Established 1961 13 Lifestyle Features Wednesday, October 7, 2020 ranian Marjane Satrapi is famous for like her with red lips and manes of jet who described herself as a “big mouth And before she goes herself, Satrapi her films and graphic novels, but it is black hair. “I really like honest, fero- who knows how to defend herself”. said she wants to have made eight Iher painting which keeps her sane, cious women,” said Satrapi, 50, who films, five exhibitions and four books. I she told AFP. The artist who was nomi- has always worn her feminism on her ‘Hypocritical moralizing’ have a plan for the next 30 years,” she nated for an Oscar for “Persepolis”, sleeve. Their sharp contrasts also echo But she also hates what she calls a joked. As for her homeland, Satrapi said based on her graphic novel on post-rev- the drawings in her bestselling graphic new hypocritical and moralizing strain she no longer “feels credible” in com- olution Iran, started out as a painter. novels. of feminism, “people who are looking menting on it. She misses terribly the And that is what she always returns to for a new kind of religion”, Satrapi warmth of “its hospitality, the Elburz after writing and shooting films like ‘Women are much prettier’ claimed. “This moralizing side really mountains and Farsi jokes... and its “Chicken with Plums” and last year’s “I like figurative painting the most. pisses me off. I don’t want to be called poetry, the purest form of expression. biopic of Marie Curie, “Radioactive”. Like the Old Masters, I would like to fill Iranian Marjane Satrapi a killer for eating a chicken,” she “We are the only people who, when we “Painting is about going back to the ori- the public need for beauty.” Despite added, saying she was against peo- want to be really understood, quote gin of what I liked doing. And my mental Covid-19, and the risk of another lock- who are much prettier,” she declared. ple’s lives being forced into “formats” . Saadi, Hafez and Omar Khayyam. “A health depends on it,” she said in her down, she is showing 16 of her paint- Despite her own long history of out- If “secularism becomes a religion as people whose mausoleums for its poets Paris studio with its view across the ings in the Francoise Livinec gallery in spokenness, Satrapi insisted that she is intolerant as extremist religion, then it’s are fuller than its mosques cannot be rooftops to Montmartre’s Sacre Coeur. Paris next month. None of them features “against all kinds of radicalism where abject,” she argued. For Satrapi bad,” she said. — AFP In fact Satrapi has become so men because according to Satrapi, men they want to burn everything down. humour is essential and a key “expres- French-she hasn’t been back to Tehran are just too damn “ugly” to paint. “All “Feminism is all about doing. If I show sion of human intelligence. Life is about in two decades-that she has rather tak- that badly shaved skin. The male pea- that I can do something too, even better losing everything. You die like a worm en to Parisians’ famous foul humor. Her cock may be more beautiful than the than a man, I have won the fight and I or a cat-if we can’t laugh about all that, giant canvases feature striking women female, but with humans it’s the women also set an example,” said the writer, we are beyond stupid.” he Tony-nominated African- American actor Thomas TJefferson Byrd, who appeared in numerous Spike Lee movies, was found shot dead in the southern US city of Atlanta at the weekend, sparking an outpouring of grief and praise for his work. Police found the 70-year-old dead in the southwest of the Georgia state capital on Saturday, with several gunshot wounds to the back, a spokesman In this file photo dancers get ready prior to the opening of the annual gala at the Opera Garnier in Paris. — AFP photos told AFP. An emergency medical team rushed to the scene and con- firmed he was dead upon their arrival. An investigation has been launched, but police have made no arrests so far. An intense and expe- rienced stage actor, Byrd made his silver screen breakthrough late in life, at the age of 45, when he appeared in Lee’s movie “Clockers.” he Paris Opera is looking at banning ous issues, so they know they will be “blackface” in its ballets and operas heard and taken seriously,” he added. Tafter nearly a quarter of its staff Neef said that “as cultural organizations called for a major shake-up of how it we need to be part of that change of soci- deals with race. The issue of racism and ety, respond to it and even anticipate it. diversity has been seen simmering since ‘You can’t be immobile’ the choreographer Benjamin Millepied of “For me it is not about politics-if you “Black Swan” fame denounced the bal- want to stay part of society, you can’t