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Cuba set to explore offshore as oil rig arrives
A huge drilling rig arrived Thursday in the warm Gulf waters north of Havana, where it will sink an exploratory well deep into the seabed, launching Cuba’s dreams of striking it rich with offshore oil, the Associated Press reports.
The Scarabeo-9 platform was visible from Havana’s sea wall far off on the hazy horizon as it chugged westward toward its final drill site about 30 miles (50 kilometers) from the capital, and 60 miles (90 kilometers) south of Key West.
Spanish oil company Repsol RPF, which is leasing the rig for about a half-million dollars a day, said it expects to begin drilling within days to find out whether the reserves are as rich as predicted.
“The geologists have done their work. If they’ve done it well, then we’ll have a good chance of success,” Repsol spokesman Kristian Rix said by phone from Madrid. “It’s been a long process, but now we’re at the point where we discover whether our geologists have got it right. It’s a happy day.”
It’s been a long, strange journey for the Scarabeo-9, Repsol and Cuba, a process shadowed at every step by warnings of a possible environmental debacle and decades of bad blood between Cuba and the United States.
The U.S. trade embargo essentially bars U.S. companies from doing oil business with Cuba and threatens sanctions against foreign companies if they don’t follow its restrictions, making it far more complicated to line up equipment and resources for the project.
To avoid sanctions, Repsol chose the Scarabeo-9, a 380-foot-long (115-meter), self-propelled, semisubmersible behemoth built in China and Singapore and capable of housing 200 workers. The rig qualifies for the Cuba project because it was built with less than 10 percent U.S.-made parts, no small feat considering America’s dominance in the industry.
While comparable platforms sat idle in the Gulf of Mexico, the Scarabeo-9 spent months navigating through three oceans and around the Cape of Good Hope to arrive in the Caribbean at tremendous expense.
Even after the rig is in place, the embargo continues to affect just about every aspect.
The Scarabeo-9′s blowout preventer, a key piece of machinery that failed in the 2010 Macondo-Deepwater Horizon disaster, is state of the art. But its U.S. manufacturer is not licensed to work with Cuba so replacement parts must come through secondary sources.
It’s also more complicated to do things like the maintenance necessary to keep things running smoothly and decrease the chances of something going wrong.
If it does, Cuba would be hard-pressed to respond to a major spill on its own, and getting help isn’t as simple as making a phone call to Washington. The embargo would require licenses to be issued for all manner of equipment and services for an emergency response.
Few U.S. companies so far have gotten permission to work with the Cubans in the event of a spill — representing just 5 percent of all the resources thrown at the Macondo blowout, according to an estimate by Lee Hunt, president of the International Association of Drilling Contractors.
Two U.S. companies have received licenses to export capping stacks, crucial pieces of equipment for stopping gushing wells, but related services like personnel and transportation have not been green-lighted, Hunt said.
“So what you have is a great big intelligent piece of iron without a crew,” he said. “You can’t just drop it on the hole and hope (the spill) will stop. It’s not a cork.”
Even Tyvek suits worn by cleanup crews cannot currently be exported to Cuba because potentially they could be used for the construction of bacteriological or chemical weapons, Hunt added.
Meanwhile cooperation between the two governments, which often struggle to see eye-to-eye on things as basic as delivering each other’s mail, has been only bare-bones.
“With any other country — Mexico, Canada or Russia — we would already have in place agreements between the coast guards of the two countries,” said Dan Whittle, Cuba program director for the Environmental Defense Fund. “There would be contingency plans written and publicly available. There already would have been drills, a comprehensive action plan for responding to a spill.”
“We don’t have that yet.”
There has been some movement.
U.S. inspectors examined the rig last week in Trinidad and gave it a clean bill of health, though notably said that did not constitute any certification. And American representatives at a regional oil meeting last month in the Bahamas were left impressed by their Cuban counterparts’ openness and willingness to share information.
But the countries’ proximity has increased fears of a disastrous spill with the potential to foul not only Cuba’s reefs and gleaming, white-sand beaches, but also, swept up by the Gulf Stream, the coast of Florida and the Atlantic Seaboard up to North Carolina.
Curiously, those fears have been cited by people on both sides of the embargo issue: Some say the prospect of environmental disaster shows the U.S. needs to lift the embargo and work with the Cubans in the interest of safety; others say the fact that the trade ban failed to prevent Cuba from drilling shows it needs to be made even tougher.
Some of the harshest criticism has come from Cuban-American members of Congress such as House Foreign Affairs Committee chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who recently accused the Obama administration of dropping the ball on Cuban drilling.
“Oil exploration 90 miles off the Florida coast by this corrupt, unaccountable dictatorship could result in horrific environmental and economic damage to our Gulf Coast communities, in addition to enriching the Castro tyranny,” Ros-Lehtinen said.
