Eric Rohmer

Eric Rohmer, an important and influential filmmaker of the French New Wave, died on Monday at the age of 89.

The Guardian reviews Rohmer's life and career.

If only I could speak Swedish ...

The Ingmar Bergman Estate is now hiring its first Artistic Director. We are seeking someone rich on initiative, with sound judgment, cooperative skills, and a thorough knowledge of arts and culture. The Artistic Director will, in collaboration with the Bergman Estate Board, build and develop the organization according to the foundation's statutes and guidelines. The Artistic Director will be responsible
for the daily management of the Estate’s activities and their content. The Artistic Director will also be expected to initiate and develop collaborations with institutions on a national and international level. The position includes budgetary responsibilites.


The position of artistic director entails two main areas of responsibility:

• Planning and realizing the Estate's public events, such as an annual winter festival, activities for children and youth, film screenings, seminars, as well as other cultural activities
– many times in collaboration with the Ingmar Bergman Foundation and the Fårö Bergman Center Foundation.
• Evaluating applications from artists and scholars who apply for residency at the Bergman Estate, and forwarding propositions to the board for final decision. Coordinating the residencies is included in this responsibility.

Qualifications:
• You are familiar with Ingmar Bergman’s work and well versed in the realms of film, theater, art, literature, and music.
• You will be the foundation’s public face, and must have the skills to communicate and cooperate on a regional, national, and international level. Strong language skills are an important criterion.
• You are an experienced leader, preferably with extensive work experience within art and culture.
• You have well documented administrative skills, including budgetary responsibilities, as well as capacities for analysis and comparison, and the ability to express yourself in writing.

The Artistic Director must be flexible when it comes to working hours and will be spending a significant amount of time on the beautiful island of Fårö and in the Gotland region. The position entails full-time employment for an initial two-year period, with the prospect of extension It is ready to be filled as soon as possible.
Salary is negotiable.

Send application including CV and references to:
Kerstin Brunnberg, Nordenskiöldsgatan 80,
11521 Stockholm, Sverige.
kerstin.brunnberg@gmail.com.
Tlf + 46 705 985 017

Interview with German Writer Judith Hermann

Over at the Goethe Institut web site there's an interview with writer Judith Hermann.

What do you expect from your next book?

Nothing. I don’t know it yet. Sometimes I ask myself whether it will be easier for me than the other books. And then I know – it won’t be easier. It will be difficult in a completely different way than Alice, than Nothing But Ghosts, than The Summerhouse, Later. It will simply have its own importance. Maybe I expect ... a certain pleasure. I look forward to my next book. I hope it will come off all right.

Read the entire interview here.

2010 Best Translated Book Award

The fiction longlist for the 2010 Best Translated Book Award was announced a few days ago and includes 25 great titles, including work by Absinthe authors Ferenc Barnás and Ersi Sotiropoulos. The entire list and other great coverage can be found over at Three Percent.

Greek Poetry Now!

Greek Poetry Now! is a new web site presenting work by over a dozen Greek poets, including Dimitris Leontzakos (who appeared in Absinthe 11):

This site does not favor any particular tendency or movement, but aspires to present some of the most interesting work written in Greek language today, trying to include different and often contradictory points of view.

The poets presented in this site have been born after the year 1965 and most of them have their work published after the year 2000.

Romanian Cinema

Yesterday Monocle magazine's Monocolumn discussed Romania's film industry. Despite recent acclaim for films such as Cristian Mungiu's Four Months, Three Weeks, and Two Days, apparently all is not well:

Cinemas are closing and internet piracy is the norm for Romanian film-watchers. The national film body that disperses tax revenues to filmmakers did not fund a single production in 2009 because it is reworking its procedures following widespread complaints about corruption and nepotism.

Despite these difficulties, Romanian filmmakers continue to produce great films and several (including Corneliu Porumboiu's Police, Adjective) will appear in U.S. theatres in 2010.

Absinthe plans to screen a Romanian film this April at Oakland Community College in Farmington Hills. More on this soon.

Poets & Writers Magazine and Fiction Writers Review

If you're not yet a reader of the Fiction Writers Review there is a good reason to start now: Poets & Writers magazine is offering a special subscription rate for readers. Learn more here.

And don't miss the first installment of Jeremiah Chamberlin's series "Inside Indie Bookstores" about Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi in the current issue of Poets & Writers.

