This week’s Ryder Films: 11/27

We are continuing to screen brand new award-winning, international and independent American films during the pandemic. Here’s a round-up of this week’s Ryder films …

ZAPPA

“We were loud. We were coarse. We were strange. And if anyone in the audience ever gave us any trouble, we told them to fuck off.” There has yet to be a film about the life and times of the brilliant and genuinely maverick musician Frank Zappa. The music he composed and performed with his band, The Mothers of Invention — a mash-up of doo-wop, jazz, classical, and atonal kazoo kookiness by way of dada — was, by his own cheery admission, “designed to annoy people.” Filmmaker Alex Winter has crafted Zappa from over a thousand hours of mostly unseen material from Zappa’s personal vault. Zappa is an expansive and intimate portrait of an extraordinary artist who was also fully engaged with the turbulent politics of his day. (USA; 129 min)

You can watch Zappa right here, right now

CRITIC’S PICK! “Zappa” foregrounds the laudable and often astonishing aspects of the man’s work and personality. A self-taught musician with a near-maniacal work ethic, over the years he came to regard his efforts in rock ’n’ roll as a day gig, necessary to support his more ambitious composing efforts. – The New York Times

“Zappa” gives its subject his well earned due within the rock firmament. But even more valuable, Winter gives Zappa pride of place among the most important composers of the 20th century, sharing some extraordinary performances of his little-known classical work. – The Washington Post

We are continuing to screen first-run, award-winning, international and independent American films during the pandemic. Here’s what’s playing this week in our virtual theater.

COLLECTIVE

You can watch Collective right here, right now

Journalism’s role at exposing corruption has rarely been as dramatically portrayed as in Collective, in which filmmaker Alexander Nanau follows an unfolding investigation in real time. Romania’s Gazeta Sporturilor newspaper isn’t internationally known, but its reporters are as dogged as any Pulitzer winner. One revelation leads to another as they uncover a vast health-care fraud that enriched moguls and politicians, and caused the deaths of innocent citizens.

The story starts in 2015 with a fire at the Bucharest nightclub Colectiv. The tragedy killed 27 people on site and injured over 100 more. Romania’s Health Minister promised the burn victims would get the highest-quality treatment, but, in subsequent months, dozens more perished. What was going wrong inside the hospitals? Gazeta Sporturilor‘s investigative team, led by Catalin Tolontan, digs into this with old-fashioned gusto, conducting stakeouts, analyzing data, and working sources like the whistle-blowing Dr. Camelia Roiu. Their revelations shake Romania all the way to the upper echelons of business and government. One target of investigation winds up dead. Was it suicide or murder? (Romania/Luxembourg; subtitled; 109 min)

ONE OF THE GREATEST MOVIES ABOUT JOURNALISM and the Dark Forces in Confronts…Alexander Nanau’s bracing, relentless documentary plays like a gripping real-time thriller, merging the reportorial intensity of Spotlight with the paranoid uncertainty of The Manchurian Candidate. When Nanau screened Collective to rave reviews at the Venice, Toronto and Sundance festivals, he had no idea that his exposé would prove to be all-too predictive of a world not prepared to cope with a rampaging virus pandemic.  – Indiewire

CRITIC’S PICK! Whatever questions you have are eclipsed by the bombshells that keep exploding. Collective sketches out an honest, affecting, somewhat old-fashioned utopian example of what it takes to make the world better, or at least a little less awful. The arc of the moral universe may bend toward justice. But as “Collective” lays out with anguished detail and a profound, moving sense of decency, it takes stubborn, angry people — journalists, politicians, artists, activists — to hammer at that arc until it starts bending, maybe, in the right direction. – The New York Times

WHERE CAN I PURCHASE A TICKET AND HOW MUCH ARE THEY?


