Veterans Day
November 11, 2018
Veterans Day is an official United States public holiday, observed annually on November 11, that honors military veterans; that is, persons who served in the United States Armed Forces. It coincides with other… wikipedia.org
Observed by: United States
Image from Getty
National Gallery of Art
November Concerts
Sunday, November 11, 3:30pm
Tapestry
Lessons of Darkness: Armistice Day 1918
Armistice Day, November 11, 1918, found people throughout the world singing and dancing in
the streets, once again hoping for a peaceful world. This program commemorates the 100th anniversary of this landmark day in history and presents works of composers affected by the war, such as Ralph Vaughan Williams, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Claude Debussy, and Maurice Ravel.
The concert also includes iconic works by Stephen Foster (the American Civil War) and Simon
and Garfunkel (the Vietnam War). Tapestry offers this program in the hope that we learn from
our collective history – our Lessons of Darkness – and work together to avoid war.
Sunday, November 18, 3:30pm
Nobuntu
Nobuntu, the female a cappella quintet from Zimbabwe, has drawn international acclaim for its inventive performances that range from traditional Zimbabwean songs to Afro jazz and gospel.
The ensemble’s concerts are performed with pure voices, augmented by minimalistic percussion, traditional instruments, and organic, authentic dance movements. Nobuntu is an African concept that values humbleness, love, unity, and family from a woman’s perspective. The ensemble represents a new generation of young African women singers who celebrate and preserve their culture, beauty, and heritage through art. The ensemble’s mission is the belief that music can be
an important vehicle for change, one that transcends racial, tribal, religious, gender, and economic boundaries.
Sunday, November 25, 3:30pm
M5 Mexican Brass
Brasscinación
Serious fun from the baroque to Broadway!
Founded in 2005, M5 Mexican Brass has gained wide international recognition as Latin America’s most successful brass quintet. The group’s recipe lies in its mix of high-class music-making and humor. Skilled at performing virtuosic chamber music in a broad variety of styles with a sound
that is M5’s alone, the ensemble adds audience interaction, showmanship, and an inimitable
Latin American charm to its concerts, each a unique musical-theatrical experience.
Concerts take place in the West Building, West Garden Court
No charge, first come, first-seated
202.842.6941
http://www.nga.gov/calendar/concerts.html
National Gallery of Art
November Film Series and Film Event
Film Series
November 3 – December 16
Luchino Visconti
Long acknowledged as one of the leading figures of mid-century Italian cinema, Luchino Visconti (1906 – 1976) was a gifted visual artist as well as a paradoxical character – a committed Marxist who descended from a noble northern Italian family, rulers of the duchy of Milan and patrons of the early Renaissance in that strategic city. Elegant and literary, Visconti was not only a filmmaker but an accomplished musician, painter, designer, and racehorse breeder, although it was his interest in opera and theater that ultimately led him to film making. He started in film by working with Jean Renoir who, Visconti admitted, “was a human influence not a professional one.” More frequently than his contemporaries, Visconti made use of motifs from European art history to enrich his mise-en-scènes, sets, and costumes, creating a sophisticated visual vocabulary. This series includes 35mm prints as well as new digital restorations; it is organized in association with Cinecittà Luce.
Only today did I see that the email with the November film schedule had arrived
on November 7th. Two films, Ossessione and Bellissima, that were part of
the Visconti Film Series have already been screened. My apologies
Saturday, November 10, 2:30pm
La terra trema
La terra trema (The Earth Trembles) features a cast of nonprofessionals – mostly local fishermen of Aci Trezza, north of Catania – to portray the life of a Sicilian coastal village. Forfeiting his own house to buy a workboat in order to avoid the brokers who control the local fleet, Antonio suffers a different sort of distress, stemming from bad weather and the bitterness of the other villagers. Visconti based his epic film on I Malavoglia, an 1881 novel by Italian realist Giovanni Verga. (1948, subtitles, 160 minutes)
Saturday, November 17, 4:00pm
White Nights (Le notti bianche)
Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s 1848 short story has been transposed to film many times, but none are as elegantly theatrical as Visconti’s. A man, wandering aimlessly at night, has a chance encounter on a bridge with a young woman vainly awaiting an erstwhile lover. The man agrees to meet her in the same spot on the bridge for the next several nights. The simple make-believe premise belies the complexity of the sentiments aroused by the film’s three principal characters (Marcello Mastroianni, Maria Schell, and Jean Marais). “Then the snow comes down, and with it a chilly desperation about the extent of human self-delusion” – Chris Auty. (1957, 35mm, 97 minutes)
