Alan Rickman Recites “If Death Is Not the End,” a Moving Poem by Robyn Hitchcock

in Film, Life, Music, Poetry, Theatre | February 1st, 2016

Odd­ball singer-song­writer Robyn Hitch­cock is a man who knows how to mark mile­stones. Back in 2003, he staged a con­cert at London’s Queen Eliz­a­beth Hall in hon­or of his own 50th birth­day, and in so doing, cre­at­ed a time release mile­stone of sorts for his friend, actor Alan Rick­man.

Mark­ing a half-cen­tu­ry with pas­sive aggres­sive-gag gifts and cards may suf­fice for the rab­ble, but a lyri­cist as gift­ed as Hitch­cock deserves bet­ter. No one can deny Rick­man of fail­ing to deliv­er, when he regaled the crowd in Queen Eliz­a­beth Hall with a recita­tion of Hitchcock’s own poem, “If Death Is Not the End,” above.

It’s an inim­itable per­for­mance that becomes all the more poignant when one lis­tens to it again, fol­low­ing Rickman’s recent death at the age of 69:

Life is what hap­pened to the dead.

For­ev­er we do not exist

Except for now.

Birth­day Boy Hitch­cock cap­tured Rickman’s appeal in a trib­ute post­ed to his Face­book page:

His morose erot­ic drawl and glo­ri­ous­ly dis­dain­ful demeanor shel­tered a pas­sion­ate artist and made for a charis­mat­ic per­former whom I was proud to have as a friend. I just can’t believe I’ll nev­er see him again.

As the poem says, he was made of life.

If Death Is Not the End

If death is not the end, I’d like to know what is.

For all eter­ni­ty we don’t exist,

except for now.

In my gumshoe mac, I shuf­fled to the clifftop,

Stood well back,

and struck a match to light my life;

And as it flared it fell in dark­ness

Light­ing noth­ing but itself.

I saw my life fall and thought:

Well, kiss my physics!

Time is over, or it’s not,

But this I know:

Life pass­es through us like the blade

Of bam­boo grow­ing through the pris­on­er pegged down in the glade

It pierces your blood, your scream­ing head -

Life is what hap­pened to the dead.

For­ev­er we do not exist

Except for now.

Life pass­es through us like a beam

Of char­coal green — a gold­en gleam,

The oppo­site of how it seems:

It’s not you that goes through life

- life is the knife that cuts your dream

Around the seam

And leaves you turned on in the stream, laugh­ing with your mouth

open,

Until the stream is gone,

Leav­ing you cracked mud,

Not even there to be absent,

From the heart­beat of a dying fish.

In bed, upstairs, I feel your pulse run with the clock

And reach your hand

And lock us with our fin­gers

As if we were bump­ing above the Pole.

Yet I know by dawn

Your hand will be dry bone

I’ll have slept through your good­bye, no mat­ter how long I wake.

Life winds on,

Through Cheri and Karl who can no longer smell choco­late,

Or see with won­der wind inflate the sail,

Or answer mail

Life flies on

Through Katy who was Cather­ine but is bound for Kate

Who looks over her shoul­der at the demon Azmodeus,

And sees the Dai­ly Mail

(I clutch my purse. I had it just now.)

Life slices through

The frozen but­ter in the Alpine wreck.

(I found your pho­to upside down

I nev­er kissed a girl so long,

So long, so love­ly or so wrong)

Life is what kills you in the end

And I can cry

But you won’t be there to be sor­ry

You were made of life

For ever we did not exist

We woke and for a sec­ond kissed.

via Audi­boom

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Late, Great Alan Rick­man Reads Shake­speare, Proust & Thomas Hardy

Samuel Beck­ett Play Brought to Life in an Eerie Short Film Star­ring Alan Rick­man & Kristin Scott Thomas

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her play, Fawn­book, opens in New York City lat­er this fall. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Download Marc Andreessen’s Influential Blog (“Pmarca”) as a Free eBook

in Business, e-books, Entrepreneurship | February 1st, 2016

Marc_Andreessen_(1)

Image by Joi, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

For years Marc Andreessen–the entre­pre­neur best known for launch­ing Mosa­ic and lat­er Netscape–ran a pop­u­lar blog called “Pmar­ca” (appar­ent­ly short for “Pri­vate Marc Andreessen”) where he dis­pensed wis­dom on star­tups, busi­ness, invest­ing and beyond. If you’ve worked in star­tups, espe­cial­ly in Sil­i­con Val­ley, you prob­a­bly fol­lowed “Pmar­ca” fair­ly reli­gious­ly.

