Artist of Industry - Richard Sexton

"Richard Sexton’s forthcoming book Enigmatic Stream: Industrial Landscapes of the Lower Mississippi River documents, in close to one hundred images spanning nearly twenty years of work, the role of industry along the riverbank. “I am drawn to environments that are not destined to last, and whose final chapter may be soon written,” says Sexton, who shot the series in black and white 'to evoke the technological era,' a time when these industrial sites 'were celebrated and romanticized as the feats of human ingenuity they genuinely are.' Juxtaposing the hulking silhouettes of these places against their adjacent surroundings—residential areas, agricultural pastures, and seemingly undisturbed wetlands—Sexton poses the question of how to facilitate economic development in the region while maintaining the health of the nearby ecosystem. ..."
Oxford American
W - Richard Sexton
amazon: Enigmatic Stream: Industrial Landscapes of the Lower Mississippi River

MADONJAZZ #163 by Spiritmuse Records: Deep World Sounds

"MADONJAZZ #163 by Spiritmuse Records: Deep World Sounds. A 1hr set from Mark Gallagher of deep, spiritual jazz and psych folk sounds from around the globe. Also includes music from Moondog, Sun Ra, the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, Don Cherry, The Art Ensemble of Chicago and many more! All Vinyl. Enjoy 🎶 Spiritmuse Records is a new independent record label based in London, UK, dedicated in unearthing hidden gems from past and future, music for both mind and spirit. ..."
MixCloud (Audio)

A Rebel French Poet Draws New Followers to the Hometown

A mural with Arthur Rimbaud’s poem “Ophelia” in the poet’s hometown, Charleville-Mézières, France.

"CHARLEVILLE-MÉZIÈRES, France — When Bernard Colin took over as caretaker of this city’s cemetery 27 years ago, his predecessor gave him some remarkably non-prescient advice: 'Don’t worry, you won’t be bothered by the grave of Arthur Rimbaud — no one visits it.' Now 60, Mr. Colin collects a few letters every week, from as far away as South Korea and Japan, addressed to Rimbaud, the poet who wrote classics like 'The Drunken Boat' and 'A Season in Hell,' and died in 1891. They are left on his grave in Charleville-Mézières, Rimbaud’s hometown — along with poems and train tickets. The caretaker has also caught couples getting overly friendly at the site, conveniently shaded by the thick, verdant foliage of a couple of conifers. ..."

NY Times

“Arthur, it has been so difficult to come here, but at least here I am,” wrote a pilgrim from Italy named Silvia.

2008 May: Arthur Rimbaud, 2010 November: Arthur Rimbaud - 1, 2012 October: Patti Smith: Poem about Arthur Rimbaud (Subtitulado), 2012 December: Writers’ Houses Gives You a Virtual Tour of Famous Authors’ Homes, 2013 August: Arthur Rimbaud Documentary, 2013 November: julian peters comics - The Drunken Boat by Arthur Rimbaud, 2014 June: In Which We Begin To Roar With Laughter At Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud, 2015 May: Illuminations - Arthur Rimbaud (John Ashbery - 1875), 2016 March: Rimbaud in New York, 2016 December: The Photography of Poet Arthur Rimbaud (1883), A Season in Hell - Arthur Rimbaud (Robert Wyatt, Carl Prekopp, Elizabeth Purnell, 2009)

G.M. Strike: 50,000 Union Workers Walk Out Over Wages and Idled Plants

"The United Automobile Workers union went on strike at General Motors, sending nearly 50,000 members at factories across the Midwest and South to picket lines on Monday morning. With the two sides far apart, U.A.W. regional leaders in Detroit voted unanimously on Sunday morning to authorize the strike, the union’s first such walkout since 2007. It began at midnight, after the union’s current bargaining agreement expired on Saturday. ... The U.A.W. is pushing G.M. to improve wages, reopen idled plants, add jobs at others and close or narrow the difference between pay rates for new hires and veteran workers. G.M. wants employees to pay a greater portion of their health care costs, and to increase work force productivity and flexibility in factories. ..."
NY Times (Video)

