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thinkingimages · 2 years

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juices of a carved pomegranate soaking through a piece of white linen...

Sergei Parajanov’s The Colour of Pomegranates is a poetic biography of the eponymous 18th-century Armenian minstrel and bard, Sayat Nova, the “King of Songs”, recounting the stages of his life as writer, lover and priest.

Bold in its avant-garde imagery, mesmerizing in its patience; at only 77 minutes it is well and truly an epic. A film about poetry that is in and of itself poetic.

The film opens with a male voice proclaiming “I am he whose life and soul are torment” from a Sayat Nova poem. In his 2013 book, The Cinema of Sergei Parajanov, James Steffen states: “Much of the film’s thematic richness and emotional resonance derive from its dual vision as a film about [the poet] and as a coded autobiography of [Parajanov].”

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Born Sarkis Yossifovich Paradjanian of Armenian parents on 9 January 1924 in Tbilisi, Georgia, Sergei Parajanov transferred from the Tbilisi Institute for Railway Engineering (1942) to study song and violin at the Tbilisi Conservatory of Music (1943-45) before gaining admission to VGIK, the Soviet All-Union State School for Film Art and Cinematography (aka Moscow Film School) in 1946. He graduated as a film director in 1951 under the tutelage of Ukrainian directors Igor Savchenko and Alexander Dovzhenko and found employment at the Kiev Film Studios (later renamed the Alexander Dovzhenko Studios).

Parajanov began his career by making the same film twice and with the same co-director, Yakov Brazelian. Shortly after completing their diploma film, Moldavian Fairy Tale (1951), shot in the Ukraine, he assisted his mentor Igor Savchenko on Taras Shevchenko (1951) and then remade with Brazelian their graduation short as a feature-length children's film titled Andriesh (1955). Moldavian Fairy Tale appears to be lost, although Parajanov claimed to have kept a copy at his home in Tbilisi. Three documentary films followed: Ballad(1957), about a choral group and made for the anniversary of the 1917 Revolution; Golden Hands (1958), about folk art and co-directed with two other documentary filmmakers; and Natalya Ushviy (1959), a portrait of a prominent Ukrainian stage and screen actress. All three documentaries can be found in the Kiev archive. His next three feature films at the Dovzhenko Studios -- The First Lad (1959), Ukrainian Rhapsody(1961), and The Flower on the Stone (1962) -- generally followed the prescribed principles of Socialist Realism, yet each did contain scenes that went against its grain.

Parajanov's ninth film in Kiev, Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors (1964), caused an uproar by smashing to bits the principles of Socialist Realism in Soviet cinema. Although awarded at several international film festivals, it was given only limited release in the Soviet Union. In trouble with the authorities for also protesting the arrest of Ukrainian poets and intellectuals, Parajanov accepted an offer from Yerevan to make a documentary on Akop Ovnatanian (1965), an Armenian portrait painter who had lived and worked in Tbilisi. Portraits by Ovnatanian were later incorporated into scenes in Kiev Frescoes (1966), a production interrupted at the Dovzhenko Studios after a fen weeks of shooting. Only fragments of Akop Ovnatanian and Kiev Frescoes remain today. The same fate befell Sayat Nova, shot under primitive conditions in Armenia. When the director's cut was confiscated, Sergei Yutkevich cut 20 minutes out of the original in an effort to save the film and re-edited the remainder into The Colour of the Pomegranates (1969) for limited Moscow release. "My masterpiece no longer exists" (Paradjanov) -- although an attempt has recently been made in Armenia to reconstruct the original version.

All further attempts to make a film proved in vain. After years of intrigue and suspicion, Parajanov was arrested in Kiev on 17 December 1973 and, after a court hearing, sentenced on 25 April 1974 to five years imprisonment at the Dnepropetrovsk camp for hardened criminals. The charges were given as "business with art objects," "leaning towards homosexuality," "incitement to suicide," and "black-marketing." In 1978, as the result of world-wide protests and petitions made by friends and artists, he was released and allowed to return to his family home in Tbilisi, but not permitted to find work in a film studio. On 11 February 1982, he was arrested again by the KGB, "for bribing a public official" to help a nephew gain entrance to the university, and detained in the Voroshilovgrad prison until November 1982.

After 15 years on a blacklist, Parajanov received the support of Eduard Shevarnadze, First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party, to make the feature The Legend of Suram Fortress(1985), co-directed by actor Dodo Abakhidze, and the documentary Arabesques on the Theme Pirosmani (1986) at the Gruziafilm Studio in Tbilisi. His last film, Ashik Kerib (1988), a Georgian-Armenian-Azerbaijan co-production, has received limited release in these countries. On 4 June 1989, he began shooting the first scenes from his autobiographical film, Confession, at his family home in Tbilisi. Three days later, he was taken to a hospital with respiratory problems. An operation for lung cancer in Moscow followed, then radiation treatments in Paris. Sergei Parajanov died on 20 July 1990 at the age of 66 in Yerevan, where he is buried.

#The Colour of Pomegranates #Sayat Nova #Sergei Parajanov #Սերգեյ Փարաջանով #Cinematic Still #Film #Still #Stills

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sergo2060 · 4 years

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Just #conservatory #Moscow #beautiful #people #city my work #artwork #red #gallery #person #man #girl #streetstyle #selfie #photographer #artis #art #GOD #armenia🇦🇲 #yerevan #russia🇷🇺#moscow #france🇫🇷 #paris #italy🇮🇹 #israeli #london #usa🇺🇸 #china🇨🇳 #dog (at Bolshaya Nikitskaya Street) https://www.instagram.com/p/B_ZedgyJ2XN/?igshid=mt6g9gv5dic4

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dearvitya · 3 years

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YOI Fic Recs (Part 2)

Look through part 1 here!

