FILM TALKS - Music, Art, & Culture
• Alegrias
Directed by: Jenny Alexander
TRT: 7 min
Alegrias is a joyful Flamenco dance from Cadiz, Spain. This 7-minute film captures guitarist Juanito Pascual, cajon player Gonzalo Grau, and dancer La Conja as they create the difficult twelve beat rhythm particular to Alegrias. Flamenco International Magazine describes La Conja as a dancer of “tremendous grace, wit and power,” a talent she brings to the complicated footwork and passionate performance of Alegrias.
Other Keywords: Music and Dance, Spanish Culture
- • Carnival: Celebrating History and Culture
Directed by: Rudy Hypolite
TRT: 35 min
This documentary utilizes the music of the Caribbean islands to explore the sights and sounds of the renowned Trinidad Carnival and the 25th anniversary of Boston’s own West-Indian Carnival. 
The program showcases the steel-band, brass and Indian tasa bands performing calypso, reggae, soca and Indian music, and the beautiful Mardi-Gras like costumes and masqueraders on display on the streets of Roxbury, Dorchester and Trinidad.
Interviews with participants and organizers give insight into the origin of the festival in Trinidad, which was a way for indentured servants and slaves 
to ridicule their owners by emulating their mode of dress and the history behind Carnival in Boston. In addition, the piece explores the origin of the steel-pan after World War II and the craftsmanship involved in making the costumes, which range from simple to the incredibly elaborate.
Other Keywords: West Indian Culture, Music, Local History
• Circus Dreams
Directed by: Signe Taylor
In the summer of 2006, Signe Taylor spent ten weeks traveling with Circus Smirkus, the only touring youth circus in the country, in order to make a feature-length documentary titled Circus Dreams. She is now editing the rough cut of this film. In this presentation, Signe Taylor will show clips from the video and discuss documentary filmmaking. The talk will cover what drew Signe to the story, the logistics of touring with the circus, and the process she will use to whittle her 300 hours of footage into a 90-minute film. Covering funding sources as well as equipment suggestions, this talk will provide an excellent introduction to the nuts and bolts of documentary filmmaking.
Other Keywords: Documentary Filmmaking, Pop Culture
• I’ll Make Me A World: A Century of African-American Arts
Directed by: Tracy Strain
This fourth hour of a six-part series opens as racial barriers are steadily being broken and a stunning series of African-American “firsts” in all fields mark the nation at mid-century. Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun overwhelmingly popular with black and white audiences is the first play written by an African-American woman to be produced on Broadway. Some fields, however, remain closed to African Americans, as we see in the lives of aspiring ballerinas Delores Browne and Raven Wilkinson. An artist who epitomizes the era, James Baldwin, chooses exile in Paris as he struggles to launch his literary career; however, events in the States compel Baldwin’s return as he lends his words and voice to the Civil Rights movement.
Other Keywords: Documentary Filmmaking, African-American History, Race
• A Jumpin’ Night in the Garden of Eden
Directed By: Michal Goldman
TRT: 75 min
This film traces the efforts of two contemporary Klezmer groups, Kapelye and Boston’s Klezmer Conservatory Band, to recover the lost history of Klezmer music. For nearly a millennium, this vigorous and soulful music was part of the celebration of Jewish life in Eastern Europe. Klezmer musicians learned hundreds of tunes by ear and their ears were open to Gypsy, Ukrainian and Greek melodies of the old-world. In the early decades of the 20th century, the music took root in America, adapting itself to American culture, but eventually disappearing as its audience assimilated into mainstream American culture. The film observes the more recent Klezmer revival by showing the musicians in rehearsals, taking Yiddish lessons, and learning from Klezmer musicians in their eighties. The film also takes its audience to a Jewish wedding and a Klezmer camp, and shows them performing live on the Prairie Home Companion radio series. Lively, clever, and often humorous, this film helps give life to Klezmer music by bringing their dynamic sounds to a contemporary audience.
Other Keywords: Jewish Studies, History, Music
• Seeing the Landscape
Directed by: Alberta Chu
Richard Serra’s Tuhirangi Contour The Tuhirangi Contour sculpture, part of a private art collection in New Zealand, is an enormous site-specific landscape work by artist Richard Serra. Richard Serra is considered of the most influential artists of the last century. His primary contribution to modern sculpture lies in the articulation of minimalism as it relates to material and form. He is best known for his large-scale steel sculptures; these massive works divide space in a manner that enables a viewer to experience structure and the environment from dynamically shifting perspectives. Seeing the Landscape is an educational arts documentary that provides insight into: the creative process of a revolutionary modern artist; the collaborative nature of creativity; and the technology and engineering that goes into the making of a great work of art.
Other Keywords: Art, Art History, Environmental Studies
- • Tango: Duel and Dance from La Plaza
Directed by: Maria Agui Carter
The tango dance has been called “the vertical expression of horizontal desire.” Sexy and syncopated, the tango has stirred sexual and political controversy for more than a century. Born in the slums of Buenos Aires, Argentina, tango dance is enjoying a renaissance throughout the world. More than ever, women are playing a key role in the development of this traditionally male-dominated art form. This La Plaza episode explores the culture of tango dance, with clips of legendary tango performances and a special appearance by the witty international dance troupe TangoMujer.
Other Keywords: Latin American Culture, Music and Dance
- • Umm Kulthum, A Voice Like Egypt
Directed by: Michal Goldman
TRT: 57 min
This film is the first documentary to bring Umm Kulthum, the most famous Arabic singer of the twentieth century, to an American audience. Born a peasant at the turn of the century, she became a woman of great wealth and power, the confidant of presidents and kings, and Egypt’s President Gamal Abd al-Nasser’s unofficial ambassador throughout the Arab world. It has been said of Umm Kulthum that she had the musicality of Ella Fitzgerald, the public presence of Eleanor Roosevelt, and the audience of Elvis Presley. This film puts her life in the context of the epic story of 20th century Egypt as it shook off colonialism and confronted modernity. The camera explores her astonishing connection with her audience, taking us into her village in the Nile Delta, and into the cafes, markets, and streets of Cairo where she lived and worked. From the Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz to a 12-year-old girl in an outdoor restaurant, people speak about the role Umm Kulthum’s music has played in their lives, going so far as to sing their favorite songs for the camera. As the radio commentator, Amal Fahmy, observes “When she sang, she was never the heroine. People heard their own story in her songs.” Four million people were on the streets of Cairo for her funeral in 1975 and, to this day, her cassettes outsell every other Arabic female vocalist. In her lifetime, she became the symbol of the aspirations of the entire Arab world.
Other Keywords: Arabic Studies, History, Liberation Movements, Music, Women’s Issues