Like so many oth­ers, Andreessen even­tu­al­ly took down his blog and began “tweet­storm­ing” on Twit­ter–all while serv­ing on the boards of Face­book, eBay, and HP, and run­ning his now influ­en­tial VC firm, Andreessen Horowitz. Before “Pmar­ca” could fade com­plete­ly into obliv­ion, fans asked Andreessen to pre­serve the blog for pos­ter­i­ty. And that he did. You can now down­load an archive of “Pmar­ca” as a free ebook. Avail­able in three for­mats (ePub, Mobi, and PDF), the archived ver­sion can be read in pret­ty much the blog’s orig­i­nal for­mat. Start your down­loads here.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Peter Thiel’s Stan­ford Course on Star­tups: Read the Lec­ture Notes Free Online

150 Free Online Busi­ness Cours­es

Start Your Start­up with Free Stan­ford Cours­es and Lec­tures

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Hear The Alan Parson Project’s Prog-Rock Interpretation of Isaac Asimov’s, I Robot (1977)

in Music, Sci Fi | February 1st, 2016

Pro­gres­sive rock, at its best, meant bring­ing in tech­niques and influ­ences not, up to that point, com­mon in rock music. Part of this meant employ­ing a kind of tech­ni­cal vir­tu­os­i­ty more often heard in more estab­lished musi­cal tra­di­tions, and anoth­er part meant draw­ing from a wider and deep­er pool of musi­cal and cul­tur­al influ­ences than did oth­er rock com­po­si­tions. The Alan Par­sons Project estab­lished their prog-rock cre­den­tials right out of the gate with their intri­cate­ly craft­ed debut album Tales of Mys­tery and Imag­i­na­tion, not just based on the work of Edgar Allan Poe but includ­ing a read­ing from that work by none oth­er than Orson Welles.

How to fol­low up a record like that? For an answer, Par­sons and his col­lab­o­ra­tor in the Project Eric Woolf­son turned from the past toward the future — or rather, toward Isaac Asi­mov’s vision of the future.

I Robot appeared in 1977, hav­ing tak­en its inspi­ra­tion in the stu­dio from Asi­mov’s Robot series, a uni­verse of sto­ries and nov­els which posit­ed the inven­tion of machines with some­thing resem­bling human con­scious­ness.

Asi­mov very much liked the idea of the album, but couldn’t—a pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny hav­ing bought the rights to his 1950 book I, Robot—grant per­mis­sion for a legal­ly straight adap­ta­tion. And so Par­sons and Woolf­son stayed out of trou­ble by remov­ing the com­ma from their title, and work­ing for­ward from Asi­mov’s con­cepts rather than ref­er­enc­ing them direct­ly. The result stands up to the test of time bet­ter than most sci­ence fic­tion, and cer­tain­ly bet­ter than most prog rock. You can lis­ten and judge for your­self on Spo­ti­fy, where the album recent­ly appeared free to lis­ten. (Don’t have Spo­ti­fy’s soft­ware yet? You can down­load it here.)

You can also watch the rough but still haunt­ing ear­ly music video for its hit “I Would­n’t Want to Be Like You” at the top of the post. The album on the whole proved quite suc­cess­ful, due in large part, of course, to its musi­cal crafts­man­ship and endur­ing sto­ry, described by the lin­er notes as that of “the rise of the machine and the decline of man, which para­dox­i­cal­ly coin­cid­ed with his dis­cov­ery of the wheel.” But the tim­ing could­n’t have hurt: I Robot came out just a few weeks after Star Wars, which stoked again human­i­ty’s inter­est in far-flung real­i­ties, out­er space jour­neys, near-mys­ti­cal high tech­nolo­gies, and machines com­ing to life. In the words of Par­sons him­self, “there was a whole new gen­er­a­tion of sci-fi lovers,” and his music had an impor­tant place in that gen­er­a­tion’s sound­track.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Orson Welles Read Edgar Allan Poe on a Cult Clas­sic Album by The Alan Par­sons Project

Isaac Asi­mov Pre­dicts in 1964 What the World Will Look Like Today — in 2014

Isaac Asimov’s Favorite Sto­ry “The Last Ques­tion” Read by Isaac Asi­mov— and by Leonard Nimoy

Free: Isaac Asimov’s Epic Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy Dra­ma­tized in Clas­sic Audio

Isaac Asi­mov Explains the Ori­gins of Good Ideas & Cre­ativ­i­ty in Nev­er-Before-Pub­lished Essay

Isaac Asi­mov Explains His Three Laws of Robots

Leonard Nimoy Reads Ray Brad­bury Sto­ries From The Mar­t­ian Chron­i­cles & The Illus­trat­ed Man (1975–76)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Take a Free Online Course on Making Comic Books, Compliments of the California College of the Arts

in Art, Comics/Cartoons, K-12, Literature, MOOCs | January 29th, 2016

Gath­er round, chil­dren and lis­ten to Grand­ma rem­i­niscin’ ‘bout the days when study­ing comics meant chang­ing out of your paja­mas and show­ing up at the bursar’s office, check in hand.

