Category: Новини

The last musher has arrived in Nome, ending the 50th running of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog race across Alaska.

Musher Apayauq Reitan of Kaktovik, Alaska, crossed the finish late Saturday night, winning the Red Lantern award and $1,000 for being the final sled dog team to reach the Bering Sea coastal community on Alaska’s western coast.

Reitan also extinguished the widow’s lamp on the burled arch that towers over the finish line, a tradition that means there are no other mushers on the trail.

The world’s most famous sled dog race started for 49 mushers March 6 north of Anchorage. The nearly 1,000-mile (1,609-kilometer) trail took them over two mountain ranges, along the frozen Yukon River and then along the Bering Sea ice on Alaska’s western coast.

Twelve mushers scratched, half of them on Friday during a vicious storm that hammered mushers with high winds as they attempted to make the final 77 miles (124 kilometers) to Nome.

Brent Sass, a Minnesota native now living in Eureka, Alaska, won the race Tuesday.
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“CODA” won the top prize at Saturday night’s Producers Guild Awards, giving momentum to the possibility that the small film could have a big night at next week’s Oscars.

The story of three adult family members who are deaf and a fourth who is not and seeks a singing career beat out bigger contenders including “The Power of the Dog,” “Dune” and “West Side Story” to take an award that — more often than not — goes on to win the Academy Award for best picture.

“This movie has been an amazing ride, it was such a special one to make, there was so much love and so much heart put into it,” said Fabrice Gianfermi as he accepted the award with his “CODA” co-producers Philippe Rousselet and Patrick Wachsberger at the 33rd PGA Awards.

An American Sign Language translator, who had been off to one side of the stage throughout the night’s speeches, stood front and center during the “CODA” acceptance and another stood in front of the stage to translate for the three actors from the film who are deaf: Troy Kotsur, Marlee Matlin and Daniel Durant.

“CODA,” an acronym for “children of deaf adults,” is nominated for three Oscars at the March 27 ceremony, including best adapted screenplay for writer-director Sian Heder and best supporting actor for Kotsur, who is expected by most to become the first actor who is deaf since Matlin in 1987 to win an Oscar.

After it won best ensemble at last month’s Screen Actors Guild Awards it began to appear “CODA” could get real consideration for best picture. The odds may be getting better. The top PGA award winner has gone on to win the top Oscar in three of the past four years and 10 of the past 13. Academy Award voting closes Tuesday.

The PGA Awards, an untelevised show from the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles honoring producers of film and television, is as much like a company awards banquet as a typical awards show, with no speeches cut short for time or curses bleeped out.

Issa Rae, producer of “Insecure” and “A Black Lady Sketch Show,” accepted the guild’s Visionary Award.

Ninety-year-old Rita Moreno, star of the both the 1961 and 2021 versions of “West Side Story,” accepted the guild’s Stanley Kramer Award, which honors someone who has combined a career of artistry and activism.

“This business has taken tenacity and hard work,” Moreno said. “Advocating for issues of social justice for the last 60 years, it’s been exhausting, exhilarating and life-giving.”

Moreno said the night itself was both joyful and exhausting after taking the stage at 11 p.m. local time, nearly three hours into the show.

“I was really getting tired,” she said. “My buttocks are a bit sore.”

George Lucas and Kathleen Kennedy, stewards of the “Star Wars” universe and producers of many other notable motion pictures, were honored for their careers with the PGA’s Milestone Award.

Presenter Steven Spielberg, whose films have been produced by both Lucas and Kennedy, called them “two titans” who are “still just like kids playing in a sandbox.”

Lucas acknowledged that his favorite achievement may not be the most popular among his peers, including the one who introduced him Saturday.

“The thing I’m the most proud of is digital cinema. That was something that I worked on for 20 years. Spent many many millions of dollars to make it happen,” Lucas said. “Some still don’t believe in it. Where’s Steven?”

Spielberg, standing in the wings, acted out the operation of a traditional film camera, to laughs from the crowd.

“But we’re all friends,” Lucas said.

