The Short List

The Edgar Awards, presented by The Mystery Writers Of America, honor the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction, television, film and theatre published or produced in the past year. The Awards will be announced on May 1, 2008. Nominees for Best Novel are:

• Christine Falls by Benjamin Black
• Priest by Ken Bruen
• The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon
• Soul Patch by Reed Farrel Coleman
• Down River by John Hart

Nominees for Best First Novel are:

• Missing Witness by Gordon Campbell
• In the Woods by Tana French
• Snitch Jacket by Christopher Goffard
• Head Games by Craig McDonald
• Pyres by Derek Nikitas

The Opera Club will be held at the Essex Library on the first Wednesday of the month beginning April 2 from 4 to 5 PM. We are offering five presentations to prepare listeners for the Salt Marsh Opera’s presentation of Lucia di Lammermoor at the Ivoryton Playhouse in October. The presenters include the following:

April 2: George Willauer, retired Professor of English at Connecticut College, will speak about the literary, cultural and historical background of Lucia, including Sir Walter Scott and Romanticism.

May 7: Diana McVey, SMO’s Lucia, will offer insights about preparing to sing the demanding title role in the opera.

June 4: Stephan Tieszan, Concertmaster of the SMO Orchestra, will discuss how Donizetti orchestrated Lucia and why he made certain choices in instrumentation.

NO EVENTS IN JULY OR AUGUST

September 3: Carol Werner-Feiertag, Stage Director for the production, will discuss staging Lucia for the Ivoryton Playhouse.

October 1: James Kuslan, who presented a fascinating illustrated lecture on the Opera Events series, will talk about madness in opera as well as bel canto, and will play sound clips of great Lucias, including Maria Callas.

If you plan to attend any or all of the lectures please call the Ivoryton or Essex Libraries for up-to-date information before each presentation in the event that the venue is changed. There is a $5 suggested donation to defray the cost of the speakers.

Victoria Murphy, PhD. will be presenting four sessions of sonnet reading and discussion at the Essex Library on Tuesday mornings at 10a.m. in April–April 8, 15, 22, and 29. Dr. Murphy has taught at Hunter College, Santa Fe Community College, The Brearley School and the Acadia Senior College in Maine. Join her in reading many sonnets, ancient and modern, and perhaps discover new connections between structure and sense. Writing a sonnet of one’s own may become irresistible.

A $5 contribution to cover the cost of materials is requested, to be paid at the first session. For more information, contact Dr. Murphy at 526-4426 or victoriamurphy@msn.com

To register for the program. please call the Library at 767-1560.

This series is sponsored by the Friends of the Essex Library.

April is a time of renewal and reinvention–not in the garden, at the Essex Library! We have a month full of terrific arts programming going on in April: Jenny Tripp’s The Write Stuff program for kids, Victoria Murphy’s Sonnet Programs for adults, the one-woman play The Secret Life Of Louisa May Alcott, and the launch of the Essex Opera Club. That might be enough for some but not for us. In addition to all of the above, Jenny Tripp is continuing her documentary series with 4 fabulous, upbeat films on Sundays at 7p.m. in April:

Ballets Russes : Part history, part love letter, Ballets Russes may be the most purely delightful documentary in years. The movie follows the birth of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in the early 1930s, an event that eventually led–after years of exhilarating experiments, bitter artistic battles, and exhausting tours–to the establishment of modern ballet around the world. Ballet Russes combines astonishing film footage of fantastical ballets (featuring extravagant sets designed by Salvador Dali and costumes by Henri Matisse) and interviews with surviving dancers in their 70s, 80s, and 90s (ranging from Dame Alicia Markova, who was a prima ballerina with the original Ballet Russe under impresario Sergei Diaghilev, to Yvonne Craig, who went on to become Batgirl in the ’60s tv show Batman); the result is a breathtaking range of scholarship and depth of feeling. The heart of the film is the dancers themselves, who are sly, thoughtful, gossipy, and amazingly youthful in spirit–even the most difficult times are discussed with humor and honesty. Ballet fans will find this an essential document, while anyone who’s never even thought of going to ballet will be completely caught up in these dancers’ passion and wonder.” Amazon.com

Sing Faster: The Stagehands’ Ring Cycle : “Winner of the prestigious Filmmaker’s Trophy at Sundance, SING FASTER is a spirited and comical behind-the-scenes look at Richard Wagner’s beloved “Ring Cycle,” one of the most ambitious and spectacular operas in history. In the tradition of “Noises Off,” this acclaimed film from Academy Award®-nominated filmmaker Jon Else tells the story of Wagner’s epic masterpiece entirely from the point of view of the opera’s unsung heroes - the union stagehands.