Actu­al­ly, Grandma’s full of it. Graph­ic nov­els are enjoy­ing unprece­dent­ed pop­u­lar­i­ty and edu­ca­tors are turn­ing to comics to reach reluc­tant read­ers, but as of this writ­ing, there still aren’t that many pro­grams for those inter­est­ed in mak­ing a career of this art form.

The Cal­i­for­nia Col­lege of the Arts is a notable excep­tion. You can get your MFA in Comics there.

Even bet­ter, you need not enroll to sam­ple the 5 week course, Comics: Art in Rela­tion­ship, led by Comics MFA chair and Eis­ner Award-nom­i­nat­ed author of The Home­less Chan­nel, Matt Sila­dy.

You might write the next Scott Pil­grim.

Or ink the next Fun Home.

At the very least, you’ll learn a thing or two about lay­out, the rela­tion­ship of art to text, and using com­pres­sion to denote the pas­sage of time.

It’s the sort of nit­ty grit­ty train­ing that would ben­e­fit both vet­er­ans and new­bies alike.

Ready to sign up? The free course, which starts in Feb­ru­ary, will require approx­i­mate­ly 10 hours per week. The syl­labus is below.

Ses­sion 1: Defin­ing Comics

Iden­ti­fy key rela­tion­ships in sam­ple texts & demon­strate the use of var­i­ous cam­era angles on a comics page

Ses­sion 2: Comics Rela­tion­ships

Cre­ate Text-Image and Image-Image Pan­els

Ses­sion 3: Time And Space

One Sec­ond, One Hour, One Day Comics Chal­lenge

Ses­sion 4: Lay­out And Grid Design

Apply mul­ti­ple pan­el grids to pro­vid­ed script

Ses­sion 5: Thumb­nails

Cre­ate thumb­nail sketch­es of a mul­ti­page scene

Enroll here.

via io9

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kapow! Stan Lee Is Co-Teach­ing a Free Com­ic Book MOOC, and You Can Enroll for Free

Lyn­da Barry’s Illus­trat­ed Syl­labus & Home­work Assign­ments from Her New UW-Madi­son Course, “Mak­ing Comics”

In Ani­mat­ed Car­toon, Ali­son Bechdel Sees Her Life Go From Puli­tiz­er Prize Win­ning Com­ic to Broad­way Musi­cal

Down­load 15,000+ Free Gold­en Age Comics from the Dig­i­tal Com­ic Muse­um

1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Samuel Beckett Play Brought to Life in an Eerie Short Film Starring Alan Rickman & Kristin Scott Thomas

in Film, Theatre | January 29th, 2016

Here at Open Cul­ture, when we think of authors who write work made for the movies, we do, of course, think of names like Dan Brown, J.K. Rowl­ing, and Robert Lud­lum — but even more so of names like Samuel Beck­ett, whose push­ing of aes­thet­ic and intel­lec­tu­al bound­aries on the stage we wel­come now more than ever on the screen. And in a way, his works have under­gone more com­plete film adap­ta­tion than have the books of many best­selling main­stream writ­ers, thanks to the 2002 omnibus project Beck­ett on Film, which round­ed up nine­teen auteurs to direct films, rang­ing in length from sev­en min­utes to two hours, of each and every one of his nine­teen plays.

Beck­ett on Film’s ros­ter of direc­tors includes Michael Lind­say-Hogg doing Wait­ing for Godot, Atom Egoy­an doing Krap­p’s Last Tape, Neil Jor­dan doing Not I, the artist Damien Hirst doing Breath, and Antho­ny Minghel­la, he of The Eng­lish Patient and The Tal­ent­ed Mr. Rip­ley, doing Play, which you can watch above. The six­teen-minute pro­duc­tion adapts Beck­et­t’s 1963 one-act, a dis­tinc­tive­ly pur­ga­to­r­i­al sort of roman­tic dra­ma which presents a man (“M”), his wife (“W1”), and his mis­tress (“W2”), each trapped in an urn, each forced to speak about the details of their tri­an­gu­lar rela­tion­ship when, on stage, the spot­light turns to them. On film, Minghel­la choos­es to swap out the spot­light for the cam­era itself, which cuts, swings, and shifts focus swift­ly between the three, com­mand­ing the his­to­ry of the affair from all three per­spec­tives, each deliv­ered with flat, rapid-fire insis­tence yet with sur­pris­ing clar­i­ty and feel­ing as well.