The exact size of Cuba’s offshore reserves, estimated at 5 billion to 9 billion barrels, is still unknown. And production would not come online for years, so any windfall is still on the horizon. But island officials are hopeful of a big strike that could inject much-needed cash into their struggling economy, and they’re not asking anyone for permission.
“Cuba is going through its own change regardless of American foreign policy,” said U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the U.S. Senate who met with Cuban officials in Havana this week on oil and other matters.
“This discovery, or potential discovery, of significant amounts of oil could dramatically change the economy of Cuba, and change the relationship with the United States in small ways and large,” Durbin said while visiting Haiti on Thursday.
For the original report go to http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jDc8hPz02rwSetJe3GF6wLaBchgg?docId=17641c8970354633802a689144daf494
John Akomfrah: migration and memory
Akomfrah’s Handsworth Songs attracted a huge audience when shown in the wake of last summer’s riots. His new film, The Nine Muses, uses Homer to explore mass migration to Britain. Sukdev Sandhu reviews the film in this article for London’s Guardian.
John Akomfrah, widely recognised as one of Britain’s most expansive and intellectually rewarding film-makers, has never been afraid of a battle. Back in the 1970s, when he was barely out of his teens, he tried to screen Derek Jarman’s homoerotic Sebastiane at the film club of the Southwark further education college, where he was studying. “There were rows. Black kids were throwing chairs everywhere. They were saying ‘you can’t show this’. So we stopped the film and had a discussion: what do you mean, ‘We can’t show this film’? It was clear there were forms of propriety for black spectatorship. Rather than run back into the field, I thought: let’s just accelerate it. Let’s push these boundaries a little bit more.”
In 1982 he began to do just that, co-founding the Black Audio Film Collective with a group of friends he’d grown up with in London or met at Portsmouth Polytechnic. Over the next 16 years, moving as seamlessly between the form of cine-essay and what they called slide-tape texts as they did between the worlds of the gallery and the newly created Channel 4, they sought to create a new language for migrant cinema. They crafted diasporic films that eschewed social realism and agitprop, took aesthetics as seriously as they did subject matter, and were informed by the canon of non-western moviemakers (Ritwik Ghatak from Bengal, Senegalese Ousmane Sembène, Santiago Álvarez from Cuba), as much as they were by the giants of the Atlantic avant garde.
Not everyone thought this was possible. Akomfrah recalls that when he first approached the Arts Council for money for an avant-garde group, “they told us straight: you can’t be avant garde because blacks can’t be avant-garde film-makers”. Others, such as Salman Rushdie, who wrote a much-debated essay about Handsworth Songs (1986) for the Guardian, felt the collective’s work was pretentious and more preoccupied with theories of representation than with representing the second-generation migrants whose rioting had occasioned the film. In the US, according to the New York-based artist and writer Coco Fusco, the collective’s work was almost inexplicable. “There was shock, incredulity, negativity. They encountered chauvinism from African Americans who wanted to know: who were these blacks with funny accents? They were thought to be too intelligent for ‘the people’.”
Akomfrah finds the charge of being an apolitical dilettante absurd. He was born in Ghana in 1957, and both his parents were involved with anti-colonial activism. “My dad was a member of the cabinet of Kwame Nkrumah‘s party. My mum had met Malcolm X in Accra in 1965. We left Ghana because my mum’s life was in danger after the coup of 1966, and my father died in part because of the struggle that led up to the coup. In 1976 my friends and I seriously considered going to enlist in the MPLA to fight in Angola. We wanted to be of use. I’m glad we didn’t. The generation before us spoke of going home; we realised what fighting we were going to do in both a literal and a metaphorical sense had to take place here.”
For Akomfrah, that fighting initially took the form of politics: “As a kid I went to an Althusserian study group; there were lots of young black kids there trying to get their heads around Althusser!” As a student activist he was a “serial occupier” and sit-in organiser, and consequently got expelled from many FE colleges. But the fight, for him, was also carried on in the realm of the imagination: he regularly sneaked in to see Tarkovsky and Fassbinder films at the Paris Pullman Cinema on the Fulham Palace Road. “I could see all these people were as fascinated with me as they were with the screen. They couldn’t work out why this kid was so transfixed.”
This commitment to a radicalism both of politics and of cinematic form finds expression in all his films. Seven Songs for Malcolm X (1993) draws on the photographer James Van Der Zee’s The Harlem Book of the Dead and Sergei Paradjanov’s The Color of Pomegranates (1968) to fashion a probing, internationalist vision of the black radical leader that is far removed from the conventional hero projected in Spike Lee’s biopic the previous year; The Last Angel of History (1995) advanced the concept of the “data thief” as part of its argument about science-fiction elements in the music of Sun Ra, George Clinton and Lee Scratch Perry.
Akomfrah’s new film, The Nine Muses, is a multilayered, gorgeously shot and affecting work that interweaves archival footage of black and Asian people travelling to and working in Britain with moody, elliptical shots of an anonymous black figure alone in the Alaskan wilderness. Split into nine chapters, each of which is dedicated to one of the Greek muses, and sprinkled with quotations ranging from the Odyssey to The Waste Land, it suggests that stories normally seen through the lens of postcolonialism could just as easily be seen in existential or mythic terms. In doing so, it invites viewers to reflect on the labels by which history – especially diasporic history – is framed and categorised.
