Author: Ohart

Kurdish culture thrives in the Shahba refugee camp on the outskirts of the Syrian city of Afrin. Among the city’s displaced residents now living in the camp are members of a local theater group. Nevroz Resho visited the group in the camp as they rehearsed their play, “The Sin of the Horse.” Bezhan Hamdard narrates.
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Fifty-three men slung their wives or partners over their shoulders and hurtled off on an hourlong race in the small Finnish town of Sonkajarvi on Saturday, as thousands of fans cheered from the stands.

The World Wife-Carrying Championship, now in its 23rd year, draws thousands of visitors to the town of 4,200 and has gained followers around the world.

There are official qualifying competitions in countries including the United States, United Kingdom, Sweden and Estonia. On Saturday, 53 couples from 13 countries joined the competition, organizers said.

The idea of wife-carrying as a sport was inspired by the 19th-century legend of Ronkainen the Robber, who tested aspiring members of his gang by forcing them to carry sacks of grain or live pigs over a similar course.

The championship is also said to stem from an even earlier practice of wife-stealing — leading many present-day contestants to compete with someone else’s wife.

On Saturday, Lithuanian parents of two, Vytautas Kirkliauskas and Neringa Kirkliauskiene, won the race, which involved running, wading through a slippery pool and getting through an obstacle course. The two defeated six-time world champion Taisto Miettinen, a Finn.

“It’s my wife,” Kirkliauskas shouted happily after the race. “She’s the best.”

The couple first competed in Sonkajarvi in 2005.

Finland, which straddles the Arctic Circle and goes through long, dark winters, is no stranger to strange sports. It has also given the world the world boot throwing, air guitar and mobile phone throwing competitions, to name a few.

“I think because we have only three months of light, we need to come up with nice stuff to do during the summertime, and we want to show everyone we have a great sense of humor,” said Sanna-Mari Nuutinen, a volunteer at Saturday’s event.
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Although Russia made it further at this year’s World Cup than almost anyone expected, it was Croatia that advanced to the semifinals with a 4-3 shootout victory Saturday following a 2-2 draw.

The overachieving hosts, the lowest-ranked team in the tournament at No. 70, were trying to make it to the World Cup semifinals for the first time since the Soviet Union finished fourth at the 1966 tournament in England.

“I left everything on the field and unfortunately we were unlucky,” Russia midfielder Roman Zobnin said. “We gave everything we could.”

The Croats hadn’t advanced this far at the World Cup since 1998, when the country made its first appearance.

Croatia will next play England in the semifinals on Wednesday in Moscow. The English team defeated Sweden 2-0.

With the crowd silenced following an extra-time goal from Croatia defender Domagoj Vida in the 101st minute, Russia defender Mario Fernandes scored to send the match to yet another penalty shootout.

Native Brazilian

Fernandes, who was born in Brazil but rejected a chance to play for that country’s national team, sent his penalty kick wide of the net in the shootout, giving Croatia the advantage.

Both goalkeepers made early saves in the shootout, with an injured Danijel Subasic stopping the opening shot from Fedor Smolov. Igor Akinfeev later blocked an attempt from Mateo Kovacic.

At 1-1, Fernandes missed his shot — only the second player to miss in any of the four shootouts at this year’s World Cup.

The teams then traded two scores each before Ivan Rakitic calmly scored the winning penalty.

Denis Cheryshev gave Russia the lead with a shot into the upper corner in the 31st minute. Croatia equalized with Andrej Kramaric’s header near halftime.

It was the second straight time both teams played in a shootout. Russia beat Spain 4-3 and Croatia defeated Denmark 3-2 in the round of 16.

Argentina in 1990 had been the last team to win consecutive World Cup shootouts. It defeated Yugoslavia in the quarterfinals and Italy in the semifinals that year, which also made Italy the last host nation to lose on penalties before Saturday.
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The Museum of Making Music in Carlsbad, California, celebrates music making throughout the year.

During a recent international festival, the museum encouraged young and old to pick up an instrument and strike a tune, joining music lovers in more than 100 countries on Make Music day, June 21.

Visitors were greeted with the symphonic sounds of the Earth Harp, strung across the parking lot, as they arrived. Inside, some amateur music makers held group performances, while others wandered the exhibits, banging on a gong or strumming a mandolin.

“We want every child that comes through this museum to pluck a string, hit a key, hit a drum,” said museum director Carolyn Grant, “because it doesn’t take much to ignite that spark” and a lifelong passion.

Said Laura Jordon-Smith, mom to a 2-year-old budding musician: “She loves to learn the words, especially songs that have little hand motions and things. She loves what we do in her music classes.”

Whether playing or listening, music is an exciting means of self-expression, said museum director Grant.
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Singer Chris Brown walked off stage after his concert in Florida and into the hands of waiting deputies, who arrested him on a felony battery charge involving a nightclub photographer last year. 

Tampa police released more details about the battery warrant Friday after Brown posted $2,000 bond to be released from the Palm Beach County Jail.

The warrant accuses Brown of hitting Bennie Vines Jr., who was hired by a club in Tampa to take pictures during an event hosted by Brown in April 2017.

Vines told officers Brown punched him while he was snapping photos. Brown was gone by the time officers arrived that night. Vines refused medical treatment, but he told the officers that he wanted to prosecute over a minor lip cut.

Emails to Brown’s agents weren’t immediately returned.

The entertainer is in the middle of his “Heartbreak on a Full Moon” tour and was scheduled to perform in Tampa Friday night.

Brown has been in repeated legal trouble since pleading guilty of assaulting his then-girlfriend, singer Rihanna, in 2009. He completed his probation in that case in 2015.

In 2013, Brown was charged with misdemeanor assault after he was accused of striking a man outside a Washington, D.C., hotel. He was ordered into rehab but was dismissed for violating facility rules.

Brown spent 2½ months in custody, with U.S. marshals shuttling him between Los Angeles and the nation’s capital for hearings.

After he completed court-ordered anger-management classes, Brown was accused of throwing a brick at his mother’s car following a counseling session.

After Brown posted a picture to his 44 million Instagram followers in January showing his 3-year-old daughter, Royalty, cuddling with a pet monkey, California fish and wildlife agents seized the capuchin monkey named Fiji from his home in Los Angeles. Agents said then that Brown could face a misdemeanor charge carrying up to six months in jail for lacking a permit for the primate.
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As the World Cup nears its climax, one of the players being cheered on in Africa is French striker Kylian Mbappe. Mbappe’s mother is from Algeria and his father is from Cameroon. While Cameroon failed to qualify for this year’s World Cup, many Cameroonians feel they are represented by Mbappe.

“France are performing very well and if you see them qualifying, it is because of Kylian Mbappe,” said Marcel Leinyuy, owner of Terminus bar in Makepe, a neighborhood in Cameroon’s economic capital, Douala. The bar was re-baptized “Mbappe” after the player scored two goals in France’s 4-3 victory over Argentina in the World Cup.

