Aki Kaurismaki's Highly Original Oeuvre Is Featured in a Bamcinematek Retrospective
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June 2003 2003 Spring Season Cecily Brown , Figure in a Landscape, 2002 BAM Spring . ENe DiR E Season sponsor: Altna I ~ /\ IVI bill Contents June 2003 Ghost Tales 10 The legendary Ingmar Bergman mixes a little Strindberg with his Ibsen for his remarkable production of Ghosts. By Stan Schwartz A Hot Happening 12 BAM's annua l Rh ythm & Blues Festival at MetroTech serves up such musical legends as Los Lobos, Mighty Clouds of Joy, and Jimmy Cliff. By Brian Scott Lipton A Strong Finnish 30 Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki's highly original oeuvre is featured in a BAMcinematek retrospective . By Leslie (Hoban) Blake The It List 4 Fashion 6 Program 9 Upcoming Events 28 Top, Steel Pulse, Rhythm & Blues Festival at Metro Tech. BAMdirectory 29 Bottom, Juha , dir. Aki Kaurismiiki. Photo, Marja-Leena Hukkanen Food 36 Co\/er Artist Cecily Brown was bern in 1969 in London. She earned a BA in Fine Arts at the Slade School of Art, and a B-TEC Diploma in Art and Design at Epsom School of Art in Surrey, England. Brown is represented by Gagosian Gallery (New York and Los Angeles), where she has had annual solo exhibitions since 1999. Her work has been featured in solo shows at Victoria Miro Gallery (London), Contemporary Fine Arts (Berlin), and Deitch Projects (New York). Brown has participated in a number of group shows at locations including Museum fur Moderne Kunst (Frankfurt am Main); Center on Contemporary Art, Seattle; P. S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, Cecily Brown NY; Barbara Gladstone Gallery, Jessica Fredericks Gallery, and David Figure in a Landscape, 2002 Zwirner Gallery (New York City), among others. Brown's short animated Oi l on linen, 80" x 80" film, Four Letter Heaven , premiered at the Telluride Film Festival. Her work Courtesy of Robert McKeeever/ is in public collections including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Gagosian Gallery (New York), Albright-Knox Art Gallery (Buffalo, NY) , and The Tate Gallery For BAMart information, (London), and is the subject of several books and catalogues, including contact Monika Wunderer at essays by Klaus Kertess and Stephan Schmidt-Wulffen. Brown's first muse 718.636.4101 or um solo exhibition will take place at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture [email protected] Garden, Washington, DC. Her new work will be shown at a solo exhibition at Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles, in early spring this year. ENCORE. 116.w.23rd st. 5th fir. NYC, NY 10011. 646-375-2295. h.,e 646-375-2334 «> 2003 IA Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission is strictly prohibited. 3 Ghost Tales Angela Kovacs, Jan Malmsjo, Pernilia August, Jonas Malmsjo. Photo: Bengt Wanselius By Stan Schwartz As a major director of Ibsen (BAM-goers will recall Bergman's Peer Gynt and his Inevitably, the subject turned to ghosts. remarkable A Dol/'s House, starring Ms. August), it seems only logical that he should "During rehearsals, Ingmar was always 'talking' now take on Ghosts. When Ibsen's blistering to Ibsen. He was always afraid Ibsen would drama of dark family secrets premiered more not like what he'd done to his play and every than a century ago, it caused an immediate time something went wrong, he'd say 'It's the uproar for its unapologetic excavation of the ghost of Ibsenl He doesn't like this!'" moral corruption and hypocrisy festering just beneath the surface of Norwegian bourgeois The speaker was the great actress Pernilla respectability. It wasn't just a question of August; Ingmar, of course, is Ingmar attacking the sanctity of marriage or the clergy Bergman; and the rehearsals were for the - Ibsen had the temerity to add syphilis and Royal Swedish Theater's acclaimed production hints of incest into the mix. It wasn't just a question of attacking the sanctity of marriage or the clergy Ibsen had the temerity to add syphilis and hints of incest into the mix. of Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts, which visits BAM 's Nowadays, it's impossible to recreate the Harvey Theater from June 10- 14. As a sense of outrage that initially greeted Ghosts , long-time Bergman stage and screen regular, and Bergman understandably takes another August is no stranger to the working meth approach. Working from his own translation, ods-and mind-of the legendary Swedish the director has, to quote his afterword to director. Which may be why on this cold, that translation , "taken out huge sheet gray January day in Stockholm, she appeared metal shears and cut to pieces the Ibsen quite comfortable with the notion that the iron corset." playwright's ghost might be haunting the rehearsal halls of Sweden's Royal Dramatic That's only the half of it. Bits of dialogue Theater. from two Strindberg plays, The