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of note
celebrates the arts of our diasporas. It is a space where art meets activism, empowerment, and social responsibility.
Founder
Editorial Director
Grace Aneiza Ali
Executive Editor
Art & Film Editor
Sandrine Colard
Photography Editor
Julien De Bock
Film Contributor
Shahnaz Habib
Book & Music Editor
Clarence Haynes
Dance Editor
M. Soledad Sklate
www.ofnotemagazine.org
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notable
Indian Women in Film  There's a new cinema movement at work - one where Indian women are becoming increasingly visible in roles that are multi-dimensional and that challenge cultural stereotypes.
Western cinema is often charged with a lack of serious attention of and value for black and brown women from developing nations - mirroring on film the very invisibility and marginalization that these women confront and challenge in their daily lives.
Within recent years, however, a number of serious dramatic films that place Indian women at the center - as subject and not object - have reached American audiences. Cinematic feasts like Water (2005), The Namesake (2006), Ramchand Pakistani (2007), Before the Rains (2007), and most recently Brick Lane (2008) position actresses from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and India in leading roles where the women they portray are the not vehicles for someone else's narrative but instead own and tell their own stories.
In Brick Lane, Bangladeshi actress Tannishtha Chatterjee portrays a woman that on the surface may seem unoriginal at best and archetypal at worst - Nazreen, the dutiful and modest Indian house wife and mother. But Chatterjee is remarkable in her craft of slowly peeling away the layers of this woman's small world to reveal a spirit that is anything but humble. In doing so, Chatterjee demonstrates that rare talent where silence and stillness convey what words dare not. And so Brick Lane is an ode to both women: the actor and the acted.
Indian actresses like Chatterjee are challenging not just the politics of how women of color in the diaspora are treated and represented in film, but at the core, they are also turning the tides on a cinematic culture of invisibility.
Image: Tannishtha Chatterjee as Nazreen in Brick Lane
Grace Aneiza Ali
grace.ali@of note magazine.org
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Editorial Note
Thank you all for your continued readership and your support for of note's mission. of note will be on vacation next week and will return to celebrate the arts of the diaspora on a bi-weekly basis for the rest of the summer.
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India
Structure and Mystic Space
On view from Friday, June 27 to Saturday, July 5
Opening reception: Thursday, June 26 @ 6 pm
 Tamarind Arts Council of New York, in collaboration with Time and Space Gallery of Bangalore in India presents Structure and Mystic Space, an exhibition showcasing paintings and sculptures from numerous contemporary Indian artists. The works emanate the dynamic cosmos of Time and Space and other mystical fundamentals such as Heaven and Earth, Life and Death, and Mother Nature. Participating Artists: Dhiraj Choudhury, S. Gopinath, Vishal Joshi, Bhavani Katoch, Somenath Maity, M. S. Murthy, K. S. Nagure, Balan Nambiar, Akkitham Narayanan, Siraj Saxena, Amitabh Sengupta, and Sidharth. Image: Vishal JoshiTamarindArt Gallery142 E. 39th Street New York, N.Y. 10016 |
China
Paul Chan: The 7 Lights
On view through Sunday, June 29
 This exhibition marks the American premiere of Paul Chan's complete series "The 7 Lights," offering a unique occasion to explore the practice of a New York-based artist whose work engages such fundamental themes as politics, poetry, war, death, and desire. Begun in 2005, Chan's ambitious cycle combines obsolete computer technology with hypnotic imagery to create a series of enigmatic encounters with light and darkness. Image: 6th Light, 2007, Digital video projection
New Museum
235 Bowery
Manhattan, NY 10002
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Rashaad Newsome: Shade Compositions
On view through July 26
 Have pop culture and globalization co-opted the wonderfully expressive gestures of the black America female? This is the question that Rashaad Newsome explores in video and photography in Shade Compositions. "The language of the body has a vocabulary all its own," says Newsome. "Gestural language is often viewed as a cultural signifier, and I am interested in how it is formed, how it evolves as well as how it is appropriated across regional and class boundaries." Location One 26 Greene Street between Canal & Grand Manhattan, NY, 10013 |
India
Kenya
Brendan Fernandes
Currently on view
 The work of Brendan Fernandes approaches the issue of culture as something endlessly deferred, with roots that may be pulled but never unearthed. The artist , whose family is Indian from the former Portuguese colony of Goa, grew up in Kenya then Canada before moving to New York and has never visited India. Written within his own history are the migrations of both colonial and post-colonial eras, begging the question of whether cultural authenticity is ever possible within the flux of history. In Fernandes' work, artifacts of consumer culture take on the forms and meanings of a culture that is typically exoticized by the west. In this way, the artist reproduces how culture is actively transformed and reinterpreted. Image: © Brendan Fernandes 2007
Momenta Art359 Bedford Avenue Brooklyn, NY 11211 |
Sri Lanka
The Fires Within: Sri Lanka at War
Asia Society Online Exhibition
 Photojournalist Ron
Haviv visited Sri Lanka in late 2007 to document the humanitarian costs
of the civil war. The Fires Within: Sri Lanka at War is his account of
the impact of a quarter-century of conflict. Sri Lanka has known civil war for 25 of its 60 years of independence. The conflict has taken a tremendous toll on ordinary Sri Lankans: over 65,000 deaths, hundreds of thousands displaced, and rising military spending and economic disruption. Image: A Sri Lankan girl, part of a group fleeing a government offensive against the LTTE, finds shelter at a destroyed mosque in Nanathan, Sri Lanka, Sept, 2007. (Ron Haviv/VII)
Asia Society www.asiasociety.org |
India
The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie
Friday, June 27 @ 7 pm
 Salman Rushdie's new novel, The Enchantress of Florence, is the story of a woman who attempts to command her own destiny in a man's world. It brings together two cities that barely know each other-the hedonistic Mughal capital, in which the brilliant emperor Akbar the Great wrestles daily with questions of belief, desire, and the treachery of his sons, and the equally sensual city of Florence, where Niccolò Machiavelli takes a starring role. With storytelling that mixes political intrigue and high drama, romance and magic, Jeffrey Eugenides and Salman Rushdie discuss the ways in which the novel is a reflection on war and politics, gender and society, fantasy and rumor, individuality and public life, and how the brutal past still influences our present world. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe
NYPL's Humanities and Social Sciences LibraryFifth Avenue and 42nd Street New York, NY 10018 |
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Poets in the Galleries
Thomas Sayers Ellis Responds to "This Case of Conscience:" Spiritual Flushing and the Remonstrance
Sunday, June 29 @ 5 pm
 This spring, the Queens Museum of Art announces its second season of Poets in the Galleries, the interdisciplinary poetry series that utilizes the Museum's exhibition space as an invigorating site of exploration, interactive readings and discussion. Thomas Sayers Ellis will conduct a lively presentation in response to the Museum's current exhibition: This Case of Conscience: Spiritual Flushing and the Remonstrance. Ellis is the author of the poetry collection The Maverick Room, the chapbooks The Good Junk and The Genuine Negro Hero, and the chaplet Song On. A contributing editor for Callaloo and Poets & Writers, he teaches in Lesley University's Low-Residency M.F.A. Creative Writing Program and is an assistant professor of creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College. Queens Museum of ArtNew York City Building Flushing Meadows Corona Park Queens, NY 11368 |
Shade Compositions
Tuesday, June 24 @ 7 pm
 In conjunction with Rashaad Newsomes's exhibition Shade Compositions (see ART section), four black women will perform a choreographed action piece, derived from dismissive gestures often characterized as "ghetto." Newsome will utilize a hacked Nintendo Wii game controller to create a music and video composition in real-time, recording, looping, composing and editing both audio and video simultaneously to the action of the performers Location One 26 Greene Street between Canal & Grand Manhattan, NY 10013 |
Nicholas Leichter: Spanish Wells & Rite of Spring
Wednesday, June 25 to Saturday, June 28 @ 7:30 pm
Saturday, June 28 to Sunday, June 29 @ 2 pm
In the world premiere Spanish Wells, sections of Claude Debussy's La Mer intercut with songs by Amy Winehouse, making a Creole with a slightly '60s vibe, mixing up genres in music and dance, along with sea themes, ideas of death and afterlife, and a touch of the subversive.
Leichter's Rite of Spring, which the New York Times called "rebellious and optimistic," complements the world premiere.
Dance Theater Workshop
219 W 19th Street
New York, NY, 10011
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Cuba
Cubaila by Oyu Oro - Afro-Cuban Folklore Experimental Dance Ensemble
Sunday, June 29 @ 6:30 pm
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Latin America
Rhythms of Latino America
Friday, June 27 to Saturday, June 28 @ 8 pm
Sunday, June 29 @ 4 pm
 The Mestizo Dance Company with its Grupo Musical presents the music and dance of 12 Latin American countries: Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Puerto Rico, Republica Dominicana, and Venezuela. |
mixed messages
The Films of Bahman Ghobadi
Ghobadi questions borders. Since the making of his first film "Life in Fog" in 1995, this Kurdish-Iranian director has consistently created a subtle cinema that challenges the arbitrariness of barbed wire fences that divide warring countries and the lines that separate adulthood and childhood.
Though he carries the weight of a complicated heritage and layers of invisible histories, Ghobadi's films are not polemical. In his 2004 film "Turtles Can Fly," graceful realism teases out humor and poetry in the life of a Kurdish refugee village on the Iraq/Iran border days before the US attack of Iraq.
