People Before Profit blog

Ink, Paper, Politics: WPA-era printmaking exhibit

Thu, 02 Oct 2014 13:14:00 +0000

CHICAGO - Images of city life, labor, and the workplace, and protests against social injustice are among the fine-art prints in an exhibition at the DePaul Art Museum.

The 56 prints in the exhibition were produced during the Depression, when the federal government was providing financial support to a wide range of artistic projects, from fiction to fine art, through the Works Progress Administration-Federal Arts Project (WPA-FAP).

The WPA was established April 8, 1935, under the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act, as a means of creating meaningful public works jobs for the nation's millions of unemployed. Under the direction of Harry Hopkins, the WPA employed more than 8.5 million people on 1.4 million public projects before it was disbanded in 1943.

Among the WPA's most famous programs are those that put writers, artists, musicians, actors and directors to work: the Federal Art Project, the Federal Theatre Project, and the Federal Writers Project. Among their products are the now-legendary public murals that still grace post offices and other public spaces around the country, as well as regional guidebooks that have become valuable cultural and historic sources.

"The prints are a window into the 1930s, a turbulent and complex time in American history," said curator Louise Lincoln, director of the museum on DePaul University's Lincoln Park Campus. "It's easy to see the hardships in the lives of ordinary people, the social and political controversies, even the disagreements among artists about what the role of art should be," she said.

Many works addressed the nation's economic inequality, leading some politicians to denounce the WPA as "subversive," according to Lincoln. A 1938 story in the Chicago Tribune called it "a vampire political machine," she said. Under the editorship of Colonel Robert R. McCormick the paper was aligned with the right-wing in its coverage of political news and social trends, attacking the New Deal and enthusiastic for the notorious Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

Many artists and critics believed that the WPA had helped to develop something distinctly American in American art, and artists were deeply grateful for the opportunity to earn their livelihood, Lincoln said. Franklin D. Roosevelt predicted, "one hundred years from now my administration will be known for its art, not for its relief programs."

The exhibition includes works by such well-known artists as Stuart Davis and Rockwell Kent, and is drawn from a donation of 100 prints to the museum from the collection of Belverd Needles Jr. and Marian Powers Needles. "This wonderfully generous gift carves out a new area in the museum's collection, and will provide a rich source of exploration and enjoyment for our students and visitors," Lincoln said.

On Oct. 15, Liz Seaton, curator at Kansas State University's Beach Museum of Art, will present a lecture on political content in the prints. The lecture begins at 5:30 p.m. All events are free and open to the public.

Ink, Paper, Politics: WPA-era Printmaking from the Needles Collection runs through Dec 21.

The DePaul Art Museum at 935 W. Fullerton, just east of the CTA Fullerton 'L' stop, is open Wednesday and Thursday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., Friday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. The museum is closed Mondays and Tuesdays. For more information, call 773-325-7506 or visit www.depaul.edu/museum.

Photo: Sanding the Propeller, 1941, by Edward Arthur Wilson. Courtesy DePaul Art Museum

Kartemquin Films announces two world premieres

Thu, 02 Oct 2014 10:53:00 +0000

CHICAGO - Kartemquin Films, Chicago's documentary powerhouse, announced that two of their films will hold world premiere screenings in October.

On Beauty will world premiere as an official selection of both the 50th Chicago International Film Festival and the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival.

Oct. 28 will see the world premiere of The School Project, an unprecedented collaboration between Chicago production companies in documenting perhaps the most volatile issue of the city's recent political history.

On Beauty is a story about appreciating the beauty of difference. The 31 minute film follows fashion photographer Rick Guidotti, who left the fashion world when he grew frustrated with having to work within the restrictive parameters of the industry's standard of beauty. After a chance encounter with a young woman who had the genetic condition albinism, Rick re-focused his lens on changing the way we see and experience beauty. At the center of the film are two of Rick's photo subjects - Sarah and Jayne - who have overcome other's perceptions to lead vibrant lives.

In Chicago, audiences can meet Emmy-nominated director Joanna Rudnick (In the Family), Rick Guidotti, and other special guests on Saturday, Oct. 18 at 1:15p.m. at the AMC River East 21 theater. Get tickets.

In Hot Springs, the film plays on 3:50 pm on Monday, Oct. 13 and 9:50 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 18. Get more details.

Visit On Beauty's website or follow the film on Facebook or Twitter.

The School Project

Examining public education after the fallout from the city's historic closing of 49 public schools, The School Project, a six-part series of 10-minute segments, launching with a free public screening and discussion at the Chicago History Museum on Tuesday, Oct. 28 (RSVP here to attend). The series' interactive website will launch simultaneously at www.schoolprojectfilm.com, and air on Chicago's PBS station.

The School Project's co-production partners include Free Spirit Media, Kartemquin Films, Kindling Group, Media Process Group, Siskel/Jacobs Productions, and producers Rachel Dickson and Melissa Sterne. Outreach partners include WTTW/Channel 11, the Chicago Sun-Times, Catalyst Chicago, the Chicago History Museum and Ebony.com.

Old And New Dreams Festival celebrates return of HotHouse and more

Wed, 01 Oct 2014 15:29:00 +0000

CHICAGO - On October 17, the acclaimed non-profit arts organization HotHouse will kick off its Old And New Dreams Festival at the Promontory, a brand new club in Hyde Park on 53rd.

With this major Festival, HotHouse is celebrating its return to the local presenting arena and publicly announcing its plans to rebuild a new home for its cultural enterprises.

HotHouse is also using the occasion of this Festival to pay homage to one of its most steadfast institutional collaborators - The Association for the Advancement for Creative Musicians (AACM), on the cusp of their 50^th Anniversary. HotHouse has been the primary presenter of music performed by the individual members of the AACM for over 25 years.

An all-ages, free community event on Saturday, October 18 (from noon to 3pm) will feature: DJ Ayana Contreras spinning vintage AACM vinyl records, film screenings, and AACM member Douglas Ewart leading a participatory oral history project.

The weekend's activities will also pay tribute to the composer and musician Don Cherry for his enormous contributions to "world music" and groundbreaking achievements as an artist. A piece specially choreographed in Cherry's honor will be performed on Saturday night by Amansu Eason and dancers from the acclaimed Muntu Dance Theatre of Chicago.

