misa campesina 2018

Musicians and singers wanted for the Misa Campesina Nicaraguense 2018. This folk mass is sung every year in celebration of Oxford’s partnership with Leon, Nicaragua.

The date for 2018 is now confirmed, it is the Sunday 22 April, i.e. Sunday morning during the Folk Weekend. The idea behind this scheduling is that the Oxford Leon Association and Trust is going to invite a very special guest from Nicaragua to take part in the misa and in other events during the Folk Weekend.

There will be around three rehearsals in the weeks before the event, so probably starting from late March. Further info, links, and my ravings on this year’s misa (which was the first time I took part) are here.

misa campesina

As part of Oxford twinning link with León, Nicaragua, it has become a tradition that the Misa Campesina Nicaragüense, a folk mass emphasising workers rights and their suffering under capitalism, is sung here once a year (although the most recent press report appears to be from 2011). To give an impression of the music, here's a 3-minute potpourri of the misa performed by Nicaraguan singer Katia Cardenal.

I managed to miss this in the last 22 instalments, but this year there was an official call for people to join the band and choir, which the young musician forwarded to me, so I got to play the lovely tunes on the flute, plus a few bars worth on the guitar.

There were a few people from Nicaragua in the audience, including a woman in the first row who watched us (the band) very closely. Before the last piece she got up to make a speech - turned out she is Guisell Morales, the Nicaraguan ambassador to the UK.



The choir warming up (own photo). The Nicaraguan embassy has shared some photos (of me even) on twitter.

Related to this, the Oxford Leon Link has an exhibition on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the town partnership. This is at the South Oxford Community Centre in Lake Street, although I'm not sure about times and dates.

We also had a visit from a coffee farmer from Nicaragua who gave a talk during Fairtrade Fortnight.

feminist utopia

Book review:

El país de las mujeres

Gioconda Belli

(2010)

In a small Mesoamerican country called Faguas, a volcanic eruption has enriched the air with an antidote to testosterone, turning its macho men into kind and docile human beings who don’t put up too much resistance when the feminist Partido de la Izquierda Erótica (PIE) sweeps to an election victory and its charismatic leader, famous for having exposed prominent sex traffickers in her TV show, becomes president with an all-female government promising to “clean up” the country.

In a time when much of the more imaginative writing goes in the dystopian direction and the state of the real world may also be headed that way, it is unusual and refreshing to find an unashamedly positive utopian novel. Especially for me with a political background that has quite a few connections to the author’s, the general idealism feels like home and the protagonists the PIE committee are very sympathetic characters.

I’m not entirely sure if the novel would work for anybody who doesn’t experience this huge political feel-good factor. The postmodern structure which mixes different kinds of testimonies and documents is at first a bit confusing until you’ve worked out who’s who. Until about the middle of the book it appeared gratuitously random to me and I would have appreciated a frame, maybe set in the distant future, such as the work of a future historian who explores these developments. Belli has used distant times to great effect in The scroll of seduction as well as in The inhabited woman, and it might have improved this effort as well.

As it stands, this is an interesting book and a heart-warming story for those who still have a heat-conducting heart, but maybe not quite as spectacularly brilliant as the two earlier novels mentioned above. Depressingly, there doesn’t seem to be an English translation at all, although it has been translated into German (Die Republik der Frauen), Dutch (Het land van de vrouwen) and Portuguese (O País Das Mulheres) among other languages.

reading the world

I was very impressed when I read that the author Ann Morgan had managed to read one book from each of the 196 countries represented at the 2012 Olympics in London. Her list of books read and others that were recommended to her is here, and the book she wrote about the experience is reviewed here.

Thinking about how embarrassingly far I would fall short of that figure I estimated I would be lucky to make it to 50 countries (in my life so far, not in a year) and started my own list to prove it. If and when I've reviewed a book on this list, I've included a link to the review. If I can't remember whether I've actually read it (even though it's on my shelf), I've marked it with CR. NFY means not finished yet. Still struggling to get to 50 though.