Unsinkable (29k): Victor is a wealthy heir with a lonely soul. Yuuri is a poor dancer with a tender heart. The deck of the Titanic might be a very romantic place to meet your one true love, but it's not exactly a fortuitous one. [Titanic AU]

all the wrong turns (48k): After his disastrous Grand Prix Final, Katsuki Yuuri decides to try to be the first skater to land a quad axel in competition. It’s a secret from everyone, except the mysterious text correspondent who appeared in his phone contacts as “Poodle” following the Sochi GPF.

when pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes pleasure (19k): Yuuri felt his body grow cold at the name; he had known a Mr. Nikiforov, once upon a time.

Five years after the implosion of their acquaintance, Mr. Viktor Nikiforov returns to —shire society, bringing in tow a young cousin. Mr. Katsuki must navigate these once-familiar waters without giving further offense, all while keeping his own heart firmly protected. [A Persuasion AU]

Love in Exile (99k): Once a well know ballet dancer in St. Petersburg, Victor Nikiforov finds himself exiled to Sakhalin Island as a political convict in 1881. As a man sentenced to katorga he will never return to European Russia or his life on the stage. Known as the "Edge of the World," his life on Sakhalin could not be further from the life he once knew. Strange circumstances lead his path to cross that of a young Japanese man, one of the very few still living on the island. Katsuki Yuuri leads a life of exile of a different kind, one that is largely self-imposed. Drawn to each other, despite their differences, something slowly begins to grow between them. When a narrowly avoided tragedy leaves them stranded together for a long, cold Sakhalin winter, they are challenged to face what their relationship really means, and what future it could possibly have.

Smooth Runs the Waters (3k): Inspector Yuuri Katsuki comes to Hillsborough Hall to investigate a murder most foul and its two primary suspects: newly widowed Victor Nikiforov and his younger brother Yuri Plisetsky.

The Other Side of Sunset (325k): 1874, Wyoming Territory: Yuuri Katsuki Taylor has got his future planned…mostly. Learn how to manage his adoptive parents’ ranch, and inherit it when he’s older. Get married and have kids (someday – not now). And most of all, carry on riding his horse with Phichit and the other ranch hands on the open range and in the mountains. But when he meets Victor Nikiforov, the striking and talented new master horseman at the neighboring ranch – and is treated to a show of his Cossack-style trick riding – his world will never be the same again…

A tale of love, loss, grief, redemption, and second (and third) chances, set in the Old West. [Cowboys AU]

Like a River to the Sea (41k): Gifts from the gods can come in strange wrappings. They can also be mixed blessings, as Victor will discover in time.Living alone on the island of Fleves, near Athens, the last thing Victor expects as he combs the beach one morning is a peculiar treasure that appears seemingly from nowhere in the shape of a handsome young dark-haired man... [Greek mythology AU]

pick lilacs for the passing time (68k): A spark flares up inside him, the vestige of some part of himself he thought long buried now resurfacing to—what, haunt him? And then he realizes. I want to dance with him, Yuuri thinks.

In which the outlandish prodigy Victor Nikiforov hits Yuuri’s life like a whirlwind after he transfers to a prestigious ballet conservatory in Moscow, two grumpy teenagers learn to be friends, and Mila’s Straight Girl CrushTM might not be so straight after all.

for better, for worse (18k): Yakov quirks an eyebrow. “Vitya, we are not having some grand ceremony."

“It doesn’t have to be grand! But the registration office? Signing some papers? Where is the romance in that?”

or: The Trials and Tribulations of Viktor Nikiforov, Six-Time World Champion and Wedding Planner Extraordinaire.

in the woods somewhere (32k): One evening in late autumn, Yuuri goes out to collect firewood. He returns with a man instead. (Viktor, Yuuri, and the end of isolation.)

The Death of Koschei the Deathless (39k): They tell tale of heroes, of men that slay monsters, and defy fate itself. Yuuri Katsuki is no hero. He's just a failed wizard trying to keep his shop afloat. This is the story of how Yuuri Katsuki fell in love with Viktor Nikiforov, and in doing so conquered death.

For the Record (10k): FOR THE RECORD by Viktor Nikiforov

What it takes to craft an Olympic Champion, and what it takes to be one.

Or: Viktor Nikiforov, sports journalist and retired figure skater, interviews Olympic Champion Yuuri Katsuki for an exclusive piece.

Happiness Writes White (37k): Yuuri falls asleep after his first day in St. Petersburg and wakes up in a strange hospital room. To his dismay, the last year of skating has all been a dream simulation designed to wake him from a long coma. Viktor Nikiforov is, in fact, not a figure skater at all, but the creator of the program, and this real world Viktor is nothing like the one he knows.

and you knew what it was (he is in love) (204k): Here's what's normal for Katsuki Yuuri: playing Quidditch, practicing spells, keeping to himself.

Here's what's not normal for Katsuki Yuuri: transferring to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in his fourth year and getting to know his idol, International Quidditch Star Viktor Nikiforov.

But maybe there's a reason they say love is the greatest magic of all. [Harry Potter AU]

All Our Yesterdays (1M): York, England, 2120: Yuuri Katsuki is a dime-a-dozen techie, spending his days doing routine repairs at the university. He hangs out with his friend Phichit, goes for a drink, watches holograms. It’s an existence – but is it a life?

Crowood Castle, Yorkshire, 1392: As the son of a baron, Sir Victor Nikiforov makes judgements where lives hang in the balance. As a knight, he must sometimes end them. It’s what he was born to do – but what of the heavy burden on his soul? Death is all too commonplace, while life and love remain elusive.