“It’s important to read images in the archive for their ambiguity and open-endedness,” Akomfrah argues. “Migrants were often filmed in relation to debates about crime or social problems, so that’s how they get fixed in official memory. But that Caribbean woman standing in a 60s factory isn’t thinking about how she’s a migrant or a burden on the British state; she’s as likely to be thinking about what she’s going to eat that evening or about her lover.”
One of the most striking features of The Nine Muses is its sound design by Akomfrah’s fellow Black Audio founder, Trevor Mathison, which meshes Arvo Pärt liturgical pieces with spirituals and Indian courtly music. The desire to create new kinds of Afro-Asian ambience stems partly from Akomfrah’s youthful enthusiasm for post-punk bands such as Test Department and Cabaret Voltaire, which explored the subversive potential of noise. “The avant garde saw our emphasis on the audio as a thought crime, a heresy. It was all about the image for them. They frowned on the sonic, treating it as an impure intrusion into a hallowed field. It was a weird hangover from high modernism, especially as if you watch a Dziga Vertov film you’ll see the early avant garde was as interested in sound as in images.”
The work of Black Audio and Akomfrah has been increasingly celebrated by the art world recently. Kodwo Eshun, one half of the Turner prize-nominated Otolith Group whose experimental films owe a debt to Black Audio, says: “From the moment I first saw Handsworth Songs it became impossible for me to settle for anything less.” Moreover, a new generation of film-makers and students, frustrated by the format-driven orthodoxies of mainstream TV and weaned on the serendipities of YouTube, is also discovering the work.
In the wake of last summer’s riots, a screening of Handsworth Songs at Tate Modern attracted a huge audience, which then stayed for a three-hour conversation. “Especially after having spent much of the last 20 years being told by apparatchiks that there’s no life in experimental film, it was shocking,” Akomfrah says. “These were inquisitive, intellectual magpies confronted by the same questions as we were in the 1980s: how much can we call political, given that the powers that be are saying it’s all criminal or without any basis in politics? They believed, like I do, that the moving image has a role to play in galvanising these debates.”
• The Nine Muses was released on Friday 20 January.
For the original report go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/jan/20/john-akomfrah-migration-memory?newsfeed=true
Royal Caribbean: Kate Joins Family for a Sunny Caribbean Getaway
Well, it IS the weekend and we just began the new semester, so here’s a bit of silly news. The Queen is about to be ousted as Jamaica’s Head of State and we have Prince Harry coming on a Caribbean tour to celebrate grandma’s 60 years as Queen. This weekend, however, the Duchess of Cambridge—yes, Kate of the humongous wedding herself—is reported to have flown to Mustique via St Lucia. Oh, joy! There are no photos so the pictures above are old—and for all we know she is shopping for groceries at her supermarket in Wales as I write this. But here is People magazine’s report:
Rainy and 48 degrees in London on Friday. No matter: The Duchess of Cambridge – with parents Michael and Carole, and sister Pippa – is off on a sunny vacation, PEOPLE confirmed in this report by Simon Perry.
Passengers on a British Airways flight from London’s Gatwick Airport to St. Lucia in the Caribbean were surprised to see the family in the first class section on Wednesday, a photographer blogged. Their presumed final destination: one of their regular holiday haunts, the private isle of Mustique.
It is believed that Prince William is not with them, as the search and rescue helicopter pilot is spending this week at his RAF base in Anglesey, Wales, after hunting last weekend on an estate in Spain with brother Prince Harry.
Mustique, where Kate and William have been frequent visitors, is a well-known, pricey haunt for such celebrities as Mick Jagger and Queen Elizabeth’s late sister, Princess Margaret. It was even inspected as a possible honeymoon destination for William and Kate.
The trip to the sun comes just days after Kate’s 30th birthday on Jan. 9 and before Carole’s 57th at the end of the month.
The Palace had no comment on Kate’s vacation.
Given that we are giving Kate’s vacation its own post, I don’t want other royal families to feel neglected by Repeating Islands (we may be refused press credentials for the next wedding) so we should also note that Prince Albert of Monaco and his new wife Charlene spend some time in Antigua a couple of weeks back. Here’s a photo of their romantic holiday (yuck!):
And, more formally, the Dutch Queen Beatrix, her heir Wilhem-Alexander, and his Argentine-born crown princess, Máxima, did a formal tour of everything connected to the Netherlands in the Caribbean region. Here’s a photo of the irrepressible Máx in Aruba so she does not feel slighted by our attention to Kate, as she, too, will be queen one day.
For the original People report go to http://www.people.com/people/package/article/0,,20395222_20563244,00.html?xid=rss-topheadlines
ABC Protest Continues: Puerto Ricans Demand Apology
It might just be too little, too late for ABC, Alexandra Gratereaux reports in Fox News Latino.
