OOF. What a time to be alive. Thank god there is still still creative genius and beauty to inspire us. Some highlights include Yi Fei Chen’s tear gun that fires water as she cries, staging a Hot Ones contest at work and heading to New Jersey at 10am on a Thursday in the middle of a storm for wings, queer line dancing (thank you shan), and baking my first cranberry curd tart.
I hope these recommendations inspire you too/always love hearing yours!
Visual Art
Photos from the Vietnamese Waterlily Harvest: From August to November, herds of tourists head to Vietnam to watch farmers, mostly women, wade through the waters at dawn to collect up to 85 different species of waterlilies. Photos of the event are just mesmerizing. These photos are by George Steinmetz.
Photos by George Steinmetz
The Clock at The MoMA: I saw this piece by Christian Marclay at the Tate in London in 2018 while Sarah was teaching a class and it’s finally in NYC! It’s a 24 hour montage of 100 years of movies with clocks and scenes shown at the time in which they are taking place. Because it’s durational you want to plan to be in there for a while to really take it in- and maybe not see much else there.
Theater
Catarina and The Beauty of Killing Fascists: I am still processing the experience of this show- as you might have heard from me directly- or might be yourself if you’ve seen it. The Brazilian play was created in 2020 and had it’s Festival d’Avignon premiere this summer. A very different context than the one we all saw it in two weeks ago. In short, the show is about a family in Brazil in 2028 that kills a fascist every year- members are initiated into doing so on their 26th birthday. The youngest one though just can’t get through with it as she doesn’t see killing as a form of justice- words are to her. Spoilers here but the run is down so feel free to read- when she can’t go through with it the family ends up killing each other and the fascist is left alone on stage. The show ends with him saying non-stop racist/sexist/homophobic things for 30mn and it’s up to the audience to figure out what to make of it and see if they can’t stop him. Watching this a week after the US elections- in a theater in the blue corner of Fort Greene Brooklyn was something. Especially over 2 hours into a show in portuguese with subtitles. About 13mn into the speech the audience started freaking out into the following discourse (and I can tell you- these were NOT plants):
Audience member 1 near me in the way back of the mezz looking at us yells- “Guys, why the hell are we letting him keep speaking?”
Audience member 2 on the opposite side yells- “Because it’s the script!”
2mn pass
Audience member 3 yells to the stage- “FUCK YOUUUUU!!!”
Audience member 4 yells to the stage- “Idiota!!!”
Yelling continues from various people, an audience member gets up from the first row who decides to take it in his matters personally, get applauded and quickly is intercepted and forcibly sat back down by security.
People left- I left 25mn into and watched the rest from a screen outside since clearly this was the end and I couldn’t take it but you know what?
It was amazing to see how riled up we could get over a piece of fictional theater we voluntarily bought tickets for- that’s the power of performance and it really forced us to our current situation. A little too soon? maybe but still a feat.
If anyone can interview the actor playing the fascist I would love to know about his experience, as a Brazilian actor generating that much chaos amongst Americans fresh out of the elections.
TV/Streaming
It’s Florida, Man: This 6 episode docuseries is a collection of some of the craziest Floridian stories and characters- which will bring you lightness and laughter if that’s what you need right now. Famous comedians reenact the stories in a really unusual format- making it all more absurd.
Zef, The Story of Die Antwoord: A really gorgeous documentary on one of the strangest bands and voices I’ve come across. Their story doesn’t lack any controversies but is worth seeing if anything just to admire the John Day’s gorgeous visuals of them over the course of 5 years.
Dìdi: Is a beautiful coming age story of a Taiwanese-American boy in the 90s trying to teach himself how to fit in, flirt, skateboard and be a part of his family. Get your tissues ready for this one.
Movies that you have probably seen and if not I really recommend them!
Anora : One of the best movies of the year, half music video feels half action movie packed with laughter and characters with barely any lines that stick with you.
Conclave: I wasn’t drawn to the world of the movie initially but stunning visuals, incredible plot, great to watch with family. It’s one of those films that manages to suck you in without leaving a place.
Emilia Perez: I personally feel very strange about this Jacques Audiard tale of a trans drug lord set in Mexico featuring Selena Gomez and Zoe Saldana. It won a prize at Cannes and is all the rage- it’s beautiful to watch- Opera-like, but the treatment of trans issues feels really dated to me… would be curious to know what others think.
I do not recommend Hot and Frosty it’s the worst movie of all time- but also if you know that coming in kind of hilarious?
Audio
Radioooo: We were at our friends Maya and Christine’s for dinner and I could swear they were playing vinyls but they were playing Radioooo’s 1950’s Brazil playlist. This incredible site allows you to pick a country and decade and curates a playlist for you. I’ve been obsessed with the site all month and one of our audio engineers even started using it for research!
The Good Whale: My god- we listened to this podcast on the way to and from my aunt’s house in the Berkshires and it’s the perfect show for a road trip. As you might expect- this story of Keiko- the Orca from Free Willy is sad but also really beautiful and funny at times. A reminder that there is only so much that humans can do to intervene in the animal world and of our connection to the natural world. Daniel Alarcón is a perfect host.
Books
The Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner: I am nearlyyy done with this book but it’s SO good/even better than Fleishman is in Trouble. Here, Taffy takes us through a satire of a wealthy 20th century Jewish-American family intergenerational relationship to work, wealth and trauma. I suspect that it will also end up going through the TV/movie development pipeline.
Sending love <3