POV’s ‘The World Before Her’ Follows Two Starkly Divergent Paths for Women in Modern India, Monday, Sept. 16, 2013 on PBS

Ruhi and Prachi Are Both Ambitious Young Women: One Hopes to Win the Miss India Beauty Pageant; The Other Leads a Fundamentalist Hindu Camp for Girls

 

Running Time: 56:46

Writer/Director: Nisha Pahuja

Producers: Ed Barreveld, Cornelia Principe, Nisha Pahuja

Executive Producers: Ed Barreveld, Andy Cohen, Nisha Pahuja, Mike Chamberlain

Editor: David Kazala

Directors of Photography: Mrinal Desai, Derek Rogers

Original Music: Ken Myhr

“Riveting.” —Stephen Holden, The New York Times

The World Before Her, A Co-presentation With the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM), is a fascinating portrait of two women and two Indias and reveals a world of startling contrasts between urban and rural, jeans and saris, consumer culture and poverty, where rapid economic development fuels a sharpening conflict between tradition and modernity–especially when it touches on women and religion. In focusing on two particularly thoughtful young women–one a militant Hindu nationalist, the other a contestant for Miss India–The World Before Her provides a timely account of a multi-faceted, often confusing clash over values and the future of the world’s largest democracy.

Nisha Pahuja’s The World Before Her, winner of the World Documentary Award at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival, has its national broadcast premiere on Monday, Sept. 16, 2013 at 10 p.m. (check local listings) on the award-winning PBS documentary series POV (Point of View). The World Before Her is a production of Storyline Entertainment in association with ZDF, ARTE, Impact Partners, Knowledge and TVO.

In 2011, 20 young women from across India gathered in a modern Bombay hotel to compete in the Miss India pageant. They had been picked from thousands of aspiring beauty queens to vie for a much-coveted crown in a country lately gone mad for beauty contests, even as the pageants have also elicited a conservative backlash.

Whatever the controversies, winning the title means instant stardom, a lucrative career path and freedom from the constraints of a patriarchal society. The 20 finalists will spend 30 days before the pageant going through a “beauty boot camp” to optimize their diction, gaits and facial expressions and help them conform to “international” standards of beauty.

Among the finalists is Ruhi Singh, from the “famous pink city” of Jaipur in northern India. The World Before Her reveals Ruhi to be anything but a dewy-eyed victim of the beauty boot camp or of pageants in general. A veteran of such contests, she submits to the beauty regime, including skin lightening, with a determination to win. Her motives certainly include making her supportive parents proud and earning lots of money. But what the crown, pride and money ultimately mean to Ruhi is this: “I think of myself as a very modern young girl and I want freedom.” For women in Ruhi’s world, a beauty pageant is a road to liberation.

Scene from Nisha Pahuja’s The World Before Her, winner of the World Documentary Award at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival, having its U.S. national broadcast premiere on Monday, Sept. 16, 2013 at 10 p.m. (check local listings) on the award-winning PBS documentary series POV (Point of View).

Scene from Nisha Pahuja’s The World Before Her, winner of the World Documentary Award at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival, having its U.S. national broadcast premiere on Monday, Sept. 16, 2013 at 10 p.m. (check local listings) on the award-winning PBS documentary series POV (Point of View).

Scene from Nisha Pahuja’s The World Before Her, winner of the World Documentary Award at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival, having its U.S. national broadcast premiere on Monday, Sept. 16, 2013 at 10 p.m. (check local listings) on the award-winning PBS documentary series POV (Point of View).

Little more than 200 miles away from Bombay, in the city of Aurangabad, thousands of girls attend annual camps run by Durga Vahini, the women’s wing of the largest Hindu nationalist group in India.