FRANCISCA

You can watch Francisca right here, right now

A rising young novelist falls in love with the daughter of an English army officer. Portuguese filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira made this amazing film in 1981, at the age of 72; as powerful as it is stark, it suggests a blending of the modernist, minimalist techniques of Jean-Marie Straub with the elusive spiritual subject matter of Max Ophuls. With its elaborate title cards, its abundance of shots in which the action is oriented directly toward the camera, its evocative interiors, and its show-stopping gala set-pieces, Francisca is an exacting, sumptuous and utterly inimitable cinematic experience, and one of Oliveira’s crowning achievements. (Portugal / subtitled / 166 min)

Francisca premiered in 1981 as an official selection in Director’s Fortnight at Cannes. The new 4K digital restoration by the Cinemateca Portuguesa premiered at the 76th Venice Film Festival in 2019.

co-feature: If you are a fan of movies about aspiring writers, you might also want to watch Martin Eden


https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZiMFO_N9xK4%3Ffeature%3Doembed

A masterpiece of modern cinema!  A story of great subtlety, density, and emotional impact. – Dave Kehr, When Movies Mattered


CITIZENS OF THE WORLD

You can watch Citizens of the World right here, right now

It is never too late to change your life. Three Italians in their seventies, all single and looking for a change, decide to leave their beloved Rome and settle abroad. But where? A rash decision?–perhaps. The Professor, retired after teaching Latin his whole life, is getting bored. Giorgetto, one of the last true Romans, struggles to make ends meet every month. Attilio, an antiques dealer, wants to experience once again the sense of adventure he had while traveling as a hippie-youth. Things will change for our three musketeers, but not quite as expected. Writer/director Gianni de Gregorio has been called “the Italian Larry David.” He also co-stars as “the Professor.”   90 min  / Italy / subtitled / 2020 https://www.youtube.com/embed/rGMk2UQ434k?feature=oembed

co-features: if you like pasta and Italian-language films, then you might want to check out Martin Eden, The Mouth of the Wolf and Sicilia, all playing this week in our virtual theater


MARTIN EDEN

You can watch Martin Eden right here, right now

Based on the 1909 autobiographical novel by Jack London, young Martin Eden is a charming, impoverished, self-taught sailor who dreams of becoming a writer. If he becomes a success, he believes, he might win the affections of a young, wealthy university student. Starring Luca Marinelli. Directed by Pietro Marcello. (2020 / Italy / subtitled / 129 min)

Martin Eden might be the BEST FILM OF THE YEAR! The film is a masterpiece, so you should see it any way you can. But it’s also nice to know that even by viewing it at home you can help out a struggling, indispensable [theater].” – Vulture

CRITIC’S PICK! An INGENIOUS adaptation of the Jack London novel. The true miracle of this film is how Marcello translates London’s lush, character-revealing prose into pure cinema.The entirety of the 20th century — its promises, illusions and traumas — sweeps through the AUDACIOUS and THRILLING Martin Eden. – The New York Times

One of the most thrilling aspects of the novel is how well it dramatizes Martin’s intellectual hunger, as he becomes a voracious reader and, in time, a writer. It’s not easy for a movie to depict the acquisition of knowledge, but this one comes as close as any I’ve seen. Sometimes Martin Eden evokes Italian neorealism, and sometimes it has the mad stylistic energy of the French New Wave. There’s no denying that THIS GORGEOUS AND PASSIONATE FILM IS SIMPLY ONE OF A KIND. – NPR https://www.youtube.com/embed/66f3BFtAmZA?feature=oembed

Co-feature: THE MOUTH OF THE WOLF  Pietro Marcello’s debut film won major prizes at the Berlin and Turin film festivals. The Mouth of the Wolf interweaves two love stories: the 20-year romance between a Sicilian tough guy and a transsexual former junkie whom he met in prison, and a poetic reverie of the Italian port town of Genoa, depicted in all its mysterious, fading glory. Commissioned by the Fondazione San Marcellino, a Jesuit order dedicated to helping society’s poor and marginalized, the film masterfully combines documentary with fiction and melancholy home movies from the past century with poetic images, sounds, and music of the waterfront today.


BUNGALOW

You can watch Bungalow right here, right now

A major work of the celebrated Berlin School, the debut of Ulrich Köhler is a mesmerizing portrait of a young German soldier named Paul who goes AWOL and returns to his childhood home in the countryside. Over a few summer days, Paul evades the responsibilities of everyday life and falls in love with his brother’s girlfriend, disrupting the lives of everyone in his circle. With Köhler’s penchant for deadpan humor and subtle performances, Bungalow becomes a quiet mockery of militarism, familial estrangement, and youthful ennui. New 4K Restoration.

