Thomas L. Kelly and Claire Burkert explore ways to rebuild post-earthquake Nepal in discussion at Rubin Museum (photo by Thomas L. Kelly)
Who: Claire Burkert and Thomas L. Kelly
What: Himalayan Style: How to Rebuild Nepal
Where: Rubin Museum of Art, 150 West 17th St. at Seventh Ave., 212-620-5000
When: Wednesday, December 9, $20, 7:00
Why: Earlier this week, we returned from a seventeen-day visit to Kathmandu, where we saw firsthand the destruction wrought by the April and May 2015 earthquakes as well as the intoxicating resiliency of the Nepalese people, who are also currently in the midst of a significant fuel blockade imposed by India, with far-reaching effects. Among the most impressive things we witnessed during our travels was a stop in Bungamati, where an international group of architecture students are working hand-in-hand with local residents to help the community get itself back on its feet. On one wall in an old temple, Bungamati residents can indicate whether they will “clean up,” “reuse materials,” “rebuild,” “repair,” or “do nothing.” On December 9, a similar conversation will take place at the Rubin Museum of Art, when Janakpur Women’s Development Center founder Claire Burkert and photo-activist Thomas L. Kelly will discuss “Himalayan Style: How to Rebuild Nepal,” inspired by their book Himalayan Style (Roli, March 2015, $49.95), which came out shortly before the earthquake hit. Burkert, a crafts expert with Nepal’s Poverty Alleviation Fund, and Kelly, who runs Wild Earth Journeys with his wife, Carroll Dunham, will sign copies of the book after their illustrated lecture, which will include photographs Kelly has taken following the earthquakes, many of which you can see here. You can contact twi-ny directly if you are interested in seeing some of the photos we took in Nepal as well.
In 2010, French actor-director Mathieu Amalric was commissioned by la Comédie-Française to make a television version of one of the plays the legendary company had recently staged. The rules were both limiting and freeing: He had to use the same cast, could not add any words to the script (but could make cuts), and had to shoot the film in twelve days without using the theater itself. Amalric had the credentials for such a daunting assignment; he had previously starred in such films as Munich, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and Kings and Queen and directed Mange ta soupe and On Tour, in which he also starred and for which he won the Best Director prize at Cannes. He decided to adapt Pierre Corneille’s 1636 play, L’Illusion comique, a melodrama written just as the Baroque style was shifting into the Classical period. The film takes place in and around a hotel in 2011, where concierge/sorcerer/detective Alcandre (Hervé Pierre) is showing surveillance video to Pridamant (Alain Lenglet), who is searching for his long-missing son, Clindor (Loïc Corbery). Clindor is working for video-game executive Matamore (Denis Podalydès); both men, as well as Adraste (Adrien Gamba-Gontard), are vying for the attention of the lovely but cold Isabelle (Suliane Brahim), daughter of corporation head Géronte (Jean-Baptiste Malartre). Meanwhile, Adraste’s coworker, Lyse (Julie Sicard), is desperately in love with Clindor. It all comes to a head one night following a dinner party, when a fierce battle takes place on a rooftop. “When all hope is gone, one has nothing more to fear,” Isabelle says.
Taiwanese writer-director Chung Mong-Hong’s third feature film, following 2008’s Parking and 2010’s The Fourth Portrait, is an intense, meditatively paced thriller about family and identity. In Soul, wuxia legend Jimmy Wang (aka Jimmy Wong Yu) stars as Wang, a simple, understated old man living in a reclusive house in the mountains. After his chef son, Ah-Chuan (Joseph Chang Hsiao-Chuan), suddenly collapses in the city and is brought back to his childhood home, strange things start occurring, as Ah-Chuan seems different and dead bodies begin to pile up. It turns out that Ah-Chuan’s soul has temporarily left his body, replaced by another, not-quite-so-gentle being, leading to yet more trouble, especially because Wang’s goofy policeman nephew, Little Wu (Vincent Liang), continues to hang around, sensing that something suspicious might be going on. The Taiwanese entry for Best Foreign Language Film for the 2014 Oscars, Soul is a gripping, surreal tale that unfolds with a cool calm that can explode at any moment, and then does. Shaw Brothers veteran Wang, who wrote, directed, and starred in such martial arts classics as The Chinese Boxer and Master of the Flying Guillotine, is sensational as Uncle Wang, playing the role with an assured, self-possessed composure despite the hell the old man finds himself in.