Travel

A New Plant-Focused Film Series Examines Our Entanglement with Nature


Lombok, the island just to the east of Bali, has lately become an attractive destination on its own with an influx of compelling new boutique beach resorts including Somewhere Lombok and Siwa. On the remote Ekas Bay, just over an hour drive from the island’s international airport, is the latest opening: Innit. Designed by two Indonesian architects, Andra Matin and Gregorius Supie Yolodi (who normally work separately but came together for this project), the property currently consists of seven two-story villas partly built of local Rajumas wood, typically used for boats. The structures blend with the surrounding landscape, particularly on the ground floor, which is essentially an extension of the beach: A concrete foundation has been overlaid with soft sand, atop which sit a rattan sofa, reading chairs and a dining table. Upstairs, the primary bedrooms’ floor-to-ceiling windows overlook the bay. Shared amenities include an Indonesian, seafood-focused restaurant (don’t miss the locally farmed lobster prepared over coconut husks) and a black-tiled infinity pool. When guests aren’t lounging by the water, they can opt for more vigorous activities, from paddleboarding to hiking, with or without a guide. Innit opens March 27; villas from $400 per night, including breakfast, innithotels.com/beach-house.


Drink Here

Just off South Congress Avenue, beneath Austin’s Hotel Magdalena, there’s a new bar whose moody lighting and wood paneling might transport you to a jazz kissa in Tokyo — until you realize there’s a version of Buc-ee’s Beaver Nuggets (a Texas chain store snack specialty) on the menu. Equipment Room, a collaboration between the executive chairman of Bunkhouse hotels, Amar Lalvani, and James Moody, the owner of Austin’s beloved music venue Mohawk, aims to “celebrate craft in an unpretentious way,” Lalvani says. The high-fidelity vinyl bar features a record collection of more than 1,200 LPs, selected by Josh LaRue and Gabe Vaughn of the indie music store Breakaway Records. The duo took care to overrepresent Texan artists such as local legends like Townes Van Zandt and Stevie Ray Vaughan. “You will hear and feel Texas throughout our vinyl collection, but you will also visually experience it through art,” says Moody of the rare posters and concert photos that adorn the bar’s walls. Even the drink offerings adhere to the music theme with cocktails named after popular songs and albums by artists like GZA and Fleetwood Mac. equipmentroom.com


Since its founding in 2016, Metrograph, the Ludlow Street art house situated in the liminal zone where Manhattan’s Chinatown blends into the Lower East Side, has served as a gathering place for cinephiles. Now, with “Botanical Imprints,” a plant-themed series beginning March 17, Metrograph’s new director of programming, Inge de Leeuw, hopes to give audiences fresh ways to engage with what they watch. In addition to screenings of Leandro Listorti’s experimental documentary “Herbaria” (2022), Hayao Miyazaki’s anime classic “Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind” (1984) and a shorts selection curated by the arts and research collective Counter-Encounters, there will be an audiovisual installation in the lobby by the Vietnamese video artist Nguyen Trinh Thi; a plant-focused menu (including the Charlotte, a gin-based cocktail with butterfly pea flower named for the American naturalist Charlotte Hilton Green) at the Commissary bar and restaurant; and streams of several of the shorts on Metrograph at Home, the company’s video-on-demand service. “Botanical Imprints” is the first iteration of Metrograph Expanded, an initiative started by de Leeuw that, she says, will encourage audiences to “find a deeper connection to the programming’s themes” by presenting activities beyond the ones typically associated with seeing a movie.

De Leeuw comes to Metrograph from the curatorial department of the International Film Festival Rotterdam, where, in addition to her film work, she created site-specific installations with, among others, Maison Margiela, Rodarte and the director Kenneth Anger. “A program on plants has been on my mind for quite a while,” she says. Listorti’s film was what finally prompted her to create the series. “ ‘Herbaria’ was such a great starting point to think about the parallels between cinema and plants, the histories they are silent witnesses to and the fragile relationship between humans and nature.” “Botanical Imprints” runs until March 27, metrograph.com.


See This



Sahred From Source link Travel

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *