28/09/2016

Chanson douce...? Plutôt berceuse sans pitié


 Mon article - en français - pour Toute la Culture sur le dernier livre de Leïla Slimani, pressenti pour les Prix Goncourt, Renaudot et Flore.

Le lien vers le site : http://toutelaculture.com/livres/fictions/chanson-douce-ou-la-berceuse-sans-pitie-de-leila-slimani/




CHANSON DOUCE : OU LA BERCEUSE SANS PITIÉ DE LEÏLA SLIMANI


28 septembre 2016 Par Melissa Chemam 


Le champ lexical du sinistre est enrichi avec dévotion : la pluie est grise et froide, les appartements exigus et sombres, la belle-mère intraitable, les parents débordés, la nourrice trop parfaite et la violence sourde et impossible à stopper. On l’a compris, Chanson douce est un titre au rire jaune.

Les personnages nous renvoient à toute la laideur de nos sociétés occidentales et ne se nourrissent que du vide : Myriam, la mère, rêve de devenir avocate, elle quitte donc le foyer pour plaider mais on ne saura jamais pour qui ni pour quelle cause ; de même, Paul, le père, rêve de produire des musiciens, mais peu importe lesquels finalement et sa plus grande émotion professionnelle tourne autour de la contemplation de sa montre Rolex qu’il s’apprête à cacher à sa mère soixante-huitarde. Mais le plus gros morceau de déviance se cache dans la nourrice, Louise : quadragénaire malingre et dépressive, maniaque, mauvaise mère de plus qui a traité sa propre fille comme un boulet, élevant les enfants d’autres familles, plus riches, plus occupées, plus bourgeoises, encore moins aimantes. Elle est, quand elle rencontre Myriam et Paul, seule et criblée de dettes. Mais ils ne s’en soucient guère. La première scène du livre est glaçante et rien n’est épargné au lecteur : avant même de s’attacher aux enfants de Myriam et Paul Massé, il les voit mourants, victimes d’atroces violences, baignant dans le sang. La nourrice, elle a raté son suicide.
Les thèmes de l’enfance, de la difficulté à devenir parents, du rôle de la nourrice sont des thèmes périphériques de la littérature française, mais récurrents, présents depuis des siècles, notamment dans le théâtre, de Molière à Musset. Ici, nous sommes plus proche de La Main sur le berceau que d’On ne badine pas avec l’amour. Il s’agit d’un angle particulièrement pertinent pour étudier notre société hiérarchisée, pressée, matérialiste. La nourrice est celle qui prend le temps pour que les enfants aient encore un peu de droit à l’enfance, celle qui entend les secrets de famille et les garde discrètement. Pourquoi l’auteur n’y a trouvé qu’une collection de détails lugubres ? Est-ce une dénonciation trop subtile, trop acharnée, de nos modes de vie désincarnés, où même l’amour maternel n’a plus de place ? Si oui, la dénonciation avait-elle besoin de cette accumulation de malheurs : le mère est complexée par ses origines sociales sans se l’avouer, a un besoin dévorant de poursuivre une carrière qui la rend aveugle, le père ne fait pas de sentiments, se méfie de tout le monde, et la nourrice a été maltraitée par son mari, vit dans un appartement sale sans que personne ne s’en préoccupe, et frôle désormais la folie, tentée par l’autodestruction…
Le roman est bien écrit, composé comme il se doit en 2016 – ni trop long ni trop court, cyniquement ironique comme son titre, pessimiste et sans pitié. Mais les motifs ayant poussé l’auteur à l’écrire restent, même à la fin, sibyllins…
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Leïla Slimani, Chanson Douce, Gallimard, 18 euros



Bristol in the US' Public Art Review


I wrote this article for the 2016 Spring / Summer edition of the prestigious Public Art Review, published twice a year in the US.

As the new issue is to be published in the coming days, this article is now available online!

Here it is. Enjoy!



Bristol’s Wild Style


Powered by visionary curators, innovative local artists, a vibrant music scene—and Banksy—public art in the capital of England’s west country is making a mark





