International News Digest
NESHAT WINS BEST DIRECTOR IN VENICE
The Iranian-American artist Shirin Neshat has been awarded the Silver Lion for best director for her directorial debut, Zanan Bedoone Mardan (Women Without Men), at the Sixty-sixth Venice Film Festival. In an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Neshat discusses the film, which follows the fate of four women in Iran in 1953, when the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mossadeq was overthrown by a foreign-sponsored coup. Neshat and her cast dressed in green and made peace signs while crossing the red carpet as an act of solidarity with the recent reform movement in Iran. The artist sees similarities between her film and the demonstrations that shook Iran after the last elections. “Look at the film character Munez, a political activist,” Neshat told the FAZ. “In the film, she dies, and I couldn’t believe it, when I saw the pictures of her dying body again, how much these images resemble those of Neda Agha-Soltan, who became an icon of the June demonstrations.” Neshat believes that the symbolism of this character, who stands for the spirit of the revolution, corresponds to recent history. “The idea of feminism in this green movement is striking. How present the women became here! With a great sense of beauty, with a lot of pride, also with violence and aggression against their oppressors. With lipstick, mascara, beautiful hair—but also a stone in the hand.”
Trailer for Shirin Neshat, Women without Men, 2009.
PIPILOTTI RIST’S PEPPERMINTA IN VENICE
The Neue Zürcher Zeitung’s Alexandra Stäheli takes a look at Pipilotti Rist’s new feature film, Pepperminta, which debuted at the Venice Film Festival. “The film tells the story of the freckled Pepperminta (played by Ewelina Guzik), a playful, red-haired dreamer who recalls not entirely by coincidence Rist’s alter-ego Pippi Longstocking,” writes Stäheli. The titular main character is given an important mission by her late grandmother: to liberate people from their fears with the help of “color hypnosis, sudden caresses, and kissing attacks.” Sounds good so far. Pepperminta gets some help from a team of friends. “Everything seems to have been integrated into this film,” writes Stäheli, who has the impression that Rist has captured the substance of her work, thinking, and producing, from the early works like Pickelporno to later installations like Homo Sapiens Sapiens at the Venice Biennale in 2005. This filmic “cocktail from Rist’s kitchen” tastes “inuredly orgiastic, technically highly precise, and sensual.” The only problems relate to the regular film details of story, dialogue, and dramaturgy. For Stäheli, Rist’s “magic drink” is “unfortunately not entirely so seductive as expected.”
TEN CULTURAL PROJECTS FOR FRANCE, INCLUDING A POMPIDOU ON WHEELS
Marin Karmitz—France’s general delegate for the country’s council of artistic creation—has unveiled ten bold new cultural projects, from a nomadic cinema school to virtual museum visits. As Le Monde reports, film producer Karmitz was nominated just six months ago by Nicolas Sarkozy to the new position, which was created especially for him by the French president. While ten projects manifest the grand ambitions of a national cultural minister, Karmitz insists that he is only “complementary” to the actual minister, Frédéric Mitterrand. Moreover, the proposed projects will not affect the ministry of culture's budget, although Karmitz foresees involving eight national ministers to realize his plans.
Project 1 aims to give more visibility to inventiveness by young artists. Project 2 aims for an “arts hill” in the west of Paris. Project 3 calls for the creation of common culture in the sector Seine-Saint-Denis. Project 4: orchestras for young people in troubled neighborhoods. Project 5: a nomadic film school. Project 6 would see support for a mobile version of the Centre Pompidou. Project 7: screening operas in public theaters. Project 8 calls for virtual museum visits. Project 9: a student cinematheque. Finally, project 10 calls for the improved distribution of French creativity and thought beyond the country’s borders.
Contemporary art gets a focus in several of the proposals, beginning with the push to give youth inventiveness greater visibility. In a national project slated for 2010 in several cities, the French creative class under the age of thirty—coming from the full range of artistic disciplines and crafts—would have “carte blanche” to intervene with works in highly visible sites, such as train stations, factories, castles, parks, and monuments, in order to “rewrite history in their own manner.”
Project 2—the arts hill in western Paris—is equally ambitious. Karmitz wants to make Paris into “the world capital of art,” with western Paris as the symbol of this hegemony. The arts hill—a reference to the Chaillot hill—would create a new “synergy,” including a global ticket and shuttle transport, between museums located around the landmark, which links the Quai Branly, Palais de Tokyo, and Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, among other institutions. Project 5—a nomadic film school to open in a houseboat in 2010 under the direction of Abdellatif Kechiche—will give rise to “street cinema” by helping young people make their first films.
Mobility also features in the future of the Centre Pompidou. With project 7, Karmitz wants to offer a helping hand to the museum’s plan to create a 10,700-square-foot museum on wheels which would tour France with significant artworks from the twentieth century on board. The name of the architect who will create the mobile museum will be announced in June 2010, and the structure will open in September of the same year.
Whoever misses the mobile Centre Pompidou will be able to make a virtual museum visit if project 8 comes to fruition. Karmitz believes that French cultural institutions do not make optimal use of digital tools and wants to add a “digital clause” for institutions that receive government funding. There’s good news for those who won’t be able to make the Claude Monet exhibition planned at the Grand Palais in fall 2010. In a pilot project, the group of national museums Réunion des Musées Nationaux will create a virtual visit of the show.
ARTS COUNCIL SEEKS ASSESSORS
There are some new positions up for grabs at England’s Arts Council. As the Süddeutsche Zeitung reports, the council is seeking 150 “artistic assessors.” Armed with proof of special knowledge about various fields—theater, literature, art, and music—the assessors are like inspectors who will write up to fourteen reports about projects that have been funded by the Arts Council. Decisions about further funding from the council will be taken based on these reports. The Arts Council is hoping that the new measure will lead to funding decisions that are “closer” to the public.