Sunday, July 31, 2022

Claude Lanzmann: "Life at its widest"

[This article was first published under the title "Summer at its widest" in Catalonia Today, July 2022.]

15 summers ago (my first full one here) the CCCB, or Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona showed French-Jewish filmaker Claude Lanzmann’s “extraordinary diptych of the Holocaust.”

Coming after the critically acclaimed, monumental 9 and a half hour documentary, Holocaust [or “Shoah”] of 1985, the Barcelona screening was titled “Variations of what is real.” It was part of their Xcèntric program for 2006-7.

Led by the academic Jorge Seca, the films were subtitled in Castilian Spanish by a group of translators from the UAB, Autonomous University in Barcelona.

In the first offering, Un vivant qui passe (1997), Lanzmann tells the story of Maurice Rossel, the only representative of the Red Cross to visit the Terezin death camp and wrote a report stating that he had seen “no atrocities.”

In 1944 Rossel reported that it was in fact a “model ghetto” and noticed “nothing terribly wrong”. He also freely and repeatedly expressed his view that Jews had “a passivity that I couldn’t stomach.” 

In the longer follow-up reel, “Sobibor” (2001) Lanzmann examined another episode of the Holocaust: the attempted escape of 600 Jews (also including some Red Army prisoners of war) from a Polish extermination camp.

He did this “through the story of Yehuda Lerner [one of only 60 survivors] who was seventeen years old, when in a meticulous plan of rebellion he ordered a Nazi officer to smash his head with an axe.”

The film “ends with the triumph of the Jews’ murder of their Nazi guards and their succesful flight from Sobibor, but he does not follow the survivors [return] where some were killed.”

Lanzmann himself (who died 4 years ago this July) was often simply called a director.

In truth, he was a film producer in the widest sense of the word.

According to journalist Julia Pascal he was even “the movie-maker-as-spy, the Jew who pretended to be pro-Nazi in order to film the guilty.

In one long sequence, he posed as a Nazi sympathiser and secretly filmed an SS officer who confided his past.” In fact, after their subterfuge was discovered he and a female accomplice were badly beaten and it could have been much worse before they got away. 

Lanzmann created from his will, as a stranger to brevity, stapling it well below accuracy or exhaustive detail.

The memoir he wrote, titled The Patagonian Hare, was no exception. If you’re like me and an hour on the beach (or maximum two) is only doable with a good book and you want something different from the standard lighter or narrower reading, then this book is the polar opposite.

It’s a kind of stretched agony in many places. His battle with what becomes his life’s purpose, the telling of the most stomach-churning truths, is clear.

What shines too from the lines of his memory in top gear is his determination to never be resigned to a great silence, to never taste the poison of passivity. 

His is a reverence for life itself. Seemingly never belittled by doubt, he has made much of the crucial importance of Nazi victims being treated so that in contemporay times “they haven’t died alone.”

My hope for everyone reading this in a season of pure heat is that you find time to relax and enjoy all that you can, living with the spirit of a Lanzmann.

Monday, July 18, 2022

Sunday, July 10, 2022

"Fossil gas labelled green in ‘biggest act of greenwashing in history’"

 


"European MEPs from the far right, and the majority of the EPP today voted in favor of the EU Commission’s proposal to inexplicably label gas as ‘green’ in the EU’s taxonomy of sustainable investments by 328 to 278. 

Europe’s elected representatives have let citizens down, says Transport & Environment, which has labelled the vote a disaster for the climate and a gift to Putin.

Luca Bonaccorsi, sustainable finance director at T&E, said:“This must be the biggest act of greenwashing in history; enacted by the same people that are supposed to protect us from the climate crisis. The sun won’t set in the east just because a bunch of complicit politicians say so in a law. Nor will gas ever be clean and renewable. The laws of nature don’t lie, but the taxonomy does. This bill will not stand up to the many legal challenges being announced, and it will be shunned by investors.”

The provisions allow all new gas plants to be labelled green under the condition that they will be used ‘sparingly’. This undermines the credibility of sustainable investing, says T&E, since no green fund or green bond includes gas today. At best the EU’s rules will be ignored, at worst it will fuel a whole industry of fake green investments.

Luca Bonaccorsi, concluded: “On top of being environmentally disastrous the bill is also unfair, with almost 75% of the estimated green funds going to France and Germany. The criteria to access green funds have been skillfully designed to steer all funds towards the two member states that co-authored the law. This is a truly sad day for Europe.”


Sunday, July 3, 2022

MOSS Deck Art Show MELBOURNE with BARCELONA


Turning Art Into Water for MOSS Foundation

Melbourne: 6pm – 9:30pm Friday 25TH Nov 2022
Barcelona: 6pm – 9:30pm Thurs 24th Nov 2022

Silent Auction closes 9:30pm Friday Melbourne time & 11:30am Friday Barcelona time
(Same bidding app, same time, different time zones!)
In person and online charity auctions.
Take your decks home on the night (pick up or shipping options too).
(Also check out MOSS shows at Gold Coast in June ‘22 & Sydney/Hawaii in Sept ‘22)
::
INVITE YOUR FRIENDS - AND YOURSELF!
Top artists from around this planet are donating their original one off art works for clean water in Eswatini / Swaziland.
100% TO THE CAUSE!
::
100% of the sale price of every piece goes to funding a life changing MOSS Foundation permanent clean water scheme in southern east Africa.

(No commissions, no admin costs, no gallery commission or artist fees, no food or wine costs. It’s all sponsored.)
Every dollar you spend goes to clean water in Swaziland / eSwatini.
::
Where:
1) Magnet Gallery. SC G19 Wharf St, The District, Docklands, VIC 3008. Australia
2) Base Elements Gallery, Carrer d'Avinyó, 31, 08002 Barcelona, Spain
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Free entry.
What is MOSS?
https://vimeo.com/295326949
www.mosswater.org
- MOSS Foundation Inc is a 100% volunteer registered charity founded by skateboarders, musicians, artists and surfers.
- MOSS Foundation has been building life changing permanent water schemes in Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), southern east Africa since 2006.
MOSS Foundation - Clean Water Saving Lives
www.facebook.com/MossFoundationSkaters
www.instagram.com/MossFoundationSkaters
www.MossWaterProject.com
#MossJam
#MossDeckArtShow
#MossFoundationSkaters
@MossFoundationSkaters 


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNPRBw93R2g&list=LL&index=2