Diane von Furstenberg (photo by Lorenzo Agius) and Alina Cho (photo by Paul Bobadilla Sangster) will sit down for an “Atelier” talk at the Met on December 2
Who: Alina Cho and Diane von Furstenberg
What: Met Museum Presents: “The Atelier with Alina Cho”
Where: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, 1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd St., 212-570-3949
When: Wednesday, December 2, $40 (includes museum admission), 6:30
Why: Last year, journalist and editor presented the inaugural season of “The Atelier with Alina Cho,” in which Cho sat down at the Met with such fashionistas as Anna Wintour and Donatella Versace. Cho is kicking off her sophomore season on December 2 with legendary icon Diane von Furstenberg, discussing art, ideas, and much more, in conjunction with the paperback publication of DVF’s memoir, The Woman I Wanted to Be (Simon & Schuster, October 2015, $17). “Living is learning, and as I look back at the many layers of experience I collected, I feel ready to share some of the lessons I learned along the way,” von Furstenberg writes in the book’s introduction. “Living also means aging. The good thing about aging is that you have a past, a history. If you like your past and stand by it, then you know you have lived fully and learned from your life. Those are the lessons that allowed me to be the woman I am.”
Over the opening credits of Nobuhiko Obayashi’s Bound for the Fields, the Mountains, and the Seacoast, the sweet sound of children singing can be heard over machine-gun blasts and explosions, immediately setting the tone for this unusual, highly stylized war-set drama. “It was a time of mischief in Japan. Even in wartime,” it says at the end of the black-and-white credits, before cutting to a shot of the red-and-white Japanese flag blowing in the wind. Kids slowly march to school to the beating of a drum, except for Sotaro Sudo (Yasufumi Hayashi), who skips down narrow streets by himself, wearing a pseudo-military outfit and carrying a pair of binoculars to help him spy on what’s going on. When he spots someone in the teacher’s (Jô Shishido) office who he’s never seen before, he wonders to himself, “She looks too young to be an adult, but too old to be a child.” That sets the stage for the rest of the film, in which Obayashi follows a group of boys and girls as they battle among themselves, experience bullying and budding sexuality, and grow up a little too fast, serving as a microcosm of twentieth-century Japan. “It is clear that reality and lies can divide people. We should not quarrel too hastily,” the teacher says. Sotaru becomes enamored with the young woman, Kawakita (Riki Takeuchi), whose younger brother, Sakae Osugi (Junichirô Katagiri), is new in school. “Please don’t be violent,” Kawakita tells Sakae, but it isn’t long before he may not have any other choice, especially when their parents (Taru Minegishi and Toshie Negishi) consider selling her into prostitution to pay off their mounting debts.
Perhaps the most frightening aspect of Danish filmmaker Camilla Nielsson’s gripping thriller of a documentary, Democrats, is how unsurprising all of the revelations are, how we all have become inured to the pervasive power of the dictatorships that control so much of the world. Following the controversial 2008 reelection of Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe, who had been in power since 1980, when the country officially gained its independence from the British-led Rhodesia, Mugabe’s ruling party, ZANU-PF (Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front), and election runner-up Morgan Tsvangirai’s opposition party, MDC-T (Movement for Democratic Change), agreed to form an inclusive coalition government and collaborate on a new constitution, to be drafted by COPAC, a committee co-chaired by former minister of information Paul Mangwana of ZANU-PF and human rights lawyer and parliament member Douglas Mwonzora of MDC-T. On the advice of Danish journalist Peter Tygesen, Nielsson requested access to the intense negotiations, and what she was given was an amazing, exclusive behind-the-scenes look into the process. Over the course of twelve shoots of between one and three weeks from 2010 to 2013, Nielsson alternately follows Mangwana and Mwonzora as they take their case to the people of Zimbabwe, traveling to rural communities and cities as their teams organize nearly six thousand town-hall-style meetings. Mangwana is a big, jolly fellow who believes Mugabe and his government are untouchable, that they will do anything and everything they can to maintain their leadership status. “Be seen as a man of peace. Even if you are not,” he brazenly says to the camera, adding, “The game of politics is pretending.” Meanwhile, Mwonzora, a much more deliberate man, explains, “We never imagined that a black man could suppress his own people.” As he makes his way across Zimbabwe, Mwonzora supports fighting back using pen and brains, not violence, imploring people to “tell us how much power we should have.” Amid claims of illegal busing and harassment by military veterans and the secret police on behalf of Mugabe, the entire constitution-making process is on the verge of falling apart, but the absurdity reaches a whole new level when the safety and freedom of Mangwana and Mwonzora are threatened.