The protagonist of "Turtles Can Fly," is a street-smart thirteen-year-old who goes by the nickname "Satellite." He bands together the village children to collect landmines which are then exchanged for TV satellites or weapons. He translates the CNN news for his elders, avoids the "haram" channels, and deciphers George Bush's war cries.
But Satellite's take-it-or-leave-it bravado deserts him when he comes across Agrin, whose expressive eyes, even under the rigorous scrutiny of close-up shots, communicate with mournful eloquence. If the young Agrin is haunted by the past, her clairvoyant brother Henkov is haunted by the future. The sibling duo take care of a blind three-year old and Agrin's anger towards the child soon becomes the keystone of a story where childhoods are transformed by violence and poverty.
The child actors portray the different faces of marred childhood : Agrin's ruthlessness, her brother's brooding silence, and the broken-English exuberance of Satellite with a clarity that credits Gobadi's empathetic yet unsentimental vision.
Shahnaz Habib
shahnaz.habib@of note magazine.org
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Germany
Turkey
The Edge of Heaven
Playing through Tuesday, June 24
 The Edge of Heaven spans the uneasy relationship between two cultures, Germany and Turkey. German born and educated, of Turkish descent, the filmmaker Fatih Akin fashions a complex story with six protagonists whose lives become inextricably linked. It's a riveting story of intergenerational conflict between grown children and their parents, the clash of values between East and West, and the edgy relationship between conventional and gay sexuality. Akin throws into the mix his special knowledge of how Europe's borders are disappearing, bringing people together in random, dangerous, exciting and sometimes fatal ways. Film Forum 209 W Houston St New York, NY 10014 |
Congo
Africa
Stories of Freedom and Rebellion:
Fangafrika: The Voice of the Voiceless & On the Rumba River
Tuesday, June 24 @ 4: 30 pm & 6 pm
 On the Rumba River @ 4:30 pmOn the Rumba River is a musical tribute to the Congolese people, who despite desperate poverty, a history of oppression, and an ongoing civil war that has killed nearly 4 million people, continue to be sustained by music.
Fangafrika: The Voice of the Voiceless @ 6 pm Hip Hop may have been born in the Bronx, but it is growing up in Africa. Fangafrika is a stylized look at the festival in Ouaga, Burkina Fasso, where Africa's best and brightest rappers gather using hip hop to tackle the serious issues facing Africans everywhere. The film is a who's who in African hip hop, from veterans like Pee Froiss, Daara J and PBS to up-and-coming hot acts. All are creating a dynamic new African identity for the mutable genre called hip hop. |
Indonesia
Of Love and Eggs
Wednesday, June 25 @ 7 pm
 The ever-surprising Garin Nugroho has produced a movie about a working class community in Jakarta during the Lebaran Holiday. Beneath its benign and gently comic surface, this is a film about the place of Islam in the lives and minds of believers. The narrative, involving three young children, was shot in a studio and involves eggs, a prayer rug, a mosque's cupola, and the universal desire for love and belonging. Asia Society 725 Park Avenue @ 70th Street Manhattan, NY 10021 |
India
Men of Burden - Pedaling Towards a Horizon
Wednesday, June 25 @ 7 pm
 Set in the city of Pondicherry, a Union Territory in South East India, the documentary uncovers the story of disappearing cycle rickshaw drivers living in abject poverty. The film explores some of the ethical dimensions of man pulling man against the background of increasingly menacing effects of motorized transport and pollution. While India's big cities are racing towards globalization and technology, these men, against all odds, remain appreciative of their modest lives by believing in the power of now. Portraying the immediacy and desolation of the situation the film highlights a catalytic change revolutionizing India's economic and social future from the grass roots level. Juxtaposing the way of life of these men with definitive solutions, the film answers the question of how these changes can trickle down to the roots of India's soil. Helen Mills Theater137-139 West 26th Street New York City, 10001 |
Iran
Iraq
The Films of Bahman Ghobadi
On screen from Friday, June 27 to Monday, July 7
 Bahman Ghobadi's dramatic and documentary films explore the resilience and culture of the Kurdish people who live in the border areas of Iran and Iraq. Filled with scenes of beautiful yet extreme and harsh landscapes, the films tell poetic stories of people facing life and hardship with courage and joy. Gobadi was born in 1969 in Baneh, a city near the Iran-Iraq border in the province of Iranian Kurdistan. Image: Marooned in Iraq. 2003. Museum of Modern Art11 West 53 Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues New York, NY 10019 |
Phillipines
Foster Child
Saturday, June 28 @ 4:30 pm & 9:15 pm