1. Algeria – Mehdi Charef: Thé au harem d’Archi Ahmed (CR - saw the movie though)
2. Argentina – Federico Andahazi: El anatomista (The anatomist)
3. Austria – Daniel Kehlmann: Die Vermessung der Welt (Measuring the world)
4. Belgium – Amélie Nothomb – L’hygiène de l’assassin
5. Brazil – Paulo Coelho: Der Alchemist (The alchemist)
6. Canada - L. M. Montgomery: Anne of Green Gables
7. Chile – Isabel Allende: La casa de los espiritus (The house of the spirits)
8. China – Hong Ying: K – the art of love
9. Colombia – Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Cien años de soledad
10. Congo, Republic of the – Alain Mabanckou: Verre Cassé (Broken Glass)
11. Cote d'Ivoire – Fatou Keita: La rebelle
12. Cuba – Zoe Valdes: La nada cotidiana
13. Ecuador – Alicia Yanez Cossio: El cristo feo
14. Equatorial Guinea – Guillermina Mekuy: El llanto del perro
15. France – Anna Gavalda: Ensemble, c’est tout (Hunting and gathering)
16. Germany – Charlotte Roche: Feuchtgebiete (Wetlands)
17. Guatemala – Miguel Angel Asturias: Leyendas de Guatemala (CR)
18. India – Ruth Prawer Jhabvala: Heat and dust
19. Iraq - Weam Namou: The feminine art
20. Israel – Ephraim Kishon: Oh, oh, Juliet
21. Italy – Umberto Eco: Der Name der Rose (The name of the rose)
22. Kyrgyzstan – Chinghiz Aitmatov: Jamila
23. Lebanon - Vénus Khoury-Ghata: Les fiancés du Cap-Ténès (CR)
24. Madagascar – Michele Rakotoson: Dadabé
25. Mexico – Laura Esquivel: Como agua para chocolate
26. Mongolia – Galsan Tschinag: Die Karawane (NFY)
27. Morocco – Tahar Ben Jelloun: Harrouda (CR)
28. Netherlands – Anne Frank: Das Tagebuch der Anne Frank (Diary of a young girl)
29. New Zealand - Katherine Mansfield: Stories
30. Nicaragua – Gioconda Belli: El pergamino de la seduccion (The scroll of seduction)
31. Nigeria – Sefi Atta: Swallow
32. Peru – Mario Vargas Llosa: El sueño del Celta (The dream of the Celt)
33. Poland – Stanislaw Lem: Stories
34. Russia – Mikhail Bulgakov: Master and Margerita
35. Senegal – Ousmane Sembene: Guelwaar
36. Sierra Leone - Aminatta Forna: The memory of love (NFY)
37. Spain – Almudena Grandes: Castillos de carton
38. Sweden – Astrid Lindgren: Pippi Longstocking
39. Switzerland – Max Frisch: Homo faber
40. Syria - Rafik Schami: Die dunkle Seite der Liebe (NFY)
41. United Kingdom – Esther Freud: Lucky break
42. United States – Megan Clark: Seduce me
43. Vietnam - Kim Thuy: ru (NFY)

Own photo of my reading pile some time in early 2014.

PS: I'll keep updating this with any further reading adventures, hoping that one day I can travel around the world in 80 books ... So this post will also serve as a directory to my reviews of world fiction.

Nicaragua Canal

One hundred years after completion of the Panama Canal, plans for a new, larger shipping route across Central America is dividing opinion. In my latest feature I have looked both at the economic opportunities for one of the poorest countries of the area, and at the dangers to biodiversity and ecosystems.

Will the Nicaragua Canal connect or divide?

Current Biology Volume 24, Issue 21, pR1023–R1025, 3 November 2014

Open access

Source: Wikimedia.

coffee and chocolate

I generally avoid writing about food, as it gets written about too much already, but if the few food types I really care about (essentially: wine, chocolate, coffee) are under threat, I have to ride to their rescue.

So here comes a feature on how climate change, financial speculation, and growth in demand may make it harder to find decent coffee and chocolate at affordable prices in the near future:

Coffee and chocolate in danger

Current Biology Volume 24, Issue 11, pR503–R506, 2 June 2014
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2014.05.035

OPEN access to full text and PDF file

own photo.