GBK and Sparkling Hill Resort Celebrity Gift and Styling Lounge – 2013 New York Fashion Week

All Images provided by Ana Martins PR and GBK Productions 

Fashion Week Celebrities, Stylists and Designers and the Media were exposed to an Array of Fashionable Lifestyle Products and Services Including an Unforgettable Stay at the Sparkling Hill Resort

In honor of 2014 Spring/Summer New York Fashion Week, Gavin Kelly and GBK Productions hosted a Luxury Gift and Styling Lounge on September 6th and 7th at the Empire Hotel. The annual GBK event, as to be expected, featured a diverse selection of lifestyle brands, fashion and accessories, all of which catering to the discerning industry’s best. The GBK’s yearly event is consistently a “must attend” festivity during New York Fashion Week. This year, GBK added touch of glam with a crystal-infused luxury lounge setting in honor of Sparkling Hill Resort – a European-inspired wellness resort known as the first resort in the world to incorporate Swarovski crystal elements into every aspect of its design. VIP guests received complimentary resort stay certificates featuring Deluxe Lakeview Rooms and Penthouse stays up to $6,000 in value.

Designer Phillip Bloch with CEO & Founder of GBK Productions, Gavin Keilly at NYFW Style Lounge by GBK

J. Alexander at NYFW Style Lounge by GBK

VIP guests also indulge in a special gift selection from luxury lifestyle brands including Presenting Sponsors Hard Candy and Pilot Pen. Hard Candy amazed with off-the-chart products, intense color, wild packaging and a flair for the dramatic, while also using the opportunity to introduce new additions to the product line, including a new collection of fun and youthful nail polishes. The name invokes all things girly and sweet while the brand brings in an edge and attitude. The lovely ladies of Pilot Pen graciously demonstrated the amazing technology behind some of their superlative writing instruments, which is renowned for quality, performance, cutting-edge technology and consumer satisfaction. Polit Pen gifted an assortment of goodies including their FriXion Clicker, Acroball Pure White and G2 Fashion FriXion Clicker erasable pens. I personally LOVE my new FriXton Clicker Erasable pens.

Emma Kenney of Showtime’s ‘Shameless’ at NYFW Style Lounge by GBK

Jack Noseworthy of ‘Killing Kennedy’ at NYFW Style Lounge By GBK

Katie Findlay of ‘The Carrie Diaries’ samples LuLu Avenue products at GBK Style Lounge, NYFW ’13

NYC cosmetic plastic surgeon Dr. Rosetta Garries at GBK Style Lounge

Some must-have beauty brands will be a highlight of this lounge, including products from: Tibolli ®, a newly launched beauty company (a personal shoutout to the fabulous Missy!) gifting their Tibolli Moisture Must Leave-In cream and Tibolli Hair Oil; ReVival Labs gifted youthH20 – Age Defying System (the only ‘Daily Superfood Nutrition’ supplement with Age Defying Benefits enhancing your Beauty, Performance and Wellness all in one); Denise G. Jolley gifted her d’Mademoiselle ® Pure Mineral Makeup and Skincare Product ™; Ann McDonnell of EcoGenics Active Botanical Skin Care, a unique combination of nature and science, paraben free and ideal for all skin types, ages and ethnicities gifted full samples of their lines to VIPs and their TSA-ready Travel Kit featuring the top selling pieces in the line to others; Nikki’s Magic Wand – gifted a singularly new and innovative cosmetic tool designed to retrieve all of the hard to reach left-over make-up from tubes and containers; and Lashem – your go to brand for your lash and brown needs!

LIONSGATE PARTNERS WITH NET-A-PORTER.COM TO LAUNCH EXCLUSIVE FASHION COLLECTION INSPIRED BY “THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE”

NET-A-PORTER Presents “Capitol Couture by Trish Summerville” – A New Fashion Collection Designed by The Film’s Award-Winning Costume Designer

Lionsgate and NET-A-PORTER, the foremost premier online luxury fashion and beauty retailer, today announced an exclusive fashion partnership for “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire,” the highly anticipated second film of the global blockbuster “The Hunger Games” franchise. The first installment of “The Hunger Games” was the 14th highest-grossing

Trish Summerville on the set of “The Hunger Games”

North American release of all time on its way to grossing nearly $700 million at the worldwide box office. “Capitol Couture by Trish Summerville” will be available exclusively at NET-A-PORTER in November.  You can sign up to be notified of the arrival of the collection at www.net-a-porter.com/capitolcouturecollection.