 An observational camera style and natural performances ground this portrait of a family in the slums of Manila. Partly shot in real time, the film chronicles the last day a foster mother has with the child she raised before he is taken by his adoptive American family. Exquisitely blurring the line between documentary and fiction, the authenticity of the film is startling, right up to its emotionally powerful finale. BAMPeter Jay Sharp Building 30 Lafayette Avenue Brooklyn, NY 11217 |
5th Annual Curacao African Diaspora Film Festival
Tuesday, June 24 to Tuesday, July 1
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Brazil
Gilberto Gil
Tuesday, June 24 @ 8 pm
 Gilberto Gil carries out a fundamental role in the constant modernization process of Brazilian popular music. Partaking of this scene for 43 years, he has developed one of the most relevant and renown careers as a singer, composer, and guitar-player in this field. Rhythms from the northeast of Brazil like the baião, apart from samba and bossa-nova were fundamental to Gil. Using them as a starting point, Gil forged his own music to which he incorporated rock, reggae, funk and rhythms from Bahia such as afoxé. Gil has tackled a wide variety of issues in his lyrics, pertinent to modern reality: from social inequality to the racial question, from African to Oriental culture, from science to religion, among others. Nokia Theatre 1515 Broadway @ W44th Street Manhattan, NY 10036 |
Mali
Salif Keita
Tuesday, June 24 @ 8 pm
 Salif Keita is an internationally recognized afro-pop singer-songwriter from Mali. He is unique not only because of his reputation as the Golden Voice of Africa, but because he is an albino and a direct descendant of the founder of the Mali Empire, Sundiata Keita. His music combines traditional West African music styles with influences from both Europe and the Americas, while maintaining an overall Islamic style. B.B. King Blues Club & Grill 237 West 42 St. Manhattan, NY 10036 |
Senegal
Orchestra Baobab
Wednesday, June 24 & Thursday, June 26
 Senegal's Orchestra Baobab has become one of the greatest world music bands, with influence extending far beyond national boundaries. Fusing Afro-Cuban rhythms and Portuguese Creole melodies with Congolese rumba, high-life, and a whole gamut of local styles, they helped turn the capital Dakar into one of the world's most vibrant musical cities. With acclaimed albums produced by Youssou N'Dour, including cameos by N'Dour and the great Buena Vista crooner Ibrahim Ferrer, Orchestra Baobab has cemented their renown as pan-African musical masters. Wednesday, June 25 @ 7 pm River to River Festival, Rockefeller Park (North of Liberty St., west of River Terrace) Thursday, June 26 @ 12 pm at BAM |
Mali
Senegal
Nigeria
Vieux Farka Toure , Fallou Dieng, Kaleta & Zozo Afrobeat
Saturday, June 28 @ 3 pm
 West Africa shines in this dynamic line-up featuring superstars from Mali, Senegal and Nigeria. Malian musician Vieux Farka Touré exudes the blues with a global perspective. Fallou Dieng is the elder statesman of a new generation of Senegalese artists emerging from the long shadows and rich legacy left by the country's most famous son, Youssou N'Dour. A thirteen piece ensemble from New York City, Zozo Afrobeat feature musicians from Nigeria and around the world, and is led by African music luminary Kaleta. Central Park SummerStage Rumsey Playfield East Side: 69th Street and 5th Avenue West Side: 72nd Street and Central Park West |
JVC Jazz Festival New York
On stage through Saturday, June 28
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Downtown Urban Theater Festival
On stage through Sunday, June 29
 The Downtown Urban Theater Festival is back for a much-anticipated sixth season at the legendary Cherry Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village.
This year's festival features 12 cutting-edge productions from a vibrant, diverse collection of new and emerging playwrights on topics ranging from songstress Billie Holiday to the 1985 fire on Osage Avenue in Philadelphia and the death of a gay Mormon to women soldiers in Iraq.
Cherry Lane Theatre
38 Commerce Street
Manhattan, NY 10014
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About Us
For
many of us, the arts are central and inspirational to our life, work,
and activism. As people of color, we are making great strides in terms
of our representation on the stage, yet we are not equally represented
in the audience. Even when it is work celebrating our histories,
experiences, and cultures - we are often scantily present in the
theaters, auditoriums, galleries, etc.
Out of that absence, of note was
created. Its mission is to increase our access
to and participation in the arts that celebrate people of color. The artistic works presented by of note demonstrate a commitment to global citizenship and social change.
Grace Aneiza ali
grace.ali@ofnotemagazine.org
Sandrine Colard
sandrine.colard@ofnotemagazine.org
Julien De Bock
julien.debock@ofnotemagazine.org
Shahnaz Habib
shahnaz.habib@ofnotemagazine.org
Clarence Haynes
clarence.haynes@ofnotemagazine.org
M. Soledad Sklate
soledad.sklate@ofnotemagazine.org
www.ofnotemagazine.org
© of note 2008. All Rights Reserved.
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