Obituaries
Ousmane Sembène, major figure in African cinema, dead at 84
By Joanne Laurier, June 13, 2007
One of the pioneering figures in African cinema, the Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembène, died over this past weekend in Dakar at the age of 84. Sembène authored numerous works of fiction and direc...
Obituary: Kurt Vonnegut, satirist and pessimist
By Sandy English, April 27, 2007
The American writer Kurt Vonnegut died on April 11 at the age of 84 from injuries to his brain suffered during a fall several weeks earlier.
Shakespearean gravitas in political satire: British actor Ian Richardson dead at 72
By Paul Bond, February 15, 2007
Even actors of great versatility and range are sometimes remembered for one or two roles. Ian Richardson, who has died suddenly aged 72, is a case in point.
James Brown, one of the greats of post-war American popular music
By Richard Phillips, January 17, 2007
Last month saw the passing of James Brown, a giant of American rhythm and blues and a key initiator of the soul, funk and rap music genres. Brown was admitted to an Atlanta hospital on December 24 and...
Obituary: Naguib Mahfouz, novelist of Egypt and humanity
By Sandy English, December 15, 2006
“There are many kinds of heroes in ancient Arabic literature, all of them horsemen, knights. But a hero today would for me be one who adheres to a certain set of principles and stands by them in...
Pianist Jay McShann, last of Kansas City’s jazz giants, dies at 90
By John Andrews, December 12, 2006
Pianist, singer and bandleader Jay McShann died Thursday, one month before his 91st birthday. Fittingly, he passed away in Kansas City, Missouri, his adopted hometown and one of the most significant i...
An appreciation of jazz singer Anita O’Day, 1919-2006
By John Andrews, November 28, 2006
Anita O’Day, one of the great vocalists in jazz history, passed away Thanksgiving Day in a West Los Angeles convalescent hospital at the age of 87. She left no survivors. Her death from cardiac ...
American filmmaker Robert Altman dead at 81
By David Walsh, November 23, 2006
Robert Altman, whose film and television directing career began in the 1950s, died in Los Angeles Monday at the age of 81. He had been battling cancer for at least 18 months. Altman, as he revealed wh...
Gillo Pontecorvo, Italian director of The Battle of Algiers, dead at 86
A 2004 interview with the WSWS
October 18, 2006
Gillo Pontecorvo, the Italian filmmaker best known for directing Battle of Algiers (1966), died October 12 at a hospital in Rome at the age of 86. The cause of death was not immediately revealed, but ...
“To Each Time Its Art, to Art Its Freedom”
Modernist architect Harry Seidler dies in Australia
By Paul Bartizan, June 20, 2006
Australian architect Harry Seidler died March 9, aged 82, nearly a year after suffering a massive stroke, from which he never fully recovered. Seidler was an uncompromising, passionate and skilled arc...
“America’s American”dreamer: poet Robert Creeley (1926-2005)
By Andrew Linder, June 8, 2006
Robert Creeley, the foremost surviving promoter and practitioner of the modernist poetics of William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound and Louis Zukofsky, died last year on March 30, his lungs giving out in...
“Be persistent in exploring human nature, and dare to run around in no-man’s land”
Veteran Japanese director Shohei Imamura dies
By Richard Phillips, June 6, 2006
Shohei Imamura, one of Japan’s most interesting and prolific post-World War II filmmakers died on May 30 from liver cancer. The 79-year-old director and scriptwriter is survived by a wife, daugh...