The luxury clothing line “Capitol Couture by Trish Summerville” consists of 16 ready-to-wear pieces as well as jewelry and leather goods inspired by “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” and designed by Trish Summerville, the film’s Costume Designer.  The collection will be available exclusively on NET-A-PORTER (www.net-a-porter.com) this fall in time for the film’s worldwide release on November 22, 2013.

“I am extremely proud of the designs that we created for ‘The Hunger Games: Catching Fire’ and there’s no partner more appropriate for ‘Capitol Couture’ than the world’s most cutting-edge luxury retailer,” Summerville said.  “I can’t wait to share it with the public through this exclusive partnership with Lionsgate and NET-A-PORTER.”

Holli Rogers, Fashion Director, NET-A-PORTER.COM, stated, “When we were approached by Lionsgate to offer the collection by Trish Summerville to our customers exclusively, we jumped at the chance.  Our customers take their style cues from myriad sources, from the latest runway shows and street trends to TV and film.  Fashion plays an important role in ‘The Hunger Games’ series and is especially prevalent in ‘Catching Fire’, and fans of the franchise will see the film reference in the collection.  This is also brilliant fashion in its own right, and we’re delighted to provide our customers with the chance to purchase limited-edition pieces designed by one of the most original costume designers in the industry today.”

Tim Palen, Lionsgate’s Chief Marketing Officer, said, “In the world of ‘The Hunger Games,’ one of the ways the Capitol defines itself is through fashion.  When we launched Capitol Couture online (www.capitolcouture.pn), it took off and quickly became an out-of-world experience for both fans of the franchise and those obsessed with the future of fashion. Trish Summerville’s Capitol Couture collection for NET-A-PORTER is a brilliant, elegant and chic extension of this effort.”

Summerville has won the Costumer Designer’s Guild Award for her work on director David Fincher’s 2011 film “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”  She has designed award-winning costumes in music videos from top recording artists including Justin Timberlake, Pink, Janet Jackson and The Black Eyed Peas. Her work can also be seen on Showtime’s “Ray Donovan” as well as in commercial campaigns for Apple, Nike, Heineken, Tanqueray, Volkswagen, Diet Coke and Chevrolet.

Murdered Out: Christopher Wool, Mike Kelley, Cady Noland, Richard Prince at Skarsted Galley New York

September 12 – October 19, 2013

Preview and Reception: Thursday, September 12, 6-8pm

Skarstedt Gallery New York (20 E. 79th St. | New York, NY 10075 | tel 212.737.2060 | fax 212.737.4171 |

Richard Prince – In Live Free or Die

info@skarstedt.com) is pleased to present Murdered Out, a group show which explores the dark underbelly of the American psyche as represented by Christopher Wool, Mike Kelley, Cady Noland, and Richard Prince. Inspired by the urban slang term, Murdered Out refers to a roguish car covered in matte black paint from roof to rim; the works in this exhibition examine American culture through a masked or metaphorically “blackened-out” lens.

Cady Noland’s Chicken in a Basket channels the violent foundations of American history via signs of confinement sprinkled with wry wit and humor. An assemblage of branded and anonymous objects – a rubber chicken, beer cans, turkey baster, American flags, and a cross wrench – Noland’s work is both tragic as well as sardonic. Part time capsule and part trash heap, Chicken in a Basket probes and symbolizes the American dream. Similarly, in Untitled (Walker), Noland invites several art-historical and cultural allusions, including the industrial materials of Minimalism and the appropriation of the American flag. As Jasper Johns famously did in the 1960’s, Noland points to the iconic status of the American flag as she drapes it on an orthopedic walker. Limply hanging from the walker’s highest bar, Noland questions the conventions and implications of what the American flag represents.

Just as Noland alludes to themes of violence, car culture, consumerism, and patriotism in her work, Richard Prince depicts this in his Gang series. In Live Free or Die, Prince combines nine unrelated images from magazines of scantily clad women on motorcycles. Indulging niche subcultures of “sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll,” Prince is also dispassionately commenting on them.

Christopher Wool’s Untitled (And If You Can’t…)

Like the murdered out car, both intriguing and unattainable, Christopher Wool’s Untitled (And If You Can’t…) is at once explicit in text and ambiguous in meaning. Emerging in the 1980s, amidst New York City’s surge in crime, Wool’s word series reflects the urban grit and the violence of the time. An all-over composition, Untitled (And If You Can’t…) compounds a stark contrast of foreground and background with a seemingly hostile de-contextualized statement. Difficult to decipher, the broken words are incorporated onto a grid-like system forcing the reader to decode meaning, which is both authoritative and subversive.

Mike Kelley’s Ahh Youth… is a visual “black nostalgia.” Subverting contemporary modes of appropriation and minimalism, this assemblage is composed of seven panels of smiling stuffed animals, and one panel displaying Kelley’s yearbook photo. The artist’s disgruntled self-portrait interrupts the sequence of lighthearted stuffed animals, creating a sense of alienation and isolation. Referring to Ahh Youth…, the artist comments: “… a kind of black nostalgia, and by that I mean something akin to black humor. I am not ‘going back’ to reclaim some longed-for positive experience from my youth, but to reexamine, from an adult point of view, some aesthetic experience that I feel I was unable to understand at that time …“**

(** M. Kelley, quoted in “Black Nostalgia. An Interview with Mike Kelley by Daniel Kothenschulte,” in D. Kothenschulte (ed.), Mike Kelley, Peter Fischli, David Weiss, Ostfildern-Ruit, 2000, p.30.)

Art Basel annonces Premier Selection of Galleries to Participate in 12th Edition of Art Basel Miami Beach

Opening Day (by invitation only):  Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Public Days: Thursday, December 5, to Sunday, December 8, 2013

In 2013 Art Basel Miami Beach will feature 258 leading international galleries, drawn from 31 countries across North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. The show presents artwork ranging from Modern masters to the latest contemporary works and includes, for the first time in Miami Beach, a sector dedicated to editioned works. Art Basel Miami Beach, whose Lead Partner is  UBS, will take place at the Miami Beach Convention Center from December 5 to December 8, 2013.

Galleries Sector 2013 – Galería OMR, Iñaki Bonillas, Plata gelatina sobre papel de fibra, 2013, Courtesy of Galería OMR

Galleries Sector 2013 – Elizabeth Dee, Gabriele Beveridge, Mostly that your face is like the sky behind the Holiday Inn, 2013, Courtesy of the Artist and Elizabeth Dee, NY

The 2013 Miami Beach show asserts again its status as the premier destination for galleries from the United States and Latin America, with nearly half of this year’s exhibitors coming from those regions. Galleries with exhibition spaces in 31 countries across North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa, including Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Monaco, Norway, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, and Uruguay are participating at this year’s show. For the full gallery list, please visit www.artbasel.com/miami-beach/exhibitors.

Galleries Sector 2013 – Proyectos Monclova, Simon Fujiwara, Art Worlds: Mex in The City, 2013, Photography: Lisa Rave

A select group of younger American galleries are taking part in the show for the first time, including Elizabeth Dee and Corbett vs. Dempsey in the show’s Galleries sector, 47 Canal in Nova, and Bureau and Real Fine Arts in Positions. Reflecting the international show’s growing link to Asia, new galleries from the region include Tang Contemporary Art and One and J. Gallery, both in Positions, and Singapore Tyler Print Institute in Edition.