Pam Katz, a screenwriter who lives in Park Slope, has been nominated for a Lola,  Germany’s version of the Academy Award, for the film Hannah Arendt. 

Katz co-wrote the screenplay with renowned director Margarethe Von Trotta. The film’s star, Barbara Sukowa, who also lives in Brooklyn, was nominated for her incredible turn as the German philosopher. Six nominations in all, the film was cited for Best Film, Best Direction, Best Screenwriting, Best Actress, Best Costume and Best Make-up.

The film, which is a huge hit in Germany, will open at the Film Forum in Manhattan on May   29 ,2013. It explores a turbulent  four-year period in the life of the great philosopher and writer, Hannah Arendt. Beginning in New York at The New School, where Arendt taught after having escaped from a French detention camp, the film moves to Jerusalem, where she covered the trial of Adolf Eichmann for The New Yorker and coined the phrase “the  banality of evil” in her article (and later book) Eichmann in Jerusalem. 

Von Trotta and Katz make thrilling drama of the backlash against Arendt’s writing about the trial and her “banality of evil” theory. Co-starring Janet McTeer as author and Arendt confident Mary McCarthy.

Writing in Der Spiegel, Elke Schmitter writes, 

Can men really be trusted? This classic question is the subject of the opening dialogue in director Margarethe von Trotta’s new film “Hannah Arendt,” which got its official release in Germany this week after screening at the Toronto International Film Festival and revolves around a less classic question: Was Adolf Eichmann, the organizer of the “final solution of the Jewish question,” a monster or an efficient bureaucrat, a pathological creature or the embodiment of the banality of evil? Her theory of the “banality of evil” turned Arendt, a German Jew who became a college professor and distinguished author of philosophical works in the United States, into a controversial international figure in the early 1960s, more ostracized and hated than revered.

I am pondering whether I should post an unhappy OR happy face emoticon? Last year the festival was sort of sprung on us in Park Slope and I heard mixed reports. There were crazy long ticket and water lines and lots of dissatsfaction.

Here’s hoping they get it right this time. For starters, they’re telling us about it two months in advance and that’s way better than last year. Nobody knew about  it and when I saw a billboard about it at the West Fourth Street  subway station I almost fell over.

GoogaMooga is also adding an extra day.

That said, they do have a great line-up of musical acts and the support of Emily Lloyd, President of the Prospect Park Alliance. In addition to it being a food festival with 85 of New York’s top restaurants are paired with 75 brews and 100 wines, there will be twenty plus lives performances from the likes of Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Flaming Lips, Matt & Kim, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, The Darkness, Jovanotti, Father John Misty and De La Soul.

Tickets are going on sale for the concerts on Thursday, March 28 at 12p and all tickets will be available at http://www.googamooga.com

Here’s what President of the Prospect Park Alliance and Park Administrator, Emily Lloyd had to say about this three-day event in Prospect Park.

Great GoogaMooga is a celebration of food, music and Prospect Park – three things that make Brooklyn such a wonderful place to live, work and play. Frederick Law Olmsted, Prospect Park’s brilliant co-designer, intended for the Park to be a great gathering place, as well as a place of quiet respite. We are looking forward to the Great GoogaMooga returning to Prospect Park in 2013,”

I’m guessing (hoping) that this means a lot of money for the park.

Carole DeSanti, who will be reading at BookCourt at 163 Court Street in Brooklyn next Tuesday, March 26th at 7PM, has written a transporting debut novel set in the backstreets and bordellos of 19th century Paris. While this is the author’s first novel, she is a veteran of the publishing business and has been an editor at Penguin known for her championing of strong female literary voices.

The book, which took a decade to write is about Eugénie R., a woman born in France’s foie gras country, who follows the man she loves to Paris, but soon finds herself marooned, pregnant, and penniless.

Sounds interesting so far, right?

She gives birth to a daughter she is forced to abandon and spends the next ten years fighting to get her back. An outcast, Eugénie takes to the streets,  navigating her way up from ruin and charting the treacherous waters of sexual commerce.

Are you hooked yet? I am.

Along the way she falls in love with an artist, a woman, and a revolutionary.

Ooh la la.

Ah Paris: City of my dreams. The capital, the gleaming center of art and civilization in Europe, is enjoying its final years of wanton prosperity before galloping headlong into the Franco-Prussian War.

For the protagonist its a conflicted landscape — grisly, evocative, addictive. As the gates of the city close against the advancing army, Eugénie must make a decision between past and present — between the people she loves most

Join Carole for the paperback launch at Bookcourt:

March 26, 2013, 7:00 p.m.

Brooklyn BookCourt

163 Court St

Brooklyn, NY 11201

http://bookcourt.com/

Nine stunning panoramic photographs by Susan Wides of New York City, including shots of Brooklyn Flea, Coney Island and the Botanic Gardens, will be on view at the Kim Foster Gallery in Manahhatan from March 21-April 29, 2013.

In All the Worlds, Susan Wides “tracks her lens on our everyday drama and urban spectacle as both observers and participants in the theatrum mundi of our city’s streets. She illuminates the moments of struggle and transcendence in the many worlds that we collectively experience–the cultural, global, corporate consumer, and natural.”

