Fame or Famine

Just a quickie this morning – Director and artist Julie Taymor is going to be honored at Aspen Film on June 28th.

Extraordinary Vision

Taymor is definitely one of the shining lights in the art of theatre and film. While perhaps best known for Broadway’s The Lion King and the recent film Across the Universe, her work goes much further. Movies like Frida and Titus, or re-imaginings of The Magic Flute for the Metropolitan Opera and Beowulf for the Los Angeles Opera are just the tip of the iceberg.

Image details: DIFFA’s Dining By Design Gala Dinner served by picapp.com

Her training included a lot of work with the wayang-kulit Javanese style shadow puppet theatre, and that aesthetic pervades the highly symbolic and representative pastiches in her work. Somehow, though, she manages to bring this across cultures and make it just as powerful for a 16 year old midwesterner like my daughter (who watches Across the Universe incessantly).

Initializing the Award

So it is fitting that she be the first to receive Aspen’s “Visionary Award” for extraordinary creative achievement in filmmaking and the arts.Laura Theilen, executive director, calls Taymor “”an artist of significant achievement whose creativity has greatly enriched filmmaking,” said Laura Thielen, executive director of Aspen Film.

They will be fete-ing her with a dinner, a retrospective with clips from her work, and lots of interesting commentary. With any luck it’ll be turned into a TV special and we can all share in the joy of celebrating this amazing woman.

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