For the third week in a row members of the Puerto Rican community, led by the organization “Boricuas for a Positive Image,” have protested outside of ABC’s studios in Manhattan’s Upper West Side neighborhood.
ABC cancelled its new cross-dressing comedy “Work It” after just two episodes. According to reports from zap2it.com ABC has not acknowledged the reason for the cancellation. The Puerto Rican campaign grew out of anger after one of the characters of the show said during the pilot episode: “I’m Puerto Rican. I would be great at selling drugs.”
The remark ignited a firestorm. Puerto Ricans to ABC: We are Not Drug Dealers!
Thursday was no exception as young and old protestors from the Latino and Black communities chanted in the frigid evening for ABC to apologize.
Julio Pabón, co-founder of “Boricuas for a Positive Image” along with Lucky Rivera, said that despite ABC canceling the show, they deserve a public apology. “Canceling the show does not cancel the problems,” Pabón told FOX News Latino during the protest Thursday evening. We are trying to prove them wrong. Just because [we are of this] race does not mean we do bad things.
- Kimberly Villanueva, 14 Yr-Old Protestor
“Racist jokes like these [cannot] continue to happen,” he added. “We have to have an apology and a meeting to make sure this doesn’t happen again. The Puerto Rican and Latino community in New York City – we are 5 million strong. 1 trillion dollars in purchasing power deserves more respect.”
Rivera added that it’s a shame drugs are corrupting the community.
“The drugs in our community [and] in Puerto Rico that is the problem,” Rivera said. “Drugs are destroying our kids, our people and our island.”
New York City councilman Charles Barron thinks ABC should give the Puerto Rican and Latino community in NYC, “a program produced by the community, for the community.” “We are the children of Fidel Castro,” Barron said fired up in front of the crowd. “We are the children of Malcom X, we are the children of Che Guevarra and our weapon is our culture. We demand that ABC respect the Black community, respect the Latino community.”
The former black panther, who was involved in having ABC take “Like It Is” off the air in 2001— a public affairs show about issues affecting the Black community— thinks the protests should escalate if ABC keeps ignoring them.
“When I met with them for “Like It Is” they said the Black and Latino communities are a large part of their audience,” Barron said. “If you’re going to make dollars off of us then you better respect us.”
“We should keep the pressure on,” he added. “They should keep a Latino program on there that is representative of the community, produced by the community, for the community.”
Other bystanders, such as filmmaker and actor Stuart Luth, says he found the protests interesting and necessary.
Luth is white but married to a light skinned Puerto Rican, screen writer and actress Viviana Rodríguez a.k.a. Viviana Leo her stage name.
Luth is currently in the process of producing a film titled “White Alligator” which focuses on racism in the entertainment industry and his wife’s experience trying to break down those barriers.
He says it is important to highlight these issues and plans to continue coming to the protests each week.
“This is the first protest of this sort that I’ve seen as we’ve been trying to make this film,” Luth said. “In the Latino community [there is] a misrepresentation of race.”
“People [are] trying to create labels and put them in boxes.”
Luth, 32, grew up in New Jersey and now lives in the Upper West Side. The filmmaker recalled his wife feeling some of the same emotions the protestors described when seeing “Work It.”
“My wife was always too white to be Hispanic and too Hispanic to be white,” he said. “So much of our perceptions are created by the entertainment industry. Their stereotypes are holding us back.”
Luth adds that he did not expect to see so many young people, in particular young Latino men protesting.
“As an outsider that didn’t know what was going on there was a lot of strong masculine energy there,” said Luth. “They were given a chance to express a part of them that was dormant for a while. A chance to join the conversation and say this is not the way we are.”
Some of the younger protestors were sisters and Bronx natives, Ashley and Kimberly Villanueva, who vow to continue attending the protests and spreading the word in their high school and on social media.
“We are trying to prove them wrong,” said Kimberly Villanueva. “Just because [we are of this] race does not mean we do bad things.”
Kimberly Villanueva, 14, and her sister Ashely, 16, attend Bronx Academy of Letters High School. They said they were compelled to join the protest after learning about the show “Work It” from their father, who is a part of “Boricuas for a Positive Image.”
“My dad works in a company where there are carpenters, construction workers, people that are not selling drugs and making good money,” said Ashely Villanueva. “I am going to bring this up to my teacher, [since] I’m taking a discrimination class.”
Closing up the protest by singing the Puerto Rican national anthem was Connecticut resident Héctor López.
López, 69, says that even though he lives far away, it’s very important for him to support this cause.
“This is a movement for all Latinos,” said López. “We need to claim our rights.”
For the original report go to http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/entertainment/2012/01/20/abc-protest-continues-puerto-ricans-demand-apology-want-new-programming/
Pan-African Jamaican statesman Dudley Thompson has died at 95
Ambassador Dudley Thompson, a historic figure in Jamaica and the Pan-African global movement, died Friday, a day after his 95th birthday, Jacqueline Charles of The Miami Herald reports.