Other homages to Cherry include the world premiere of the Chicago Underground Duo's partnership with legendary saxophonist Pharoah Sanders (headlining Saturday night) and appearances by Rajanstani Sufi masters Lahka Khan with world-renowned Chicago percussionist Hamid Drake. Saxophonist Ornette Coleman once described Pharoah Sanders as "probably the best tenor player in the world."

Additional Festival premieres include the debut concert appearance of Classic Black, led by acclaimed storyteller Shanta Nurullah, the US debut of Amsterdam-based trio Oliver's Cinema, and the highly anticipated return to Chicago of tenor saxophonist David Murray.

Replete with unusual pairings, Chicago debuts, the long-overdue appearance of major jazz artists, Old And New Dreams Festival is a spectacular entry in the fall calendar of arts and culture events.

Festival Summary /Calendar Listing (Jazz, Film, World Music, Dance)

HotHouse presents the Old And New Dreams Festival

Friday October 17 doors at 7pm, concert 8pm

Saturday October 18 Free Community Programs Noon-3pm

Saturday October 19 doors at 7pm, concert at 8pm

Sunday October 19 doors at 1pm, concert 2-4pm

Promontory 5311 S. Lake Park, Chicago

Tickets $22-$40

Information: Old And New Dreams Festival

Photo: Pharoah Sanders, Iridium, New York, CC BY-SA 2.0, Dmitry Scherbie

"The Trip To Bountiful" in review

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 15:08:00 +0000

During the first scene of Act I of Horton Foote's The Trip to Bountiful, I have to admit I quickly got bored. No explosions! How about some costumed superheroes? Instead of gunplay or swordplay there was just wordplay. Lots of blah, blah, and blather-call it "Foote-in-mouth-disease." The show features what used to be called "an all-Negro cast," but where were the whooping, hollering, hoofing and crooning? Even worse, it starred an 80-year-old actress playing an old lady! To top things off, there appeared to be audio problems, making it difficult to hear some of the dialogue.

In terms of the Hollywood formula, Foote's stage adaptation got two things right: It features big Tinseltown names, as well as a work derived from another medium that it has bounced back and forth from. There's been a bounty of Bountifuls, starting with the 1953 NBC-TV play starring Lillian Gish, Eileen Heckart and Eva Marie Saint on the Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse. A version of this teleplay was adapted for and performed on Broadway. Bountiful next returned on the big screen, with Geraldine Page scoring the Best Actress Oscar and Foote a screenwriting nomination for the 1985 movie co-starring John Heard and Rebecca De Mornay. Then there was a 2013 Broadway revival starring Cicely Tyson, Vanessa Williams and Cuba Gooding, Jr., and a 2014 Lifetime made-for-TV movie with Tyson and Williams reprising their roles and Blair Underwood in Gooding, Jr.'s part as Ludie Watts.

It's the latter cast that's treading the boards at the Ahmanson in Bountiful's current incarnation, which is directed by Michael Wilson, who previously helmed the Lifetime version. By the time they and Foote were done skillfully, subtly working their magic, I became ensnared in what could be called Foote's drama of everyday life featuring ordinary people facing the vicissitudes of existence. The production's captivating conundrums include the elderly Carrie Watts' (Tyson) desire to return to her tiny Texas hometown one last time before she dies. It is a testament to Foote's talent as a dramatist that he manages to pack his Lone Star odyssey with much of the tension of Odysseus' epic ancient journey across the Mediterranean, or the exploratory cross-continental quest of Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty in On the Road.

For twenty years the uprooted Carrie has lived in the big city with her son Ludie and his disputatious, prima donna wife Jessie Mae (Vanessa Williams, who so deliciously dished malevolence from 2006-2010 as Wilhelmina Slater on the Ugly Betty ABC series). The two women clash-often over Carrie's pension check, which helps pay for the diminutive domain they inhabit together in a Houston apartment, the divided Ludie often caught in the middle of the two bickering women. As his mom yearns to return to the home of his boyhood, the hard working Ludie strives to keep peace in the household and to get a raise.

When Ludie and Jessie Mae, and then Greyhound ticket agents and a Sheriff (Devon Abner), attempt to prevent Carrie from returning to the place of her birth there is almost a mutiny on the Bountiful. In the process city slicker Ludie becomes a Luddite, waxing poetic along with his Ma about their good ol' hometown, and the simple joys of rustic life, from the singing birds on wing to the fields.

Like Geraldine Page, Lillian Gish obviously was white. So the themes of aching for home, of nature versus urban, confronting aging and so on, are universal. Thus the transition from a Caucasian cast to a mostly Black one is seamless, and the saga remains more or less the same: Being human trumps racial identity. Although set in the 1950s, Bountiful could take place today. (Of course, the fact that the sheriff is kindly instead of a violent gunslinger not only goes against the Hollywood strain, but serves to remind viewers that Bountiful is a work of fiction, after all.)

The Ahmanson production's scenic transitions filmicly flow with Jeff Cowie's impressive sets. The supporting cast, in particular Jurnee Smollett-Bell as Thelma, all shine along with the principals. In the absence of ultra-violence or comic book characters, once I gave it a chance I ended up loving this Trip to Bountiful, which did, after all, have a protagonist with superpowers. As the curtain falls Cicely Tyson as Carrie waves and says "goodbye," as if the actress who has touched us so much with poignant performances, such as The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman from forty (!) years ago, is bidding a fond farewell to the audience. The entire house rose at the premiere to give her and the cast a well-deserved standing ovation. Here's hoping that Ms. Tyson will be drinking from the waters of life-be they flowing from a once segregated water fountain or that mythic creek at Bountiful-for many years to come.

The Trip to Bountiful is playing Tuesdays through Fridays at 8:00 pm, Saturdays at 2:00 and 8:00 pm, and Sundays, Oct. 12 and 26 and Nov. 2 at 1:00 pm, and Sundays, Oct. 5 and 19 at 6:30 pm through Nov. 2 at the Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90012. For more info: www.centertheatregroup.org/; (213) 628-2772.

