Category: Lifting Voices

REVIEW: Gala Mukomolova Poetry Reading and Book Signing

Fareah Fysudeen Leave a comment

In the first reading of the Helen Zell Visiting Writers series, I sat excited and enthralled to witness the arrival of poet Gala Mukomolova. It was lovely being back in the UMMA Auditorium for the 2019 inception of the series, with the warm light suspended by translucent threads, giving it the quality of floating Hogwarts candles; the dimness of the room lulling me into a kind of aesthetic trance; poetry washing onto the shores of my mind. And so entered Mukomolova’s work into one of my beloved programs at Michigan. 

In her reading, Mukomalova read from her debut poetry collection Without Protection. Mukomolova has many identities she explores in her work. She is Russian, Jewish, refugee, New Yorker, lesbian. These intersecting identities ground her work into her own universe, and she enters this space she has invented with the agency, authority, and recognition of her own power. I am currently unraveling what it means to write about your identity in your work– how much of it seems like “material” you’re performing, and how much is actually authentic. I haven’t read Mukomolova’s work in full and am only acquainted with the work she read to us, but it seems to me that she enters her poetry as her own creation. When she writes in Russian, or explains deeply personal situations, she seems to explain the narrative not for us, but for herself; the work, in some ways, seems to be the many aspects of her identity in conversation with the other parts in one place. To me, this seems wildly liberating, not the puppeteeting that might structure other inauthentic works. 

Mukomalova’s poetry collection explores the story of the old Russian fable about the young girl named Vasilyssa trying to escape from the witch Baba Yaga. Her power, bravery, and divine feminine energy guide her to enter Baba Yaga’s home Without Protection. The collection includes a multiplicity of narratives colasing into one, delicately woven together, the old and new and personal and universal all in conversation. One sentence will be about the story of Baba Yaga, the next an anecdote from Mukomalova’s life, another an advertisement on Craigslist. It’s a brilliant tapestry of multiplicity and power that Mukomolova crafts in her poetry. 

There is, moreover, a definite belief in the power of women, and more specifically, in the sexuality of women. Mukomalova writes:

 

I want everything. I want to be fucked like the wife who waited

for her soldier’s return, fucked: the island, the sand, the nymph, 

the lust that strands him. Fucked: the witch’s sword against his dick before she 

opens. Ill deep throat, I’m sayin’

it’s April, 72 degrees, I’m in love and wearing platforms. This song is just like 

my first years in America, the jump off. What I mean is reckless, performing 

a kind of hope.

 

Mukomalova’s poetry is unabashed about desire, about the complex highs and lows of wanting and not having, or wanting and having and being a woman. There is an erotic energy weaved into her poetry that gives it power and shamelessness, an unapologetic ode to her womanhood and sexuality. 

Overall, I enjoyed the reading very much. Rereading some of her poetry here to write this blogpost reminded me how thrilling it is to read it, and I have to admit that I enjoyed reading it more than I did hearing it. In any case, I think this makes it easier for you, dear reader of this blog post, to go out and read Gala Mukomalova’s stunning and multi-layered debut poetry collection Without Protection. 

Sources: https://coffeehousepress.org/products/without-protection, poetry except from https://pen.org/four-poems-by-gala-mukomolova/

REVIEW: Tigers Are Not Afraid

Emma Pinchak Leave a comment

It’s hard to describe this movie. It feels like it was made a while before its 2017 release, reminiscent of ancient fairy tales and old westerns. Fantasy blends with the supernatural with cowboy kids and unspecific wars that rage eternally.

The whole film had a strange feeling to it, a dark beauty made all the more sinister by the twisting of youth into a violent survival. Sandwiched between scenes of children killing to live–pistol large and awkward held in their small hands–we witness a lavish mansion, a beautiful koi pond, the sun laying warm orange hands upon the earth.

In various scenes I drew a similarity to the 2010 adaptation of Alice In Wonderland, whose creators favored the duller, harsher, rotting side of marvelousness. The blueprint to this wonderland is reflective of that, its color scheme made up of romantically bleak sandy expanses and pastel paints faded by time under the watchful eye of the sun. Dust covers all in a show of a strangling embrace, clouding the landscape in an attempt to dilute its horrors.

 

What was unclear was the lack of explanation of the adverse effects of making wishes. This seemed an uneven piece of the plot, as Estrella’s mother and the other victims of the gang are seeking justice for the violence through which they’ve suffered. Perhaps they recognize some need for balance, granting wishes being too disruptive an act unless it was accounted for by some random tragedy. But this concept is not corroborated by any other behavior by the dead; they seem motivated only by the rage from the injustices committed against them, and in this basically solely self-interested. Adhering to a lawful cosmic order does would not seem to be an overly pressing concern for them.