Critic’s Pick! Köhler’s first film, newly available in the U.S., is a secretive and beautifully observant study of teenage disaffection. The New York Times https://www.youtube.com/embed/gFxtiU-R9vE?feature=oembed


ALONE

You can watch Alone right here, right now

A cat-and-mouse thriller, adapted from a 2011 Swedish film and reset in the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest. Alone follows Jessica, recently widowed, who is kidnapped and held captive in a remote cabin. She escapes but is lost in the heart of the untamed wilderness, with only her wits to rely on for survival. Meanwhile, her mysterious captor closes in.  Directed by John Hyams (98 min)

John Hyams directed last year’s fabulously zippy zombie series, “Black Summer.” Alone unfolds with elegant simplicity and single-minded momentum. -The New York Times


12 HOUR SHIFT

You can watch 12 Hour Shift right here, right now

12 Hour Shift is a heist-gone-wrong film set during one strange night in an Arkansas hospital. Nurse Mandy is desperate to make it through her all-night shift without incident. This is particularly hard to do when you’re involved in a black market organ-trading scheme. When her hapless but dangerous cousin Regina misplaces a kidney, Mandy and Regina frantically try to secure a replacement organ by any means necessary. Talk about bedside manner! 12 Hour Shift is an edgy, madcap odyssey directed by Brea Grant. This is actress Grant’s first film as writer-director, and she elicits wonderful performances from her largely female ensemble cast. 87 min


SICILIA

You can watch Sicilia right here, right now

Film has never seen a collaboration like that between Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, a fiercely intellectual husband-wife duo whose decades-spanning oeuvre aimed to spark a revolution among the masses. It contains adaptations of Kafka and Brecht, homages to D.W. Griffith, Renoir, and Bresson, and treatises on political matters both current and eternal.

One of Straub-Huillet’s most engaging and accessible works, Sicilia! is the story of a man who returns to a village in Sicily after 15 years to visit his mother. Adapted from Elio Vittorini’s novel “Conversations in Sicily,” the film is so exquisitely rendered that herring roasting on a hearth or a meal of bread, wine and winter melon, can take on the humble aura of a Caravaggio painting. The actors, all nonprofessionals, declaim their extended discussions with grand, high-relief diction, and the film’s starkly exquisite black-and-white images set the dialogue as if to visual music. (66 minutes)

“One of their great later works.” – The Village Voice

“Straub-Huillet’s aesthetic abounds in anomalies. One finds comfort, albeit austere, in encountering patented elements of the filmmakers’ approach in Sicilia!” – James Quandt, Artforum


WE ARE LITTLE ZOMBIES

You can watch We Are Little Zombies right here, right now

One sunny day, four young strangers meet by chance at a crematorium. They have all recently lost their parents, but none of them can shed a tear. They are like zombies, devoid of all emotion. Alone in the world at 13 years of age with no future, no dreams, and no way to move forward, our protagonists dress themselves in scraps from a garbage dump, track down musical instruments, and decide to form a kick-ass band. They call themselves LITTLE ZOMBIES. This is a story about their quest to retrieve their ability to feel.

Directed by Makoto Nagahisa, We Are Little Zombies bursts with hyper pop style and unbridled imagination. Mixing inspiration from film, television, music, and, most importantly, video games, Nagahisa dazzles with a myriad of cinematic tricks, and he pushes his script in zany directions while never losing sight of its sympathetic exploration of grief and loss. (Japan / subtitles / 120 min)

CRITIC’S PICK! Wry humor, absurd dialogue and unflagging energy propel this dazzling, manic debut from Makoto Nagahisa…. he throws an entire box of tricks at the screen. Splitting it in two, fading to black and white, writing over it, and dunking an entire scene into a fishbowl, he fashions a fantasia of pranks so unexpected and colors so intense (the splendid cinematography is by Hiroaki Takeda), they could make you hallucinate. – The New York Times https://www.youtube.com/embed/O_-9wNeRLSs?feature=oembed

WHERE CAN I PURCHASE A TICKET AND HOW MUCH ARE THEY?

Do you have a comment or a suggestion for a film? Maybe you’d like to write something for our magazine. Send an email to editor@theryder.com. We can be talked into almost anything.