The capital of England’s West Country, Bristol, is a very visual place. Houses are painted in bright colors and the city center is dominated by the graceful shapes of the sailing ships on the Floating Harbour, which faces the blue Bristol Channel and the Irish Sea.
Bristol is also very visual in another sense: For more than three decades it’s been a special hotbed for public art. Sculpture, performance, and street art started blooming in its streets during the bleak years of the 1970s recession and under Margaret Thatcher’s government in the 1980s. With the turn of the century, the economic recovery and the efforts of a talented group of artists and curators propelled the city into one of the world capitals of public art.
Right at the center of Bristol, on the Floating Harbour, is Pero’s Bridge, a pedestrian footbridge named in honor of Pero Jones, who came to live in the city in 1784 as the slave of a famous Bristolian merchant. The bridge, designed by Irish artist Eilis O’Connell, opened in 1999 as part of an effort to shed more light on the role of the slave trade in Bristol’s history. It’s one of the many examples of public art that make the city special to this day.
Another is The Black Cloud, an imposing wooden pavilion designed by international artists Heather and Ivan Morison in association with architect Sash Reading, which stood for four months in 2009 in Victoria Park in South Bristol.
At one end of Pero’s Bridge, on Narrow Quay, is the Arnolfini Gallery, one of the key places where new reflections on the purpose of public art started in the mid-1990s, thanks to Caroline Collier, its director until 2005, now at the Tate in London. Caroline was a mentor to Claire Doherty, curator and founding director of Situations UK, a group based at the Spike Island Gallery, a short walk away along the River Avon. The Situations group paved the way for a new form of public art in the early 2000s.
Talking with Doherty in the Spike Island Café, it’s not hard to see how this dynamic, elegant, charismatic, and open-minded arts professional succeeded in bringing major changes to the slightly outdated world of British public art circa 2000. With the help of the University of the West of England, and thanks to some financing from the Bristol City Council, she set up Situations UK as an independent two-year program whose goal was to think about the role of public art and its social context.
Doherty’s main idea was to think through the whole process of creating public artworks “from the studios to situations,” as she told me. Beginning in 2003, she organized lecture programs, inviting some of the key figures in the public art sector, such as the French sculptor Daniel Buren.
In 2009, Situations received an award and a £30,000 grant. It became an independent charity in 2012 and set up some new principles for public art when Doherty published the booklet The New Rules of Public Art in 2013.
Her “Rule no. 01” states that “it doesn’t have to look like public art. The days of bronze heroes and roundabout baubles are numbered. Public art can take any form or mode of encounter—from a floating Arctic island to a boat oven—be prepared to be surprised, delighted, even unnerved.” Rule no. 02: “It’s not forever.” Other rules encourage artists to go for the unplanned, create links inside the community, embrace provocation, and remain open to outside people and ideas.
“Our new independence allowed us to become an organization with an artistic vision,” says Doherty. “And that also comes from the fact that Bristol has the perfect size, unlike London, to be able to quickly, as a new actor, contribute to its scene on a large level. We then felt we had a purpose and a role.”

Looking for Renewal
Beginning in 2014, Situations UK launched events that quickly brought about a turning point. The Art Weekenders, three-day marathons of artist talks, studio visits, performances, cross-genre installations, and other events across the city, highlighted pieces by Marcus Jefferies and Colin Higginson, among others.
Then came 2015, a special year for public art in Bristol. In July, English sculptor and land artist Richard Long, born in Bristol in 1945 and trained at Saint Martin’s School of Art in London, was commissioned to develop a temporary public artwork for the Bristol Downs public parklands as part of his solo exhibition, Richard Long: Time and Space, at the Arnolfini Gallery. The artistic year culminated in November 2015, when the brilliant Chicago-born artist Theaster Gates staged his first UK public project in Bristol, as part of the cultural program for Bristol 2015 European Green Capital.
Entitled Sanctum, it set up, with the support of Situations, a temporary structure within the shell of the fourteenth-century Temple Church, using discarded materials from various places across the city. Gates invited musicians and performers to sustain a continuous offering of sound and spoken words in the structure, 24 hours a day for 24 straight days. Among the performing artists who participated in Sanctum were the Bristol Reggae Orchestra, the Dead Astronauts, William The Conquered, banjo player Béla Fleck, and a gospel choir, as well as local playwright Edson Burton and poet Miles Chambers. The aim was to foster a space for collaboration and new encounters. More than 1,000 performers took part.
“Theaster is very generous, and in every artwork he does he brings in other great talents,” says Claire Doherty. “I went to meet him personally in Chicago and I was delighted to discover he knew about Situations and he knew about Bristol, mainly thanks to its fantastic music scene! He is a fan of Massive Attack and Portishead. When he arrived in Bristol, he immediately picked up on its aesthetics.”
For Doherty, the value of such a performance doesn’t lie in its duration but in “how it lives on, unlike official statues! Part of the beauty comes from the fact that it’s going away. It is difficult to commission, but it’s what we aim to do: value the experience, attract people, and increase their well-being.”