Those qual­i­ties nat­u­ral­ly owe to Beck­et­t’s mas­tery of the word, but also to the per­for­mances of the three actors, giv­en under absurd cir­cum­stances, caked with filth and stuffed into pots: Kristin Scott Thomas as the wife, Juli­et Steven­son as the mis­tress, and the late Alan Rick­man as the hic­cup­ing adul­ter­er. Every line they speak dis­tills some aspect of the Beck­et­t­ian world­view: “Silence and dark­ness were all I craved,” says Thomas’ W1. “Well, I get a cer­tain amount of both. They being one. Per­haps it is more wicked­ness to pray for more.” “Things may dis­im­prove,” says Steven­son’s W2. “Adul­ter­ers, take warn­ing,” says Rick­man’s M, “nev­er admit.” And the ulti­mate ques­tion: “When will all this have been… just play?” But in Beck­et­t’s real­i­ty, there’s noth­ing so “just” about it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a “Breath” and Watch Samuel Beckett’s One-Minute Play

Hear Samuel Beckett’s Avant-Garde Radio Plays: All That Fall, Embers, and More

Samuel Beck­ett Directs His Absur­dist Play Wait­ing for Godot (1985)

Mon­ster­piece The­ater Presents Wait­ing for Elmo, Calls BS on Samuel Beck­ett

Rare Audio: Samuel Beck­ett Reads Two Poems From His Nov­el Watt

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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85 Compelling Films Starring and/or Directed By Women of Color: A List Created by Director Ava DuVernay & Friends on Twitter

in Film | January 29th, 2016

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Image by Marie Maye, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

If you fol­low film news—or real­ly, just news—you’re well aware of the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the cur­rent crop of Acad­e­my Award nom­i­nees. While awards extrav­a­gan­zas seem like lit­tle more than pop­u­lar­i­ty con­tests, it is curi­ous that nei­ther the acclaimed lead actors nor the direc­tors received nom­i­na­tions for two of the most pop­u­lar films of the year—Creed and Straight Out­ta Comp­ton. (See SNL’s satir­i­cal take on this.) There’s been no short­age of crit­i­cal praise for the tal­ent in those films and oth­ers, cast­ing doubt on claims that actors, writ­ers, direc­tors, etc. of col­or sim­ply weren’t up to snuff. The truth is like­ly more banal: most of the Acad­e­my vot­ers are old­er white men. (“Old­er and more dude-heavy than just about any place in Amer­i­ca,” says The Atlantic, “and whiter than all but sev­en states.”) No need to allege out­right con­spir­a­cy when implic­it bias oper­ates to exclude peo­ple all the time with­out mali­cious intent.

Nor do cor­po­rate buzz­words like “diver­si­ty” car­ry much weight when it comes to cre­at­ing a more inclu­sive indus­try. “It’s a med­i­c­i­nal word,” says Sel­ma direc­tor Ava DuVer­nay, “that has no emo­tion­al res­o­nance… Diver­si­ty’s like, ‘Ugh, I have to do diver­si­ty.’ ” No one wants to attend a “diver­si­ty train­ing” or read a hir­ing man­u­al about how to “do diver­si­ty”; rec­og­niz­ing tal­ent should­n’t be a forced, pro­ce­dur­al mat­ter, but a mat­ter of course. The Acad­e­my has vowed to make changes by retir­ing many inac­tive mem­bers to non-vot­ing emer­i­tus sta­tus and—in an Orwellian turn of phrase—“doubling the num­ber of diverse mem­bers” by 2020, what­ev­er that means. The afore­men­tioned DuVer­nay has been sow­ing seeds of dis­con­tent with the sta­tus quo for quite some time now, online and in the indus­try itself with her dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­ny AFFRM+Array Releas­ing, which attempts to coun­ter­bal­ance the racial and gen­der dis­par­i­ties in the film world.

In a tweet last year, writ­ten off the cuff dur­ing a writ­ing break, she put out a call to fol­low­ers to “name three films you like with black, brown, native or Asian women leads” or direc­tors. Indiewire com­ments that “it seems like com­mon sense that these films exist,” yet “the ques­tion proved to be a seri­ous chal­lenge for Twit­ter.” Even­tu­al­ly, DuVer­nay and the Twit­ter denizens came up with a list of 85 titles star­ring and/or direct­ed by women of col­or, and you can see them all list­ed below. If you find your­self watch­ing movie after movie about the same kinds of expe­ri­ences, maybe con­sid­er mak­ing your own view­ing habits more “diverse” by check­ing out some of these excel­lent, and in most cas­es lit­tle-seen movies, includ­ing two well-reviewed films from DuVer­nay her­self, 2010’s I Will Fol­low and 2012’s Mid­dle of Nowhere.