Battle of Lake George

Benjamin West's depiction of William Johnson sparing Baron Dieskau's life after the battle
Wikipedia - "The Battle of Lake George was fought on 8 September 1755, in the north of the Province of New York. The battle was part of a campaign by the British to expel the French from North America, in the French and Indian War. On one side were 1,500 French, Canadian, and Indian troops under the command of the Baron de Dieskau. On the other side were 1,500 colonial troops under William Johnson and 200 Mohawks led by noted war chief Hendrick Theyanoguin. The battle consisted of three separate phases and ended in victory for the British and their allies. After the battle, Johnson decided to build Fort William Henry in order to consolidate his gains. William Johnson, who had recently been named the British agent to the Iroquois, arrived at the southern end of Lac du Saint Sacrement on 28 August 1755, and renamed it 'Lake George' in honor of his sovereign, George II. ..."
Wikipedia
W - Fort William Henry
French and Indian War: Battle of Lake George (Video)
French and Indian War: Siege of Fort William Henry

Location of Fort William Henry at the southern end of Lake George

2015 October: History of the Acadians, 2016 October: French and Indian War

A last remnant of the Duane Street shoe district

"New York is a necropolis of defunct businesses. But every so often an old sign from one of these dead and gone businesses reappears like a ghost, reminding us that at another time in another New York, they were part of the cityscape. One of these long-gone stores recently revealed itself at 114 Chambers Street in Tribeca. 'Craig’s Shoes' it reads, looking strangely British and very old-fashioned. Tribeca Citizen also noticed the back-in-view sign earlier this summer. Reader comments explain that Craig’s had been in business since 1949, ending its run in 2006 at a second store site on 132 Chambers Street, which was to be demolished and replaced by the AKA Tribeca Hotel. Interestingly, Craig’s wasn’t just a one-off shoe store in a neighborhood once known for its light industry and food provisions businesses. ..."
Ephemeral New York

Sierra Club

Wikipedia - "The Sierra Club is an environmental organization in the United States. It was founded on May 28, 1892, in San Francisco, California, by the Scottish-American preservationist John Muir, who became its first president. ... Traditionally associated with the progressive movement, the club was one of the first large-scale environmental preservation organizations in the world, and currently engages in lobbying politicians to promote environmentalist policies. Recent focuses of the club include promoting sustainable energy, mitigating global warming, and opposing the use of coal. The club is known for its political endorsements, which are often sought after by candidates in local elections; it generally supports liberal and progressive candidates in elections. ..."
Wikipedia
W - John Muir
Sierra Club
Ready For 100 | Sierra Club (Video)

John Muir

Amy Sherald’s Shining Second Act

“A single man in possession of a good fortune,” 2019; “The girl next door,” 2019.
"What a difference a presidential portrait makes. Two years ago, Amy Sherald’s painting career was slowly if belatedly picking up steam. She was 44 and after a four-year hiatus from art — for family illness and her own heart transplant — had had a handful of solo shows, including a four-day pop-up affair on New York City’s Lower East Side in March 2017. A few months later, in October, Ms. Sherald’s profile began to rise when the National Portrait Gallery commissioned her to paint a portrait of the former first lady Michelle Obama, setting the artist on the fast track to prominence. And so here we are: Ms. Sherald is having her first full-fledged New York solo in the Chelsea space of the voracious mega-gallery Hauser & Wirth. 'Amy Sherald: The Heart of the Matter...' is a magnificent, stirring show. ..."
NY Times
Amy Sherald the heart of the matter...
What Amy Sherald Is Looking At: The Painter on 8 Cultural Touchstones That Inspire Her, From Wes Anderson to WEB Du Bois

Installation view of “Amy Sherald: The Heart of the Matter...” at Hauser & Wirth.

NYCTrust Special – E’s E on Nickel & Dime Radio

"Relaxed sunday vibes with E’s E guest set on $mall ¢hange’s Nickel & Dime Radio Show. Recorded live on WFMU, 91.1FM – Jersey City, NJ. Enjoy! Tracklist: Moodie’s All Stars – Frog Leap, Jovens Do Prezda – Pina, Abdel Mohamed – Laissez Passer, Los Dandy’s – Tu Son Tu Son, Los Fantasticos De Chimbote – Quiero Que Amanesca, Pedro Miguel – Cabrita Que Tira Al Monte, Harold y Su Banda – Carretera, Carretera, Prince Buster – Funky Jamaica, Bumps Jackson – Funky In Jamaica Pt. 2, Hugh Masekela – Unhlanhla, Father & Sons – Soul In The Bowl, Les Leopards – D’Leau Coco, Minguito – Ngi Kalakala Mivu Ioso, Conjunto Tipica Contreras – Capricho Egipcio.
Brooklyn Radio (Audio)
mixcloud (Audio)