Photo: Official site

“To Be Takei”: Love, diversity, and Star Trek

Fri, 26 Sep 2014 15:10:00 +0000

A new documentary chronicling the life of activist and actor George Takei is currently screening, to the delight of his many admirers. To Be Takei, a loving tribute to the man and his passion for life, is produced and directed by Jennifer M. Kroot. The film is not exclusively designed for Trekkies, though fans should be pleased with this cinematic profile of the actor best known for his role as Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu in the original Star Trek series. Takei's desire to play an important character at a time when Asians were rarely featured in serious roles is reflected during his on-screen discussion. He was enthused from the very start when Trek creator Gene Roddenberry offered him a part in a science fiction series that would feature a multi-ethnic crew. This groundbreaking television show is only one facet of Takei's fascinating journey, which continues today at "warp speed."

Takei is also an important voice in the continuing struggle for gay rights and marriage equality. When former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed California's same-sex marriage bill in 2005 after it passed both houses of the state legislature, Takei came out publicly as a gay man to lend support to the cause. Same-sex marriage eventually became legal in California, and Takei has been on the front lines in this fight for equality ever since. He and his partner, Brad Altman, were married September 14, 2008, and moviegoers see footage of the happy ceremony. The intimate fabric that holds the film together is Mr. Takei and his husband. There are many personal scenes of the couple driving, chatting, and enjoying life together. The camera becomes privy to their innermost thoughts and views. The documentary has a comfortable feel to it, portraying the amiable couple in an honest, down to earth style. The relaxed pace of the movie successfully intermingles light-hearted moments with more serious subjects.

Takei's childhood experiences affected him immensely, and created emotionally charged memories he openly discusses. Americans of Japanese descent who resided on the West Coast were rounded up and forced into camps during World War II simply because of their ethnicity. His family, being of Japanese heritage, was interned at the Rohwer War Relocation Center in Arkansas for the duration. This travesty in American history eventually led to reparations many years later and an official apology from the United States government. Unfortunately, as detailed by Takei, the lives of many innocent citizens were changed forever. Japanese families, including his own, returned penniless after their release, as businesses and property were lost forever. The film presents archival footage of the Japanese internment camps, showing barbed wire and armed sentry guards. For many viewers, these images alone will leave a lasting impression. To Be Takei may initially lure moviegoers with scenes from Star Trek, but does an invaluable service by highlighting this dark period in history with Takei's stark commentary.

The documentary covers a lot of ground, including Takei's recent popularity on social media. As a consistent activist for human rights, he testified in Congress about his time spent in Japanese relocation camps, which helped lead to the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. He has been tireless in his support of progressive values, appearing at numerous speaking engagements. He says that each citizen should be an "agent of change" until there is true equality for all.

In the 1970s, Takei campaigned for Tom Bradley, who became the first African-American mayor of Los Angeles. He also narrowly lost his race for City Council of Los Angeles. Mayor Bradley later appointed him to the Southern California Rapid Transit District. Takei's direct participation in rapid transit issues helped lead to the creation of the Los Angeles subway system, as he proudly mentions in the film.

To Be Takei features commentary from his former Star Trek co-stars, including (surprisingly) William Shatner, with whom he has shared an ongoing verbal feud over the years. This should spark the interest of die-hard Trekkies. From important social issues and historical perspectives to an amusing rift between two Trek actors, there is something for everyone in this film.

Takei is a profoundly positive person: He proclaims that negativity has never been an option for him. The man continues to coordinate a busy schedule of appearances with his husband. From political activism to autograph events, he shows no sign of slowing down. The movie itself serves as an inspiration for positive thinking and achieving goals. Many viewers will definitely exit the theater smiling, and attempting their best George Takei "Oh My!" impressions on the way out!

Photo: George Takei gives the Vulcan "live long and prosper" salute at the 2014 Human Rights Campaign Gala. (CC)

A playwright named "Shagspeare" in Bill Cain's "Equivocation"

Wed, 24 Sep 2014 15:56:00 +0000

This summer, to celebrate the 450^th anniversary of the playwright and poet from Stratford-upon-Avon's birth, Will Geer's Theatricum Botanicum (WGTB) presented an all-Shakespeare repertory season at its leafy amphitheater perched in Topanga Canyon, Los Angeles. But one work this season is not by, but rather about, the Bard-or a reasonable facsimile thereof.

Ted Barton, who'd previously portrayed Shakespeare at WGTB's July ceremony honoring the dramatist, plays a similarly named wordsmith, "Shagspeare," in. This two-act drama with some humorous touches imagines a Shakespeare-like author-"Shag" for short-receiving a command assignment: A royal commission to write about Guy Fawkes and England's 1605 Gunpowder Plot, a piece of agitprop that presents the government's point of view, to be performed by the theater company Shagspeare belongs to.

The Gunpowder Plot was an actual conspiracy to blow up King James and the Houses of Parliament that took place while Shakespeare was still alive. It's beyond the scope of this review to go into details about the revolutionary scheme, but many readers will be familiar with Guy Fawkes masks, which depict a smirking face with a mustache upturned at each end and a goatee. These masks were popularized in the 2006 movie Vendetta and more recently have adorned the faces of some protesters, from Occupy Wall Street to Anonymous.

Equivocation is at its thought-provoking best when it ponders the role of theater and politics, plays and propaganda, or, to paraphrase Lenin, "the stage and revolution." There is swordplay as well as wordplay, including a definition of what equivocation means that this reviewer had never considered before.

The two and a half hour-long work is extremely complex, even convoluted, and I honestly found it difficult to follow. This complexity is compounded by a play within a play, as at one point the troupe of thespians performs a truncated version of Macbeth. Although the cast consists of only six (small by Theatricum standards), it seems that at least some of the actors play multiple roles. If I understood that aspect of the production correctly, the playbill only listed one role per actor, which only adds to the confusion. One can guess that all of the above reflects the fact that Bill Cain is, in fact, a Jesuit priest!

In addition to probing the role of art vis-à-vis politics, nine years after the 400^th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot the play's plot has interesting references to our 21^st-century world. There is the torture that has crept onto stage and screen since the Cheney-Bush régime got into the euphemistically named "enhanced interrogation" biz at Guantánamo and "black sites" that dot the globe. Indeed, this is the second WGTB production this summer wherein torture is a plot point.

Even more ominously, like Aeschylus' Persians, Equivocation also depicts a beheading. Both of these decapitations are occurring onstage just as ISIS maniacs are making videos (with "high production values," as newscasters/propagandists for some reason rarely fail to point out) of the poor Western journalists and aid workers whose heads these terrorists are busy chopping off.

