If I Lived Near NYC I'd be at The Bridge Tonight

For those of you near NYC you're fortunate to have the opportunity to attend the discussion/reading series on translation, The Bridge.

Tonight's event at McNally-Jackson Books should be particularly interesting: a discussion of post-war Greek poetry with translators Karen Emmerich and Edmund Keeley.

Get all the details about the event here.

Salone Internazionale del Mobile

The 50th Salone is taking place in Milan this week and if your interests include furniture design you'll appreciate Monocle's daily coverage of the exhibits, kicked off by Hugo Macdonald's piece about Established & Sons.

And the 2011 Nordic Council Literature Prize Goes To ...

Icelandic writer Gyrðir Elíasson.

Read more about the award and the author here.

(C) Kristján Kristjánsson 

The cinema’s lord of terror and the French avant-garde

“His enormous shadow spreads
Over Paris and the world,
What is this grey eyed specter
Who surges through the silence?
Might it be you, Fantômas,
Prowling on the high rooftops?”

- La Complainte de Fantômas
By Robert Desnos (1933)
Translation by M. Lapin (2009)

The Philadelphia International festival of the arts (PIFA) kicked off April 7^th and runs through May 1^st, with dance, theater, music, film and a host of associated events. The festival’s inspiration is the artistic explosion that was taking place in Paris a hundred years ago, and while that era causes most people to think of Picasso, Stravinsky and Modigliani there are other names and art forms that deserve to be better known.

One of these names is Fantômas, the Lord of Terror, whose fictional incarnation turns 100 years old this year and whose film incarnation in the 1913-14 silent classic by Louis Feuillade is being screened at the festival starting April 13.

Besides being an excellent film in itself Fantômas has a special place in 20^th century art history for the inspiration it provided the next wave of Modernist irreverence, for whom even Matisse and Diaghilev reeked too much of high culture. The Societé des Amis de Fantômas was founded by Guillaume Apollinaire and Max Jacob, later included Picasso, Jean Cocteau and Colette.

The arch-fiend’s influence carried into Surrealism, with painter André Masson saying that Fantômas ranked with Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams and Lautréamont’s Maldoror in the movement’s early days. Painters such as Juan Gris and René Magritte painted him – Magritte’s famous “The Threatening Murderer” (L'assassin menacé) can be traced to an actual scene from one of the films.

The poet Robert Desnos wrote his Ballad of Fantômas in 1933, which was set to music by Kurt Weill. In 25 beautiful stanzas the poem sums up each and every one of Fantômas’ crimes (Don’t read the poem before you have seen the film!)

Of course filmmakers drew from it as well, Luis Buñuel saying that he much preferred Fantômas to the more self-conscious avant-garde cinema of the 20’s and later. Alain Resnais also attested to the strong influence of the film and most recently Olivier Assayas made Irma Vep (1996), a film about a modern day director trying to remake Feuillade’s series Les Vampires (1915).

PIFA will also feature a screening of Léonce Perret’s The Mystery of the Rocks of Kador (Le Mystère des roches de Kador). The promo clip unfortunately has a “ha ha aren’t these old, silent films wacky” narration, presumably to draw in a crowd of ironic youth to yuck it up at the old-fashioned melodramas. But, Apollinaire, Magritte and all the others weren’t wrong - these films deserve a serious viewing.

Shortlist Announced: Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2011

The shortlist for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2011 has been announced and includes a few of my favorite reads from last year:

• Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Susan Bernofsky from the German, published by Portobello Books
• Kamchatka by Marcelo Figueras, translated by Frank Wynne from the Spanish, published by Atlantic Books
• The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk, translated by Maureen Freely from the Turkish, published by Faber and Faber
• I Curse the River of Time by Per Petterson, translated by Charlotte Barslund with Per Petterson from the Norwegian, published by Harvill Secker
• Red April by Santiago Roncagliolo, translated by Edith Grossman from the Spanish, published by Atlantic Books
• The Sickness by Alberto Barrera Tyszka, translated by Margaret Jull Costa from the Spanish, published by MacLehose Press

Read more about the prize and shortlist here. 

Absinthe Recommends: Films

An early look at some of the film recommendations coming up in Absinthe 15:

My Queen Karo

Directed by Dorothée van den Bergh

Netherlands/Belgium, 2009

Ten-year-old Karo lives a happy, carefree life with her mother, Dalia, and Raven, her father, along with a community of hippy squatters in 1970s Amsterdam.  However, when Raven brings another woman and her children into the community, Karo has to grow up quickly and deal with the moral dilemmas associated with free love, shared living, and appropriated housing. 

  

Hunting Down Small Predators

Directed by Tsvetodar Markov

Bulgaria, 2010

Four teenagers take to petty crime to raise some money for a vacation to the seaside but when their scheme to kidnap the cats of a wealthy old woman brings them dangerously close to a mobster and drug trafficker, they might just find themselves in deeper than they imagined in this dark comedy by Bulgarian director Markov.

