In a book-filled room—before a goblin’s cap and image of a cat—the Friday Reading Group had been talking Shakespeare.
Professor Josh Cohen had been speaking of Titus Andronicus with Debra San and Lin Haire-Sargeant and Carol McCarthy and Louise Myers and Athans Boulukos and Norrie Epstein and Robert Gerst, readers all, professors all…
Made a movie? A film festival nearby or far might be the right place to show it. They are numerous, many are wonderful, and most are open to submissions.
Professor Chico Colvard curates the Independent Film Festival Boston. FilmFreeway lists many others. This one waives submission fees for Mass Art student documentary filmmakers.
The film premiers at the Museum of Modern Art’s Docs Fortnight 2018. ArtsDaily.org describes Docs 2018 as the Musuem of Modern Art’s
“17th annual showcase of outstanding and innovative nonfiction film from around the world. This year’s festival, which runs February 15–26, 2018, includes an international selection of more than 20 documentary features and an extensive program of short films, with filmmakers and artists present for discussions following many of the films. These screenings represent the North American, US, or New York premiere of nearly every film featured in the festival—along with the world premieres of Susanna Styron’s Out of My Head (2017), Jeffrey Perkins’s George (2017), Chico Colvard’s Black Memorabilia (2017), Jules Rosskam’s Paternal Rites (2017), Michelle Memran’s The Rest I Make Up (2017), Amy Jenkins’s Instructions on Parting (2018), and more. Doc Fortnight 2018 is organized by Kathy Brew, Guest Curator, with Gianna Collier-Pitts. ”
Go visit!
Cheryl Clark Vermeulen serves as Assistant Professor of Liberal Arts.
Liberal Arts Professors Athans Boulukos (Emeritus), Albert Lafarge, Leon Steinmetz and visiting scholar Lawrence San share thoughts about Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra.
Photo: Carol McCarthy
Enhancements: Robert Gerst
Professor Emeritus Athans Boulukos & friends are re-reading Julius Ceasar in the LIberal Arts office because Shakespeare gives the inner life a voice. With Professor Boulukos are Liberal Arts colleagues Joshua Cohen, Albert Lafarge, Robert Gerst, Carol McCarthy, Carol Boulukos, Leon Steinmetz, Lin Haire-Sargeant, and Professor Emerita Debra San.
Lin Haire-Sargeant took the photos. There’s a chair at that table reserved for you.
String Trio No. 1 (Jean Cras)
Upon his recognition as a Chevalier de la France, Paul-André Bempechat remembered this:
Just as the instinctive performer can find her- or himself thunderstruck at the discovery of a new work – the arresting slow movement of Schubert’s String Quintet; Gustav Mahler’s Lied, Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen; the prophetic slow movement of Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” Sonata or the heart-wrenching final movement of Schumann’s C major Fantasy – so can the historian become overwhelmed upon reading the manna-from-heaven which is the correspondence and archives of a near-forgotten composer. In this case, Jean Cras, composer, physicist, a patented inventor, a multi-decorated Admiral for his service to humanity during the Great War, a loving husband and father corresponding daily from afar during lengthy tours of duty. Continue reading
Now, when words and truth are estranged,
and slide by each other, nodding, like exes at a party,
what words should we trust?
When war empties out whole countries and the brown water rises,
what is fed to the people but words, words enough to choke on, if they don’t starve first?
Pity the poets, trying to wring from words
whatever truth might still be left
after the despots and liars have crumpled them up,
leaving them to litter the refugee roads.
Thank God then for the artists,
for their language has yet to be fouled.
Truth still resides in the etched black line, the pot well thrown,
the aperture that clicks upon what cannot after be unseen.
Even as you pluck the words from the roadsides and try to smooth them into sense,
artists are clothing the bent backs, drafting plans for the shelters,
finding where beauty hides in this roiling world and drawing it out.
When there is nothing to be said that can be certified true,
nothing to be heard that doesn’t mean one thing and still another,
why reach for words?
Trust instead the color, the image, the form carved into space
which is what it is and therefore cannot lie.
If you seek truth on this shaky, burdened, hopeful planet,
why not make art?