Furthermore, Equivocation was launched shortly before the referendum on Scottish independence, which, like the Gunpowder Plot, had the potential to greatly alter what is called the United Kingdom.

Barton is fine as the pantalooned Shag, as is Taylor Jackson Ross as his daughter Judith, who is the ensemble's only female member (unless you include a brief drag sequence-after all, in Shakespeare's day, all of the roles were depicted at the Globe by males). The interplay between father and daughter has something of a Shakespearean quality, a bit in the mode of Lear. Alan Blumenfeld is able as the ailing Nate and full of the romping pomposity this seasoned actor emanates in his more comic roles. As Sharpe, Dane Oliver steals many of his scenes as a preternaturally hammy, preening "ac-teur!" Mike Peebler deftly directs this complicated stew that, fan as I am of the Theatricum, I only wish I could more unequivocally recommend to avid amphitheatergoers.

Equivocation is being performed in repertory through Oct. 4 along with Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Lear plus Much Ado About Nothing, at Will Geer's Theatricum Botanicum: 1419 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga, California, 90290. For repertory schedule and other information call: (310) 455-3723 or see: www.Theatricum.com.

Photo: Dane Oliver, left, and Alan Blumenfeld in Bill Cain's "Equivocation" at Will Geer's Theatricum Botanicum. (Ian Flanders)

"Persians" theater review: War is Hades

Mon, 22 Sep 2014 15:34:00 +0000

A pair of plays is being performed near Malibu-both are presented in amphitheaters, deal with historical upheavals, ponder the nature of theater as an expressive medium and, in a macabre foreshadowing of ISIS beheadings, Equivocation at Will Geer's Theatricum Botanicum and Persians, both involve decapitations.

Aeschylus' 5^th-century BCE (Before Christian Era) classic Persians is being produced under the stars at Getty Villa. This outdoor production directed by Anne Bogart is a case study in stagecraft wherein the ancient meets the avant-garde. According to Bogart, Persians "is considered to be the first extant play of western civilization." As such, the ambitious helmer asserts, "We are attempting to chart nothing less than the birth of drama, the big bang of the theater."

At first the theatrical techniques of Aeschylus' 2,500 year old Ur-drama may be off-putting to 21^st-century audiences, unused to dramatic devices such as (literally) a Greek chorus, ritualism, and so on. But by the end of this play antiquity and experimental theater seem to collide and merge. After 90 minutes or so, Aeschylus' style as filtered through Bogart kinda grows on you.

First performed around 472 BCE, Persians' story-such as there is-is about the real-life naval defeat of the Persians by the Greeks a mere eight years earlier. In addition to being a tragedian, Aeschylus was actually a veteran of the wars against Persia, so knew whereof he wrote.

Mind you, the dramatist created his work before the rules of drama existed, so Mr. Aeschylus presumably knew not of that show biz maxim: "Don't tell me, show me!" So much of this epic nautical battle is related in the dialogue delivered by members of the nine-actor cast (who are from the New York-based SITI Company).

Viewed from our 21^st-century perch, Aeschylus' tragedy may be resonant in the collective psyche as the original "clash of civilizations," between West and East. Of course, Aeschylus put quill to papyrus before Christianity and Islam existed. Nevertheless, some may interpret this as the primordial propaganda piece pitting what is now Iran against the Western world.

The production makes good use of props-from a broken oar to a statue's decapitated head, pulled by a costumed actress across the stage on a long fabric train. As mentioned, this is an eerie bit of theatrical prophesying of ISIS' brutal beheadings of at least three Westerners, two of whom were journalists.

The mise-en-scène makes some inspired use of the Getty's Villa setting when, toward the end of the action-which has up to now taken place mostly on the ground-level space between the amphitheater and the villa and in the aisles between the seats-the Greco-Roman-style building is opened up and becomes part of the scenery. This is organic theater, J. Paul Getty style.

Funny thing happened on the way

However, a funny thing happened on the way to the Villa: The mostly modern dress costuming by Nephelie Andonyadis falls down on the job. What the Hades is the point of contemporary attire if the play takes place 2500 years ago in ancient Greece? (I'm not much of a fan of ahistorical garb of characters in recent productions of Greek-themed plays.)

Well, maybe the point is that this 2500 year-old tragedy about war is, o woe and alas, as relevant today as it was in 472 BCE when Persians premiered in Athens. Consider this line uttered by the Ghost of Darius: "Outrage, once ripened, yields a bumper crop of retribution."

Still so true, for violence remains the scourge of humanity. Just consider the NFL's recent rash of reported beatings and abuse of women and children by those contemporary gladiators, pro football players. Or ponder the epidemic of rape in the U.S. military. Have you noticed that few, if any commentators, dare cite the proverbial elephant in the room? Namely, that football is an extraordinarily violent sport and the U.S. armed forces is the greatest purveyor of violence on the face of the Earth (thank you to Martin Luther King, Jr., for that observation in A Time to Break Silence), making ISIS look like schoolyard punks in comparison. ISIS beheads three poor misbegotten Westerners, while the Pentagon slaughters millions.

Have you heard a single pundit dare declare that if we really want to abolish NFL domestic abuse, et al, Americans must stop patronizing spectacles of violence as forms of mass entertainment? (The only thing missing at football stadiums are the vomitoria into which fans poured their guts out at the Coliseums of old.) And have you heard a civic leader or news analyst dare to say that if women (and men, too) don't want to be sexually molested they should avoid the ultra-violent U.S. military like the plague upon humanity that it is? Voluntarily joining up with brutal individuals/organizations is not a wise, effective strategy for staying out of harm's way.

So maybe Persians' modern dress is, unfortunately, appropriate after all. Those arrogant, goose-stepping, overzealous Xerxes types still march amongst us. In any case, Persians is tough going for most amphitheatergoers and is primarily for fans of Greek and ancient drama and/or students and lovers of theater and its history.

But if you go, BYOT (Bring Your Own Toga), because there aren't any onstage-and besides, it gets cool at night out-of-doors, so strap your sandals over a pair of socks.

In any case, from Aeschylus' Athenian city-state to the United States (that postmodern global empire), war is still Hades.

Persians plays through Sept. 27 on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 pm at the Getty Villa, 17985 Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu. For more info: (310) 440-7300; www.getty.edu.

