Related Posts

Newsday on America to Zanzibar

Here is a Newsday article on the exhibit America to Zanzibar: Muslim Cultures Near and Far, at The Children’s Museum of Manhattan, for which I was the lead academic advisor. It’s a good chance to shout out my friends from high school. “Our goal is to have children deal with differences in a healthy, positive way and encourage them to be inquisitive while exploring the world instead of running away from its differences,” Rashid said, an experience not so different from his years growing up in Elmont.  

Youssef Chahine is Dead

via Hawg Blawg, I see that Egyptian filmmaker Youssef Chahine is dead. I haven’t seen his earlier work, but I am a fan of al-Massir (Destiny). It’s protagonist is Ibn Rushd, and it’s a reflection of the rise of authoritarianism and the loss of knowledge. There are a couple of sub-plots that I really appreciated in the film, including mystical authoritarianism, which people don’t often associate together, and the power of music to represent freedom. Youssef Chahine

What do these things have in common?

What do the movies The Passion of Christ and American Pie have in common? I saw a report on CNN the other day about a new DVD player that edits movies on the fly to remove objectionable material. The story was recently posted on CNN.com. I thought it was worth mentioning because they interviewed a spokesperson for the company, and he said something that caught my attention, but that didn’t make it into the print story. When the violence or language is integral to the story, it won’t be edited. So The Passion and American Pie have integrated the objectionable…