for co-producing The Whales of August, (Lilian Gish’s last film.) A Clockwork Orange, I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, Robert Altman’s Short Cuts and more. In addition, he is noted for his collection of historic movie posters that have been exhibited in Museums from Los Angeles to Jacob’s Pillow. He is also a songwriter.
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Wave Theory Records Presents 3 Women
Legendary Score by Gerald Busby
By: - Feb 07th, 2021Wave Theory Records has released the original soundtrack from legendary filmmaker Robert Altman’s 1977 cult avant-garde film 3 Women, starring Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek. The strikingly dissonant score was written by American composer Gerald Busby,
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Opera Philadelphia's Channel Introduced
David T. Little's Soldier Songs an Inventive Triumph
By: - Feb 16th, 2021Without foregoing any production value, and in fact capitalizing on new opportunities, Opera Philadelphia has been leading the field in contemporary productions that attract new audiences. Over the past decade daring experiments have been undertaken, always with careful consideration. A warehouse was the setting for the production of an opera about Andy Warhol (reminiscent of a Factory?). Composers in residence have been encouraged to test the limits of an operatic stage, like Philip Venables’ Denis and Katya, designed as a social media transmission.
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Berlinale 2021
A Virtual Berlin Film Festival
By: - Mar 08th, 2021The winners of the Virtual Berlinale, 2021, have received their Golden and Silver Bears and will return to Berlin in June for the award ceremonies and, so the world hopes, for a public viewing of their films.
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Cutting Edge New Music Festival 2021
The Art of the 21st Century Trombone
By: - Apr 13th, 2021The Cutting Edge Concert Series 23rd season began this week. Victoria Bond has held this series through thick and thin. It comes to us live streamed and is a treasure.
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Irish Rep Streams Little Gem
Elaine Murphy's Moving Tritych Is a Jewel
By: - Apr 29th, 2021Irish Repertory Theatre is streaming its 11th production in the time of Covid. Today we seldom see heterosexual women of three generations loving their men, despite difficulties that boyfriends and husbands bring to a relationship. This is a tender, funny revelation.
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Tiny Beautiful Things
George Street Playhouse’s Filmed Play
By: - Jun 04th, 2021Tiny Beautiful Things, George Street Playhouse’s filmed play, based on Cheryl Strayed’s book, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar (2012), a collection of Strayed’s columns is beautifully brought to life by actress Laiona Michelle, who as Sugar, plays a down-to-earth, expletive-spouting advice-giving columnist
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Art in Focus: The Provocation of Conditions
Online Films from The Yale Center for British Art
By: - Jun 21st, 2021The Yale Center for British Art opens a student-curated online exhibition that showcases four decades of experimental British filmmaking. The result is the Center’s first exhibition presented exclusively online. Art in Focus: The Provocation of Conditions features four short films. All four films can be viewed exclusively on the Center’s website from June 21 through August 23, 2021.
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Images Cinema Event in Williamstown
Sneak Preview of Hudson Falls
By: - Jun 29th, 2021Images Cinema will host a “sneak preview” of the first episode of Hudson Falls, a new comedy/drama/mystery series, on Wednesday, July 21st at 7:30 PM. This special event will be a fundraiser for the nonprofit theater and will include an onstage conversation with the cast and the creator/producer of the show, independent TV/movie producer Elias Plagianos of Clarkstown, New York.
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Irish Repertory Theatre Streams The Cordelia Dream
Marina Carr Play in Dublin
By: - Aug 06th, 2021The Irish Repertory Theatre has expanded our notion of performance in their streamed productions. A company with a small theatre (146 seats in the main house), now offers its consistently superior productions to the wide audience they deserve.
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Berkshire International Film Festival
Goes Virtual This Time
By: - Aug 20th, 2021BIFF continues to celebrate independent film and this year we share stories of hope, of our future, of our past, of heroism, of inspiration and of laughter, loss and love. So, we invite you to check out the program and watch all the films you want, whenever you want, wherever you want. Specific instructions will follow on the BIFF website for passholders and all others interested in the virtual event.
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Sweet Land, Opera of the Year
The Industry Produces Grand Opera
By: - Aug 29th, 2021Sweet Land by a consortium of artists formed by the adventuresome Los Angeles company The Industry has won the award for best new opera in 2020 from the Music Critics Association of North America. Music by Du Yun and Raven Chacon. Libretto by Douglas Kearney and Aja Couchois Duncan . Directed by Cannupa Hanska Luger and Yuval Sharon.
