INFEMNITY™ Entertainment News

Quoting the Chaplin Awards website: "The Chaplin Award... goes to an actor or filmmaker whose work embodies Charles (Charlie) Spencer Chaplin’s qualities of realism, diversity, and courage within their craft. These individuals have made outstanding contributions to entertainment within the field of cinema throughout the entirety of their career." This year's recipient was actor, producer, and soon-to-be director Viola Davis. She was honored with tributes from Gina Price-Bythewood (director of The Woman King ), Meryl Streep, Jessica Chastain, George C. Wolfe, among others. While being interviewed on the red carpet, Viola Davis said, "I am very blessed. No doubt. But it would be beautiful if we had a lot of company in this rarified air. I've always felt that the privilege was just doing it. See, I'm from the other side of acting then: ninety-five per cent unemployment rate, one per cent that make $50,000 a year or more. I never got into it to be famous." T...

  April Gibson accepting her 2019 B Free Award For her role as producer of  The Noshing with Nina Show , April Gibson has been nominated to receive several B Free Awards. She has, in fact, been the winner of the award three times: twice in the First Amendment category, and once in the B Entertaining category.  But last night's nomination - in the B Informed category - was special, because for the past two years, April has been looking after her mother in Louisiana, who has been struggling with dementia. She is handling all aspects of caretaking, from overseeing her mother's financial affairs, to chauffeuring her to various doctors' appointments. She has had to sacrifice her life and success in New York City, in order to be present for her mother in her time of need. The episode that was nominated was the show's coverage of the International Conference on James Baldwin, which took place in the South of France in June of 2022. It happened at the tail end of intern...

  Georgia Clark Last Tuesday, Caveat on the Lower East Side of Manhattan was the venue for the latest performance by "Generation Women," billed as "A Storytelling Night from New York City... with Wit and Wisdom from All Ages." Author Georgia Clark  emceed the evening titled "Spring Cleaning: What I Kicked to the Curb," introducing all six participants, each representing a decade. The event was livestreamed, and is still available on demand until April 25th. You can watch the show  here . Our own Nina Kennedy  read an original piece she authored for the event, representing women in their sixties. Julie Magruder* Representing Team twenties, Webby Award-winning podcast producer  Julie Magruder  opened the evening with a moving piece on body-image, and her own obsession with dieting and losing weight.  Allison Kelley Representing women in their thirties,  Allison Kelley  - a Brooklyn-based humor writer and essayist with work featured in The ...

John Guare Before last night I had no idea of who John Guare was. I figured he was just another white man who had been privileged to receive all kinds of attention, success, wealth, and awards for being a white man. Last night I learned that he was the author of famous plays such as Six Degrees of Separation , House of Blue Leaves , Two Gentlemen of Verona , among others. Ariana DeBose was one in a cast of more than two dozen actors including Meryl Streep, Ben Stiller, and Amy Herzog, et al, who performed scenes from Guare's many plays. As far as I was concerned, she was the biggest star on the stage. She presented a reading from Landscape of the Body , which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. She also sang a song from the play. I wondered if many of the elderly white audience even knew who she was. If reminded, I'm sure they would recognize her as the Oscar winner for Best Supporting Actress in Steven Spielberg's West Side Story . But judging from the applause she received, it...

  The party was ON last night in Manhattan on Bond Street where the TittyPix 4th Anniversary Party took place, and the new 2023 calendar was launched. Founded by Fallon Smalberg, TittyPix was created as part of her "...idea to paint breasts for fun. When she showed the images to friends and posted them on Instagram, the responses contained a thread that echoed her own journey toward a positive body image. The business began after a discussion with a fellow artist and photographer about the potential power of offering individual paintings to other people with the intention of creating a space of empowerment, self-acceptance, breast diversity, and healing." Fallon Smalberg (she/her) was raised in Los Angeles, and moved to NYC in 2014. She holds an M.S.W. from Fordham University and is currently a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology. She is passionate about body positivity, community-building, intersectional feminism, and gender inclusivity. Fallon Smalberg Fallon gracious...

