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April is
National Frog Month
and
National Poetry Month
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Tweet us today with author birthdays!
Sunday April 17
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Ray Kluun (b. 1964) – Dutch novelist – Komt een vrouw bij de dokter (Love Life) (2003) |
Read about Ray Kluun here and here
Ray Kluun is a young Dutchman who slept around while his wife was at home dying from cancer. This might have remained a matter for him and his conscience if he had not then written a book about a young Dutchman who sleeps around while his wife is dying from cancer. In Kluun’s case one of the partners became a serious and long-term lover. So too with the man in his book.
“I’m not proud of what I did,” he says, referring to his infidelity, “but when you have to give all your energy to something like this, in a part of your life when you should be having fun; when you turn from a man into a nurse having to support someone physically, mentally, emotionally, then something else drops out. If all this positive energy is going out towards someone else, then an existing black side of you comes up. A guy I know collected stamps. When his wife got cancer, he became obsessed with stamp-collecting, and he never cheated on his wife. You always use your escape route. My weakness had been nightlife and women.”
(Read the entire Times interview here)
Read excerpts from Kluun’s novel Love Life
(from page 308)
When Carmen wakes up I ask her if she wants anything to eat.
‘Yes. Half a morphine pill.`
‘Are you in pain again?
She nods. ‘Terrible pain. My back.’
‘Then l’ll give you a whole one.’
‘Are we supposed to do that?’
‘What else? Scared it’s going to kill you?’
She bursts out laughing. ‘lf only . . .‘
All of a sudden her face grows taut. ‘Isn’t it time to tell Luna I soon won`t be here?’
‘I’ve already prepared her for that a little bit this morning.’
‘And what did she say?`
‘That’ – gulp – ‘it was OK if it meant you aren’t in pain any more and you don’t have to be sick.’ Together we cry over our little ray of sunshine.
`Feeling a bit better?’ I ask after a while. She nods. ‘Shall I read out the emails you’ve got?’ She nods again. Like a real star, she replies to her fans. Like a real secretary I type in the answers Carmen dictates.
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Read the comments to the BBC4 Saturday Live interview of Kluun
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/saturdaylive/2007/05/ray_kluun.html
Comment 7.
I find Mr Kluun’s story very reassuring. I find it such a confusing thing to be living in a society where people do dreadful and deceitful things while maintaining the illusion that they are someone ‘perfect’ and ‘respectable’…. I think Mr Kluun and his wife probably experienced something in their time together that many couple I know seem to lack entirely- an honesty and an ability to talk together openly about the things about each other that were good, as well as bad.
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Born April 17
Giusy Ferreri (b. 1979) – Italian singer-songwriter
Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) (b. 1885) – Danish memoirist, short-story writer – “Babette’s Feast”
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Monday April 18
| Rithy Panh (b. 1964) – Cambodian filmmaker |
Read about Rithy Panh here and here
Ever since his 1994 movie “Rice People” introduced a Cambodian voice to world cinema, the director Rithy Panh has become the conscience of a nation still haunted by the tragedy of its recent past. “From the beginning I knew my work would focus on the problems in my country,” Panh said. “It’s been 26 years since the fall of the Khmer Rouge, yet we still don’t fully understand why we were forced to live through these horrors.”
“Most of these men still don’t understand how they became killers,” Panh said. “It’s not simply a question of judgment. We need to find answers to these questions. “Pol Pot is dead, but so far not a single person has been tried or convicted for crimes committed during that period. “
“We have no recorded images of the genocide,” he said. “If we don’t confront the past, we will lose these essential memories; which is why I encourage people to tell their stories. The Khmer Rouge tried to destroy our culture and our identity, but it could never be simply a process of erasing something from a blackboard.”
(from “Staring down horrors of the Khmer Rouge”
by Robert Turnbull, New York Times, April 5, 2007)
Watch a trailer for Panh’s documentary S21
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3UoFMIooHk
Rithy Panh interview on the beach at Cannes Film Festival, 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvzVhdIXnM0
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Born April 18
Costas [or Kostas] Ferris (b. 1935) – Greek film director, screenwriter, lyricist – Rembetiko (1983)
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Tuesday April 19
| Sandro Petraglia (b. 1947) – Italian screenwriter, film director – The Girl by the Lake (2007) |  |
Read about Sandro Petraglia here
Sandro Petraglia’s filmography
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0677758/
Read a review of The Best of Youth, screenplay by Sandro Petraglia and Stefano Rulli
From a summer day in Roma in 1966 to a winter night in Norway in 2003, Best of Youth chronicles some 40 years in the lives of the Carati family and their friends. Over the course of six riveting hours, Giordana weaves a delicate tapestry of human ecstasy and misery, paralleling the ups and downs of a family with the rise and fall of a country. Italy unravels and so do its people. Best of Youth is about the search for a national and personal identity and everything that happens to the Carati family becomes an act of self-preservation. Yes, Best of Youth is talky, but it’s also unmistakably, blisteringly human.
http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/the-best-of-youth/1040
From an interview:
Sandro Petraglia, “The Best of Youth” is not only the title of a collection of Friulian poetry by Pasolini, it is also a tragic song of the mountain people as they were going to die in war. The meaning of the title (typically romantic) is also a way of mocking the definition of the “best”, which basically says not to be so sure … A strong belief of “baby boomers” born after the war is that you want to stay young forever. Jim Morrison of The Doors said, I hope I die before I get old. This generation has never said “everything that is real is rational, ” but: everything that is real is not right and must be changed. This path naturally involves many mistakes: only he who stands still is never wrong.