THIS WEEK’S ryder filmS

We are continuing to screen first-run, award-winning, international and independent American films during the pandemic. Here’s what’s playing this week in our virtual theater.

COLLECTIVE

You can watch Collective right here, right now

Journalism’s role at exposing corruption has rarely been as dramatically portrayed as in Collective, in which filmmaker Alexander Nanau follows an unfolding investigation in real time. Romania’s Gazeta Sporturilor newspaper isn’t internationally known, but its reporters are as dogged as any Pulitzer winner. One revelation leads to another as they uncover a vast health-care fraud that enriched moguls and politicians, and caused the deaths of innocent citizens.

The story starts in 2015 with a fire at the Bucharest nightclub Colectiv. The tragedy killed 27 people on site and injured over 100 more. Romania’s Health Minister promised the burn victims would get the highest-quality treatment, but, in subsequent months, dozens more perished. What was going wrong inside the hospitals? Gazeta Sporturilor‘s investigative team, led by Catalin Tolontan, digs into this with old-fashioned gusto, conducting stakeouts, analyzing data, and working sources like the whistle-blowing Dr. Camelia Roiu. Their revelations shake Romania all the way to the upper echelons of business and government. One target of investigation winds up dead. Was it suicide or murder? (Romania/Luxembourg; subtitled; 109 min)

ONE OF THE GREATEST MOVIES ABOUT JOURNALISM and the Dark Forces in Confronts…Alexander Nanau’s bracing, relentless documentary plays like a gripping real-time thriller, merging the reportorial intensity of Spotlight with the paranoid uncertainty of The Manchurian Candidate. When Nanau screened Collective to rave reviews at the Venice, Toronto and Sundance festivals, he had no idea that his exposé would prove to be all-too predictive of a world not prepared to cope with a rampaging virus pandemic.  – Indiewire

CRITIC’S PICK! Whatever questions you have are eclipsed by the bombshells that keep exploding. Collective sketches out an honest, affecting, somewhat old-fashioned utopian example of what it takes to make the world better, or at least a little less awful. The arc of the moral universe may bend toward justice. But as “Collective” lays out with anguished detail and a profound, moving sense of decency, it takes stubborn, angry people — journalists, politicians, artists, activists — to hammer at that arc until it starts bending, maybe, in the right direction. – The New York Times

WHERE CAN I PURCHASE A TICKET AND HOW MUCH ARE THEY?


FRANCISCA

You can watch Francisca right here, right now

A rising young novelist falls in love with the daughter of an English army officer. Portuguese filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira made this amazing film in 1981, at the age of 72; as powerful as it is stark, it suggests a blending of the modernist, minimalist techniques of Jean-Marie Straub with the elusive spiritual subject matter of Max Ophuls. With its elaborate title cards, its abundance of shots in which the action is oriented directly toward the camera, its evocative interiors, and its show-stopping gala set-pieces, Francisca is an exacting, sumptuous and utterly inimitable cinematic experience, and one of Oliveira’s crowning achievements. (Portugal / subtitled / 166 min)

Francisca premiered in 1981 as an official selection in Director’s Fortnight at Cannes. The new 4K digital restoration by the Cinemateca Portuguesa premiered at the 76th Venice Film Festival in 2019.

co-feature: If you are a fan of movies about aspiring writers, you might also want to watch Martin Eden


A masterpiece of modern cinema!  A story of great subtlety, density, and emotional impact. – Dave Kehr, When Movies Mattered


CITIZENS OF THE WORLD

You can watch Citizens of the World right here, right now

It is never too late to change your life. Three Italians in their seventies, all single and looking for a change, decide to leave their beloved Rome and settle abroad. But where? A rash decision?–perhaps. The Professor, retired after teaching Latin his whole life, is getting bored. Giorgetto, one of the last true Romans, struggles to make ends meet every month. Attilio, an antiques dealer, wants to experience once again the sense of adventure he had while traveling as a hippie-youth. Things will change for our three musketeers, but not quite as expected. Writer/director Gianni de Gregorio has been called “the Italian Larry David.” He also co-stars as “the Professor.”   90 min  / Italy / subtitled / 2020

co-features: if you like pasta and Italian-language films, then you might want to check out Martin Eden, The Mouth of the Wolf and Sicilia, all playing this week in our virtual theater