A City of Different Parts
Bristol is a special place for the arts in the UK because, according to Doherty, “it is a city made of lots of different parts that don’t often get to speak to each other.” For her, one of the roles of public art is to bring about a dialogue among all these parts.
Bristol’s diversity has been key to its cultural bloom since the 1980s. That diversity was first reflected in its underground music scene, in which some of the city’s brightest youth started mixing strains of punk rock with reggae and nascent hip-hop. The mix grew popular in the mainly Jamaican communities in Saint Pauls, Knowle West, Barton Hill, and elsewhere. In 1983, a young artist with the pseudonym 3D started painting graffiti in different areas of Bristol, inspired by New York graffitists such as Futura 2000. 3D’s pieces melded wording, can-made art, and figurative decorations.
Born Robert Del Naja in 1965, 3D soon became the main artist working with the DJ collective The Wild Bunch. His art enlivened the walls of places such as The Dug Out nightclub, the Special K café, and the Hamilton House community center in Stokes Croft, a street that links the Saint Pauls area with the city center.
The movement started to explode when, in July 1985, the Arnolfini organized the first graffiti exhibition in a British gallery, Graffiti Art, with the 20-year-old 3D at the center of events, along with local artists, New Yorkers, and Birmingham-based Goldie. After that, and thanks to the influence of American photographers Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant’s book Subway Art and Charlie Ahearn’s film Wild Style, graffiti evolved in Bristol as a very special form of street art. Influenced by 3D, well-known artists Nick Walker and Inkie emerged in the late 1980s.
“Lots of young artists were linked by then and kept in touch,” says Inkie, aka Tom Bingle, born in 1970. “At the Barton Hill Youth Club, [youth worker] John Nation started to have a whole library of photographs from our murals and some space always available to paint. There were so many connections between us that Bristol rapidly became an epicenter for graffiti.”
Also a lyricist and rapper, 3D became a founding member of the band Massive Attack in 1988. Ten years later, also inspired by 3D’s murals, and with the help of John Nation, the man who would become the most renowned street artist in the world appeared in Bristol: Banksy. To this day, Banksy’s 1998 mural The Mild Mild West still adorns the wall of Hamilton House, attracting thousands of visitors every month.
A whole new generation followed, with artists such as Cheo, Cheba, Cosmo Sarson, Angus, and Conor Harrington leaving their mark on the city. And in 2015, Bansky made a spectacular return to his home region by opening a “bemusement park,” baptised Dismaland, in Weston-super-Mare, a few miles from Bristol. Few unauthorized public art projects of such daring have been set up with such success. Bristol’s official public art is thriving, but it’s the celebrated outlaw Banksy who now epitomizes how much the city has to offer in terms of art beyond gallery walls.

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Freelance journalist Melissa Chemam has been covering news and culture for 13 years. Born in Paris, she has lived in Prague, Miami, London, Nairobi, and elsewhere. She’s writing a nonfiction book about Bristol.

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27/09/2016

Lastest Tricky's interview


In his own words:
Tricky's recent interview with The Observer, published last August.

Tricky: ‘I've got family members I haven't spoken to in 15 years’
Saturday 13 August 2016 14.00 BST



 Photograph: Andrew Kuykendall/Lickerish



I got a lot of love in the beginning because of my story. People knowing that I lost my mother made everything real. It wasn’t like a pop star thing. It was real blood and tears.

I’ve been doing some shows with Massive Attack and it’s great to see them after all these years. People say, “Why don’t you do more shows, use the opportunities?” But it’s not work I really want at the moment. I’m mainly putting stuff out on my own label. I’m still doing what I love but at my own speed, in my own vibe.

I spent 200 grand on a car service over 18 months in New York. The driver, Vladimir, a Russian guy with half a foot became my mate, because I’d see him so often. He’d come in the house and watch boxing.

Madonna asked me to produce an album for her but I turned her down. I was supposed to meet her in the lobby of my hotel, but I couldn’t wake up. My mate called and said, “She’s down here, what are you doing?” And I’m like, “I’m tired, call me back when I’ve woken up.” So that wasn’t a good look.

I’ve got family members I haven’t spoke to in 15 years. I was at an awards ceremony in London, and this girl comes over to me and she goes, “Hey, how are you doing?” And I was, like, “Babe, how are you? You look very familiar…” And she goes, “Yes, I’m your fucking sister.”

I’m a soppy bastard. I cry at absolutely anything. Lethal Weapon, the fight scene at the end – you can see it on YouTube. That fucks me up right there.

My most embarrassing moment was with Ben Stiller. I was in a club in New York and he came over and said, “Oh, I’m a fan, come and have a drink.” But he was with this girl, and the girl kept looking at me… I’m thinking, ‘She’s making him look like an idiot.’ So I said, “What the fuck are you looking at?” Then he goes to me, “That’s my sister.”

I don’t believe in death. I just don’t think all that love and all that energy can just disappear into nothing.

Björk was so good to me. She’s very independent and she doesn’t suck your energy. She lets you be you. She’s a free spirit so she knows how to be with a free spirit. That’s the only sort of woman I could see myself staying with.

One of my brothers must have done 12 years in jail, on and off. We look very similar. I’ve been stopped by the police and they thought I was him. I showed them on YouTube who I was. That was a shock to them.

I don’t like creepy-crawly stuff. Girls can pick up a spider and just chuck it out of the window. No way, I’m not doing that. I actually scream.

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 The Obia EP will be released on False Idols on 30 September



Festival du Film Britannique : Rendez-vous à Dinard


 Immense source de réjouissance : rentrée d'Angleterre mardi dernier, me revoilà bientôt lancée sur de nouveau sur les routes britanniques sans même passer la Manche...

