some are going anarchist in romania and we like that

or maybe i shouldn't call it just that, but for me anarchism is anytime one can see through the vail of manipulative society and want to replace power with solidarity and community. REAL EYES SEE REAL LIES, and they seem to have some of that:

made the intro cuz i wanted to spread the word about a documentary in the line of many anti-capitalist ones, but a bit more poetic, spiced with cool quotations from many counter-culture authors of all times. slightly pedantic, maybe not powerful enough to open the eyes of "the enslaved", but able to reinforce what we know quite well. i don't know how to help people chose not to ignore these truths, but i'm bound on trying.

oh, dad!

“And When Have You Last Seen Your Father?” (Anand Tucker, 2007)

…a difficult question to be asked as you approach the age of thirty,or forty because either you’ve left home long ago and life now reserves too little time to remember the old folks, or the memory of a young and present dad- a real dad!- is under a thick layer of dust. Have you ever seen him really? What do know about his life before you? Maybe a couple of photos with army chums and one in which his head is fully covered in curly hair. Just an opportunity to laugh, imagine further and reminiscence… or maybe you can grasp the real him in the gaze of mom. If they’re still together after all these years, it must have been love! Or habituation? Or the fear to lose a home?

There comes a time when they get old, when they make us come back and want to get to know them as adults, to interpret their mistakes through cynical adult eyes. Would you rather confront them than take care of them? You have some pieces of the puzzle from back in adolescence: it was impossible for him to be faithful while mom was resilient for the kids. He was often the heart of the party in public and nothing but a grump in private. But still, he taught you how to drive, took you camping and bought you your first beer. But then again, he always criticized you, made the worst jokes on your behalf and was still far from being content with your achievements.

Anand Tucker’s film speaks to the moment in your life when you realize you’ve gone a long separate way since that umbilical cord was cut. So long that it takes a journey into childhood to reconnect with the old people who live at your former address. What was so good and what was so awful about them? How did you come to hate one of them?
Colin Firth faultlessly plays Blake, an awarded writer who visits the house of his parents to spend the last days with his dying father. The sad event gives him the opportunity to make up with the grim memories he had of the dad- a cheating personality, “minor duplicities, little fiddles”, lack of empathy, or the constant desire to impress and to be liked, on account of others. Although knowledgeable of having been cheated throughout their marriage, the old mom (Juliet Stevenson) does not cease to be at her husband’s side. As his strength leaves his body into being spoon-fed, he rewards her with pathetic hypocrite moments of “I don’t know what I would have done without you.” Blake is about to make the mistake of being sucked into memories of his first love- a sharp-tongued lassy maid in his family’s house during his adolescence- and forget about his wife and kids. Their arrival after the death of the father and the attempt to reconcile with his aunt (the one he suspects to have been his dad’s lifelong mistress) brings him back to present life. There he finds space to accept the dad that passed away as a faulty person, but as a real dad- one whose memory he can squeeze to his chest, one whose ashes he ritually tastes.

Imdb rating: 6.8

WATER

“Water” (Deepa Mehta, 2005)

“A woman who is unfaithful to her husband is reborn in the womb of a jackal”(The Laws of Manu)

Chuyia’s husband dies so her family sends her to a widows’ ashram where she is to spend the rest of her life. Only that Chuyia is a little girl of about 7. They shave off her long beautiful hair and leave her among bald women in rags, to share their austere life. They expect that she would offer senseless devotion to a husband she never knew and to a tradition she is too young to embrace willingly. She keeps asking for her mother and wants nothing more than to return home. Among the other scary widows, as different in character as the many inhabitants of an inferno she meets Kalyani, a beautiful young widow, the only one who for some reason keeps her hair.

The story is placed in India in 1938, in a time in which the name of GandHi was starting to be heard. Widow houses survive through the hideous practice of prostituting one of them to the rich. In this case, it becomes the duty of Kalyani, thus the beautiful hair still on her head and her looks. From a miserable state she almost reaches salvation in the possibility of marrying a young handsome and liberal aristocrat. He’s ready to pursue his love in spite of his higher caste, but as the two elope, she realizes she’s been selling her services to her future father-in-law. Kalyani finds her end in the arms of the sacred river Ganges, deciding to commit suicide, aware that the desired escape is an illusion.