When a brilliant scientist goes rogue, journeying to the Middle Ages with the world’s first time machine, Yuuri is stunned to be called on as the last hope of preventing her from changing history. After an abrupt departure, he lands at Crowood Castle disguised as an enemy of the Nikiforovs, Sir Justin le Savage – and will need to act the part if he is to survive. It’s a tall order for someone who can barely tell the back end of a horse from the front. But if Ailis, in her own disguise, discovers who he is, his mission will end in a blaze of laser-gun fire. He must not give his real identity away, even to the beguiling knight he’s falling in love with…

#yuri on ice #yoi #victuuri #victuri #anime #victor nikiforov #katsuki yuuri #katsuki yuri #viktor nikiforov #yuri plisetsky #sports anime #fics #fic recs #yoi fanfic #fanfiction #.txt

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musicainextenso · 3 years

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youtube

Alexander Scriabin can be considered one of the most exciting personalities among Russian composers. He was born in 1872 in Moscow, to a family of noble origins. His mother, Lyubov Petrova Scriabina, who died in 1873, was a pianist too. Scriabin studied at the Moscow Conservatory from 1888 to 1892, around the same time as Sergey Rachmaninoff. His unique style of composition in the beginning was influenced by Fryderyk Chopin, however, as his compositional language matured, Scriabin was inspired by theosphy, mysticism, poetry, philosophy, and his own synaesthesia. In his ouvre, Scriabin reevaluated the meaning of Gesamtkunstwerk originated from Richard Wagner, as his later works were combinations of different branches of art.

For this post, I chose a piece from the composer’s first period. Scriabin started writing the Sonata op. 19 in g-sharp minor in 1892. It is the second among his ten piano sonatas. It was only published in 1897, after a series of revisions. In 1896, the composer stated the following: ’’I have finished the sonata, but I am completely dissatisfied with it (…)’’.

It consists of two movements, both in g-sharp minor:

I. Andante

II. Presto

This sonata feels almost impressionistic, which is not a coincidence, if we take a look at the programme notes written by the composer:

’’The first section represents the quiet of a southern night on the seashore; the development is the dark agitation of the deep, deep sea. The E major middle section shows caressing moonlight coming up after the first darkness of night. The second movement represents the vast expanses of ocean in a stormy night.’’

Despite being a late 19th century work, many ideas used by Scriabin in this sonata were the results of Beethoven’s experimenting with the sonata form. For example, both sonatas in his op. 27 (E-flat major and c-sharp minor) are subtitled ’’Quasi una fantasia’’, and differ a lot from the classical sonata form. In his 32 sonatas, many have less or more than the standard 4 movements. The most relevant is the Sonata op. 90 in e minor, which consists of only two movements.

One of the best recordings of this sonata is from Valentina Lisitsa, Ukranian pianist who became famous on YouTube. The recording was made in 2013, in Blumenstein, Canton of Bern, Switzerland-which is also related to Scriabin’s life: in 1903 he moved to Switzerland with his wife. I think Lisitsa’s interpretation creates an atmosphere which is very close to the sensations mentioned in the programme notes, and the acoustic environment of the church makes this recording unique.

Noémi Baki-Szmaler, guest editor - @une-barque-sur-l-ocean

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henk-heijmans · 3 years

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Professor Ilchenko of the Moscow Conservatory performs before soldiers on the Southern front, 1942 - photographer unknown

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internatural · 2 years

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Dmitri Shostakovich on stage of the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory with Sviatoslav Richter and David Oistrakh, after the Moscow premiere of the Violin Sonata. 4 May 1969. Credit: Dmitri Shostakovich: Pages of His Life in Photographs/G. Andreyev / O. Dombrovskaya

SOURCE: DSCH Shostakovich Journal

#Russian #Russia #Shostakovich #Oistrakh #sviatoslav richter #photo #violin #music #DSCH

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calciopics · 3 years

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Kylian Mbappé is Born to Run

The France forward grew up in the suburbs of Paris, steeped in the culture of football. At 22, the World Cup-winner is already a global superstar, and only now entering his prime. Will Euro 2020 be the moment when he overtakes Messi and Ronaldo to become recognised as the best player on the planet?

Kylian Mbappé was 18 when he walked into the changing room of the French national team. “It’s very difficult,” he recalls, “because great players don’t want to give you their place. That’s what makes them great players. They especially don’t want to give you their place if you arrive with the label of ‘Future Great Player’.” Within a year, Mbappé and France had won the World Cup in Moscow.

Three years on, we are talking in a room of his mansion in the leafy, old-money streets of Neuilly, just outside Paris. It isn’t even his home; he bought it to house his foundation, which offers after-school activities to rich and poor children alike. In conversation, Mbappé resembles a veteran TV presenter more than a young footballer. He makes short speeches in complete sentences, as precise in his footing as he is on the field. He sits as straight-backed as he runs. His expressive face keeps breaking into smiles: he likes talking, and is almost unburdened by the usual footballer’s fear of saying the wrong thing.

His burly father Wilfried sits beside us, but only once during the interview will he feel impelled to intervene. Meeting Mbappé, you come to understand how he hit football seemingly already fully formed. At 22, he has achieved more than most great players ever do. Can he take one more step and become the world’s best footballer?

His story starts 10 miles and a universe away from where we’re sitting today. His hometown, Bondy, is a multicultural suburb just northeast of Paris that looks as if someone plonked a Soviet town on top of an ancient French village. The old church is surrounded by fast-food joints and fading 1960s’ apartment blocks, one of them now adorned with a giant mural of Mbappé.

His parents grew up in Bondy: Wilfried, of Cameroonian origin, and Mbappé’s mother Fayza, of Algerian descent. Mixed marriages are common in the Parisian suburbs, the banlieues, but the couple did have to defy some local disapproval.

If a wannabe footballer had to choose the ideal place on earth to grow up, it might have been the Mbappé home in Bondy. Mbappé’s father and uncle were both football coaches, and Fayza, who ran after-school activities, played handball in the French first division. His parents had adopted an older boy, Jirès Kembo Ekoko, who went on to make a long career as a journeyman professional footballer. “I didn’t bring a new passion into the family,” Mbappé says with understatement.

He grew up practically inside the local football club, AS Bondy. “In the Parisian suburbs there are football fields everywhere,” he enthuses. “People here live for football. I was born with the sports ground facing my window.” It’s no wonder, he adds, that Paris’s suburbs are perhaps the deepest talent pool in global football, producing players such as Paul Pogba, Blaise Matuidi, N’Golo Kanté and Riyad Mahrez.