He was a historical figure in the politics of Jamaica and in the larger global struggle to unite people of African descent. Hard to miss with his cheerful disposition, intellect and passionate conversations, Ambassador Dudley Thompson drew crowds no matter where he went.
A former Jamaican cabinet minister who served as a minister of national security, justice and foreign affairs, Thompson died Friday morning in New York, the day after he turned 95. He was scheduled to celebrate the next week in New Jersey. He lived in Weston.
“We will miss his intellect, his stature,” said Jamaica’s Miami Consul General Sandra A. Grant Griffiths, whose office confirmed the death. “He was all over the place.”
Griffiths last saw Thompson in December when he attended a holiday gathering at her residence. There, like elsewhere, he drew crowds to his side as he discussed Jamaica, and Africa, the continent where he served as an envoy in several countries including Nigeria, Namibia and Ghana, and practiced law as a young man. It was while defending the late Jomo Kenyatta during his Mau Mau rebellion trial in Kenya that Thompson became well-known across Africa.
Jamaican Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller described Thompson as “a man of firm convictions, articulate, sharp on his feet and witty. Dudley Thompson loved his country with a passion and served it with honor and distinction.”
Thompson was up with the times. He blogged and had his own website. www.DudleyThompson.4t.com. His dream was to see a united Africa and was president of the World African Diaspora Union..
According to his website, he was born in Panama and raised in Jamaica. He served in Britain’s Royal Air Force during World War II, and he was a Rhodes scholar. In the early 1950s, he practiced law in Tanzania and Kenya, and became involved in the nationalists struggles in both countries.
In October, Thompson made history when the African Union made him the first person to become a citizen of the continent and gave him a passport. Dozens of African presidents attended the ceremony, said Djibril Diallo, senior advisor to the executive director of the UNAIDS and advisor to the President of Senegal on Diaspora Affairs.
Diallo said Thompson left him a voice mail on his cell phone just days ago telling him to call because he had some suggestions on their ongoing collaboration to promote Africa.
“I was working on getting him an honorary ambassadorship for the entire African continent,” said Diallo, whose relationship with Thompson dates back more than 20 years. “He’s amazing as a Pan-Africanist, and has worked to the last hour just preaching Africa and the diaspora.’’
For the original report go to http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/01/20/2599977/pan-african-and-jamaican-statesman.html
Lie Lady Lie [HOUSESITTER]
Come ona Tree House (of Life)
Git on up in here! Dennis Cozzalio is our host for the second annual Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule Movie Tree House -- and you're invited, too. Join returning Tree Housers Dennis, Jason Bellamy, Sheila O'Malley and me, and welcome Simon Abrams and Steven Boone to the lofty branches, where we have been discussing such life-and-death matters as...
The art and science of year-end list-making (from Dennis):
As of January 2012, it's a chore for me to recall anything but fragments of images from The Tree of Life beyond that wonderful sequence in which the oldest boy's growing up amongst his two younger siblings is compressed into a beautiful visual essay about the way a child might see the surrounding world. It seems to me it is with this gaze that Malick most clearly relates. Unfortunately, a child's focus is also all over the map, and that too is a feeling I get from "The Tree of Life." So am I crazy in having to admit that I have higher regard for "Your Highness" or "Captain America: The First Avenger" or "Troll Hunter" or "Contagion" than I do for "The Tree of Life"? You tell me.
In compiling my list for the year I also had the strange experience of having my expectations for how that list might look at the end of the year scrambled and significantly altered by three very different movie experiences, two of which I just happened to have on the same night less than two weeks ago....
The acting! (from Sheila):
Tanya Stephens and Tessanne Chin Headline “Eclectic”
YardEdge announces that on Saturday January 21, 2102, Griot Music presents an art exhibition, a recital featuring the poetry of Cherry Natural, Randy McLaren, Najuequa Barnes, Ganja, Samuel Gordon, and Simone C. Simpson. There will also be a performance by the 2010 Global Battle of the Bands winner Dubtonic Kru and 2011 Global Battle of the Bands Jamaica winner Di Blueprint. Headliners Tanya Stephens and Tessanne Chin will follow with a live show. Then the after party will continue with selectors ZJ Electra and DJ Smoke (Rennaissance).
These events will take place at the Courtleigh Auditorium in New Kingston, Jamaica. Doors open at 7:00pm.
Photos: Tanya Stephens (above) and Tessanne Chin (below)
For more information, see http://www.yardedge.net/happening-on-the-edge-2012/eclectic-the-ultimate-concert-and-after-party-january-21
Cuban Theatre Day and the Latin American and Caribbean Theater Season in Havana
As part of the activities honoring Cuban Theatre Day [Día del Teatro Cubano] on January 22, Casa de las Américas (Havana, Cuba) sends its first call for its Latin American and Caribbean Theater Season and Mayo Teatral 2012, during which various workshops will be held. Held from May 4 to 13, Mayo Teatral offers a cycle of events dedicated to the centennial of the great playwright and Cuban intellectual Virgilio Piñera.