The film’s beautiful scenery and music are only matched by the deep sadness of the storyline. The ending brings a minuscule ray of light, the teaching of Gandhi enlightening one of the widows into helping Chuyia to escape. Albeit half dead after having been molested, as she becomes the replacement of Kalyani through a trick of the widows.

There’s no controversy about arranged marriages in the film, but the pressure of society and tradition making women live as half-dead is poignantly carried across. The film is obviously not Bollywood, but Canadian! It was actually banned in India, although it addresses a still existing social problem and the dire life of a demographically expanding society, the drama of cultural idiosyncrasies reinforcing the cycle of poverty. In spite of the title, "water" is not an environmental film, but it deals with a large-scale phenomenon, “There are over 34 million widows in India according to the 2001 census. Many continue to live in conditions of social, economic and cultural deprivation as prescribed 2000 years ago by the Sacred Texts of Manu.”

Nominated for Oscar

Imdb rating: 7.6

9

if you worship tim burton,you're bound to like this short of to Shane Acker's, which they produced in 2005.
long feature followed in 2009, gotta get my claws on that one!

how to be a locavore

this is how they do it in down-under.
i found insight in this SEED film about the different types of making sure that the food on your table is as local as possible: farmers markets, food box systems, food coops, community farms, community gardens and school garden.
plus i found that besides being a vegetarian (or vegan) it is also important to be a locavore=Someone who exclusively (or at least primarily) eats foods from their local or regional foodshed or a determined radius from their home (commonly either 100 or 250 miles, depending on location). By eating locally, most locavores hope to create a greater connection between themselves and their food sources, resist industrialized and processed foods, and support their local economy. The majority of locavores do not give themselves a strcit radius from which to eat, but instead buy as much of their food as they can from farmers, growers, and sellers with whom they have a relationship or whose growing or producing practices appeal they want to support. (about.com definition)
in the american oxford dictionary, locavore was word of the year in 2007, as there are many laudable american initiatives which subscribe themselves to the eat local challenge. so for all you snotty people put there thinking nothing eco ever came from or is happening in the US, wrong again!

anyhow, this is australia in this short film.
i've got nothing more to write about it, the film is self-explanatory, just watch, be inspired and learn!!!

no m'am!

it's great to be able to play even if you're a grown up. it's even better if you make fun of the right people in a daring attempt to open up a few minds.

thus,

Press/295
20 May 2002
WTO to announce schedule for disbanding

After a protracted and detailed review of current trade policy and its
effects on developing countries, the World Trade Organization has
decided to effect a cessation of all operations, to be accomplished
over a period of several months. The WTO will eventually
reintegrate as a new trade body whose charter will be to ensure
that trade benefits the poor.[...]

In order to provide greater access to the Least Developed Countries who will most benefit from the existence of the TRO, the organisation's headquarters will be moved from their current location in Geneva to the capital of one of the LDCs. Proposals for final location are currently being solicited.


dream on, babies!!!
the game here belongs to The Yes Men, creators of GATT.ORG, a website mocking the World Trade Organization, and describing its activities as faithful to reality as possible( they call it wisely "identity correction"), e.g.: "WTO news WTO Announces Formalized Slavery Market For Africa.".Nevertheless, the appearance is legit, with logos and a good webdesign, but all the links leading to other anti-globalist websites.

this is a beautiful stunt from the anti-globalists, mostly because on account of the website being mistaken for the official one, they got invited to various conferences where they impersonate WTO people putting forward their elaborate ideas. how to end world hunger through recycling burgers from the first world and selling them to the third world, the manager leisure suit with a giant inflatable penis adapted with a monitor to control outsourced employees in the Global South, and others. is extremely worthwhile to watch the documentary about them because it takes guts and minute preparations to play like this.

