On Feb. 25 I celebrated one of my favorite artist’s birthdays at the “Pierre-Auguste Renoir 180th Birthday — Livestream Art Program” hosted by Robert Kelleman, founder and director of non-profit organization Washington, D.C. History & Culture. As a participant of the virtual art gallery tour, I was fondly reminded of my previous tourist experiences in art galleries.
The 78th Golden Globe Awards kicked off the 2021 film and TV awards season on Sunday. As expected, it was a mostly virtual ceremony, with nominees tuning in through Zoom and presenters showing up in-person at their respective bicoastal locations. Hosts Tina Fey and Amy Poehler returned, and with already three hosting turns already under their belts, it promised to be an eventful, no-holds-barred kind of night.
“Story is not the only mode available to us in experiencing our lives.”
This past Sunday, the Shriver Hall Concert Series livestreamed Daniil Trifonov’s pre-recorded piano program from New York's 92nd Street Y. The virtually delivered event was a success, with over 200 live attendees from around the world — highlighting Trifonov’s international presence.
A 21-year-old woman disappears for three weeks in a Los Angeles hotel infamous for its history of crimes and murders. The last seen footage of her raises more questions than answers and becomes a viral sensation. What happens next?
The History of Art and East Asian Studies departments sponsored an event titled “Documenting Industry: Photography, Modernity and the Nation in India and China” on Feb. 19. Scholars from around the world joined the Zoom-recorded event, presenting original research on ways in which documentary photographers have explored the lives of industrial laborers in India and China.
Amazon’s latest film release, The Map of Tiny Perfect Things, is not quite what you’d expect. Though it has the look of a typical coming-of-age comedy, or perhaps just an uninspired rendition of Groundhog Day, it turns out to be neither.
It is a fairly well-known fact that mainstream perceptions of historical Black leaders in America are understood through a largely cordoned-off, de-radicalized tone. The story goes that Martin Luther King Jr. and other Southern Christian leaders organized peacefully to end segregation, and that the U.S. government listened and responded in kind.
The teen romance trilogy that started with a bang is now coming to a long-awaited end. To All the Boys: Always and Forever marks the last time we’ll see the much-beloved on-screen couple, though it won’t necessarily mark the end of their love story. This time, Lara Jean Covey (Lana Condor) and Peter Kavinsky (Noah Centineo) face the ups and downs of senior year of high school, coupled with the stress of the uncharted territory that awaits them after graduation.
The Barnstormers return to our home-theaters once again with the warmth of easy-going comedy and the intrigue of a classic “whodunnit” narrative in their special Clue: Stay at Home. The production was a livestreamed virtual adaptation of Clue, a screenplay inspired by the timeless Hasbro board game and iconic film of the same name.
Over the last 11 months, I’ve found it increasingly hard to sit through a movie in one sitting or even to coax myself into viewing a film at all, really. Since I’m on my computer all the time, seated in one place for classes and work, sitting down to watch something online for a couple of hours has become incredibly unappealing.
For two years, the soundtrack to all the times I looked out the window in a car, hung out in my dorm with the string lights on or enjoyed a quiet sunset with my friends was the same: brent.
Set to officially premiere in 2021, Hopkins senior Rebecca Penner and ‘20 alum Carver Bain won Best College Long Narrative at the 2020 Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival (FLiFF) with their film “How To Care For Strangers.” With Penner’s skills as a Film & Media Studies major and Bain’s insight as both a Film & Media Studies and Theatre Arts & Studies minor, the pair was able to combine forces to co-write this energetic film.
The Hopkins Writing Seminars Department hosted a Turnbull Poetry Lecture by Natasha Trethewey, the 19th poet laureate of the U.S. and winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, on Feb. 4. So far, she has written five books of poetry, including Domestic Work, her astounding debut which was selected for the Cave Canem Poetry Prize. The lecture was open to the public and accessible through Zoom.
With awards season postponed and few major film releases, it’s been an unusually dull time for us film geeks. Thankfully, film festivals are still a go, albeit online and with limited in-person capacities. One of them is the prestigious Sundance Film Festival, which kicked off on Jan. 28 and took place over seven days. Leaving behind its Park City venue of four decades, Sundance turned to a mostly virtual modality to deliver its screenings, talks and events.
Hopkins hosted its annual Lighting of the Quads (LOTQ) celebration on YouTube Live this past Saturday. LOTQ usually takes place each December shortly before finals; however, this year’s celebration marked many firsts — the first time the event went virtual, the first time it took place during the spring semester and the first time there was no live audience in the ordinary sense.
The White Tiger movie debuted this January after long-delayed plans for movie production, and is one of the largest international releases of an Indian movie in recent years. It’s not hard to guess why: Despite its source material being over a decade old, it presents a story of class warfare, global inequality and crises of democracy that have become even more relevant today.
Similarly, we cannot simply escape 2020 and everything that went wrong. Escapism is not staying put or avoiding conflicts mindlessly but instead finding a moment of tranquility and then moving on, inspired to fight for a better future.
In the epilogue of a new translation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov’s hysterical condition worsens upon beginning his prison sentence, causing him to have a feverish dream about the spread of nihilism in the form of a virus. The events chronicled in this dream are extremely telling of dual pandemics — the global COVID-19 outbreak and the dissemination of disinformation through social media — that plagued 2020 and now plague 2021.
Netflix, Disney+ and HBO Max. The international film festival circuit moving online. The looming extinction of movie theaters. Whether we like it or not, 2021 marks the beginning of a series of radical, possibly lasting, changes the film industry will experience.