Film review: "Love is Strange"

Thu, 18 Sep 2014 15:17:00 +0000

Put seasoned actors like John Lithgow, Alfred Molina, and Marisa Tomei together in a film, and guaranteed there'll be a certain amount of movie magic.

The opening shot has long-time partners Ben (John Lithgow) and George (Alfred Molina) rising from their bed, dressing up in respectable suits, and heading out to their wedding after 39 years together. Of course the event is posted on all the social media, meaning that it shortly comes to the attention of the Roman Catholic archdiocese. George is promptly and unceremoniously fired from his job teaching music at Saint Grace Academy. The loss of income forces them to sell off their condo, which makes them effectively homeless in the hyperactive housing market of New York City.

Ben, somewhat older at 71, a now retired studio painter of modest professional success (he never really had a proper gallery show), is not in a position to contribute much to the financial security of the marriage. So they are forced to find shelter with friends and family-Ben in Brooklyn with his nephew Elliot (Darren Burrows) and niece Kate (Marisa Tomei) and their adolescent son Joey (Charlie Tahan), and George with Ted (Cheyenne Jackson) and Roberto (Manny Perez), two gay cops.

This is the crisis that sits, almost unrelentingly, at the heart of the 94-minute film, directed and produced by Ira Sachs, written by Sachs and Mauricio Zacharias. The story came to Sachs in 2011 when he married his same-sex partner (a painter) once it became legal in New York. They immediately became daddies to twin children. It may well have occurred to them, what would the consequences be if one of us lost an income, or became incapacitated? How much does a couple's or a family's happiness and success depend on the arbitrariness of society?

As George says to the priest, the principal of the school who fires him and then invites him to pray together, he'll pray on his own, thank you very much-in other words, the Savior George follows is obviously not the same as the Church's.

Love is Strange is not just a paean to enduring marital love, but an ironic exposition of the vulnerable nature of same-gender marriage even in a supposedly liberal, enlightened place like New York City. George and Ben's years-long commitment never particularly bothered the church, but the very fact of marriage, the public statement of the commitment, led directly to the couple's downfall.

At the same time the film also examines the nature of other relationships when subjected to high pressure. How solid are they when put to the test of having your lonely, aging uncle crashing with your family, or having your staid, older former neighbor move in with your late-night partying crowd of young urbanites? Both Ben and George are equally out of their element: Indeed, the only element they knew, at this point after four decades together, was the solace, warmth and familiarity of each other.

The score, deeply infused with pensive Chopin études, contributes to the autumnal atmosphere.

Sachs's film is almost an O. Henryesque lesson in what can go wrong from the finest of intentions. There's no happy ending, maybe just some wisdom passed on to the survivors. Will Elliot and Kate, both professional go-getters on their way up, and yet remarkably inept each in their own way at communication, learn anything? Joey, the grandnephew, ends the movie on an upbeat; perhaps he paid attention to Ben's heartfelt conversations with him about love.

So tightly focused on Ben and George as the film is, a number of hanging threads are left blowing in the breeze. Details are not filled in about several sub-themes that are brought up and dropped, such as the nature of the relationship between Joey and his friend Vlad, nor why they obtained some books from the school library. Nor why, in this era of many similar stories about firings from church-related jobs, George didn't mount a public campaign to reinstate him. Nor whether his message to his students about being true to themselves, in which he quotes St. Paul, "Love does not delight in injustice," was something he just imagined doing, or did he actually do it, and what was the outcome?

Most film goers do not require every last plot point to be neatly wrapped and tied up in a bow by the end, but the result in this case of so many open questions left unaddressed just seems inadequate. Yes, we truly get the deep love between these two men. Yes, we get the irreparable harm done to them. Is that the whole story? A mood of passivity overlays this film, when a little healthy fight-back might have been called for.

The Los Angeles Swiss Film Festival in review

Wed, 17 Sep 2014 14:02:00 +0000

From Heidi to Hollywood, Charlie Chaplin to Jean-Luc Godard to H.R. Giger, James Bond to the Pink Panther to Bollywood to the TV reality series The Bachelor and beyond, Swiss cinema and television has a rich heritage. This motion picture plenitude was on full display at Hollywood's Harmony Gold Theater on Sept. 7 during the 4th Edition of Short Films Long Night presented by the Los Angeles Swiss Film Festival.

This year 14 short films plus two Switzerland Tourism TV spots were screened. The "100 percent Swiss" category included six shorts made on location in Switzerland by and with mainly homegrown talents. Eight shorts were projected in the "Here & There" category, which included works made in part by Swiss talents and filmed outside of the Confédération Helvétique (CH, the oval ID sticker on cars from Switzerland).

The variety of films shown reveals the Alpine nation's depth and breadth of talent. Interestingly, all of the shorts could have been shot outside of Switzerland. For example, the urban setting of the 9'33" comedy drama directed by Rafael Kistler, The Kids Are Alright, dealing with issues of crime, immigration and youth, might have been lensed during the night in any European urban area. Those attributes people typically think of as Swiss - snow-capped peaks, ski lifts, yodeling, alpenhorns, Saint Bernards and the like - were curiously only on display in the well-made Switzerland Tourism television commercials that also entertained the L.A. audience. One could say these ads were "100 percent Swiss-plus."

In any case, three of the shorts won awards -- one per category plus an audience award voted by attendees in the packed auditorium. Winning in the "100 percent Swiss" division was the French-language, subtitled 14' black comedy The Finger, directed by Malika Pelliocioli. In this delicious farce, three siblings battle over the legacy of their dearly departed dad around the time of his funeral at home. In particular, the two brothers and one sister have their eyes on the ring adorning the film's eponymous digit. Sheer hilarity ensues as they attempt to retrieve the piece of jewelry before it, along with its bearer, goes on to meet its proverbial maker.

What is particularly droll is that the sister is identified as a socialist candidate for office -- who actually campaigns during the funeral! Perhaps Pelliocioli had it in mind to indict Swiss socialists for being as greedy as the rest of their capitalist brethren. In any case, the short's title may be a witty reference to what the deceased is giving, posthumously, to his avaricious children. Pascale Rey, president of Dreamago (a Swiss organization based in Sierre/Valais specializing in coaching screenwriters), received the award on behalf of Valais-based Pelliocioli.