“35 Shots of Rum” by Claire Denis (2008)
“A Dif­fer­ent Image” by Alile Sharon Larkin (1982)
“A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night” by Ana Lily Amir­pour (2014)
“Advan­ta­geous” by Jen­nifer Phang (2015)
“Ala Modalain­di” by Nan­di­ni Bv Red­dy (2011)
“All About You” by Chris­tine Swan­son (2001)
“Alma’s Rain­bow” by Ayoka Chen­zi­ra (1994)
“Appro­pri­ate Behav­ior” by Desiree Akha­van (2014)
“B For Boy” by Chi­ka Anadu (2013)
“Bande de Filles/Girlhood” by Céline Sci­amma (2014)
“Belle” by Amma Asante (2013)
“Bend it Like Beck­ham” by Gurinder Chad­ha (2002)
“Bessie” by Dee Rees (2015)
“Beyond the Lights” by Gina Prince-Bythe­wood (2014)
“Bha­ji on the Beach” by Gurinder Chad­ha (1993)
“Caramel” by Nadine Laba­ki  (2007)
“Cir­cum­stance” by Maryam Keshavarz (2011)
“Civ­il Brand” by Neema Bar­nette (2002)
“Com­pen­sa­tion” by Zeinabu irene Davis (199)
“Daugh­ters of the Dust” by Julie Dash (1991)
“Dou­ble Hap­pi­ness ” by Mina Shum (1994)
“Down in the Delta” by Maya Angelou (1998)
“Dry­long­so” by Cauleen Smith (1988)
“Earth” by Deepa Mehta (1998)
“Elza” by Mari­ette Mon­pierre (2011)
“End­less Dreams” by Susan Youssef (2009
“Eve’s Bay­ou” by Kasi Lem­mons (1997)
“Fire” by Deepa Mehta (1996)
“Fri­da” by Julie Tay­mor (2002)
“Girl in Progress” by Patri­cia Riggen (2012)
“Girl­fight” by Karyn Kusama (2000)
“Habibi Rasak Khar­ban” by Susan Youssef (2011)
“Hiss Dokhtarha Faryad Nem­izanand (Hush! Girls Don’t Scream)” by Pouran Der­ahkan­deh (2013)
“Hon­ey­trap” by Rebec­ca John­son (2014)
“I Like It Like That” by Dar­nell Mar­tin (1994)
“I Will Fol­low” by Ava DuVer­nay (2010
“In Between Days” by So-yong Kim (2006)
“Intro­duc­ing Dorothy Dan­dridge” by Martha Coolidge (1999)
“It’s a Won­der­ful After­life” by Gurinder Chad­ha (2010)
“Jumpin Jack Flash” by Pen­ny Mar­shall (1986)
“Just Anoth­er Girl on the IRT” by Leslie Har­ris (1992)
“Just Wright” by Sanaa Ham­ri (2010)
“Kama Sutra” by Mira Nair (1996)
“Los­ing Ground” by Kath­leen Collins (1982)
“Love & Bas­ket­ball” by Gina Prince-Bythe­wood (2000)
“Luck by Chance” by Zoya Akhtar (2009)
“Mi Vida Loca” by Alli­son Anders (1993)
“Mid­dle of Nowhere” by Ava DuVer­nay (2012)
“Mis­sis­sip­pi Damned” by Tina Mabry (2009)
“Mis­sis­sip­pi Masala” by Mira Nair (1991)
“Mix­ing Nia” by Ali­son Swan (1998)
“Mon­soon Wed­ding” by Mira Nair (2001)
“Mosqui­ta y Mari” by Auro­ra Guer­rero (2012)
“Na-moo-eobs-neun san (Tree­less Moun­tain)” by So-yong Kim (2008)
“Night Catch­es Us” by Tanya Hamil­ton (2010)
“Pari­ah” by Dee Rees (2011)
“Pic­ture Bride” by Kayo Hat­ta (1994)
“Rain” by Maria Gov­an (2008)
“Real Women Have Curves” by Patri­cia Car­doso (2002)
“Sav­ing Face” by Alice Wu (2004)
“Sec­ond Com­ing” by Deb­bie Tuck­er Green (2014)
“Some­thing Nec­es­sary” by Judy Kibinge (2013)
“Some­thing New” by Sanaa Ham­ri (2006)
“Still the Water” by Nao­mi Kawase  (2014)
“Stranger Inside” by Cheryl Dun­ye (2001)
“Sug­ar Cane Alley/Black Shack Alley” by Euzhan Pal­cy (1983)
“The Kite” by Ran­da Cha­hal Sabag (2003)
“The Rich Man’s Wife” by Amy Hold­en Jones (1996)
“The Secret Life of Bees” by Gina Prince-Bythe­wood (2008)
“The Silence of the Palace” by Moufi­da Tlatli (1994)
“The Water­mel­on Woman” by Cheryl Dun­ye (1996)
“The Women of Brew­ster Place” by Don­na Deitch (1989)
“Their Eyes Were Watch­ing God” by Dar­nell Mar­tin (2005)
“Things We Lost in the Fire” by Susanne Bier  (2007)
“Wad­j­da” by Haifaa Al-Man­sour (2012)
“Water” by Deepa Mehta (2005)
“Whale Rid­er” by Niki Caro  (2002)
“What’s Cook­ing?” by Gurinder Chad­ha (2000)
“Where Do We Go Now?” by Nadine Laba­ki  (2011)
“Whit­ney” by Angela Bas­sett (2015)
“Woman Thou Art Loosed: On The 7th Day” by Neema Bar­nette (2012)
“Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl” by Joan Chen (1998)
“Yelling to the Sky” by Vic­to­ria Mahoney (2011)
“Young and Wild” by Mar­i­aly Rivas (2012)