PS A few months after my feature appeared, the genome of Coffea canephora was published in Science magazine, accompanied by an excellent perspectives piece arguing that in light of the present dangers to coffee crops, researchers should urgently link up genome info with phenotype characterisation:

A wake-up call with coffee
Dani Zamir
Science 5 September 2014, vol 345, p 1124.
abstract and restricted access to full text

And I'm chuffed that the author cited my feature (even referred to it twice). It doesn't happen every day that my journalistic work gets cited in Science magazine.

forty years later

Today is the 40th anniversary of the coup in Chile. Thirty years ago, I attended a major event on the eve of the 10th anniversary:

which was a huge arena event with lots of big names. The head of the regional government and future federal president Johannes Rau was sitting in the first row with his very young wife (and I was two rows behind them), when the evening's host Dietmar Schönherr, speaking about the US interference in Nicaragua, referred to the then US president Ronald Reagan as an arsehole. That was front page news the next day.

Based on what I learned that evening and later (eg from books like Joan Jara's excellent biography of her husband Victor), I have never been able to hear any US politician trying to take the moral high ground without grumbling, but look at what your guys did to Chile. And even though it has now returned to democracy, the recent student demos have reminded us that Pinochet's legacy persists in the education system as elsewhere.

Oh well. There doesn't seem to be much going on around here today. Just me and my Victor Jara LPs.

now and later

Written and directed by French director Philippe Diaz but filmed in Los Angeles and in English, this film juxtaposes a hippie-style, free love and social justice world view to the view of the financial/political/military power. It could have been called “Make love not war”, although the actual title is really quite lovely and clever as you will realise after about 30 minutes.

In principle, we have a chamber piece setting these two world views up against each other. In one corner we have Bill, a disgraced banker, representing the people who think that their money and/or power will let them get away with anything - but, having been ejected from the system he supported, he is now ready to change his views and indeed his life philosophy.

In the other corner, Angela (Shari Solanis), the illegal immigrant offering him shelter for a few days in her gorgeously hippie-styled penthouse flat on top of a derelict hotel, where both the toilet and the shower are completely open-plan and in plain view of everything else, and where part of the neon sign of the hotel serves as lighting for the single room. That room alone is reason enough to watch the movie.

Angela embarks on the re-education of banker Bill, trying to reconvert him into a useful member of society – although it will have to be the society of a different country, as the US authorities want him locked up. With her priorities firmly on her sensual desires, she goes in for the sex first, fitting in the political education later.

To me, as someone who has essentially grown up with the Nicaragua solidarity movement, her political lecturing was a tad over-familiar, although I appreciate that the vast majority of the US audience will not know (or in fact believe, if told) that the CIA sold arms to Iran to finance the removal of a democratically elected government in Nicaragua (it’s called the Iran-Contra affair, look it up). This scandal, which was exposed in November 1986, is kind of hard to reconcile with the prevailing US ideology that “we’re the good guys”, but I can confirm that it is true, I was alive (and young and angry) when it happened. Bill’s response “you read too many novels” was hilarious to me, but probably representative of what a vast number of people would say if confronted with these historical events.

People who don’t like the gospel she preaches may resent the dialogue, but, as washed-up banker Bill proves, Angela’s charm is irresistible, whether or not you share her political opinion. And her roof-top paradise from where she looks down on the social divisions on LA with eagle eyes, is equally seductive.

I’m not exactly sure that the film will convert many Bills to Angela’s views, not least because it is effectively being boycotted and hasn’t been released in the UK at all, neither in cinemas nor on DVD. In the US, it remained unrated and got a review in the New York Times in 2011, when a Manhattan cinema showed it as part of a series of unrated films. Still it remains important to uphold the opposition to the sexual, military and financial oppression of our age, and linking these three may help to broaden the horizons of people who were only aware of one or two.

amazon.com

After the explanations above, it is almost needless to say that the film did not get a release in the UK (and thus joins my fast-growing list of films not shown here). However, it is available on DVD in the US and also in Germany. I’m showing the US edition here, as the German one shows a photo at the top of the cover that isn’t from the film, and I have a nagging suspicion that somebody may have had racist reasons to put Bill’s ex-wife there in her bra (who only appears for 2 minutes in the film, sitting in a café, fully dressed) rather than Angela.

