Gorazde" and "Palestine" practically defined graphic journalism, as well as fiction, poetry and snapshots of refugees mixed in collage work.The second volume, covering Burmese refugees in Thailand, offers a similarly effective mix, featuring a graphic novella illustrated by Kamel Khelif.
The third book, Ciudad Juarez, investigates the plague of missing and murdered girls in the Mexican town and provides a horrific emotional center to the collection -- many of its finest moment occur here. Kirshner mixes her lengthy investigation into the life of a girl named Claudia -- poetic snippets culled from a box of document provided by her family -- with numerous pieces of beautiful fabric art to illustrate the story. The standout section, though, includes the work of Phoebe Gloeckner on the included graphic novella, juxtaposing snippets from murderers with dioramas featuring cloth puppetry, a horrific artistic realization of a terrible truth.
Kirshner finishes the collection with a volume on the AIDS-driven refugee crisis in Malawi, examining the situations of the those who must live in what is rapidly becoming a ghost country, including boys in jail who have survived stints in adult prison. Piercing the despair is a haunting little fable-like tale of loss, illustrated delicately by Julie Morstad.
Contained in each volume are multiple styles of art -- including unusual choices like sign writing, botanical art and tattoo sketches, as well as the aforementioned fabric art. Put together with various forms of storytelling, "I Live Here" creates a work that sings the stories of those without loud voices through a multitude of angles.
The mixed media illustration comes at the truth from a number of emotional checkpoints and creates a multi-faceted view of agony in our world. The idea is to neither tell nor show so much as to create an emotional landscape for the horrors witnessed via a kind of graphical poetry.
This is not an easy collection to get through, but it is an intensely rewarding one -- a remarkable achievement that will echo a call for action and compassion in your head long after you put the books down.
Andrei Tarkovsky 2 Pack: The Steamroller And The Violin and Voyage In Time (Facets Video)
In the pantheon of singular film geniuses, Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky seems to be of such a cult that it barely registers against the more splashy personalities that cinema has had to offer. For too many people, he is best known as the guy who directed the original version of "Solaris" before Steven Soderbergh, but to Ingmar Bergman, Tarkovsky was the greatest filmmaker ever -- a title he deserves from so many more people.
Tarkovsky’s movies were unique, intense, spiritual affairs, wrapped in some form of Christian mysticism -- and while they often presented darkness, they never wallowed in it. Many of his films offer a kind of redemption via the darkness, a light born of sacrifice and hurt -- a personal responsibility to a greater, intangible good in the world -- that is accentuated by a painstaking slowness that is contemplative and precise. To experience Tarkovsky at his best is to indulge in a life-altering meditative process with a movie screen.
The tragedy of Tarkovsky is that he died too early -- at the age of 54 of lung cancer, and shortly after his first taste of freedom from the Soviet system. In 1984, he was in Sweden preparing his final film "The Sacrifice" and refused to return to his home country, embracing the opportunity to make films without restraint. A year and a half later, Tarkovsky was dead.
In this new double pack, opposite ends of Tarkovsky’s career are revealed, from his 1960 diploma film "The Steamroller and The Violin" to "Voyage in Time," a 1983 journal by the filmmaker that chronicles his search for film locations in Italy to use in his film "Nostalghia,"a trip that provided him with the first real taste of freedom that would cause him to eventually leave his home.
"The Steamroller and The Violin" offers a preview of what was to come two years later with his first professional feature film, "Ivan’s Childhood," in 1962. In this student film, Tarkovsky documents a slice of life encounter between Sasha (Igor Fomchenko), a 7-year-old violinist, and Sergey (V. Zamansky), a steamroller driver, as they bridge the gaps between their worlds and forge a friendship. It’s a heart warming effort -- admittedly a slight entry in the Tarkovsky filmography -- but he still manages to inject depthful emotion into the little tale, as well as his usual strong use of symbolism to hint at further dimensions in the story.
With "Voyage In Time," 23 years have passed since the student film and Tarkovsky has become an acknowledged master of cinema whose observations are sought out. This document uses his journey through Italy as a chance to get to know the director, to hear him talk about his views on film and to discover at least some of his process of creation.
The main conflict arises from his Italian collaborator Tonino Guerra’s desire to show Tarkovsky possible film locations that he thinks Tarkovsky would like -- sites of classic, structured beauty. The director actually seeks out a more abstract emotional landscape as realized through the physical human ones.
Through a series of questions sent to him in the mail, Tarkovsky gets to lay out his philosophy on film, from his views of genre and commercialism to the level of sacrifice and submission required of cinema from its practitioners. The director comes of as gentle, but intense, and it’s hard not to see how he could make so few movies over two decades that say much more about the intangible than the most prolific of filmmakers.
Not quite book ends of a creative life, this Facets Video special 2-pack offers a unique glimpse into the depths of one of the great international masters of cinema.
http://www.thetranscript.com/northberkshirenews/ci_12268680?source=rss