(translated with Google from the Italian)
Sandro Petraglia: “La Meglio Gioventù” non è solo il titolo d’una raccolta di poesie friulane di Pasolini, è anche una canzone tragica degli alpini che andavano a morire in guerra. Nell’accezione tipicamente romana è anche un modo beffardo di definirsi i “migliori”; in fondo chi lo afferma è il primo a non esserne così convinto… L’elemento forte dei “baby boomers” nati dopo la guerra sta nel fatto di voler restare giovani nella testa. Jim Morrison dei Doors diceva: spero di morire prima di diventare vecchio. Questa generazione non ha mai detto “tutto ciò che è reale è razionale”, ma: tutto ciò che è reale non va bene e bisogna cambiarlo. Questo naturalmente comporta anche molti sbagli: solo chi sta fermo non sbaglia mai.
Read the interview (Italian language) here
Watch a scene from La Meglio Gioventu / The Best of Youth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPa-iw6Et6s
Sandro Petraglia talks about his films (in Italian language) [1 hour]
http://vimeo.com/album/1475384
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Born April 19
Etheridge Knight (b. 1931) – U.S. poet
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Wednesday April 20
| Asia Alfasi (b. 1984) – U.K. / Libyan Manga artist |
Read about Asia Alfasi here and here and here
Listen to a BBC Radio 4 interview of Asia Alfasi
Alfasi: Glasgow is a rough city. And the area we moved in was rougher still. And we were the only Muslims. And the only non-white Scottish. I was the first to wear a hijab in school. And coupled with not being able to afford a uniform at that time as well — we also had to wear frilly dresses. That completed the look. But the great thing was, after I didn’t change, through taunting, they respected me for who I was. And I learned something great from that.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/04/2006_50_thu.shtml
Watch Asia at work in her office trailer, talking about her art
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CRE5oXXbvw
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Born April 20
Erna Brodber (b. 1940) – Jamaican novelist, cultural historian – Louisiana (1994)
John Paul Stevens (b.1920) – U.S. Supreme Court Justice
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Thursday April 21
| Elaine May (b. 1932) – U.S. comedian, playwright, screenwriter, theater director – The Birdcage (1995) |
Read about Elaine May here and here
Watch a funny Nichols and May skit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5pXggZIr6I
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziahbVD5Y5o
and listen to “My son, the nurse”
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| Queen Elizabeth II (b. 1926) – U.K. monarch |  |
Read about Queen Elizabeth here and here and here
Watch documentary footage of the Queen, with her voiceover speaking of her life
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh1-9ww_HmM
Visit the British Monarchy Facebook page here
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Born April 21
Kole Omotosho (b. 1943) – Nigerian novelist, playwright, essayist – Just Before Dawn (1988)
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Friday April 22
| Kseniya Simonova (b. 1985) – Ukrainian artist, performance artist, sand stories |
Read about Kseniya Simonova here and here
“Miss Simonova drew a series of pictures on an illuminated sand table showing how ordinary people were affected by the German invasion during World War II. The images, projected onto a large screen, moved many in the audience to tears …. She begins by creating a scene showing a couple sitting holding hands on a bench under a starry sky, but then warplanes appear and the happy scene is obliterated.”
(Read the U.K. Telegraph article here)
Read an interview with Kseniya Simonova here
“To get myself ready, I lived and breathed the seashore for three months. I had to feel, to talk with and work with the sand.” And it paid off because her performance received the largest amount of audience support in the history of the show. It also made people cry.
“I presented several ‘sand shows’ before the show but it was the board that selected the one on World War II. I was rather worried that it might not be successful with the viewers because I thought it might play with their emotions too much.”
As the show proved, the board was spot on in choosing which story to portray as even the jury’s hard-nosed Ihor Kondratyuk revealed his emotions that night, saying how he felt he had just gone through the whole tragic history himself.
In the beginning, Ksenia had no optimistic opinion about the show’s objectivity; thinking that there was no way the ‘real winner’ would in fact win the contest. “I was probably the most suspicious there, going on about how everything in Ukraine is so corrupt. But it was to my own surprise that in fact, I won!”
Watch Simonova talk about and create her art
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNwe4X1fMck
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Born April 22
Immanuel Kant (b. 1724) – German philosopher – The Critique of Pure Reason
Ana Maria Shua (b. 1951) – Argentinian novelist, poet
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Saturday April 23
| Michael Moore (b. 1954) – U.S. filmmaker, journalist – Capitalism: A Love Story (2009) |
Read about Michael Moore here and here
Watch Michael Moore on the Charlie Rose show
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10659
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Born April 23
William Shakespeare (b. 1564; baptized April 26, 1564) – English playwright, poet – Hamlet (1600)
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CD – Sounds of North American Frogs – Smithsonian Folkways
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