Update October 2024: rewatched the film 11 years later and still love it. A bit worried re what happened to Shari Solanis, she hasn't been in any movies since.

¡no pasarán!

Loving this week's SPIEGEL cover showing Pussy Riot member Nadyezhda Tolokonnikova sporting a ¡No pasarán! T-shirt.

Der Spiegel, issue 33/2012

That brings back so many memories of Nicaragua solidarity events and all that :)

Those who "will not get through" according to the use of the slogan at the time, were of course the Contra - right-wing insurgents (as we like to say today) enthusiastically supported by that nice Mr Reagan. Earlier uses of the phrase include Spanish Civil War, says Wikipedia.

movies we're not allowed to see

-- last updated 25.06.2015 --

NB: for more recent updates see my new blog post on this issue.

I've been catching up on some European movies from the last years that for some reason or another didn't get a cinema release in the UK (criteria: no release date listed on IMDB and film didn't show up here). There is a growing collection of recent films that I really liked and that didn't get shown in this country, so I'm compiling a commented list here:

Mädchen Mädchen (Girls on top) - Germany 2001, Dennis Gansel.

Juana la loca - Spain 2001, Vicente Aranda - it's just a straightforward period drama based on the same events as Gioconda Belli's more ambitious novel El pergamino de la seducción (which I reviewed here) but I love the story so it doesn't harm to have a second view on it. It's nicely done and should interest people outside Spain too. (It has in fact been released in the US as "Mad Love", but not here.)

800 balas (800 bullets) - Spain 2002, Alex de la Iglesia - surprisingly brilliant film, see my review.

El otro lado de la cama (The other side of the bed) - Spain 2002, Emilio Martínez Lázaro - starring Paz Vega, Natalia Verbeke.

Suite Habana (Havana Suite) - Cuba 2003, Fernando Pérez - not European, but still interesting.

L'esquive (Games of love and chance) - France 2003, Abdellatif Kechiche - only shown at the London film festival.

Dot the i - UK 2003, Matthew Parkhill - this one puzzles me, actually, it's made in Britain, with funding from UK film council, in English (though with stars better known in Spanish speaking countries), all nipples carefully covered up, and it still went straight to DVD (more here).

Tout le plaisir est pour moi (The pleasure is all mine) - France 2004, Isabelle Broué, starring Marie Gillain - comedy around libido lost and found, a bit painting by numbers and too americanised for my taste, but apparently not enough to get a UK release.

En la cama - Germany / Chile 2005, Matías Bize starring Blanca Lewin, Gonzalo Valenzuela - the film that inspired Julio Medem's "Room in Rome" (2010, see below). See my review.

Melissa P - Italy / Spain 2005, Luca Guadagnino - a difficult topic handled tactfully, see my review.

Ensemble c'est tout - France 2007, Claude Berri - ok, I wasn't really overwhelmed by this one, see my review of the book (by Anna Gavalda) with post-script on the film here. The film was only shown at a festival here and hasn't even seen a DVD release (my DVD is from Germany).

Caótica Ana - Spain 2007, Julio Medem - maybe not his best work but still worth watching, see my review here.

Les anges exterminateurs - France 2006, Jean-Claude Brisseau - although part one of the trilogy, Les choses secretes, was shown in UK cinemas, this second part and the final one, A l'aventure, weren't.

Tangerine - Germany 2008, Irene von Alberti - German musicians try and fail to connect with the culture of Morocco ...

A l'aventure - France 2008, Jean-Claude Brisseau - third part of the trilogy, of which only the beginning, Les choses secretes made it to UK cinemas.

LOL (Laughing out Loud) - France 2008, Lisa Azuelos - a teenage comedy with a twist, as Sophie Marceau, who shot to fame with La Boum in the 80s, plays the mother of the lead girl this time round. Looking this up on IMDB, I found out that a US remake starring Miley Cyrus and Demi Moore is due to be released on 1.6.2012. Oh, and there hasn't even been a DVD release in the UK, another movie I had to import from Germany.

