Interview: John Greyson

John Greyson is a Canadian filmmaker, activist, writer, and professor at York University. Since 1988, he has won three Teddy Awards at the Berlinale, as well as numerous other accolades at film festivals around the world. His latest short, Green Laser, documents his participation in the July 2011 Gaza flotilla on the Canadian ship Tahrir. The film makes use of re-appropriated footage from the 1960 Zionist epic Exodus, rewriting a shirtless Paul Newman's dialogue in support of the flotilla. The clips are spliced together with interviews with other flotilla participants, as well as images from Athens' Syntagma Square and Riverdance performances. Below an interview with John, where we speak about his infamous 2009 confrontation with the Toronto International Film Festival, queer solidarity, and activism.

At the studio: Stine Goya

When I was in Copenhagen for Fashion Week I was so lucky to be invited to the studio of Stine Goya in Nørrebro. It's located in a beautiful backyard, that she shares with the hatter, who manufactures her and Vibskov's hats as well as Rud. Rasmussen, a traditional carpenter who designs beautiful danish furniture. She awaited my visit with her partner and her baby, who was bubbling with joy (which is no wonder with parents, that are so full of charm).
The studios, where the team works on the next winter collection with summer 2013 already finished (imagine that!), is a sequence of light filled rooms with wooden panelling in light grey. It was indeed not hard to imagine how Stine Goya's light and gentle colors, patterns and delicate and joyful designs come to life in this surrounding.

By the way, Stine wears a light peach colored jacket from her current summer collection.

At Home: The Wednesday Chef

I made a visit to Charlottenburg a few weeks ago to visit Luisa, a food writer who's been running the well-known blog "The Wednesday Chef" for almost seven years now. Luisa was born in Berlin to an Italian mother and American father, and lived here until she finished high school, when she left for to work in publishing in New York. As a side project, she started the blog, spending each Wednesday attempting to make the recipes she'd clipped from The New York Times and Los Angeles Times. Since then, she moved to Berlin and is now working on a book for Viking Press called My Berlin Kitchen, which will come out in the US in September, with a German translation to follow.

After the link, our attempt at making graham crackers (which are actually more like a cookie), the lamentably unavailable in Germany yet essential ingredient for cheesecake crusts, s'mores, and Nanaimo bars.

Last night's opening of Mädchenschule

Even more pictures on Vogue.de

At the studio: Henrik Vibskov

So I visited Henrik Vibskov, also known as the King of Copenhagen. He and his exuberant installations demonstrate how a mixture of art and fashion can work, and need no further introduction. In his studio he and his team do everything - designing and creating the clothes, the setups for his shows, and the pieces for his art exhibitions. Only his gigantic archive of garments and objects are stored elsewhere. For his winter 2012 show, they produced a movable drum-runway in a huge storehouse in the former Carlsberg brewery area, where the movements of the models moved the all-white drumsticks.

What you see in his background is actually the workshop part of the studio, and is supposed to be cleaned up and reorganized very soon, now that the shows have ended. On the right you see an installation his interns created for Christmas two years ago; clever observers might be instantly able to tell what it's supposed to resemble.

After the click you'll find my favs from his winter collection.

Stockholm