Demain s'ouvre le Festival du Film Britannique à Dinard et le programme est absolument passionnant!

Cette 27e édition met à l'honneur le grand, l'immense et humaniste Ken Loach, avec la projection de son nouveau - et peut-être dernier - film : 'I, Daniel Blake' ("Moi, Daniel Blake").

Pour avoir vu le film il y a plus de trois semaines, je ne peux que souligner qu'il mérite mille fois sa Palme d'Or attribué à Cannes en mai dernier, et qu'il s'agit d'un film immanquable, doté d'émotions intenses et d'une justesse rare. La bande annonce du film (en anglais) est déjà sur ce blog.

La productrice de Ken Loach, Rebecca O'Brien sera présente pour une discussion et le film documentaire de Louise Osmond, 'Versus', sera également présenté dans le week-end, un petit bijou qui retrace la carrière de Ken Loach, avec lui et ses proches collaborateurs. Une oeuvre remarquable et passionnante!

Le Festival propose de plus une belle radiographie du cinéma produit en ce moment dans mon pays de coeur!

J'ai déjà un gros coup de coeur pour 'Sing Street', le nouveau film de John Carney, pour ma part...
Il sort en France le 26 octobre.

Rendez-vous à Dinard et sur Twitter!


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Infos presse :

 
Festival du film britannique de Dinard27e édition28 septembre - 02 octobre 2016
 
Du 28 septembre au 2 octobre 2016, Dinard, la ville la plus british de Bretagne, célèbrera la 27e édition de son Festival du film britannique. Pendant 5 jours, la cité emblématique de la Côte d’Emeraude présentera au public et aux professionnels 6 films en compétition, de nombreuses avant-premières, des rétrospectives, des séances spéciales, des rencontres, Masterclasses, et rendra hommage à de grands acteurs du cinéma britannique.

Ces séances se feront en présence d’invités prestigieux, des équipes des films en compétition, du Jury et de son président Claude Lelouch, qui remettra à l’issue du festival le Hitchcock d’Or.

La marraine de cette 27e édition est Rebecca O’Brien, productrice des films de Ken Loach depuis 30 ans. Elle interviendra au cours du festival pour nous parler du cinéma britannique en cette période post-Brexit et des films en compétition qui reflètent l’incertitude d’une jeune génération se questionnant sur son avenir depuis la sortie du Royaume-Uni de l’Union Européenne

Le Festival du film britannique est un rendez-vous ouvert sur le monde et accessible à tous. Il est devenu au fil des ans l’événement incontournable des passionnés d’un cinéma protéiforme – à la fois pointu et populaire, engagé et teinté d’un sens de l’humour typiquement british –, de glamour et de culture d’outre-Manche, enregistrant plus de 30.000 entrées dans les salles obscures. 

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25/09/2016

Versus - The Life and Films of Ken Loach


 Absolutely wonderful documentary. The content is more than powerful and meaningful, but the direction and editing are also brilliantly taking.




Must watch:


Versus - The Life and Films of Ken Loach - BBC Documentary 2016





Ken Loach, who has been making socially aware dramas and documentaries for over 50 years, reflects on his often controversial career, with comments from colleagues, friends and family. Successes like Cathy Come Home, Kes and Palm d'Or winning The Wind that Shakes the Barley are matched by tales of projects shelved or pilloried, a stage play cancelled during rehearsals, and a personal tragedy.

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As you are doing it you're thinking 'how 
can I shoot this in such a way that it is

credible? So that I really believe it?"

Versus: The Life and Films of Ken Loach Synopsis


One of Britain’s most celebrated and controversial filmmakers, VERSUS: THE LIFE AND FILMS OF KEN LOACH presents a surprisingly candid behind-the-scenes account of Ken Loach’s career as he prepares to release his final major film I, DANIEL BLAKE later this year.
Director Louise Osmond was granted exclusive access on set and uses this as a starting point to assay Loach’s career, from his early work as a farcical theatre director, to his TV dramas and later as an award winning feature director.
As well as interviews with Loach, Osmond talks with a host of his friends, adversaries, colleagues and collaborators including: Cillian Murphy, Gabriel Byrne, Paul Laverty, Nell Dunn, Alan Parker, Melvyn Bragg, Sheila Hancock, Ricky Tomlinson, Chris Menges, Crissy Rock, and Barry Ackroyd.
This year will see Ken Loach celebrate his 80th birthday, release his 50th major work I, DANIEL BLAKE, and commemorate Cathy Come Home’s 50th anniversary in November. VERSUS: THE LIFE AND FILMS OF KEN LOACH is more than just a document of Loach’s work but a playful study on the process and struggles of creating such a unique career and body of work.

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Audioghost68, the movie


 If you follow this blog, you know how much I've loved this creation... I wrote about it in French and I mentioned it in my long article on Il Grande Cretto to be published in the coming issue of the Public Art Review (in the US).

