Virgin Territories – Tales of a Caribbean Movie Theatre
Reading by Vera Graaf and Artwork by Sabina Streeter
Sunday, August 25 at 4 pm
East Hampton, Springs, NY - The Leiber Collection is thrilled to present a reading of Virgin Territories ~ Tales of a Caribbean Movie Theatre with author Vera Graaf, accompanied by artwork by artist Sabina Streeter. Join us for this fantastic adventure story that takes us to the island of Virgin Gorda in the British Virgin Islands of the 1970s with a young couple who brought movies to the remote island for the very first time. Artist Sabina Streeter will show a new painting inspired by this incredible story.
About the book:
When a young, adventurous couple from New York City follows their dream to open a movie theater on a faraway Caribbean island, they have no idea of the tumultuous journey that lies ahead. Running the Argus Cinema on Virgin Gorda becomes a wild ride over bureaucratic hurdles, baffling island customs, eccentric neighbors, a fickle audience, plus a mysterious ghost right in the entrepreneurs' own backyard. Will the cinema succeed? Will the couple's love survive all challenges? This memoir, a true story of the 1970's, tells how two adventurous souls came to be inscribed forever in the island's annals as the "Godfather" and the "Godmother".
About Author Vera Graaf:
Vera Graaf is a writer, journalist and documentary filmmaker, living in New York City. Raised and educated in Germany, she escaped, like many of her generation, at an early age to live in the United States. Homo Futurus, her thesis on American Science Fiction, was published 1971 in Germany by Econ/Claassen Publishers. With her partner, Michael Zimmer, she spent the 1970's in the Caribbean, starting out on French St. Barts, then moving to the British island of Virgin Gorda. There, they established and ran the Argus Cinema, the island's first movie theater, opening in 1974 with The Godfather. This memoir is based on those adventurous years. As a journalist, in the Eighties and Nineties, Vera covered the New York cultural scene for various German publications. After a brief foray into documentary filmmaking, she has now happily returned to writing and lives in Manhattan.
About Artist Sabina Streeter:
Sabina Streeter is a contemporary artist whose portraits are based in classical traditions and include an extraordinarily diverse range of present and historical figures. Streeter enlarges reality, then cuts to the emotional with an unblinking clarity of detail. Her work dramatizes issues of history, popular culture, and universal longing. The freely gestural strokes are executed in charcoal, pastel, gouache and oil and result in a movement between figurative painting and abstraction. As Alanna Heiss, founder of MoMA PS1, observes, "Sabina's work has a unique conceptual content and an aura of cool detachment that is ironic without being jaded or exaggerated. If I had to choose one living artist to distill my likeness on canvas, it would be her.” Sabina Streeter was born in Munich, Germany, to a family of artists. She has lived and worked in Sag Harbor, New York, since 1992.
The Leiber Collection is located at 446 Old Stone Highway in the East Hampton hamlet of Springs. For more information, visit the website at www.leibercollection.org, email info@leibercollection.org, or call 631-329-3288.
To reserve tickets: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/virgin-territories-tales-of-a-caribbean-movie-theatre-tickets-997320300867