MARTIN EDEN

You can watch Martin Eden right here, right now

Based on the 1909 autobiographical novel by Jack London, young Martin Eden is a charming, impoverished, self-taught sailor who dreams of becoming a writer. If he becomes a success, he believes, he might win the affections of a young, wealthy university student. Starring Luca Marinelli. Directed by Pietro Marcello. (2020 / Italy / subtitled / 129 min)

Martin Eden might be the BEST FILM OF THE YEAR! The film is a masterpiece, so you should see it any way you can. But it’s also nice to know that even by viewing it at home you can help out a struggling, indispensable [theater].” – Vulture

CRITIC’S PICK! An INGENIOUS adaptation of the Jack London novel. The true miracle of this film is how Marcello translates London’s lush, character-revealing prose into pure cinema.The entirety of the 20th century — its promises, illusions and traumas — sweeps through the AUDACIOUS and THRILLING Martin Eden. – The New York Times

One of the most thrilling aspects of the novel is how well it dramatizes Martin’s intellectual hunger, as he becomes a voracious reader and, in time, a writer. It’s not easy for a movie to depict the acquisition of knowledge, but this one comes as close as any I’ve seen. Sometimes Martin Eden evokes Italian neorealism, and sometimes it has the mad stylistic energy of the French New Wave. There’s no denying that THIS GORGEOUS AND PASSIONATE FILM IS SIMPLY ONE OF A KIND. – NPR

Co-feature: THE MOUTH OF THE WOLF  Pietro Marcello’s debut film won major prizes at the Berlin and Turin film festivals. The Mouth of the Wolf interweaves two love stories: the 20-year romance between a Sicilian tough guy and a transsexual former junkie whom he met in prison, and a poetic reverie of the Italian port town of Genoa, depicted in all its mysterious, fading glory. Commissioned by the Fondazione San Marcellino, a Jesuit order dedicated to helping society’s poor and marginalized, the film masterfully combines documentary with fiction and melancholy home movies from the past century with poetic images, sounds, and music of the waterfront today.


BUNGALOW

You can watch Bungalow right here, right now

A major work of the celebrated Berlin School, the debut of Ulrich Köhler is a mesmerizing portrait of a young German soldier named Paul who goes AWOL and returns to his childhood home in the countryside. Over a few summer days, Paul evades the responsibilities of everyday life and falls in love with his brother’s girlfriend, disrupting the lives of everyone in his circle. With Köhler’s penchant for deadpan humor and subtle performances, Bungalow becomes a quiet mockery of militarism, familial estrangement, and youthful ennui. New 4K Restoration.

Critic’s Pick! Köhler’s first film, newly available in the U.S., is a secretive and beautifully observant study of teenage disaffection. The New York Times


ALONE

You can watch Alone right here, right now

A cat-and-mouse thriller, adapted from a 2011 Swedish film and reset in the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest. Alone follows Jessica, recently widowed, who is kidnapped and held captive in a remote cabin. She escapes but is lost in the heart of the untamed wilderness, with only her wits to rely on for survival. Meanwhile, her mysterious captor closes in.  Directed by John Hyams (98 min)

John Hyams directed last year’s fabulously zippy zombie series, “Black Summer.” Alone unfolds with elegant simplicity and single-minded momentum. -The New York Times


12 HOUR SHIFT

You can watch 12 Hour Shift right here, right now

12 Hour Shift is a heist-gone-wrong film set during one strange night in an Arkansas hospital. Nurse Mandy is desperate to make it through her all-night shift without incident. This is particularly hard to do when you’re involved in a black market organ-trading scheme. When her hapless but dangerous cousin Regina misplaces a kidney, Mandy and Regina frantically try to secure a replacement organ by any means necessary. Talk about bedside manner! 12 Hour Shift is an edgy, madcap odyssey directed by Brea Grant. This is actress Grant’s first film as writer-director, and she elicits wonderful performances from her largely female ensemble cast. 87 min


SICILIA

You can watch Sicilia right here, right now

Film has never seen a collaboration like that between Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, a fiercely intellectual husband-wife duo whose decades-spanning oeuvre aimed to spark a revolution among the masses. It contains adaptations of Kafka and Brecht, homages to D.W. Griffith, Renoir, and Bresson, and treatises on political matters both current and eternal.

