leisure
10 the georgetown voice
march 17, 2011
Film festival provides good, green fun by Mary Borowiec In our generation, going green has gone from a hippie-centric fad to a full-blown industry. From celebrity-designed reusable totes to trendy organic food stores, it seems that “saving the planet” is, to some degree, on everyone’s mind. But beyond our Sigg water bottles, what do we really know about the problems facing the environment today? For those yearning to learn more, look no further than D.C.’s 19th annual Environmental Film Festival, which runs Mar. 15-27. With 150 events taking place in museums, libraries, theaters, and universities all over the District, the film festival invites viewers to step back and join in a “celebration of the natural world” that is both varied and thoroughly 2011-pertinent. This diverse lineup, which, according to its website, includes “documentary, narrative, animated, archival, experimental and children’s films,” is designed to engage its participants in current, pressing debates about the environment, like the impact of energy on our increasingly consumptiondominated society.
With this aim in mind, this internationally-renowned festival includes countless films worthy of recognition, including numerous world premieres. Equally impressive is the breadth of films, which highlight subjects as diverse as oceanography, nuclear wastelands, and the threats facing the wilderness. Likewise, the festival’s featured filmmakers bring a host of fresh perspectives, with works from 40 different countries by professional filmmakers and students alike. For the plant- and food-loving naturalists, today features the “Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Wine” program, which includes the world premiere of America’s Sustainable Garden: United States Botanic Garden, and the D.C. premiers of Portrait of a Winemaker: John Williams of Frog’s Leap, and Out to Pasture: The Future of Farming. Shown at the Maret School, this program also features a discussion with Allen Moore, director of Out to Pasture and his student film crew. Travel enthusiasts, or just those who are big fans of 3D movies, will enjoy the IMAX Arabia 3D at the National Museum
d.c. environmental film festival
Introducing the new, eco-friendly Hajj: All pilgrims are required to use organic cotton prayer rugs. of Natural history on Saturday. Arabia immerses the viewer in a story of Saudi Arabia’s rich faith, culture, and natural beauty. Filmmaker Hamzah Jamjoom, a 22-year-old Saudi film student, profiles the millions of Muslims who have taken the sacred pilgrimage of the Hajj. The film, which was a post-9/11 effort to correct the extremist stereotype that Jamjoom felt Americans had assigned to Muslims, bridges cultures through a powerful visual experience. It’s heavy, unexpected topics like this—which focus on so much more than just grass growing—that make this year’s
festival such a dynamic and multifaceted event. But if you don’t feel like taking a bike or Envirocab to an offcampus screening, Georgetown is also hosting events right on the Hilltop. This Friday, Black Wave: the Legacy of Exxon Valdez and The Sinking Ship will be shown on campus as a part of the United Nations Association Traveling Film Festival. Documenting two oil-based environmental disasters, these films draw on personal reflections of the incidents and the communities that they hit the hardest, a topic that is especially timely and pertinent in
the wake of this summer’s British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Despite the fact that everybody seems hell-bent on being eco-friendly, our generation still faces a plethora of environmental issues that continue to define the world we live in. D.C.’s Environmental Film festival not only provides information, entertainment, and artistic value, but a forum for discussion about solutions to these issues. So pack up those Sigg bottles in your reusable tote, and go learn exactly why you put so much effort into going green.
Get wired in Portrait Gallery with A New Language by Heather Regen History may have awarded John Hancock and Queen Elizabeth with fame for their bold and ornate signatures, but sculptor Alexander Calder deserves points for creativity—when signing his works, Calder brandished cold copper wire as elegantly as any calligrapher. In sculpting wire portraits of famous people, which
lack any trace of a brush or a stone surface, Calder marked each of his wire sculptures with an inventive inscription. Woven behind an earlobe, under a chin or at the base of a neck, Calder looped wire to form his signature on each of his whimsical wire portraits. These wire portraits are the subject of Calder’s Portraits: A New Language, on display now through August 14 in the Na-
smithsonian american art museum
After The Wire was cancelled, cast members found work with Calder.
tional Portrait Gallery. Although best known for his invention of the mobile as a form of sculpture, Calder also crafted a prolific set of three-dimensional, caricaturelike, copper and steel wire portraits throughout his career. The exhibit highlights this delightful, though often overlooked portion of Calder’s canon. The gallery divides Calder’s works roughly by the profession of the subject, with portraits of actors, athletes, and fellow artists each displayed in a room of their own. However, Calder also sculpted portraits of subjects he knew personally, and as a result, portraits of Calder’s neighbors and cousins strangely appear among the wire visages of Babe Ruth and Jimmy Durante. The not-quite-perfect organization that arises from Calder’s mix of subjects nicely breaks up the rigidity of the gallery, allowing space for unknown but expressive faces to shine. Situated at the entrance of the gallery, Calder’s portrait of
Slavoljub Eduard Penkala sets the tone for the rest of the exhibit with his warm, wire smile. Though Calder did not immortalize the inventor of the first solid-ink fountain pen in his own medium, wire serves Penkala well—the inventor’s square face and bright eyes pop from their copper threads, suggesting a playfulness of character in a man who spent his years innovating the designs of the modern mechanical pencil. Just as in Penkala’s portrait, Calder expertly captures the character of former president Calvin Coolidge in his own wire doppelganger. Crafted with a single, thick steel wire rather than a multitude of thinner, copper threads, Coolidge’s portrait accentuates his striking, expressive facial features. Beside the portrait, the gallery notes that “especially in his early wire portraits, Calder straddled the line between portraiture and caricature.” The artist himself described his methods by saying that “where you have
features, you draw them; where there aren’t any, you let go.” Coolidge’s exaggerated portrait speaks strongly to this mantra. But although Calder’s curling wires give life to his subjects, the National Portrait Gallery misses an opportunity to present the artist in his full character. Calder himself often hung his wire creations from walls and ceilings, allowing the portraits to dangle and spin, just as his mobiles did. While two of Calder’s portraits are presented suspended from the ceiling, the rest sit boring and immobile in plexiglass boxes on simple white stands. But despite their presentation, Calder’s portraits still reveal the artist’s playfulness just as well as the subjects they represent. Calder would often craft miniature wire carnival models as a hobby, claiming the title of “ringmaster of the Lilliputian circus.” The swirling copper and steel wires of Calder’s portraits similarly indicate that this artist clearly took great joy from his creations.