The Iranian auteur Abbas Kiarostami has long blurred fiction and reality—in his films, it’s never clear what reflects the real world and what’s been plucked from the director’s interior universe. A subset of such ambiguity is Kiarostami’s interest in art, its intent, and how it affects us. His 1997 film Taste of Cherry ended with a shot of Kiarostami and his crew…filming Taste of Cherry. In his 2008 film Shirin, he instead fixates on the audience. Showing as part of this year’s Iranian Film Festival, it observes the faces of more than 100 Iranian actresses—and Juliette Binoche—as they watch a film of a nearly millennium-old Persian tale. —Jonathan L. Fischer

Read the full City Lights pick here; screening details after the jump:

Read More “Tonight in Film: Kiarostami’s Shirin at the Freer” »

What makes two of tonight’s local Haiti benefits unique?  They both feature Haitian bands.  Konpa combo Rafrechi is hosting a charity event at Kahler Hall in Columbia, Md., with donations going to the Caribbean American Network, while the New York City-based outfit Tabou Combo will be at the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage, where people can contribute money to the Red Cross.

Read More “Haitian Bands Tabou Combo, Rafrechi at Benefits Tonight” »

The World Bank, whose Port-au-Prince office was reduced to rubble in the Haiti earthquake last week, is holding a fundraising concert for victims of the disaster on Friday at the Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation auditorium, featuring pianist Valery Kuleshov.  Named “Honored Artist of Russia” by Boris Yeltsin, Kuleshov studied under Vladimir Horowitz, attracting the attention of the Russian piano legend after he managed to notate by ear many of Horowitz’s unpublished transcripts of classical works (see this video).  The program will skew toward the romantic composers Kuleshov favors, including Chopin, Liszt, and Rachmaninoff, and a dramatic arrangement of Bach’s “Chaconne” for piano by Ferruccio Busoni.

Read More “IFC Fundraiser for Haiti: Valery Kuleshov, Piano” »

1. Boozing Along to Contra: The Vampire Weekend Drinking Game!
2. Teddy Afro, Ethiopia’s Bob Marley, at the Armory Saturday
3. Arts Roundup: Are Vampire Weekend Jerks? Edition
4. New Songs for 2010: Free Music from Wale, XO, and Future Times
5. Critical Appreciation: Robert H. Smith, Arts Patron

Teddy Afro, Ethiopia’s biggest pop star, will kick off his 2010 American tour Saturday night at the D.C. Armory.  Afro, born Tewodros Kassahun, is known as Ethiopia’s Bob Marley, thanks to his occasionally sociopolitical lyrics and his frequent use of roots-reggae rhythms. Heralded throughout the Ethiopian diaspora since 2001, Afro is little-known in the Anglo music world—he is not even mentioned at allmusic.com—but he has received some media attention here in articles discussing  his attitude toward his country’s government, as well as his recent jail time.

Afro’s profile at home grew when the Ethiopian government banned several of his songs as part of a 2005 postelection crackdown.  Then, after a controversial indictment and trial, Afro began serving a jail sentence in 2008 for a 2006 incident in which he allegedly hit and killed a homeless boy with his BMW and fled from the scene. Afro maintained that he was innocent and that the government trumped up the charges because of his political criticisms. He spent 16 months in jail.  A judge had originally sentenced him to six years but an appeals court ruling and time off for good behavior reduced his jail time.

Read More “Teddy Afro, Ethiopia’s Bob Marley, at the Armory Saturday” »

Western pop music, says producer Johan Karlberg, “wouldn’t be the same if we weren’t influenced by African or Middle Eastern music. But if you argue too much about these things, you’re thinking too hard and not listening.”

Karlberg is Swedish, Etienne Tron (his partner in the production duo Radioclit) is French, singer Esau Mwamwaya is Malawian, and all three live in London and work together as the Very Best. On a buzz-generating mixtape last year, the trio collaborated with indie rockers who draw from African pop styles like highlife and soukous (Vampire Weekend and the Ruby Suns) and a pair of alt-minded rappers with world-spanning tastes (M.I.A. and Santigold). Mwamwaya sang in at least four languages. And Radioclit took samples from as diverse sources as Architecture in Helsinki, Hans Zimmer, Cannibal Ox, and the Free Willy theme song.

So the Very Best—which performs tonight at DC9 with Javelin—has heard plenty of arguments about globalization and appropriation and authenticity, and could probably debate them all day. But the more you intellectualize music, Karlberg says, the more meaningless it can become. Life’s too short not to dance.

And not just dance, but smile.