via Indiewire

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Spike Lee’s List of 95 Essen­tial Movies – Now with Women Film­mak­ers

The 10 Great­est Films of All Time Accord­ing to 358 Film­mak­ers

725 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc. 

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Art from David Bowie’s Final Album, Blackstar, is Now Free for Fans to Download and Reuse

in Art, Music | January 28th, 2016

Bowie_Blackstar_1

Jonathan Barn­brook, the British graph­ic design­er who cre­at­ed the cov­er art for sev­er­al of David Bowie’s more recent albums, had his cre­ative stu­dio issue an announce­ment on Face­book today, one which will sure­ly please many:

Barn­brook loved work­ing with David Bowie, he was sim­ply one of the most inspi­ra­tional, kind peo­ple we have met. So in the spir­it of open­ness and in remem­brance of David we are releas­ing the art­work ele­ments of his last album ★ (Black­star) to down­load here free under a Cre­ative Com­mons Non­Com­mer­cial-Share­Alike licence. That means you can make t‑shirts for your­self, use them for tat­toos, put them up in your house to remem­ber David by and adapt them too, but we would ask that you do not in any way cre­ate or sell com­mer­cial prod­ucts with them or based on them.

Barn­brook was the cre­ative force behind Hea­then (2002), Real­i­ty (2003) and The Next Day (2013). In this in-depth inter­view, the design­er talks about his approach to cre­at­ing a visu­al lan­guage for Black­star, whose design ele­ments can now be freely down­loaded here.

via Pitch­fork

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dave: The Best Trib­ute to David Bowie That You’re Going to See

David Bowie Releas­es 36 Music Videos of His Clas­sic Songs from the 1970s and 1980s

David Bowie Lists His 25 Favorite LPs in His Record Col­lec­tion: Stream Most of Them Free Online

David Bowie’s Top 100 Books

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An Animated Introduction to Goethe, Germany’s “Renaissance Man”

in History, Literature | January 28th, 2016

We all know the name Goethe — some of us even know the full name, Johann Wolf­gang von Goethe. I’ve nev­er lived in the renowned 18th- and 19th-cen­tu­ry writer, politi­cian, and cul­tur­al poly­math­’s home­land of Ger­many, but even when I lived in Los Ange­les, I reg­u­lar­ly went to my local branch of the Goethe-Insti­tute for Ger­man cul­tur­al events. Even in Korea, where I live now, Goethe has left a wide if shal­low mark: you can see The Sor­rows of Young Werther in the form of an elab­o­rate stage musi­cal, for instance, and buy almost all the goods you need in life from the enor­mous con­glom­er­ate named after the young lady on whom Werther con­cen­trates his doomed affec­tions, Lotte.