“I wish our football federation could have called him to play for us in the national team. When you look at our own national team, you see there is something missing of which Mbappe has,” Leinyuy said.

Mbappe, whose Cameroonian father is his agent, is one of 15 players on the French squad who were either born in Africa or can trace their roots back to the continent, parts of which France ruled at one time as a colonial power.

Mbappe became a professional player in Monaco at the age of 16, just three years ago. 

He has never lived nor played in Cameroon, but his performances attracted the attention of the Cameroon Football Federation, and he was contacted to play for the national team, nicknamed the Indomitable Lions. But French coach Didier Deschamps already had keen eyes for him.

Soccer analyst and former Cameroon premier league player Gabriel Tsila says it is a great loss that Cameroon failed to get Mbappe to play for his father’s homeland.

Tsila says the team needed Mbappe to bring Cameroon’s football (soccer) back to glory, but their local football federation neglected him. He says it is a shame that Cameroon abandoned Mbappe to France at a time when central African states’ football has taken a downward turn due to a lack of talented players.

Cameroon’s national team is the African champion. However, the squad was eliminated from the race to the 2018 World Cup after a one-all tie last year with Nigeria. 

Local football fans say if they had players like Mbappe, they would have performed better. 

Nonetheless, thousands of Cameroonian World Cup fans will cheer on Mbappe, who they see as a fellow countryman playing for a nation with deep ties to Cameroon.
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The year 1968 was a time of great social and political upheaval in America. Coincidentally, the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington also opened to the public that year. To celebrate its 50th anniversary, the museum is presenting a time capsule of that important period and the cultural icons who shaped it. The exhibit is especially timely as the nation once again grapples with political and social turmoil. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.
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A book about an alleged prophecy describing Donald Trump’s win as U.S. president is being produced as a movie by Liberty University, but students at the Christian college are pushing back on the film.

The production, in which Liberty University students are technicians, editors and set decorators for class credit, tells the story of Mark Taylor, a retired firefighter from Orlando, Florida. Taylor said in 2011 God told him Trump would become president of the United States. Trump won the election in 2016.

“This movie could reflect very poorly on all Liberty students and Liberty University as a whole,” states an online petition called “Cancel the Liberty University Film Programs Heretical Film Project,” created by Liberty students.

The author’s “claims to have received prophecies directly from God … do not align with the Bible’s message,” states the petition signed by more than 2,000 respondents.

Liberty University, in Lynchburg, Virginia, partnered with Christian filmmaker Rick Eldridge, owner of Reel Works Studio in Charlotte, N.C., to produce the book, which was published in July 2017. 

Liberty University staff contends that this has been an excellent learning experience for students in cinematic arts at the university.

“We think this feature-length work experience is unique to our department among film schools,” said Stephan Schultze, Liberty professor of cinematic arts and director of the film. “This distinction gives our students a skill set that makes them ready for the workforce upon graduating.”

Movie production experience

Students agree they have gained hands-on experience working on the movie production. But some said they object to the alleged prophecy and the message.

In their online petition, they cited a later interpretation of the Bible, 1 John 4:1, that suggests believers “test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.”

“We should be very wary of modern-day prophets,” the petition says. “Mark Taylor has claimed God told him that electing Trump will save the world, which is unbiblical at best and heretical at worst.”

“Liberty’s mission statement and purpose is to be a light on a hill and to train champions for Christ,” the petition continues. “Openly supporting both a ‘modern-day prophet’ and Trump as a school does not convey this mission.”

Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. is an outspoken Trump supporter and was appointed to the Trump Task Force for Higher Education in 2017.

Schultze said the Liberty students who worked on the film served in positions that usually go to people with at least five years of experience in the film industry.

The Liberty students pushed back, saying they were “of the distasteful opinion that the producer had only come to Liberty to make his film because he could get free student labor that would significantly lower the cost of making the film,” according to a source who asked to remain anonymous. “Many of us felt used at times, which was another reason why we petitioned against the film in the first place.”

Students were given other options to working on the prophecy film, but those were of lesser experience, the source said. Well into the making of the film, students said, “it became clear … after the initial script reading and the many rewrites … the film did have a political agenda, which we were against.”

Biopic-style film

Schultze said the film is a biopic that “chronicles real-life events, following a fireman [Taylor] suffering from PTSD who believes he has heard a message from God, that Donald Trump will be the next president.” He did not respond directly to whether he thought the film was heretical but said he would “advise people to watch the movie first.”

“I think the film will be well-received, and people will be inspired to know that our students have created a narrative film whose quality is strong enough to warrant a national theatrical release on more than 1,200 screens,” he said.

“This is been a great experience for students, and I believe it will provide them with the edge they need for employment upon graduating,” Schultze added.

He said that Liberty University did not receive or pay any fees in exchange for the movie being produced there. He said there was a “cost benefit to student involvement,” but there was also “a risk to engage newly skilled labor still in a steep learning curve. It all evens out in the end because additional shooting days are required for the teaching process to take place on set. Our students’ education is a huge benefactor in the process.”

Students contested that the experience had enhanced their learning.

“Many do not want this movie on their resume and some are even considering … dropping out,” the student petition said.

Eldridge of Reel Works said he wants the film’s message to resonate with its viewers.

“We hope that they will be inspired by all that is great about our country,”  Eldridge said of the audience in an email to VOA. “All the while we hope that they will be entertained by the story and the many voices who will speak during our reflective conversations after the dramatic story.”
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It might seem meshuganah — crazy — to stage a beloved musical in a language that most of the audience won’t understand. But Tevye the dairyman and his family will speak Yiddish in an off-Broadway production of “Fiddler on the Roof” directed by Oscar and Tony winner Joel Grey.

 

Previews start Wednesday for the show, which will be the first-ever U.S. production of “Fiddler” in the language its characters would have spoken.

 

“I always knew what this play was about and that’s how I had the chutzpah to tackle it,” Grey said during a rehearsal at the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, which is housed at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in lower Manhattan. “We work in English first on the scenes so that everybody understands the characters, and the third or fourth time we do it in Yiddish, and we just keep at it.”

There will be supertitles in English and Russian for theatergoers who don’t know their schmaltz from their schmutz.

 

“Fiddler on the Roof” opened on Broadway in 1964 starring Zero Mostel as Tevye and ran for eight years. It has been a favorite of schools and community theater groups ever since and has been revived on Broadway four times. Its songs including “Sunrise, Sunset” and “If I Were a Rich Man” are familiar even to people who’ve never seen the show.

 

Based on stories by Sholom Aleichem originally written in Yiddish, “Fiddler” is set in 1905 in a Jewish village in czarist Russia.

 

A Yiddish version of “Fiddler” translated by actor and writer Shraga Friedman as “Fidler afn Dakh” was performed in Israel in 1966 but was never staged in the United States until now.

 

In the Yiddish version of the show, the song “To Life!” doesn’t have to be translated from “L’Chaim!” — It’s just ‘L’Chaim!” “If I Were a Rich Man” becomes “Ven ikh bin a Rotschild,” from a story by Aleichem about a man who imagines he were as wealthy as a member of the Rothschild family.