you can browse through their latest work here

PS: the pink ball at Rostock was not bad either, methinks :P

grizzly man

the world's cold shoulder leads some to embrace wilderness as a obsessive ideal in need of protection. without using a religious or metaphysical justification for protecting elements of nature, men and women struggle to immerse themselves in the habitat in which ultimately they would feel protected. what is the mindset of such a person?
watching werner herzog's docu-drama about the grizzly man Timothy Treadwell, the most vibrant feature piercing through the images recorded in his solo expeditions is his displacement. having spent 13 summers in the Alaskan grizzly habitat, he documents his encounters and relationships with the bears and foxes, through which you could sense the regret of not being able to perfectly fit in.
at times dead serious about his conservationist work and its necessity, most of the times playing like a kid left home alone, making up friends and voices, the man remains a mystery even in his disappearance. the director advices that the documented end of Timothy be destroyed, after hearing the tape with the screams of him and girlfriend being torn apart by one angry grizzly.
absurdly enough, this bear was killed afterwards and thus the effort of the grizzly man's expeditions do not appear so valiant and useful in the end.
he did tamper with nature, but was aware of the constant threat, and could not give up what had been offering him a true meaning. the need to feel needed ...or selflessness? i can't really judge, and perhaps one should not.

TT one hand holding the camera and recording himself: "and that's the story here...for me, Timothy Treadwell, the kind warrior. can i take it? i'm trying...ok, yeah, i can do it, why not? i've crossed the halfway point...i've had danger in the bone...i've almost died, i've almost fallen off a cliff. the danger factor is about to amp up in the maze [grizzly maze], the maze is always the most dangerous...lord, i do not want to be killed by a bear...i do not! i always cannot understand why girls don't want to be with me for a long time...because i have really a nice personality...i'm fun...i'm very very good in the...well... you're not supposed to say that when you're a guy...but i know that i am, they know i am...aaaaaaaand i don't fight with them...i'm so passive...bit of a patsy...which is that of a turnoff to girls to be a patsy?"

john muir, steve irwin, timothy treadwell, jane goodall and many others have lived in the light of man being on a par with wildlife, and undoubtedly this needs to be the truly ethical approach to modernity.

addicted to the dust

courtesy of Alinutza (one of the most talented and inspiring people I know )




this is Monkey Dust(blatently British), one of the best cartoons i've seen recently. it's so real in content, that it's heartbreaking, without being deplorable. just sick, as we like'em. human modern nature .....NAKED
i advise you to watch all the monkey dust you can get on youtube, and imagine the Ro version :

corporation young studs with their self-destructive consumerist aura, the lady who sells you bread everyday, beaten up by husband and robbed by the kids, the guy in the street asking money from you to make an x-ray for his wife, old people traveling in overcrowded buses, the latest car of that famous footballer, nonsensical TV shows, shiny malls, mud, barking dogs that sometimes kill, the president and the filthy rich everyday in the news......shitload of material for open-eyed Romanians.

you've got here the first episode

how to make important history LOOK uninteresting

we all know it's wrong to compare human sufferring, because it has an absolute character and implies a normative authority which is not be granted to people. but you can compare the manner in which you bring suffering in discussion or you portray it.

i saw a film about genocide that i've been planning to see for a long time and it sucked immensely.

i saw a film about genocide which i found by accident on a library shelf and it really got to me.

i find it saddening that the calamity of the armenian community, namely the genocide in 1915-18 is still disputed as a truthful historical event. but works such as Atom Egoyan's Ararat do not help this ethical crisis but turn it into kitch. the story of the armenian's deportation and humiliation and mass murders is told by a confused and indoctrinated young guy smuggling drugs into canada (of which he had no knowledg) in front of a customs officer in his last day before retirement who ends up calling the guy's art historian mom who offered expertise for the making of a film about the genocide starring the homosexual partner of the son of the custom's officer. if you understood nothing, it's wonderful, because it is hard to digest in its gratuitous intricacy. i wonder if the canadian-armenian director wanted to convey the tradegy of his people by putting emphasis on the relationshit of the aforementioned narrator with his stepsister who keeps accusing the step mom (the valiant art historian, lecturing tirelessly about the life and work of artist Arshile Gorki, a survivor of the genocide) about murdering her father.

carbord bad scenography represents mount ararat in the distance, even if the film-in-the film takes place in van (armenian stronghold during the genocide) from where one cannot see the mountain- it's the observation of the learned art historian woman in the contemporary frame of "ararat". for me it symbolizes the whole effort behind this: very long expectations father laborious disappointments.