 

But beyond this confusion, there is at least some dark beautiful justice to mingle with tragedy. All the conflicting directions involved in the film makes it difficult to process, but truly this is what film should do: confuse, make us process at once all it’s trying to communicate. There is no movie of any quality that does not frustrate.

I don’t know exactly that any romance should be juxtaposed with real, current violence. I have some creeping sensation that its beauty, however clearly dark it may be, is dangerously placed. Perhaps this movie is only this way as it’s shown through the eyes of children. Though hardened by their circumstances, they still possess the imagination of the young, and need to cope somehow with their orphaning. They seek shelter in each other, yes, but must see something else in the world that can distract them from what they’ve lost.

 

 

PREVIEW: Out There: A Performance by art duo Princess

Emma Pinchak Leave a comment

I’m always one for expanding my horizons, especially when it comes to the arts. I have no idea what to expect for this one! Part performance art, part film, Out There approaches a serious subject (mens’ role in combatting misogyny in society) with creativity. Described as having a “science fiction narrative,” the performance is a collaboration by JD Samson, visual artist Jennifer Meridian, and the band TEEN.

The event has free admission, though there is a limit to how many people can occupy the performance room. So, please RSVP via https://www.eventbrite.com/e/out-there-a-performance-by-art-duo-princess-tickets-70631796605.

See you Friday, October 11 at 5 PM at the Stamps Gallery, 201 S Division St!

 

 

 

REVIEW: CSEAS Film Screening–Thai Movie Night. Ploy / ‘พลอย’

Emma Pinchak Leave a comment

I loved this movie, especially as I wandered into the screening room without thinking that I would.

Ploy follows the addition of a stranger (the titular character) into the lives of two troubled people making the mistake of languidly existing in a deeply flawed marriage, and doing nothing about it. She looks far younger than the nearly 19 years she claims to have lived; her doe-eyed youthfulness plays into the strength of the chaos she innocently unleashes. While unsettling given her childlike features, she holds a clear sexuality that serves to beckon forward the evil already within the couple’s complicated relationship.

Although the director fiercely guards his definition of the movie as a simple, commercial one (and certainly not of the art house variety, as many critics and fans have claimed), the entire time I was seeing metaphors in everything, appreciating his sense of aesthetics; the subtleties of object placement and camera angles and color and slight expression changes on the characters’ faces.

The intense scene with Dang trying to escape her armed captor at the abandoned warehouse was chillingly beautiful despite the typical artlessness of violence. The wind rustling through the ripped, translucent plastic created a feeling of being inside a kind of dust storm, the panic of the events coalescing with an uncertainty of direction and decreased visibility.

The hotel’s hallways were strikingly bare, though the inside of the rooms are lavishly modern suites with full kitchens and enormous beds. The bar has a lonely, electric feeling to it, part old-timey diner and part futuristic hangout. The lobby feels more like an empty airport, the back of the taxi a warm, wet cavern.

Some things were left mismatched, maybe as a nod to how the paranoid, lonely mind creates frantic stories when reality gives out less information than needed. The purpose of the thievery of the suit jacket and pants is never revealed, nor is the question of whether the hot-blooded romance between the maid and bartender is real or a dream of Ploy’s. Also, the identity of the boy she’s with in the beginning is never revealed. Rather than viewing these things as plot holes, I recognized their role in enriching the jarring feeling of love lost Ratanaruang was trying to create.

But whether or not the romance between the two young lovers was a fabrication of Ploy’s imagination is unimportant. Instead its significance lies in the sad hope they and we all have in new love. Placed next to (in all its beautifully erotic glory) the failing marriage Dang and Wit share, it both depresses and envigorates, causing us to question how we unfailingly fall into the ecstacy of novelty despite our knowledge that it may eventually end, or at least shift into something far less enticing.

It’s hard to say whether to take Ploy as a gift or an evilness. The way the movie ends, it seems we are supposed to conclude the former, but I didn’t feel satisfied with that. Her presence does exacerbate the couple’s arguments, which eventually leads to uncharacteristically bold actions that end up bringing the two closer together, but the pain she brings about is almost glazed over in this. Dang is the victim of violent sexual assault and (we are led to assume) she ends up killing her captor, but after the fact this is not mentioned, the enormous range of emotions created remaining unexplored and unexpressed. Having an ending where the couple comes back together, seeming to even happily glow in the backseat of the taxi, seems again a direct ignorance of the lesson in communication Ploy was meant to teach. But then, maybe this was the film’s vision, to show the cyclical nature of apathy to anger turning into self-fooling false happiness. Or maybe it’s meant as a truly happy ending, in which honesty is less important than intentionally appreciating one’s partner.

If you haven’t seen this movie yet, I would strongly urge you to watch it.

