Madrid-based artist Alicia Martín’s amazing installation at Casa de America cultural center in the heart of Madrid appears to pour out of the building like an avalanche of literature. This piece is part of an ongoing series of installations around Spain titled Biografias or Biographies. Each one incorporates approximately 5,000 used books.
Take a look at a video of one of Alicia’s early installations in Cordoba:
I absolutely love this short film, Birth of a Book, which is a brief vignette on the actual creation of a real book using traditional printing methods. The film was shot, directed and edited by Glen Milner for the Daily Telegraph. It was filmed at Smith-Settle Printers, Leeds, England. The book being printed is Mango and Mimosa by Suzanne St Albans, and the edition is a reprint by Slightly Foxed Editions London. Yes, that’s Slightly Foxed the fantastic secondhand London bookshop on Gloucester Road.
The Orwell Prize is Britain’s most prestigious award for writing. Each year a select committee awards the prize—actually four prizes—for work that aims to achieve George Orwell‘s goal “to make political writing into an art”. The long lists for the book prize, blog prize and journalism prize were announced last week. My money is on Christopher Hitchens‘ Arguably for the 2012 book prize.
Picture of George Orwell which appears in an old acreditation for the BNUJ. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I’m less certain about the blogger prize. This year’s long list seems to be wanting in independent blogging. In fact, it appears that most of the recognized bloggers actually work for mainstream media outlets. What’s up with that?
Anyway, the prize winners will be named on May 23, 2012.
A big tip of the hat to reader and contributor Evan Smythe for the link to this truly bizarre video from the former BBC television show Friday Night,Saturday Morning. Hosted by Tim Rice, the now famous lyricist, the episode was an absurdist debate between journalist, media whore Malcolm Muggeridge and Mervyn Stockwood, Bishop of Southwark on one side and John Cleese and Michael Palin on the other side about Monty Python’s Life of Brian.
At times virtually indistinguishable from a Python sketch, the show underscores why films like Life of Brian need to be made. If you’re a Python fan (and who isn’t), you won’t want to miss this video, if only for the fascinating tidbits on the making of the movie.
The 1979 short film Away From it All is a Monty Python gem that sends-up those inane travelogues that we’ve all had to endure. The 13 minute film was written and narrated by the inimitable John Cleese and was shown in theaters as an opening teaser for Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Unfortunately, the hilarious flick was only available for theatrical release in the UK and in Australia, but now the rest of the world can enjoy it too.
George Orwell’s groundbreaking novel 1984 is about to get a new movie make-over. Rumor has it that Imagine Entertainment, run by Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, is developing a new take on Orwell’s iconic, dystopian classic. And, too add the bizarre factor, apparently the street artist Shepard Fairey was instrumental in bringing the project to Imagine.
The seminal book has been adapted before for movies and television, including a powerful, if flawed, version starring John Hurt and Richard Burton.
The prophetic, bestselling author Margaret Atwood is galvanizing public support for striking library workers in Toronto, Canada, while challenging shortsighted proposed cuts to library budgets. This week, Ms. Atwood said that “People support libraries, but
sometimes don’t understand that it takes people to make them run. Just as it takes writers to write books”. She also encouraged her Twitter followers to attend rallies and read-ins at the Writers’ Union of Canada in support of striking library workers.
Self-described “urban hacktivist” Florian Rivière from Strasbourg has come up with a foolproof method for crossing busy European streets. His portable crosswalk would have come in handy last week in Madrid. Check-out his website for more of his tongue-in-cheek inventions and hacker culture inspired guerilla street art.
Yesterday marked the opening of the new temporary exhibition in the Anne Frank House: “We too might move on”. The exhibition sheds light on the flight of the Frank family, the Van Pels family and Fritz Pfeffer from Germany to Holland in the 1930’s and their subsequent vain attempts to find a safe refuge elsewhere. Eva Schloss-Geiringer, Holocaust survivor and stepdaughter of Otto Frank, opened the exhibition and talked about her life in Amsterdam after she escaped from Austria with her parents and brother in 1938. The exhibition will be on display in the Anne Frank House until 15 September 2012.
Eva Schloss-Geiringer
The exhibition places the story of the Frank family, the Van Pels family and Fritz Pfeffer in the context of the approximately 410,000 Jews who fled Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1941. After Hitler came to power in 1933, a large section of the German Jewish population left their fatherland. Between 1933 and 1941, approximately 280,000 Jews fled Nazi Germany and 130,000 left Austria, which had been annexed by Hitler: half of the total Jewish community of these countries. Several tens of thousands arrived in the Netherlands. For many of them it was only a stop on a longer journey.
The Frank and Van Pels families and Fritz Pfeffer also tried to move on from the Netherlands. On 24 December 1937 Edith Frank, Anne’s mother, wrote in a letter to a friend: “We too might move on”. The Frank family tried to find a safe refuge in Britain, the USA and Cuba, the Van Pels family in the USA, and Fritz Pfeffer in Australia, Aruba and Chile. None of their attempts succeeded. They were betrayed, and sent to concentration camps. Otto Frank was the only one to survive.
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