The new production shows how decades of work to preserve Yiddish by organizations including the Folksbiene — Yiddish for World Stage — have paid off.

 

“For more than a generation we’ve had an explosion of contemporary Yiddish arts and culture by musicians, poets, theater makers, scholars and writers who have studied the language and its history and its incredible volume of modern literature and eclectic music,” said Alisa Solomon, the author of “Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof,” published in 2013.

 

Solomon said “Fiddler” is “free to just kind of be itself in a way that 50 years ago it couldn’t be in some circles because there was an absence of that vibrant Yiddish culture.”

 

Yiddish, which is based on German with elements taken from Hebrew and other languages and is written with the Hebrew alphabet, was once spoken by millions of Eastern European Jews but fell victim both to the Holocaust and the pull of assimilation. Isaac Bashevis Singer, who won a Nobel Prize for his stories written in Yiddish, famously said the language “has been dying for a thousand years, and I’m sure it will go on dying for another thousand.”

 

Immigrants to the United States built a thriving Yiddish theater scene that launched the careers of famed acting teacher Stella Adler and stars such as Edward G. Robinson. The Folksbiene was founded in 1915 and was once one of more than a dozen Yiddish theater companies on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. It presents plays from the Yiddish theater canon as well as new work and adaptations of Yiddish literary works such as “Yentl,” based on Singer’s story “Yentl the Yeshiva Boy.”

 

Grey’s father, Mickey Katz, was a musician and actor who performed Yiddish comedy songs, but Grey said he doesn’t speak much Yiddish himself and has been learning while rehearsing.

 

Grey watched as the actors rehearsed the tavern scene from “Fiddler” in which Tevye agrees to let the butcher Lazar Wolf marry his eldest daughter. To a non-Yiddish speaker, the most easily understood words were schnapps and vodka.

 

The 86-year-old is best known for his role as the master of ceremonies in “Cabaret,” a musical that improbably turned the rise of Hitler into popular entertainment.

 

“He brings a whole other dimension in terms of his theatrical knowledge and sense,” said Zalmen Mlotek, the Folksbiene’s artistic director. “It’s an experience.”
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It was 50 years ago the sci-fi epic “2001: A Space Odyssey” by author Arthur C. Clarke and filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, opened in theaters across America to mixed reviews. The almost three-hour long film, was too cerebral and slow-moving to be appreciated by general audiences in 1968. Today, half a century later, the movie is one of the American Film Institute’s top 100 films of all time.

Film director Douglas Trumbull was a special photographic effects supervisor on the “2001” set. He describes Kubrick as a perfectionist and an innovative genius, who spent four years producing the film.

“He started out with the intention of making a more conventional movie, with dialogue and suspense and character development and drama and things that movies are normally are made out of. And during the production he began stripping away all of the conventions of normal melodrama because he was working on this 70mm giant widescreen Cinerama process and the movie progressively became more immersive. And the more immersive it became and the more experiential it became the less you had to talk about it,” says Trumbull.

To create this immersive experience Kubrick built “a centrifuge set, the big center piece of the movie” as Trumbull describes it. 

The cameras were tied on the rotating set and were filming in 360 degrees. This is how Kubrick created the illusion of the spacecraft crew walking from the floor to the ceiling. And then there was the music.

“The movie differentiates itself in many ways with using classical music rather than a score which underscores every moment and the composer will often gouge the strings at the moment you are supposed to be afraid. Kubrick did not want any of that manipulation,” says Trumbull.

The music of Johann Strauss’ Blue Danube Waltz is in step with Kubrick’s crisp, slow moving images of space: an otherworldly spectacle watched on huge Cinerama curved screens in 1968.

Many describe the effect as ‘hypnotic,’ enhancing the message of “2001:A Space Odyssey,” that humanity’s intellectual advancement was aided by alien intelligence.

Kubrick steered clear of images of stereotypical aliens. Instead, the alien presence appears suddenly, through a looming black monolith, transmitting signals that teach apelike anthropoids how to use tools for hunting and survival. Millions of years later, in Kubrick’s imagined high tech world of 2001, the aliens make contact again through the monolith.

This time, the sleek rectangle prods humans towards an exploration voyage to Jupiter.

“And they get to Jupiter and that’s where the transformation takes place.” By “transformation,” Trumbull means the evolution of Dave Bowman, the only surviving astronaut aboard Spacecraft Discovery 1, into a noncorporeal entity after he makes contact with aliens through a stargate that transcends time and space. Trumbull, takes credit for the visual effects that created the famous Stargate.

“I seemed to be able to come at it with some new solutions for Stanley that no one had thought out before and he began to trust me. So, I would go to him and say ‘I think I have the solution for the Stargate,’ for example, that was one of the high points for me on the movie. And it was this idea that you could take photography and open the camera shutter for a long period of time, several seconds, and move lights and blink them on and off in patterns and create three dimensional light streams for the star gate, which seems to me to be in perfect harmony with the idea of the Stargate which of itself was supposed to be a transition through time and space,” Trumbull says.

Other innovations followed.

“There was one artist who was in charge of painting the Earth for example, no one had any photographs of the Earth yet, because they had not added orbiting satellites yet,” says Trumbull. “And so, he worked out this technique painting with water colors on glass and then painting the clouds on glass and then going back and scratching it with a razor blade which started creating things that simulated the way clouds naturally form on the Earth. Then, I painted all the stars in the movie. All the stars are spattered white paint from my airbrush onto black shiny paper and I’ve worked out this technique of reducing the pressure of the airbrush until it started to sputter, and it would sputter stars which would become completely irregular and very natural looking, not like I painted them with a paintbrush, which would look artificial.”

Trumbull compares Kubrick’s filming of “2001” to today’s all-immersive Virtual Reality filmmaking:

“You know, the time when the ‘2001’ was made, it was in a time of Cinerama and these 70-millimeter spectacles of “Sound of Music,” “West Side Story,” and giant-screen theaters and you would go out, it was a big deal to go out to see a big-screen movie.”

Today, he says, the equivalent all immersive 360-degree filming and viewing would be virtual reality.

“A lot of people want to have their virtual reality experience, they want to go into another dimension, they want to have some experience that transcends their everyday reality. That’s what I think virtual reality promises.”

Equally significant to the film’s technology is the plot.

“The story it was trying to express was extremely cosmic and very big. Because the idea was that some super intelligent highly evolved civilization way beyond our imagination that to us would look like a god would be incomprehensible to us, like magic, was intervening in human affairs from time to time just to make sure we got through,” says Trumbull. 

A powerful sub plot was the antagonistic relationship between man and artificial intelligence. Hal, the ship’s malfunctioning central computer, and Bowman, clash over the ship’s control. 

Bowman prevails. His psychedelic-looking passage through the Stargate ends in a static hotel room the aliens have recreated from his memory in order to make contact with him in a different dimension. There, on the bed, Bowman, a very old man, is dying before he gets transformed into a transparent star child.

To celebrate the film’s 50th anniversary, artist Simon Birch recreated that hotel room at the Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. Exhibit curator Martin Collins explains the lasting power of the film.

“The movie did not seek to pose specific answers to its largest questions. What would be the fruits of space exploration, what would be the potential meaning of contact with extra-terrestrials, what would be the possible transformations that might occur to humanity as it undertakes exploration outside the planet? So, all of these larger questions are kind of implied here in this room and I think we hope that these visitors will sit back a little bit and think about why this room is here and think about this larger set of questions that Kubrick and Clark posed in “2001: (A Space Odyssey).” 

The film has been remastered in HD format and has been released in IMAX theaters to celebrate its 50th anniversary. It feels as contemporary as ever.

“I think the movie has stood all these 50 years because it’s unique, it’s spectacularly beautiful, it’s 70mm giant screen. You have to see it on a giant screen to say ‘ah, now I understand why it’s so beautiful, and why these shots last so long, because they are worth looking at. And then the story is this very cosmic evolutionary future looking. And so, when the movie is over, there is a lot to think about,” says Trumbull.
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The weirder it gets, the more Lakeith Stanfield looks right at home.

 

It was Stanfield, as the bodysnatched Andrew Hayworth, personifying the nightmare of Jordan Peele’s “Get Out.” In Donald Glover’s “Atlanta,” his cosmically lackadaisical pot-smoking philosopher Darius is the epitome of the show’s freewheeling surrealism. And in Boots Riley’s comic and caustic social satire “Sorry to Bother You,” Stanfield is the entry-level telemarketer Cassius (“Cash”) Green, whose swift rise introduces him to a darkly dystopian world.

 

“I do find I’m a little more comfortable than the average person in strange situations, which is probably why I’m an actor,” says Stanfield. “I’ve been in some strange situations. Like orgies. And I was in an orgy in this movie. It wasn’t strange to me at all. I had no reservations about getting naked. I was supposed to be naked in this, full frontal.”

 

He grins. “Maybe I am, I don’t know.”

 

Since his acclaimed feature-film debut in 2013’s “Short Term 12,” Stanfield, 26, has become one of the most arresting, unpredictable, and in-demand actors in Hollywood. He has played Jimmie Lee Jackson (“Selma”), Snoop Dogg (“Straight Outta Compton”‘), Miles Davis (“Miles Ahead”) and, um, Chandler, in Jay-Z’s “Friends”-style music video “Moonlight.” In even his soberer parts, Stanfield has a disarmingly laid-back, unflappable presence, like his antennae is tuned to a different frequency than everyone else.

 

Glover, the “Atlanta” creator, vividly remembers first meeting Stanfield.

 

“He barely talked to me,” Glover said in an email. “He was not concerned with getting the job at all. He was already living in a different dimension than the rest of us.”

 

“Sorry to Bother You,” which opens Friday on the heels of ecstatic reviews, Stanfield may have found the best feature-film vehicle yet for his particular dimension. The movie is a years-long passion project for Riley, the Bay-area hip-hop pioneer and activist, who along the way also spoke to Glover and Peele about the role. It’s a wild, anti-capitalist romp through workplace America, all seen through the dazed eyes of Stanfield.

“What holds the movie together — which is why I picked Lakeith — is there’s all this crazy stuff happening but you have to believe that character,” says Riley. “If it’s an actor that’s like, ‘Oh, this is how I show I’m scared. This is how I show I’m confused’ — it wouldn’t work. Lakeith doesn’t care about what his face looks like. He just gets to that emotion.”

 

In the film, Cassius is catapulted into overnight success once he begins using what an older employee played by Danny Glover terms is “your white voice.” Stanfield’s rise, though, has been predicated on remaining himself.

 

“It’s a hard thing to be yourself and be available,” Stanfield said in a recent interview in Soho. “It’s much easier to use the white voice, which I’ve also done. But at some point, I become exhausted with it and I have to say what’s on my mind and do what I feel. Part of that is the reason why people put cameras on me.”

 

Stanfield has previously channeled into music his underprivileged upbringing in the Southern California desert city of Victorville. In eachof the 2015 music videos for his hip-hop duo Moors, Stanfield (who recently apologized for a freestyle with homophobic lyrics) returns to an image of drowning on the seafloor.

 

“At the time I made those, I felt smothered by circumstances,” says Stanfield. “There was a lot of family drama at the time. I watched a family member that I love try to kill themselves by suffocation. I was writing from that place. The reason why you haven’t seen very much follow-up to that kind of material is because, luckily, I haven’t been in those kinds of situations.”

 

Drawn into acting by a high-school drama class, Stanfield came to Los Angeles at 18. He recalls spending hours staring at Echo Lake in between auditions, with nothing else to do.

 

“I was homeless. And I was hungry sometimes,” Stanfield says. “But I didn’t really view it as hard. I always kept a positive idea about it. I remember being in my car listening to Jimi Hendrix and eating McDonald’s and being like: One day, I’m going to remember this moment. And I still do.”

 

Stanfield’s breakthrough came via Destin Daniel Cretton’s college short film “Short Term 12,” which five years later became the feature about a foster care facility for at-risk teens. By then, Stanfield was in Sacramento working at a marijuana factory. His character, who gradually comes out of his shell, mirrored Stanfield’s own journey. But any reticence is now long gone.

 

“I always want to expand,” says Stanfield. “I can learn something from everyone and everything and hopefully I get to play a dog that is also a cat, that is also a man and a woman and a flower so I can just be all versions of life.”

 

“Playing a flower would be awesome,” adds Stanfield, smiling, before referencing his “Atlanta” character. “It’s a very Darius thing to say.”

 

Exactly where Darius ends and Stanfield begins can be difficult to define. A lot of Darius’ eccentric serenity comes directly from Stanfield, who improvises much of Darius’ non-sequitur musing. “In some ways, he is me,” says Stanfield.

 

“I think he’s not acting. Acting is pretending. And Keith doesn’t seem to pretend much,” explains Glover. “Darius, like Lakeith, is living in the now. I can honestly say Lakeith is the only person in the world I know who could play Darius.”

 

There’s some method to Stanfield’s madness, even if the method is the sort that worries directors. Riley discovered that himself, when he realized Stanfield didn’t know his lines as shooting approached on “Sorry to Bother You.”

 

“And he’s like: ‘I don’t usually do that until right before,’ says Riley. “His brain is still going through a process of finding the words. It might just be a millisecond more, but it’s not that polished thing. That makes the lines more real for him. That’s what all the fantastical elements and the absurdity rely on.”

 

Last summer, Stanfield had a baby with his girlfriend, actress Xosha Roquemore. He has his biggest budget film yet coming in October: “The Girl in the Spider’s Web.” In a since-deleted Instagram post, Stanfield noted of the largely Swedish cast: “I’m the only black person in this film.”

 

But having grown up gravitating toward movies that he saw himself in, Stanfield likes the idea that “Sorry to Bother You” could be “some kid’s ‘Menace to Society’ … but with less guns.”

 

“Now, black bodies can occupy space where we have these fantastical and absurd things happening, which we haven’t seen,” he says. “You can’t do that when you’re too busy trying to make yourself seem human. We can still talk about those things, but now we can also talk about these other things.”
…

The International Basketball Federation, or FIBA, is conducting an investigation into a bench-clearing brawl between Australia and the Philippines that led to the ejection of 13 players.

The fight broke out during a 2019 FIBA World Cup qualifying game Monday in the Philippine Arena outside Manila. Australia was leading the host squad 79-48 late in the third quarter when Roger Pogoy of the Philippines struck Australian opponent Chris Goulding with an elbow. Goulding’s teammate Daniel Kickert retaliated by shoving Pogoy to the floor, sparking the free-for-all.

The on-court anger spread into the crowd, with at least one fan throwing a folding chair at the players.

The game resumed with only three eligible Philippines players. The game was called after two of the Philippine players fouled out and Australia holding a commanding 89-53 lead.

FIBA issued a statement saying it will open disciplinary proceedings against both teams, with final decisions to be “communicated in the coming days.”

Anthony Moore, the head of Basketball Australia, said his players were “bruised and battered” but not seriously hurt. Moore apologized for the team’s actions, saying it was “not the spirit in which we aim to play basketball.”

Among the players ejected was Australian center Thon Maker, who launched several wild high-flying kicks at Philippine players during the melee. The Sudanese-born Maker, a star with the National Basketball League’s Milwaukee Bucks, tweeted his apologies hours after the brawl, saying he was “deeply disappointed over the actions displayed” during the game.

“Being from a war-torn country, basketball for me has always been a means to bring people together,” Maker said. 
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Like fans all over soccer-mad Brazil, Carlos Junior followed every move the national team made on the field Monday in its 2-0 victory over Mexico.

He wiped his brow every time Mexico closed in but failed to score. He banged the table or a drum when Brazil took a shot and missed. And he jumped up and down and hugged friends when Neymar finally put the ball in the net in the 51st minute.

But Junior did not watch or listen to the game the way most Brazilians did. Instead, the 31-year-old massage therapist who is deaf and blind experienced the match with the help of interpreters using touch communication and a model soccer field to recount the passes, goals and fouls of the national team.

Junior’s love of soccer and his way of following the World Cup moved many in Latin America’s largest nation after a friend posted a video of him keeping up with Brazil’s group game against Costa Rica. The video caught the attention of national and international media and has been shared and seen by millions online.

“The moment you do this, you show that a deaf and blind person is the same as any other person,” Junior, who communicates with tactile sign language, said of the video and its wide viewership.

On Monday, Junior and a handful of other people with sight and hearing losses gathered at a cultural center in Sao Paulo to follow the game with the help of interpreters.

Junior has followed soccer for as long as he can remember. He has Usher syndrome, which causes hearing and vision problems. While born deaf, he was able to see as a child and even played goalkeeper on a team for deaf youth. At 14, his vision began to deteriorate, and he was fully blind by 23. He continued to cheer for his beloved Sao Paulo with the help of his father.

“Before my dad would take my hand and say, ‘Ehh! Look there! A goal! A goal!’ But information was missing,” Junior said. “I wanted to know if the ball hit the crossbar, what side was it on, the right side or the left side.”

It was then that Helio Fonseca de Araujo, who is a sign language interpreter, proposed the idea of using a model field. De Araujo had seen Maria Stella Nunes speak once about the field she built for her husband, who is deaf and has low vision and had asked for the model. Nunes interpreted Monday’s game for her husband, Carlos Roberto Lopes Nunes, at the same cultural center where Junior followed the game.

Araujo then improved upon the original idea, building a bigger field and adding in the idea of using a second interpreter to give even more game information in real time.The system they have developed is this: Junior places his hands on the interpreter’s. One hand represents the ball, the other the player who has possession. The interpreter moves his hands around the model field to indicate the action. Meanwhile, another interpreter draws on Junior’s back, communicating which team and even which player (by tracing the player’s number) has the ball. Through his haptic, or touch, communication, the interpreter can also note fouls, yellow or red cards, blocks and saves.

​During the regular season, Junior often makes do by following games via text summaries posted online that a device translates into Braille for him. But for major games, he calls on de Araujo and others like him. The technique is so good that Junior even knew in previous games when Neymar fell down, or when Brazil coach Tite hurt himself while celebrating the team’s win over Costa Rica.  

“Even though they (deaf and blind people) don’t have access to lots of information, that doesn’t hinder their lives,” de Araujo said. “If society adapts to them, they can live normally.”

 
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“Hembe-lembeh!” yells Ahmad Isah, the host of Nigeria’s “Brekete Family” radio program.

“Olo-lolo!” shouts his audience — more than 100 people who have crammed into his studio, looking for justice.

“Brekete Family” is a show which promises to help Nigeria’s downtrodden redress wrongs — a format, says Isah, born out of frustration in an official legal system beset by bureaucracy and mismanagement.

One of the first members of the public to speak is a man who says he was unfairly sacked. Instead of going to a tribunal, he has decided his best chance of getting his rights is to appear on the talk show, broadcast out of the capital Abuja six mornings out of seven.

Isah puts the man’s case to a government official sitting in the crowd, who promises to look into it — and the show moves on to two groups of relatives arguing over a bequest, the next in a long line of plaintiffs waiting in the wings for a hearing.

“We have bad governance, bad leadership,” says Isah, who styles himself “Ordinary President.”

“The laws are there, but the enforcement is nothing — implementation: zero. It is as good as not being there. The laws only favor the rich and the mighty in the country, ordinary Nigerians are not being protected by law.”

Nigeria’s justice ministry did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Redress

“Brekete Family” does not release listener figures. But the crowds waiting outside the gates of the Human Rights Radio station are there to see — proof of an audience so established that it has developed its own slogans and language.

The call and response that starts the show has no relation to any of Nigeria’s official tongues, but Isah says its listeners know it means: “One who has nobody has God, and one who has God has everything” — a reference to the program’s central promise to help the helpless.

The show puts its callers in touch with government departments and tries a measure of mediation — the family dispute seems settled after an on-air debate, with an apology from one side.

In the past, it has delivered a measure of its own “justice” by naming and shaming officials it says have failed its audience. On occasion it has also published the phone numbers of government functionaries and asked its audience to badger them for a response.

After his studio appearance, the first speaker, former university professor Idris Isiaku Abdullahi, is confident it will have some impact on his dismissal.

“I am optimistic, I am hopeful, I have every hope that redress will be sought here,” he says.
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LeBron James is signing with the Los Angeles Lakers, leaving the Cleveland Cavaliers for the second time to join one of the NBA’s most iconic franchises.

James’ agency made the announcement Sunday in a release, saying he has agreed to a four-year, $154 million contract. The game’s best all-around player and biggest star will now lead a young Lakers team that has been overmatched in recent years while rebuilding but will instantly rise with James.