Read More “Don’t Overwork, Don’t Overthink: The Very Best @ DC9″ »

Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi’s documentary, Youssou N’Dour: I Bring What I Love , focuses on the release of the Senegalese singer’s controversial 2004 album Egypt, and the performances he did in support of that CD.

Recorded before Sept. 11, 2001, Egypt features and the film depicts N’Dour praising the peaceful and positive values he gets from Sufi Islam and such Senegalese religious figures as Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba. To make the point that music and Islam don’t need to be at odds, he spurns his band’s typical instrumentation in favor of noted Egyptian arranger Fathy Salama’s 14 piece-orchestra.

While N’Dour expected to have to defend the album overseas, the film finds him rejected at home, where some felt Egypt’s mixture of Islam and pop culture was blasphemy.

The film features striking color-filled images of the annual religious pilgrimage Mourides, members of a Senegalese Sufi order, make to the country’s Touba mosque. There’s touching footage of N’Dour bonding with his ninetysomething grandmother, as well as clips of N’Dour onstage and backstage gorgeously wailing his odes of prayer in Wolof, French, and English around the world.

The movie ends on an up note as N’Dour’s first-ever Grammy for the album causes his compatriots to revise their take on Egypt and leads to the album’s re-release.

Youssou N’Dour: I Bring What I Love (2008), 102 min; through Thursday 10-15 at the Avalon Theater, 5612 Connecticut Ave. NW. (202) 966-6000

Art closely reflects life in one of this year’s Arabian Sights Film Festival openers,  Open Shutters Iraq, a documentary film about Iraqi women learning to tell stories using photography.  In a meta-critical way, director Maysoon Pachachi (an Iraqi herself) documents a story she can relate to even though it differs dramatically from her own.   Pachachi was born in Washington, DC to Iraqi parents and was educated in the US, Iraq and the United Kingdom, where she now resides as a professional director.   The women she documents currently live in Iraq, and are learning the craft of photography through a program run by British photojournalist Eugenie Dolberg.

The film is set in Damascus, Syria, where the women got their first training in photography and where they return after shooting photo-essays in Iraq. In their training, they are encouraged to share their life stories so that they can begin to create art from a deeply personal place.  These stories about Iraqi life have been largely unheard and the photos the women subsequently produce come from a perspective largely unseen.

I had the opportunity to ask Pachachi a few questions of my own. Here’s what she had to say: Read More “Q&A With Maysoon Pachachi, Director of Open Shutters Iraq” »

As part of their Latin American Film Festival, AFI Theatre in Silver Spring is screening the documentary Beyond Ipanema: Brazilian Waves in Global Music. The film takes a look at the continuing international fascination with music from Brazil.

“For decades Brazilian music has captivated audiences worldwide. What makes Brazilian music such a powerful force? Why does bossa nova still lure DJs and producers 50 years after it was created? Why does the Tropicália movement resonate so deeply with the alternative-rock crowd?”

Hopefully they will answer answer some harder questions about Brazilian music as well, like “why does Devandra ‘Sandra’ Bernhard think he’s Caetano Veloso?” and “was the anus-marble from the cover of Todos Os Olhos ever fully retrieved?”

The film features Veloso, David Byrne, Creed Taylor, Os Mutantes, Bebel Gilberto, Gilberto Gil, Milton Nascimento, Thievery Corporation, M.I.A. and more. We already missed the centerpiece screening this past Saturday, but they’ve thankfully added two more: 7:45 on Wed. and 7 on Thurs. Director Béco Dranoff will be appearing at the second showing.

The Virgin Mobile Fest is not today’s only big event. The Reggae Summerfest is taking place in downtown DC today.  The lineup includes speedy dancehall reggae toasters Beenie Man and Capleton plus more rootsy, slower-tempoed performers such as Marcia Griffiths, Cocoa Tea, the Itals and I-Wayne.

 One of the most interesting acts on the bill is not a reggae artist. Mahmoud Ahmed is an age 60-something singer from Ethiopia, who has gained attention from non-Ethiopians since the 1990s thanks to his cuts on the widely heralded Ethiopiques compilations and director Jim Jarmusch’s usage of fellow Ethiopian Mulatu Astatke’s songs in the 2005 movie Broken Flowers.  Here is some 2006 and 2008 footage of Ahmed that shows he is still vital. 

Reggae Summerfest Sunday August 30 at 12 noon with Beenie Man, Capleton, Marcia Griffiths, Cocoa Tea, I-Wayne, Mahmoud Ahmed from Ethiopia, The Itals, Jovi Rockwell, Fire Star, Kunzo & Tonestar from Nigeria, Lionize, Image Band, The Iternals, S.T.O.R.M., and more at  City Center DC, 900 9th Street NW, Washington DC 
Information Line: 202-725-0331