As a non-white kid from the suburbs, did Mbappé always feel accepted as French before he became a French icon? “I’ve always felt French. I don’t renounce my origins, because they are part of who I am, but I’ve made my whole life in France, and never at any moment was I made to feel I wasn’t at home here.” In the banlieues, he says, “We have a love of France because France has given to us and we try to give back to it.”

Mbappé’s parents made him take school seriously, and he was also a not-very-talented flautist at Bondy’s conservatory, but football came first. At AS Bondy, he says, “My father was my coach for 10 years. He helped construct the style of player I wanted to become. But I never felt the pressure of, ‘You have to become a footballer.’ Above all, it was a passion.”

Tagging along with his dad and uncle on their coaching jobs, the child acquired an unusual gift: he became a footballer who thinks like a coach. “Very young, I was always in the changing rooms, listening to the tactical talks and the different points of view, because football is made up of different viewpoints. I learned to have this tolerance, and I think it helped me, because being a coach is putting yourself in somebody else’s place. I think I have the gift of doing that. It helps in football, because if you’re a player, generally you think about yourself, about your own career. I can see, for instance, when something in a game is frustrating a team-mate. I can put him at ease.”

When you’re in the World Cup final, you’re convinced you’re going to win. You walk onto the field, the trophy is there, and you tell yourself it is impossible the other team will take it

Mbappé turned out to be that perfect sporting combination: a natural who is coachable. “He assimilates advice quickly. You ask him something once, and the second time he does it,” Antonio Riccardi, his former youth coach at AS Bondy, told me. Even as a child, Mbappé was an efficient footballer: decisive, never just decorative.

By adolescence, he was being courted by the big European clubs, which all keep close tabs on the Paris region. He visited Chelsea, and celebrated his 14th birthday at Real Madrid, which cannily found him the perfect babysitter: the club’s then assistant coach Zinedine Zidane, the greatest French footballer. When Zidane offered Mbappé a lift in his fabulous car, the overawed child offered to take his shoes off first.

The Mbappés sifted the countless offers and chose Monaco, where the route to the first team looked shortest. Mbappé arrived there, he says, “with my [footballing] baggage well filled.”

Kids in performance-sports families learn that they never arrive. Each step up is just another learning opportunity. In Monaco’s first team, the teenaged Mbappé encountered the veteran Colombian striker Radamel Falcao, freshly returned from unhappy loan spells with Manchester United and Chelsea.

“He was a star,” says Mbappé, “but he had a desire to transmit. He was like a teacher to me. He’s someone who always wants to score, but he left me the space to express myself. He’s very cool in front of goal, calm in his game, and he transmitted this serenity that I didn’t have, because I was young, excited and wanted to go at 2,000 kilometres an hour.”

The kid who didn’t yet have a driving licence scored 15 league goals in his first professional season to help Monaco win the French title in 2017. He added six more in the Champions League knockout rounds. He also passed his baccalauréat, France’s equivalent of A-levels.

Mbappé marvelled at the tension on the faces of other professionals, because he didn’t feel it himself. Everything came easily to him, without great sacrifice, he has said. When I ask about stress in a profession of hypercompetitive men, he shrugs: “Daily life is easy.”

His vertical ascent didn’t surprise him; it just happened a bit quicker than he’d expected. But others were stunned. Here was something new: an 18-year-old complete forward. Built like an Olympic sprinter, Mbappé ran upright, looking around him. He could dribble, cross and shoot. He was more advanced than Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo had been at 18.

How does he describe his style? “The modern attacker who can play anywhere,” he replies. He explains that forwards used to be specialists: “There’d be a number nine, or number 11, or number seven.” Mbappé, though, is the all-in-one. “I think my CV can speak for me. I’ve played alone up front, I’ve played on the left and the right. In all humility, I don’t think it’s given to everyone to change position like that every year and keep a certain standard of performance at the highest level. That didn’t fall from heaven. If I speak of the baggage given me in my teens, it’s all there.”

In one regard he has always been unequalled: the counterattack at speed. He says, “I’ve managed to work on my weak points but above all to perfect my strong points, because I was always told that it’s through your strong points that you’ll exist.”

In March 2017, Mbappé became the youngest player in 62 years to debut for France. Five months later, his hometown club Paris Saint-Germain agreed to sign him for a fee of £166m. He drew on his childhood experiences to navigate two alpha-male changing-rooms. At PSG, his good English and Spanish helped him deal with foreign team-mates. With Les Bleus, France’s assistant coach Guy Stéphan told Mbappé’s biographer Arnaud Hermant: “He knows the codes of the changing room. At table or in the bus, he doesn’t just sit somewhere randomly. For a youngster, he isn’t timid or introverted. He expresses himself.”

By summer 2018, picked for the World Cup in Russia, Mbappé was comfortable enough to claim the blue number 10 shirt — previously worn by Zidane and Michel Platini — and to say in public that he was gunning for the trophy.

“I went to play the matches calmly like I always have. I didn’t want to change just because it was the World Cup,” he says. “We were lucky to have a young squad. We were totally carefree, just a band of mates.”

Hang on, surely a football team isn’t really a band of mates? “No,” he acknowledges. “Just like the baker doesn’t get on with all bakers. You don’t have to eat with your team-mates every evening to win.”

In the World Cup round of 16, his two goals and a 37kmph gallop through Argentina’s defence made his global name. The night before the final against Croatia, he admits, “I was a bit stressed. I didn’t manage to sleep much. But the nearer the match came, the less stressed I was.” Before kick-off he was joking in the changing room. Stéphan recalls: “He experienced the final as if it were a PSG-Dijon game.”

Mbappé says, “When you’re in the World Cup final, you’re convinced that you’re going to win. Even the Croats were convinced they were going to win. You walk onto the field and the trophy is there, between the two teams, and you tell yourself it’s impossible that the other team will take it. That’s why there’s such disappointment afterwards if you don’t win.”