Française -France 2008, Souad El-Bouhati - shortish film about being a foreigner and choosing your country, starring Hafsia Herzi from Couscous (La graine et le mulet), review to follow.

Soul kitchen - Germany 2009, Fatih Akin - review to follow.

Castillos de cartón - Spain 2009, Salvador García Ruiz - charming film based on novel by Almudena Grandes, about three art students in 1980s Madrid who find their ways in art, love, and life. See my review of the UK DVD edition trying to mis-sell it as porn.

Je te mangerais - France 2009, - girl-on-girl obsession complete with harrassment and a background of classical music. Love the setting (in Lyon) and the views, but there are some disturbing things going on that aren't really addressed. Also, the link between emotions and their musical expression wasn't easy to catch for mere mortal non-pianists like me. Went straight to DVD in the UK in 2010 (title: Highly Strung, cert. 15).

Now & later - USA 2009, Philippe Diaz - free love vs. the power of military and financial oppression, heart-warming stuff, read my review here.

Mentiras y gordas (Sex, party & lies) - Spain 2009, Alfonso Albacete - superficially, this is sex and drugs and techno all the way through, so don't be surprised at the knee-jerk reaction from some quarters and the 18 certificate on the DVD. If you can look beyond that, however, there are interesting subtleties (the lies are in the title for a reason), characters likeable with all their flaws, and a cautionary tale about the dangers of drugs and falling in love.
UPDATE December 2023: rewatched this after realising that it features a young Ana de Armas (who since then moved on to Hollywood and played Marilyn Monroe). Hadn't remembered much after 14 years, so I had great pleasure in rediscovering it.

Happy Few - France 2010, Antony Cordier - starring Elodie Bouchez - I missed La vie rêvée des anges when it came out, and generally hadn't seen a movie with Bouchez since Les roseaux sauvages (1994), so I made a note regarding this one when I heard about it in France. Needless to say, it didn't get a UK release (not even as DVD) so I imported the DVD from Germany. One might question whether the news that two couples have merged into a foursome is material enough to fill two hours, but I really liked the general feel and atmosphere of it.

L'âge de raison - France 2010, Yann Samuell - starring Sophie Marceau - what happens if the letters a clever 7-year-old girl writes to her future, 40-year-old self actually get delivered? Good question, slightly muddled in the answer but still interesting and moving to a degree. Further proof that de-frenching French films by bringing in a bit of English dialogue and leaving out all nipples doesn't guarantee cinematic release in the English-speaking world. Neither does the presence of a huge star like Marceau ... It was shown in cinemas in Germany, where a DVD is available under the title Vergissmichnicht.

Balada triste de trompeta - Spain 2010, Alex de la Iglesia - shown at Edinburgh Film Festival only.
A complex and difficult movie on the trauma caused by the Spanish civil war, read my review here

Vénus noire - France 2010, Abdellatif Kechiche - epic and profound biopic of an African woman shown around as "Hottentot Venus" in European cities in the 19th century. See my review here

Mes chères études - France 2010, Emmanuelle Bercot - now this alternative approach to student finance might have caused scandal around here, so better not show it.

678 / Les femmes du bus 678 - Egypt 2010, Mohamed Diab, starring Nahed El Sebai, Boushra, Nelly Karim - very timely and relevant film on the everyday harassment of women, see my review here.

still from "Habitación en Roma": official site.

Habitación en Roma (Room in Rome) - Spain 2010, Julio Medem - read my review here.

I love Périgord - France 2011, Charles Nemes – it’s a cliché-laden comedy about an Anglo-French culture clash and I wouldn’t normally make a fuss about it, but given the topic, a no-show in UK cinemas might of course be read as censoring the opinion of the other side in this age-old cultural conflict.

Q - France 2011, Laurent Bouhnik – What if relationships between people were driven by rampant female desire, what might this alternative to the testosterone-soaked world we live in look like? The (male) writer/director seems to think that it would be a better world, as the desire of the female protagonist, although a bit disconcerting at first, ends up being a force for good, fixing troubled relationships and strengthening the community. Sadly, censors and marketing people are unable to ignore the bare chests for long enough to work out what a film is actually about, so we have another interesting film that didn’t get a UK release and went straight to DVD with a blurb that essentially tries to sell it as posh porn. When will they ever learn?