But why, more than 180 years after Goethe’s death, does his name still come up in so many dif­fer­ent con­texts? And giv­en that, why do so many of us know so lit­tle about his long, var­ied, col­or­ful, and high­ly pro­duc­tive life and career? This sounds like a job for the video wing of Alain de Bot­ton’s School of Life, whose short primers con­tin­ue to bring us up to speed on why the lega­cies of so many cul­tur­al fig­ures (with one sec­tion giv­en over to the lit­er­ary) have endured, or should endure. “Goethe is one of the great minds of Euro­pean civil­i­sa­tion, though his work is large­ly unknown out­side of the Ger­man speak­ing coun­tries,” says de Bot­ton in their video on Goethe: “He deserves our renewed atten­tion.”

To fill out the details pro­vid­ed in the School of Life’s video, you can read an overview of Goethe’s career (includ­ing details on the prop­er pro­nun­ci­a­tion of his name) in the accom­pa­ny­ing Book of Life entry online. It tells the sto­ry of not just Young Werther’s cre­ator, but “one of Europe’s big cul­tur­al heroes – com­pa­ra­ble to the likes of Shake­speare, Dante and Homer,” skilled in let­ters, of course, but also in “phys­i­ol­o­gy, geol­o­gy, botany and optics,” who also spent stretch­es of his career as “a diplo­mat, fash­ion guru, a senior civ­il ser­vant, a pornog­ra­ph­er, the head of a uni­ver­si­ty, a fine artist, an adven­tur­ous trav­eller, the direc­tor of a the­atre com­pa­ny and the head of a min­ing com­pa­ny.”

We might call Goethe, inso­far as he devel­oped his own mas­tery, span­ning so much of the human expe­ri­ence, a Renais­sance man out of time — but one who, in his way, out­did even the actu­al men of the Renais­sance. “We have so much to learn from him,” adds the Book of Life. “We don’t often hear peo­ple declar­ing a wish to be a lit­tle more like ‘Goethe.’ But if we did, the world would be a more vibrant and humane place.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Goethe’s The­o­ry of Col­ors: The 1810 Trea­tise That Inspired Kandin­sky & Ear­ly Abstract Paint­ing

The Tale of the Fox: Watch Ladis­las Starevich’s Ani­ma­tion of Goethe’s Great Ger­man Folk­tale (1937)

The Death Masks of Great Authors: Dante, Goethe, Tol­stoy, Joyce & More

Har­ry Clarke’s 1926 Illus­tra­tions of Goethe’s Faust: Art That Inspired the Psy­che­del­ic 60s

Eugène Delacroix Illus­trates Goethe’s Faust, “One of the Very Great­est of All Illus­trat­ed Books”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Stephen Hawking & Actor Paul Rudd Play an Epic Game of Quantum Chess, Narrated by Keanu Reeves

in Games, Physics | January 28th, 2016

The Insti­tute for Quan­tum Infor­ma­tion and Mat­ter (IQIM) at Cal­tech post­ed on its YouTube chan­nel today a fun lit­tle video called “Any­one Can Quantum”–the “Any­one” prob­a­bly refer­ring to actor Paul Rudd, who takes on Stephen Hawk­ing in a game of Quan­tum Chess, nar­rat­ed by Keanu Reeves. Quan­tum Chess, a made-up thing, a gim­mick, you say? Not so appar­ent­ly. It’s a thing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Psy­che­del­ic Ani­ma­tion Takes You Inside the Mind of Stephen Hawk­ing

Down­load the Soft­ware That Pro­vides Stephen Hawking’s Voice

Stephen Hawking’s Big Ideas Explained with Sim­ple Ani­ma­tion

Free Online Physics Cours­es

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Rare Video Captures 29-Year-Old Luciano Pavarotti in One of His Earliest Recorded Performances (1964)

in Music, Opera | January 28th, 2016

Some­times it’s hard to believe that cer­tain enter­tain­ers did not arrive ful­ly formed with their famous look already part of the act. It’s still weird to me, for exam­ple, to see very ear­ly George Car­lin, look­ing like a nephew to the but­ton-down com­e­dy of Bob Newhart. You might get the same shock see­ing this very early—possibly the first, but not verified—televised appear­ance of mas­ter tenor Luciano Pavarot­ti.

In this archived clip from Sovi­et tele­vi­sion, the future opera super­star looks more like come­di­an Jack­ie Glea­son than the beard­ed, icon­ic fig­ure he would become. Those eye­brows are work­ing over­time, though.

The year is 1964, only three years after his pro­fes­sion­al debut in a region­al Ital­ian opera house, where he played the lead, Rodol­fo, in a pro­duc­tion of La Boheme. It was also a year after his first major accom­plish­ment, sup­port­ing and singing with Joan Suther­land on an Aus­tralian tour. He was yet to have an Amer­i­can pre­miere, and was still try­ing to make a name for him­self.