One of Straub-Huillet’s most engaging and accessible works, Sicilia! is the story of a man who returns to a village in Sicily after 15 years to visit his mother. Adapted from Elio Vittorini’s novel “Conversations in Sicily,” the film is so exquisitely rendered that herring roasting on a hearth or a meal of bread, wine and winter melon, can take on the humble aura of a Caravaggio painting. The actors, all nonprofessionals, declaim their extended discussions with grand, high-relief diction, and the film’s starkly exquisite black-and-white images set the dialogue as if to visual music. (66 minutes)

“One of their great later works.” – The Village Voice

“Straub-Huillet’s aesthetic abounds in anomalies. One finds comfort, albeit austere, in encountering patented elements of the filmmakers’ approach in Sicilia!” – James Quandt, Artforum


WE ARE LITTLE ZOMBIES

You can watch We Are Little Zombies right here, right now

One sunny day, four young strangers meet by chance at a crematorium. They have all recently lost their parents, but none of them can shed a tear. They are like zombies, devoid of all emotion. Alone in the world at 13 years of age with no future, no dreams, and no way to move forward, our protagonists dress themselves in scraps from a garbage dump, track down musical instruments, and decide to form a kick-ass band. They call themselves LITTLE ZOMBIES. This is a story about their quest to retrieve their ability to feel.

Directed by Makoto Nagahisa, We Are Little Zombies bursts with hyper pop style and unbridled imagination. Mixing inspiration from film, television, music, and, most importantly, video games, Nagahisa dazzles with a myriad of cinematic tricks, and he pushes his script in zany directions while never losing sight of its sympathetic exploration of grief and loss. (Japan / subtitles / 120 min)

CRITIC’S PICK! Wry humor, absurd dialogue and unflagging energy propel this dazzling, manic debut from Makoto Nagahisa…. he throws an entire box of tricks at the screen. Splitting it in two, fading to black and white, writing over it, and dunking an entire scene into a fishbowl, he fashions a fantasia of pranks so unexpected and colors so intense (the splendid cinematography is by Hiroaki Takeda), they could make you hallucinate. – The New York Times

WHERE CAN I PURCHASE A TICKET AND HOW MUCH ARE THEY?

Do you have a comment or a suggestion for a film? Maybe you’d like to write something for our magazine. Send an email to editor@theryder.com. We can be talked into almost anything.



Culture and the pandemic

A Letter to Brazil

By Darlene J. Sadlier

[editor’s note: Darlene J. Sadlier, a professor emerita at Indiana University, writes about  literature, arts and culture of the Portuguese-speaking world. Her 2016 book, The Portuguese Diaspora: Seven Centuries of Literature and the Arts, explores literary and artistic works resulting from population travel and displacement during and after the Portuguese empire.  Her most recent book is The Lilly Library A to Z: Intriguing Objects in a World-Class Collection.

As global pandemic and political divisions and economic hardships surge today, culture seems ironically to be flourishing under technologies like streaming and Zoom, but also struggling, like a boxer forced up against the ropes. I am thinking of especially vulnerable entities like museums, archives and theaters, whose survival depends upon public access and support. In troubled times like these, their future is decidedly more precarious. In many places, this culture might be regarded as unimportant or even troublesome, and either ignored or dispensed with like an unnecessary luxury. In my own country, the United States, necessary lockdowns for public health reasons have taken a major toil on cultural institutions. While our public schools are timidly reopening, most often remotely, cultural projects and institutions without federal or state support are trying to survive a pandemic that has already extinguished numerous small and large businesses across the nation. Without a national plan for addressing the virus here, museums, art galleries, archives, theaters, and other cultural entities are in peril because their existence in the midst of a raging pandemic depends on the protocols of keeping safe, which includes social distancing, which may or may not be tenable.

***

In the novella A hora da estrela (The Hour of the Star), written over 40 years ago and later adapted to the screen, Brazilian Clarice Lispector describes her protagonist Macabéa’s desire for knowledge when she listens to bits of information on Rádio Relógio. One of the words she hears is “culture,” which she asks her boyfriend Olímpico to explain. In his invariably insecure and irritated way, he gruffly replies, “culture is culture!”. 

