MUSIC Bosnia And the Ship Sailed On Evropa Music by Nigel Osborne; Libretto by Goran Simic The necessity of the arts for the survival of dignity and the human spirit is nowhere more apparent than in Sarajevo. In nearly three years under siege, Sarajevans have refused to allow the Bosnian capital’s artistic soul to perish. An emotional highlight at the 11th annual Sarajevo Winter Festival last week was a one-time-only performance of an operetta by Britain’s Nigel Osborne and Bosnian poet Goran Simic. With President Alija Izetbegovic in the audience, the production (also seen on national television) was complete with soloists, the city’s symphony orchestra and 150 members of its children’s chorus.
Composer Osborne, 46, is a professor of music at Edinburgh University whose association with the city began during his student days. Since the outbreak of the Bosnian war, he has been committed to keeping alive Sarajevo’s cultural diversity, returning several times to conduct musical workshops for the city’s children. His opera Sarajevo was performed in London in August. A political allegory with biting satire, Evropa takes place on a drifting ocean liner. Its anxious young passengers want to know their destination, but alas, the ship is being steered by Madame Europa, a faded grande dame who is more absorbed in the greatness of her past than by the treacherous rocks that lie ahead.
MOVIES Israel Romancing the Scud Song of the Sirens Directed by Eytan Fox
In Israeli films, war is a prevailing theme, so it is hardly surprising that Song of the Sirens is set against the backdrop of the Gulf War. What makes it unusual–and refreshingly so–is that the film is a romantic comedy about looking for love while Saddam Hussein’s Scud missiles are headed for Tel Aviv. Says its director, U.S.-born Israeli Eytan Fox: “Israeli films tend to be ideological and socially and politically oriented. No wonder Israelis run away from them as too heavy and morbid.” Not so for Fox’s Song of the Sirens: since opening last October, it has attracted 145,000 moviegoers, more than the other 12 made-in-Israel films of 1994 combined. It is being shown at the Berlin Film Festival that got under way last week.
The movie is based on a 1991 best-selling novel by Irit Linur and follows the zigzag entanglements of Talilah Katz, a thirtysomething advertising executive who fits easily into Tel Aviv’s chic yuppie milieu and is representative of the modern, liberated young Israeli women contemptuous of the macho and militaristic values woven through their society. “A fine movie, well produced and well acted,” summed up l`Isha, a women’s publication, and added, “For a change, Tel Aviv doesn’t look like it is part of a third-world country.” Fox financed his $600,000 film from government grants and private investors, who are gambling that the movie will be a box-office success not only in Israel but beyond. So far, the bet is paying off.
United States Stone by Stone Moving the Mountain Directed by Michael Apted Their faces shining with hope, demonstrators pour into Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. A statue of the Goddess of Democracy towers above the banner-waving throng. A man stands alone and defiant before the brutal strength of a moving tank. Seen on television during the tumultuous days of May and June 1989, the images were burned into the world’s memory. The documentary Moving the Mountain re-examines the events from the perspectives of four student leaders who escaped and are now in the U.S. They recount their experiences, their hopes for China and the responsibility they feel for the hundreds, if not thousands who died when the government ordered the military to crush the protests.
Wishing to “put a human face” on the Tiananmen events, producer Trudie Styler focused on the dissident Li Lu, now 29 and completing graduate degrees in law and business. Director Michael Apted combined fictional scenes of Li as a boy with archival footage from Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, where the seeds of the Tiananmen demonstrations were sown. After his parents were denounced and sent away, Li lived with a series of foster families, surviving rejection and ridicule with self-reliance and an unvanquished spirit. It is he who relates the parable of the mountain that, stone by stone, can be moved aside.
This freedom to study, to speak out, to prepare for the future is in stark contrast to the ordeal of Wei Jingsheng, who has been put forward for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. He spent nearly 15 years in prison; while he was temporarily free in late 1993, Apted filmed him at a secret location. “As the time they’ve been gone grows long,” Wei says of the exiles, “China will fade from their memories, and that is like bidding farewell to oneself.” A few months later he was arrested again; he has not been heard from since.
EXHIBITS Germany Spoils of Empire “The Wrack: The Ship Finds of Mahdia” Rhenish State Museum, Bonn
The vessel lay for almost two millenniums at the bottom of the Mediterranean near the Tunisian port of Mahdia, its deep, watery grave discovered in 1907 when underwater archaeology was in its infancy. Most of the wrack’s 200 tons of cargo was subsequently removed and stored in Tunis’ Bardo Museum. There it remained until a joint project between the Bardo and Bonn’s Rhenish State Museum restored the treasures of the ancient world for 20th century viewers. The ship–its name is unknown–sailed from Piraeus around 80 B.C., possibly bound for Rome when it sank, taking down with it items from Athenian workshops and objects ransacked from Greek temples.
The contents of the doomed ship were intended, museum specialists contend, for the Roman Empire’s newly wealthy. The inventory yielded 60 to 70 marble columns, two life-size marble statues, a bust of Aphrodite and a herm of Dionysius, nine bronze statuettes, three ornamented bronze beds, three catapults, along with massive kraters, urns and candelabras. The 230 objects on display in Bonn are placed in historical context with documentation of trade routes, furniture making and the decorative crafts of the period. “A ray of light is shown on the ancient world,” wrote one enthusiastic Bonn reviewer of the first-ever exhibit.
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