Sunday, November 18, 4:00pm
Senso
Visconti’s first film in color is an elaborately conceived historical drama – portraying the Risorgimento [Italian unification] at the time of the 1866 Battle of Custoza – and a powerful love story featuring Farley Granger as Austrian deserter Franz Mahler and Alida Valli as the contessa who betrays her own Italian cause. “Operatic in concept (with the opening scene at Venice’s La Fenice, and pivotal moments underscored by Bruckner’s 7th Symphony), Senso ranks as one of the director’s most ambitious achievements” – British Film Institute. (1954, subtitles, 123 minutes)
Friday, November 23, 2:00pm
Rocco and His Brothers
The epic sweep of Rocco and His Brothers (Rocco e i suoi fratelli) tells the tale of the Parondi family – a mother and her five sons who have left their home in rural Basilicata for the northern city of Milan in search of opportunity. Rocco becomes a parable of fraternal bonds, tradition, and transformation. The brilliantly neorealistic mise-en-scène contrasts with the film’s passionate operatic underpinnings. “A Greek tragedy played out in Milan,” wrote one critic, set to the passionate score of composer Nino Rota. (1960, subtitles, 177 minutes)
Saturday, November 24, 2:00pm
The Leopard (Il gattopardo)
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s beloved classic Il gattopardo chronicles a fading Sicilian patrician dynasty (after the writer’s own family history) through the chaotic years of the Risorgimento when Sicily was annexed to Italy. For his adaptation, Visconti cast Burt Lancaster as the prince and Alain Delon as his nephew. The film was recently restored to its intended length and CinemaScope aspect ratio. “The truly remarkable ball scene . . . is not simply a directorial tour-de-force; rather it decisively marks the transition from the tired, old nobility represented by the Prince of Salina to the thrusting ambition of the new ruling class” – Julian Petley. (1963, subtitles, 186 minutes)
November 10 – 17
From Co-op to LUX: The Last Decade of the London Film-Makers’ Co-op
Established in 1966 by a band of British experimental film artists interested in sharing and supporting each other’s work, the London Film-Makers’ Co-op (LFMC) shared similar concerns with contemporary US-based organizations such as Canyon Cinema in California and the Film-Makers’ Cooperative in New York. This series highlights a selection of short films by LFMC members made in the 1990s, the organization’s last decade, before it incorporated with London Electronic Arts and other independent film organizations such as Circles and London Video Access, to eventually become LUX.
Saturday, November 10, 12:30pm
Resistance to Professionalization
As a working entity in support of artists’ filmmaking practice and community, the London Film-Makers’ Co-op was a space outside the commercial realm. This program begins with a micro film from one of the Co-op’s core members, Peter Gidal, whose one-minute elegiac tribute Assumption (1997) pays homage to the early life of the organization. This is followed by the DIY ethnography London Suite (Vivienne Dick, 1989, 28 minutes); Running Light (Lis Rhodes, 1996, 15 minutes), an investigation into immigration and “the endless travelling from place to place forced upon people”; Latifah and Himli’s Nomadic Uncle (Alnoor Dewshi, 1992, 17 minutes), in which two cousins discuss ideas of culture and history while wandering through London; and Crystal Aquarium (Jayne Parker, 1995, 33 minutes), a study in performances above and below the waterline that takes its title from the tanks used for underwater performances at the London Music Hall at the turn of the twentieth century. (Total running time 94 minutes)
Saturday, November 17, 2:00pm
Self-Determined Selves
A program of shorts by several of Britain’s most important women filmmakers includes the lyrical Mirrored Measure (Sarah Pucill, 1996, 9 minutes), which explores Jacques Lacan’s idea of the “mirror stage”; Deliliah (Tanya Syed, 1995, 12 minutes), a meditation on violence, love, and survival; Lady Lazarus (Sandra Lahire, 1991, 24 minutes), the first part of a trilogy entitled “Living on Air,” inspired by the life and work of poet Sylvia Plath; A Life in a Day with Helena Goldwater, a trawl through a fictional day in the life of a performance artist who doubles as a deck chair attendant (Sarah Turner, 1996, 20 minutes); and the silent, optically printed Imaginary, told in three parts (Moira Sweeney, 1990, 16 minutes). (Total running time 81 minutes)
Film Series
Through November 11
Lifting Traces: Memories of London
Proposing a cinematic context in tandem with the National Gallery of Art exhibition Rachel Whitered, this series expands on ideas set forth in Whiteread’s 1993 sculpture House. Issues around housing, psycho-geography, and notions of home and community in Britain’s capital are explored through artist films utilizing documentary and experimental techniques. Highlighting selected works by London-based filmmakers William Raban (who introduces two programs), Patrick Keiller, and John Smith, the series offers a unique perspective into moving image work that is contemporaneous to, and conterminous with, Whiteread’s sculptural practice.