I'll postpone writing about the second one, which jerks tears out of stones and guilt out of everybody, because i'm too bitter right now. ararat won best film of the year in Canada and other awards, while the other one impressed only a few people at an independent filmmakers' festival in Indianapolis, Indiana.

to be continued...

lost our way

WE T H I N K TO MUCH AND WE F E E L TOO LITTLE

the speech made at the end of The Great Dictator (Charlie Chaplin) used by wax taylor. for another dream-film check out que sera . if you guess the film you can win 100 points and my everlasting love

i am sick and depressed, but it's beside the point...

yes, of course I cringe at the thought of bombings, murders, deaths by any means, and I can hardly say that famous stalin joke "a single death is a tragedy, death of a million is statistics" is hilarious.
BUT there are certain pieces of information which blatantly point out the IRRATIONAL CRUELTY of people and they just sadden me to the bone. there u have it: a rare siberian tiger in a zoo in central china was beheaded and skinned in order to make some money on the black market.
she was anesthetized by her killers who otherwise could not have performed this, and she was one of the 530 of its kind in the wild.

even if not butchered by criminals, animals in bucharest zoo are killed by the personnel.
to me the whole idea of zoo is obsolete and cruel. even if located in china, bucharest, berlin, they are all sad places that bruise the imagination. i do want to see a kangaroo, i love them, but i don't want it to be restricted to a place which undoubtedly stinks and cannot replace its natural habitat.

since i don't stray from films analogies too much, one that touches on the obscurity of the zoo and its relation to human decay is "A Zed and Two Noughts" by the old man Peter Greenaway, a fountain of criticism which i admire.

fund-a-mental changes?

a film which shuddered this morning. after a jolly eventful night.

i managed to ravel in three films with the same philosophic spine during the same week; these augmented my new intuitions: tsotsi, lord of the flies and ciudad de deus.
after having deplored the lack of rule of law, and its consequences on property, I ended up contemplating the concept of state of nature and its winners.

all the three films are about ruthlessness, delivering the fact that MAN IS A BEAST and that perhaps it's unnatural times we have been living since the rise of humanitarianism. suddenly it's not that easy for me to condemn power gained by brute force or cunning, since the alternative of the weak and good-willing proves uninspiring. irrational fight for survival (supremacy) whether in a Soweto slum, a deserted island, or an apocalyptic Favela brings forward a similar individual- young, both feared and respected, an somewhat aestheticised. nonetheless, somebody out there found it immoral to glorify such a typology and added to all these creations an ethical counterpoint. in this manner, the viewer is pushed towards embracing the "correct" morality and condemn violence.



be that as it may, i have grown a temporary abhorrence of weakness manifested both physically and mentally. it started partly from being intrigued by the necessity of making clear-cut distinctions which result in condemnation of villains, then got fired up by a book, and cemented in a misfortunate encounter...to be explained later

the savage innocents

one worthless woman has just finished watching this wonderful film, alongside her redundant mother and would like to share the manner in which they were mesmerized. *the savage innocents* tells the story of Inuit life in a tranquill and non-dramatizing style. someone feels lucky to be able to take a glimpse into an igloo filled with bear fur, old meat with worms-their finest food-and laughter. 

nevertheless, this 1960 film, would raise a lot of eyebrows of the *politically correct* dogmatised. starting with the role of women, who are considered by both men and themselves as worthless, save a few minor tasks they can perform, among which laughing with the husband (yes, that is Eskimo's cute way of saying 'sex') and mending his socks. moreover, you have the brutal treatment of animals: just as mom and i were softening at the sight of baby seals, the lead character played by Anthony Quinn, drives a spear through its bubbly head. we turn to each other, thinking .....true, an Arctic man's gotta live.....

another point of moral collision springs from the understanding of customs. when Inuk wants to offer a man who entered his igloo (white man christian missionary) the greatest favour of laughing with his young wife, the man starts shouting about the evilness of the deed, and offends both. the eskimo tries to shake his own sense into him and cracks the man's head against the igloo. quite pardonable. symbolical punishment of an unwanted invasion, but not the same as wild dogs or polar bears would punish an intruder on their territory. murder is taboo for Inuits and a murdered cannot enter another man's igloo again. Inuk wants to prove to white men, decided to judge and punish him, that the death was an accident and his soul is not murderous. however, that cannot be done, white men, as well as Inuits in white man's clothes cannot understand this custom and would chastise it.

