Alan J Gerstle
Ph.D. New York University, Communications; M.F.A. Columbia University, Dramatic Arts: B.A. Hunter College of the City University, Speech; Wesleyan University, Certificate in Creative Writing; Fairfax County Board of Education, Certificado de Estudios Avanzados; , LaSalle University (Philadelphia), Certificate in Counseling Psychology. Audited four graduate courses in Latin American Studies, Georgetown University.
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“There’s Donovan and the girl who he slept with last night,” Nora said, pointing with her chin. It was the first thing out of her mouth since they spread out the beach towel and parked themselves on the lawn. Johnny turned and noticed a girl leaning against the trunk of a tree near theirs. She wore a peasant dress. Light brown hair and freckles around her deep-set, brown eyes made her look mysteriously attractive.
The musician next to the girl was Donovan, Johnny figured. He looked like him—long, straight hair and full lips—and there was a black guitar case by his side. Johnny watched him yawn. It was odd that Nora had mentioned the thing about the girl. They hadn’t been out of one another’s sight since they arrived. Maybe he was better off not knowing. Otherwise, it could make him not like Nora the way he wanted to.
As the sun set the night before, Johnny and Nora had stood by the dock and watched the harbor. Johnny noticed how the boats fidgeted in the water as though they were waiting for someone who would never show up. When the dusk had given way to night, Nora pointed to a guesthouse. They walked in and paid for a musty room. The bed was creaky (not that they did anything). Nora wore pajamas, and Johnny fell asleep in his clothes. It had been a long ride.
Ximei, a documentary filmed in China over a seven-year period by Andy Cohen and Gaylen Ross, follows the HIV-positive titular protagonist and plain-spoken community leader named Ximei, a local "peasant" woman in her thirties. Ximei is filmed as she negotiates the government bureaucracy in remote Henan province while acting as a community activist and advocate for the 300,000 other people in the region that developed HIV/AIDS as a result of a national government program during the 1990s, whose goal it was to increase blood bank reserves at a minimal cost. The program offered a month's wages (about five dollars) to blood donators. Tragically and stupidly, the public health workers in the province didn't decontaminate their transfusion equipment. As a result, many local residents that took advantage of the opportunity to earn extra money, contracted HIV, either from coming in contact with contaminated medical equipment or by receiving transfusions of untested, tainted blood during treatments for an accident or disease.
Liyana, directed by the Swaziland-born husband and wife team of Aaron and Amanda Kopp, is a genre bending documentary that follows a small group of Swazi children — residents of Likhaya Lemphilo Lensha, a Swaziland orphanage — as they participate in a storytelling workshop. Swaziland has a particularly egregious orphan problem because of the country’s high incidence of AIDS-related death.
“It’s OK in the swamp, especially if you’re the number one toad.”
Leto, written and directed by Kirill Serebrennikov (“The Student”), has received much buzz because of the director’s house arrest — apparently because he is no friend of Vladimir Putin. It has also been criticized for not capturing the true spirit of the 1980s revolutionary rock and roll scene in the USSR, which it is supposed to depict. Finally, the portrayals of its main protagonists, Victor Choi (Teo Yoo, “The Moment”) and Mike Naumenko (Roman Bilyk), leaders of the musical protest against the ossifying Soviet government, have been viewed as imprecise. Some of this criticism might be valid if Leto was a biopic, but it’s not. Get over it.
The plot of this Western-styled tale focuses on Sam Kelly (Hamilton Morris, “8MMM Aboriginal Radio” TV series), a soft-spoken Aboriginal worker who is being hunted by Sergeant Fletcher (Bryan Brown, “The Light Between Oceans”), a bitter, unrelenting local law enforcer for allegedly murdering a “whitefella.” However, it is the land itself and the local culture that has arisen from it that seem to be the major protagonists. In a bleak, unforgiving desert outpost, a town called “Henry,” neither the white men nor the indigenous “black hands” have anything to look forward to other than the difficult labor of cattle ranching with intermittent breathers spent at the local tavern, a place that serves as town square, hang-out, and watering hole. Here, Archie’s description of Aboriginal life can be applied to the milieu of the white locals. They get drunk and rowdy, but none of them sing or dream.
