Some people subtitle this movie as Indian Love; the reason is perfectly clear. Tizoc (Pedro Infante) is an Indian who works hard while the rest of the indians envy and even hate him. One day he meets the most beautiful woman on earth, María (María Félix) so takes her as the Virgin of the local church.
The woman is member of a wealthy country-family, one of the richest of the region. However, the wealthy, beautiful and Virgin-like woman befriends the poor but hard working Indian.
One day Tizoc is hurt by another Indian. María witnesses this and gives him a white handkerchief to wipe his blood. ¡Alas! The man goes crazy. In fact she ignores that to offer a white handkerchief to an Indian of this region means to accept him as the husband.
Now Tizoc works harder to build the house where he and María should come to live. No matter what, Tizoc won't listen to anybody, not even the local priest: he is convinced that María wants to be his wife.
After a few days he comes to believe that María has made a fool of him. So, angry, he kidnaps her and takes her to a mountain. Even the Army comes after him to rescue the wealthy woman, but also the other indians who hate Tizoc.
In captivity María talks to Tizoc and he realizes his misunderstanding. So he lets her go free. But then one of the other indians, trying to kill Tizoc, shoots her an arrow to kill her. The saddest Tizoc takes out the arrow from her breast and plunges it into his own chest.
Perhaps the most famous passage of this movie is when Tizoc sings her Te quiero más que a mis ojos. Te quiero más que a mis ojos. Pero quiero más a mis ojos Pero quiero más a mis ojos porque mis ojos te vieron (I love you more than my eyes, I love you more than my eyes. But I love more my eyes, but I love more my eyes because my eyes saw you)
Moved, she begins to weep. Then, when he realizes that she's crying, with a rock hits the mouth that has made her cry.
On April, 15th, 1957 Pedro Infante died on a plane crash. However, months later his character as Tizoc got him the Berlin's Silver Bear for Best Actor (while Twelve Angry Men got the Golden Bear)
The predominant form of cultural expression among the Kyrgyz nomads is the narration of epics. The art of the Akyns, the Kyrgyz epic tellers, combines singing, improvisation and musical composition. The epics are performed at religious and private festivities, seasonal ceremonies and national holidays and have survived over the centuries by oral transmission.
The value of the Kyrgyz epics lies largely in their dramatic plots and philosophical underpinnings. They represent an oral encyclopaedia of Kyrgyz social values, cultural knowledge and history. The pre-eminent Kyrgyz epic is the 1000-year-old Manas trilogy, which is noteworthy not only for its great length (sixteen times longer than Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey), but also for its rich content. Blending fact and legend, the Manas immortalizes important events in Kyrgyz’s history since the ninth century. The Kyrgyzs have also preserved over forty “smaller” epics. While the Manas is a solo narration, these shorter works are generally performed to the accompaniment of the komuz, the three-stringed Kyrgyz lute. Each epic possesses a distinctive theme, melody and narrative style. Akyns were once highly respected figures who toured from region to region and frequently participated in storytelling contests. They were appreciated for their proficiency in narration, expressive gestures, intonation and lively mimicry, so well suited to the epics’ emotionally charged content.
During the 1920s, the first part of the Manas trilogy was recorded in written form based on the oral interpretation of the great epic singer, Sagynbay. The epics remain an essential component of Kyrgyz identity and continue to inspire contemporary writers, poets, and composers; even today, the traditional performances are still linked to sacred cultural spaces. Although there are fewer practitioners nowadays, master akyns continue to train young apprentices and are helped by recent revitalization initiatives supported by the Kyrgyz government.
Inscribed in 2008 (3.COM) on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (originally proclaimed in 2003)
Place: musée du quai Branly, 37, quai Branly, Paris (France)
Webpage: www.quaibranly.fr Comments: The musée du quai Branly presents Māori: Their treasures have a soul, featuring Māori culture through 250 pieces from the collections of the Museum of New ZealandTe Papa Tongarewa. This exhibition, never shown before outside New Zealand, is a testimony to a strong and living culture. It affirms a people’s will to master their own future by emphasising tino rangatiratanga: Māori self determination and control over things Māori.
The exhibition presents a great range of artwork, including sculpture, adornment, daily and sacred objects, architectural elements, photographs, audiovisual documents, and so on. It highlights the links between taonga (ancestral Māori treasures) and contemporary art, shedding light on important issues and debates for Māori today.
The exhibition presents Māori culture as seen by Māori, free from Western views and biases. The heart of the exhibition features art that addresses the political, spiritual, and aesthetic developments that have shaped Māori culture.
