Tagged: culture

Bringing together music lovers and festival goers from all over the world for a weekend of fun, art and music in Golden Gate Park is just one of the positive impacts the Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival has on the Bay Area.

It is strange to think that tuxedos, which are today the height of formality, were once an informal concession to comfort while dining. As Lord Grantham dons a tuxedo in last week's Downton Abby, he cautiously notes that "All the chaps in London are wearing them only for the most informal evenings." Mr. Carson can't have been happy. It's all a slow slide until we're all wearing Snuggies , I suppose. While the tailless dinner jacket got its start from the tailor of Queen Victoria's son, Prince Edward, it got its [...]

Chennai-based publishers Blaft have gained a lot of notoriety and acclaim for their anthologies, namely The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction Vol. 1 & 2 . So when they announced the release of their new anthology The Obliterary Journal, we immediately decided to get in touch with Blaft editor Rakesh Khanna to get a lowdown on what readers can expect from it. Rakesh, a mathematician from U.C Berkeley and IIT-Madras, moved to Chennai in 1998. After almost ten years of being fascinated with the lurid covers of pulp magazines at local tea stands, he established Blaft with [...]

The 2012 edition of the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival runs from Saturday, Feb 4 to Saturday, Feb 11. As in previous years, the festival features a host of musical performances, art installations, film screenings, heritage walks and workshops. Contributing to the art installations in SoBo this year is renowned 3D street artist Tracy Lee Stum , who is on a tour of India sponsored by the American Centre of the US Consulate General. Stum has been creating interactive 3D artwork for the last 14 years and has gone on to gain immense critical acclaim and popularity. We caught up [...]

For the past 11 years, the !f Istanbul International Independant Film Festival has provided Turkey with the chance to see over 70 000 independants films from all over the world and allows emerging as well as famous directors to present their work to Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir cinephiles. !f Istanbul will take place between the 16th and [...]

The Mumbai International Film Festival will be held at the NCPA from Feb 3 to Feb 8. The festival will have simultaneous screenings of films at the Godrej Theatre and the Tata Theatre. The MIFF is one of the few festivals conducted by filmmakers and is only held once every two years. The festival will also feature various master classes and seminars with filmmakers and festival jury members, including classes and workshops on subjects such as script and commentary writing and how to use the HD-SLR camera into a filmmaking tool. The workshops will be held at the Experimental Theatre [...]

There's a common thread that ties together each of Gusmano Cesaretti 's photography collections. Each collection displays his uncanny ability to capture a specific place and time, in a way that feels almost mythical, and yet also deeply personal. While each series, taken as a whole, paints a sort of romanticized portrait of the place in question, the idiosyncratic details of each picture tell a story of their own. The pair of collections currently being shown at Los Angeles' Roberts & Tilton gallery- the first documenting 1970s East L.A., and the second depicting the harsh realities of [...]

On Monday, our film expert Franklin Laviola shared his predictions for the approaching Academy Awards nominations. Not surprisingly, he did quite well: 71 out of 104 nominations correct, perfect performances in the Best Director and Best Foreign Language Film Categories, and a spot-on prediction that Hugo and The Artist would lead all films with 11 and 10 nominations, respectively. He also correctly predicted that Jennifer Lawrence would look like this: Of course, the fact that Mr. Laviola correctly predicted many of the nominations [...]

Porcelain Raft - Strange Weekend Mauro Remiddi has led a complicated musical life. He has performed Klezmer Music for the Berlin Youth Circus, crossed the 38th Parallel to re-interpret the folk songs of North Korea, composed music for short films and Vaudeville revivals , and, today, he is set to release his solo debut under the name Porcelain Raft. The record, entitled Strange Weekend , is a triumph of so-called "dream pop," a record at once both intimate and expansive, both gentle and arresting. Mr. Remiddi recently re-located [...]

• Porcelain Raft - Unless You Speak From Your Heart

I don't listen to Norwegian black metal. Until about two hours ago, I couldn't have told you anything about it, and after spending the better part of that time learning about it, I can't say I'm rushing to find a download link. But Until the Light Takes Us is just a fascinating film, and for that hour and a half I was immersed in a subculture completely foreign to me. Released to mixed reviews in 2009, the film is the product of directors Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell's vision, a documentary compiled through years [...]

