The Wind Rises — its title taken from a line in Paul Valéry’s poem “The Graveyard by the Sea” (“The wind is rising! We must try to live!”) — weaves a tender, doomed love story into two volcanic decades of Japan’s history, from 1918 to the end of the ’30s. Here are indelible images of the 1923 Kanto earthquake and the firestorms that devoured whole cities and killed 140,000 people. Here is the Depression that crippled Japan while its government poured more money into its military.The version currently playing in Pittsburgh, and the one released nationwide on February 28, is dubbed in English. Showtimes for March 4, 5, and 6 are 1:40 pm, 4:30 pm, 7:20 pm, and 10:10 pm.
The movie is really a double biopic: of Horikoshi, whose life it follows from his youth to his work at Mitsubishi, with a brief postwar coda; and of the author Tatsuo Hori, whose 1937 novel The Wind Has Risen tells the story of a tubercular girl at a sanatorium. The life and works of Hori, who died of TB in 1953 at age 48, inform the character of Naoko Satomi, the young woman who becomes Jiro’s wife.
a hypnotically beautiful dream from the Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-wai, opens with curls of smoke, eddies of water and men soaring and flying across the frame as effortlessly as silk ribbons. The men are warriors, street fighters with furious fists and winged feet, who have massed together on a dark, rainy night to take on Ip Man (Tony Leung), a still figure in a long coat and an elegant white hat. Even amid the violent whirlpools of rain and bodies, that hat never leaves his head. It’s as unyielding as its owner.The movie starts at 7:00. Tickets are $5 at the door, or $6.17 online.
Born in Vietnam during wartime in 1968, artist DINH Q LE moved to the US at 10 years old and was brought up amid Western depictions of his homeland. In his artistic practice, Lê developed an innovative multidisciplinary technique that combined traditional Vietnamese craft with images and fragments of history and modern truths. His work continued after he returned to Vietnam in his 20s, where he examined complex and contradictory topics such as the continuing legacy of the war and the marketing of Vietnam as a tourist's paradise. Lê is the co-founder of the Vietnam Foundation for the Arts, which initiates artistic exchanges between Vietnam and the West, and Sán Art, the first independent not-for-profit art space in Ho Chi Minh City. In 2010, Lê was the recipient of the Prince Claus Award. He will discuss past projects and his work for the 2013 Carnegie International.Lê is one of several Asian artists with works on display at the 2013 Carnegie International, which runs through March 16 at the Carnegie Museum of Art (map). The day after the CMU lecture, March 5, Lê will participate in a discussion at the Carnegie Museum of Art Theater. From the museum's website:
Explore Dinh Q. Lê’s work in the 2013 Carnegie International in greater depth. Life and Belief: Sketches of Life from the Vietnam War, an installation of 100 drawings and paintings made by Vietnamese artist-soldiers on the front lines of the Vietnam War accompanied by a documentary film, will be the starting point of a discussion focused on art, war, and image. Lê, who will speak to the artists’ inside interpretation of the war, will converse with Dr. Daniel Lieberfeld, associate professor at Duquesne University, and Dr. Philip Nash, Vietnam historian and associate professor of history at Penn State Shenango, about the power of images during and after the conflict. Lê will also discuss his follow-up companion project to this piece—a look at the non-communist artists and their lasting legacy. Exhibition co-curator Dan Byers will moderate the discussion. Cosponsored by Carnegie Mellon University School of Art and Jeff Pan.The discussion runs from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. and is free with admission to the museum.
