The Danish director Bille August’s “Night Train to Lisbon,” a German-Swiss-Portuguese co-production with a stellar European cast, will have its world premiere out of competition at this year’s Berlinale (February 7-17). The philosophical drama-cum-thriller stars Jeremy Irons and features Tom Courtenay, August Diehl, Bruno Ganz, Martina Gedeck, Jack Huston, Mélanie Laurent, Christopher Lee, Lena Olin, and Charlotte Rampling (who replaced Vanessa Redgrave).

The film was adapted by Greg Latter and Ulrich Herrmann from the ruminative, labyrinthine 2004 novel by Pascal Mercier (the pseudonym for Peter Bieri, the Swiss professor of analytic philosophy). The book is widely considered one of the last decade’s most intellectually satisfying works of European fiction.

Irons plays the aging Classics teacher Raimund Gregorius (Swiss in the novel, English in the movie), who is as dedicated as he is erudite, but lives a boring, lonely, spiritually empty life – words have become more important to him than people. (A “prissy” fellow teacher is called Virginie Ledoyen, either a bizarre nod to the beautiful French star or a coincidence.)

After rescuing a woman from jumping off a bridge to her death, Gregorius is prompted by the melodic way she pronounces “Português” when naming her mother tongue to visit a Spanish bookstore. There he chances on the volume “A Goldsmith of Words” by the Lisbon doctor Amadeu de Prado. The book’s cogent meditations – on the meaning of language, whether or not humans can change and discover “a hidden internal life of unimagined depths,” the deceptiveness of appearances, and the unknowability of others – affect Gregorius so deeply that he resigns from his school and starts out on the 26-hour train journey from Bern to Lisbon, via Geneva, Paris, and the Basque region.

Once there, he discovers that Amadeu had died of an aneurysm. He also learns that, as a man of blazing integrity, Amadeu had fought against Prime Minister António de Oliveira Salazar’s authoritarian right-wing regime, which had deployed the secret police organization PIDE to repress civil liberties and political opposition. Amadeu’s treatment of a leading policeman, “the Butcher of Lisbon,” had caused his patients to ostracize him, pushing him into increasingly dangerous acts of resistance.

Despite the vagueness of Gregorius’s quest (even to himself), he is changed by his meetings with Amadeu’s surviving relatives and friends. In the film, Lee plays the priest who had taught Amadeu, and Rampling the sister who keeps his flame. Courtenay is an infirm fellow resistance fighter who had been tortured by the police, and Gedeck the latter’s niece, the eye doctor who treats the symbolically myopic Gregorius.

Ganz and Olin also play former resistance fighters, Jorge and Estefania, once a couple. Although Estefania had fallen in love with Amadeu and he with her, Amadeu rejected her, staying loyal to Jorge, his best friend. In the movie’s flashbacks, Huston, Diehl, and Laurent play the young Amadeu, Jorge, and Estefania.

“Each man’s lives touches so many other lives,” says Clarence the Angel in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” “Night Train to Lisbon”’s version of that adage is Gregorius’s reflection, “Was it possible that the best way to make sure of yourself was to know and understand someone else?” The success of “Night Train to Lisbon” will depend on how effectively it depicts Gregorius’s comprehension of Amadeu’s inner life directing his future onto a different track – metaphysically, no mean feat.   

Click on the video below to hear Jeremy Irons and other cast members discuss the making of "Night Train to Lisbon": 

Writing about Juergen Teller’s forthcoming exhibition at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts, ICA director Gregor Muir notes: “whether he is an artist or photographer … or anything connected with such thoughts, can only lead us astray. Teller’s work is about great images.” Indeed, the German-born photographer moves between genres with breathtaking ease. Acclaimed in the fashion world for his Vivienne Westwood, Helmut Lang, and Marc Jacobs campaigns (among many others), Teller has long ago made a name for himself with more personal series of works. “Ed in Japan” compellingly records a trip taken with his wife, gallerist Sadie Coles, and their then-infant son. His private life is also at the heart of Teller’s “Irene im Wald,” which was shot in the forest with his mother in his hometown of Erlangen, and “Keys to the House,” portraits of family and friends in the British countryside.

Whatever the subject (and the preparation these images involve), Teller’s images bristle with raw emotion. They advertise a sense of authenticity characteristic of pictures taken off-the-cuff, on the spur of the moment. Known for never touching up his work, the photographer shows his numerous muses each captured within an uncompromising light: whether Charlotte Rampling naked in the Louvre, Vivienne Westwood flashing a red pube, or Kristen McMenamy baring her anus. Teller is equally challenging with himself, posing shitting in snow, or with his head stuck in a platter of roasted pig. Yet, for all its provocation and surrounding controversy, there’s a genuine sense of tenderness in Teller’s work, a palpable enthusiasm and genuine complicity between photographer and subject. A week before the opening of his ICA show, ARTINFO UK met the man at his West London studio.

I was thinking about your recent projects “Irene im Wald” and “Keys to the House.” How do you link these two series?

I’ve always wanted to photograph the forest. I lived next to the forest, and I very much like to be there. But I was never able to photograph it, because there are so many trees, and for some reasons, I tried too hard. A couple of years ago, when we were renting this house in Suffolk, I started photographing the landscape there, and I was very pleased with the results. Because these Suffolk landscapes worked, that gave me a confidence to go back to the forest, to go back home. I realised it’s when you actually just look and don’t impose yourself too much on it that the pictures come to you. But you have to look a lot. I walked a lot, and I took many, many photographs.

Was the problem the immensity of the forest? Did you feel it would escape you?

Well, I just couldn’t see the wood for the trees. It really helped me to do these simple landscape pictures in Suffolk. And then my mom wanted to join me. She liked that I came back and spent some days with her, going for walks in the countryside. That’s when I started to photograph my mother.

Do you feel that you’ve established a different kind of relationship with her through these images?

Yes, because I wrote a text about it too. It’s in the book, and it will be in the exhibition underneath the photographs. Let’s say it has bridged certain gaps between my mother and me, in a good way. She’s fully behind me now.

