June is Busting Out All Over! This month:
** Castro’s Spies: Director Gary Lennon phones in from Dublin to talk about his documentary depicting the heroic undercover Cubans infiltrating Miami, known as the Cuban Five.
** Decolonizing Museums: A review of the new book by Shimrit Lee on the service of museums to imperialism
** Lost People, Places and Spaces: Dennis Broe on the international crime novel writing festival in Lyons
and more!!
View online here: June 2022 Arts Express Magazine
This month in the Arts Express Magazine:
** Veteran Actor Jim Broadbent on playing a true-life working class hero in The Duke
** Artist Tom Keough shares scenes from his graphic bio about the Irish revolutionary, James Connolly
** Dennis Broe on the constructed media representations of Zelensky in “Mr. Zelensky Goes to Washington”
and more!
View online here: May 2022 Arts Express Magazine
Get your free subscription to the Arts Express Magazine, the companion magazine to Arts Express Radio, by sending an email with the word “subscribe” in the subject line to: artsexpresslist@gmail.com
John “Bubbles” Sublett, who taught Fred Astaire how to tap, and played Sportin’ Life in Porgy and Bess, was a master of rhythm tap. He appears in the clip above in the 1937 film, Varsity Show, with his long time partner Ford “Buck” Washington.
Thanks to YouTuber AndresDCE
One more lesson in obsequiousness from How to Succeed In Business Without Really Trying. The late Robert Morse rings every bit of humor from the song. The clever lyrics and music are by Frank Loesser.
Thanks to YouTuber Movieclips
As a youngster I didn’t much like Laurel and Hardy, but viewing this short recently, I couldn’t help laugh at their absolutely perfect timing. I’m assuming that part of the way it comes across on this film is due to the director, Charles Rogers.
Thanks to YouTuber Culture & Education
** Veteran Danish Director Bille August discusses his new film, The Pact, and Ingmar Bergman
**An Arts Express exclusive excerpt from the re-release of the Ballad of An American: the Autobiography of Earl Robinson, the composer of “Joe Hill,” “The House I Live In,” and “Ballad for Americans”
**Our April Fools “Dear Ethicist”–advice for the morally confused
**The Freebie Zone: The best of the free ‘net
and more!
Listen to Arts Express Radio Saturdays 6AM ET on WBAI.org and WBAI 99.5 FM NYC
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Monday morning, Allison Young singing at least as well as anybody else is ever going to sing that E.Y. Harburg-Harold Arlen classic that was almost cut out of the movie.
More at Allison Young
Imagine a world where meat is produced from animal cells rather than a slaughter house. Dr. Uma Valeti, the co-founder and CEO of Upside Foods claims such a world is now within reach. A new film documentary, Meat the Future—that’s meat spelled M-E-A-T–follows Dr. Valeti over a five-year period as he attempts to make his dream a reality. From the world’s first cell-based meatball which cost $18,000 per pound to the establishment of a growing industry, Meat the Future presents a different kind of meat-eating future. I was happy to have as my guest on Arts Express, Meat the Future’s director, Liz Marshall.
Click on the triangle above to hear my interview with director Liz Marshall, as broadcast today on the Arts Express radio program on WBAI FM NY and Pacifica affiliates across the nation.
In 2002 a Mauritanian engineer named Mohamedou Slahi was bundled onto a military transport plane and imprisoned by the US at Guantanamo for 14 years enduring years of physical and psychological torture. He wrote a book about it while he was in there that eventually got made into a film called The Mauritanian. But after the film’s release, journalist John Goetz found himself enlisted by Slahi on an obsessive mission that Goetz could never have predicted. Goetz documents his journey with Slahi in a new film called Guantanamo Diary Revisited. I was very happy to speak with Goetz about his new film.
Click on the triangle or mp3 link above to hear the interview with John Goetz as broadcast today on the Arts Express radio program on WBAI FM NYC and Pacifica stations across the nation.
Two of the best films I’ve seen about teachers were foreign documentaries about the teachers of younger children. The first is a French film called To Be and To Have, released about two decades ago, about a rural teacher who taught in a kind of one room school house. But my new favorite teaching film is a recently released German documentary titled Mr. Bachmann and His Class. The Mr. Bachmann of the title is a 6th grade teacher who teaches new immigrants to Germany, and he is decidedly unorthodox.
Click on the grey triangle or mp3 link above to hear my review as broadcast today on the Arts Express radio program on WBAI-FM NYC and Pacifica affiliates across the nation.
Get your free subscription to the Arts Express Magazine, the companion magazine to Arts Express Radio, by sending an email with the word “subscribe” in the subject line to:
This month in the Arts Express Magazine:
** The Unforgivable: Director Nora Fingscheidt on the Sandra Bullock film about eviction and life after incarceration
** Caitlin Johnstone’s Three Poems for Today: “Sources Say,” “To-do List” and “Crazy”
** Red Book Day Art--International celebrations of Left books and the anniversary of the Communist Manifesto.
** War Is A Racket
**The Freebie Zone: The best of the free ‘net
and more!
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Amiri Baraka was an internationally known poet, playwright, political activist and theorist. But as prolific and influential as he was, the rest of his family, including his wife Amina and children Ras and Middy, are just as special. A recent documentary called Why is We Americans provides a portrait of the Baraka family and how they helped shape modern Newark, NJ, the nation, politics, arts and subsequent generations. I was happy to talk with the directors of the film, Why is We Americans, Udi Aloni and Ayanna Morris, and also one of the subjects of Why is We Americans, Amiri Baraka Jr, known as Middy.
