Welcome to issue twenty-five 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.
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EPISODE 25 SHOW NOTES
Rachel Handler who has interviewed the director for Vulture, describes the film as “a call to arms from director Agnieszka Holland and co-writers Gabriela Łazarkiewicz-Sieczko and Maciej Pisuk — a viscerally disturbing, two-and-a-half-hour warning about the international encroachment of fascism and mass dehumanization, captured even as tragedy continues to unfold.”
In an interview with Al-Jazeera, Holland said that despite the backlash “[…] people are going to see the film. People are discussing it, people are crying, expressing very deep emotions. That is what I wanted to do, to touch the hearts and conscience of my co-citizens.”
Youssoupha’s song Mourir Mille Fois
My piece: Documenting our Humanity.
LISTEN
Podcast: Collaboration: A Potential History of Photography. In this episode of the Thames & Hudson Podcast, Wendy Ewald, Susan Meiselas and Laura Wexler – three of the co-authors of Collaboration: A Potential History of Photography – delve behind the scenes of their book in which they offer up an alternative understanding of photography as something that is inherently collaborative, and explore the countless complex relationships between photographer, subject, viewer, camera and more. It’s a fascinating conversation. I have always wondered how the subjects of the so many photographs we admire and celebrate were feeling about finding their image in a museum, a book, in someone’s private collection… So many questions the book explores and this podcast touches on.
WATCH
The Hell of Auschwitz - Maus by Art Spiegelman by Pauline Horovitz on Arte TV. I read Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer winning graphic novel more than a decade ago. It truly is one of those works that makes you grasp the power of comics as a narrative medium. I was therefore very curious what the filmmaker wanted to capture with this documentary. I found the way she puts herself in the story very interesting, and the detailed way in which she takes the viewer through Spiegelman’s process, spoke to me. It is a really well made documentary that highlights how Spiegelman has revolutionised the medium of comics.
READ
Since I mention the documentary about Maus by Art Spiegelman, let me tell you more about the story. This comic book depicts Spiegelman interviewing his father about his experiences as a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor. It represents Jews as mice, Germans as cats and Poles as pigs. It is a mix of memoir, autobiography, history, fiction, no matter what one wants to call it, it is an essential read for anyone who is interested in how personal narratives set in complex historical contexts, can be told through comics. In 1992 it became the first graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize.