This incredible event also brought me to Sicily, which was as powerful in my life as discovering Mexico in 2012. A feeling of complete belonging...

A film has been made out of the shooting of the performance by Giuseppe Lanno and Giancarlo Neriand is to be shown at the Naples' Arte Cinema Festival early October.

Here are the details:



AUDIOGHOST68

  •   
  • Teatro San Carlo

Giuseppe Lanno, Giancarlo Neri
Italy / 2015 / 9'


Nel gennaio del 1968 Gibellina fu quasi completamente rasa al suolo da un violento terremoto. Alcuni 
anni dopo la città venne ricostruita a pochi chilometri di distanza e il sindaco, Ludovico Corrao, volle 
coinvolgere nella ricostruzione architetti, urbanisti e artisti di fama internazionale. Alberto Burri non 
volle intervenire nella “nuova” Gibellina ma propose una gigantesca opera che avrebbe completamente 
coperto le macerie: il Grande Cretto. L’opera fu realizzata tra il 1984 e il 1989 e ultimata nel 2015 in 
occasione del centenario della sua nascita. AUDIOGHOST68 è un evento per luci, suoni e mille attori, appositamente concepito per il Grande Cretto dal musicista Robert Del Naja e dall'artista Giancarlo Neri: 
mille lucciole bianche si muovono e danzano nella notte tra le “vene” del Cretto, mentre nell’aria si 
sentono i suoni e le voci di quel 1968 che segnò la fine di Gibellina.

In January of 1968, Gibellina was nearly destroyed by a violent earthquake. A few years later, the city 
was rebuilt a few kilometers away and for the reconstruction, the mayor, Ludovico Corrao, wanted the 
involvement of internationally renowned architects, town planners and artists. Alberto Burri was 
unwilling to work on the “new” Gibellina but proposed an enormous work which would have completely 
covered the ruins: the Grande Cretto. The work was conducted between 1984 and 1989 and completed
in 2015 to mark the centennial of Burri’s birth.  Audioghost68 is an event for lights, sound and a thousand 
actors and was especially created for the Grande Cretto by the musician Robert Del Naja and the artist 
Giancarlo Neri: one thousand white fireflies move and dance in the night in the “veins” of the Cretto 
while the air is filled with sounds and voices from that distant 1968 which marked the end of Gibellina. 

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Watch the trailer:



About Karl Marx



Just one of the week's important read:


Marx & Engels writings on Civil War still provocative 155 years later


With a presidential candidate on the Republican side who is the darling of neo-Confederates, old style KKK-types, and alt-right white nationalists, there's no time like the present to review the United States' troubled history with racism. International Publishers' new and completely updated edition of The Civil War in the United States by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels is an opportunity to do just that.
What makes this collection of writings by these two giants particularly interesting, however, is not just the commentary they offer on the Civil War. As Professor Andrew Zimmerman, who edited this edition, says in his introduction, "Readers will not find a Marxist interpretation" of the war in this book. Instead, what it showcases is Marx and Engels in the process of applying their methodology of historical materialism to an event of world-historic importance as it unfolded.
The book thus carries a relevance beyond the interest it might arouse among Civil War buffs or historians; it represents a milestone in the development of Marxism as a method of social and political analysis.
International first offered this title nearly 80 years ago, edited and introduced at the time by Herbert Morais (under the pseudonym Richard Enmale). In this edition, Zimmerman has expanded the selection of texts to include new writings by the primary authors, but also added relevant material from figures such as Union Army officer Joseph Weydemeyer, a comrade of Marx and Engels, as well as African-American scholar W.E.B. DuBois.
Zimmerman's introduction to the book and his commentary for each individual chapter provide a background that is rich in detail and tailored to a contemporary audience. Marx and Engels' newspaper articles and private correspondence are situated within the historical and political debates of their day, but their place in the ongoing development of Marxist political economy is also chronicled. As Zimmerman points out, Capital Volume 1 would appear just a couple of years after the Civil War, so the selections in this book are examples of Marxism in its own process of development.
A fundamental conclusion that Marx and Engels return to throughout is the undeniable reality that the Civil War was, fundamentally, a social revolution against the institution of slavery. Efforts by some at the time (and subsequently by revisionist historians) to paint the conflict as being fought solely over tariffs or "states' rights" trade disputes are exposed as one-sided and usually self-serving interpretations. The economic nature of the conflict was certainly key, but it was economics in the form of slavery which informed every aspect of not only the Civil War, but of U.S. and global industrial development.
As Marx observes in one excerpt, "Direct slavery is just as much the pivot of bourgeois industry as machinery... Without slavery you have no cotton; without cotton you have no modern industry. It is slavery that gave the colonies their value; it is the colonies that created world trade, and it is world trade that is the precondition of large-scale industry." Slavery, then, was "an economic category of the greatest importance."
The American Civil War, for Marx and Engels, was a class conflict - not just a military one. Following on the insights of DuBois and others, Zimmerman rescues Marx and Engels' arguments from the mechanistic "Marxist" interpretations of the war which have characterized it as simply the victory of a bourgeois revolution and the freeing of capitalism from its slave fetters. In Zimmerman's words, the war was, according to Marx and Engels, "a workers' revolution carried out within a bourgeois republic that was finally undermined by that bourgeois republic." That undermining of course, was the counterrevolution against Reconstruction.
Zimmerman does not shy away from the shortcomings of Marx and Engels in his introductions or his selection of texts, however. He is blunt in his critique of their propensity to underestimate and not properly recognize the central role played by slaves and former slaves in fighting for their own emancipation. Though Marx and Engels are consistently anti-slavery and unreservedly on side with the fight for freedom, black workers and slaves play only secondary roles in most of their discussions of labor's struggle against slavery. The addition of DuBois's 1933 essay, "Karl Marx and the Negro," as an appendix serves as an important remedy.
Marx and Engels' analysis of Abraham Lincoln's halting but steady evolution from reluctant anti-slavery warrior to a new kind of democratic leader destined to "lead his country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world," makes up another important component of the book. It holds lessons for how activists today must strategically evaluate political figures and leaders.
Finally, the lessons Marx and Engels drew from the Civil War are reflected in their writings on the role of racism in England's colonial domination of Ireland and on the class struggle nature of revolution which was displayed in the Paris Commune. The latter "Civil War in France" was described by Marx with the same language that had colored his earlier descriptions of the fight against the Confederacy. The Commune, he said, was yet another example of "the war of the enslaved against their enslavers."
This book stands as an example of how the two masters of critical political economy grappled with the rapid development of capitalism and the upheaval of social revolution in the mid-19th century. The insights of the selected writings on offer are matched by the succinct but illuminating introductory texts by Zimmerman. The volume holds importance for not just students of Marxism or the Civil War, but for political activists and academics broadly.