Heaney Writes about Milosz

As we've noted before, 2011 is the centenary of Czeslaw Milosz's birth and in the Guardian Seamus Heaney celebrates the work of the great Polish poet. He begins with a story about the writer:

Milosz, on a return visit to his birthplace in Lithuania some 50 years after he had left, walked up to an oak tree and embraced it. An image of the return of the native, of course, but also an image of someone drawing strength – the psychic, moral and physical strength of a great poet – from his home ground.

Heaney concludes:

What distinguishes Miłosz as a poet is the abundance and spontaneity of the work, his at-homeness in so many different genres and landscapes, his desire for belief and his equally acute scepticism. Chiefly, however, what irradiates the poetry and compels the reader is a quality of wisdom.

Very true.

Disappearing Act III: New European Cinema

Disappearing Act, a festival of European cinema in New York, kicked off tonight with the Czech film Czech Peace, directed by Vit Klusak and Filip Remunda.

From the schedule it appears to be an interesting and diverse program and, amazingly, all the films are FREE!

Learn more here or view the schedule below:

THURSDAY, APRIL 7
6:30 pm The Happiest Girl in the World (Cea mai fericita fata din lume, dir. Radu Jude, 2009, Romania)  
8:15 pm Lourdes (dir. Jessica Hausner, 2009, Austria, France, Germany)

FRIDAY, APRIL 8  
6:30 pm Osadne (dir. Marko Skop, 2009, Slovakia)  
7:45 pm Troubled Water (De usynlige, dir. Erik Poppe, 2008, Norway)   

SATURDAY, APRIL 9
1 pm Come Undone (Cosa voglio di piu, dir. Silvio Soldini, 2010, Italy)
3:30 pm The Girl (Flickan, dir. Fredrik Edfeldt, 2009, Sweden)
5:30 pm The Woman with a Broken Nose (Zena sa slomljenim nosem, dir. Srdjan Koljevic, 2010, Serbia) followed by Q&A with director Srdjan Koljevic8 pm Home (dir. Ursula Meier, 2008, Switzerland) 
   
SUNDAY, APRIL 10
1 pm Dusk (Schemer, dir. Hanro Smitsman, 2010, The Netherlands)
2:45 pm The Father of My Children (Le pere de mes enfants, dir. Mia Hansen-Love, 2009, France)
5 pm Tales from the Golden Age (Amintiri din epoca de aur, dirs. Ioana Uricaru, Hanno Hofer, Razvan Marculescu, Cristian Mungiu, Constantin Popescu, 2009, Romania) followed by Q&A with director Ioana Uricaru 8:30 pm Bibliotheque Pascal (dir. Szabolcs Hajdu, 2010, Hungary)
   
MONDAY, APRIL 11
6:30 pm Panel Discussion: Subtitled Cinema Initiative 8:15 pm Kill Daddy Good Night (Das Vaterspiel, dir. Michael Glawogger, 2009, Austria) introduced by producer Sabine Schenk 
   
TUESDAY, APRIL 12
6:15 pm Me Too (Yo, tambien, dirs. Alvaro Pastor and Antonio Naharro, 2009, Spain)
8:15 pm Everyone Else (Alle Anderen, dir. Maren Ade, 2009, Germany)
   
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13
6:30 pm The Blacks (Crnci, dirs. Zvonimir Juric and Goran Devic, 2009, Croatia)
8 pm Snow (Snijeg, dir. Aida Begic, 2008, Bosnia and Herzegovina)
   
THURSDAY, APRIL 14  
7 pm Mother Teresa of Cats (Matka Teresa od kotow, dir. Pawel Sala, 2010, Poland)  

Longlist Announced for Indie Booksellers Choice Awards

Well, we're a little late with this but the longlist for the Indie Booksellers Choice Awards (sponsored by Shelf Awareness and Melville House) was announced yesterday.

Many good books from writers and publishers we admire, along with a number of works in translation, including Jenny Erpenbeck's Visitation.  

We also must mention and applaud the inclusion of Asunder by Robert Lopez, published by our good friends at Dzanc Books.

Take a look at the list here.

Review of Absinthe #13: Spotlight on Romania

Over at Literalab, Michael Stein shines a spotlight on Absinthe #13, our special issue on Romanian literature:

Of all the literatures of Central Europe struggling to squeeze into the three percent quota of translated writing published in English every year, Romanian seems to be doing relatively well. The evidence collected in Absinthe: New European Writing- Issue 13: Spotlight on Romania indicates that a good part of this is due to the amazing writers the country produces.

Now don't you want to pick up a copy of this issue for yourself and a friend?