La Casa de las Américas invites participation for its Latin American and Caribbean Theater Season and Mayo Teatral 2012, which will be celebrated on May 4-13, bringing together a representative sample of the varied work of the current Latin American and Caribbean theater scene. Theater groups from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico and the Dominican Republic will participate for the first time in our event; therefore this edition will be characterized by the novelty of the proposals and the wide variety of languages, with ten scene guest stage performances.
In addition, Casa will present a selection of best material premiered on the island in the last biennium as well as a Piñera Cycle, with staging of Virgilio Piñera’s works, carried out by Cuban troupes and directors.
There will also be workshops by experts in the field, such as Ailyn Morera (Costa Rica); Antonio Zúñiga (Mexico); Rodolfo Guerrero (Mexico); Francisco Sánchez, Pablo Obreque and César Espinoza (Chile); and Lowell Fiet (Puerto Rico/USA).
For more information on events, lodging and more, see eventos@casa.cult.cu
For original post (in Spanish), see http://laventana.casa.cult.cu/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=6649
Photo above: a scene from Mayo Teatral 2010, from http://www.caimanbarbudo.cu/artes-escenicas/2010/06/escenas-de-identidad/
Point
The Netherlands is doing its very best to present itself as the puppy devoted to its american masters. The so-called antipiracy 'authority' has come out succesful in the legal action ordering two providers to block a torrent site (and don't be surprised if you can't follow the link...).
But enough of these depressing subjects.
In this post I would like to share two more singles by one of Benin's oldest orchestras: Orchestre Super Star de Ouidah.
Unfortunately, as in my earlier post, I am confronted by an enigma. What do they mean by "un point c'est tout"?
The lyrics are printed on the back of the sleeve and at first glance seem to clear up some of the mystery. The "PCD" is more than likely the Presidential Council of the early 1970s, which was the subject of a song by El Rego which I posted earlier. If you are interested I recommend you read the very detailed entry on Hubert Maga in the wikipedia.
I wasn't surprised to read that Maga, like (the for incomprehensible reasons widely revered) Senghor and 'dinosaur' Houphouet-Boigny, had gained respectability by getting himself (by ruse and deceit) elected into the French National Assembly.
The fact that there were "nordistes" (northerners) and "sudistes" can, it appears, be at least in part by attributed to Maga.
So what about this "point"?
Well, I think the answer can be found in this passage of the wikipedia: "A presidential council, consisting of Maga, Ahomadégbé-Tomêtin, and Apithy, was set up on May 7 with a presidency that changed every two years. Maga inaugurated this system for the first two years. Each man agreed to not use the military to extend their term or use any other means toward that consequence. If decisions were not unanimous during the first round of voting, a two councilman majority would suffice on the second round. The council served as the executive and legislative branch of Dahomey."
So "un point c'est tout" would mean that one vote could decide the majority. Is it me, or does this sound familiar?
What is the B-side of this single on the label is the A-side on the cover. This song was composed by Nigerian highlife star and innovator Roy Chicago (more about him here). I'm not sure what the relation is between Pascal Médagbé, the sax player portrayed on the sleeve, and Roy Chicago, but listening to his abuse of the sax it seems unlikely Médagbé played with the master.
Discafric DCF 13
Musically I prefer the next single, which is coincidentally also the next single on the Discafric label. This is largely due to the guitar playing of 'Timo' Apovée, nicknamed (at least on the sleeve) "Dieu de la guitare".
For those who don't understand french, the text on the back translates as: "Born in Ouidah on January 24, 1939 Timothée was taken by his father to Libreville in 1946. At the age of seven he was admitted to the catholic primary school Monfort led by brother F. Macaire and he worked there with a remarkable courage, but the death of his father who managed a business (Hatton and Cooks'son) sabotages his plans.
Taken back to his native country in 1955 by one of his uncles, very soon great problems come down on his existence. He liked staying alone in his little room to hum some songs to the sound of what later became his 'violon d'Ingres' (great love): the guitar.
He founded several orchestras: the Mexicana Jazz, Jazz King's Band and then the Super-Star de Ouidah. So he became Solo Guitarist/Composer and chef d'orchestre.
Let us hope and wish that Timo God of the Guitar reaches the top of the stars of the country and is able to one fine day compete with his Congolese colleagues."
I'm not sure what the relevance is of the mention of the headmaster and the name or even profession of his father, but I don't think the hopes and wishes expressed in the last sentence became reality.
This doesn't mean he is no good as a guitar player. I particularly like the sound of his guitar. It reminds me of the guitars of the earlier Guinean orchestras (Paillote, Jardin and such).
And anything that reminds me of those glorious orchestras must be good.