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The Third Man
Best of Noir Films
By: - Sep 11th, 2021The nighttime streets are dark and shadowy, elegant in rubble and 19th century buildings. Cobblestones glisten in the light from street lamps. Carol Reed’s 1949 film, The Third Man, shows us a visually stunning Vienna, a masterpiece of the noir realm, and probably one of the greatest films of all time.
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Little Girl by Sebastien Lifshitz
French Film About a Trans Child
By: - Oct 06th, 2021Little Girl, a 2020 documentary about a young French trans girl, would be a good introduction to what it means to feel you were born in the wrong body. It’s an exquisite film, a sweet story of 7-year-old Sasha, who lives in rural France with her incredibly devoted and supportive family. Unfortunately, not everyone around her is equally as understanding.
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Shakespeare & Company Benefit Screenings
Speak What We Feel, a Documentary by Patrick J. Toole
By: - Oct 19th, 2021Winner of the Audience Award for Best Documentary Film at the 2021 Berkshire International Film Festival (BIFF) and the first feature-length film project in the Company’s 44-year history, Speak What We Feel follows hundreds of students from 10 high schools across Berkshire, Hampden, and Columbia counties as they prepare to stage a full production of a Shakespeare play under the guidance of Shakespeare & Company education artists.
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Todd Haynes Documentary Evokes The Velvet Underground
Is There More to the Story of Lou Reed and His Band
By: - Oct 21st, 2021Steve Nelson was the foremost producer/promoter of concerts by The Velvet Underground in the period 1967-1970. He managed the legendary rock club The Boston Tea Party and produced shows in western Mass. at his club The Woodrose Ballroom and at the Paramount Theater in Springfield. He also designed several of the posters promoting those shows. He was an Archival Consultant to the Haynes film and provided visual materials for it.
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Definition Theatre's Social Justice Film
America v.2.1: The Sad Demise and Eventual Extinction of the American Negro,
By: - Nov 08th, 2021At a time when we should all be thinking about how America’s history might be taught in all its blood and glory, Definition Theatre succeeds in tossing new ingredients into this steamy pot of burgoo. Its new theatrical film, America v.2.1: The Sad Demise and Eventual Extinction of the American Negro, is a raw, sad and funny story of a future America, told in four parts.
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Remaking West Side Story
Screenwriter Tony Kushner and director Stephen Spielberg
By: - Jan 05th, 2022The original film of Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story was released in 1957. Why mess with a masterpiece? Now we have a remake collaboration by living legends screenwriter Tony Kushner and director Stephen Spielberg. While arguably not better it certainly is different and relevant for a new generation of viewers. Look for the fabulous 89-year-old Rita Moreno (Academy Award winner for her 1961 portrayal of Anita) as Valentina, the widow of the store owner ‘Doc.”
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Why Casablanca is an Iconic Film
TCM Encores Jan. 23 and 26
By: - Jan 06th, 2022When the movie “Casablanca” merged the powerful elements of love, war, and destiny in 1942, the film and its producers never saw the phenomenal appeal or its success coming until it won the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1943. Eighty years later it still deserves a shout-out for American filmmaking exceptionalism.
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72nd Berlinale - Germany
February 10-20, 2022
By: - Feb 24th, 2022Chapeau! An amazing undertaking has drawn to a close in Berlin, Germany. Amid still active Covid-19, Marietta Rissenbeek and Carlo Chatrian, the heads of the film festival Berlinale, brought about the 72nd international film festival in real time.
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Gordon Getty Preludes His New Opera
Goodbye Mr. Chips Prmeieres at Walter Reade Theater
By: - Mar 01st, 2022Gordon Getty is his own man, as composer, librettist and supporter of the arts. His new opera, Goodbye Mr. Chilps, premieres on film on March 2nd at the Walter Reade Theatre. Berkshire Fine Arts asked a few questions.
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Gordon Getty Premiers a New Opera in New York
New York City Opera and Festival Napa Valley Co-Present
By: - Mar 03rd, 2022The opera by Gordon Getty, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, had its New York premiere as an opera reimagined for film. Co-presented by New York City Opera (NYCO) and Festival Napa Valley, Getty’s fourth opera is based on the popular 1934 novella Goodbye, Mr. Chips and other stories by James Hilton.
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Opera Philadelphia Returns with O Festival
Premiere Opera Company Surprises and Delights
By: - Mar 15th, 2022Opera Philadelphia will return with the O Festival in September. 2022.
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