About Some Meaningful Events: African Cinema and 50 Years of FESPACO

By Marius Hrdy

JUL-AUG 2019 | Film

In a festival where a major part of the lineup consists of the newest restorations of “Old Hollywood” filmmaking, recent editions of Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna have been marked by a refreshing turn towards lesser known cinemas and film industries that are no less interesting.

Music: A Subversive History

By George Grella

NOV 2019 | Music

Songs about fucking and killing—that would have also been an appropriate subtitle for this scintillating new book from Ted Gioia. He’s already written three valuable books about the place of music in society and human experience, Healing Songs (2006), Works Songs (2006), and Love Songs: The Hidden history (2015). Music: A Subversive History builds on those by digging down into the fundamental nature of music, how it is made and how it affects us.

My History With History

By Kashana Cauley

MAR 2019 | Critics Page

Until a few years ago, I wasn’t a fan of history. I didn’t hunt down explanations of the present from the past.

Édouard Louis Comes to Brooklyn: The History of Violence and The End of Eddy

By Emma Grillo

NOV 2019 | Theater

Emma Grillo on Èdouard Louis's The History of Violence. The story, an adaptation of a memoir by the same name by the French author takes place during Christmas Eve. Over the course of two hours, Director Thomas Ostermeier leads audiences through the harrowing account of Louis’s rape and near murder, in a dizzying series of tellings and retellings, all layered on top of one another.