Wasn’t she always?

There was a certain question mark. Obviously she doesn’t like certain images, but I believe she is more forgiving now, because she understands everything more.

You’ve been taking pictures of your family for a long time. Do you see your practice, or part of your practice, as a sort of diary?

No. I don’t see it at all as a diary. I have certain ideas, and they are mostly project-based. “Ed in Japan” [2006], which I shot when my son was 11 months, was a journey we took through Japan and that became a book and an exhibition. I wouldn’t just photograph Ed today, brushing his teeth and tomorrow going to school. 

Can you tell me about the ICA exhibition?

It has three rooms. All the framed work is pretty much my personal work, and then there’s a small room, the reading room, which will have a table with books of mine attached. On all four walls, I will wallpaper about 700 photographs, from top to bottom. There will be everything: Céline ads, Jigsaw ads, Marc Jacobs ads, portraits, everything like that.

You are showing photographs in several different ways: on magazine-type paper, framed, or in books. Do you think about the final materiality of the image when you shoot it?

Well, there’s always a different reason for a different thing. For example, when I did the picture of Victoria Beckham in a plastic bag with her head sticking out for a Marc Jacobs ad, there was monthly discussion between Victoria, Marc, and me. Then you have to produce the oversized bag, you have to have it built. Then all you do is fly to L.A. and execute it. It was pretty clear that this picture could be something, more than just a silly fashion ad.

Isn’t that always what you have in mind?

Yes, but I knew with this one for sure. This picture is also on the wall on one of the upstairs rooms.

You presented Victoria Beckham in a way completely at odds with the images of her we were used to until then. How did she react to the idea? Did you find that you had to do some convincing to do?

No, the convincing was pretty straightforward. I wanted her to be a product, an accessory in this bag. She understood that very well, and she was laughing with us. But it was difficult for her to agree that I wasn’t going to give her photo approval. Then I said: “Listen, there is this bag, and your legs sticking out and I’m going to make a Polaroid. You can look at the Polaroid and see that there’re nothing hidden in it. I’m not going to put a fucking elephant on top of your head.” I believe that if you are straightforward and honest with your intentions, telling the subject what you want to do, then it’s either a yes or a no. But of course, it depends how you ask. You have to have a certain charm, and ask at the right moment.

Alex Needham wrote in the Guardian that to be photographed by you is “to accept a dare.” Do you agree?

No, I don’t. People take the whole thing far too seriously. It’s just a fucking photograph. Certain people are like: “This is really daring, I agreed to be photographed by you,” and I’m thinking: “Are you crazy? I’m not going to bite your thing off. This is just ridiculous.” And I make them beautiful anyway, I make them interesting and good looking. They are all grown-ups. They have a full understanding of what I’m asking them to do, or not to do. They know what they are running into.

Even when you started photographing, say, Kate Moss when she was a teenager? Did she know what she was letting herself into?

No, when you are young you don’t necessarily know, of course. But my pictures of her when she was a teenager are very naïve, there’s nothing weird about them.

You are one of the photographers who radically changed the way we understand fashion photography. How much of this was an intentional project of yours?

That didn’t interest me at all. It’s just what I do. It’s how I feel, how I see, and that’s what I believe in. I was always on my own on doing it. Then I got a response for it and it grew. I was interested in certain things, working with [former partner, stylist] Venetia [Scott] at the time. It made complete sense for me to work with Helmut Lang, and I worked with him from 1993 to 2004. Working with Kristen McMenamy also made complete sense.

Each time it’s a person, isn’t it?

Yes, it’s all very personal, and a personal response to everything.

You’ve had a longstanding relationship with several of your subjects. Do you feel that it gives you a different eye on them? Does the trust make it easier?

It makes it more difficult in a way, but it’s more interesting certainly. I just like certain people. I like being with them, having conversations with them, having dinners with them, and I like going on an adventure with them. For me, it’s not about collecting, doing celebrity portraits. I’m just interested in each person and it’s exciting to go further with them. And in the end, there’s not that many people you actually like.

How did you start on your self-portraits?

I was always photographing other people. And at some point, I thought it was psychologically draining. I just wanted to feel how it is to photograph myself, to feel how it is to be photographed by me, the physical act of it, if that makes sense. I was also interested in how it looked, and I enjoyed it for a while.

Do you feel self-portraiture has changed the way you photograph?

It has helped with my subjects. It pushed things a lot more forward. When they are looking at my self-portraits, they really know what they are getting into. I would have never gone so far with anyone else. It certainly opened up.

You’ve got a very particular technique, with two cameras and flash, that you use one after the other. How did you arrive to this process?

It’s getting a little bit too much written about, and all of it isn’t true.

It’s time to put it right.

It has many reasons. It started out with nervousness, and it gives me time to think behind the camera. Then of course, as I’m a professional photographer, there were certainly cases when there was something wrong with the camera, you have to make sure you covered it on both. I also find that it sort of hypnotises the subject, in a very gentle way. If it’s a bigger camera and you have a tripod, take a picture, look at the Polaroid, say: “Oh, the Polaroid looks nice,” and then put the film in, and ask the subject to do the same thing, by the time you take the actual picture, they are completely stiff. I would rather get rid of the whole thing, and just do this [pretending to have a camera in each hand]: “this is right,” this is right, stay like that” — get rid of the whole thing, and don’t make that, what people call “decisive photograph.” There will be a decisive photograph, but it’s more fluid.

You famously don’t shoot on digital cameras. Why is that?

I would like to photograph digital but I haven’t really properly looked, and found a camera which I liked. I’ve never found a camera where the flash works so fast. And I just grew up with [analogue photography], you know. So far for me there was no real reason to change anything. But I’m not really against it.

“Juergen Teller: Woo,” January 23 – March 17, 2013, ICA, London

BRUSSELS — In contrast to the VIP stampedes of top-tier art events, Brussels Antiques and Fine Arts fair, or BRAFA, has an unassuming charm; this year’s edition opened with a trickle on Wednesday, and it wasn’t until Thursday night that well-heeled hordes swarmed waiters for hors d’œuvres.