And you know we love everyday drama and urban spectacle.

The gallery blurb for All the Worlds alludes to a wonderful quote by Baudelaire on the passionate city spectator (and by extension the photographer of the city). Here is the quote in its entirety from The Painter in the City: 

“For the perfect flaneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite. To be away from home and yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the centre of the world, and yet to remain hidden from the world–such are a few of the slightest pleasures of those independent, passionate, impartial natures which the tongue can but clumsily define. The spectator is a prince who everywhere rejoices in his incognito. The lover of life makes the whole world his family, just like the lover of the fair sex who builds up his family from all the beautiful women that he has ever found, or that are–or are not–to be found; or the lover of pictures who lives in a magical society of dreams painted on canvas.”

All the Worlds opens on Thursday March 21 with an opening reception. But the show will run through April 29th at 529 West 20th Street in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood.

I am inviting you to an exciting event at Congregation Beth Elohim on March 21 at 7:30 PM.

No, it’s not my daughter’s Bat Mitzvah.

This Brooklyn by the Book event will include a Passover wine tasting, delicious treats from Gefilteria (a Brooklyn start-up that is reinventing seder food) and a conversation with Edgar M. Bronfman, Jan Aronson and Rabbi Andy Bachman about The Bronfman Haggadah just out from Rizzoli. Community Bookstore will be on hand to sell the book, which makes a truly great seder Haggadah and/or gift.

This is a Haggadah for your collection!

But don’t take my word for it. Here’s what Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) had to say:

“The Bronfman Haggadah has everything I want in a seder guest. It’s clear-headed but allows for argument. It’s straightforward but has a flair for the dramatic. It’s colorful but not tacky, opinionated but not dogmatic, and it’s not so long-winded that the soup gets cold. Dive in!

Rabbi Bachman and Edgar M. Bronfman go way back. From 1998-2004, Rabbi Bachman was the Executive Director of the Edgar M. Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life: Hillel at NYU. There’s is great respect between the two of them, which should make for an interesting discussion about the meaning of Passover and issues of Jewish identity and theology.

Edgar M. Bronfman, 83, has devoted his life to Jewish causes. He founded the Samuel Bronfman Foundation, which supports a wide variety of causes, programs and initiatives including, Birthright Israel, 92nd Street Y, Hebrew Union College, Interfaith Family, My Jewish Learning, American Jewish World Service, Congregation Beth Elohim and much more.

The Bronfman Haggadah written by Edgar M. Bronfman and illustrated by Jan Aronson is a provocative and stunningly visual retelling of the Passover story, the Bronfman Haggadahhas been called “a revolutionary Haggadah for the 21st century” for the way that it tells the story of the Jews’ dramatic journey from slavery to freedom, in a way that will captivate generations to come.

Jan Aronson’s bold and brilliant watercolor paintings heighten the text and amplify a story that is crucial to the Jewish narrative of Identity. These luminous images— both abstract and figurative—artfully illustrate the Seder plate’s symbolic foods, the parting of the Red Sea, the forty-year journey through the desert, the giving of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, and other events pivotal to Passover.

David Suissa in Jewish Journal wrote:

“Bronfman has taken the secular and spiritual values that resonate with the new generation — such as tikkun olam, pluralism, human dignity and social justice — and rooted them proudly in the story of the Jewish people. He’s made the seder night different by appealing to the indifferent. That alone is worthy of Jewish pride.”

I’d love for you to join me on this special night. Come for the program and stay for the food (or visa versa). I think it will be very memorable evening.

What: Brooklyn by the Book Presents A Conversation with Edgar M. Bronfman, Jan Aronson and Rabbi Andy Bachman about The Bronfman Haggadah

When: March 21, 2013 at 7:30 p.m.

Where: Congregation Beth Elohim

What Else: A $10 suggested donation includes tastings from Gefilteria and Slope Cellars. Please RSVP.

Books will be sold by The Community Bookstore.

FULL DISCLOSURE: My company Brooklyn Social Media is representing the Haggadah!

Turns out that  Bev Grant and Carolann Solebello are doing a monthly series at my fave Park Slope art house and cafe. Two Moon is a cozy art gallery, performance space and coffee house on Fourth Avenue Park Slope.

We heart Fourth Avenue and the efforts of Two Moon’s owners Danielle and Joyce to bring food, beverage and culture to that up and coming Brooklyn thoroughfare.

Sharon Goldman, who used to be part of a sweet duo called Sweet Bitters, will be performing with Bev and Carolann in an evening of swapping songs and sharing stories, and this show will be extra fun because we’re tying it to Women’s History Month. She writes: “We’re an all-female cast, obviously, and we’ll be focusing on tunes with women-oriented and feminist themes (though that’s quite a wide swath of possibility!).”

Sharon promises to sing “Falling Into Place,” the Park Slope song I love.

Also,  Bev has a wonderful exhibit up of her photos from the 1968 Miss America Pageant protest…I can’t wait to see those.

Bev & Carolann Present: Second Fridays @ Two Moon

Friday, March 15, 8 p.m.

Two Moon Art House & Cafe

315 Fourth Avenue

Park Slope, Brooklyn

(718) 499-0460

$10 suggested donation