Word: elegiac
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...watching Smith, whose technique is to explore an explosive public event by interviewing hundreds of participants and then impersonating dozens of them, using only their distilled words. As writing it resembles journalism, but in performance -- as she takes on all races, ages and genders -- the impact is that of elegiac art. While in theory each character could be portrayed by a different actor, Smith regards it as essential to have all of them embodied by one person who also remains unmistakably herself, a black woman: "I think the form speaks to the content. It says something about...
...Lost Soldier" is not particularly profound, but it remains a marvelous film. Its elegiac and celebratory quality is reminiscent at times of the Taviani Brothers' "The Night of the Shooting Stars." Kerbosch has carefully adapted Rudi van Dantzig's autobiographical novel into a sensitive, lyrical film, resonant with truth and the burnished memory of a first love...
...Yoshiko Uchida (Philomel; $14.95). A clear, direct look at social injustice is especially hard in children's literature, whose traditions say wrongs must be made right. In 1942 the Japanese-American author was sent with her family to a detention camp, and this story and Joanna Yardley's warm, elegiac illustrations recall a time for which good explanations are still not available. The title refers to a bracelet given the Japanese-American heroine Emi, who's about eight, by her Anglo friend Laurie. The gift and the remembered friendship allow Emi to hope that peace and trust will return...
...notorious Apache warrior with more empathy for Native American culture than ever before, but not without its share of gun battles and scalping parties. (Scalping by the Mexicans, that is; the practice, we are told, was only later appropriated by the Indians in retaliation.) The film has an elegiac tone, opening at a Fourth of July celebration in 1905 attended by an old, sad-eyed Geronimo, by then something of a historical sideshow attraction. In flashbacks we see the education of a rebel, a young warrior who turns vengeful after his wife and baby are killed in a massacre...
...fits this body with metal shells, prongs and armatures, sometimes binding it as well with strips of burlap like mournful bandages. Thus you find yourself looking at something large, somber, mutilated and of irresistible physical power. Brenson points out that the War Games pieces are all, in some degree, elegiac; they convey a mourning for < violated nature, because nearly all the forests of Poland have been cut down and sold off as timber to Scandinavia since World...