But the fair’s modesty is partly by design, as its underdog position allows it to include treasures across a wide range of categories: from gilt Louis XIV interiors to Julian Schnabel crockery tableaux, to Flemish School paintings and modern art, to jewelry, art deco and even autographs and cartoons.

This year, the BRAFA found itself — in both timing and geography — caught between the increasingly glitzy Biennale des Antiquaires and the all-dominating masterpiece rendez-vous TEFAF. But booths at Tour & Taxis, the Belgian capital’s rehabilitated former customs and mail-sorting hangars, are roughly half the price of those in Maastricht and a quarter of the cost at Paris’s Grand Palais.

The art prices follow suit. Frankfurt’s Galerie Jörg Schumacher had the fair’s big-ticket work in René Magritte’s diminutive oil-on-canvas “La Belle Lurette,” a Surrealist foggy landscape featuring a staring eyeball-chess piece, priced at €2.9 million ($3.86 million). According to the gallery, the piece, estimated to have been painted in 1965, was likely purchased directly from the Belgian artist by its first owner before going to Sotheby’s London in November 1970. It then went into the hands of the mysteriously named (or titled) “H.R. Chancellor,” and next was placed by a Brussels dealer in a Swiss private collection in 1978. But the painting was most recently offered by Michael Haas at last year’s Art Basel Basel Miami Beach. “We’re hoping it will stay in Belgium, where it once belonged,” said the gallery’s Tristan Markus Lorenz.

That particular Magritte appeared to just pip another, the 1928 painting “Le voyage des fleurs,” priced at €2,8 million with Paris dealer Pierre Mahaux. At Galerie Taménaga, Pierre-Auguste Renoir was center stage with the still life “Trois Citrons” (1915) — signed, not stamped, at €385,000 ($513,000) and emerging from a 30-year stay in a private Japanese collection.

But most of the early sales matched the human scale of the fair itself. Two of three François-Xavier Lalanne sheep quickly escaped from Knokke contemporary dealer Guy Pieters’s stand, at €120,000 ($160,000) each, along with a Pierre Alechinsky painting in a metal frame. Welcoming visitors with Jan Fabre’s golden laughing man, Pieters’s playful booth blended Belgian and international names, lining up a gothic bulldozer and tattooed pig skins by Wim Delvoye, Koen Vanmechelen’s crazy-eyed chickens, three Fabre brains and a glittering bulb dollar sign by Tim Noble and Sue Webster. Separate rooms were dedicated to sculptures and sketches by Christo and Bernar Venet.

At the other end of the exhibition space, Steinitz set up its habitual glittering gesamtkunstwerk of ornate Louis XIV to XVI furniture and Art Nouveau items and, as reported by Abigail Esman, sold two mahogany wall panels for €500,000 ($666,000).

Around the corner, the newly elected BRAFA director Harold t’Kint de Roodenbeke parted with the Rik Wouters watercolor “Nel en forêt” in the low six-figures, while the fine Salvador Dali ink-on-paper “Melancholie” (1941), dedicated and gifted to Lady Mountbatten in 1942, went to a fellow tradesman. The Brussels dealer also sold several works by James Ensor, the 1973 Paul Delvaux watercolor “Portrait with hands” — formerly in the collection of M. Verschelden, a friend and doctor of the artist in Furnes — and the graffiti-cursive oil-on-canvas “L’art m’ennuie” (“Art bores me”) by BEN. “The clients are relaxed and open. They are looking for good pieces — and buying good pieces,” said the gallerist.

BRAFA punches its weight, and only 10 of its 128 dealers will also be at TEFAF in March. The imperative to save the very best pieces for Maastricht helps to keep the two fairs on separate levels. “That’s absolutely a reality, because the price point at which people are buying at TEFAF is higher,” said Boris Vervoordt, of Axel Vervoordt. “But that also makes it wonderfully attractive to visit a fair like the BRAFA. You can really buy a wonderful thing for €1000 here.”

“Who wants to be 15 days in Maastricht anyway?” quipped Phoenix Ancient Art’s Michael Hedquist, alluding to TEFAF’s reputation as a world-class fair held in a somewhat lesser-known city. At BRAFA, the Geneva and New York gallery showed an ancient Egyptian relief fragment and an Italiote suit of armor, drawing the most interest from private collectors, with a hint of museum peeking as well.

BRAFA also remained unafraid to take chances. London’s Finch & Co. brought a delightful set of curiosities, among them the entire skull of a large, adult male Hippopotamus Amphibius from the late 18th - early 19th century (priced at €22,000/$29,000) and, on the wall, a set of five Rowland Ward Scottish abnormal malformed red deer antlers (ca. 1897-1916, at €12,500/$16,500). The French Librairie Signatures offered photographs and hand-written documents by Schubert, Einstein and Freud.

At European silver specialist Bernard de Leye, a delicately ornate model ship rolled on a wave of jeweler’s silk — already a stunning sight, before you realized that its entire plinth was, in fact, a large music box. Made entirely in vermeil and silver — down to its fine-mesh sails — by French jeweler Pilloy, the three-mast battleship was a gift from the City of Paris to the Duchess of Berry in 1821, on the occasion of the birth of the Duke of Bordeaux, grandson of Charles X.

A second, smaller music box within the ship itself could be triggered by winding the lone steel cannon among dozens of tiny silver ones. The piece had until recently remained in the family of the Duchess, which took it abroad in 1930. “Had it stayed in France, I would never have been able to get it out,” noted Bernard de Leye, hinting at UNESCO’s 1970 convention and the French state’s power to preempt a sale. He added that it could now find its way to a museum.

The vast crossover of genres at BRAFA can seem incongruous at first, but it’s finding more and more favor with a generation of collectors who mix and match. The trend was evident in several booths set up like collector's studies. At Axel Vervoordt, admirers crossed creaky vintage floorboards to admire Egyptian and Roman archeology in the nooks of a large French horseshoe-shaped library in walnut, the ensemble giving off a natural musk. In a separate room, a “Magnetic Wall” tableau by Greek sculptor Takis flanked a never-before-shown draped Roman Venus Genetrix figure in marble from the 1st – 2nd centuries A.D, and a trompe l’œil minimalist beam sculpture by Otto Boll— all in an echo of “the in-betweens” of the world today.