The Civil War in the United States
 by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. 
Introduction by Andrew Zimmerman. 
219 pp. $14.00, ISBN: 978-07178-0753-6.
Available in paperback from International Publishers

Editor's Note: International Publishers is hosting a book talk with Andrew Zimmerman to discuss this new edition on Thursday September 22 at 7pm at Brooklyn Commons, 388 Atlantic Ave. in Brooklyn, NY. 

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As I've written here before, years ago, I've work with Raoul Pack to help him on the research he needed to write his film's synopsis about Karl Marx.

The film became years later a fictional project and will be out next year.

It's called The Young Karl Marx, has been shot in between France, Belgium and Germany in French, English and German, and will be out in 2017.

Here are more details:




26 year-old Karl Marx embarks with his wife, Jenny, on the road to exile. In 1844 Paris, he meets Friedrich Engels, an industrialist's son, who investigated the sordid birth of the British working-class. Engels, the dandy, provides the last piece of the puzzle to the young Karl Marx's new vision of the world. Together, between censorship and the police's repression, riots and political upheavals, they will lead the labor movement during its development into a modern era.


Read here too:


http://variety.com/2015/film/global/berlin-raoul-peck-set-to-direct-august-diehl-in-young-karl-marx-exclusive-1201427240/


Berlin: Raoul Peck Set to Direct August Diehl in ‘Young Karl Marx’ 




Haitian vet helmer Raoul Peck is on board to direct “The Young Karl Marx,” a period drama chronicling the turbulent youth and friendship between Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
The ambitious project has lured two German stars: August Diehl (“Night Train to Lisbon,” pictured above) for the role of Marx, and Alexander Fehling (“Inglorious Basterds”) for the role of  Engels.
Pic is being produced by Agat Films and Velvet Film in France, Rohfilm in Germany and Artemis Prods. in Belgium.
Films Distribution, Nicolas Brigaud-Robert and Francois Yon’s Paris-based arthouse company, has acquired international sales to the film.
Written by Peck and Pascal Bonitzer, “The Young Karl Marx” opens with 26-year old Marx who goes with his wife, Jenny, into exile, and depicts Marx’ encounter with Engels, the son of a textile factory owner, in 1844 Paris.
Set against the backdrop of the 1848 rebellions, which culmintaed in police raids and riots, the movie charts Marx and Engels’ journey to complete Communist Manifesto, which gave birth of the labor rights movement.
“Avoiding the habitual caricature of the old bearded revolutionary icon, this film is the coming of age of two young and daring intellectuals who will have an extraordinary impact on the world of the 20th century and beyond,” said Peck, whose latest “Murder in Pacot” will be playing in the Berlinale Panorama Special on Feb. 10.
“The Young Karl Marx” is backed by pay TV Canal Plus, pubcaster France Televisions (France 3 Cinema), as well as Germany’s Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg (MBB) and Mitteldeutsche Medienforderung (MDM). Diaphana and Neue Visionen will release the movie is France and Germany, respectively.
Lensing is scheduled to begin in July.