Half of Bondy gathered in front of a giant screen to cheer on the commune’s own “Kylian national”. Scoring in France’s 4–2 victory, he seemed to have reached his career apogee aged 19. He didn’t see it like that. Interviewed the night of the final, he described winning the World Cup as “already good” but only a start.

The next day, as the Bleus’ bus edged along a packed, ecstatic Champs-Élysées, writes Hermant, the ice-cold kid mused to the French Football Federation’s president Noël Le Graët: “Was all this really necessary?”

Mbappé explains now: “For me, it wasn’t an outcome, a finality. I don’t think of that trophy now at all. I don’t look at pictures of the World Cup before going to sleep. Honestly, it’s people on the street who come up and say, ‘You’re world champion, merci, merci.’”

He understood that his early triumph had upset football’s all-important hierarchies. Returning to PSG, he immediately reassured Paris’s Brazilian star Neymar: “I’m not going to walk on your flowerbeds. I’ll be a candidate for the Ballon d’Or [the award for world’s best footballer] this year because you won’t be, but I promise I don’t want to take your place.”

Soon after, he took the World Cup trophy to Bondy, where thousands came out to greet him. “It was a way to say, ‘Thank you.’ I’ve never forgotten which soup I have eaten. So it was important for me to return there after my first World Cup and first international title.” (Note that word, “first”.)

France’s coach, Didier Deschamps, recalls falling into “physical and moral apathy” the season after he lifted the World Cup as a player in 1998. Did Mbappé experience a hangover? He grins: “I finished as best player in the league, highest scorer, best young player, I was chosen in the team of the season, and we won the league.”

Winning the World Cup made Mbappé a national hero. Does he consider himself a star? “I think so. If your face is everywhere in the city, everywhere in the world, that’s for sure. Being a star is a status, but it doesn’t make me a better person than others.”

He lives like a luxury prisoner, who cannot leave home without being mobbed. “It takes an organisation just to go out,” he says. He has joked that when his future children ask him about his youthful adventures, he won’t have any.

“A fan gives you enormous love,” says Mbappé carefully, “but sometimes maybe an excess of love, and he might not respect your intimacy. We give our lives to the people, because we give them pleasure every three days, and we give them our time. It’s impossible to hope for a normal life, but just a little respect for one’s private life isn’t too much to ask for, I think.”

As a young man of non-white origins, he has a particular vulnerability with the French public, one-third of whom voted for the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen in the run-off of the presidential elections in 2017. Even so, he has begun to speak out against police violence.

“I took time to start talking about it, because I wasn’t ready,” he admits. “I had a lot of things to digest: my change of status, my new life. But I have always opposed all types of violence.”

When I note that French police violence is disproportionately directed against people of non-white origins from suburbs like Bondy, his father stirs from his silence: “We’re not answering that. You’re orienting it as if the violence were only against people from the banlieues, which is false.”

In high-level football, nobody will make a place for you. Ego, self-love, isn’t just the caprice of stars. It’s also the will to give the best of yourself

French fans like their stars humble. Mbappé has explained “the French mentality” to Neymar, who favours a bling-bling, poker-playing party lifestyle. Mbappé says, “In Brazil, they are more festive, in France more serious. Here it’s not considered good to display your passions. People will think he’s neglecting PSG because he plays poker. I think he has begun to understand that. At first it was hard for him because he experienced it as an affront. When he arrived, they put his face on the Eiffel Tower, and six months later they’re asking him why he’s playing poker. In France, people know what you have but they don’t want to see it. They just want to see you playing football, smiling.”

But Mbappé believes humility isn’t enough. He thinks great footballers need big egos. “In high-level football, nobody will make a place for you or tell you that you’re capable of things. It’s up to you to persuade yourself that you are. Ego, self-love, isn’t just a caprice of stars. It’s also the will to surpass yourself, to give the best of yourself.” Every time he walks onto the field, he says, he tells himself, “I’m the best.”

In truth, he knows he isn’t the best — Messi and Ronaldo are better. “It’s not only me who knows that,” he laughs. “Everyone knows it. If you tell yourself that you’ll do better than them, it’s beyond ego or determination — it’s lack of awareness. Those players are incomparable. They have broken all laws of statistics. They have had 10 extraordinary years, 15.”

Still, he admits: “You do always compare yourself with the best in your sport, just as the baker compares himself with the best bakers around him. Who makes the best croissant, the best pain au chocolat? I watch matches of other great players to see what they’re doing. ‘I know how to do this, but can the other guy do it too?’ I think other players watch me, too. I think that pushes players to raise their game, just as Messi was good for Ronaldo and Ronaldo was good for Messi.”

Does Mbappé compare himself with the other great forward of his generation, Borussia Dortmund’s Norwegian Erling Braut Haaland? Mbappé’s reply sounds a touch patronising: “It’s his second year, we’re getting to know him. It’s the start for him. I’m happy for him, for what he’s doing.”

The more you become an important person, the more duties you have. I’m no longer the little kid. I’m Kylian Mbappé

In this elite individual competition, the top spot may be coming free. Messi (34 this month) and Ronaldo (36) are “nearer the end than the beginning”, acknowledges Mbappé. In February, his hat-trick helped PSG thrash Messi’s Barcelona 1–4 at the Camp Nou. “The best match of my career,” Mbappé says, “because it was complete. I helped my team both offensively and defensively, and I succeeded in the creation and finishing of my moves, in one-against-ones. I won 90 per cent of my duels, if that stat is correct. All match, I never had a moment when I felt extinguished.” He then scored two at Bayern Munich, before PSG fell to Manchester City.

Some opposing teams now rearrange their entire tactical systems to combat the Mbappé counterattack. “There are quite a few anti-Kylian plans every match,” he says. “It means I’ve been recognised as a great player. It requires you to have multiple strings to your bow. I like that, because I adore challenges.”