Discafric DCF 14
Jaipur Literature Festival – Requiescat in Pacem
Longboard Race: Guajataka Downhill 6 and Music Festival
The Guajataka Downhill Festival, held every year in Quebradillas, Puerto Rico, is just around the corner: today! The festival goes from January 20 to 22, 2012. Today, Friday January 20, the Guajataka Downhill 6 will offer a welcome cocktail will be hosted at Hotel Guajataca from 6:00 to 9:00pm. The organizers remind us that this will be the last chance for any international or local racer to finish registration and/or payment for participation.
Keep in mind that part of the festival weekend includes the Guajataca Music Festival. On Friday, the line-up includes rock bands Vivanativa and La Secta. On Saturday, featured artists include Cultura Profética (reggae band) and live Dj’s Lady Liquid, Dj Xtasys, Z Boys, and Dano (electronic, dubstep, D&B, house, and electro fusion). Sunday features the well-known indie rock band Indigo and reggae band Yerba Bruja.
Also on Sunday, January 22, Guajataka Downhill will be hosting the “Underground Surf Series” Local Surf Contest event on Guajataca Beach.
See video of a Guajataca 2012 pratice run here (with music by Skrillex, “Ruffneck Bass”—love it!):
For photos of last year’s races, see http://www.longboardism.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-search.cgi?search=Guajataca+Downhill&IncludeBlogs=2&limit=20
Call for Submissions: The Grenada Arts Council’s 48th Annual Art Show 2012
It is once again time for the Grenada Arts Council’s 48th Annual Art Show 2012. Because the Arts Council received many requests from young artists who have visited the gallery, participation is now open to artists 14 years of age and up, residing in Grenada and Grenadian artists living abroad. Submission dates are January 26-28, 2012.
The show will take place at the Grenada Arts Council Gallery, located at 9 Young Street, in St. Georges, Grenada. Opening night is February 2, 2012, and the exhibition will run until April 28, 2012.
The Grenada Arts Council is a volunteer non-governmental organization, dedicated since 1964 to the development of the visual arts of Grenada. Our Permanent Collection established in 1995 to keep an archive of Grenadian art in Grenada continues to grow, with two acquisitions this year. As a stakeholder in the recently launched Tourism Strategy, (bridging Heritage and Art), the Grenada Arts Council on behalf of Grenada’s artists, looks forward to a year of positive energetic inclusion within the larger cultural engine, and close productive collaboration with the Ministries of Education, Youth Empowerment and Finance, as well as the Ministry of Tourism, the Board of Tourism and the Cultural Foundation.
For more information, write to gac.asp@gmailcom or see http://www.docstoc.com/docs/document-preview.aspx?doc_id=108606914 and http://grenadaartscouncil.blogspot.com/#!/2011/12/gac-bridges-heritage-and-art-in-tourism.html
For rules, see http://www.docstoc.com/docs/document-preview.aspx?doc_id=108606914
For entry form, go to http://www.docstoc.com/docs/document-preview.aspx?doc_id=108606916
Theater: Teresa Hernández’s “Coraje II”
Taller de Otra Cosa and Producciones Teresa, no inc. present Coraje II [Courage II]—a theatrical production written and interpreted by Teresa Hernández and directed by Miguel Rubio. The play will be on stage from January 20 to 22, and 27 to 29, 2012, at the Victoria Espinosa Theater (at the corner of Calle del Parque and Ponce De Leon Avenue; Bus Stop 23) behind the Francisco Arriví Theater in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Show times are as follows: Friday and Saturday at 8:30pm and Sunday at 4:00pm and 7:00pm.
About the play, which was performed at the Teatro de la Luna 14th International Festival of Hispanic Theater, Rosalind Lacy writes:
Hernandez is a teller of unsettling stories with long, run-on sentences, and low-level humor. Her focus is on violence in a highly militarized country engaged in wars overseas as well as turf wars over the drug trade at home. She adopts different characters and voices to teach us how to cope with a surreal, modern age in which you’re safer and better off in the army than on the city streets.
Her edgy, satirical dialogue, as Nancy, the dutiful, doting daughter, the care-giver for her shell-shocked, veteran father, is a mix of disjointed memories, sprinkled with unifying refrains. “The devil is on the loose, sister, that’s how it is…amen,” or “Praise be to him!” Her disjointed ramblings in Coraje II are unique in that she shows us how-to-survive. This superb actress, who can change her mood from cynical to stoical with a raised eyebrow, is as courageous as she is experimental as a writer. With a flair for panache, Hernandez does both succinctly and delightfully well.
This versatile actress draws excerpts from playwright Bertolt Brecht’s gloomy poetry, which she speaks and sings directly to us. Also she derives inspiration from his great anti-war epic, Mother Courage, the inspiration for Coraje II/Courage II. A detailed plot is provided in the lobby. Read it to enhance your enjoyment of the performance.
