Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Sunday 22 February 2015


Sunday reading on nybooks.comSpies and the American secrecy system, writing in the margins, when foreign films aren’t foreign enough, Abdulrahman Sissako’s Timbuktu, and Carl Van Vechten’s portraits of the Harlem Renaissance.

THIS ISSUE SPONSORED BY THE KNOPF DOUBLEDAY PUBLISHING GROUP
 
Anthony Grafton
A new exhibition shows readers writing in books of every kind, for every imaginable reason.
 
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Darryl Pinckney
The first thing Carl Van Vechten’s photographs of black people speak of is his talent for friendship.
 
Alexander Stille
What do viewers expect from the Best Foreign Film category at the Oscars?
 
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Christopher de Bellaigue
It is difficult to unearth love, joy, and erotic charge in a story that begins with the killing of a man, includes capital punishment, and ends with the agonized features of an orphaned child. But this is what the Mauritanian filmmaker Abdulrahman Sissako does in Timbuktu.
 
Freeman Dyson
Why does the American public still consider all spies to be demons? Why does the public make no distinction between technical spies like Julius Rosenberg stealing useful knowledge and tactical spies like Kim Philby destroying human lives?
 
ART
A selection of Francesca Woodman’s fashion photography, taken between 1978 and 1980 (Marian Goodman Gallery)
 
THEATER
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s An Octoroon is a meta-melodrama with forbidden love, slave auctions, and exploding steamboats (Theatre for a New Audience)
 
FILM
survey of recent non-fiction cinema includes Barbara Kopple’s new film on The Nation magazine (MoMA)
 
MUSIC
An ingenious and thoughtful production of The Mastersingers of Nuremberghas opened to loud critical applause (English National Opera)