Night after night at the San Francisco Opera, a majestic universe of trolls, giants, and magic mountains comes alive before audiences. But when the stage dims, another spectacle unfolds as the highly-skilled stagehands maneuver 1000-pound set pieces in near darkness, with a meticulous choreography no less intricate than that of the opera’s. While the mythical Valkyries on stage seem an improbable counterpart to the stagehands, at the heart of the film is a surprising connection between Wagner’s Norse mythology and the sensibilities of these working people. And as the stage crew offers their own animated interpretation of the “Ring Cycle,” this hilarious and ultimately moving film becomes a meditation on the most basic of human themes: love, greed, power, and redemption.” Amazon.com

Who The #$&% Is Jackson Pollock?: “When Teri Horton, a 73-year-old former long-haul truck driver with an eighth grade education bought a painting in a thrift shop for five dollars, she didn’t know that it would pit her against the most powerful people in the art community and perhaps forever change the way art is authenticated around the world. Who The #$&% Is Jackson Pollock? is a rollicking adventure that documents a 15-year war with the art world’s inner circle, lifts the veil on how art is bought and sold in America and introduces audiences to the funny, profane and utterly unforgettable Teri Horton.” Amazon.com

Life After Tomorrow: ” The award winning Life After Tomorrow, a film by Julie Stevens and Gil Cates, Jr., reunites more than 40 women who played orphans in the original Broadway production of Annie and reveals the highs and lows of their experiences as child actresses in a cultural phenomenon. Once the curtain came down, many found it could be a hard-knock-life, fraught with out-of-control stage mothers, separation anxiety, and worst of all, pubescent growth spurts that could find the moppets being replaced by smaller, younger editions just waiting in the wings. As one cast member in the film remarks, The younger ones are coming to take your place and you’re 12. It’s not like you are getting downsized at 50…you’re 12!. While their lives moved on, the impact of the experience remains. Features behind-the-curtain footage from the original Broadway production and performances with the re-united orphans.” Amazon.com

The Opera Club, co-sponsored by the Essex and Ivoryton Libraries, will meet in the Program Room of the Essex Library on the first Wednesday of each month at 4p.m. to provide lectures and demonstrations to enhance your enjoyment of opera and local opera events. The first Opera Club meeting will take place on Wednesday, April 2 . There will be a suggested donation of $5 per meeting.

Greg Behrman, author of The Most Noble Adventure, will be on hand Monday, March 17th, 7 p.m., at the meeting of the American History Book Club at the Essex Library. Please join us for a lively discussion. Stop by or call the Library (767-1560) to pick up a copy of The Most Noble Adventure. Thanks go to Dan Nesbett for arranging Mr. Behrman’s visit.

Forget everything you thought you knew about our documentary program coming up in March…here’s the real scoop:

Through the Eyes of Others;

A documentary series, four Sunday evenings in March

The 2^nd, the 9^th, the 16^th and the 30^th at 7 pm at the Essex Library

Documentaries can educate, inflame, propagandize, or sanctify. Also, uniquely, they can take us into other worlds, the closed lives and secret societies that coexist with ours. The four films chosen for this series all provide a glimpse into hidden places. A toxic family tug-of-war is played out against crumbling grandeur. A media circus surrounds a bizarre fratricide down on the farm. Amish teenagers face a dangerous, fascinating passage to adulthood via worldly temptation. And an odd, tragic loner finds himself – but loses his life – through his obsession with grizzly bears. Astonishingly intimate, human-scale and revelatory, these films are quirky gems, like the people who inhabit them. You will never forget them.

March 2^nd, 7 pm

GREY GARDENS

Directors: Albert and David Maysle, 1975

Weirdly compelling, funny, tragic; GREY GARDENS became a cult phenomenon, and even spawned a Broadway musical. Welcome to the world of Big and Little Edie Beale; Jackie O’s eccentric, reclusive cousins. Living together in the moldering splendor of their East Hampton mansion, this toxic mother and her middle-aged daughter spar, reminisce, and eerily entertain us, with all the can’t-look-away fascination of a slow-motion car crash. Not to be missed.

March 9^th, 7 pm

BROTHER’S KEEPER

Director; Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, 1992,

Known by all of Munnsville, New York as harmless hermits, the Ward brothers (also including Lyman and Roscoe) live an 18th-century lifestyle in their tiny, grimy shack, sleeping in the same bed through cold winters and tending daily to their hayfields and livestock. Semiliterate and stunted by minimal exposure to the outside world, the Wards are disheveled children in the bodies of aging men; and when Delbert is charged with suffocating his ailing brother Bill, he’s a prime target for legal manipulation and a media circus that’s immediately drawn to his case. Fascinating and full of compassionate humanity. (As seen on Amazon.com)

March 16th, 7 pm

DEVIL’S PLAYGROUND

Director: Lucy Walker, 2002

Most of us know no more about the Amish than we can glean from books or a casual encounter – which goes a long way to explaining the fascination of Devil’s Playground. The film explores a little-known Amish coming-of-age rite, called Rumspringa. Believing as they do in adult baptism, the Amish require that their young people make an informed decision whether to stay in the community, or to choose the “English” (our) path, and withdraw. For this one time in their lives, Amish youth are allowed to sample freely from the dangerous attractions offered by the modern world; sex, drugs and rock and roll. And they do. The film follows a group of Amish teens struggling with their choices. Moving, surprising, illuminating.