For more information, you may call (787) 607-6724 or write to puchiplaton@gmail.com
For a preview, directed by Gabriel Coss, see http://vimeo.com/35141075
For a review on the play in English, see http://dctheatrescene.com/2011/11/04/coraje-ii-courage-ii/
For a review in Spanish (which includes a video and the photo above), see http://www.80grados.net/2012/01/otro-teatro-en-teresa-hernandez/
‘सलमान रूश्दी के कार्यक्रम रद्द होने पर निराशा’; PUCL regrets cancellation of Salman Rushdie’s visit to Jaipur
Nuri Bilge Ceclan
Neu in unserem Webmagazin: Ein Audiogespräch mit Nuri Bilge Ceylan über seinen großartigen Film Once Upon a Time in Anatolia.
1 Kommentare (ansehen)Coriolanus
The monomania of the performer, stuck on the role, holding his character up to the light and inspecting it from every angle, permeates Fiennes’s intense directorial debut. In other hands, the character Coriolanus can come off as a thesis with a sword or a Chigurh-esque cartoon. But Fiennes privileges this slab of granite with a soul. The play complicates our understanding of politics, democracy, leadership, and war; the movie is first and foremost a study of a man.
The Caribbean in 2012: Looking Forward (NACLA report)
Kevin Edmonds, NACLA’s new Caribbean blogger, has posted this report on NACLA’s website. You can follow his reports by clicking on his name above.
Two thousand and twelve holds both a great deal of uncertainty and cautious optimism for the Caribbean. The election of new governments over the past year in Jamaica and St. Lucia, the controversial re-election of an incumbent in Guyana, and the selection of Michel Martelly out of a flawed election in Haiti has sent mixed signals about the overall direction the region is taking. With the global economy still in an extremely volatile state, the predominately service-oriented economies of the Caribbean remain extremely vulnerable to the action or inaction of Europe and the United States.
In Guyana, December’s election saw Donald Ramotar of the incumbent People’s Progressive Party emerge with the win—albeit with a minority government. The delayed release of election results triggered a wave of controversy and political tension within the country that has yet to cease. The Opposition leader, David Granger, just announced the possibility of a snap election in the country to capitalize on the current controversy surrounding the PPP.
In Haiti, the sombre two year anniversary of the earthquake has come and gone, signalled by another round of lofty reconstruction promises in what many consider to be a tragically stalled effort. The accountability and legitimacy of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti continues to erode after being unapologetic for their role in introducing cholera into the country and releasing a group of Uruguayan soldiers accused of raping a young boy without charge, despite the existence of video evidence. President Michel Martelly has been under fire for failing to overcome a standstill over the implementation of his national education plans, while proudly calling for the re-establishment of the notorious Haitian army. Hopefully 2012 will be the year of lessons learned, starting with a concerted and coordinated effort to invest in sustainable and publically accessible partnerships and investment.
In Jamaica, Portia Simpson Miller’s return to power has come with the promises of shaking up the country by tossing out the monarchy and finally making Jamaica an independent republic. While perhaps more symbolic than substance, it offers to deliver important political capital, which will be much needed, especially when facing the more daunting issues of managing and reducing debt, corruption, and crime. Miller was partly elected on her promise of using state funding to reduce the unemployment rate. For the United States, Miller’s election confirms their worst fears of a diversion from the IMF’s prescription. As WikiLeaks revealed, “In such a scenario [the election of Miller], Jamaica could go the way of Haiti: fatally driven by crime, poverty, drugs, gangs, social disintegration, and emigration – all more reasons for strong US support for Golding’s ongoing reforms.” Whether or not Miller will be able to run Jamaica in the interests of the Jamaican people will be a story to watch throughout 2012.
In St. Lucia, Prime Minster Kenny Anthony swept back into power after a five year absence, defeating Stephenson King of the United Workers Party. Facing extensive infrastructure and housing damage due to Hurricane Tomas in 2010, increasing crime, and a volatile tourist market, the Prime Minster is currently looking east in a risky effort to play China and Taiwan against each other in order to secure the largest promises of aid and development for St. Lucia.
Finally, the emergence of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) signals an important shift away from the traditional U.S. influence in the Caribbean. It is too early to determine whether or not a competing organization like CELAC will be able to deliver on the promises of sustainable development and strengthen South-South cooperation in the Caribbean, or if the Caribbean will fare as a forgotten partner in this predominately Latin American venture. Several Caribbean countries (Dominica, St. Vincent, and Antigua) have already joined ALBA, revealing that the interest in new forums of cooperation and partnership are not based on motives of political opportunism, but rather due to the overwhelmingly negative experience the Caribbean has had with neoliberal globalization. Looking at the history of the lack of benefits the Caribbean has had in adopting initiatives like the Caribbean Basin Initiative, it is hardly surprising.
For the original report go to http://nacla.org/blog/2012/1/19/caribbean-2012-looking-forward
Painting by Jean-Pierre Frey from http://jeanpierrefrey.blogspot.com/2010/05/jean-pierre-frey-cuadros-y-muebles.html
