• Montreal living: Triangle vs the Plateau

    Comparing a new section of Montreal with the Plateau, an older and well loved neighborhood.

  • Laughter in the shadows: The chilling cabaret scene of M Klein

    Losey hired Frantz Salieri to bring his flamboyant and imaginative queer cabaret style to M Klein.

  • Unfiltered Montreal

    Montreal is a city that refuses to be reduced to picture postcard clichés. Here, the gritty dep and styled food-market, the narrow ruelles and the wide boulevards, the laughter and longing, all exist side by side, unposed and unrehearsed. Montreal Unfiltered is an invitation to witness the city as it truly breathes: raw, restless, and…

  • Homage to Margot Capelier, Casting Director for M Klein

    Margot Capelier was known and admired in French Cinema for being the first Casting Director in France, if not Europe. She was a poignant example of a person who put their heart into the profession, helping a lot of people, but remaining in the shadows herself.

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  • Exploring location shooting in Joseph Losey’s M Klein

    Losey used thirty two different Paris locations in shooting M Klein. They added greatly to the realism of the film, but each location brought unique challenges and often there were problems.

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  • Rebels in class: The birth of Pilobolus Dance Theater

    There aren’t many arts organizations that survive fifty years, but the energetic dance group Pilobolus has surpassed the half-century mark and is still going strong. That’s not to say that getting to fifty has been easy. Part of its secret in attaining longevity has been that since birth it’s had an audacity and questioning of…

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  • Joseph Losey’s film M Klein: A behind-the-scenes look

    Part of a series on the making of the Losey film, M Klein (available on the Criterion Channel) Joseph Losey in Hollywood People often don’t fit into neat boxes. Joseph Losey defied easy classification. In the 1930s and 40s he was a young, breathtakingly handsome Hollywood director with an expanding stage and film reputation, known…

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  • A 23-year streak, broken

    Exceptionalism exists in Canada too Last weekend I was at a friend’s party in Montreal and sitting next to a man I had never met. It was noisy, a lot of people speaking excitedly and simultaneously, so the man leaned over towards me and asked me my name. I told him and he looked me…

  • The impossible miracle of Biblioteca Vasconcelos

    Mexico City architecture has many highlights, but Biblioteca Vasconcelos is an unusually fanciful space floating 600,000 volumes off a roof suspension system.

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  • All roads? Perhaps not …

    I’ve never been totally comfortable with Rome. To be honest, I’ve always had problems with authority and authority figures, and there’s no city more populated with both than the old Roman capital. And that’s not even saying anything about the Vatican. I can be relatively sure that my ancestors paid a price to the Romans, and it makes…

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  • In search of Auxilio Lacouture

    I’m not as big a recreational reader as I’d like to be. I’m not that fast a reader and I feel like after I’ve waded through all the web and print articles and news reports I’m interested in there isn’t a lot of extra time left over. But before going to Mexico City I set a goal…

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  • Who said you have to smile for photos?

    Lena Dunham (of the TV show Girls fame) has been having a public spat with a Spanish magazine, accusing the publishers of using Photoshop to improve her thigh. Usually, being “improved” is something people like. Objecting is a twist. Dunham says her problem is the result of a recent change that leaves her against the retouching of photos – even to her benefit. Never one to miss…

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