The winner of the "Here & There" category was a real change in pace from The Finger's naturalistic style. Elie Chapuis' 6'32" animated Impostor depicted a cartoony deer attempting to rob a man's identity by removing his head. Although a work of animation, Chapius' skillfully wrought short dealt with infidelity and other all-too-human, if not too nice, baser desires and instincts. (One of this critic's personal favorites among the shorts was another animation piece, Fabienne Giezendanner's 12' Giant Dwarf, an imaginative, creatively rendered version of an Inuit legend.)

The knee-slapping Ruprecht likewise belies the stereotype some have of the Swiss as being a dour, humorless folk. It was easy to see why L.A.-based filmgoers awarded Yangzom Brauen the Audience Award for the 10'48" (mostly) English-language comedy, as it deals with one of Los Angeles' most irksome nuisances: Leaf blowers, and the ear-piercing noises they make, especially during early morning hours. Ruprecht is having sex (perhaps with a prostitute?) when his passionate romp is ruined by pesky gardeners, prompting the European (perhaps Swiss) man into action by attempting to get the L.A. city bureaucracy to stop this chronic disturbing of the piece, which Ruprecht has been complaining about, with little effect, for ages. Uproarious frivolity ensues with a series of cross-cultural collisions and encounters in L.A.'s multi-culti cauldron of disparate nationalities from around the world, as East meets Alp. Brauen received the award in person from attorney Dennis Fredricks, who serves as a special counsel to Swiss and other consulates, and Swiss model Alizée Gaillard.

The Consulate General of Switzerland (Consul General Jean-François Lichtenstern is a huge movie buff), supported by Presence Switzerland, presented the Los Angeles Swiss Film Festival. Along with recent works by Swiss filmmakers such as Germinal Roaux, Bettina Oberli, Marc Forster, veteran Xavier Koller, et al, the Festival's shorts showed that this is a small nation with big-screen big talents.

Photo: Audience Award Winner "Ruprecht" was directed by Yangzom Brauen, a female Swiss filmaker who lives in L.A.

Happy birthday, Phil Stern, "Greatest Generation" photographer

Wed, 17 Sep 2014 11:22:00 +0000

Phil Stern, chronicler of many of the icons and epic moments of the twentieth century, celebrated his 95th birthday at the Veterans Home of California, West Los Angeles (where he resides), on September 6. For the occasion, he donated 95 prints of his photos for permanent display at the Veterans Home. The list of Stern's subjects reads like a who's-who of mid-century American luminaries, including presidents, movie stars, war heroes, jazz musicians, and often incorporating the everyday workers around them.

Phil Stern worked for Life, Look, and Collier's magazines, but I first encountered his work in reprints in Spy Magazine in the 1990s. The range of iconic real-life moments he captured is astounding: from the portentous, ghostly image of Frank Sinatra lighting a blurred JFK's cigarette at his inaugural ball in 1961, to the holiday snap of a very casual John Wayne, lighting a cigarette while sporting serious moose knuckle in short-shorts and espadrilles during a 1959 Acapulco vacation, to the surveillance-like photo of a pregnant Marilyn Monroe walking amongst workers on the MGM lot, shot from Samuel Goldwyn's office window.

A colloquial humor and warm humanity pervade all of Stern's work. His photos capture the simple human responses of individuals caught in moments of intimacy during momentous historic and cultural events. Stern pulled the Hollywood picture frame back so we could see the stars surrounded by behind-the-scenes technicians and workers doing their jobs. He got James Dean to break through his brooding image by asking him to make goofy faces for his kids.

Stern started his career as a WWII combat photographer documenting the activities of the élite fighting unit, Darby's Rangers, in North Africa and Sicily. Subjects ranged in scope from intimate portraits of GIs to broad landscapes of battlegrounds, and a "mug shot" of Rommel's dog Fritzi in a little barbed wire enclosure, under a sign reading: "Prisoner of War Camp."

Stern continues to produce work. His latest series, "Shooting from the Hip," documents, (via digital photos taken from his wheelchair) the staff and residents of the Veterans Home in which he lives.

According to an essay included in the show, Stern had a politically contentious, to say the least, relationship with one of his favorite subjects: John Wayne. Stern, some of whose friends lost jobs to the Hollywood Blacklist, said, "I was a lefty and he was a right-wing. Whenever we'd get loaded we'd have terrible arguments."

Stern, whom John Birch Society member Wayne labeled a "bomb-throwing Bolshevik," describes a prank he played on the fanatically anticommunist Duke:

"I was in the USSR on my first visit in 1959 doing general coverage for my agency. While there I went to the main post office in Moscow and found the most graphic stamps with the largest images of Stalin and Lenin that I could find. I put them on postcards and addressed them to Wayne at his Newport Beach home. About a year later in a meeting he said to me: 'I did get those postcards from Russia, you son of a bitch!'"

The Veterans Home of California is located at 11500 Nimitz Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90049. Enter the front door of Building D any time between 6 a.m. and closing at 8 p.m. The phone number there is (424) 832-8200

Photo: Chris Elliott

"What I Learned in Paris" - a review

Tue, 16 Sep 2014 15:41:00 +0000

Only five years after Atlanta son Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated, Vice Mayor Maynard Jackson audaciously challenged the incumbent Mayor Sam Massell, and won with almost 60 percent of the vote. In 1973, at the age of 35 he became, in his own words, "the youngest, the fattest, and the blackest mayor of Atlanta." From that moment on, as the characters in Pearl Cleage's new play What I Learned in Paris keep saying, "Nothing's going to be the same." The work is enjoying a truly elegant West Coast premiere at the Colony Theatre in Downtown Burbank, adjacent to Los Angeles.

Maynard Jackson's mayoralty served as a giant stride forward for Black America-jobs, empowerment, political office. His major accomplishment was the construction of the new Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport terminal "ahead of schedule and under budget." When he died in 2003 at the age of 65, he was mourned at an Atlanta Civic Center memorial that drew a crowd of more than 5,000.

The play features a five-person all African American cast. J. P. Madison (William C. Mitchell) is a prominent lawyer being eyed for a high position in Maynard Jackson's administration, and much given to portentous, self-important statements like "Now we have to rise to meet the demands of history." He is divorced and (supposedly) remarried, to Ann Madison (Joy Brunson), press coordinator for the campaign, less than half his age, who has a great deal of self-discovery yet to do.