“We are the future antiquarians, just wait 15 or 20 years and see,” suggested Serge Maruani, of Knokke’s Maruani & Noirhomme, in its fifth year at BRAFA. “Today, there is no longer a separation of genres, it’s all a blend. You can easily imagine a Roman sculpture with a work by Gilbert & George. There are always recurrent themes, across the centuries.” His hanging of David Lachapelle’s provocative “The Rape of Africa” from 2009 — which closely replicates the setting of Botticelli’s 1484 “Venus and Mars” — underscored the point. The gallery also showed quietly racy photographs by Bettina Rheims and a nice crop of Man Ray’s conceptual sculptures, among them a complete version of his 1920 “Obstruction” mobile of 63 wooden hangers over a suitcase.

“Our collectors today are not oriented in one direction,” said Augusto Brun of Milan’s Il Quadrifoglio, which showed Chinese works and Chinese-inspired Italian sculptures, but led its booth with a €140,000 ($185,000), 18th century German sculpture of a female cymbal player with a young satyr, deaccessioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2012.

“Tastes change, the client doesn’t change — but we see a new generation of clients,” added t’Kint de Roodenbeke. “Last year, I sold a small painting to a client. And I just now sold another piece to his son. With this variety, we see two or three generations coming together and learning from each other.”

For newcomer Hélène Bailly, being at the BRAFA was more widely strategic. “We just reopened our second space on the Quai Voltaire, in front of the Louvre,” said the young Parisian dealer, who set Jean-Pierre Formica’s white salt sculptures against works by Alexander Calder, James Ensor and Francis Picabia. “The new space will be about Old Masters, Modern and contemporary art — and we’ve been best known for contemporary, so this will be a chance to show people that we are open to all major arts.”

At Liège-based Le Couvent des Ursulines, the easygoing dealer duo was philosophically debating whether one could at once be merry and jolly. The gallery no longer has a storefront but remains open only on appointment, making art fairs an essential overture. “It’s getting better and better,” said owner Jean-François Taziaux, an 11-year veteran of BRAFA, adding that “fairs are great for meeting people, and both for buying and selling. When we did the Biennale des Antiquaires this year, it allowed me to acquire as well.”

Among his works were an imposing French Restoration gueridon with a past in the collection of famed dealer Roger Imbert and for €58,000 ($77,000), a rosewood Charles X-era billiards table by Charles Toulet, with a rare elephant motif on its inlay and a bed of schist stones.

BRAFA again showed real strength in African tribal art. French stalwart Alain de Monbrison returned after a hiatus with a Congolese Mangbetu slit drum with a curvy, minimalist line, priced at around €200,000 ($266,000). Didier Claes broke with his trend of monumental, single-work presentations (many will remember his show-stopping Nkonde nail fetish at BRAFA in 2011) to show smaller middle-African Lwalwa mask, used in hunting and fertility ceremonies, before becoming props for dancers journeying from town to town, performing for food and drink.

Adrian Schlag brought a nicely peculiar South African Lovale chair, shaped like a figure holding its sliced-in-half head, with a second, smaller head protruding — an apparent precursor to both Surrealism and the early films of David Lynch. But it was Serge Schoffel who stole the show with a wall of Bete spiritual warrior masks from the Ivory Coast, with heavy eyebrows and moustache-like appendages. The Brussels dealer had assembled the little known but forceful masks through auctions and private collections over the past eight years, and priced them between €15,000 ($20,000) and €150,000 ($200,000) apiece.

Ahead of TEFAF, Flemish School painting at BRAFA was predictably timid. Floris van Wanroij brought one of the better hangings with Adriaan van Overbeke and Willem Vandevelde the Younger. Paris dealer Florence de Voldère darkened her booth and lit each painting individually, reviving the colors of among others “Paysage d’hiver avec patineurs” (1616) by Jacques Fouquières, a contemporary of Poussin who was commissioned by Louis XVIII to paint city views for the Grandes Galeries of the Louvre, works that were largely lost in a fire at the Tuileries in 1871.

The fair continues until January 27, and despite Brussels being largely snowed in, organizers hope to beat last year’s tally of 46,000 visitors.

To see the sights and highlights from BRAFA 13, click on the slideshow.

Michelle Obama ushered in a brave new Obama presidency over the weekend with a shocking new set of...bangs. Sensational though they were, the First Lady’s fashion choices, too, were of a high level of intrigue rarely seen in a land of practical pantsuits. In the end, however, she stayed consistent with her program of eclectic yet unfussy, body-conscious, American-made fashion. The inaugural weekend saw a trifecta of tried-and-true Michelle Obama tropes: bold colors, belts, cardigans, and those much-ballyhooed arms. The 48-hour ritual of public appearances was a sartorial cadenza, beginning with a state-appropriate, albeit slightly humdrum, knee-length dress and cardigan set, and ending with a showstopper crimson gown by — who else? — Mrs. Obama’s go-to inauguration dressmaker, Jason Wu.

At Sunday morning’s official swearing-in ceremony in the Blue Room, the second-term FLOTUS erred on the side of caution and color coordination. Her midnight-blue Reed Krakoff sheath harmonized with the president’s Brooks Brothers suit. At the inaugural reception at the National Building Museum Sunday night, Michelle recycled a Michael Kors sleeveless black sequined dress she rescued from 2009. At the public swearing-in on Monday, she significantly upped the fashion ante with a custom-made A-line navy jacquard coatdress by now-famous menswear-turned-women’s designer Thom Browne. The First Lady, who wore Browne at the second presidential debate, tempered the formidably voluminous, mildly avant-garde silhouette with a beaded belt from J.Crew. For the inaugural ball, she pulled out the proverbial big guns with Wu’s shoulder-bearing scarlet velvet-and-chiffon gown, adorned with a white gold ring of pavé diamonds by Kimberly McDonald.

