FIRST PERSON FEST REVIEW: Salon Du Festival

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FIRST PERSON FEST REVIEW: Salon Du Festival

POSTED: Monday, November 9, 2009, 4:21 PM

Filed Under: Arts | Events First Person Fest

Photo | Lauren Seibert

Nimisha Ladva reads an essay about
her relationship with her mother-in-law.

We never left our seats at the Painted Bride, but we might as well have hopped a plane and spun around the world. In the space of two hours Thursday night at the Salon du Festival, the sixth event of the First Person Festival, the audience found itself carted off to Sinai, England, New Orleans and even Philly's own Northern Liberties. Four presentations of memoir and documentary art drew us into four very different worlds.

Erica Hoffman kicked off the night with a presentation of her essay 'Mom's New Deal,' a saucy little piece describing her relationship with her penny-pinching mother. The latter apparently lived for two days on a can of green beans in her younger days, and later could be found 'wielding her coupon-cutting scissors like a back-alley surgeon,' as Hoffman recalls.

Philadelphia photographer Laura Jean Zito opened our eyes to a world rarely seen through the lens of a camera ' especially a camera in the hands of a woman. Though the Sinai Bedouin people rarely allow themselves to be photographed, somehow Zito managed to overcome this cultural barrier in her travels through Egypt's peninsula. Her striking images of harems, robes billowing in the wind, rolling sands, and scarves covering all but a woman's piercing eyes made the exotic seem tangible ' if only for an instant. Zito's descriptions of the culture had me hooked, from the fact that the Bedouin consider the mouth the most sensual part of a woman, to their 'waste nothing' desert mentality, to the slow infiltration of the West into Bedouin life. How did Zito gain access to all this? 'I believe I was at the same time a mascot, an anomaly, and a role model for the Bedouin,' she told us.

Photo | Lauren Seibert

Jennifer Baker discusses 1980s NoLibs.

Another anomaly introduced herself soon after: Nimisha Ladva, a blend of so many cultures it was hard to keep track. Indian by heritage, Ladva was born in Kenya, raised in England, educated in the States, and ended up marrying a Jew. In a soft British accent, Ladva read us a humorous essay on her relationship with her mother-in-law Elaine, bemoaning Elaine's preference for corned beef (note: Ladva is a lifelong Hindu vegetarian). 'Looking back, I realize that it was my own karma that put Elaine in my life,' said Ladva. 'Her sandwich, piled high with the meat of a small Brazilian herd, left me speechless. If Hindus had a hell, this would be it.' She finished up with a story based on the true circumstance of her grandmother's dying wish for peaches.

In a joint presentation, artist Jennifer Baker and her husband, Inquirer journalist Stephan Salisbury, took us back time to the Northern Liberties neighborhoods of the '80s and '90s. As her paintings of the old and new buildings flashed across the screen, the two alternated in telling the tale of the fires that burned down much of neighborhood.

Finally, photojournalist Ryan Brandenberg spoke about his fascination with Katrina and its aftermath for the people of New Orleans. Over a span of several years and several visits to the Ninth Ward, one of the most damaged neighborhoods, Brandenberg shot 27,000 photographs and recorded 118 hours of audio. Putting it all together in a slideshow, he gave us a glimpse of the motivations ' in their own words ' of the people who returned to start over again.

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