Illustration by Jimmy Simpson
1. The beloved British polymath and broadcasting legend Melvyn Bragg, who joined the BBC in 1961, just lately stepped down from his present “In Our Time,” which, since 1998, has delved into issues of science, artwork, and much, far past, knowledgeable by teachers moderated with Bragg’s nice brio. In attribute style, a few of Bragg’s final episodes discover dragons, civility, and the evolution of lungs.
2. “WTF with Marc Maron” helped outline the podcast kind, beginning in 2009, as Maron soul-searched and mea-culpaed his approach by means of outdated beefs with fellow-comedians; he advanced into the most effective interviewers within the enterprise. Autumn brings the top of “WTF” and a documentary about Maron, “Are We Good?”
3. “Kreative Kontrol,” an insightful labor-of-love interview podcast by the Edmonton-based journalist and music fanatic Vish Khanna, marked its thousandth episode this summer season. Khanna’s ardour and depth of information have yielded many coups, together with notable interviews with the Silver Jews’ David Berman, in 2019, and with all of the members of Fugazi, in 2024.
What to Watch
Rachel Syme on a movie-series companion to the Met’s “Superfine” exhibition.
September is unofficially Style Month in New York. The runway exhibits stomp by means of, together with the attendant canapé-dotted events and slick model occasions. Magazines drop their thickest, glossiest points. There’s an energized, back-to-school vigor round buying—nubbly sweaters of all colours tempt passersby from well-composed retailer home windows. This 12 months, even a film theatre is getting in on the trendy temper: Metrograph, on the Decrease East Facet, hosts a weekend movie sequence, full with talkbacks and particular friends, known as “Ravenous for Magnificence!: Superfine Tales on Display screen” (Sept. 20-21), a companion to “Superfine,” the Metropolitan Museum’s present Costume Institute exhibition exploring Black dandyism in style. (The exhibition’s curator, Monica L. Miller, put the sequence collectively.) Listed below are the 5 movies on view.
A scene from “The Gospel In line with André.”{Photograph} from Dustin Pittman / Penske Media / REX / Shutterstock
“The Gospel In line with André” (2017, Kate Novack)
When André Leon Talley died, in 2022, the style world misplaced one among its most charismatic and engaging figures. Talley, an excellent bon vivant and the primary Black man to function artistic director of Vogue, was a sort of caped crusader for top style (fairly actually; his cape assortment was legendary). Talley was a staunch advocate for designers and their craft, whilst he typically critiqued the business at giant for its clubbish exclusivity.
“Black Is . . . Black Ain’t” (1995, Marlon Riggs)
The director put his personal story on the heart of this wide-ranging documentary in regards to the range of Black expertise in America. Whereas making it, Riggs was battling AIDS, and the movie’s meta-narrative, about whether or not he’ll survive to see it completed, lends the work a poignant urgency. The movie received the 1995 Filmmakers Trophy at Sundance, however Riggs was not there to just accept it; he died in 1994.
“On the lookout for Langston” (1989, Isaac Julien)
This beautiful black-and-white exploration of the Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes expands right into a wider meditation on queer Black identification. Julien used archival footage from the nineteen-twenties, intercut with the writing of Hughes, James Baldwin, and others, to indicate the connection between artists throughout time, each in speakeasies and on the web page.
“Dressed Like Kings” (2007, Stacey Holman)
Holman’s quick documentary digs into the subculture of oswenka (or “swank”) pageants in South Africa, by which males parade of their best garments in pursuit of being named “Greatest Dressed.”
“Portrait of Jason” (1967, Shirley Clarke)
A riveting documentary that’s half monologue, half character research, half confrontation, this cult traditional, shot in the middle of twelve hours in Clarke’s residence on the Chelsea Resort, includes a lengthy, meandering dialog with Jason Holliday, a homosexual road hustler and aspiring cabaret performer who’s a talker par excellence. Jason alternately romances the digital camera and spars with it; you’ll go away together with your head spinning.
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