PREVIEW: CSEAS Film Screening–Thai Movie Night. Ploy / ‘พลอย’

Emma Pinchak Leave a comment

It’s always good to break up the tedium of the school week with something a little more interesting than differential equations. Too often we get stuck in the poisonous mindset not just of continuous labor, but of reliance on the same tired relaxants–rewatching The Office for the twentieth time, stress-eating entire loaves of day-old bread from Jimmy Johns, compulsively list-making in your agenda.

This week, expose yourself to something a little different, and a little more mind-enriching: foreign film! As a part of CSEAS’s continuing Thai movie night series, Ploy (2007) will be shown in North Quadrangle’s Video Viewing Room in the Language Resources Center at 7PM this Thursday, September 26th.

The movie follows a couple trapped in a hotel room with a stranger, whose behavior begins to sneakily find cracks in their relationship. It’s a story of the fragility of trust inside the seemingly strong walls of love and marriage, and it leads viewers to wonder whether anything is built to last.

REVIEW: The Farewell

Corrina Lee Leave a comment

The Farewell is a movie about an ending coming suddenly into sight. Billi (Awkwafina) comes home to do laundry and comes away with the knowledge that her grandmother, Nai Nai (Zhao Shuzhen), has only a few months to live. With that fatal deadline looming, the entire family has decided to lie to Nai Nai, hoping to ease her mind by keeping the diagnosis of lung cancer a secret. Billi, though, has her doubts, complicated, in no small part, by her own need to say goodbye. But the rest of the family is insistent. They will gather together at Nai Nai’s apartment in China under the false pretense of a wedding. They will carry this secret so that Nai Nai won’t have to.

Much of the comedy comes from the fact that no one – not Billi, not her parents, not her uncles or cousins – can bear the weight of that secret entirely. The cracks widen with each barely mustered smile, with each nervous side-glance after a misplaced word. There is a palpable awkwardness to every interaction, as every member of the clan works to maintain a flailing façade. Even the shots are intentionally awkward. Frames are shot from the perspective of an individual in the scene, inserting the viewer first-hand into the lie. We are confronted by the knowing faces and a painful self-awareness. And we laugh as those faces contort into an expression resembling a smile. Because what else is there to do in a situation as dire as a coming death? So, the secret becomes an elaborate distraction, as much for the living’s sake as for the dying.

Together, the family help Nai Nai assemble the wedding. She attacks the tasks with a relentless zeal. There is no danger greater, after all, than a grandmother spurned. Of course, the wedding must have lobster instead of crab. Of course, the couple must be posed to indicate a perfect romance. Anything less would be unworthy of the family she has built. Nai Nia projects such familial fierceness that the false occasion takes on more than a tinge of truth. Feelings that were once faked become frighteningly real. Tensions buried for years bubble up and erupt. For as much as the family is united, they are also fractured in ways that only family can be. Billi’s father (played as a plodding gloom by Tzi Ma) and her uncle (Yongbo Jiang) are constantly at odds. They have been separated by long years and longer distances. While Billi’s father moved his small portion of the clan to the United States, his brother chose Japan. Now, they are brought together once again, back to where they came from. They share cigarettes at night while splitting a much heavier burden. They will have to be the pillars of the family from now on.

These poignant, lingering moments are sometimes interrupted by less poignant moments that linger even longer. The director, Lulu Wang, often uses slow-motion shots for emphasis but it comes off as syrupy instead. There is a sense of trying a bit too hard to romanticize the moment, as if the movie is memorializing this moment just as the characters are memorializing theirs. It is a good sentiment, executed less than perfectly. By, what feels like, the fiftieth poignant moment, you want the film to move on. But it can’t. The movie is stuck. The characters are stuck between celebrating life and mourning death, one that is still approaching. The film is premised on binaries. To tell or not to tell. Lobster or crab. Life or death. But as each character discovers, they reside in spaces that feel not quite right and not quite wrong. The Farewell meanders well, following the characters as they explore the mediums between the extremes. It is the static points where it struggles.

Billi, mainly drifts between the extremes of modernity and traditionally held values. It is also a question of how others perceive her, a young Chinese American living alone in New York City, and how she sees herself, a struggling writer searching for some of that childhood stability. She is, like many first-generation Americans, struggling to reconcile the alienation she feels from all sides. In herself, Billi embodies every influence throughout her life, from the gentle reproaches of Nai Nai and her parents, to the harsher financial admonishments of the American economy. The Farewell, then, is not only a film about moving in ambiguous places but also how those ambiguities can be incorporated within. The Farewell doesn’t much deal with resolute truths. It is more comfortable with lies and half-facts. We all are. And in death, as in life there really is no such thing as an absolute surety.