(Tomorrow at 8:30 AM on the East Coast, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences will announce its nominees for the 84th annual Academy Awards. The annoucements will be made by the moderately attractive Jennifer Lawrence . Sadly we did not have the opportunity to speak with Ms. Lawrence, so we asked our resident film expert Franklin Laviola to give us his predictions for the nominations. Check back tomorrow morning to see how accurate he was.) Note: In categories where predicted nominees are not listed in alphabetical order, they are listed in order of the [...]

"Connecting two nations via laughter is priceless. If you don't like it, maybe it's not your cup of tea," says Rajiv Satyal, one-third of Make Chai Not War. Courtesy of the US Dept of State, three comedians of Indian origin (born and bred in America) have been on tour in India since January 4. The cities en route were Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Patna, Kolkata, Durgapur, and Mumbai. In order of height, the three men are, Rajiv Satyal - According to his website bio, he is "the fun-size Indian comedian from Ohio whose witty, universal, and [...]

Many people have anxiety about learning a new language, but it does not have to be hard. In fact, learning a new language can be a lot of fun! Focus on the opportunities that speaking another language can bring. If you travel, it can make communication much less of a problem. It will even increase your communication skills right where you live. In today's economy, knowing another language can make it easier to get a job. People who live in America are increasingly finding that Spanish is becoming the nation's second language. In many parts of America, many [...]

Glenn Ligon is certainly not the first artist to use America as a conceptual framework through which to explore his own identity. But through some combination of Ligon's unique experience in America, and the biting wit and keen insight he brings to that discussion, his contribution stands as something definitive and original in contemporary art. Most noticeably, Ligon's art is about being black and about being gay in America. But far from transparent or obvious criticisms about race or sexuality, Ligon's work is highly conceptual, offering personal meditations that match the complexity of the subject matter he's approaching. [...]

Urban dance is frequently misunderstood. Whether it is portrayed in rap and hip hop music videos or simply on street corners around the world, the image of urban dance is either glamorous , gritty or somewhere in between. Street culture is a vast and often ambiguous concept with the glorification of poverty and violence through street gangs lining up alongside something as innocuous as break dancing. Born and raised in the bustling Mumbai suburb of Bandra, Priya Gonsalves has been devoted to dance from very early on in her life. She has been into street dance for [...]

On paper, no. I for one, have not come across any person that has thought of or committed suicide as a result of an iPhone. However, in the town of Wuhan, China, some 300 have threatened to do just that. Well, not exactly, let me rewind. Foxconn , the single largest private employer in mainland China manufacturers many of the products we cherish so deeply in America. Motherboards, camera parts, tablets and yes iPhones are just some of the products that Foxconn manufactures, which make up the $150 billion consumer electronics industry. Employing close to [...]

When Mirra "The Mother" Alfassa founded Auroville, she stated, "Auroville is meant to be a universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony, above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities." Moreover, she wrote, "The purpose of Auroville is to realize human unity." More accurately, Auroville is a grand experiment in attempting to bring the utopian ideals of the '60s into fruition in a real, living, breathing community. Located in Southern India, the township boasts 2000-plus residents who live mostly in harmony, on a limited budget, taking part [...]

Last year , the world lost a true revolutionary. It seemed that only in the years leading up to his death, had greater pop culture begun to realize the true impact and importance Gil Scott-Heron had had on its own landscape. Though hip-hop and jazz historicists, vinyl collectors and political minds had been singing his praises for decades, it seemed that the last few years of his life saw that well-deserved reverence reaching an unprecedented level. The release of his final album, I'm New Here , a collaborative effort with XL Recordings founder Richard Russell, and the posthumous Jamie [...]

Singapore-based graffiti artist Didier 'Jaba' Mathieu painted the wall of Cool Chef Cafe in Worli Naka, Mumbai and we brought you pictures of the event here . This week, we gathered all our video and audio footage of this occasion and put together an awesome graffiti video. Jaba has been painting for years now and this wall-piece epitomized his old school approach to wildstyle graffiti writing. Learn more about 'tagging' and where it comes from as Jaba explains graffiti and what it's like to paint in India. Catch 'Jaba Tags Cool Chef Cafe' below.

Veteran graffiti writer Jaba came to Mumbai this week and crafted an abstract wall piece at Cool Chef Cafe, Worli on Tuesday, January 03. Jaba has been a graffiti artist for over 20 years now and he is known for his futuristic characters and wildstyle graffiti (check out his work here ). Jaba starts sketching the wall piece Jaba begins by sketching his design on the wall with the colours he will be using for this particular piece. Each section has to be filled in [...]