This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. Employing themes such as the near versus the far, and the one versus the many, I hope to raise some questions about the roles and responsibilities we each play as individuals in a collective that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming.
The movie theatre where Arvin Chen's film Au Revoir Taipei made its world premiere
I had the pleasure of attending the Berlin International Film Festival where I was able to see the world premiere of Arvin Chen’s first feature-length film Au Revior Taipei. Last year he came away from the festival with a Silver Bear Award for his short film Mei, which you can watch below in its entirety. I am so glad that I was able to make the trip to Berlin, amazed at what Arvin has been doing for the past couple years (and the director and writer that he has become), and enchanted with his new beautiful film. Although light-hearted and whimsical in tone, Au Revior Taipei stays with you, and I found myself wandering under the gateway arches of Berlin, smiling and thinking of lines from the film, or a visual image that had a lasting mark, or the 30s inspired jazz music that compliments the story perfectly.
Arvin readily admits to stealing heavily from the French New Wave, but he does so with a unique vision that separates him from the French, Taiwanese and American filmmakers. He is creating a niche all to his own, not so much stylistically like what Wes Anderson did with his debut Bottle Rocket (which Arvin jokingly says his aspired to imitate), but instead in the subtle tone and feel of the film. This makes the viewing experience rich and welcomed by moviegoers looking for something sophisticated and new.
If his feature film is this good (which it is, but I consider myself a bit biased), one wonders with anticipation what is next on the bright horizon, obscured only by the cityscape of Taipei, Arvin’s unique backdrop to his cinematic stage full of good food, dancing and soul.
A few of the best Salinger pieces I’ve read so far:
Dave Eggers writes for The New Yorker and considers what Salinger has been doing for the last half-century, and how this mystery gets to “the heart of writing iteself . . . given that the nature of written communication is social.”
Holden Caulfield, the icon, hovers over anything you write about teenagers whether your text specifically acknowledges it or not. My approach was to acknowledge the hell out of it and to play around with the well-established convention that everyone’s angsty, smart-ass teen narrator try as hard as he can to be mistaken for him. But I’m not some kind of anti-Salinger activist. I was just trying to be funny, honest.
In Part One of this slightly strange documentary, Kurt Vonnegut talks about growing up, writing short stories for the magazines, and then he gets interviewed by his good friend Kilgore Trout.
Next fall the High School ISS Art Trip will visit three Spanish cities—Madrid, Toledo, and Barcelona—for six packed days and five nights. We will begin our adventure in Madrid, using a half day to also visit Toledo (A beautiful, walled city dating back to the 7th Century BC). From Madrid we will board [...]
11th Grade English Classes: Mark your calendars and planners. Below is the schedule for both my English A2 and A1 courses. I look forward to some interesting presentations and activities.
Students who have not had a conference with me yet will need to schedule one this week, using the sign-up sheet that is now posted outside [...]
As my English A1 HL class concludes their first semester of coursework, where we studied what we called the idea of “blurring the lines between fictional realities and autobiographical impulses,” I decided to screen Michele Gondry’s The Science Sleep as a bridge between the prose that we have studied, and the drama texts that we [...]
In my English A2 class today we concluded our Media Studies Semester by finishing the film Tough Guise, and then watching a presentation by Ji Lee, the creator of the Bubble Project.
I found the project’s “manifesto” interesting:
Our communal spaces are being overrun with ads. Train stations, streets, squares, busses, and subways now scream [...]
We have been having some interesting discussions in TOK investigating language as a way of knowing. As I pointed out last Friday, it seems like we are more interested in focusing on the problems and limitations with language, instead of trying to explain its benefits. But we also had some interesting ideas to share about [...]
“I’ll Fly Away” is my favorite song in the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? This version was recorded by the wonderful Gillian Welch and Alison Krauss.
Next week in TOK we will watch this presentation, given by eccentric lexicographist Erin McKean (ironically my spell-check is telling me that “lexicographist” is not a word, which seems fitting). She also helped start this site called Wordnik:
And today we read this to get us thinking about language, libraries, and how we can connect this [...]
As we’ve begun to experience some of Carol Ann Duffy’s poetry as a class–both from her collection titled The World’s Wife and from her other books–I am curious about the connections that we can make between the poems that we looked at in groups last week: “Medusa,” “Salome,” and “Demeter.”
In a review of The World’s [...]