If the angelic white confection Wu designed for Mrs. Obama’s first inauguration was a tabula rasa, a sartorial embodiment of the message of optimism and hope that won Mr. Obama the Oval Office, Michelle’s second turn in Wu channels the chutzpah that got him reelected. It’s tempting to fall into the epistemological trap of imbuing Mrs. Obama’s wardrobe with partisan meaning. And while Mrs. Obama's clothes reveal precious little about gun control, immigration reform, or the direction of the American economy, her embrace of high fashion and mass retailers, her penchant for turning emerging designers into household names (Prabal Gurung, anyone?), and  patriotic investment in American manufacturing speak volumes about her views of her role.

In Noel Coward’s “Private Lives,” Amanda irreverently announces, “Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.” Marin Mazzie is currently proving just how potent it can be in her cabaret act at New York’s 54 Below, which runs from January 22 through 26. Coming from a three-time Tony nominee (“Ragtime,” “Passion,” “Kiss Me, Kate”), you might expect show tunes to dominate the act, which Mazzie has put together with director Scott Burkell. Or even a song or two from a recent venture: her role as the Bible-spouting mother in the musical “Carrie.” But the emotional markers on this autobiographical journey are the top-40 tunes that were emanating from the radio in the Rockford, Illinois, home in which the Broadway belter grew up. That means re-interpreting a wide range of pop hits, including Maria Muldaur’s “Midnight at the Oasis,” Carly Simon’s “That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be,” Barry Manilow’s “Weekend in New England,” and the Burt Bacharach-Hal David classic, “Anyone Who Had a Heart.” Mazzie even manages to sneak in a little bit of TV’s “The Partridge Family” nostalgia with “I Think I Love You.” The singer and actress spoke with ARTINFO’s Patrick Pacheco about mining the emotional complexities of deceptively simple songs.

Noel Coward notwithstanding, do you think these songs are underrated?

Yeah, absolutely. I wanted to take these songs that you listen to as pop tunes on the radio and I wanted to deconstruct them and show what great songs they are, to make people look at them a little differently. Like “Make Your Own Kind of Music.” It’s simple yet such a fantastic song, and so timely. It’s about standing up for yourself, living your life, freely and openly, and having the right to do so. I looked at the songs of Janis Ian and Carly Simon, too. They’re profound in their own way. And that’s what makes them so memorable.  

Did any one sound define the period for you?

Well, I do go back to my parents’ era, to songs they danced to. “That’s All” and “Tenderly.”  My dad managed a television station and my mom loved music, so the radio was always on. There were many different sounds but the Bacharach-David songs are really definitive of that time. And Tom Jones.

Tom Jones?

We loved Tom Jones! Still do. A sexy, sexy man and sexy performer.  He sings and you know there’s something going on behind it. He sang a lot of the Bacharach-David songs. I was a kid watching the “Tom Jones Show” with my mom and we’d joke about throwing our underwear at the TV set! [laughs]   

Is it the operatic emotion that attracts you?

Yes. Lots of people have great voices but if there’s no emotional connection, no interpretation to a lyric, then it doesn’t matter how great your voice is.

How do you make that connection on a Bacharach-David song like “Anyone Who Had A Heart”?

I approach any song from an acting standpoint, finding things in my life to apply to a song. I could relate to that song. Not when I first heard it as a kid but in my later years, post-high school, post-college… having had really horrible relationships. Being screwed over by someone in my life, not being able to leave the sickness of that relationship, recalling that, and putting that on a song. 

What was the biggest surprise in putting the act together?

Scott and I became really excited about “Weekend in New England,” the Barry Manilow song. I don’t want to make a generalization but some people might think it’s “corny” or “schmaltzy.” And we discovered it as a really powerhouse song.

In going back to your youth, did you learn anything about yourself?

Even when I was young, around 10 or 11, I loved the complex emotions behind these songs. Hearing these songs about love lost, I always played into them even though I hadn’t experienced that. I wondered how it would happen and asked myself how I’d react.

Do you think that emotional precocity is something that actors have in common?

As actors, I think that’s just ingrained in you.  You start exploring and being interested in other people’s lives, emotions, and scenarios. You start thinking about the neighbors that you went to visit as a kid, this one woman who was alcoholic, who had [a lot of] kids, and she just couldn’t cope. You become so aware of just how much it takes for some people to just get through a day. And that’s juxtaposed against your own growing up, listening to music that’s just sexy and fun, like “Midnight in the Oasis,” and the joy of being a kid. 

Read more Patrick Pacheco in Play by Play.

– J.M. Coetzee to Curate Belgian Pavilion: The Belgian pavilion at this year's Venice Biennale will be curated by Nobel Prize-winning novelist J.M. Coetzee. It's an interesting choice considering the author is South African and notoriously avoids publicity. (He declined to collect both of his two Booker Prizes in person.) The pavilion will be devoted to the art of Ghent-based sculptor Berlinde De Bruyckere. [Utopia Parkway, Flanders News]

– African American Museum Curators Seek Obama Artifacts: During Monday's inauguration celebrations in Washington, D.C., curators from the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture parsed the crowds looking for the most unusual handmade artifacts to add to the museum's collection of objects pertaining to Barack Obama's presidency. Turns out it's not always easy getting people to donate their Obamamorabilia. "The more personal the object, the more attached it is to a special event, the harder it is for the person to give it up," said the museum's founding director, Lonnie G. Bunch. [Washington Post]

– Court to Hear Lawsuit Over Looted Art Worth $100 Million: The last great Holocaust-era art restitution case may be upon us. David de Csepel, great-grandson of Jewish banker and devoted art collector Baron Mór Lipót Herzog, has filed suit in federal court against the government of Hungary, three of its museums, and a university. He is seeking the return of more than 40 artworks valued at $100 million. In addition to deciding the fate of the Herzog collection, the case could help set precedent for suing a foreign government in U.S. courts. [LAT]