Memoria de mis putas tristes - Mexico/Denmark 2011, Henning Carlsen - lovely adaptation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez' eponymous short novel from 2004. Review to follow.

Camille redouble (Camille rewinds) - France 2012, Noémie Lvovsky - Charming if slightly illogical time travel story featuring the director in the lead role. It was - released in around a dozen countries but no UK date in sight.

La fille de nulle part - France 2012, Jean-Claude Brisseau - this low-budget ghost story looks like poor old Brisseau is now reduced to filming in his own flat and playing the lead himself, but it is still interesting.

Mapa para conversar (A map for love) - Chile 2012, Constanza Fernandez, starring Andrea Moro, Mariana Prat, Francisca Bernardi - three women in a cute little chamber piece mostly set on a small boat. Restrictions clear the mind, as one of the characters says. Available on DVD from the lovely peccadillo pictures.

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PS: I am, of course, a bit biased in favour of Spanish and French cinema, but I'm sure there are similarly neglected films from other European countries, and indeed from around the world as well. I'll also acknowledge bias towards vaguely intelligent films, which excludes some German comedies that were extremely successful on the domestic market but didn't get exported.

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"Endangered List" of films that may or may not end up on the list above (as I haven't seen them yet, and/or they may still turn up):


Flores raras (Reaching for the Moon) - Brazil 2013, Bruno Barreto
Landes - France 2013, François-Xavier Vives, starring Marie Gillain
Ayer no termina nunca (Yesterday never ends) - Spain 2013, Isabel Coixet - shown at the Berlin International Film Festival 2013, and at the London Spanish Film Festival 2013

Una pistola en cada mano - Spain 2012, Cesc Gay - Shown in Germany (Ein Freitag in Barcelona), and at the London Spanish Film Festival 2013.

Die Vermessung der Welt (Measuring the world) Germany 2012, Detlev Buck.
Klip (Clip) - Serbia 2012, Maja Milos
Weil ich schöner bin - Germany 2012, Frieder Schlaich
El amigo aleman (The German friend) - Germany, Argentina 2012, Jeanine Meerapfel
3 - Uruguay, Argentina, Germany 2012 - Pablo Stoll - oops, there are too many movies called 3, I was looking for this one and first found the one below, and got all confused.
Tres - Ecuador, Argentina, Germany 2012
3 Zimmer/Küche/Bad (Move) - Germany 2012
Baad el Mawkeaa (After the Battle) - France / Egypt 2012
Después de Lucía - Mexico / France 2012
A perdre la raison - Belgium 2012, Joachim Lafosse, starring Emilie Dequenne
Buscando a Eimish - Spain 2012, Ana Rodríguez Rosell, starring Manuela Vellés, Emma Suárez - shown at the London Spanish Film Festival 2012
Joven y alocada - Chile 2012, Marialy Rivas

Lo mejor de Eva - Spain 2011, Mariano Barroso - starring Leonor Watling, Adriana Ugarte
Un été brûlant - France 2011, Philippe Garrel - starring Monica Bellucci
Violeta se fue a los cielos (Violeta went to heaven) - Chile 2011, Andrés Wood - a biopic of the Chilean folk singer, song writer Violeta Parra
Graba - Argentina 2011
Lo contrario al amor - Spain 2011 - shown at the London Spanish Film Festival 2012
Verbo - Spain 2011 - shown at the London Spanish Film Festival 2012
Karen llora en un bus - Colombia 2011
Abrir puertas y ventanas (Back to stay) - Argentina 2011, Milagros Mumenthaler
La chispa de la vida (As luck would have it) - Spain 2011, Alex de la Iglesia
Poulet aux prunes (Chicken with plums) - France 2011, Marjane Satrapi
3 - Germany 2011, Tom Tykwer
I phone you - Germany 2011, Dan Tang
Almanya - Willkommen in Deutschland - Germany 2011, Nesrin Samdereli, Yasemin Samdereli