22/09/2016

FALSE IDOLS PRESENTS: 'THE OBIA' EP



Big Tricky news today!!


FALSE IDOLS PRESENTS: THE OBIA EP

7 TRACK EP FEATURES UK RAP FIGUREHEAD CASISDEAD, MASSIVE ATTACK’S ROBERT DEL NAJA’S “EUANWHOSARMY”, RUSSIAN ARTISTS WOODJU AND SYAVA, AND KIKO KING & CREATIVEMAZE

OBIA EP RELEASED VIA FALSE IDOLS 30TH SEPTEMBER.


1. WOODJU - Damballah
2. Euanwhosarmy Feat. Lyndsey Lupe – For Nothing
3. Syava - Nenaviju Izmenu
4. Kiko King & creativemaze - Tin Man
5. Tricky Feat. CASISDEAD - Does It
6. Kiko King & creativemaze - Wolves
7. WOODJU - Irradiant


STREAM TRICKY FEAT. CASISDEAD - "DOES IT"


The ‘OBIA EP’ is Tricky’s latest release, out via his own False Idols imprint on Sept 30th. The seven track collection showcases works by established and young emerging artists including CASISDEAD, Kiko King & creativemaze, WOODJU, Syava and Euanwhosarmy Feat. Lyndsey Lupe.

All the artists featured have been specially chosen by Tricky with the main purpose to provide a platform for them to be heard, where – in contrast to most UK and US labels – music does not have to be in English language.

It includes a powerful collection of tracks one that stretches from soulful electronic and hip hop sounds of Russia’s underground to the grooves of Berlin’s young talent, including artists discovered by Tricky on his travels and touring around the globe.

The EP is framed by two tracks by WOODJU, opening with ‘Damballah’ and closing with ‘Irradiant’. Both him and Syava, who contributes the track “Nenaviju Izmenu”, are Russian artists that struck up a strong relationship with Tricky, once again on his travels and have now been provided with a platform to shine.

Next up, Tricky provides Massive Attack’s Robert Del Naja (a/k/a 3D) an opportunity to showcase a new track entitled ‘For Nothing’, produced by Del Naja and Euan Dickinson under the name Euanwhosarmy and featuring the vocals of Lyndsey Lupe. The pair’s current creative bond should come as no surprise, as Tricky recently returned to perform alongside the Bristol band this summer to much media attention.

Los Angeles- and Berlin born Kiko King & creativemaze who now both reside in Berlin and have supported Tricky on German dates, add two tracks, “Tin Man” and “Wolves”.

‘Does It’ is a new take of a track that originally appeared on Tricky’s ‘False Idols’ album in 2013. This version features new verses from one of UK rap’s most elusive and enigmatic figures CASISDEAD who delivers his trademark distinctly British and macabre delivery with snatches of story bound lyrics that are socially poignant.

There’s a clear organic and unforced feel to the OBIA EP with the contributors granted license to grow with a native wild approach. We see Tricky taking a visible supporting role to artists that he wants to see flourish.

OBIA EP is released through False Idols September 30th.


'En dehors de la zone de confort: Rendez-vous le 6 octobre



Les livres sont prêts!
Rendez-vous en librairie le 6 octobre...



Adam Curtis is back with "HyperNormalisation"





 Extraordinary filmmaker, Adam Curtis is an eye-opening storyteller, deeply interested in describing our reality as never presented before. His commentaries alone are worth many listens. His use of video and still images is always fascinating.

He is back with a very striking film, to be shown on the BBC's web platform, the iPlayer, in one month.

The film will premiere at 9pm on Sunday 16 October.

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See the trailer here:




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Read more below:

http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/33042/1/new-adam-curtis-film-hypernormalisation-out-next-month?utm_source=Link&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=RSSFeed&utm_term=new-adam-curtis-film-hypernormalisation-out-next-month&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter



DAZED

New Adam Curtis film HyperNormalisation out next month

Massive Attack announced the release of the unique documentary maker’s new film via their Facebook – have we become lost in a fake world?

Ever get the feeling that things are increasingly difficult to understand? That information, despite it being everywhere, is increasingly difficult to process? That power systems and their infrastructures are impossible to decipher and even harder to penetrate? You aren’t alone.
In his new film HyperNormalisation, journalist and vital filmmaker Adam Curtis (Bitter LakeAll Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace) explores the complexities of modern life and traces a journey from 1975, beginning in New York and Damascus, right through to today’s Trump-dominated media landscape, exploring simply what is real anymore and asking the question “how did we become lost in this fake world?”
As with all of Curtis’ films, an unnerving soundtrack complements the film’s overarching theme – not just that we are being unsettled, but that it’s happening deliberately.

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BBC:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2016/adam-curtis-hypernormalisation


Adam Curtis’ new film HyperNormalisation to premiere on BBC iPlayer this October



Date: 22.09.2016     Last updated: 22.09.2016 at 10.49
Acclaimed filmmaker, Adam Curtis brings his new epic film, HyperNormalisation to BBC iPlayer this October. The film will premiere at 9pm on Sunday 16 October.

