Voice Choices

Fires on the Plain

by Jim Hoberman

December 1, 2010

Dir. Kon Ichikawa (1959).
This first-rate anti-war film, and the darkest comedy that Ichikawa ever made, concerns cannibalism on the battlefield—it’s tasteful but devastating.

Fri., Dec. 10, 7:30 p.m., 2010

More:Culture Kon Ichikawa

Archive Highlights

From The Archives

BLACK LIKE WHO? Love and the Enemy

“If there’s any legacy of ’60s Black Nationalism I find ennobling and empowering, it’s that movement’s Pan-Afrikanist embrace of Black folk everywhere as brother and sister.”

by Greg Tate
Pride

Sylvester: Staying Alive

“For almost 20 years, Sylvester has been an icon of San Francisco nightlife: outrageous, bold, proud. Today, he is a symbol of a totally different San Francisco — a gay man struggling to stay alive”

by Barry Walters
The Culture

The Unbearable Whiteness of Publishing, Pt. 1

“For the first five years that I was writing for The New Yorker,” says a longtime contributor, “the closest I ever got to a person of color was a young white fact-checker with dreads.”

by James Ledbetter
Equality

Juneteenth, the Day the Last Ones Heard

“The day that federal troops rode into Galveston with orders to release those kept as slaves has been celebrated, in Texas and beyond, for 127 years, as Emancipation Day, as Jubilation Day, as Juneteenth.”

by Lisa Jones
Art

Andy Warhol’s Pop Riot

“The sophisticated audience that had turned out to put down the art that was not on display provided a chilling touch of surrealism worthy of Buñuel or Fellini”

by David Bourdon
From The Archives

Václav Havel: The New King of Absurdistan

“It is a party, and Václav is The Good King: relaxed, smothered in kisses and well-wishes ... the only president in living history who, in one breath, can quote John Lennon, Samuel Beckett, and Immanuel Kant”

by Vít Horejs & Bonnie Stein