Thai Nights

It has been over two years since a dark depression claimed Iris Chang's life [q.v.]. She is not forgotten. If you haven't read The Rape of Nanking, read it. It will upset the hell out of you. Read it. It was a bombshell when it was published. Each year as the Japanese bury their heads deeper into the sands of shame, this brilliant, beautifully written history becomes more and more relevant--in a panorama of Rwanda and Darfur and Iraq and other genocidal swamps that CNN hasn't gotten around to documenting. Read it!

Remembering a sweet friend and a precious woman...


Oshun, the Yoruban Goddess of love, delights in the creation of beauty and art, sensual delights and self-adornment. Her symbols are mirrors, jewelry, honey, golden silks and feather fans. Creativity in decorating home and temple is a way of honoring Oshun, who will bless any beautiful space created in Her honor. There is no object so common that Oshun will not appreciate more if it is made artistic and pleasing to the eye. Creativity in dress and self-adornment please her as well, and when Oshun is pleased, her blessings know no limits.

Oshunyomi Mugwana was the promoter of The "Jazz In The Alley Festival" for over 20 years. Jazz In the Alley was an annual one day music event that was one of the South Side's favorites. Oshun's family moved to Chicago from Dumas, Arkansas in the early 1940's and became lifelong residents of the Bronzeville community. Oshun lived as an expatriate in Spain and travelled the world as a photographer. In the 1970's she attended The Community Film Workshop, and from there she was among the first African-American employees at WLS-TV Ch. 7. From WLS she went on to WTTW where she took on the role of broadcast engineer from 1978 until her death, July 16, 2006. In 1979 Oshun founded OM International, and revived the original "Jazz in the Alley" music festival. She produced the free neighborhood festival in Bronzeville with little or no funding and at often at her own expense. A warm, caring, witty and humorous personality, Oshun was a treasured friend of local jazz greats such as Art Porter, Don Moye, Kahil El-Zabar, and Ari Brown. She also has promoted the careers of many filmmakers and photographers, such as Barbara E. Allen, Mary Pat Kelly, Bill "Onikwa" Wallace and Stephanie Moore. She was a tireless advocate for young people. In the 1980's, she sponsored a tribute to Captain Walter Dyett as well as arts and social programs for DuSable High School students. In the 1990's she sponsored and promoted an annual tribute concert in honor of John Coltrane featuring local music giants.

She will be missed with wonder and affection.

On July 30th, Ingmar Bergman died. He was the last of the great master filmmakers of the 20th century. None have emerged yet in this century. For lack of a better cliché, Bergman created literature on film, visual, audio, musical, spoken literature. His influence in perception and portrayal ranks with that of Picasso.

Two issues ago in Scene4, I wrote about Bergman's last work. It is seemingly apropos to publish it again.

Ingmar Bergman--His Theatre of Film

Four years ago, the remaining master filmmaker of the 20th Century, Ingmar Bergman, released a made-for-television film, Saraband. It was unanimously acclaimed and cited as the 'coda' work to his long, creative career. Today, in ill heath and 89 years old, it is apparently true.

Saraband is a sequel of sorts to Bergman's 1973 Scenes From A Marriage-- it features the extraordinary actors, Liv Ullman and Erland Josephson, creating the same characters from the prior film. And it adds a marvelous performance by Börje Ahlstedt. In short, the acting is superb.

The film has Bergman's characteristic master's editing style: in-camera, long takes, surprising jumps. It suffers because Bergman's long-time collaborator, the artist Sven Nykvist was no longer at his side creating the cinemaphotography, and shot for television on digital video all of the nuance and rich-color texture of film is missing. But Saraband has one treasure that these deficiencies cannot diminish. It has the writing--Bergman's writing.

He was mentored by the great Swedish theatre and film director, Alf Sjöberg, who conquered the "flashback" barrier in 1951 in his classic, Miss Julie. Bergman wrote for Sjöberg, learned from him, and went on to create his masterpieces both on stage and in film. Above his brilliance as a theatre and film director is Bergman's writing. He is an incomparable playwright and screenwriter.

Saraband is not a theatre piece adapted to cinema. It is a film--with a filmmaker's vision and rich visual skills. The gift it offers is a rare one today: words, language that actors can dive into as if it were a pool of music. Show me a film among all of the shit that is produced in Hollywood and, frankly, the rest of the world. Only here and there--perhaps one by Carlos Saura, perhaps another by Alan Rudolph. We live in the age of Mamet and teen-marketing, where grunts and valley-speak tax film actors who have tiny voices and rarely have the skill to portray emotions and responses when the words are absent.

At least we have the Kubricks, the Kurosawas, the Leans, the Fellinis and the Bergmans to calm the yearning and whisper hope for the future.

A friend of mine recently posted a moving tribute to the late composer, Basil Poledouris, whose work and music I've admired and collected for years. He called him: "a quintessential artist of cinema, a filmmaker's composer." And that he was. Like the great John Barry and others, Poledouris not only composed and orchestrated wonderful music he also had a magnificent talent for scoring film, absorbing the visual and breathing it back in layers of sound and subtle underpinning--a costuming of music, if you will. It was a gift of the gods that cannot be trained.

One of my favorite films, and one of the best Westerns ever made (John Ford notwithstanding) is "Quigley Down Under" which features and is elevated by a Poledouris score. The depth and dimensions of the music is stunning; the main theme (and its modulations) unforgettable. Immediately evoking a lineage with Jerry Goldsmith's classic theme from "The Magnificent Seven", Poledouris' "Quigley" is equally beautiful and far more complex and enveloping. Beyond Goldsmith, there is, in this score, a transient and embracing influence of the surprise and mystery of Kurt Weil, who also had the gift, though sadly unfulfilled.

I never met Basil Poledouris. I wish I had. But I do know him, a friendship built through his music. That is how he lives on, through his music, and, no doubt, through the artistry of his daughters.

In Scene4 I wrote: "Amadeo Modigliani was a good painter, not a great one. He didn't have the breath-taking, explosive color madness of Van Gogh or the eclectic, mind-boggling genius of Picasso. He was a good painter like a 1000 others in the 20th century. "

I was wrong. Among the 1000 others, including Picasso, there was only one Modigliani.

In the article, I was making a smug, sneering comment about the merchandising of art. It's really irrelevant especially with regard to him. If he had sold his work for more than a few francs, if he had acquired patronage and some comfort, he wouldn't have lived much longer than he did. He was a haunted man and he was dying of a physical disease for which there was no medical control. Like Rimbaud, Modigliani created works with perspectives and color that linger and in turn haunt the viewer. Like Rimbaud, he was a stranger and could not live in the world in which he found himself.