be let’s “insidious racism” after taking the immobile and never change anything reins in 2015. He said he had been told about yourself.” Paris Opera told AFP that that “one does not put a person of color “the tights we buy will soon be more in the corps de ballet because they would nuanced” but said that its workshops be a distraction”. “We have to get rid of have been tinting pointes shoes to the this racist idea,” Millepied said soon after color of the dancers’ skin for years. taking over, only to resign a year later. Blackface in opera and ballets has large- The institution’s new director ly been abandoned by most major com- Alexander Neef has asked outside In this file photo dancers get ready prior to the opening of the annual gala at the Opera Garnier panies in the West. But the practice still experts to examine the “ballet blanc”, in Paris. goes on in Russia, with Misty Copeland, some traditional 19th-century ballets the first ever “principal dancer” at the In this file photo taken on June 21, where all the female dancers wear ‘N’ word ed, a practice already widespread else- American Ballet Theater, condemning the 2014 US actor Thomas Jefferson Byrd white dresses or tutus, as well as a raft But a manifesto signed by 400 of the where. Bolshoi in Moscow last year for staging a attends the “Spike Lee...Ya Dig!” of other race-related issues. French Paris Opera’s staff said the “N” word is Five black and mixed race dancers at blackface production. It hit back by dis- career retrospective and celebration ombudswoman Constance Riviere and still used in speech at the opera. The the ballet posed together on Instagram in missing her “absurd declarations”. The during the 2014 American Black Film historian Pap Ndiaye will deliver their word is also used for a space inside the June over the hashtag #blackdancers- Decolonize the Arts group-which is push- Festival at Metropolitan Pavilion in report in December. Millepied Opera Garnier still known as the “carre matter. Neef-who has spent the last 12 ing for racial harassment to be made ille- New York City. — AFP photos renamed “la danse des negrillons” des negresses” (the Quadrangle of the years in charge of the Canadian Opera gal-told AFP that they welcomed the (“The Dance of the Little Negroes”) in Negresses), even though it had been offi- Company-hailed the “courage” of staff for opera’s rethink. “Anti-racist codes of con- Whether he was playing the boss the ballet “La Bayadere” as “The cially renamed as the “carre des cari- speaking out and their “very thoughtful” duct or changing titles is not about cen- in “Clockers,” or the father in “Get on Dance of the Children” while he was in atides”. As well as an outright ban on criticisms. “Even before they approached sorship, we are in living in a new era,” the Bus,” his talent and physical charge of the opera’s ballet company, blackface, staff called for an end to “the me, we had already started thinking said its head Francoise Verges. — AFP presence made him stand out in and forbade dancers at its school from silence that surrounds” the race issue. about doing a mission,” he told AFP. “We Lee’s films and caught the attention blacking up for it. Tights and pointes shoes “should corre- want to create a culture internally so that of other directors. But he returned spondent to a dancer’s color”, they insist- people come forward to talk about seri- to work with Lee on several other projects, including a 2017-2019 series based on Lee’s own movie “She’s Gotta Have It.” and the 2015 film “Chi-Raq.” “Tom is my guy,” Lee said on his Instagram account. “I’m so sad.” “Byrd was brave, funny, creative, country, smooth, expres- n exceedingly rare 102-carat haven assets like diamonds, property sive and a joy to be around,” said flawless white diamond sold for and gold”. Only seven other white dia- actor Wendell Pierce, who appeared A$15.7 million at an online auction monds bigger than 100 carats and of with him in “Get on the Bus.” “What in Hong Kong on Monday evening. the same quality have ever gone under a fine actor,” said Oscar-winner Described as “completely flawless” by the hammer. Viola Davis on Twitter. “Loved work- auctioneer Sotheby’s, the 102.39-carat The stone was sold without a reserve ing with you Byrd...So sad your life stone went to an unnamed telephone price, meaning the diamond went to the ended this way.”— AFP In this file photo Jimmy Page, guitarist and Led Zeppelin founder, speaks during a media bidder for HK$122 million in an auction highest bidder and did not need to meet preview for an exhibit called “Play It Loud: Instruments of Rock and Roll” at the held online because of the coronavirus a minimum threshold, the first time in Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.