Charles Messier (26 June 1730 – 12 April 1817)

Wikipedia - "Charles Messier (French: [me.sje]; 26 June 1730 – 12 April 1817) was a French astronomer most notable for publishing an astronomical catalogue consisting of 110 nebulae and star clusters, which came to be known as the Messier objects. The purpose of the catalogue was to help astronomical observers, in particular comet hunters like himself, distinguish between permanent and transient visually diffuse objects in the sky. ... Messier's occupation as a comet hunter led him to continually come across fixed diffuse objects in the night sky which could be mistaken for comets. He compiled a list of them, in collaboration with his friend and assistant Pierre Méchain (who may have found at least 20 of the objects), to avoid wasting time sorting them out from the comets they were looking for. The entries are now known to be galaxies (39), planetary nebulae (5), other types of nebulae (7), and star clusters (55). ..."
Wikipedia
W - Messier object
Hubble’s Messier Catalog
YouTube: Charles Messier: The Catalog of Space | David Rives

Messier star chart depicting all the Messier objects (plotted on a rectangular grid right ascension and declination)

Hidden Histories: The Story of Women Film Editors

Margaret Booth
"A momentous event in online film culture went mostly unnoticed earlier this year: the unveiling of Edited By, Su Friedrich’s large and invaluable web resource devoted to women film editors. Friedrich, a renowned experimental filmmaker with a body of work spanning over four decades, tells the story of coming upon a film history book, turning to the editing chapter, and finding that each reference to a film mentioned the director—but never the editor. Looking up the cited films on IMDb, she discovered that most of them were edited by women. Out of this seed of curiosity grew the enormous research effort that has now resulted in the website. ..."
Criterion

Elizaveta Svilova

Harlan County, USA (1976)

Wikipedia - "Harlan County, USA is a 1976 documentary film covering the 'Brookside Strike', an effort of 180 coal miners and their wives against the Duke Power Company-owned Eastover Coal Company's Brookside Mine and Prep Plant in Harlan County, southeast Kentucky in 1973. Directed and produced by Barbara Kopple, who has long been an advocate of workers' rights, Harlan County, U.S.A. is less ambivalent in its attitude toward unions than her later American Dream, the account of the Hormel Foods strike in Austin, Minnesota in 1985-–86. It won the Oscar for Best Documentary at the 49th Academy Awards. ..."
Wikipedia
Documentary Noise: The Soundscape of Barbara Kopple’s Harlan County, U.S.A.
YouTube: Harlan County USA Trailer
YouTube: Harlan County, USA 1:44:34

Cajun music

A black and white reproduction of a 1938 photograph by FSA Photographer Lee Russell depicting a group of musicians playing at a cajun dance hall near Crowley, Louisiana.
Wikipedia - "Cajun music (French: Musique cadienne), an emblematic music of Louisiana played by the Cajuns, is rooted in the ballads of the French-speaking Acadians of Canada. Cajun music is often mentioned in tandem with the Creole-based zydeco music, both of Acadiana origin, and both of which have influenced the other in many ways. These French Louisiana sounds have influenced American popular music for many decades, especially country music, and have influenced pop culture through mass media, such as television commercials. ..."
Wikipedia
64 Parishes
What is Cajun & Zydeco: Dance & Music
YouTube: Louisiana Cajun French Music From The Southwest Prairies 50:00, Cajun Songs from Lousiana (Folkways, 1956) 32:28, Ambrose Thibodeaux ‎– Authentic French Acadian Music (1966) 29:52, Zydeco - Louisiana Creole Cajun Music Blend 1:24:06, Balfa Brothers - Tribute to Cajun Music - 1979, Mink DeVille - Mazurka

Hohner 3002 folk/Cajun Ariette Acordeón Marrón Natural

Debatable

"The big debates, distilled. This comprehensive guide will put in context what people are saying about the pressing issues of the week. Sign up for Debatable to hear more from the voices you agree with — and better understand those you don’t."
NY Times: Emails may include promotional content from The New York Times.
NY Times: Debating - News about Debating, including commentary and archival articles published in The New York Times.
Wikipedia - Debatable, Cambridge Dictionary: Debatable

NY Times: The Role of Men in the Debate Over Abortion - A man in Atlanta protesting Georgia’s restrictive abortion law in May.

