Blowback: Valerie Plame is on the line to Arts Express, in a conversation about her venture into fiction writing and her first novel, the female espionage thriller, Blowback. Plame, who was infamously outed by the Bush Administration as a CIA agent during the Iraq conflict, penned Blowback with co-author Sarah Lovett. And the two women have crafted a story with female operatives front and center, while likewise undercover.
Listen to the Interview Here:
Go For Sisters: Director John Sayles phones in to Arts Express to talk about his latest dramatic feature and character fueled road movie. Challenging the questionable line between official right and wrong; the criminalization of drug addiction in this country; unusual undocumented immigrants venturing across the US-Mexican border; and how the personal always intertwines with the political in his movies. While touching on Freud, the women’s movement, race, class and the ruined lives of ex-cons.
Red Shirley: Eminent rock musician and songwriter Lou Reed who just passed away, really needs no introduction. But few were aware that towards the end of his life, Reed was also an aspiring filmmaker. And the one film he made, Red Shirley, is an affectionate bio-doc in tribute to his fiery cousin on the occasion of her 100th birthday in 2010. The famed Velvet Underground performer momentarily steps out of the spotlight himself to defer to an unsung woman and her own rich and buried history, as a union activist and movement builder during the dismal days of garment center sweatshops in 1930s NYC.
Arts Express Poetry Corner: People’s poet Chris Butters reads from his work.