Roberta Flack I was privileged to be in the audience for the world premiere of Antonino d'Ambrosio's new film Roberta , a documentary on the life of the two-time Grammy Award-winning American chanteuse Roberta Flack. For those of us who were around in the 1970s, Roberta Flack's music has been part of the soundtrack of our lives for 50 years. Via personal interviews with luminaries such as the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Clint Eastwood, Yoko Ono, Angela Davis, Peabo Bryson, Valerie Simpson, Sean Lennon, among others, the film paints a a multi-faceted picture of the artist, and answers many questions that we may have had. Flack in 1971 In the film, Flack was very tight-lipped about her childhood, aside from saying that her mother was their church organist and she sang in the choir. She came from a very large family, and said that she didn't sleep alone until she was an adult. A child prodigy, she began studying classical piano at age 9 and was awarded a full music scholarship...

The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center honored New York City Leaders and Allies at 25th Annual Women’s Event on Saturday November 5th. Nearly 400 attendees were present for an evening of cocktails, dinner, speeches, and an after party benefiting The Center. Honorees included activist, nonprofit executive, and politician Elisa Crespo; President of Christopher Street Financial Jen Hatch; and Georgie Greville Jasper, Co-Founder and Creative Director of Milk Makeup. The sold-out event included a performance by actress and singer Jenn Colella. Elisa Crespo received the Community Impact Award, and Jen Hatch received the Trailblazer Award. Georgie Greville Jasper accepted the Corporate Impact Award on behalf of Milk Makeup. Karine Jean-Pierre White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre presented a previously recorded congratulatory message to the audience. Watch her speech  here .  Glennda Testone, Executive Director of The Center, also addressed the audienc...

  After all the scandals in recent years involving male conductors and rape/sexual-abuse allegations, why must the first major film about a woman conductor portray her as a predator? While watching  Tár   I had memories of Basic Instinct , when we were so happy to see lesbians portrayed onscreen that we were willing to overlook the fact that they were psycho killers. Now we are forced to watch a successful, internationally-acclaimed woman conductor (who is also a lesbian), but suffers from major character flaws. Where is this fantasy world where a major symphony orchestra has a woman music director, a woman concert master, and a woman-dominated board of directors? This scenario does not exists, so it is especially frustrating that this fictitious conductor is such an evil character. Throughout the film we are teased with fragments of Mahler's Fifth Symphony, which are so short and disconnected that we are left craving for an uninterrupted performance of the complete ...

  Our next guest on The Noshing with Nina Show  will be Alexis Hunter, author of Joi Lansing: A Body to Die For . Hunter was the partner of Hollywood sensation Joi Lansing, who was called the Marilyn Monroe of television. The lovers met on the set of the 1970 film Bigfoot , in which Lansing starred. Hunter had been hired to play one of the "Bigfoot monsters," while wearing a hairy outfit that covered her entire body. She was already a fan of Lansing's after having seen her on television in her hometown of Arkansas City, Kansas before she moved to Hollywood to pursue her own acting career. When Lansing invited her out for coffee, a full-blown romance soon followed. Rachel and Joi Lansing Lansing was married at the time to her third husband, but their relationship had been platonic for several years. Lansing had dated Frank Sinatra and other male celebrities while she was still legally married, while her husband Stan had become more of a father figure, according to Hunter. ...

  To quote the Windy City Times :  PrideIndex's Esteem Awards return in person after two-year hiatus by Carrie Maxwell 2022-07-03 PrideIndex held its 15th annual Esteem Awards on July 2 at Sidetrack during Chicago's Black Pride holiday weekend. The non-profit Esteem Awards is, according to its website, "dedicated to promoting positive images of the African American/People of Color, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning (LGBTQ)+ communities. Since 2007, the Esteem Awards has honored over 300 local and national organizations and individuals for their continued efforts in supporting the areas of entertainment, media, civil rights, social services, business and the arts." Letter from Mayor Lori Lightfoot National awardees included South Fulton, Georgia, Mayor khalid kamau (Outstanding Service, Male); Tagg Magazine Publisher and keynote speaker Eboné Bell (Outstanding Service, Female); Human Rights Campaign Community Engagement Director Tori Cooper (Outsta...