Los Angeles also provides James with a larger platform for his business interests and social activism.

This is the third time in eight years James has changed teams. He returned to the Cavs in 2014 after four seasons in Miami. 

The 33-year-old had previously said he wanted to finish his career in Ohio, and although he’s leaving home again, Cleveland fans are more forgiving after he ended the city’s 52-year sports championship drought in 2016. 
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Kicking the ball and working as a team is the message DC Scores seeks to send to children and young people in the U.S. capital. This program focuses on learning to play one of the most popular sports in the world, soccer. And also, as Cristina Caicedo Smit reports, through good handling of the ball, improve the young players’ academic performance.
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Intricate design, white flowers and see-through veils. A happy bride proudly wears her perfect wedding attire, this time, however, made from toilet paper! June is a popular month for weddings, so the 14th Annual Toilet Paper Wedding Dress Contest took place in June in New York. As Elena Wolf reports, the entries shocked the jury with the elegance and chic that one doesn’t usually expect from hundreds of rolls of bath tissue. Anna Rice narrates her report
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Botanical artist Carol Malone-Brown is seated, bent forward, intently concentrating on a painting she is working on of a green apple with leaves.

She carefully puts a small amount of paint on one leaf using the “dry brush” method — mixing tiny drops of water with watercolors and then using a paintbrush to draw short, fine lines. She will sit at her desk, painting this leaf for many days to get the shades of light and dark just right.

While many people might find this tedious, for Malone-Brown, creating botanical art is “very soothing and meditative.” She draws inspiration from her beautiful garden, filled with a variety of plants at her home in Alexandria, Virginia. This allows her to combine her love of plants with botanical art, painting only what she grows.

Botanical art combines art with science because each piece must have botanically accurate details. 

“The garden is like your laboratory,” Malone-Brown explained. “I mean you can run in and out, and maybe you’re in there drawing and painting, and you’re saying to yourself, ‘How does that leaf connect to the stem exactly?’”

Her images, which are mostly watercolors, show the delicate beauty of plant species.

A garden of botanical art

Malone-Brown’s art is being showcased, along with 45 other pieces, at the U.S. Botanic Garden in Washington. It’s part of a series of botanical art exhibits worldwide, featuring native plants in 25 countries, including China, South Africa, Indonesia, Russia and Colombia. The idea is not only to highlight botanical art but the great diversity of plants.

Malone-Brown’s painting of a Virginia strawberry plant is on display at the U.S. show, white flowers and red strawberries that look good enough to eat.

“To be authentic,” she said, “I had to make sure that the plant actually flowered and produced fruit at the same time.”

It took her four hours each day for five months to complete the image. She painted it on vellum, a parchment made from calfskin, which gives the image a lovely luminescence.

The Botanic Garden art exhibit also features other flora, like the saguaro cactus of the U.S. Southwest, the bigleaf maple tree from the West Coast, and a variety of flowers, including violets and sunflowers. A sunny orchid, called a yellow lady slipper, was painted by well-known botanical artist Carol Woodin, who also serves as exhibitions director for the American Society of Botanical Artists.

Distinctive styles

Woodin says every artist has a distinctive style. 

“Some tell a story, others capture a moment in time, or study a plant and focus on each stage of its growth,” she said.

Besides watercolor, oil, colored pencil and etching were used to create the pieces on display.

Botanical artist Alice Tangerini used pen and ink. She is the only botanical illustrator for the Smithsonian Natural History Museum’s botany department in Washington. For more than four decades, Tangerini has been drawing meticulous botanical images that scientists use for research.

She said photos cannot capture details the same way botanical drawings do.

“Every time I’m making a line it’s a little bit exciting,” she said. “You see a leaf or flower that is different from any other, or a small portion of a seed.”

Like other botanical artists, Malone-Brown said there is pleasure in the process of painting the plants.

“They are our best friends,” she joked. “You truly have to love a plant that you paint because you’re going to spend a lot of time with it!”
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Football’s cruel mistress — the penalty shootout — arrives at the World Cup on Saturday after a packed fortnight of group games, ready to dispense her characteristic doses of unbridled joy and heartbreak in the knockout stages.

There has been a penalty shootout at every World Cup since 1982 in Spain, and while it is still a matter of contention whether this is the best way to decide a winner, the post-match shootout is now common at all levels of the game.

But the consequences of failure are nowhere more devastating than at a World Cup, where two previous finals and five semi-finals have been decided by the gut-wrenching lottery of penalties.

Inevitably it is the misses that are best remembered, none more so than Italy’s Roberto Baggio blasting over the bar to hand Brazil the World Cup in 1994 or Chris Waddle with a similarly wild and wayward effort for England in the semi-final four years later.

In all, 26 World Cup clashes have needed penalties to produce a winner, although only twice have they gone past the first stage of five kicks each.

Of the 16 teams in the second round in Russia starting Saturday, all but four have had past experience of a World Cup shootout.

Argentina should be the most confident, having been involved in more World Cup shootouts than any other country and winning four out of five.

Brazil have won three of four, including the 1994 final in Los Angeles, and France two of four, losing to Italy in the deciding game in Berlin in 2006.

But for the likes of England, Mexico and Switzerland the prospect of progress in Russia hinging on spot kicks will verge on the terrifying.

England have lost all three of their shootouts, and Mexico two out of two. The Swiss, bucking the national stereotype of calm efficiency, failed to convert any of their kicks in their one previous shootout, going out to Ukraine in the last 16 in Cologne in 2006.

For Colombia, Croatia, Denmark and Russia it will be a new World Cup experience if they are forced into the post-match tie breaker, although the Danes succeeded in the semi-finals on their way to their shock European Championship success in 1992.

Conversion rate

In the entire World Cup finals history, there have been a total of 240 post-match penalties taken, with 170 of them scored.

That is a decent conversion rate given the gut-thumping tension that always goes with the shootouts. The stress of nail-biting fans in the stands has nothing on the pressure felt by the players involved, many of whom often cannot bare to look while their colleagues step up to take their shots.

Penalty shootouts were first introduced at the 1978 World Cup but were not needed until four years later. Before that, an even more unsatisfactory toss of the coin was used to break the deadlock.

One consolation for the teams now faced with the prospect of penalties in Russia is that they will not have to face Germany.

Their 100 percent record in World Cup shootouts remains intact due to their unexpectedly early departure.
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“To grow up as a child in Congo, according to God’s will, is to grow up in paradise,” Col. Mamadou Ndala says in the opening scenes of “This Is Congo,” a film making its theatrical release Friday in the United States.

Strolling outside the eastern city of Goma where he is stationed, Ndala adds: “Perhaps because of the will of man, growing up in Congo is to grow up in misery because of these endless, unjust wars imposed on the people.”

Congo has been in the headlines as it faces its latest outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus, and as a long-delayed presidential election is set for December. Dozens of armed groups continue to wreak deadly havoc on the vast, mineral-rich nation.