Tear the Roof Off the Sucker: An Introduction to Parliament Funkadelic

Parliament Funkadelic, circa 1974
"If you don’t know much about funk, P-Funk—the legendary Parliament Funkadelic—is a great place to start. (Yes, you can make the same case for James Brown, Sly Stone, the Ohio Players, and myriad others.) P-Funk emerged in the late ‘60s and dominated the 1970s. They went through at least four somewhat distinct periods, pioneered a unique approach to groove—especially once bassist Bootsy Collins, resh from a stint with James Brown, joined the band—and combined that with psychedelia, humor, space travel, and subtle yet cutting social commentary. They were a guitar-centric outfit, but often had a horn section, embraced synthesizers, and never lost sight of their vocal roots. Parliament and Funkadelic were not two separate bands. P-Funk, under the guidance of vocalist and ringleader George Clinton, was a collective of musicians—which numbered about 50 people during their mid-’70s peak. ..."
Reverb LP (Video/Audio)

2009 January: George Clinton, 2010 December: Mothership Connection - Houston 1976, 2011 October: Funkadelic - One Nation Under A Groove, 2011 October: "Do Fries Go With That Shake?", 2012 August: Tales Of Dr. Funkenstein – The Story Of George Clinton & Parliament/Funkadelic, 2015 July: Playing The (Baker's) Dozens: George Clinton's Favourite Albums, 2015 August: Chocolate City (1975), 2016 February: Maggot Brain - Funkadelic (1971), 2016 June: P-Funk All Stars - Urban Dancefloor Guerillas (1983), 2017 March: Up for the Down Stroke - Parliament (1974), 2017 May: P-Funk mythology

World’s Most Famous Replica of NYC Gets a New Shine

The Panorama of the City of New York
"On long-term view at the Queens Museum, the Panorama of the City of New York was once the highlight of the World’s Fair in 1964. The miniature replica of New York City (including all five boroughs) took over 100 full-time workers nearly three years to build, and is still the largest architectural model of any city in the world to date. The Panorama was the brainchild of 'master builder' Robert Moses, who saw it as a tool for urban design and planning after it left the fair. The City of New York spent $672,662 in 1964 to construct the miniature metropolis, which included 830,000 buildings (now there are 895,000 buildings) over an area of 9,335 square feet. The meticulously crafted, hand-painted design continues to fascinate New Yorkers and global travelers alike, even after 53 years. ..."
The Culture Trip (Video)

10 essential UK dub and reggae albums

"Reggae was born in Jamaica, but it found a second home in the UK – the result of waves of post-war Caribbean migration, and the curatorial ambitions of labels like Chris Blackwell’s Island Records, who took names like Bob Marley and made them international celebrities. Early on, the idea that Britain could turn out reggae artists to compete with the Jamaicans seemed absurd. But around the mid-‘70s, a new wave of musicians and studio hands started bubbling up from the UK’s multiracial centres, taking the style, sound and themes of the Caribbean groups and giving them a distinctly UK twist. Red Bull Music caught up with three legends of the UK reggae and dub scene – broadcaster and DJ Don Letts, On-U Sound don Adrian Sherwood and BBC 1XTRA’s Seani B – and asked to talk through 10 essential UK reggae and dub landmarks. ..."
Red Bull (Video/Audio)

The Tale of Dirty, Old, Leaky Zalinski

Brigadier General M. G. Zalinski sank off the coast of British Columbia in 1946. Full of munitions and fuel, it began leaking oil nearly six decades later.
"An officer aboard the United States Army transport ship Brigadier General M. G. Zalinski described an autumn rainstorm on British Columbia’s north coast as a fluid wall 'so heavy that one could not distinguish rain drops falling.' Even the steel bow of the 76.5-meter ship disappeared from his view. The ship was on a routine mission in 1946 to deliver military and general cargo from Seattle, Washington, to Whittier, Alaska, a 2,500-kilometer voyage north. The crew navigated without radar, an important, but nascent, technology in the Second World War. Instead, they used echoes from the ship’s whistle to indicate proximity to shore in tight passages. The ship found safe anchorage in British Columbia’s Inside Passage—but not for long. ..."
Hakai Magazine (Audio)

Map data by OpenStreetMap via ArcGIS

The anti-liberal moment

"Shortly after its post-World War I creation, the foundations of Germany’s Weimar Republic began to quake. In 1923, Hitler staged an abortive coup attempt in Bavaria, the so-called Beer Hall Putsch — a failure that nonetheless turned Hitler into a reactionary celebrity, a sign of German discontent with the post-war political order. One contemporary observer, a legal theorist in his mid-30s named Carl Schmitt, found the seeds of the crisis within the idea of liberalism itself. Liberal institutions like representative democracy, and the liberal ideal that all a nation’s citizens can be treated as political equals, were in his view a sham. Politics at its core is not about compromise between equal individuals but instead conflict between groups. ... Schmitt’s critique of liberalism proved terrifyingly accurate. The struggle between the Nazis and their opponents could not be resolved through parliamentary compromise; the Weimar Republic fell to fascism and took the rest of the continent down with it. ..."
Vox
The Atlantic: Will the Left Go Too Far?