Surely he’s now too big a player for the French league? He umms and aws: “France isn’t the best championship in the world, but it’s my responsibility, as a flagship player, to help the league grow.” Yet he may well leave this summer, to Real Madrid or England. The decision, perhaps the biggest he’ll face in his career, will be made inside his family. Almost uniquely for a star footballer, Mbappé doesn’t have an agent, just lawyers.

At 22, he considers himself an experienced footballer. He says he and Neymar “are now the two natural leaders” of PSG. When he kicks off the delayed Euro 2020 with France in June, it will be with more responsibility than at the World Cup. “The more you become an important personality, the more duties you have. I’m no longer the little kid. I’m Kylian Mbappé.”

Kylian Mbappé’s prime may have already arrived. Fast strikers usually peak between 20 and 24. A Euro and a World Cup within 18 months, while France’s generation of 2018 remains almost intact, may be his best chance to make football history. What are his career ambitions? That smile again: “To win everything.” (Esquire Magazine)

#kylian mbappe #Mbappe #AS Bondy #AS Monaco FC #france national team #world champion 2018 #paris saint germain #PSG #football #fussball #foot #fodbold #futbol #futebol #soccer #calcio

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lightsonparkave · 3 years

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HAPPY TWO-YEAR ANNIVERSARY TO LIGHTS ON PARK AVE! 🎂🎉 In celebration of LoPA’s birthday (August 22, to be exact), all of the prompts from the previous year are up for grabs.

Round 24 will end on August 31, 11:59 PM ET (what time is that for me?).

As always, you’re free to jump in whenever you’d like during the round, a wide variety of work types is accepted, and there are no minimum work requirements. Unfinished works and works for other fandom events are allowed. You can find more information about Lights on Park Ave and the participation guidelines here.

Here are all 149 prompts. Go crazy and have fun! 🎈

ROUND 13: TIME

A quote about being infinite in the present moment from The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“Vellichor,” the the strange wistfulness of used bookstores

“How long is forever?” dialogue from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

“Time” - Hans Zimmer (Inception OST)

A quote and gifset from Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival (2016) about the nonlinear structure of time

Agnès Varda’s portraits when she was 20, 36, and 80 years old

A John Irving quote about what time does to the people who matter to us

Ten traveling back to see Rose on New Year’s Day in 2005 before he dies and reincarnates in Doctor Who

Future inventions in 2015 as seen in Robert Zemeckis’s Back to the Future Part II (1989)

A quote about what time does for wounds

ROUND 14: LIMINALITY

A photoset of various liminal spaces

Illustration of a black cat in front of a red-lit house with the caption, “They say no one is living here—but the lights come on, once every year”

A photoset of Victorian-era spirit photography, an art form that attempted to capture the ghost of a deceased loved one

Information on the famous Mojave phone booth, a lone telephone booth in the middle of the desert that received calls from all over the world

Rosemary Ellen Guiley’s The Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits Third Edition’s definition of “witching hour”

Illustration of a ghost train on an abandoned trestle bridge in the Pacific Northwest

A quote by Isabel Allende about spirits coming out at night in the library

Gifset of the spirit world in Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away (2001)

Illustration of a neon roadside sign of a motel that only appears at night by a long-forgotten highway

“Pacific Coast Highway” - Kavinsky

A gifset quote from The Twilight Zone (1959)

Scenery from Twin Peaks season 1 (1990)

A quote about something shifting into a strange, new place inside of a person from Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

ROUND 15: LOSS

A quote about being lost and found by someone special by Sue Zhao

A photo of the Mildred, wrecked off Gurnard’s Head, Cornwall in 1912

A quote about ephemerality and the beauty of it from Troy (2004)

Two paintings of people visiting ruins by Caspar David Friedrich

A quote about desire and loss by Lara Mimosa Montes

A photo of an overgrown, abandoned conservatory

A passage about what disappears and what remains in ruins from Suicide by Édouard Levé

Dialogue about gratitude for people who aren’t meant to stay in your life but shape who you are from BoJack Horseman

A scene from Fleabag where the Priest chooses God over Fleabag and gently tells Fleabag that her love for him will pass before they part ways

A prayer to St. Anthony, patron saint of lost things, people, and souls

Oscar Wilde’s tomb in Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, covered in lipstick kisses from admirers

Photos of a cemetery statue in Austria, wrapped in branches and dead leaves, holding a single flower

ROUND 16: DEVOTION/SERVICE

A gifset of Kevin on the phone, telling Chiron he’ll cook food for him from Barry Jenkin’s Moonlight (2016)

Buttercup’s monologue to Westley about how she would do anything for him from The Princess Bride by William Goldman

Gifs of Merlin saying that he was born to serve Arthur from BBC’s Merlin

An excerpt about giving all of oneself to someone despite what it costs from House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

A gifset of various times Jaime and Brienne demonstrate their loyalty to and love for each other in Game of Thrones

A gifset of all the different ways Cliff is there for Rick in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)

A gifset of Nadia deciding to be by Alan’s side no matter what in Russian Doll

“Devotion” - Ocean Vuong

A gifset of Bond comforting a traumatized Vesper in the shower in Casino Royale (2006)

A gifset of Sookhee refusing to leave Hideko, saying her job is to look after her in Park Chanwook’s The Handmaiden (2016)

ROUND 17: DREAMS

A dreamscape gifset and quote about repressed thoughts in dreams and the Internet from Satoshi Kon’s Paprika (2006)

A gifset of Mitsuha and Taki finally meeting in their own bodies in a dream from Shinkai Makoto’s Kimi no Na wa (Your Name) (2016)

A quote by Tinker Bell telling Peter Pan where he can find her and where she’ll always love him in Steven Spielberg’s Hook (1991)

The scene where Keating tells his students that poetry, beauty, romance, and love give life meaning in Peter Weir’s Dead Poets Society (1989)

An animated illustration of a storefront called “Hauntings” with a flickering “99¢ dreams” neon sign

Various dreamscape scenes and a quote about ideas being the most resilient parasite from Christopher Nolan’s Inception (2010)

A quote about how all living beings must dream to survive reality from The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

