MÄRZMUSIK

WOMEN'S DAY

To celebrate Women's day, I'd recommend watching documentaries on the different stories of two admirable woman: Jyoti Singh and Susan Sontag.

Jyoti was an Indian girl from a poor family determined to become a doctor. She finished medical school in 2012 and went home to visit her parents in Delhi. Her life was crushed when she hopped on a night bus after going to the movies with a friend. Jyoti was brutally raped by six man and died days later. The documentary features interviews with rapist defendants and one of the convicted, who showed no remorse and blamed the woman for not behaving "decently". Controversially, "India's Daughter" has been banned in India, but you can see it here: bit.ly/indiabbcdaughter

I've read "On Photography" and other essays by Susan Sontag while in university, and became an admirer ever since. Susan was an American writer and filmmaker, teacher and political activist, who wrote extensively about photography, culture and media, human rights, feminism and many other topics. The New York Review of Books called her "one of the most influential critics of her generation.^" "Regarding Susan Sontag" is available on HBO GO. bit.ly/leeviasontag

I YAWN, THEREFORE I AM

As I don't have strong beliefs in an afterlife or any deity, I turned into philosophy to find comfort for the grief that posesses me since the recent death of my mother. I confess I haven't found any, but at least learned to formulate my questions better. Curious on the life of the so-called father of modern philosophy, Rene Descartes, I stumbled upon the informative but extremely boring Cartesius, a 1974 TV-film from Roberto Rossellini. Strange enough, in the early 60s Rossellini held a press conference to announce movies were a dead art form. He felt television was the art thing of the future and began to direct dramas based on the lives of historical figures. As Andy Nicastro pointed well on his critic, "Cartesius proves anything it is that an artist can sell out his talent to his own worst pedagogical ambitions just as readily (and ruinously) as he can sell out to political or commercial ones."