“This Is Congo,” directed and filmed by former photojournalist Daniel McCabe, gives an insider’s view on the diverse lives behind the headlines. It follows four people — a military commander, a mineral dealer, a tailor and a high-ranking, anonymous military intelligence officer — to show the humanity in the middle of crisis.

Traveling around the Kivu regions in the east, McCabe sought to explore the root causes of conflict in Congo. He ended up on the front lines of fighting between the army and M23 rebels as they marched into Goma in 2012 and were pushed out the following year. He gained unprecedented access through Ndala, the film’s main subject.

Though filming mostly took place in 2012 and 2013 the scenes of fighting appear timeless, reflecting Congo’s continuous upheaval as some soldiers are recruited by ever-changing rebel groups and later reintegrated back into the army, which is poorly organized and badly paid.

“This is a revolving cycle of conflict,” McCabe told The Associated Press. “The film to me is about the banality of war and the corruption of man. Our hope is that the audience can identify with the characters.”

Another of the four main characters is Mama Romance, who turned to selling gemstones to support her family, eventually sending her children to good schools and breaking the cycle of poverty. The dangerous work, as she crosses borders to sell, shows how entrepreneurial Congolese make money from the rich mineral resources around them. Often the proceeds from exports never trickle down.

“This Congo” also follows Hakiza Nyantaba, a tailor who has been displaced for years by conflict, as he ekes out a life at the kind of camp that is home to many Congolese. As of January 4.5 million people had been displaced, according to the United Nations refugee agency.

“It seems God has forgotten us,” Nyantaba says.

McCabe honors his resilience.

“There are displacement camps where people have been living for 20 years. It’s unfathomable,” the filmmaker said.

Alleged corruption by officials and mining companies in part drives the fighting in Congo, which has trillions of dollars of mineral deposits ranging from diamonds and zinc to copper and tin.

“This is Congo” makes clear that civilians are the victims.

McCabe, who clearly adores the complexities of Congo, said he wants the film’s viewers to “dig up more information on their own . read more books, have more interest in the area.” He urged people to “broaden their gaze.”

The film premiered in September at the Venice Film Festival but will release on Friday in theaters in New York City, Los Angeles and other U.S. cities. It also is being released on the BBC in the UK on iTunes in more than 70 countries.

“This is Congo” also will screen in Goma on July 15 on the closing night of the Congo International Film Festival.
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Gowns and ensembles worn by Carol Burnett, Cher and Raquel Welch are going up on the auction block.

The clothing was created by 78-year-old fashion and costume designer Bob Mackie, who has been honored for his work in motion pictures, television and the fashion industry.

Julien’s Auctions says the highlights include two gowns that were worn by Burnett and a pair of Punch and Judy costumes that she and Joel Grey wore on her CBS program.

There’s a hand-painted silk ensemble that Cher wore to the 1974 Academy Awards, along with a gown that Raquel Welch wore.

The exhibition will be displayed aboard the ocean liner Queen Mary 2 on an Aug. 19 trans-Atlantic crossing before the auction takes place in Los Angeles at Julien’s on Nov. 17.

 
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In the months leading up to the 2019 Super Bowl, some of Atlanta’s bare walls will get a makeover.

The city of Atlanta and the Super Bowl Host Committee have partnered with arts group WonderRoot to launch “Off the Wall.” The project will create up to 30 murals focusing on Atlanta’s past, present and future role in civil and human rights. Brett Daniels, chief operating officer of the host committee, said the murals will transform the city in hopes of sparking a community-wide conversation. 

The artwork will start going up this fall and will remain as a permanent part of Atlanta’s cultural scene after the game. Students from Freedom University, which provides services for immigrant students in the country illegally, will aid in the design and installation of the murals.
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Attorneys for Meek Mill are asking the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to remove a Philadelphia judge from his case days after she denied his new trial request.

In a filing late Wednesday, the rapper’s attorneys say Judge Genece Brinkley’s actions in court showed she had an opinion before hearing Mill’s request. It also says by requiring a hearing and strenuously cross-examining a witness, she strayed from how other judges had treated similar requests.

The court split on a previous request to remove Brinkley.

The district attorney’s office has agreed Mill should get a new trial, and Mill’s attorneys also are asking the Supreme Court to grant one.

Mill has asked that his decade-old drug and gun convictions be thrown out because of credibility issues with the officer who testified against him.
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Kristen Wiig doesn’t look much like a villain in a photo released for Wonder Woman 1984.

Director Patty Jenkins on Wednesday tweeted the first look at Wiig as Wonder Woman’s foe, Cheetah. Wiig is dressed as Barbara Minerva, the mortal who morphs into a powerful nemesis. Wiig’s character is shown standing in what appears to be a natural history museum, looking at taxidermy.

Gal Gadot returns as Wonder Woman, and Chris Pine reprises his Steve Trevor role.

Wonder Woman 1984 is the fourth movie featuring Gadot as the title character. It is due in theaters in November 2019.
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Joe Jackson, the fearsome stage dad of Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson and their talented siblings, who took his family from poverty and launched a musical dynasty, died Wednesday. He was 89.

Clark County Coroner John Fudenberg told The Associated Press that Joe Jackson died at Nathan Adelson Hospice in Las Vegas.

Fudenberg said he did not have full details, and a determination was not immediately made about whether his office would handle the case.

“We are reviewing the circumstances surrounding the death, but there is no reason to believe it’s anything other than a natural death,” the coroner said.

Jackson was a guitarist who put his own musical ambitions aside to work in the steel mills to support his wife and nine children in Gary, Indiana. But he far surpassed his own dreams through his children, particularly his exceptionally gifted seventh child, Michael. Fronted by the then-pint-sized wonder and brothers Jermaine, Marlon, Tito and Jackie, the Jackson 5 was an instant sensation in 1969 and became the first phase of superstardom for the Jackson family. Over the following decades, millions would listen to both group and solo recordings by the Jackson 5 (who later became known as The Jacksons) and Michael would become one of the most popular entertainers in history.

Joe Jackson died two days after the nine-year anniversary of Michael Jackson’s death. 

The King of Pop’s estate released a statement mourning the death.

“We are deeply saddened by Mr. Jackson’s passing and extend our heartfelt condolences to Mrs. Katherine Jackson and the family. Joe was a strong man who acknowledged his own imperfections and heroically delivered his sons and daughters from the steel mills of Gary, Indiana, to worldwide pop superstardom,” said John Branca and John McClain, co-executors of the estate.

“Papa Joe,” as he would become known, ruled through his stern, intimidating and unflinching presence, which became so indelible it was part of black popular culture, even referenced in song and on TV. 

“This is bad, real bad Michael Jackson, Now I’m mad, real mad Joe Jackson,” Kanye West rhymed in Keri Hilson’s 2009 hit, “Knock You Down.”

Michael and other siblings would allege physical abuse at their father’s hands.

