Chris Brown, Frank Gratkowski, William Winant, and Fast Forward will all take part in Interpretations program December 11 at Roulette in Brooklyn, with special guests
Roulette
509 Atlantic Ave. at Third Ave.
Thursday, December 11, $15-$20, 8:00
917-267-0363
www.roulette.org
www.interpretations.info
Since 1990, the Interpretations series has been developing “a community of experimental composers, their virtuoso interpreters, and an adventurous and supportive audience.” Over the past quarter-century, Interpretations has presented such avant-garde composers and musicians as Morton Subotnick, Anthony Braxton, Thomas Buckner, La Monte Young, Michiko Akao, Robert Ashley, Roscoe Mitchell, Fred Ho, and the FLUX Quartet. On December 11 at 8:00, the twenty-sixth Interpretations season continues at Roulette in Brooklyn with the trio of pianist and processor Chris Brown, alto saxophonist, clarinetist, and flutist Frank Gratkowski (whose name has been consistently misspelled as “Gratowsky” on both the Roulette and Interpretations websites), and percussionist William Winant, who specialize in creating unique, improvisational sound environments. In addition, New York-based English composer, multimedia artist, and culinarian Fast Forward (aka Paul Wilson) will present “10,” a work for ten musicians playing ten different instruments performing ten separate pieces, featuring Gelsey Bell, Tom Chiu, Chris Cochrane, Michael Evans, Miguel Frasconi, David Freeman, Grady Gerbracht, Gisburg, Dave Ruder, and Aliza Simons.
Swedish filmmaker Göran Hugo Olsson brings physician and psychiatrist Frantz Fanon’s seminal 1961 book, The Wretched of the Earth, to bold, vivid life in the empowering documentary Concerning Violence: Nine Scenes from the Anti-Imperialistic Self-Defense. “Every one of us must think for himself — always provided that he thinks at all; for in Europe today, stunned as she is by the blows received by France, Belgium, or England, even to allow your mind to be diverted, however slightly, is as good as being the accomplice in the crime of colonialism,” French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre wrote in the lengthy preface to the book. For Concerning Violence, Olsson called on Columbia University professor Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak to provide a heavily academic introduction, setting the stage for nine examples of the relationship between settlers and natives, Europeans and Africans, in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s. As he did with his previous film, 
Emboldened by the civil rights movement, antiwar rallies, and student demonstrations, women across America came together and took to the streets in the mid-to-late 1960s, fighting for liberation from long-held societal beliefs and strictures. Mary Dore’s She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry focuses in on the years 1966 to 1971, when women became activists for their own rights, reclaiming their bodies and redefining gender roles, refusing to be treated like second-class citizens anymore. “It was like all this energy had been pent up in these women for all these years and it just exploded,” says Chicago activist Mary Jean Collins at the beginning of the film. Twenty years in the making, the documentary contains new interviews with more than thirty women who describe their experiences in the women’s liberation movement, giving the inside scoop behind specific marches, strikes, protests, and organizations, as Dore cuts between the speakers today, usually interviewed in their home environment, and rare archival footage and photographs of the women in action more than forty years ago. Dore explores the importance of such books as Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique and the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective’s Our Bodies, Ourselves and speaks to cofounders and early members of such groups as the National Organization for Women, the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union, Gainesville Women’s Liberation, and JANE, which provided underground abortions. All of them fully understand that the fight is far from over, especially with what is currently going on in Congress. “You’re not allowed to retire from women’s issues,” Dallas Women’s Coalition cofounder Virginia Whitehill explains. “You still have to pay attention, ’cause somebody’s gonna try to yank the rug out from under you, and that’s what’s happening now.”