Pelican and Ghost Sonata, have been inserted , and most 10 Ghost Tales audaciously, a wholly-original scene written by Bergman has also been added. No wonder the Swedish master feared the angry reprisals of Ibsen 's spectre. The key to Bergman's vision, naturally, is Mrs. Alving herself, whom the director sees as "a Nora who never slammed the door- both victim and executioner, sophisticated liar, and merciless truth-teller at the same time." As it happens, August had never played Mrs. ~ Alving before, but having already provided .2 ~ Bergman with a truly stunning Nora, she c: ~ understood the director's comparison implicitly. "@> "I didn't have any set idea of Mrs. Alving, [butl .l5 the first thing Ingmar told me was she's like a ~ big sister to Nora and that was the first thing to "- help charge up my imagination," says August. "'<~ .!l! Bergman's rethinking of Ibsen's play is hardly E limited to textual cuts and additions. Equally c1:' striking is the evening's distinctive tone. For years back will notice very specific and deliberate a playwright traditionally associated with visual cross-references between these two naturalism, Bergman's take on Ibsen abounds productions, not least of which is the ominous with heightened expressionistic touches, from presence yet again of Jonas Malmsjb. Th e the stylized color palette to the dream-like young actor now plays Osvald, Mrs. Alving's quality of the Alving household. There is also son who is dying of syphilis. Sporting ghostly the production's generally elevated emotional white makeup and a blood-red scar on his pitch, culminating in a harrowing final scene in forehead, Malmsjb's Osvald is clearly his which Bergman makes shockingly explicit what character in Ghost Sonata , now pushed to even I bsen on Iy hinted at. darker depths of physical and spiritual ruin. The production has a harrowing final scene in which Bergman makes shockingly explicit what Ibsen only hinted at. Taken altogether, these theatrical strategies For her part, Pernilla August could not venture strike one as less Ibsen-esque as, well, a guess as to which playwright Bergman might Strindbergian. And that's hardly surprising: feel closer to. But with infectious enthusiasm, if there's one playwright even more closely she offered this: "When you work with Ingmar associated with Bergman than Ibsen , it's the Bergman, Ibsen is so close and Strindberg is so great mad Swede. And following Bergman's close. And when Ingmar says something like stage career over the years , theater-goers may 'I'm afraid Ibsen is not happy with this,' he have discerned a kind of tug-of-war as to which really believes it and it becomes so real. I feel playwright has exerted a greater pull on the it too. It's not scary, it's beautiful in a way." director. New York audiences are lucky to be able to Judging from the current production, it's a tie. share in that beauty. ,. Indeed, Bergman has come right out and called the play Ibsen's Ghost Sonata . Indeed, BAM Stan Schwartz is a freelance writer and critic goers who saw Bergman's Ghost Sonata a few specializing in Swedish theater and cinema. 11 R&B Festival A Hot Happening decade, the caliber of acts has become stronger and an outdoor covered stage was built By Brian Scott Lipton primarily to protect the performers from the sun-but one thing has remained constant: Hot time, summer in the city. Indeed. And the series is still a community-based event. there is no hotter spot than the Metrotech Commons at the corner of Flatbush and Myrtle "I want these shows to feel intimate, like a Avenue. Every Thursday between June 5 and neighborhood happening," says Danny August 7, the world's greatest Rhythm and Kapilian, who has been the event's producer Blues artists gather there for the BAM Rhythm since 1995. "It's one reason we don't do any & Blues Festival at MetroTech. advertising outside the area." For the past eleven years, these outdoor concerts Kapilian began his association with BAM in -held from noon until 2pm-have provided 1985- working with guest artist Twyla Tharp thousands of Brooklynites, primarily a mix of and has been a longtime Brooklyn resident. So nearby office workers and residents, with the he knows his audience. "I saw MetroTech chance to hear the top music makers of all being built, and I know my neighbors," he time. Artists who have graced the Metrotech says. "In some of the early years, we included stage include Percy Sledge, Darlene Love, jazz and world music acts, but the acts people Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes, Lesley Gore, most responded to were the true R&B greats. " Sam Moore, Ruth Brown, Nona Hendryx, Dr. John, Bo Diddley, Ben E. King and Wilson Of course, the term Rhythm and Blues crosses Pickett, to name just a few of the approximately many categories, and this year's festival 100 stars who have left audiences hooting and includes them all: the acoustic blues of guitarist hollering.