Leonard Quart is Professor Emeritus of Cinema — CUNY and COSI; Contributing Editor, Cineaste; Columnist for Berkshire Eagle; and co-author of American Film and Society Since 1945 —4th Edition (Praeger).
It’s not Jonathan the man I want to write about, but how he defined himself as an artist, which he saw as a moral imperative—his life’s prime and most passionate commitment.
Rackstraw Downes' paintings would best be described as realist with his sustained, meticulous and intensive outdoor working process, and paintings that draw attention to what is characteristic of the 21st-century cityscape.
One result of the election is that the country is even more divided between rural and suburban, big-city America—not so different than Europe where right wing parties have their support in small towns and rural areas outside cities like Warsaw, Berlin and Budapest.
Spike Lee's new film "BlacKKKlansman" contains some flaws but, though set in the 1970s, often transcends its weaknesses to heavy-handedly but powerfully evoke our current Trump-dominated era, one in which an unembarrassed racist is in power and the alt-right, including neo-Nazis, has been resurrected.
When I feel the need, I often invoke images of my prosaic East Bronx neighborhood, which was then an intact, primarily Jewish working-class and lower-class/middle-class mix of a few Art Deco apartment buildings, a few private homes, and many five-story red brick walk-ups and gray tenements.
My encounter is the kind that you could easily have in the city if you ask the right questions, and have the patience to sit and listen closely to another person’s revelations.
