Screening

About Anthony Arnove

Year Released:

2011

Genres:

From Print to Stage to Film - The Art of Adapting

Anthony Arnove is the editor, with Howard Zinn, of Voices of a People’s History of the United States, a critically acclaimed primary-source companion to Zinn’s best selling A People’s History of the United States that features the words of rebels, dissenters, and visionaries from our past — and present. Rethinking Schools describes the book a “stunning new volume.” Jon Stewart of The Daily Show calls it “Gut-wrenching.” And Salon.com considers it “Compelling and indispensable.” The book, published by Seven Stories Press, also has a companion teacher’s guide and curriculum.

Zinn and Arnove have organized public readings from the Voices of a People’s History of the United States that have featured the words of Frederick Douglass, Tecumseh, Emma Goldman, Paul Robeson, Susan B. Anthony, and others. These events have featured Mos Def, Viggo Mortensen, Sandra Oh, Kerry Washington, James Earl Jones, Marisa Tomei, Kurt Vonnegut, Lili Taylor, Sarah Jones, Wallace Shawn, John Sayles, Danny Glover, Alice Walker, Harris Yulin, Josh Brolin, Cindy Corrie, Steve Earle, Allison Moorer, Ally Sheedy, Mark Ruffalo, exonerated death row prisoners and their families, and many other readers. He worked with Howard Zinn, The Culture Project, and director Rob Urbinati on a stage adaptation of the book, Rebel Voices. The Culture Project featured a workshop of the play in the Impact Festival in September 2006. A full production, coauthored and coproduced by Arnove, opened at The Culture Project in fall 2007 and is now in development for performances at other theaters nationally. Highlight performances of Voices (Readings from Voices of a People’s History of the United States) are available on DVD (AK Press) and CD (Seven Stories Press). Seven Stories has also published a free teacher’s guide to the book: Teaching with Voices of a People’s History of the United States. He cofounded the nonprofit Voices of a People’s History of the United States with Howard Zinn and the arts and production company Civic Bakery with Chris Moore and Brenda Coughlin.

Arnove is the co–executive producer and co-director with Howard Zinn, Chris Moore, John Brolin, and Matt Damon, of The People Speak, the film documentary version of Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States and Voices of a People’s History of the United States (which he co-wrote with Zinn). He also coauthored the film’s script with Zinn.

He has directed and co-directed dozens of staged readings from Voices and for The People Speak, including a performance at the Brixton Academy in London with Colin Firth. He is also so-executive producer and co-director with Colin Firth of a UK version of The People Speak, which aired in fall 2010 on the History Channel in the United Kingdom and featured Ian McKellan, Ben Kingsley, Keira Knightley, and more than a dozen other leading musicians and actors.

Arnove’s is the author of Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal, with a foreword by Howard Zinn, published in paperback from Metropolitan Books and the American Empire Project in January 2007. Arundhati Roy calls the book “urgent.” Cindy Sheehan describes it as “brilliant.” And Eve Ensler finds it “An impassioned, unflinching case for immediate U.S. withdrawal.” The book has also been published, or will soon be published, in Australia, Italy, Bosnia, France, and Lebanon.

He is also is the editor of Iraq Under Siege: The Deadly Impact of Sanctions and War (South End Press) and Terrorism and War, a collection of post–9/11 interviews with Howard Zinn (Seven Stories Press).

For his most recent book project, Arnove edited The Essential Chomsky, published by The New Press.

He also served as stage director of London’s World Book Night in 2011, a live event in Trafalgar Square featuring John le Carré, Edna O’Brien, Margaret Atwood, and many other leading international authors, launching the giveaway of more than one million books in one weekend across the UK.

An activist based in Brooklyn, he is a member of the International Socialist Organization, the National Writers Union, and the Dramatist’s Guild.

His writing has appeared in O Magazine, The Financial Times, The Nation, Monthly Review, In These Times, International Socialist Review, Red Pepper, Socialist Worker, L’Humanite, Le Nouvel Observateur, Z Magazine, Cineaste, New Politics, Mother Jones, Left Business Observer, and other publications. He writes regularly for the ZNet web site.