6 of the Most Legendary Grateful Dead Shows That Happened at The Cap 47 Years Ago

"The early 1970s were arguably the most iconic time period for the Grateful Dead. 1971 laid the groundwork for years like 77 and 78. The stage had been set and the band began to experiment, taking the music even further than the formative years of the 60s. It was vital that the band had the right venues, with the right energy, to do this; The Capitol Theatre was one of those venues. Starting February 18, 1971, and ending February 24, 1971, the Grateful Dead played 6 legendary shows at The Cap. These historic shows capture the magic of the Grateful Dead in the early 1970s – purity, passion, musicianship, and fearlessness. The Dead pushed the improvisational boundaries of music and psychedelia in a way that changed live music forever...."
The Capitol Theatre (Video/Audio)

Ron “Pigpen” McKernan

The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera (1984)

Wikipedia - "The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Czech: Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí) is a 1984 novel by Milan Kundera, about two women, two men, a dog and their lives in the 1968 Prague Spring period of Czechoslovak history. Although written in 1982, the novel was not published until two years later, in a French translation (as L'Insoutenable légèreté de l'être). The original Czech text was published the following year. The Unbearable Lightness of Being takes place mainly in Prague in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It explores the artistic and intellectual life of Czech society from the Prague Spring of 1968 to the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union and three other Warsaw Pact countries and its aftermath. The main characters are: Tomáš, an adulterous surgeon; his wife Tereza, a photographer anguished by her husband's infidelities; Tomáš’s lover Sabina, a free-spirited artist; Franz, a Swiss university professor and lover of Sabina; and finally Šimon, Tomáš’s estranged son from an earlier marriage. ..."
Wikipedia
Guardian - Light but sound: John Banville rereads The Unbearable Lightness of Being
20 Quotes From The Unbearable Lightness of Being To Heal A Broken Heart
New Yorker: The Unbearable Lightness of Being By Milan Kundera and Michael Henry Heim (March 11, 1984)
amazon

Why No One Watches Baseball Anymore

"... This past weekend is not just a snapshot, or an unrepresentative sample. It speaks to a broader problem about the future of the sport. For years, articles bemoaning baseball’s ability to attract a younger audience have shot up like weeds, but in 2019 they have more currency, because we have more data. A recent Gallup poll shows that only 9 percent of people in the United States are listing baseball as their favorite sport. That’s the lowest number since Gallup started asking the question in 1937. Recent statistics also show that ballpark attendance is down in 19 of the 30 stadiums around the league. Camera shots of games being played in front of near empty crowds are now plentiful. There is also the embarrassing spectacle of the sparsely watched Tampa Bay Rays looking to play half their games in Montreal. Baseball also has the oldest average fan base of any of the major sports. ..."
The Nation
Guardian: Baseball no longer a supergiant but it is still the most American of sports
This is why baseball is so white (Video)

When Jackie Robinson broke the color line in 1947, he ushered in an era of great black players. But the number of African American fans and baseball stars is on the decline.

The Sculptor Who Reconceives Classical Myths

Yoko Kubrick sculpting at her workshop in Pietrasanta, Italy. At right is “Tides” (2019).
"To understand the ethereal sculptures made by the American artist Yoko Kubrick, you have to know your Greek mythology: The quarrels and trysts of those gods and goddesses inform her work just as they’ve inspired sculptors since the Athenian master Phidias, who, in the fifth century B.C., carved anthropomorphic statues of Zeus, Athena and their cohort in fine detail, from their flared nostrils down to their sandaled feet. Kubrick, who works primarily in Tuscany, uses the same milky Italian marbles and handwork techniques as her mostly male predecessors, but to experience her abstract pieces is less to stare into the face of the divine than to encounter three-dimensional renderings of divinity’s ineffable essence. ..."
NY Times
Yoko Kubrick
NY Times: Italy's Marble Mecca (Aug. 8, 1993)
Massimo Galleni - Sculptor in Pietrasanta

Kubrick’s workbench.