Sunday, November 11, 2:00pm
London
London is a lauded portrait of Britain’s capital by celebrated film essayist Patrick Keiller. It articulates the city’s meaning through references to its past, as told by a narrator and his companion known only as Robinson (perhaps a reference to Daniel Defoe’s protagonist). “A classic of British psycho-geographic cinema . . . London shows the graying rumbles of a city in the dying grips of Thatcherism, while tackling a huge range of inner-city problems that are still sadly relevant today” – Adam Scovell. (Patrick Keiller, 1996, 85 minutes)
Sunday, November 11, 4:00pm
Home Suite preceded by Blight
Home Suite is a close-up journey through a domestic landscape as well as an expedition through memory. Playing upon ambiguity and the unseen, the work uses physical details to trigger fragmented verbal descriptions of memories. (John Smith, 1994, 96 minutes)
Blight, made in collaboration with the composer Jocelyn Pook, is a montage that revolves around the building of the M11 link road in East London, a project that provoked a long and bitter campaign by local residents to protect their homes from demolition. (John Smith 1996, 15 minutes)
Film Event
Sunday, November 25, 2:00pm
Chartres: La lumière retrouvée (Chartres: Light Reborn)
Introduced by Dominique Lallement
The partial restoration of Chartres Cathedral that took place from 2014 to 2016 focused on the nave, stained-glass windows, and first figures in the ambulatory. Chartres: La lumière retrouvée documents this meticulous process through observation and conversations with numerous restorers, archaeologists, scientists, and architects. The screening is followed by a panel discussion. (Anne Savalli, 2016, subtitles, 54 minutes)
Films will be screened in the East Building Auditorium
Seating is on a first come basis
http://www.nga.gov/calendar/film-programs.html
National Gallery of Art
Constitution Avenue between Third and Seventh streets
202.737.4215
http://www.nga.gov
Metro: Archives-Navy Mem’l-Penn Quarter
Cognitive Reserve
As early as the 1980s, it was observed that people with the same level of age-related physiological brain impairment displayed different levels of cognitive impairment. In other words, the same amount of age-related brain damage has different effects, depending on the individual. Early studies showed that individuals with lower levels of education and from lower socioeconomic backgrounds had a higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s and dementia, while those with higher educational and occupational attainments were at a lower risk. One study, for example, conducted in 1996 by D. A. Snowdon and colleagues at the Sanders-Brown Center, University of Kentucky, Lexington, found that the verbal skills of a group of nuns at a mean age of 22 was a reliable predictor of their cognitive performance and risk for Alzheimer’s disease approximately 58 years later.
To account for the differences in response to physiological changes in the brain resulting from aging, and the role that education seemed to play in these differences, a new concept was proposed: cognitive reserve. According to the concept of cognitive reserve, when brain damage occurs, the brain attempts to cope with the damage by drawing upon already existing cognitive processing strategies and compensatory mechanisms to get around the damage. A person’s individual store of these strategies and mechanisms is his or her “cognitive reserve.” The larger the store, the more successful that person’s brain will be at coping with unexpected events, including physical damage to or deterioration of the brain. People with a large cognitive reserve are more adept at improvising and finding new ways to get something done in an emergency. Thus, a person with a large cognitive reserve will display less cognitive impairment as his or her brain deteriorates with age than a person with a smaller cognitive reserve. Cognitive reserve gives a person cognitive resilience—another useful concept. It refers to how well a person can “bounce back” from an event that causes damage to the brain. The greater a person’s cognitive resilience, the less cognitive impairment he or she is likely to experience as a result of aging.
Cognitive reserve is built up over a person’s lifetime through the exercise of the brain’s cognitive functions, especially as it occurs in educational, occupational, leisure, and recreational activities. Numerous studies published in the 2000s demonstrated that having an abundance of these lifetime experiences reduces the risk of developing dementia by as much as 46%. While cognitive reserve is best established during a person’s childhood, youth, and early adulthood, there is growing evidence that it can be added to even later in life. Research conducted by Dr. Yaakov Stern and colleagues at Columbia University in 2010 showed that the playing of complex games can boost cognitive reserve in the elderly and improve working memory.
It must be kept in mind that the building up of cognitive reserve over one’s lifetime does not guarantee that one will not experience age-related cognitive decline. It must also be remembered that cognitive reserve does not operate in isolation. It is part of a network of factors that work together to form an entire lifestyle pattern that includes a healthy diet, adequate physical exercise, wholesome social and interpersonal relationships, and a positive approach to dealing with the challenges that confront us from day to day.
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