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22 - The Mirror of our Lives
Welcome to issue twenty-two of The Attention Span Newsletter by me, Canan “Ja’anan” Marasligil. I’m a writer, a literary translator and an artist based in Amsterdam. Every other week, I take the time to reflect and offer a glimpse of how I see and feel the world through the lens of culture, art, translation, poetry and literature.
You can support my work via patreon 🧡
EPISODE 22 SHOW NOTES
The films of Kryzsztof Kieślowski on MUBI.
I have watched The Zone of Interest, Jonathan Glazer’s Oscar winning film, at my local cinema. The film’s title refers to the term used by the Nazis to describe the immediate area around the concentration camp. As described in this Guardian interview with the director, “Played by German actors Christian Friedel and Sandra Hüller, the couple are the embodiment of the Jewish writer Primo Levi’s insistence that it is ordinary people, rather than monsters, who are capable of committing atrocity.”
WATCH
I really enjoyed watching American Fiction by Cord Jefferson, a film adapted from the book Erasure by Percival Everett (2001). It tells the story of Monk, a frustrated novelist who's fed up with the establishment that profits from Black entertainment that relies on tired and offensive tropes. To prove his point, he writes a book as expected of the White literary and media establishment to be “Black” under a pen name, and what unfolds is the whole hypocrisy of the system and the literary industry. Many moments I could imagine a version of this film set in the Netherlands, Belgium or France. Someday I may even write that version myself!
LISTEN
The soundtrack of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s film La double vie de Véronique by composer Zbigniew Preisner. It is mesmerising. It will move you even more if you watch the film too.
READ
Vanessa Springora’s memoir Le Consentement (which has been translated to English by Natasha Lehrer as Consent) is a very difficult read. I have dived into it (as well as in other literature about sexual abuse on minors) since actor Judith Godrèche has filed complaints against filmmaker Benoit Jacquot for rape with constraint, and another French auteur cinema favourite, Jacques Doillon for rape with violence. I wanted to write in a future issue of the newsletter about sexual abuse and abuse of power in art, cinema, literature, as it’s been bothering me for years (from Woody Allen to Roman Polanski and many more) but I haven’t found the strength yet to dive deep. It may come. In any case, Springora’s memoir is disturbing in the reality it describes and how the system has allowed all the abuse to happen, but it’s also an incredible reclaiming of one’s agency and I applaud the author for fighting back her abuser with the weapon he’s been using all his life to legitimise his predatory behaviour: literature.
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By Canan (Ja’anan) MarasligilWelcome to issue twenty-two of The Attention Span Newsletter by me, Canan “Ja’anan” Marasligil. I’m a writer, a literary translator and an artist based in Amsterdam. Every other week, I take the time to reflect and offer a glimpse of how I see and feel the world through the lens of culture, art, translation, poetry and literature.
You can support my work via patreon 🧡
EPISODE 22 SHOW NOTES
The films of Kryzsztof Kieślowski on MUBI.
I have watched The Zone of Interest, Jonathan Glazer’s Oscar winning film, at my local cinema. The film’s title refers to the term used by the Nazis to describe the immediate area around the concentration camp. As described in this Guardian interview with the director, “Played by German actors Christian Friedel and Sandra Hüller, the couple are the embodiment of the Jewish writer Primo Levi’s insistence that it is ordinary people, rather than monsters, who are capable of committing atrocity.”
WATCH
I really enjoyed watching American Fiction by Cord Jefferson, a film adapted from the book Erasure by Percival Everett (2001). It tells the story of Monk, a frustrated novelist who's fed up with the establishment that profits from Black entertainment that relies on tired and offensive tropes. To prove his point, he writes a book as expected of the White literary and media establishment to be “Black” under a pen name, and what unfolds is the whole hypocrisy of the system and the literary industry. Many moments I could imagine a version of this film set in the Netherlands, Belgium or France. Someday I may even write that version myself!
LISTEN
The soundtrack of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s film La double vie de Véronique by composer Zbigniew Preisner. It is mesmerising. It will move you even more if you watch the film too.
READ
Vanessa Springora’s memoir Le Consentement (which has been translated to English by Natasha Lehrer as Consent) is a very difficult read. I have dived into it (as well as in other literature about sexual abuse on minors) since actor Judith Godrèche has filed complaints against filmmaker Benoit Jacquot for rape with constraint, and another French auteur cinema favourite, Jacques Doillon for rape with violence. I wanted to write in a future issue of the newsletter about sexual abuse and abuse of power in art, cinema, literature, as it’s been bothering me for years (from Woody Allen to Roman Polanski and many more) but I haven’t found the strength yet to dive deep. It may come. In any case, Springora’s memoir is disturbing in the reality it describes and how the system has allowed all the abuse to happen, but it’s also an incredible reclaiming of one’s agency and I applaud the author for fighting back her abuser with the weapon he’s been using all his life to legitimise his predatory behaviour: literature.