From John Cage to Kool Herc: A Brief History of Turntablism

John Cage
"Coined by DJ Babu of the Beat Junkies crew, the term ‘turntablism’ emerged in 1995 to reflect the artistic practices of the hip hop DJ and, specifically, to denote the difference between playing back records and using turntables to manipulate sound. What’s described as turntablism today however, extends beyond hip hop, and its history starts much earlier. In fact the creative use of reproductive technology started early in the development of the equipment. From the mid-to-late 1800s, buyers of cylinder phonographs and graphophones were using the equipment not only to listen to pre-recorded music, but also to make their own vocal and instrumental recordings. ..."
The Vinyl Factory (Video)
A Brief History of Turntablism (Video)
W - Turntablism

DJ Grandmaster Flash

Holger Czukay - Cinema (2018)

"'Holger has been probably the best editor with tape I ever came across,' says producer and recording engineer Rene Tinner, who worked closely with his studio partner Czukay from the seventies to the nineties. 'He could have 90 or 100 slices of tape on a table, and he could by magic put them back together with music, perfectly. In that, he was a pure master.' The music in this box set does indeed demonstrate masterful arrangements of sounds and sources, movement and melody, humour and seriousness, that can well be described as magical. It is also a set of unpredictable keys and ciphers, revealing a unique worldview where high artistic rigour meets continual openness to chance and serendipity. In this, Holger not only cut and pasted music, but time, place and mindsets, when such things in popular culture were not only technically near impossible, but virtually unprecedented. ..."
Holland Tunnel Dive
Discogs (Video)
amazon
YouTube: Cinema - CD1 (Anthology), CD2, CD3

2011 September: Can, 2011 February: Plight & Premonition, 2011 June: Persian Love, 2013 October: Flux + Mutability - David Sylvian and Holger Czukay (1989) , 2014 June: Holger Czukay - Der Osten Ist Rot, Rome Remains Rome (1984/7), 2016 March: Invaders Of The Heart - Jah Wobble (1982), 2017 April: Jah Wobble, The Edge, Holger Czukay - Snake Charmer (1983), 2017 June: The Legend Lives On… Jah Wobble In Betrayal (1980), 2017 July: Can - The Singles (2017), 2017 September: Holger Czukay (1938-2017)

This Week’s Sky at a Glance, September 6 – 14

"... Saturday, Sept. 7. Look left of the gibbous Moon at dusk for Saturn, as shown above. Much farther to the Moon's right is brighter Jupiter. Once night is fully dark, can you piece out the Sagittarius Teapot below the Moon and behind its light? Sunday, Sept. 8. Now Saturn glows to the Moon's right at dusk, as shown above. A winter preview: Step out before the first light of dawn this week, and the sky displays the same starry panorama it does at dinnertime around New Year's. Orion is striding up in the southeast, with Aldebaran and then the Pleiades high above it. Sirius sparkles far down below Orion. The Gemini twins are lying on their sides well up in the east. See Bob King's Good Morning, Orion! ..."
Sky and Telescope

America America - Elia Kazan (1963), The Immigrants - Criterion

"... This epic, physical, elemental, almost monomaniacal film is an important touchstone for [Martin] Scorsese, a talisman of the passage from and between the old world of Classical Hollywood and the new, more distinctly personal and modern cinema of such directors as John Cassavetes, Luchino Visconti, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Scorsese’s varied contemporaries in the soon to emerge New Hollywood. Kazan’s film is also a driven tale of the passage from the old world of Europe and Asia Minor to the new, ambivalently cleansing world of America. Kazan’s film itself sits between these opposed and entwined worlds. Its extensive use of European locations in Greece and Turkey (mostly the former due to the Turkish authorities’ objections to Kazan’s choice of locations and subjects), deployment of modish techniques associated with the new waves of Europe such as the jump cut and a more episodic, novelistic narrative structure, dexterous deployment of Haskell Wexler’s lucid and fluid hand-held camera, and reliance on non-professional actors and less well-known faces, all combine to grant the film both a freshness and a sense of grounded authenticity. ..."
sensesofcinema - “People are waiting”: Elia Kazan and America America
W - America America
MoMA
amazon
YouTube: America America, America America - Elia Kazan, The Dance of Vartan