By Jason Apuzzo. I just wanted LFM readers to know that due to some exciting new developments in my non-Libertas career, I won’t presently have time to review Super 8. I will try to catch up with the film at some point down the line, and will otherwise attempt to be back up and running normally next week.
In the meantime, feel free to comment below to register your own reactions to the film.
Posted on June 11th, 2011 12:20pm.
By David Ross. My daughter and I heard the Tokens’ “Wimoweh” somewhere or other; this led to Ladysmith Black Mambazo; this in turn led to Miriam Makeba, and ever since we’ve been listening to Makeba day in and out, with no weariness – indeed with ever deepening respect – on the adult side. My daughter wanted to be an ‘African singer’ last Halloween, but we talked her down from this ledge of potential racist scandal, and she wound up going as a ‘Chinese princess.’
Let me offer a simple conviction: during the 1960s Miriam Makeba was one of the very greatest vernacular artists in the world, in a category with the likes of James Brown, Ray Charles, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, Charles Mingus, and Thelonius Monk. She might be reasonably compared to Aretha Franklin or Sarah Vaughan, but on the whole she was their superior, combining the former’s soaring voice with the latter’s genius for phrasing, and endowing everything she did with a palpable personal charm. As a politically resonant Third World artist combining native and American idioms, the obvious – and fair – comparison is to Bob Marley.
Here (see above) is a tremendous clip associated with Makeba’s appearance in Stockholm in 1966. The concert is available as a DVD import titled Miriam Makeba Live at Bern’s Salonger (I purchased mine from Amazon.co.uk), but the film does not include this sequence. I gather that Makeba appeared on TV in support of the concert proper. The clip features two tremendous songs and some comments on the arch-nastiness of the racial politics of South Africa, with Makeba herself utterly fetching in her duality of girlishness and loftiness. This second clip, a bossa nova delight from the live appearance at Bern’s Salonger, highlights Makeba’s remarkable versatility. This third clip drives home her capacity for massive, earth-shaking grooves.
Enjoy this material while you can. YouTube has lately been stripped of Makeba material.
The core of Makeba’s sixties output is available on three CD sets that repackage seven of her albums. These sets are a must for anyone with a serious interest in twentieth-century music, as indispensible as Live at the Apollo and Kind of Blue.
Posted on June 11th, 2011 at 9:23am.
By Joe Bendel. It was a scene somewhat reminiscent of the kindertransport, the World Jewish Relief’s coordinated effort to relocate Jewish children in British foster homes. Yet these were Finnish children, packed off to Swedish host families, in advance of the invading Soviet would-be conquerors. Decades later, several of the surviving relocated youngsters record their experiences for posterity in Erja Dammert’s documentary War Children, which screens today as part of DocPoint’s tenth anniversary celebration in New York.
It is a testament to the Finnish people that they were able to withstand the forces of Soviet domination. In 1939, though, Finland’s future as a free and democratic country was far from certain. For their own safety, scores of Finnish parents sent their sons and daughters off to temporary refuge in ever-neutral Sweden. Such painful decisions are difficult to explain to children, though. Evidently, in several cases they did not even try, simply packing up their sleeping young ones and depositing them on outbound trains.
Not surprisingly, the young Finns typically experienced difficult transition periods, particularly since few if any of the children spoke Swedish. Yet, eventually many acclimated quite well to their hosts’ higher standards of living. Naturally, they also formed emotional bonds with their foster parents. Indeed, for many of the younger children, their Swedish surrogates largely supplanted the memories of their legal Finnish parents.
Though not as elegantly crafted as the thematically related Y in Vyborg, War Children is unfailingly sensitive and respectful in its approach to its subject matter. Broadway patrons will also notice certain parallels between the former Finnish refugee children’s stories and The People in the Picture, Donna Murphy’s new musical running through June 19th at the Roundabout’s Studio 54 Theater. Of course, it is important to stress that the Finns were not facing the same genocidal threat as European Jewry, but rather the everyday indiscriminate brutality of the Soviets.
DocPoint features a diverse slate, but some of its best selections open an intimate window into Finland’s unique WWII experience, hitherto largely overlooked by American media and scholarship. Indeed, War Children is a very strong film, while Vyborg is even more so. Both are definitely recommended during DocPoint’s 2011 New York tour. War Children screens today (6/11) at Scandinavia House.
Posted on June 11th, 2011 at 9:22am.