“We’d perform for him and he’d critique us. If you messed up, you got hit, sometimes with a belt, sometimes with a switch. My father was real strict with us – real strict,” Michael Jackson wrote in his 1985 autobiography, “Moonwalk.”

La Toya Jackson would go as far as to accuse him of sexual abuse in the early 1990s, when she was estranged from her entire family, but she later recanted, saying her former husband had coerced her to make such claims. She and her father later reconciled.

By the time they were adults, most of the Jackson siblings had dismissed him as their manager; Michael and Joseph’s relationship was famously fractured; Michael Jackson revered his mother, Katherine, but kept his distance from Joseph. 

However, during some of his son’s most difficult times, including his 2004 molestation trial, Joseph was by his side, and Michael acknowledged their complicated relationship in a 2001 speech about healthy relationships between parents and their children:

“I have begun to see that even my father’s harshness was a kind of love, an imperfect love, to be sure, but love nonetheless. He pushed me because he loved me. Because he wanted no man ever to look down at his offspring,” he said. “And now with time, rather than bitterness, I feel blessing. In the place of anger, I have found absolution. And in the place of revenge I have found reconciliation. And my initial fury has slowly given way to forgiveness.”

In his autobiography, Joseph Jackson acknowledged having been a stern parent, saying he believed it was the only way to prepare his children for the tough world of show business. However, he always denied physically abusing his children.

Joseph Walter Jackson was born in Fountain Hill, Arkansas, on July 26, 1928, the eldest of four children. His father, Samuel Jackson, was a high school teacher, and his mother, Crystal Lee King, was a housewife.

In a 2003 interview with Martin Bashir, Michael Jackson teared up when discussing the alleged abuse, saying he would sometimes vomit or faint at the sight of his father because he was so scared of him.

“We were terrified of him. Terrified, I can’t tell you I don’t think to this day he realizes how scared, scared,” said Jackson, who added that his father would only allow him to call him by his first name, not “daddy.”

The alleged abuse wasn’t just physical. Michael Jackson, who drastically changed his face with plastic surgery through the years, talked several times about how his father would mock the size of his once-broad nose, calling him “big nose.”

After Michael’s death, Joseph Jackson sued when it was disclosed that he wasn’t included in Michael’s will. Michael’s mother, Katherine, was given custody of Michael’s three children and the money to support them. But none of the siblings were named as heirs.

Father and son seemed to have reconciled for a time when Michael Jackson was on trial on child molestation charges. His father was in court to lend him support nearly every day, and Michael was acquitted of all counts in 2005. But he left the country and when he returned, they weren’t close.

Toward the end of his life, Michael did not allow his father to visit his Holmby Hills home. Bodyguards said they turned away Joseph Jackson when he appeared at the gate wanting to visit his grandchildren.

By 2005, no longer involved in his children’s careers, Joseph Jackson had launched a boot camp for aspiring hip-hop artists, promoting lyrics without vulgarity and sponsoring competitions for young artists from across the country. He spent most of his time at a home in Las Vegas and traveled the country auditioning talent for the competition.

For many years before that, he and his wife had lived in an estate they built in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley where he had hoped his children would remain with him at least until they were married and perhaps even afterward. But there were estrangements, and Jackson, a dandy who wore a pencil-thin mustache and huge diamond pinky ring, faced allegations by his wife of infidelity. She filed for divorce twice but never followed through.

“We just let our troubles die out,” Jackson said in 1988, following a reconciliation. “We survived. We love each other, and we have children. That’s why we’re together.”

When Dr. Conrad Murray went on trial in 2010, charged in Michael’s overdose death from propofol, Joseph and Katherine attended court with several of Michael’s siblings. Murray’s conviction of involuntary manslaughter provided some measure of comfort for the family.

Joe Jackson is survived by his wife, his children and more than two dozen grandchildren.
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A new art exhibition in London depicts Michael Jackson as a savior, a saint, an entertainer, an icon, a monarch, a mask and a mystery.

The National Portrait Gallery show, opening Thursday, reveals the extent to which contemporary artists have been drawn to the late King of Pop, as an artistic inspiration, a tragic figure and a fascinating enigma.

Gathering work by 48 artists from around the world, the show includes Jackson-inspired paintings, photographs, videos, textiles and ceramics. It ranges from 1980s pop-art portraits by Andy Warhol and Keith Haring to David LaChapelle’s depictions of a Christ-like Jackson and Kehinde Wiley’s vast portrait of the entertainer as a king on horseback.

Curator Nicholas Cullinan said Wednesday that, nine years after Jackson’s death, the show explores “how he could mean so many different things to so many people.”

Jackson had already been a child star when he became an international icon in 1983 with the release of “Thriller,” one of the best-selling albums of all time. His music, moves, style and innovations in staging and video had a huge impact on popular culture. He also struggled with the limelight, and died in 2009 of a prescription drug overdose at age 50.

The exhibition includes works that reflect on what Jackson meant to his fans, his place in African-American culture, the way he manipulated fame — and the way fame manipulated him.

 U.S. artist Todd Gray, who worked for Jackson as a photographer in the 1970s and 80s, recalled him as a sweet-natured youth — “If he stepped on an ant, he would cry” — but also someone keenly aware of his image. He remembered Jackson refusing to change his mismatched socks for a photo shoot, saying: “`People will talk. That’s what I want.'”

Gray has reworked his old photos by layering other pictures over Jackson’s face, including images from Ghana, where the artist has a home.

“It’s my way to place Michael in the African diaspora,” he said.

The show has the support of Jackson’s family, though not all the works are flattering. American artist Jordan Wolfson shows nothing but Jackson’s darting, blinking eyes, taken from a 1993 TV interview in which the star denied child molestation allegations.

Several works depict Jackson in a mask, most famously Mark Ryden’s cover art for the “Dangerous” album. Isaac Lythgoe has turned that image of Jackson’s masked eyes into a plush headboard.

Other images are heroic. German artist Isa Genzken juxtaposes Jackson and Michelangelo’s David. Wiley — who has also painted Barack Obama’s official portrait — depicts Jackson in armor on horseback, in a painting modeled on Peter Paul Rubens’ portrait of King Philip II of Spain. The portrait was the last one Jackson commissioned, and was completed after his death.

One work, filling a whole room, focuses not on Jackson but on his fans. South African artist Candice Breitz filmed 16 German-speaking Jackson fans of myriad ages and races, singing “Thriller.” It’s an engaging and moving work that shows just how much Jackson means to those who love his music.

Scottish artist Donald Urquhart, who created an illustrated Michael Jackson alphabet for the exhibition, thinks Jackson’s “manipulation of fame” has inspired many artists. But he says Jackson will be most widely remembered for his boundary-crossing music.

“I’ve been to tiny villages in Sumatra where they just play Michael Jackson all day long,” Urquhart said. “They don’t speak English, but there’s something in his music that is beyond language.”

“Michael Jackson: On the Wall” runs in London from Thursday until October 21. It moves to the Grand Palais in Paris from November to Feburary, then travels to the Bonn, Germany and Espoo, Finland.
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