– Murakami Takes on the Berlin Gallery Scene: The first exhibition of the year at Takashi Murakami's new gallery in Berlin gathers 500 works from eight Japanese ceramic artists (all of whom are represented by his sister gallery, Oz Zingaro, in Tokyo). "There is now a new genre of ceramic art that has grown from a more left-wing mindset and where the artists deliberately seek to prevent their prices from going up," Murakami explains. But why open a gallery in Berlin in the first place? The art star says his friend, fellow artist Anselm Reyle, convinced him it was a good idea. [DW]

– Virgin Atlantic to Sell Street Art In Flight: Virgin Atlantic is getting into the art business. Beginning next month, first-class passengers traveling between New York and London will be able to buy paintings by British street artist Ben Eine in midair. "An airplane cabin isn't the first place people think of when they choose an exhibition space, but I'm all for doing things differently," the artist said. His works are priced between $4,000 and $24,000 and will be exhibited in the airline's clubhouses on the ground and through a virtual gallery onboard. [USA Today]

– Portland Gets Grants for Small Arts Organizations: The Portland Institute of Contemporary Art is launching the Precipice Fund, a new grant-giving initiative for Portland-based visual art collectives, alternative spaces, and artist-run collaborative projects. It will distribute small grants of $500 to $5,000 to up to 20 recipients annually. The fund itself is financed by a grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation. [Artforum]

– Sistine Chapel's Past Restorations Put it at Risk: The Vatican's efforts to restore the Sistine Chapel cieling in the 1980s and '90s — which involved removing layers of protective coating that kept Michelangelo's masterpiece shielded from atmospheric pollutants — may have done more to damage it the than the thronging masses now passing beneath it every day. Since a plan to re-coat the frescoes with synthetic resin was abandoned, they remain unprotected and at the mercy of dirt, dust, and other damaging substances in the air. [Artwatch]

– Columbus Museum Plans Major Expansion: Ohio's Columbus Museum of Art is preparing for the last phase of its $63-million renovation plan: a new $37.6-million, 50,000-square-foot wing. Expected to be complete in two years, the addition will include a full-service restaurant, new permanent collection galleries, and an events complex. "We need a larger special event space," said museum spokesperson Nancy Colvin. "That’s a major revenue stream for us." [Business First]

– Alleged Picasso Nabbed in Turkish Sting: A painting titled "Harlequin Family" and said to be a lost work by Pablo Picasso was recovered by Turkish police in Elazığ province after a suspect attempting to sell the work for $10 million was stopped and the artwork was found in his car. The mysterious painting has been sent to the local Elazığ Archaeology and Ethnography Museum to be examined. [Anatolia News Agency]

– Trenton Doyle Hancock Wins Greenfield Prize: Painter Trenton Doyle Hancock is the winner of the annual $30,000 Greenfield Prize, beating out shortlisted hopefuls including Nicole Eisenman and Byron Kim. Hancock will attend the Hermitage Artist Retreat in Englewood, Florida and produce an original work of art there under the auspices of the Greenfield Foundation. [Press release]

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“Tokyo 1955-1970,” the current sixth-floor exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, is subtitled “A New Avant-Garde,” and, as rich and strange and garish as the show is, I’m inclined to call it “an Other Avant-Garde.” Trauma is indistinguishable from liberation. Science fiction rules. (It reminds me of Robert Smithson’s fondness for the Museum of Natural History where, he wrote, “the time states of ‘1984’ are mixed with those of ‘One Million BC.’”) The show’s two poles are the mutant and the primordial; its operating principle, for reception even more than production, would seem to be creative misunderstanding.

It’s astonishing to see postwar Japanese artists assimilating a half century of European vanguardism and coming up with analogs to Mad cartoonist Basil Wolverton (Tatsuo Ikeda) or assemblages evoking the pods from “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (Tetsumi Kudo), updating traditional Japanese practices as Miró-elegant modern art (Sadamasa Motonaga’s enameled stones) or trumping the East Village by 30 years with auto-slide projections (Shōzō Kitadai’s table-top epic “Another World”). The cinematic equivalent is the great Japanese director Nagisa Oshima, who died last week at age 80. (You can find my colleague Graham Fuller’s obit here.)

According to film theorist and creative “misunderstandder” Noël Burch, Oshima was the first self-consciously avant-garde filmmaker in Japanese history. Be that as it may, Oshima was a great filmmaker and a life-long radical provocateur who was confined by no particular style — he had many. Only a few of Oshima’s 20-odd features were included in the MoMA complementary show of Japanese independent and underground cinema, but they were characteristic and choice. Most have already screened but there’s still time to catch “Band of Ninja” (a.k.a. “Manual of Ninja Arts”), Oshima’s 1967 unique experiment in ultra pragmatic anime, screening Thursday, January 24, at 6:45 p.m.

Unable to fund a live-action version of Sanpei Shirato’s epic manga, published in 17 volumes between 1959 and 1962 during the very period of the polarizing Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, Oshima photographed Shirato’s crude kinetic panels (energetic drawings, many softened by a smudgy wash reminiscent of Andy Warhol’s early Dick Tracy paintings). He then added character voiceovers, as well as an intermittent benshi-style narrator and cartoon sound effects, to create a symphony of non-stop static action. The montage results in long passages of near-abstract mayhem while movement is largely confined to the occasional passing of a long scroll before the camera.

The film’s narrative, which concerns the ninja leader of a 16th-century peasant revolt and his prolonged campaign against a warlord nemesis, is quickly subsumed in a welter of characters, many of whom practice the “art of doubling” or shape-shifting. Replete with extended flashbacks, the convoluted saga encompasses plagues, famines, and droughts, as many instances of mass carnage that might well have been unwatchable — or, indeed, unstageable — as photographic cinema.

Still, however confusing the plot, the “historical materialism” that infused Shirato’s manga and endeared it to the radical students of the ’60s is a constant. “Band of Ninja” manages to cram a half dozen battles into its final two minutes to end with the New Left exhortation that “The People Will Keep Fighting!” It’s a true tour de force: Lines on paper have seldom seemed so violent.

Read more J. Hoberman in Movie Journal.