A comic about people we love taking turns to visit us in dreams every night

Lovers and Sleeping Couple, two drawings by Egon Schiele

A quote about belief in a better world by Robert Frobisher to his lover, Rufus Sixsmith, in Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

A quote about the feeling of falling in love lingering when you wake up from a dream in Alexis Dos Santos’s Unmade Beds (2009)

A photo of subway graffiti by an unknown author insisting that they’ll never give up making the world a better place to live in

ROUND 18: PHYSICAL TOUCH

A scene about how to return a stolen kiss from Daniel Ribeiro’s The Way He Looks (2014)

A line about kissing someone the way a flower opens from “I Know Someone” by Mary Oliver

A gifset focusing on showing affection and care through hands from Park Chanwook’s The Handmaiden (2016)

A passage about two people leaving invisible marks on each other through the accumulation of touches over the years from A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood

Two conversations about never being touched before and only being touched by one person from Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight (2016)

Going from yearning to touch someone but stopping oneself to being allowed to touch them from Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy

Moving art of two bodies made of stars and the cosmos embracing

A quote about maintaining sanity by touching someone but being separated despite proximity from The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje

A line about proving that one still exists and is real through touch from On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

Different touches between Villanelle and Eve expressing violence, threat, sexual tension, comfort, and companionship in Killing Eve

A juxtaposition of two scenes from Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love (2000) of Su Li-zhen rejecting and accepting Chow Mo-wan’s hand

A compilation of marble sculptures by Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Syd (Chris Evans) trailing kisses down London’s back in London (2005)

ROUND 19: IMMORTALITY

James Baldwin talking about how art helps you discover that people before you have experienced the same thing as you and you are not alone

Dr. Brand saying that love transcends time and space in Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014)

Nadia and Alan meeting for the first time as they’re about to die and relive the same day again in Russian Doll

The loneliness of losing everyone by having a long life as expressed by Ten in Doctor Who

The doomed eternal time loop romance of Simon and Alisha from Misfits

A quote by Edvard Munch about becoming eternal through the flowers that grow from his body after death

Nagai Kei recalling the traffic accident that killed him and triggered his immortality, making him one of the rare persecuted humans to possess the power, in Ajin

A collection of moments from Jay Russell’s Tuck Everlasting (2002)

A quote by Mary Wollstonecraft hoping for something that lasts inside the heart

Various scenes with Jack Harkness from Doctor Who

Aya telling Asou-kun to live on and live forever as she nears the end of her life in 1 Litre of Tears

An excerpt about the immortalization of the self through love from “Love of the Wolf” in Hélène Cixous’s Stigmata

A collection of scenes from the Black Mirror episode “San Junipero”

Naoko telling Toru to always remember her and remember that she existed in Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

Dom explaining to Ariadne that he uses the PASIV to dream as it’s the only way that he can be with his wife and children in Christopher Nolan’s Inception (2010)

ROUND 20: POETRY

“I’m Going Back to Minnesota Where Sadness Makes Sense” - Danez Smith

A line about wanting to forget how much you loved someone and then actually forgetting from Bluets by Maggie Nelson

“Perhaps the World Ends Here” - Joy Harjo

“In Time” - W. S. Merwin

“By Small and Small: Midnight to Four A.M.” - Jack Gilbert

“Magdalene: The Addict” - Marie Howe

“Wild Geese” - Mary Oliver

“Morphology 2″ - CJ Scruton

“20″ from Moscow in the Plague Year by Marina Tsvetaeva

“To Hold” - Li-Young Lee

ROUND 21: LONGING

“I Loved You Before I Was Born” - Li-Young Lee

A poem about longing for someone through worlds by Izumi Shikibu

A gifset of Marianne and Héloïse falling in love from Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)

“Make Me Feel” - Janelle Monáe

A quote about living in longing being better than realizing that longing from 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

“I Want You” - Mitski

Orpheus and Eurydice in Hades - Friedrich Heinrich Füger

Long definition of the word “saudade”

Definition of the word “hiraeth”

“Something About Us” - Daft Punk

Two lines about burning quietly from the poem “The Pillowcase” by Annelyse Gelman

A conversation about wanting each other after decades of separation from Pedro Almodóvar’s Pain and Glory (2019)

A Hanahaki disease mood board

“Shrike” - Hozier

Two lines about wanting someone to return from Herakles by Euripides

“Love of My Life” - Queen

“Eyes, Nose, Lips” - Taeyang

A screenshot of Kathy and Tommy holding onto each other desperately from Mark Romanek’s Never Let Me Go (2010) and a quote from Kazuo Ishiguro’s eponymous novel

ROUND 22: YOUTH

“Perfect Places” - Lorde

A piece about realizing you’ll never be this young again, but it’s the first time you’re this old by Kalyn Roseanne Livernois

A conversation between Neil and Mr. Keating about Neil feeling trapped and unable to live the life he wants because of his father from Peter Weir’s Dead Poets Society (1989)

An excerpt about being too young to know how to love properly from Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor” - Arctic Monkeys

Elio’s father telling Elio not to try to rid himself of his sorrow and pain—and with that joy—which he feels so strongly because he’s so young from Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman

A quote about how everything feels final to young people because they’re experiencing it for the first time from Middlemarch by George Eliot

Lara Jean telling Peter that she had to make it seem like she liked him to deal with her love letter fiasco in Susan Johnson’s To All the Boys I Loved Before (2018)

Rue and Jules dancing together and partying it up in Euphoria

“Le Plongeoir” by Laurent Roch

A quote about being pushed into adulthood and not being ready from Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

A photo of a roller rink illuminated by pink and purple lights

Pastel photo series of Coney Island by Mijoo Kim and Minjin Kang

“Hips Don’t Lie” - Shakira feat. Wyclef Jean

“Young Dumb & Broke” - Khalid

Different moments accompanied by the letter to Mr. Vernon at the end of detention from John Hughes’s The Breakfast Club (1985)

Various scenes and a quote about growing up and realizing life isn’t like a fairy tale from Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

