Interview

Lamis Saidi (born on 4 September 1981) is an Algerian poet and translator.

In 2004, she graduated as a computer science engineer from the university of sciences and technology in Algiers. Adding to Arabic, she is fluent in French, English and Spanish.

She has published three poetry books (As usual, I forgot my suitcase / to the movies/like a devastated city) and a biographical essay on her father entitled : Room 102.

She has translated many poets such as : Anna Gréki, Yamina Mechakra, Rabah Belamri, Henri Michaux, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Emily Dickinson.

she’s been working for more than two years, on the translation(from French into Arabic) of the work of Algerian poets that wrote between the 50s and the 90s of the last century, as an ambitious project to redefine part of the Algerian modern literature history.

Her poems are translated into French, English, Dutch and Spanish.

She has also worked as an organizer and a moderator of cultural debating spaces, in the National Algerian Library and the National Algerian Theater in Algiers.

She participated in many literary festivals such as : WRITERS UNLIMITED (in the Hague 2008 South Africa 2010), TRANSMEDIALE (Berlin 2009), VOIX VIVES (France 2011 Spain 2014).

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is the award-winning author of a memoir and three novels, and the editor of five nonfiction anthologies.

Her memoir, The End of San Francisco, won a Lambda Literary Award, and her previous title, Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots?: Flaming Challenges to Masculinity, Objectification, and the Desire to Conform, was an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book.

Her new novel, Sketchtasy, is just out—Sarah Schulman says, “If Sketchtasy doesn’t become a classic, we are doomed.”

For her current tour schedule, click here.

Alison’s work includes oil paintings and ceramics that depict women engaged in mysterious ceremonies. Presented as installations, with objects positioned on the floor or on stands like altars in front of the paintings, the works together tell a story. They suggest that the viewer has entered a sacred space, and that they are seeing remnants of a mystical happening that took place there. Vessels are repeated throughout the paintings and ceramics, and suggest the cosmic egg. These vessels are carefully tended to, guarded, and used by the women who inhabit the scenes. Figures pose in trance-like, choreographed movements, reflecting Alison’s belief that art making is ritual, and that all ritual is performance.

“I’m interested in creating images of women supporting and connecting with one another. I am part of a community of incredible women~ herbalists, witches, midwives, artists, and revolutionaries, and it informs my work big time.”

Alison Blickle has exhibited widely in the United States and Europe, with recent solo exhibitions at Kravets Wehby Gallery in New York and Five Car Garage in Los Angeles. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at MOCA Tucson, Nassau County Museum, Deitch Projects, New York University, The Hole, and Beers London. Alison received an MFA from Hunter College in New York in 2009, and a BFA from California College of the Arts in San Francisco in 2006. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

Sara Driver adapted, produced and directed the film version of Paul Bowles’ short story, YOU ARE NOT I (1982, 48 min.). It premiered in the U.S. at Joseph Papp’s Public Theatre in New York City and was featured at many international film festivals, and museums. In 2011 it was presented in the Master Works section of the New York Film Festival.

Her feature film; SLEEPWALK (1986, co-writer, producer, director, 78 min.), won the prestigious Prix Georges Sadoul (1986) given by the French Cinémathèque. SLEEPWALK also won the Special Prize at the 1986 Mannheim Film Festival, and was the opening night selection for the 25th Anniversary of the Semaine International de la Critique at Cannes (1986). SLEEPWALK was also featured at the Museum of Modern Art’s 1987 New Directors New Films Series.

In 1993 she made the award-winning feature film, WHEN PIGS FLY (co-writer, director, 94 min.), starring Marianne Faithfull and Alfred Molina. It premiered in competition at the Locarno Film Festival and was shown at Toronto, Rotterdam, as well as many other international film festivals.

She wrote and directed the short documentary, THE BOWERY – SPRING, 1994, part of “Postcards from New York,” an anthology program for French TV.

Driver’s other film credits include Jim Jarmusch’s, PERMANENT VACATION (1979, producer, production manager) and STRANGER THAN PARADISE (1984, producer). She produced the Tom Waits music video, “It’s All Right With Me” (1990, Jim Jarmusch), as part of the “Red, Hot & Blue” AIDS benefit television broadcast. In 2016 she co-produced Aaron Brookner’s film Uncle Howard.

Her films have had retrospectives in Denmark, Buenos Aires, Anthology Film Archives NYC, Thessaloniki International Film Festival and in TIFF Cinematique, Toronto and Maine International Film Festival. In 2015 she was given a tribute for her work in cinema by the Lisbon and Estoril (Leffest) Film Festival in Portugal. Her films are available in a boxset from Filmswelike.

Her most recent film as director/producer, Boom For Real The Late Teenage Years of Jean Michel Basquiat (2017) was released Spring of 2018 in the States and is in distribution throughout the world. It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, and was selected for the New York Film Festival; it is being shown at a variety of international film festivals. The NY Times called it a ‘Beguiling Look at a Teenage Basquiat’.

Jo Confino is a journalist and a photographer.

Jo is inspired by the Japanese Wabi Sabi art movement that sees great beauty in impermanence and decay.

He is fascinated by taking pictures of small and insignificant objects that are often falling apart.

By focusing on them and giving them a monumental quality, these objects gain he attention and love that otherwise would pass them by.

Jo also takes a particular interest in photographing reflections, either in water or glass, that bend our sense of reality and allow us to look below the surface of life.