This above clip, a jaun­ty and con­fi­dent take on Verdi’s “La Don­na e Mobile” from Rigo­let­to, shows all the youth­ful promise in his 29-year-old voice. Com­pare and con­trast below his 1982 ver­sion from Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s film ver­sion of the opera. It’s sweet­er and Pavarot­ti has less to prove, firm­ly estab­lished in the fir­ma­ment of singing stars. The song remains the same, but this ear­ly glimpse into Pavarotti’s career shows he knew he was going places, but just need­ed that chance to prove it.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Pavarot­ti Sings with Lou Reed, Sting, James Brown and Oth­er Friends

New Web Site, “The Opera Plat­form,” Lets You Watch La Travi­a­ta and Oth­er First-Class Operas Free Online

Stephen Fry Hosts “The Sci­ence of Opera,” a Dis­cus­sion of How Music Moves Us Phys­i­cal­ly to Tears

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Stephen Hawking’s New Lecture, “Do Black Holes Have No Hair?,” Animated with Chalkboard Illustrations

in Physics, Radio | January 28th, 2016

You can now hear in full on the BBC’s web­site the first part of Stephen Hawk­ing’s 2016 Rei­th Lec­ture—“Do Black Holes Have No Hair?” Just above, lis­ten to Hawk­ing’s lec­ture while you fol­low along with an ani­mat­ed chalk­board on which artist Andrew Park sketch­es out the key points in help­ful images and dia­grams. We alert­ed you to the com­ing lec­ture this past Tues­day, and we also point­ed you toward the paper Hawk­ing recent­ly post­ed online, “Soft Hair on Black Holes,” co-authored with Mal­colm J. Per­ry and Andrew Stro­minger. There, Hawk­ing argues that black holes may indeed have “hair,” or waves of zero-ener­gy par­ti­cles that store infor­ma­tion pre­vi­ous­ly thought lost.

The arti­cle is tough going for any­one with­out a back­ground in the­o­ret­i­cal physics, but Hawk­ing’s talk above makes these ideas approach­able, with­out dumb­ing them down. He has a win­ning way of com­mu­ni­cat­ing with every­day exam­ples and wit­ti­cisms, and Park’s illus­tra­tions fur­ther help make sense of things. Hawk­ing begins with a brief his­to­ry of black hole the­o­ry, then builds slow­ly to his the­sis: as the BBC puts it, rather than see black holes as “scary, destruc­tive and dark he says if prop­er­ly under­stood, they could unlock the deep­est secrets of the cos­mos.”

Hawk­ing is intro­duced by BBC broad­cast­er Sue Law­ley, who also chairs a ques­tion-and-answer ses­sion (in the full lec­ture audio) with a few select Radio 4 lis­ten­ers whose ques­tions Hawk­ing chose from hun­dreds sub­mit­ted to the BBC. Stay tuned for Part Two, which should come online short­ly after Tues­day’s broad­cast.

The short ani­mat­ed video above gives us a tan­ta­liz­ing excerpt from Hawk­ing’s sec­ond talk. “If you feel you are in a black hole,” he says reas­sur­ing­ly, “don’t give up. There’s a way out.” That nice lit­tle aside is but one of many col­or­ful ways Hawk­ing has of express­ing him­self when dis­cussing the the­o­ret­i­cal physics of black holes, a sub­ject that could turn dead­ly seri­ous, and—speaking for myself—incomprehensible. As far as I know, black holes work in the real uni­verse just like they do in Inter­stel­lar.

I kid, but there is, how­ev­er, at least one way in which Christo­pher Nolan’s apoc­a­lyp­tic space fan­ta­sy with its improb­a­bly hap­py end­ing may not be total hokum: as Hawk­ing the­o­rizes above, cer­tain par­ti­cles (or anti-par­ti­cles) may escape from a black hole, “to infin­i­ty,” he says, or “pos­si­bly to anoth­er uni­verse.” The main idea, says Hawk­ing, is that black holes “are not the eter­nal pris­ons they were once thought.” Or, in oth­er words, “black holes ain’t as black as they are paint­ed,” which also hap­pens to be the title of his next talk. Stay tuned: we’ll bring you more of Hawk­ing’s fas­ci­nat­ing black hole the­o­ry soon.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Psy­che­del­ic Ani­ma­tion Takes You Inside the Mind of Stephen Hawk­ing

The Big Ideas of Stephen Hawk­ing Explained with Sim­ple Ani­ma­tion

Watch A Brief His­to­ry of Time, Errol Mor­ris’ Film About the Life & Work of Stephen Hawk­ing

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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