HyperNormalisation tells the extraordinary story of how we got to this strange time of great uncertainty and confusion - where those who are supposed to be in power are paralysed - and have no idea what to do. And, where events keep happening that seem inexplicable and out of control - from Donald Trump to Brexit, the War in Syria, the endless migrant crisis, and random bomb attacks. It explains not only why these chaotic events are happening - but also why we, and our politicians, cannot understand them.
The film shows that what has happened is that all of us in the West - not just the politicians and the journalists and the experts, but we ourselves - have retreated into a simplified, and often completely fake version of the world. But because it is all around us, we accept it as normal.
HyperNormalisation has been made specifically for BBC iPlayer. It tells an epic narrative spanning 40 years, with an extraordinary cast of characters. They include the Assad dynasty, Donald Trump, Henry Kissinger, Patti Smith, the early performance artists in New York, President Putin, intelligent machines, Japanese gangsters, suicide bombers - and the extraordinary untold story of the rise, fall, rise again, and finally the assassination of Colonel Gaddafi.
All these stories are woven together to show how today’s fake and hollow world was created. Part of it was done by those in power - politicians, financiers and technological utopians. Rather than face up to the real complexities of the world, they retreated. And instead constructed a simpler version of the world in order to hang onto power.
But it wasn’t just those in power. The film shows how this strange world was built by all of us. We all went along with it because the simplicity was reassuring. And that included the left and the radicals who thought they were attacking the system. The film reveals how they too retreated into this make-believe world - which is why their opposition today has no effect, and nothing ever changes.



"BBC iPlayer offers an extraordinary place to experiment and to tell stories that allow you to explore and explain the strangeness of our modern world in a new way". Adam Curtis
Victoria Jaye, Head of TV content, BBC iPlayer says: ““Adam is a brilliant storyteller and film maker, who has taken full creative advantage of BBC iPlayer to produce ambitious, groundbreaking new work. HyperNormalisation is both timely and important and builds on the huge success of Bitter Lake which attracted over 1.8 million requests to the platform. So far this year, iPlayer first titles have attracted over 75 million requests, which is a significant contribution from a select few titles and we expect to see this rise as we look to premiere more and more content on the service.”
Adam Curtis says: “BBC iPlayer offers an extraordinary place to experiment and to tell stories that allow you to explore and explain the strangeness of our modern world in a new way. Complex, interwoven stories that reflect the new complexity and unpredictability of our time.”
HyperNormalisation builds on the success of Bitter Lake, Adam Curtis’ first iPlayer commission and The Rack Pack, which attracted over 1.2m requests on iPlayer before being broadcast on BBC Two.
Notes to Editors
BBC iPlayer is available on over 10,000 devices in the UK for free, from computers and smartphones to tablets and Connected TVs. BBC iPlayer and BBC iPlayer Radio saw a record-breaking 3.6bn TV and radio programme requests in 2015 - with nearly 3 billion TV requests, and 0.7bn radio requests, across all devices.
IW

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The Independent:
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/hypernormalisation-adam-curtis-bbc-documentary-to-look-at-why-the-world-is-so-hopelessly-fcked-a7322391.html


HyperNormalisation: Adam Curtis BBC documentary to look at why the world is so hopelessly f*cked

'We have retreated into a simplified and often completely fake version of the world'



Revered filmmaker Adam Curtis has a new film coming to BBC iPlayer that will explore our increasingly false perception and presentation of the world around us.
The official blurb from the BBC explains it very nicely, so I’ll get straight to that:
'HyperNormalisation tells the extraordinary story of how we got to this strange time of great uncertainty and confusion - where those who are supposed to be in power are paralysed - and have no idea what to do. And, where events keep happening that seem inexplicable and out of control - from Donald Trump to Brexit, the War in Syria, the endless migrant crisis, and random bomb attacks. It explains not only why these chaotic events are happening - but also why we, and our politicians, cannot understand them.
'The film shows that what has happened is that all of us in the West - not just the politicians and the journalists and the experts, but we ourselves - have retreated into a simplified, and often completely fake version of the world. But because it is all around us, we accept it as normal.'
HyperNormalisation will draw upon a maelstrom of stories, attempting to weave them together and ascertain how today’s fake and hollow world was created.
One need only glance at social media to see how the world and its many complex issues have been simplified, so it will be interesting to see a documentary maker as talented as Curtis - the man behind Bitter Lake - tackle this.
Spanning 40 years, the narrative will include the Assad dynasty, Donald Trump, Henry Kissinger, Patti Smith, the early performance artists in New York, President Putin, intelligent machines, Japanese gangsters, suicide bombers rise, fall, rise again, and finally the assassination of Colonel Gaddafi.
HyperNormalisation will be released on BBC iPlayer on Sunday 16 October.

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