Between Milan, Paris, and London, the just-finished men's collections proposed a slimmed-down classicism for fall. From Kim Jones' Bhutanese trek at Louis Vuitton, loaded with puffer jackets and tapestried smoking jackets, to Thom Browne's abstract proportions to Lanvin's back-to-basics tailoring, a subdued throughline is emerging for the season. Of course, there were also the wildcards, such as James Long with his glittery grossness and Craig Green with his masks made to look like planks of wood. Here, ARTINFO runs down our ten favorite looks of the season. 

Agnieszka Holland’s “Burning Bush” (“Hořící Keř”) could prove one of the most politically charged miniseries of the year. It depicts the fallout of Jan Palach’s self-martyring protest of the demoralization of the Czech people caused by the Soviet occupation that followed the Prague Spring.

On January 16, 1969, five months after the tanks rolled in, the 2o-year-old Charles University history student doused himself in gasoline and set himself on fire in Prague’s Wenceslas Square; he died three days later. The impact of the news images reverberated throughout the West.

The HBO Europe miniseries premieres at a Prague cinema tonight and will air in 15 European countries starting Sunday. It is not clear yet when HBO will broadcast it in the United States or whether it will be shown theatrically here.

Written by 28-year-old Štěpán Hulik, the series starts with Palach’s self-immolation and incorporates news footage of his emotional funeral, which was attended by thousands. It then follows the strenuous efforts of the lawyer Dagmar Burešová to defend his mother in a trial against the Communist regime, which tried to discredit Palach’s sacrifice.

Burešová (who is played by Tatiana Pauhofová) defended about 65 people removed from their jobs or otherwise persecuted by the Communists during the Normalization era, among them Milan Kundera and Ivan Medek. After the 1989 revolution, she served for six months as the Czech Republic’s Justice Minister.

Holland’s own politicization was inevitable. Her paternal grandparents died in the Warsaw Ghetto; her journalist mother was a member of the Polish underground who took part in the Warsaw Uprising; her journalist father was probably murdered by the KGB during interrogation.

Best known for “Angry Harvest” (1985), “Europa, Europa” (1992), and “Olivier, Olivier” (1992) – troubling humanist films about diaplacement – and more recently for “In Darkness” (2011), Holland has worked for HBO before, directing episodes of “The Wire” and “Treme.” “Burning Bush” is a better fit: at the time of Palach’s protest, Holland was a student radical at Prague’s FAMU film school. During the suppression of the Prague Spring, she spent six weeks in solitary confinement for spreading materials supporting the Dubček government’s reforms.

In an interview with the New York Times in 1993, she spoke of the Prague Spring as her most “joyous”time and the subsequent clampdown as her most “pessimistic.” 

“It was a society in which hope was broken, a society of disintegration, resignation, fear, and atomization,” she recently told Radio Prague. “What I was seeing… you know, it was my first experience of this kind, so it stayed in me very deeply, as a deeper truth about the strength of the society – how long people can fight for something and in which circumstances, and when they give up.”

Emma Smetana, the 24-year-old news actress and TV anchor who has a small role as Palach’s supposed girlfriend in “Burning Bush,” had personal reasons for being invested in the film. “My grandparents knew Jan Palach, because they were in the same high school and they were in the same generation,” she told the radio station. “So the whole heroic act he did – and I think there’s absolutely no doubt that’s what it was – was a bit relativized by them, in the sense that they talked about him as a quiet, discrete, not particularly shining personality. They said that they almost wouldn’t notice him actually at school, and that he was an average guy.

“I think that actually reinforces the impression that I have of this act – that heroes are not born as heroes. It’s somehow the general context that pushes some normal, plain, ordinary people into acts that are then shown by history to be incredible and exceptional.”

When I first got to know brothers Zack and Adam O’Farrill, they were traveling with their parents and grandmother in Cuba. Yet that 2010 trip was no family vacation. It was the realization of a dream for their father, Arturo, a Grammy-winning pianist and bandleader.

Arturo had brought his orchestra to the island to perform the music of his father, Chico, who left Cuba for good in 1959, and whose own towering legacy as composer and bandleader forever changed the contours of what we think of as the union of Afro-Latin music and jazz. Now Zack and Adam — Arturo’s sons, and Chico’s grandsons — are making their own distinctive musical mark.

Arturo was born in Mexico, where Chico first landed after leaving his homeland, and raised in Manhattan, where Chico ultimately settled. Arturo toured Europe in the big band led by avant-garde composer Carla Bley while still in his teens. “When I first began to play music, I rejected my father and my inherited culture,” he said. “But a magical thing happened when my father got elderly and he needed help. I got past all the resistance and the fear, and I heard the music as if it was new to me.” In the years since, as founding leader of New York’s Afro Latin Jazz Alliance, Arturo has expanded that legacy to approach something unbound by ideas of geographic borders and stylistic categories.

On that 2010 trip to Cuba, Arturo also premiered an original piece, titled “Fathers and Sons,” for which he brought both of his sons and some guest musicians onstage. Adam, then 16, stood toe-to-toe with some of Havana’s finest young horn players and sounded fiery, inventive trumpet solos. Zack, then 19, eased into the rhythm section of his father’s group and played drums with confidence and elegance.

News of this third generation of gifted O’Farrill musicians had arrived on recordings first via one track of Arturo’s dazzling 2009 CD, “Risa Negra.” We learned more through The O’Farrill Brothers Band’s debut CD, “Giant Peach,” which was released in 2011 and bristled with confidence and creativity. Whereas Arturo initially rejected his father’s legacy, Adam and Zack seem to have easily absorbed their father’s aesthetic; their own music reflects Arturo’s openness to many influences, and a similarly sly way of blending styles without bowing to any one. Adam, now 18, attends Manhattan School of Music, where his father once studied. Zack, 21, will graduate in May from City University of New York’s Macaulay Honors College. The O’Farrill Brothers’s new CD, “Sensing Flight” (Zoho), features a loose-limbed yet well-organized young sextet, including tenor saxophonist Livio Almeida; guitarist Gabe Schnider; pianist Adam Kromelow; and bassist Raviv Markovitz. They play “Wrong Key Donkey,” composed by their father’s early influence, Carla Bley, but otherwise mostly Adam’s original compositions. There are hints of Afro-Latin forms here and there, but these are fleeting or subtly ingrained. Mostly, the music fits within a landscape of inventive jazz from a generation of players in New York who are catholic in their tastes, fluent in many styles, and capable of great compassion within a band.