Macabéa does not know it, but of course she already has culture, as we all do, in the broad social and anthropological sense. What she is curious about, however, is perhaps more like the learned culture of arts, sciences and letters—what Matthew Arnold described in the 19th century as “the best that is thought and said.” That sort of culture belongs to a humanist tradition about which Macabéa, as an impoverished northeastern migrant recently arrived in Rio de Janeiro, has no knowledge and no access. We can debate the sorts of things it ought to contain, but its value should be self-evident, and it should never be the property of a single social class. It should also be protected from the totalitarianism and populist ideology that has always threatened it and that threatens it today in many countries.

Four years after the publication of A hora da estrela, the British academic Raymond Williams wrote a seminal volume titled Culture, which addresses the complexities and the future of the word Macabéa seeks to understand. Williams was writing about the emerging discipline called cultural studies, or the study of cultural production in its artistic, socio-political, and economic contexts. He acknowledges that collaborative, interdisciplinary investigation of culture would likely encounter difficulties and resistances along the way from established cultural traditions or political forces, as indeed it did.

Unless a nation’s government deems culture and education as unnecessary for its citizens, which is not yet the case currently in the U.S., perhaps one possible solution lies in what Williams described as a more socially-engaged cultural effort firmly anchored in a broader, collaborative context. We are already seeing some evidence of the greater engagement between institutions that formerly used the Internet to publicize exhibits and performances and have embraced new technologies to open their doors virtually and potentially to larger audiences. However, as any theatergoer knows, what remains absent is the sense of community or attachment that cultural spaces as well as schools and universities provide. 

Culture should never be the property of a single social class. It should be protected from the totalitarianism and populist ideology that has always threatened it. 

A recent New York Times article described an innovative collaboration between arts and technology that enabled a New York City museum to physically open to the public. The museum purchased a new social distancing hardware called EGOpro Tags that buzz whenever a visitor gets too close to another person in the room. The museum also limits the number of people visiting at any one time and requires pre-entry temperature checks. Visits are limited to a maximum ninety minutes. This may not rival the enjoyment of pre-pandemic visits, where people cluster and roam freely, but it is a way to keep the institution and its art alive and accessible in person without placing individuals at risk. The virus, social unrest and political dissent in our streets have also become powerful catalysts for new forms of cultural expression. Ironically, the kinds of difficulties and resistances we are experiencing here and globally are driving new ways of thinking about and producing culture and surely will remain with us into the future.

As I sit in Bloomington, I keep my many friends in Brazil and elsewhere close through Internet exchanges about what is happening. Culture is not just institutions but also the substance of our lives — whether we realize it or not. While I am prevented from traveling to do research at places like the Cinemateca in São Paulo, which is vital to my profession (and now has been closed down by the Bolsonaro government, without regard for its staff, who have gone unpaid for months, or for the safekeeping of the film collections), I have enrolled in an online seminar called Na Real _Virtual, with classes involving film showings, critical readings and live interviews with twelve documentary filmmakers. Contained physically by the virus and restrictions that now separate our two countries, I travel virtually to Brazil and with over 150 classmates participate in the production and transmission of artistic culture. Our seminar has become a microcosm of a world that seems almost to have ceased to exist. Like Macabéa, we seek knowledge and eagerly write our chat questions to film directors in the hopes that, among the many that are sent, ours will be answered. Technical difficulties sometimes block transmissions, but culture continues to circulate. We are caught up in the enthusiasm of the moment and while we are isolated at home, we nevertheless see one another’s names and sometimes faces flash on the screen. Our questions go out to the group at large; often, as we begin the sessions, chat greetings to all appear on the screen, as if we were meeting one another not online but on a busy street somewhere or even (heavens!) in a crowded indoor space. 