Amador - Spain 2010, Fernando Leon Aranoa, starring Magaly Solier
Le sentiment de la chair - France 2010 - (slightly scared of this, plot summary sounds like it may be taking "anatomical detail" a little bit too literally?)
Marieke, Marieke - Belgium 2010, Sophie Schoukens
Die Fremde (When we leave) - Germany 2010, Feo Aladag - starring Sibel Kekilli
Le nom des gens - France 2010, Michel Leclerc
Flamenco, flamenco - Spain 2010, Carlos Saura -
Un homme qui crie - France/Belgium/Chad 2010, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun -
Joseph et la fille - France 2010, Xavier de Choudens - starring Hafsia Herzi, Jacques Dutronc


La fille du RER (The girl on the train) - France 2009, André Téchiné, starring Emilie Dequenne
Eloise - Spain 2009, Jesús Garay
Io, Don Giovanni - Spain / Italy 2009, Carlos Saura
Anonymes (Buried secrets) - France 2009, Raja Amari - starring Hafsia Herzi
El último verano de la Boyita - Argentina 2009, Julia Solomonoff - shown at the Viva Festival, Manchester only.
La Yuma - Nicaragua 2009, Florence Jaugey -

El juego del ahorcado - Spain 2008, Manuel Gómez Pereira - starring Adriana Ugarte
La journeé de la jupe (Skirt day) - France 2008, Jean-Paul Lilienfeld - starring Isabelle Adjani, who won a César for this role
L'aube du monde (Dawn of the world) - Iraq, France, Germany 2008, Abbas Fahdel - starring Hafsia Herzi
Le premier venu (Just anybody) - France 2008, Jacques Doillon -
Arráncame la vida (Tear this heart out) - Mexico 2008, Roberto Sneider - Adaptation of Angeles Mastretta's novel, shown at the Viva Festival, Manchester only.

Les filles du botaniste - France / Canada (2006) but dialogue in Mandarin
Short order (Life is a buffet) - Ireland, Germany, UK 2005 - starring Emma de Caunes

Perder es cuestión de método - Colombia 2004, Sergio Cabrera - an adaptation of Santiago Gamboa's eponymous novel

Petite Lili - France 2003 - starring Ludivine Sagnier; an adaptation of Chekhov's The Seagull, apparently

Solino Germany 2002, Fatih Akin

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Finally, films from the watch list that did get a UK release after all, hooray:

Alceste a bicyclette (Bicycling with Moliere) - France 2013, Philippe Le Guay - Note the predictable replacement of the name of Alceste (the lead character in Le misanthrope) with the author's name in the international title. UK release on July 6th, 2014.
El artista y la modelo - Spain 2012, Fernando Trueba, starring Claudia Cardinale - one-off showing at the London Spanish Film Festival's Spring Weekend, April 2013, then release of around a dozen copies in September 2013, details here
La vie d'Adèle (Blue is the warmest colour) - France 2013, Abdellatif Kechiche - winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes 2013, and I was still worried it might not get a release here. That's how bad things have become. It was released in November 2013.

Paris-Manhattan - France 2012, Sophie Lellouche - French reflections on Woodie Allen - UK release 5.7.2013, apparently, although it hasn't shown up in our local cinemas. Got DVD via Germany and really liked it.
Les femmes du 6ème étage (The women on the 6th floor) - France 2010 - UK release in July 2012
Elle s'appellait Sarah - France 2010, Gilles Paquet-Brenner - starring Kristin Scott-Thomas
UK release 5.8.2011 as "Sarah's Key"

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Further reading:

1. An interesting piece from a movie professional who had a few fights with the UK censors appeared in the Guardian film section on 1.10.2010.
2. 100 years of film censorship (slash classification): Kira Cochrane in the Guardian on the BBFC's anniversary, 27.7.2012.
3. BFI statistical yearbook 2013: According to the country of origin stats on page 17, 151 (23%) of the movies released in the UK in 2012 came from other European countries. Also see the chapter 5, "Specialised Films", which includes stats on foreign language films. Apparently, 230 films in 32 foreign languages were released in 2012, accounting for 35.5% of all releases but taking only 2% of the box-office. I'll prepare a separate blog entry on these stats.