The young and handsome John Nelson (Shon Fuller) also worked on the campaign, under J. P., and has his own political and career ambitions. He and Ann are sweet on each other, but of course J. P. stands in the way. Hired political consultant Lena Jefferson (Karan Kendrick) from California plays an enabling role, to know what the campaign activists have to do and to get them where they need to be to do it. Similarly, in the play, she is the go-between who sees all and greases the wheels of dramatic action.

As the undisputed star of the play, and the "I" of the title, there's Eve Madison (Tony winner L. Scott Caldwell), J. P.'s first wife, brassy, bejeweled and bigger than life, who in response to the Jackson election, breezes unannounced back into town after her post-divorce decampment to San Francisco, sensing that a grande dame of her culture and sophistication may be just what Atlantans of all races need right now to start learning how to get along and share living space and political power.

What the program notes do not say, but which is on display in an accompanying photo exhibition at the theater about the first years of the Jackson mayoralty, is that the playwright was herself Jackson's press secretary. As prolific an author as Pearl Cleage has become (her first novel, What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day, was an Oprah Book Club pick), it is clear that this play comes directly out of the experience she had in her 20s in that game-changing movement forty years ago. She dedicates her crisply written play "to the people who lived it and to the ones who stayed around to tell the tale."

In all truth, What I Learned in Paris is mostly a clever, fast-paced romantic situation comedy (much opening and closing of doors with the comings and goings of these five players), whose director, Saundra McClain, keeps her audience joyously smiling at all the delicious hi-jinks on stage. But the very explicit historical backdrop becomes the metaphor for the characters' coming of age, or better, coming into the wisdom that is age-appropriate for the period and for the personae.

Or might it be just as much-or dialectically, as we like to say-the other way around? Maybe the personal stories, however comedically told, are themselves the metaphor for a political coming of age. From now on, every Black person in Atlanta in some way represents Maynard Jackson. The premier city of the New South has become "the new Black capital of America," presaging other big mayoral and even higher victories for Black political candidates.

What Eve learned in Paris was to appreciate, really for the first time in her life, her own power as a woman who could hold her head high, or "how to enjoy eating in a fancy restaurant by myself," as she puts it. She also grew to love the flow of good champagne. Then too, she is an emissary from the liberation movements of California, with her truth sessions, her relish for Alice B. Toklas brownies, and her new-found embrace of free love and meditation. Her ear has become attuned to the domineering way men deliver their pronouncements. Feminism has raised the bar for America, now too in Atlanta. There are many ways to unpack the idea of freedom.

The eye-popping detail in Charles Erven's stage set shows the comfortable interior of an Establishment Black doyenne's Atlanta home in the early 1970s, decorated discerningly with sculpture and artwork expressing pride in her African roots. The space had been used as Jackson campaign headquarters, so has a somewhat lived-in look, with placards and rally signs lying about. The sound design by Dave Mickey features a number of period songs audiences will remember with fondness. Dianne K. Graebner's costume design is spot-on with authenticity.

The Colony Theatre is now in its 40^th anniversary season, occupying a modern, 270-seat facility with a year-round season of plays, musicals, and film showings. All of its actors appear under union contract. In the current play, the tight ensemble work makes their work highly indivisible, but standouts are certainly L. Scott Caldwell as Eve, William C. Mitchell as J. P., and Shon Fuller as John Nelson. It's a fine romp with some well considered messaging about managing our political and personal lives.

What I Learned in Paris plays through October 5, Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 3 and 8 pm, and Sundays at 2 p.m. The Colony Theatre is located at 555 N. Third St., Burbank. For further information, call (818) 558-7000 or email boxoffice@colonytheatre.org. The company website is www.colonytheatre.org. Q&A talkbacks after the performance will take place on September 24.

Photo: William C. Mitchell, L. Scott Caldwell, Karan Kendrick and Shon Fuller star in the Colony Theatre production of the West Coast premiere of 'WHAT I LEARNED IN PARIS," written by Pearl Cleage and directed by Saundra McClain and now playing at the Colony Theatre in Burbank. PHOTO CREDIT: Michael Lamont.

"Wetlands” movie review: Exploring secretions and inner selves

Mon, 15 Sep 2014 15:12:00 +0000

If you're looking for light entertainment, don't go to see "Wetlands." If you're ready for a serious gut-wrenching outlook-changing German-made art experience, go ahead.

In the first scene, I thought I was going to see some light comedy with "wink wink" sexual references. When the lovely young skateboarding woman started exhibiting her hemorrhoids, I decided it was shock schlock. Pornography was another suspected category as "Helen" nosedived into her sexual escapades. After much more, I decided the most probable category was psychiatric soul-searching on the individual level with, possibly, some universal insights. It was funny, intriguing, disgusting, and scary.

Directed by David Wnendt, and clocking in at 109 minutes, "Wetlands" would make John Waters blush. Waters gloried in shock and nasty humor through films such as "Pink Flamingos" and the great scratch-and-sniff epic, "Polyester." Helen, portrayed as 16-18 years old and still living at home, is nastier than any film character I've seen.

I suspected that "Wetlands" had been a novel. Novels usually get away with more than film, because they aren't as visually hard-hitting. I found that "Wetlands" was a 2008 novel by Charlotte Roche ("Feuchtgebiete" in the original German). Director Wnendt adapted it for the movie without flinching at showing what had only been described.

For really serious film-goers, I recommend "Wetlands." One couldn't ask for better film making. Carla Juri, as Helen, smacked me in the face with every high-pitched horrible emotion she goes through. While revealing one of the least redeemable characters ever portrayed, she still beguiles the audience! As a dauntless explorer of smelly body secretions and rudimentary sexual experiences, she might even be admired.

The scary part, for me, was when I realized that the musical score fit the film so well. If popular music can say the same things about alienation and self-loathing that the movie was saying, then was I watching a movie about a tormented middle-class German woman-child, or was I watching something with universal themes that applied, perhaps, to a significant swath of a generation of young people who can't bear their lives any longer and, so far, see no hope of effecting change?

It made me shudder.