My writer-friends often say that despite the horrors of the pandemic, the isolation has made them even more productive. At the same time, bookstores that sell their and other works are collapsing in domino fashion, plagued not only by the virus but online titans like Amazon and heavy real estate prices. And while there is a modicum of solace in Internet book acquisitions, the loss of the physical entity, the knowledge it holds and imparts as well as the sense of community, cannot be equated to online perusals and purchases. In the U.S., bookstores had been closing at a rapid rate long before the pandemic arrived on our doorstep. New York City is a prime example of this. But there are moments when technology can stop the bleeding. In Bloomington we have a used bookstore called Caveat Emptor that has been in business for decades. When the owners announced they were going out of business after weeks under lockdown, the community rallied to its defense. Small and larger donations were sent to try to keep the business afloat. On the Internet, a donation site was created by the owners which offered a care package of books to be delivered to those who donated. My donation resulted in the delivery of eight books to my front door by a man with a mask riding a bicycle. On the site, I marked the categories of modern literature and mysteries/thrillers and received volumes by authors such as Anthony Trollope, John Galsworthy, L.R. Wright, and May Sarton. The bookstore was flooded with donations by a community that values books as well as the physical space we associate with the joy of browsing and finding new and known authors and books. However, there is a caveat; until the pandemic is controlled, keeping businesses afloat, such as bookstores and theaters (including our city’s beloved The Ryder Film Series and its free magazine), requires more than a one-time donation. 

Despite the current hardships created by a tenacious disease and social repression, and possibly because of them, the production of culture continues. I suspect the future of culture everywhere will be forever changed by the pandemic, which has made us more conscious of our need to reach out, connect and collaborate and, most importantly, never to be daunted by any attempt to keep us from the knowledge and personal growth that is not a luxury but a human right and necessity.  

The Italian Larry David; The Lotus Lantern and Luminaria Project

It is never too late to change your life. Citizens of the World, three Italians in their seventies, all single and looking for a change, decide to leave their beloved Rome and settle abroad. But where? A rash decision? – perhaps.
The Professor, retired after teaching Latin his whole life, is getting bored. Giorgetto, one of the last true Romans, struggles to make ends meet every month. Attilio, an antiques dealer, wants to experience once again the sense of adventure he had while traveling as a hippie-youth. Things will change for our three musketeers, but not quite as expected. Writer/director Gianni de Gregorio has been called “the Italian Larry David.” He also co-stars as “the Professor.”   90 min  / Italy / subtitled / 2020 Citizens of the World is one of four first-run Italian films playing this week in The Ryder’s virtual cinema, along with Martin Eden, The Mouth of the Wolf and Sicilia, all playing this week in our virtual theater.

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If you have not seen it yet, here’s a link to the current issue of The Ryder magazine.

The Lotus Lantern and Luminaria Project

The Lotus Lantern and Luminaria Project is an initiative to bring the glow of lanterns to our Bloomington community, as the days shorten and the nights get longer. To celebrate lantern traditions from around the world, Lotus is working with a few lantern artists to create templates for building lanterns that can be used decoratively in homes and businesses, or on walks, to light the way.

The project is designed to be welcoming and inclusive by focusing on lantern customs that represent several different world traditions. Lotus will supply the materials and will hold workshops, to enable both live, physically-distanced participation and participation via online instruction. Sign up on Eventbrite for our workshops.

Every celebration needs its songs to go with it. Lotus will be posting the music and lyrics for a couple of lantern songs, by mid-November, ideally with a live rendition as well. Singing during the lantern walk will be done with masks on, as required for safety. We hope to have a couple of different groups involved in learning these.

On December 4, Lotus will host the inaugural Lotus Lantern Walk. People who have built a lantern will be invited on a walk that begins at the Lotus Firebay, where they can pick up a free LED tea light candle. From the Lotus Firebay, we’ll head to the B-line, and continues to either the Showers Plaza or the Monroe County Courthouse (exact path TBD).

LIVE Author Talk with Rob Harrell
Join Morgenstern Books for another live author talk this Friday @ 5PM with cartoonist and graphic novelist, Rob Harrell. His most recent graphic novel Wink is hilarious, heart-wrenching story about surviving middle school with an unthinkable diagnosis, while embracing life’s weirdness. It’s based on Rob Harrell’s real life experience and is packed with comic panels and spot art. Rob Harrell also created and drew the internationally syndicated comic strip Big Top, Life of Zarf, as well as the acclaimed graphic novel Monster on the Hill. He also writes and draws the long-running daily comic strip Adam@HomeLearn more: Facebook event