Click on the grey triangle or MP3 link above to hear the interview as broadcast recently on Pacifica affiliates across the nation.
When I was a child, my father took me to a Shangri-la. A beautiful high-ceiling building filled with people sitting at tables; the walls were made up of scores of little windowed cabinets filled with slices of lemon meringue pie, or coconut crème pie, or bean soup or dozens of other treats. And if you put your nickels into the magic slot, the window popped open and it all could be yours. Of course, I’m talking about the Automat. I was happy to speak with Lisa Hurwitz who has made a nostalgia-filled film documentary called The Automat.
Click on the gray triangle or mp3 link above to hear the discussion of The Automat with director Lisa Hurwitz, as broadcast today on WBAI FM NYC and Pacifica affiliates across the nation.
Brava Theater cultural center
Mission District
San Francisco, California
Have you ever had this experience, as I have had many times? I’m at a friend’s house and inevitably someone asks what’s new, and what have you been working on, and though I may have a project that I’ve been working on, I suddenly become all muckle-mouthed and it just becomes a trail of, “Well, it’s kinda hard to explain…”
To the rescue: a book that I thought I would hate, but turned out to be a really interesting and useful book…
Click on the triangle or mp3 link above to hear the rest of the story as broadcast today on WBAI FM NYC and Pacifica stations across the nation.
Woody Guthrie’s song version of John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath as sung by Brooklyn’s favorite cowboy, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. Phil Ochs fans might recognize the melody as the same that Phil used for his own song “Joe Hill,” but Phil was just following tradition since Woody had already stolen the tune from an even earlier song called “John Hardy.”
Thanks to YouTuber mrgildons
If you’re not totally glued to your computer email 24/7 you may have noticed that the US Postal Service mail delivery has been getting more and more chaotic and sporadic over the last few decades. Filmmaker Jay Galione has come out with a documentary film that helps to unravel the labor battleground that is the US Postal Service in a deeply personal film, The Great Postal Heist. I was happy to interview Jay for Arts Express radio.
Click on the triangle or mp3 link above to hear the interview as broadcast today on WBAI FM NYC and Pacifica stations across the nation.
The great Sidney Poitier died this month.
Here he is in one of his most masterful performances as Walter Lee Younger in Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun.
The play was originally directed on Broadway by Lloyd Richards, the first Black director on the Broadway stage. In their lean days as struggling actors, Richards and Poitier would pool their money to buy and split a hot dog. They promised each other that if one got an opportunity, they’d bring the other along. When Poitier got Hansberry’s script, he insisted that Lloyd direct the play. Lloyd worked intensely with Hansberry to shape the play and then cast and directed the play perfectly. The stage cast, many of whom were also in the film– and who you can see in this clip from the film–included Ruby Dee, Diana Sands, Claudia McNeil, and John Fiedler.
Thanks to YouTuber The aesthetic of the Image: [world] cinema clips
There’s a long history of actors and variety performers who have had their first taste of theater with a basement childhood puppet stage. But actor Robert Brock of Lancaster PA was determined to make good on his childhood dream of building a marionette theater for the public and living in an apartment upstairs. Now in a new documentary, director Alexander Monelli brings to life the joys and woes of Robert’s single-minded adult pursuit of his childhood dream in Monelli’s new film Marionette Land.
Click on the triangle or mp3 link above to hear the interview with Alexander Monelli, as broadcast yesterday on WBAI FM NYC and Pacifica stations across the nation.
Daniel Radcliffe in a non-Harry Potter-ish role, insists on the unity of us all, as his corporate brethren in How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying agree. Robert Morse and Matthew Broderick who both played the same role, introduce the high-spirited number at the Tony Awards.
Who knew that Radcliffe was such a great song-and-dance man?
Thanks to YouTuber The xNYr
In the early nineteen sixties, a hidebound Catholic Church attempted to modernize with a movement known as Vatican 2. But some Church people, nuns and priests, wanted changes that were a bridge too far for Vatican 2. In Los Angeles, the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary went toe to toe with the church hierarchy, involving themselves in anti-war and social justice movements. I was happy to speak with Pedro Kos, the director of a new film documentary called Rebel Hearts about those women of the Immaculate Heart who insisted on staying true to their consciences.
Click on the triangle or mp3 link above to hear the interview with Pedro Kos as broadcast today on WBAI FM NYC and Pacifica stations across the nation.
Monday morning, some great photos of the original Broadway cast of West Side Story set to a breakneck speed medley of the immortal Leonard Bernstein score.
Thanks to YouTuber johntlew
In 2016, Californians voted “Yes” on proposition 64 which made cannabis legal for recreational purposes. But perhaps counter-intuitively, the consequences of that act were decidedly mixed and complex. A new documentary, Lady Buds, focuses on a group of six cannabis growers, mostly women, who had to wrestle with the many unforeseen circumstances that came along with pot legalization. I was happy to be speaking with the director of Lady Buds, Chris J Russo.
Click the triangle or mp3 link above to hear my interview with Chris Russo, as broadcast today on Arts Express on WBAI FM NYC, and Pacifica stations across the country.
