Archive for New York city
say their names [a New Yorker cover]
Posted in Books, pictures, Running with tags Ahmaud Arbery, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, Alton Sterling, Botham Jean, Breonna Taylor, David McAtee, drawing, Emmett Till, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, George Floyd, Gordon, Laquan McDonald, Malcom X, Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers, Michael Brown, murders, New York city, New Yorker, Philando Castile, racism, Rodney King, Rosa Parks, Sandra Bland, slavery, Stephon Clark, Tamir Rice, Tony McDade, Trayvon Martin, US Government, USA, Walter Scott, Yvette Smith on June 21, 2020 by xi'anunorthodox
Posted in Books, Kids, pictures, Travel with tags Berlin, Brooklyn, fundamentalism, Germany, Hasidic Judaism, Netflix, New York city, religious cult, TV series, ultra-orthodox, Williamsburg on May 17, 2020 by xi'an
Another series I watched during quarantine is the short and powerful Unorthodox, by Anna Winger, featuring the fantastic actress Shira Haas as Etsy, fleeing her unhappy marriage and the stifling rules set by her Hasidic community in Williamsburg, New York, to seek refuge in Berlin, although ambivalent to get help from her distanced mother once there. I found the story quite moving and intense in the slow unfolding of Etsy’s progressive unraveling of her un-orthodoxy and of her desperate escape into a world she knows nothing about. While her difficulties in apprehending this new universe are well rendered, I however find the part of the story when she joins a friendly group of music students somewhat too lazy a plot, although her fight there for achieving autonomy by herself only is remarkably transcribed. I am equally quite impressed by the show immersion into the Hasidic community, which is putting a considerable effort in replacing their tradition into an historical perspective and exposing the outworldly separation between men and women, who are essentially reduced to becoming mothers. The main strength of Unorthodox is that it keeps away from manichaeism, with people stuck into a frozen tradition and not seeing the oppression it induces. As most often with fundamentalism.
New York still
Posted in Books, pictures, Running, Travel with tags coronavirus epidemics, cover, lockdown, New York city, quarantine, still life, The New Yorker on May 3, 2020 by xi'anGrand Central Terminal
Posted in Books, pictures, Travel with tags Agent Orange, Cornell University, coronavirus epidemics, COVID-19, George Casella, Grand Central Terminal, Ithaca, New York city, painting, picture, The New Yorker, USA on April 22, 2020 by xi'anwhy are Sundays so depressing?
Posted in Kids, Travel with tags indie rock, New York city, The New Abnormal, The Strokes on April 19, 2020 by xi'an