beware of orange trees

I got an orange tree for my birthday last year, and some time after that, seemingly unrelated, I started reading La mujer habitada by Gioconda Belli. I've had the book for 10 years, but only got round to reading this, her debut novel, now, after her other major works. It soon turned out that the heroine is becoming "inhabited" by the spirit of a native American from the time of the Spanish conquest, and that the spirit had previously inhabited the orange tree she put in her patio. The spirit gradually turns her into a guerilla fighter. So I am now being very careful not to get too close to that tree of mine. Maybe it already tricked me into reading the book.

But seriously, and leaving any irrational fears of citrus plants aside, I liked the novel a lot, and it was particularly intriguing to read it soon after her more recent novel, El pergamino de la seduccion (the scroll of seduction). Although the books are very different and set in different countries (Nicaragua and Spain, respectively), one could argue that they both feature as the main characters a young woman and a large house. In both books the young woman establishes a magical link to a woman who lived around 400 years earlier, via the orange tree in one case, and via the old house and its inhabitants in the other.

It's also interesting to read the book as a look back across time on the regime that the Sandinista movement swept away, knowing as we know now, that a few of the dashing young guerilla leaders eventually became corrupted by power.

What I really don't understand is why her work is so underappreciated in the English-speaking world. Maybe it doesn't translate well?

going loco

Book review

El pergamino de la seduccion (The scroll of seduction) by Gioconda Belli


“Juana la loca,” or Queen Joanna of Castile (1479-1555) never reigned because her father, her husband, and her son consecutively declared her insane and unfit to govern, claiming her political role for themselves. According to Gioconda Belli’s rehabilitation dressed up as a quite marvellous novel, the poor woman wasn’t insane at all, just squeezed between three males who had much bigger political ambitions and instincts, and whom she had the misfortune to love. (The men in question were Ferdinand II of Aragon, her father, Philip the Handsome, her husband, and her son Charles I of Spain and V. of Germany, in whose empire the sun never set.)

Gioconda Belli (born 1948) brings Joanna back to life using Lucia, a young woman in 1960s Madrid (so she’s vaguely of the author’s generation, who also went to boarding school in Madrid in the 60s) who plays her role in a game of history re-enactment that allows her to go through at least some of the experiences (love, vulnerability, imprisonment, bereavement) that Joanna went through in the 16th century. The role play artifice bridging a gap of 450 years works surprisingly well, bringing both the unfortunate queen and her modern day interpreter to life. The male history prof who sets the situation up and manipulates Lucia as the three men in her life manipulated Joanna remains more enigmatic. The spooky old house where much of the story is set is almost a character of the story and reminded me of the modern classic Nada by Carmen Laforet.

Does the author convince us that Joanna wasn’t mad after all? In her afterword she argues that while historians tend to label her as schizophrenic, none of the psychiatrists she consulted agreed with this diagnosis. Most tellingly, Joanna only went “mad” when she was treated badly, e.g. locked up, forcefully separated from her children, etc., but appeared perfectly sane under normal conditions. Which suggests that she wasn’t psychotic at all.

What appears to have been her real problem, however, was a lack of political instinct, which turned out to be catastrophic for somebody thrown into the political arena simply by virtue of her royal descent and her robust health – everybody else with higher ranking claims to the throne died young. Yes she was kicked around by the men in her life, but one can’t help thinking that the queen gene skipped a generation. Her mother, Isabella of Castile, described as cold-hearted in the novel, but famous for the Reconquista (the expulsion of the Arabs from the Iberian peninsula) and for sponsoring Columbus’ crossing of the Atlantic, would have asserted herself in a similar situation, while Joanna just drowned in it and went “mad”.

Her gift appears to have been in a different domain – she is described as a passionate lover (the safe hands of an author who is also known for her erotic poetry are a definite bonus in that domain) and managed to produce six healthy children who all went on to become monarchs. The mad world of political power-struggle just wasn’t for her.




Picture from Wikimedia