Sweet Country marks a return to the theme of the clash between Aboriginal and European cultures that Warwick Thornton, the film’s director, addressed in “Samson & Delilah.”
“There’s Donovan and the girl who he slept with last night,” Nora said, pointing with her chin. It was the first thing out of her mouth since they spread out the beach towel and parked themselves on the lawn. Johnny turned and noticed a girl leaning against the trunk of a tree near theirs. She wore a peasant dress. Light brown hair and freckles around her deep-set, brown eyes made her look mysteriously attractive.
The musician next to the girl was Donovan, Johnny figured. He looked like him—long, straight hair and full lips—and there was a black guitar case by his side. Johnny watched him yawn. It was odd that Nora had mentioned the thing about the girl. They hadn’t been out of one another’s sight since they arrived. Maybe he was better off not knowing. Otherwise, it could make him not like Nora the way he wanted to.
As the sun set the night before, Johnny and Nora had stood by the dock and watched the harbor. Johnny noticed how the boats fidgeted in the water as though they were waiting for someone who would never show up. When the dusk had given way to night, Nora pointed to a guesthouse. They walked in and paid for a musty room. The bed was creaky (not that they did anything). Nora wore pajamas, and Johnny fell asleep in his clothes. It had been a long ride.
Ximei, a documentary filmed in China over a seven-year period by Andy Cohen and Gaylen Ross, follows the HIV-positive titular protagonist and plain-spoken community leader named Ximei, a local "peasant" woman in her thirties. Ximei is filmed as she negotiates the government bureaucracy in remote Henan province while acting as a community activist and advocate for the 300,000 other people in the region that developed HIV/AIDS as a result of a national government program during the 1990s, whose goal it was to increase blood bank reserves at a minimal cost. The program offered a month's wages (about five dollars) to blood donators. Tragically and stupidly, the public health workers in the province didn't decontaminate their transfusion equipment. As a result, many local residents that took advantage of the opportunity to earn extra money, contracted HIV, either from coming in contact with contaminated medical equipment or by receiving transfusions of untested, tainted blood during treatments for an accident or disease.
Liyana, directed by the Swaziland-born husband and wife team of Aaron and Amanda Kopp, is a genre bending documentary that follows a small group of Swazi children — residents of Likhaya Lemphilo Lensha, a Swaziland orphanage — as they participate in a storytelling workshop. Swaziland has a particularly egregious orphan problem because of the country’s high incidence of AIDS-related death.
“It’s OK in the swamp, especially if you’re the number one toad.”
Leto, written and directed by Kirill Serebrennikov (“The Student”), has received much buzz because of the director’s house arrest — apparently because he is no friend of Vladimir Putin. It has also been criticized for not capturing the true spirit of the 1980s revolutionary rock and roll scene in the USSR, which it is supposed to depict. Finally, the portrayals of its main protagonists, Victor Choi (Teo Yoo, “The Moment”) and Mike Naumenko (Roman Bilyk), leaders of the musical protest against the ossifying Soviet government, have been viewed as imprecise. Some of this criticism might be valid if Leto was a biopic, but it’s not. Get over it.
The plot of this Western-styled tale focuses on Sam Kelly (Hamilton Morris, “8MMM Aboriginal Radio” TV series), a soft-spoken Aboriginal worker who is being hunted by Sergeant Fletcher (Bryan Brown, “The Light Between Oceans”), a bitter, unrelenting local law enforcer for allegedly murdering a “whitefella.” However, it is the land itself and the local culture that has arisen from it that seem to be the major protagonists. In a bleak, unforgiving desert outpost, a town called “Henry,” neither the white men nor the indigenous “black hands” have anything to look forward to other than the difficult labor of cattle ranching with intermittent breathers spent at the local tavern, a place that serves as town square, hang-out, and watering hole. Here, Archie’s description of Aboriginal life can be applied to the milieu of the white locals. They get drunk and rowdy, but none of them sing or dream.
Sweet Country marks a return to the theme of the clash between Aboriginal and European cultures that Warwick Thornton, the film’s director, addressed in “Samson & Delilah.”