for the eskimo, life is pain and only death is painless. the old (needless to say worthless) mother-in-law travelling with the hunter's family decides to lessen their burden by staying behind to meet her end. she sits on a skin and awaits serenely for a bear to come and eat her, afterwards be hunted, and thus return to her family as food.

the film also envisaged a dangerous form of ignorance, through the young couple's dilemma of whether they should kill their newborn because it lacks teeth and would lead a suffering life in their absence. on the other hand, the Eskimo is wise enough to appease the gods of wind and snow to his advantage, let go of life when it clearly dissapeared from the body, but use whatever at hand to preserve it. most beautiful is how they know to let go of people, a woman is not a man's property (maybe because she is worthless?), and men are of equal value if they are good hunters and have all their teeth. the role of each precedes their individual features, and falling inlove is a mere acknowledgement of the fact that one can fulfill such a role.

 iceberg hearts rubbing their noses together.

why backwardness hurts

Starting from a comparison of mr. Marius Oprea between the Western and the Balkanic spirit, I was drawn into a review of the film "Zorba the Greek" which gave course to a disqueting mood. To begin with, i give you my translation of his words: " This is the heritage of the area: little bloody and restless stories which barely disturb the eternal whistle of the peasant leading his cart through dust, making a tired squeaking sound which paradoxically echoes like in a gothic cathedral. Living in the Balkans is boring, dusty, languid, and at the same time, misterious, tragic and sometimes gradiose. There is an order of all things, and in this order, the Balkans have their place: a particular music, tougher, faster and ordless. Who was born here and has bathed in this air can love and understand it: one cannot build cathedrals out of mud, but you can find the same beauty in a little church in a grove. Zorba the Greek could not have been born anywhere else, but in the Balkans, and only here his fast blood kindled, and only here his dance makes sense."

As poetic as this vision may seem, i failed to see anything of the sort in the film, but dangerous backwardness of beings living only in the present and for themselves. Tradition and the village society's common law are taken as universal truths against which nobody fights even when they lead a senseless mob to murder. love is only desire, to be consummed and does not go beyond flesh; obviously there is no consideration for private life and there is a constant need to point the finger and ostracize what contradicts the precepts of the community; seldom attempts of reasoning and technic ingenuity result in utter failure which is not reprobated but cheered; displaying what? a praise of stupidity? One must nevertheless praise the idea of failure, when arrived at in a complete and spendid manner.
There is no tragedy, an honest widow's killing, the financial ruin of *the Boss*, the pillaging of a French woman's property by the village people after her death, everything is taken lightly, one dances to forget, does not interpose with the will of the many stupid ones, and accepts destiny in its societal form.
In this light, the dances give out a ridiculous glow, they are the manifestation of primeval instincts to which i see no spiritual dimension. There is no beauty in a little church of a village if the community is entitled to commit murder by its own laws on its grounds. And why should bloody stories be contemplated and not prevented?

"everything is fine. we will live a thousand years." reads Alexis Zorba in lambchops. A dangerous thought for descendants.

I AM AWARE THAT I JUST CAST A XXI CENTURY ONLOOK ON A UNIVERSE INCONSISTENT WITH THESE VALUES. AS IT HAPPENS, THERE IS A ALSO HUGE BREAK-UP BETWEEN THE WESTERN AND THE EASTERN WORLD S.

childhood is an intricate web of repressions-SPIDER

ok, so i love Cronenberg, his films apparently twisted but with an amazing grasp on human psichology. recently, i experienced in a minor key what he depicts in *Crash* because of my daily small accidents. smashing my pinkie finger against a parked car while riding my bike and checking out a cute guy on the sidewalk, falling from 2m and hitting my ass on a hard floor, the habitual peeling tomatoes fingercut, door closed right in the face, finding my foot under a that of a heavy and nonchalant person's. nevertheless, with all the pain, there was some form of pleasure, at least the thought that my young body can still take these easily.

*Spider* makes one think about perceptions and realities; and moms and dads, and dads cheating on moms, and how that made you feel as a small kid. what i take with me is the image of glass broken like a spider's web and a good dosage of doubt. what about? everything!