RAMhil1 Contents May 2003 The It List 8 Program 9 Ghost Tales 10 The legendary Ingmar Bergman mixes a little Strindberg with his Ibsen for his remarkable production of Ghosts. By Stan Schwartz All For The Best 12 The Village Voice : Best of 2002 The critics choose the best films and best undistributed fil ms at BAM in June. By Jessica Winter Upcoming Events 28 BAMdirectory 29 At Long Last Lovers 30 After 240 years, Jean-Philippe Rameau 's rarely seen 18th-century opera, "Les Boreades," finally makes it to American shores. By Ellen Lampert-Greaux ~Im 33 Top: Pernilla August in Ghosts. Photo, Bengt Wanselius Fashion 34 Bottom, Dolls in Village Voice, Best of 2002. Food 36 Photo, Celluloid Dreams r.nv~r 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 Mira 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 Oil 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 bocks 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. F.u, 646-375-2334 e 2003 LA Publishing, Inc. All righrs reserved. Reproducrion wimouf permission is striccly prohibired. 3 Ghost Tales Angela Kovacs, Jan Malmsjo; Pernilla August, Jonas Malmsjo. Photo, Sengt Wanselius By Stan Schwartz As a major director of Ibsen (BAM-goers will reca ll Bergman's Peer Gynt and his Inevitably, the subject turned to ghosts. remarkable A ool/'s House, starring Ms. August), it seems only logical that he shou ld "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 someth ing went wrong, he'd say 'It's the uproar for its unapologetic excavation of the ghost of Ibsen! He doesn't like thisl'" moral corruption and hypocrisy festering just beneath the surface of Norwegian bourgeois The speaker was the great actress Pernilla respectabi lity. It wasn't just a question of August; Ingmar, of cou rse, 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--<lf 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, Th e 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 I bsen'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 Bergman with a truly stunning Nora, she understood the director's comparison implicitly. "I didn't have any set idea of Mrs. Alving, [but] 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. ~ g,o Bergman's rethinking of Ibsen's play is hardly .!l?" '"E limited to textual cuts and additions. Equally ~ 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 Malmsjo. The 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, Malmsjo's Osvald is clearly his which Bergman makes shockingly explicit what character in Ghost Sonata, now pushed to even Ibsen only 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-goors 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 Villa2e Voice: Best of 2002 All For The Best Oscar winner for Best Animated Film, Spirited Away, and the hypnotic Inuit saga The Fast By Jessica Winter Runner, all of which made the poll's top 20. Critics' awards generally function as a pleasant Appropriate for a trove of movies that slipped reiteration of the yea r's conventional wisdom , under the radar, silence is often golden. The and the annual Village Voice Critics Poll counts title of Gyorgy Palfi 's Hungarian entry Hukkle as no exception; after all, its latest chart-topper, is an onomatopoetic rendering of a codger's Far From Heaven, was arguably the best­ hiccups-which is on ly fitting, given that reviewed movie of 2002. scarcely an actual word is spoken in the film . Both Takeshi Kitano's Dolls, wh ich finds the But the Voice panel, numbering 78 at last Japanese director ranging ever further from his count and loosely drawn from North America's blood-splattered mayhem of yore , and Pa rk Ki­ alternati ve press, is by definition a bit quirkier yong's Camel(s) , from South Korea , are reticent than your average critics' circle. Significantly, studies of love or lu st going nowhere at its own they also evince great enth usiasm for festival­ bittersweet pace. hopping. Anyone fortunate enough to have access to the international film-fest circu it can Sorrow triggers many of the series' narratives: fleetingly grasp a utopian notion of a truly global Jean-Luc Godard's sometimes infuriating, often cinema: one unfettered by market exigencies, transcendent In Praise of Love is chiefly a work language or cu ltural barriers and even traditional of romantic and ideological mourning. Indeed, expectations of what a movie is supposed to Godard posits the two as inextricably linked.