Stills of the young lesbian couple in love from the music video of “You Know” - Jaurim

Lines by Effy about her emotional and mental struggles from Skins

Nathan chiding the group for not taking advantage of their superpowers as young offenders from Misfits

ROUND 23: HEDONISM

A passage about giving into passion and losing control from The Secret History by Donna Tartt

“Thot Shit” - Megan Thee Stallion

An aesthetic photoset of the Greek god Dionysus

A quote about living for ecstasy rather than balance from From a Journal of Love by Anaïs Nin

A photo of an anonymous person in nothing but a silk robe and lingerie

A photo of Donatella Versace lounging in a chair, surrounded by shirtless, muscular men sunbathing around her in Capri, Italy in 1994

An aesthetic photoset based on The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

The music video for “Heartless” by The Weeknd

A plea for summer to never end from Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman

“Plastic Love” - Mariya Takeuchi

A gifset from the music video of “Blinding Lights” by The Weeknd, a continuation of the “Heartless” music video

“XS” - Rina Sawayama

A gifset from the music video of “Body” by Mino

Photos of people dancing at the legendary Studio 54

Photos and a description of the party scene at Studio 54

Chris Evans and Evan Rachel Wood hooking up in a car in the “Gucci Guilty Black” commercial

#stevetony #steve/tony #superhusbands #stony #stevetony prompts #stony prompts #lightsonparkave #round 24

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coochiequeens · 3 years

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The last of Oklahoma's "Five Moons" has set.

Marjorie Tallchief — one of the five Native American ballerinas from Oklahoma who rose to global fame in the 20th century — died Nov. 30 at her home in Delray Beach, Florida.

She was 95.

"Aunt Margie was one of the most humble, sincere and gracious people I have ever known," Russ Tallchief, Marjorie Tallchief's nephew and a writer and dancer based in Oklahoma City, told The Oklahoman.

"She told me that a great opportunity will present itself to every person at some point in time, but you have to be ready for that opportunity, just as she was when she stepped onto the world stage to represent her family, her Osage Nation and the United States as a world renowned ballerina.

From her start dancing in her father’s movie theater with her sister in their Oklahoma hometown, Tallchief performed around the world, achieving national and international acclaim.

The younger sister of famed fellow prima ballerina Maria Tallchief, Marjorie Louise Tallchief was born in Oct. 19, 1926, in Denver, Colorado, during a family vacation. Her parents were Alexander Joseph Tall Chief, a member of the Osage Nation, and his wife, Ruth Porter Tall Chief.

Her paternal great-grandfather had helped negotiate with the U.S. government for oil revenues that brought the Osage Nation vast wealth, and she grew up in Fairfax until her family moved to California when she was a girl so that she and her sister could further their ballet training.

She studied under prominent choreographers Ernest Belcher, Bronislava Nijinska and David Linchine, according to the Oklahoma Historical Society.

She accepted a position of leading soloist in the Original Ballet Russe, a traveling company that took ballet to small towns across America. She went on to perform with the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas and the Chicago Opera Ballet.

She joined the Paris Opéra Ballet in 1957, and she was the first American ever to become première danseuse étoile, or "star dancer," the highest rank a performer can reach in the legendary company.

In 1958, she also became the first American ballerina since World War II to perform in Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre, according to the Oklahoma Hall of Fame, which inducted Tallchief in 1991.

Tallchief performed for U.S. Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, as well as for French President Charles de Gaulle.

"The importance of Marjorie Tallchief to Oklahoma's artistic and cultural history cannot be overstated. As an Osage and native of Fairfax, she achieved success previously unthinkable in the world of ballet for someone of her background," Oklahoma Historical Society Executive Director Trait Thompson told The Oklahoman.

Artistic career continued after her retirement from the stage

Best known for her roles in ballets like "Romeo and Juliet," "Giselle" and "Idylle" — the latter was choreographed by her husband, George Skibine — Tallchief was prima ballerina with New York's Harkness Ballet from 1964 until 1966, when she retired from the stage.

She subsequently taught at the Dallas Civic Ballet Academy and acted as a dance director for the Dallas Ballet. In 1980, she helped her sister found and taught at the Chicago City Ballet.

From 1989 to 1993, Tallchief worked as director of dance at the Harid Conservatory in Boca Raton, Florida. She retired to Delray Beach, Florida, where she was a fixture at local yoga and Pilates studios well into her 90s.

She was presented with a distinguished service award from the University of Oklahoma in 1992 and named one of the “50 Most Influential Oklahomans of the 20th Century” in 2000.

Tallchief married to Skibine, an artistic director, ballet master and choreographer, in 1947. They had twin sons and remained married until his death in 1981 at age 60.

Tallchief is survived by her sons, Alexander and George Skibine, and her grandchildren, Alexandre, Nathalie, Adrian and Trevor Skibine.

Five Moons leave a lasting legacy

Tallchief was the last surviving member of the "Five Moons," five Native American dancers from Oklahoma who took the international ballet world by storm in the 20th century. Along with Marjorie Tallchief, the Five Moons included her sister, Maria Tallchief (1925-2013), Yvonne Chouteau (1929-2016), Moscelyne Larkin (1925-2012) and Rosella Hightower (1920-2008).

The moniker “Five Moons” evolved from the Oklahoma Indian Ballerina Festivals that took place in 1957 and 1967 to celebrate the 50th and 60th anniversaries of Oklahoma statehood. The 1967 festival included a ballet created by Cherokee composer Louis Ballard Sr. called "The Four Moons" performed by four of the five ballerinas —Maria Tallchief had retired from performing — featuring solos honoring each dancer's heritage.

Oklahoma Native American artist Jerome Tiger (Muscogee and Seminole) created a painting for the program cover titled "The Four Moons." Chickasaw painter Mike Larsen went on to depict the Five Moons in a state Capitol mural titled "Flight of Spirit," which was dedicated in 1991.

#Rest In Peace Marjorie Tallchief #Native American Women #ballerina #Five Moons #oklahoma #Osage Nation

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