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Julian Lennon will host and executive produce a docuseries on how our surroundings influence the making of art.

The series, entitled “Inspired,” will be co-produced with New York-based documentary specialists Cargo Film & Releasing. The show will explore the way new places influence and shape the creative process of contemporary artists.

In each episode, Lennon — the son of late Beatles member John Lennon — will meet top artists to uncover a “rich tapestry of inspiring stories and allow the viewer to visit a city, region or country through their eyes.”

Lennon is a Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter, philanthropist, film producer, author and photographer. The project marks one of his first forays into television presenting.

Lennon said: “What’s so special about this series is getting to know an artist and the culture of a place through a specific lens — this unique relationship an artist has with a certain place that gets their creative juices going.

Norma Bengell controversies (photo: Norma Bengell in Walter Hugo Khouri’s ‘Eros’) (See previous post: “Dead at 78: Norma Bengell, First Actress to Go Full Frontal in Mainstream Films.”) Norma Bengell found herself embroiled in numerous controversies throughout her life. For instance, besides her not infrequently "scandalous" anti-establishment screen roles of the ’60s and ’70s, she took to the streets to protest against both censorship in the arts and Brazil’s military dictatorship. At the 1985 edition of Rio de Janeiro’s Fest Rio, Bengell got into a verbal match with American actress and fellow jury member Ellen Burstyn (Oscar winner for Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore) following alleged improprieties at the festival’s awards ceremony and Bengell’s role in the jury. Presumably to justify her worth as a jury member, the native Portuguese-speaker Bengell bellowed in Spanish: "I am a great actress!" Norma Bengell: Controversial filmmaker In later years,...

"Dzi Croquettes reclaims the eponymous avant-garde theater group as major figures in Brazil's history of state terrorism and artistic resistance," writes Diego Costa in Slant. "More than just a 'bunch of faggots' (as the dictatorship's guards that surveilled them would put it), the 13-member 1960s troupe of gender-fucking, glitter-covered polyglot queens was 'queer' at a time when the word was still just another gay slur. Theirs was a status quo-shattering kind of camp, circumventing censorship through sarcasm, crafting intricate and combustible juxtapositions including a black queen delivering a gut-wrenching version of Jacques Brel's 'Ne Me Quittes Pas' in a pink wedding gown — and combat boots…. At one point they try conquering Europe, performing in Paris for the likes of Omar Sharif, Catherine Deneuve, Jeanne Moreau, and Josephine Baker, who requests that the Dzi Croquettes replace her as Theatre Bobino's main act once she dies, which they do."

Ernest Hardy...

Dzi Croquettes (2009, dir. Raphael Alvarez, Tatiana Issa) Dzi Croquettes is a revealing documentary about a Brazilian dance and theater group resembling an all-male, 1970s version of the Ziegfeld Follies. Banned by the ruling military dictatorship, they used their empowering sexuality to revolutionize the gay movement worldwide. Dzi Croquettes will have its NYC premiere at the Tribeca Cinemas Doc Series on July 26. We asked New Yorkers Alvarez and Issa to answer a few questions about their fascinating film. Tribeca: Please describe the story you tell in Dzi Croquettes. Raphael Alvarez and Tatiana Issa: The Dzi Croquettes were a groundbreaking dance and theatre group who used their talent and a mix of humor and derision to challenge the violent dictatorship that gripped Brazil in the 1970s. Creating a new stage language in theatre and dance, which would influence an entire generation, this theatre group ...

From my inbox… for New Yorkers: A collaboration between The Museum of Modern Art and the Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival, the annual Premiere Brazil festival introduces New York audiences to original and accomplished recent work by both new and established Brazilian filmmakers.

This year’s edition opens with the New York premiere of an acclaimed documentary about contemporary artist Vik Muniz’s collaboration on a recycling project with the inhabitants of the world’s largest garbage dump – a powerful ode to the transformative powers of art. A number of evocative works (Lands; Reidy, Building Utopia; I Travel because I Have To, I Come Back because I Love You) deal with the collision between modern lifestyles, urban expansion, and the destructive power and delicate balance of the vast Brazilian landscape. This year’s classics selection, dedicated to the continued preservation and celebration of the legacy of the influential Cinema Novo movement,...