Nine Eleven

Thu, 11 Sep 2014 11:19:00 +0000

Before nine in the morning the great city shines in the sun. Against blue skies, innocent flights arrive and leave. The cry of a desperate bird on its escape to the ocean gets lost in the noise of the big metropolis. Tall buildings, like dark sentinels of order and efficiency, open their doors to a dance of tapping of heels, fingers on computers, the music of coffee pots, smiles and secrets. Schools are getting ready for their morning rituals, colleges are filled with laughter, songs, books and kisses. Factories, stores, street vendors, poets, lovers, smog-poisoned insects, struggling bees: foreign threats will not get through this hard-working army. The world has seen here the finest example of democracy.

Only the master minds who planned it acknowledge the expected change in the path of airplanes, the sound of engines coming closer.

And then, an explosion. Pieces of the great building fall on the pavement like ancient dirt-covered tears. Explosions. There are people covering their faces in horror before they are obliterated. Bodies obstruct the traffic of tanks and jeeps carrying fire-spitting dragons. Military buses open their jaws to the fingers on the computers, the dancing heels, the hands on the coffee pot, the students and poets, the lovers, insects and the terrified bees. The undercover secrets revealed in all their magnificent evil.

From the smoke and the flames, a great man is broadcasting his last words to the people that elected him to carry on the flag of their hopes.

In the far North of the world, a president closes the book on another successful coup d'état.

In the South of the continent, on nine eleven nineteen seventy three, the eternal snows of the Andes bleed red rivers over Chile.

Tucson, Arizona, September 2014

Photo: Sept. 11 is also the anniversary of the 1973 U.S.-backed military coup that overthrew the democratically elected Popular Unity government in Chile. President Salvador Allende died in the presidential palace during the coup. AP

Poem: “More Than a Black Cat Bone”

Mon, 08 Sep 2014 11:47:00 +0000

The worse thing to do is burn yer own ass. Though the fire dies out be a whole lot longer for stupidity to pass. Sometimes the best thing to do is lock yer arms n just sit still. When you bend not to break you may offend the man in blue but he'll hafta look a long time to find a reason just to kill.

Takes a whole lot more than a black cat bone or a buncha noisy kids or a blogger all alone. Takes strong-headed people all together like stone. Takes a whole lot more than a black cat bone.

Doesn't make sense to expound that power comes from a barrel. Ya won't even hear the sound of that Xmas carol. If there comes a time when it's rifles we gotta shoulder we better be a lot bigger not bolder but dignified that we signified free speech harder not to get scammed by equestrians who masquerade as wannabe martyrs. We can lose ev'ry battle n still win the war. If our principles don't rattle we can open ev'ry door.

Takes a whole lot more than a black cat bone or a buncha noisy kids or a blogger all alone. Takes strong-headed people all together like stone. Takes a whole lot more than a black cat bone.

Photo: Deviant Art (CC)

Two trailblazing performers "Coming out Muslim"

Tue, 02 Sep 2014 12:55:00 +0000

Yes, the double entendre is intentional: Coming out as gay/lesbian, and simultaneously affirming (or adopting) a Muslim identity. Or as two path-breaking performers at the Levantine Cultural Center in Los Angeles put it recently, "Allah made me Muslim; Allah made me queer."

Wazina Zondon is one of the performers, the daughter of an Afghan working-class immigrant family growing up in New York City, who knew she was "different" already as a pre-teen, and able to put a lesbian label on it by her later teen years. She now teaches Sex Ed at a public school in Brooklyn, and is a member of the New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE).

The other performer is Terna, based in Boston area and pursuing an MA in psychology and mental health. She is of mixed Nigerian-Liberian background, who came to Islam after a Christian upbringing, proud and "out" in the States, but deeply (and necessarily) closeted whenever she visits her family in Africa.

Their traveling performance piece, "Coming Out Muslim," is a collage of coming-out stories, unmet parental expectations, song and chant, dance movement, prayer, revelations, hair and head coverings, and henna. They mean to persuade us of their conviction that "Islam is not a problem-it's the people who interpret it." There's a lot of common ground there with just about every religion.

Sitting at the intersectional crossroads of race, class, gender, sexuality, nationality, colonialism, language, immigration status, and faith, the issues posed in this presentation defy easy, convenient categories. To some for whom this subject matter has heretofore been taboo, the show teems with radical precepts and unimaginable egalitarianism. For an audience of seasoned GLBT activists who told their "coming-out" stories to the world 40 and 50 years ago, it has the nostalgic glow of a first-time experience. If Gay Liberation has come to many Christian and Jewish denominations, now it's the Muslims' turn to speak up and speak out.

The intersectional fulcrum sometimes balances on delicate negotiations with lovers and partners. Culture and religion are often inseparable. In one passage, Wazina addresses her partner's questions about toleration and backwardness in the traditional Afghan community that is Wazina's emotional homeland: "Don't tell me how to handle my family," she cajoles. "I ask you to love them for all that they are and all that they are not, as you love me." Good advice in any relationship!

Terna asks "that you remember all those who are not able to claim all of themselves out loud, for whom it is literally dangerous to do so. For those of us who straddle worlds (identities and cultures dealing with the legacy of colonialism), I ask prayers, blessings and advocacy so that we are able to be home, go home, create home. I ask you to commit to being a person who invites and can hold the wholeness of others."

The Los Angeles production of "Coming Out Muslim" was co-sponsored by two small but important organizations: Muslims for Progressive Values, founded in 2007, which aims to present an alternative view of both politics and Islam, and even has a GLBT committee. They are happy to meet in dialogue with anyone who invites them, for a fresh and different perspective on being Muslim in the contemporary world.

The second co-sponsor was the Levantine Cultural Center itself, founded in 2001 to explore the arts and civilizations of the Middle East and North Africa, from Morocco in the west to Pakistan and Afghanistan in the east. A big part of its job is to combat negative stereotypes of a largely ignored and underrepresented community.

It has a small performance space, a library, café, gallery, and bookstore and gift shop on West Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles. Their schedule is bursting with lectures, exhibitions, panel discussions, readings, theater and dance performances, comedy nights, film showings, and Arabic language classes - in 2013 more than 80 programs - many reflecting the multi-cultural and inter-cultural facets both of that part of the world, and of the city of Los Angeles itself.

If you are interested in bringing "Coming Out Muslim" to your community, contact them at comingoutmuslim.com, or check them out on Facebook. Contact Muslims for Progressive Values at info@mpvusa.org. The Levantine Cultural Center can be found at levantinecenter.org.

Photo: Left, Terna, right, Wazina Zondon, at the Levantine Cultural Center, Los Angeles.