I caught up with the O’Farrill Brothers via email to dig into their influences, musical beginnings, and thoughts about the current jazz scene. There were two rules: Each had to reply out of sight of any family members. 

Given your background, was it obvious that you two would be musicians?

Adam: Growing up in that environment was no doubt beneficial to where I’m at now, but early on when they made play piano at age 6, I wasn’t really sure I wanted to be a musician. Then I picked up trumpet at age 8, got into that, and soon after my dad started working with me on improvising.

Zack: It wasn’t necessarily obvious for us to become musicians. They wanted us to have some musical experience, but we were never forced into playing or performing. It really became obvious more because of what we’ve experienced in music than because it’s what our parents wanted us to do. For me, it was toward the end of high school when I realized that there were so many other things I could do besides music, but that music is all that I really wanted to do.

How has your dad affected your music?

Zack: He always taught us in terms of playing, it’s more than just the notes you play — it’s how you play them, and even deeper, why you play them. He’s always shown us that we don’t have to be confined to one style or concept, and that the world of “jazz” is much larger than it is taught as being. So it’s our mission to constantly try to expand and redefine (or destroy the definition of) the music, and to always challenge ourselves artistically.

Was is Arturo who led you to “Wrong Key Donkey” and Carla’s music?

Zack: Our dad definitely introduced us to Carla Bley’s music really early on. Look for the record “I Hate to Sing,” and you’ll hear him featured singing, which always cracked us up. Carla Bley’s music has been very important for us artistically because she was someone who never compromised herself as an artist, even when mainstream popularity eluded her for her entire career. She also has a huge sense of humor in her music, which is something that is seriously lacking in most jazz today. “Wrong Key Donkey” was a discovery of mine in an old book of her published music that I found in a bookshelf here at home one day.

Adam, do you see yourself in a line of composers from your grandfather to father to you?

Yes definitely, and what’s interesting is that my grandfather, father, and I each take a lot from a particular composer from a relatively similar era. For Chico, it was Stravinsky; my dad, Messiaen; and for me, it’s kind of been a combination of Ravel, Debussy, and Poulenc.

How has the Afro-Latin legacy that you clearly both understand l affect this music? Or does it?

Adam: Well, I’ll admit that the Afro-Latin music has influenced me least of anyone in the family. It’s not that I have anything against the music — on the contrary, I love it — but for whatever reason, it never really hit me as hard. However, I am very influenced by how the music came to be. Afro-Latin music is a mixing pot of countless sounds, ideas, and influences from countless places and people. Right now, I’m really working on making music that’s also a mixing pot, but of jazz, classical, rock, electronic, Middle Eastern, hip-hop, and many more, in the same way that Latin music was created.

Zack: The biggest way the Afro-Latin legacy has affected my music, including how and why I play, is that music from Latin America is still deeply in touch with dance roots and sense of music as a natural and necessary part of community. Latin music is still largely about dancing or based on dancing. Jazz has completely forgotten about its dancing, African roots. African music is all about community, and that’s why I feel Afro-Latin music is so important for jazz.

How did your trips to Cuba affect you?

The trips to Cuba illustrated to me how much importance the Cubans place in the arts (particularly music), compared to other parts of the world. Every other street in Havana, there’s either a hand percussionist, a street band, or a folkloric instrumentalist, while you may get billed or stopped for playing in a public park in New York. Same thing for education. All the youth is classically trained — Cuba has some of the best trumpet players I’ve ever seen — and they have a strong balance between artistic and academic work, while in the U.S., music programs are being cut out of schools left and right.

Zack: The trips to Cuba affected me artistically because any sort of artist down there, even the jazz musicians, recognizes that history of art as manifestation of community that I alluded to before. The jazz musicians down there can all play son and rumba, and understand the African, socioeconomic, historical, and spiritual roots of what they do and they use this information in creating art.

How would you describe the jazz environment you are coming up in? What does this experience mean in terms of those who say jazz is dead or dormant?

Adam: Well, I don’t think jazz is dead, but I think there are a lot of people who do, and are holding it back from really progressing. I’m not criticizing and judging the people who like recording music that was done 50 years before and call it “new,” but I just ask, Why? I mean, it’s just something I don’t really see their side of. I also think the majority of the young people who play this music — and this is largely a result of the jazz education system — are too focused on how good they can play, whether they can play [John Coltrane’s] “Giant Steps” in all keys, or use every pattern in their solos, etc. The jazz education machine — with the exception of schools like New England Conservatory and CalArts — doesn’t support creativity and innovation, and I know this because I’m a student at a school right now that is pretty content with making me play bebop everyday.

Zack: The jazz environment that my brother and I are coming up in today is, for the most part, the opposite of what I said about Cuba. Players here go to jazz school and come out and go to jam sessions where they rehash the useless information they learn in their improvisation classes which should really just be called “Applied Harmony.” There is so much wrong in the jazz scene here. So much of what people think is hip is the same stuff that everyone is doing. I always ask myself, what’s the point of creating art if you’re not at least trying to create something new that hasn’t been done or seen or heard before?

What are some recordings you’ve taken recent inspiration from?

Adam: Rafiq Bhatia, “Strata”; The Dirty Projectors, “Bitte Orca”; The Mars Volta, “Nocturniquet”; Flying Lotus, “Until the Quiet Comes.”

Zack: Blitz the Ambassador, “Native Son”; Rafiq Bhatia, “Strata” and “Yes It Will”; Brad Mehldau, “The Art of the Trio Vol. 5.”

ARTINFO's Patrick Pacheco and contributor Frank DiLella give us the rundown on the big names and shows headed to Broadway this spring.