“Summer of Soul” won the PGA’s documentary film category and “Encanto” won the award for animated movies. Both are also nominated for Oscars.

In the PGA’s television categories, awards went to the producers of “Succession,” “Mare of Easttown” and “Ted Lasso.”

Greg Berlanti, producer of shows including “Dawson’s Creek” and several series from the D.C. comic universe, was given the guild’s Norman Lear Award and was praised for advancing LGBTQ characters and storylines.

Outgoing co-presidents of the guild Gail Berman and Lucy Fisher were tearful as they expressed joy that they could finally see their gathered peers in person after two years during which the pandemic forced the show to go virtual.

They praised their fellow producers for keeping the industry alive during their tough tenure.

“Hollywood loves a comeback story,” Fisher said, “and boy, yours is one for the ages.” 
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With many small businesses failing during the economic downturn of coronavirus lockdowns, three sisters in the U.S. state of Colorado chose the pandemic to open Denver’s first Vietnamese coffee shop. VOA’s Scott Stearns went to their café to hear their story.
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World-famous ballet dancers from Russia and Ukraine, Argentina, Cuba, France and Japan come together Saturday for a gala to raise funds for Ukraine and send a message of peace.

“We as artists have talent and we need to use this talent to say what we believe in,” Ukraine’s Ivan Putrov, co-organizer of the event to be held at the English National Opera’s London Coliseum, told AFP.

“Art has a voice and is the voice that we use,” said Putrov, who was a principal dancer with London’s prestigious Royal Ballet from 2002-10.

Putrov and Romanian ballerina Alina Cojocaru both trained in Kyiv and decided to mobilize the world of ballet for this “humanitarian appeal” in the face of Russia’s invasion.

Now, they have united a team of exceptional dancers to “raise funds that will save lives,” Putrov said.

The message is not only for the West and those in Ukraine, but also Russia.

“Some Russians will hear us and will raise their voice… because what’s happening is outrageous,” he said.

Stars taking the stage include Russia’s Natalia Osipova, Argentina’s Marianela Nunez and Japan’s Fumi Kaneko, all from the Royal Ballet, and France’s Mathieu Ganio from the Paris Opera.

Ukraine’s Katja Khaniukova, Spain’s Aitor Arrieta and the United States’ Emma Hawes of the English National Ballet will also perform on the night.

The evening hopes to raise more than $130,000 for the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) UK charity collective which includes the British Red Cross and is helping victims of the war.

“Is art appropriate in such a horrible circumstance? Of course it is, because it gives hope, it gives inspiration to people,” said Putrov.

Loaded with symbolism

The Ukrainian national anthem will open the evening, which will close with The Triumph of Love from the ballet Raymonda, with music by Russia’s Alexander Glazunov.

In between there will be 13 symbolism-laden choreographies such as No Man’s Land by Liam Scarlett, Lacrimosa by Gyula Pandi and Ashes by Jason Kittelberger.

Russian composers including Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff will also be played.

“Russian culture doesn’t have anything to do with (President Vladimir) Putin, and equally Putin has nothing to do with Russian culture,” said Putrov.

Osipova, one of the most famous Russian dancers outside her country, declined to be interviewed.

But her presence “signifies that Russia doesn’t equal aggression,” said Putrov.

Cuba’s Javier Torres of the Northern Ballet will perform The Death of a Swan by Camille Saint-Saens.

The piece is about a paraplegic who loses one of his limbs and “represents fighting for what you have lost,” Torres told AFP.

“It talks about fighting to the end and that’s how I wanted to interpret it,” he said, thinking of “people who try to resist what happens to them,” like the Ukrainians mired in war or the Cubans who have suffered under decades of U.S. sanctions and embargoes, and “even by the Russians” in Soviet times.

“I have that pain, I have that anguish that every Cuban who lives outside of Cuba has, because we know the needs that are experienced there,” he said.

He said he has not previously mixed art with politics, but Saturday’s gala is “a humanitarian duty as a dancer, as a human rights defender, first as a person and then as an artist.”
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