Edge Message #69 from Brian Sweeney, producer NZEDGE.COM
TO NEW ZEALAND EDGE GLOBAL COMMUNITY
AOTEAROVEANS IN GLOBAL PROFILE
Coverage from the world’s online media featuring edge movers and shakers, including:
Janet Frame RIP, Peter Jackson and team in Return of the King (everywhere), Keisha-Castle Hughes, Hayley Westenra, Russell Crowe, Michael Cullen, Black Sox, Black Caps, NZ Sevens, Witi Ihimaera, Christine Jeffs, Martin Henderson, Cliff Curtis, The Datsuns, Howard Frederick, Alannah Currie, Andrew Adamson, Sukhi Turner, Carol Owens, Judith Mayhew Jonas, Lynda Chanwai-Earle, Bob Charles, Black Grace, Maurice Gee, Natalie McComb, Elizabeth Knox, Callum McLeod, Peter Gordon, Anna Hansen and Brad Farmerie, NomD, MC Tahi, the Venerable Pong Re Sung Rap Tulku Rinpoche, edge friends Ian McKellen, Andy Serkis, Billy Connolly and Tom Cruise, Opus International, Nelson Wearable Arts, Milford Track, Wellington, Wanaka, NZ artists at Paradise Now NYC, and NZ wine, cuisine and Rings-inspired tourism in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Observer, The Scotsman, The Age, CNN, Vogue, Conde Nast Traveler, Toronto Star. /category/newzedge/
TO THE IS-LAND
nzedge tribute to Janet Frame (d. Dunedin 29 Jan 2004) by editor-at-large Paul Ward (4000 words): “Mixing and revolving words with the skill of a warrior handling a Taiaha, novelist Janet Frame made an pre-eminent edge contribution to international literature, coming as she did from the peripheries of art and society. Yet her fictional explorations have always been forays into the interior. For Frame her art and imagining was the closest she could come to conjuring experience, madness, dreams, identity and memory, into a coiled reality. The agenda for her prose, wrestling with the dual/jewel (to borrow a typical Frame word-play) nature of ‘truth’ entangled in the medium of its expression, is laid out the famous opening lines of To the Is-land: “From the first place of liquid darkness, within the second place of air and light, I set down the following record with its mixture of fact and truths and memories of truths and its direction toward the Third Place, where the starting point is myth.”
NZFLAG.COM
From the first day of nzedge we have advocated the adoption of the Silver Fern as the New Zealand flag. It is an emotionally visceral symbol that strikes the heart wherever you are in the world. Wellington businessman and change agent Lloyd Morrison has instigated a campaign to have the Silver Fern officially installed as the national flag. This is patriotism at its intelligent best. The design Lloyd has commissioned is swift, simple, contemporary and resonant. We’re 100% behind the effort. Register your support at www.nzflag.com
A CAFÉ IN THE SKY
This 60 minute documentary/drama about the Gloomy Sunday cult is written and produced by London-based nzedger Scott Alexander Young. Filmed in Budapest, A Café In The Sky delves into the legend of Rezso Seress, the composer of one of Hungary’s best known pieces of music, Szomoru Vasamap, or Gloomy Sunday. Drawing on a phenomenon some 71 years old, this is a story with universal themes; heartbreak, betrayal, the power of music, and the heavy burden that is ‘talent’. Includes interviews with the Chief Rabbi of Budapest and 87 year old psychiatrist Dr. Imre Zádor. And features some of the most exciting talent of the New Europe including Mark Griffith, Matt Devere, Brandon Krueger, Áron Peterfria, Zita Görög, Zsanett Nyerky & Andrea Keresztes. Go to www.scottalexanderyoung.com to download the trailer (70MB).
GEOGRAPHY
Expressing a metaphorical context for New Zealand has been a passion of mine for some years. I’m especially engaged with creating new visual language that shows what “edge” means, not only in our landscapes and signs and symbols but in our relationship with the international. So I’ve made a book, called it Geography, it’s 100 photographs with a few maps and notes. It’s a meditation about edge which I hope you can enjoy. http://shop.nzedge.com/product.asp?id=963798
Inspirational line-of-the-month is from The New York Times review of Public, the NoLita restaurant of Gordon/Hansen/Farmerie: “A high-risk, high-reward dining proposition. They did not come thousands of miles to bore New York. Understatement is not in the plan. Sometimes you have to slap people in the face to get their attention.”
Cheers. Hope your 2004 is going well so far, from many angles this is going to be a transformative year.
Brian Sweeney
Publisher, Producer
THE NEW ZEALAND EDGE
http://www.nzedge.com
brian@nzedge.com