March 30^th, 7 pm

GRIZZLY MAN

Director: Werner Herzog, 2005

Another major Academy kerfuffle occurred when this much-praised documentary was refused Oscar consideration for containing too much archival footage. Hertzog weaves together an extraordinary portrait of a difficult, complex man, amateur naturalist and wildlife advocate Timothy Treadwell. Treadwell, who spent 13 summers filming himself and his beloved grizzly bears in Katmai National Park, slowly unravels mentally until he comes to believe that he has become one of them. His fate, which seems inevitable from the outset, is only part of the story. Hertzog’s combination of Treadwell’s footage with interviews and his own musings make a fascinating film, and bring a strange, alienated, yet ultimately sympathetic man, back to life.

As a follow-up to the Library’s Environmental Film Series in February, the Essex Land Trust will host a viewing of a 20-minute film entitled: “A Connecticut Plan To Fight Global Warming” produced by the Connecticut Fund For The Environment on March 12th at 7p.m. in the Library’s Program Room. Josh Friedman, a member of CFE’s outreach team, will hold a question and answer session after the film to share information about what can be done at the local level to save the environment.

To register, or for more information, contact Paul Greenberg at 767-7355.

The Essex Library will present a documentary program on Tuesdays in March (4th, 11th, 18th and 25th) at 2p.m. in the Library’s Program Room. Please call (767-1560) or stop in to the Library to reserve your space.

Documentaries can educate, inflame, propagandize, or sanctify. Also, uniquely, they can take us into other worlds, the closed lives and secret societies that coexist with ours. The four films chosen for this series all provide a glimpse into hidden places. A toxic family tug-of-war is played out against crumbling grandeur. Two young men from the ghetto vie to escape it, without losing themselves along the way. Amish teenagers face a dangerous, fascinating passage to adulthood via worldly temptation. And an odd, tragic loner finds himself – but loses his life – through his obsession with grizzly bears.

Astonishingly intimate, human-scale and revelatory, these films are quirky gems, like the people who inhabit them. You will never forget them.

GREY GARDENS

Directors: Albert and David Maysle, 1975

Weirdly compelling, funny, tragic; GREY GARDENS became a cult phenomenon, and even spawned a Broadway musical. Welcome to the world of Big and Little Edie Beale; Jackie O’s eccentric, reclusive cousins. Living together in the moldering splendor of their East Hampton mansion, this toxic mother and her middle-aged daughter spar, reminisce, and eerily entertain us, with all the can’t-look-away fascination of a slow-motion car crash. Not to be missed.

HOOP DREAMS

Director: Steve James, 1994

HOOP DREAMS caused an Academy firestorm when, despite uniformly glowing reviews, it was eliminated for Oscar consideration on a technicality. The film tells the parallel stories of two talented inner-city kids with dreams of professional basketball glory, each trying to cope with the pressure cooker environment of scholastic athletics, and the realities of family life on Chicago’s mean streets. Filmed over a five-year period, it’s considered a classic of the genre.

DEVIL’S PLAYGROUND

Director: Lucy Walker, 2002

Most of us know no more about the Amish than we can glean from books or a casual encounter – which goes a long way to explaining the fascination of Devil’s Playground. The film explores a little-known Amish coming-of-age rite, called Rumspringa. Believing as they do in adult baptism, the Amish require that their young people make an informed decision whether to stay in the community, or to choose the “English” (our) path, and withdraw. For this one time in their lives, Amish youth are allowed to sample freely from the dangerous attractions offered by the modern world; sex, drugs and rock and roll. And they do. The film follows a group of Amish teens struggling with their choices. Moving, surprising, illuminating.

GRIZZLY MAN

Director: Werner Herzog, 2005

Another major Academy kerfuffle occurred when this much-praised documentary was refused Oscar consideration for containing too much archival footage. Hertzog weaves together an extraordinary portrait of a difficult, complex man, amateur naturalist and wildlife advocate Timothy Treadwell. Treadwell, who spent 13 summers filming himself and his beloved grizzly bears in Katmai National Park, slowly unravels mentally until he comes to believe that he has become one of them. His fate, which seems inevitable from the outset, is only part of the story. Hertzog’s combination of Treadwell’s footage with interviews and his own musings make a fascinating film, and bring a strange, alienated, yet ultimately sympathetic man, back to life.

There are some additions and changes to some of our upcoming programs:

1. The Thursday afternoon Knitting Club for children in grades 3-6 will commence on Thursday, January 17th at 5p.m.

2. The First Monday Book Club is making a permanent change to the Second Monday Book Club and will meet again on Monday, February 11 to discuss The Pickup by Nadine Gordimer.

3. The Essex And The Sea Series will kick off on Sunday, February 3rd with a visual parade of the greatest sailing photographs ever taken in America, selected from Mystic Seaport’s Rosenfeld Collection. We will follow that up on Sunday, February 10th with a behind-the-scenes look at the treasures of the Mystic Seaport Museum. The Program will close on Sunday, February 24th with a slide show of breathtaking photographs of Connecticut lighthouses by noted author and photographer Jeremy D’Entremont.