European Morosity

“Americans are so friendly. They talk to you, they smile at you,” Gaby said. It was her third day in New York. Like me she grew up in Moers, a small town on the lower Rhine. Geneva, Switzerland, is her adopted home. “Swiss people, like the Germans are not friendly to strangers. They always seem in a foul mood,” she added.
I’ve also noticed this difference between Europeans and Americans and still remember my astonishment upon my arrival in New York. White Americans physically resembled the Germans, but seemed a different species altogether. They did not walk with slumped shoulders; they did not drag their feet. They walked with a bounce in their step and held their heads high. They smiled at you. They were optimistic. I did not understand why they weren’t affected by history. Where was their Vergangenheitsbewältigung? How did they cope with the past? Why weren’t they burdened by guilt for what they had done to the Native Americans and the Blacks? Why weren’t they mourning their losses in the Vietnam War? Half of the world hated them, but they didn’t care. Unlike the Germans, they didn’t believe in guilt-ridden soul-searching.
Recently Dominique Moïsi’s book The Geopolitics of Emotion deepened my understanding of the differences between Americans and Europeans. Moïsi is the founder of the French Institute of International Affairs and a visiting professor at Harvard University. In his book, he examines the emotions that drive cultural differences and cause the divisions in the post-9/11 world. He shows how fear, humiliation, and hope are reshaping the world. For him both the U. S. and Europe are ruled by fears of the “other.” Both continents fear the loss of their national identity.
In contrast Muslims and Arabs are ruled by humiliation. They feel excluded from the economic benefits of globalization. Historical grievances and conflicts at home extend to the countries they emigrate to. This feeling of humiliation is evolving into a culture of hatred. In another part of the world China and India --with their economic might and focus on a prosperous future-- have created a culture of hope. Moïsi believes that “Chindia” will in the future come to dominate the world and that the U.S.A., with its huge debt and crumbling infrastructure, will no longer be a major player. According to Moïsi, Europe--stuck in the past and resembling a museum--won’t be able to move forward.
He sees more collective hope in the United States than in Europe and cites the election of Obama as an example. He observes that West Europeans experience more collective fear despite little real suffering. What my visitor from Geneva described as the foul mood of her fellow citizens, Moïsi calls the morosity of the continent.
His ideas are a thought-provoking and resonate with many of my own experiences. He is considered a leading authority on international affairs and I highly recommend his book:
Dominique Moïsi: The Geopolitics of Emotion, Doubleday
Price: $25.00
ISBN: 978-0-385-52376-9 (0-385-52376-9)

Life Is Lost So Easily

We had just returned from opening a bank account. A cat lay on the road, kicking the air as if in an attempt to escape the ground. Its back was broken and, mercifully, it died moments later.

When you decide to make a change for the better, angels appear to you out of the blue. We had to buy a bed and had just received delivery at the door of the warehouse, from where we wheeled our new acquisition in the direction of the car and wondered if we could get away with the boot being open on the ride home. We’d already spotted some traffic police, who had pulled over a Range Rover with British number-plates and a stocky Bulgarian in the driver’s seat trying to reason with them. Traffic police in Bulgaria are like briars, they’re everywhere, especially when the boot of your car is open. My wife was in favour of paying twenty euros for the official transport to take the bed home, but I figured a two-metre bed, like a human, should be able to fit inside the car and wheeled away. Once at the car, we shunted the bed in until it touched the rear of the front seats and set about trying to tie the boot down with a piece of string our son had magically turned into a tangle. Twice the boot pistoned open and, prior to the third attempt, my wife consulted a man in a neighbouring Lada (Bulgarians are very prone to exchanging opinions, unlike the English, who will do their best to complete the task in hand without being noticed), who said not to worry, it wasn’t illegal and the police wouldn’t stop us. He jerked his head skywards, which in Balkan sign language means ‘no way’, and resumed his silent conversation with the girl in the back, his daughter or granddaughter no doubt. But when he saw we were making a hash of things and he could be of help, he got out, opened the boot of his Lada and produced a bungee cord, which he proceeded to fit with greater mastery than our own. I read the tattoos in the kindness of his eyes and thanked him.

We rode away, making sure to avoid the corner with the traffic police, but of course there were more round the next corner and the car in front slowed down to turn left, causing us to slow almost to a halt right next to the second set of policemen, who fortunately were previously engaged and so fooled by my blank look, which said there’s nothing wrong with us and no, that’s not a bed sticking out of the boot. The rest of the journey was uneventful, despite speeding down the middle lane of the main thoroughfare into Sofia centre, cars overtaking right and left, buses blurring the dividing line between their lane and ours.

He was not the only angel to come to our aid in the face of oncoming change. Suffering causes two reactions in people: they will either do all they can to avoid you suffering the same or inflict their own suffering on you. As the poet Ivan Teofilov commented to us over blackcurrant juice and cakes the other day while swirling a glass of whisky and reminiscing about taking part in the Edinburgh festival back in 1969, when my wife and I were one and still couldn’t walk on to the stage, life is lost so easily.

Absinthe 12 and ALANDIA

To celebrate the publication of Absinthe 12 we held an intimate party at John Cowley and Sons in downtown Farmington. Many guests had the opportunity to sample their first taste of absinthe, thanks to our new sponsor ALANDIA who provided a bottle of their Absinthe Maison ALANDIA. Several people mentioned that it was the best absinthe they had tried, a sentiment shared by this writer. ALANDIA is the official sponsor of the Absinthe web site and we strongly suggest checking them out for absinthe, absinthe spoons and glasses, and much more.