It’s the morning after Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign announcement and major donors are already running for the hills. Blackstone co-founder and CEO Stephen Schwarzman declared that he will not be backing Donald Trump in his renewed bid for the presidency. Schwarzman is the second high-level Trump donor to say he’s taking his money elsewhere in the last two weeks.
In a statement to Axios announcing his decision, Schwarzman indicated he believes “it is time for the Republican Party to turn to a new generation of leaders and I...
In a statement to Axios announcing his decision, Schwarzman indicated he believes “it is time for the Republican Party to turn to a new generation of leaders and I...
- 11/16/2022
- by Nikki McCann Ramirez
- Rollingstone.com
The Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, also known as the “Main Branch” of the New York Public Library, is located at 42nd Street and 5th Avenue, next to Bryant Park. Almost 150 years ago that was the setting of the Murray Hill Reservoir, which supplied drinking water for most of the city through the end of the 19th century. It’s perhaps no coincide that the Nypl’s headquarters are located there, since they have taken on the duty of supplying the city with knowledge and culture, elements which are as essential to New Yorkers as water. The iconic building is at the center of Frederick Wiseman’s Ex Libris, an enthralling documentary that chronicles the work the Nypl continues to do since its inception in 1911.
Wiseman’s enlightening, often quite moving film, explores the Nypl’s reach beyond 42nd Street, through its almost 90 branches, which provide courses, talks and, of course,...
Wiseman’s enlightening, often quite moving film, explores the Nypl’s reach beyond 42nd Street, through its almost 90 branches, which provide courses, talks and, of course,...
- 9/19/2017
- by Jose Solís
- The Film Stage
Interview: Daniel Kasman | Video: Kurt WalkerAmerica's greatest living filmmaker, Frederick Wiseman, returns to the city of New York after the Queens borough collage In Jackson Heights (2015) with another opus that looks at a dense, living ecosystem, seeing it as a embodiment of an American ideal and struggle. Where the great documentarian’s 2015 picture surveyed the melting pot of the Jackson Heights neighborhood, finding within an exemplary diversity of race, nationality, religion and sexual orientation, all inextricably intertwined with threats of gentrification, discrimination, and commercialization, Wiseman’s new work, Ex Libris, explores New York’s public library system to find a complex, contradictory model for democratic thought.“A library is not about books—that’s what a lot of people think, that it’s a storage place for books,” says Francine Houben, the creative director of the firm chosen to re-envision and remodel New York’s iconic, lion-guarded Stephen A. Schwarzman Building.
- 9/14/2017
- MUBI
Frederick Wiseman’s films are often filled with moments that subtly and unexpectedly jolt viewers who think they know what they’re in for. In Ex Libris, in which he focuses on The New York Public Library, such a moment comes when Francine Houben, creative director of the firm selected to renovate the institution’s iconic Stephen A. Schwarzman building in midtown Manhattan, explains that libraries are not about books, or their storage, but about people. With this simple statement Houben encompasses the spirit of Wiseman’s generous, enlightening look at one of the most important organizations in the city, and as the film suggests, perhaps also an essential tool in preserving the American ideal of freedom and equality.
Even if it sounds like a platitude, the notion that knowledge frees the spirit has rarely been captured with the insightfulness Wiseman grants his film. He removes the romanticism fiction often...
Even if it sounds like a platitude, the notion that knowledge frees the spirit has rarely been captured with the insightfulness Wiseman grants his film. He removes the romanticism fiction often...
- 9/13/2017
- by Jose Solís
- The Film Stage
Ex LibrisDear Fernando—and welcome Kelley!This year at the Toronto International Film Festival (Tiff) I thank our lucky stars that we have a third and new member among our correspondents: Fernando, meet Kelley; Kelley, Fernando. Ironically, as we add a new critic, Tiff is subtracting films, for it was announced back in February that this autumn festival would lose something like 20% of its massive lineup, which numbered 296 features last year. The number of features cut isn't quite that high, but any regular Tiff-goer certainly knows that this festival's identity—note, not brand—is mostly founded on numerical plethora rather than a notable curatorial perspective on the year's movies.The most obvious result of the culling in the 2017 lineup is that the Vanguard and City to City sections are gone, and the absolutely essential Wavelengths—the defining program of Toronto’s festival and key to its current reputation alongside the...
- 9/7/2017
- MUBI
Most of Frederick Wiseman’s films are long, but very few of them — possibly none — are too long. There’s a good reason for that. Actually, there are a lot of good reasons for that, but one tends to rise above the rest: Boredom is fundamentally antithetical to his work. Cinematically vivisecting American institutions since 1967, Wiseman has been able to sustain interest throughout endless documentary epics like “At Berkeley” and “Belfast, Maine” because his observational approach insists that drama is woven into the fabric of everyday life, and because his shrewd instinct for non-linear storytelling proves that point beyond any shadow of a doubt. His best films frame reality in a way that allows us to see it more clearly through his camera than we can with the naked eye,. All of his films are his best films.
All the same, the hypnotic and thoroughly essential “Ex Libris — The New...
All the same, the hypnotic and thoroughly essential “Ex Libris — The New...
- 9/3/2017
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
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