The introductory area orientates visitors to the Māori world by presenting a major underlying concept of the exhibition.
* Tino rangatiratangais a phrase synonymous today with the struggle of Māori for greater control over their own destiny and resources. The core word is ‘rangatira’, or ‘chief’ – someone acknowledged as a leader, holding authority over their tribe and geographical dominion. Tino rangatiratanga embodies the ideas of sovereignty and self-determination – the will of Māori to regain control over their culture, identity, and resources, and to participate and contribute to global issues, such as environmental protection.
* In the 1835 Declaration of Independence, Māori clearly asserted their desire to maintain their sovereignty. They reiterated this desire with their later signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi (the Treaty of Waitangi) in 1840.
The signing of these documents would, they understood, guarantee the recognition of theirauthority over their land, forests, fisheries, and so on.
Sir Laurens Jan van der Post, CBE (December 13, 1906 – December 16, 1996) was a 20th century Afrikaner author of many books, farmer, war hero, political adviser to British heads of government, close friend of Prince Charles, godfather of Prince William, educator, journalist, humanitarian, philosopher, explorer, anthropologist and conservationist.
Van der Post was born in the small town of Philippolis in the Orange River Colony, the post-Boer War British name for what had previously been the Afrikaner Orange Free State in what is today South Africa. His father, Christiaan Willem Hendrik van der Post (1856–1914), of Dutch origin, had arrived in South Africa at the age of three and had married van der Post's mother in 1889.
He spent his early childhood years on the family farm, and acquired a taste for reading from his father's extensive library, which included Homer and Shakespeare. His father died in August 1914. In 1918 van der Post went to school at GreyCollege in Bloemfontein. There, he wrote, it was a great shock to him that he was "being educated into something which destroyed the sense of common humanity I shared with the black people". In 1925 he took his first job as a reporter in training at The Natal Advertiser in Durban. In 1926 he and two other rebellious writers, Roy Campbell and William Plomer, published a satirical magazine called Voorslag (English: whip lash) which promoted a more racially integrated South Africa; it lasted for three issues before being forced to shut down because of its radical views. Later that year he took off for three months with Plomer and sailed to Tokyo and back on a Japanese freighter, the Canada Maru, an experience which produced books by both authors later in life.
In 1927 Van der Post met Marjorie Edith Wendt (d. 1995), daughter of the founder and conductor of the Cape Town Orchestra. They traveled to England and on March 8, 1928, married at Bridport, Dorset. A son was born soon after on December 26, named Jan Laurens (later known as John). In 1929 van der Post returned to South Africa to work for the CapeTimes, a newspaper in Cape Town. He began to associate with bohemians and intellectuals who were opposed to James Hertzog (Prime Minister) and the white South African policy. In an article entitled 'South Africa in the Melting Pot', which clarified his views of the South Africa racial problem, he said "The white South African has never consciously believed that the native should ever become his equal."
In 1931 he returned to England and formed friendships with members of the Bloomsbury group including Arthur Waley, J. M. Keynes, E. M. Forster and Virginia Woolf. Virginia and her husband Leonard Woolf were publishers, and had previously published William Plomer's works, and it was through Plomer's connections that van der Post gained introduction to the Woolfs and the Bloomsbury Set.
In 1934 the Woolfs published van der Post's first novel under the Hogarth Press label. Called In a Province, it portrayed the tragic consequences of a racially and ideologically divided South Africa. Later that year he decided to become a dairy farmer and bought a farm called Colley Farm, near Tetbury, Gloucestershire. There he divided his time between the needs of the cows and occasional visits to London where he was a correspondent to South African newspapers. He considered this a directionless phase in his life which mirrored Europe's slow drift to war. In 1936 he made five trips to South Africa and during one trip he met and fell in love with Ingaret Giffard (d. 1997), an English actress and author five years his senior. Later that year his wife Marjorie gave birth to a second child, a daughter named Lucia, and in 1938 he sent his family back to South Africa. When the Second World War started in 1939 he found himself torn between England and South Africa, his new love and his family; his career was at a dead end, and he was in depressed spirits, often drinking heavily.
In May 1940, van der Post volunteered for the British Army and upon completion of officer training in January 1941 he was sent to East Africa in the Intelligence Corps as a Captain. There he took up with General Wingate's Gideon Force which was tasked with restoring the Emperor Haile Selassie to his throne in Abyssinia. His unit led 11,000 camels through difficult mountain terrain and he was remembered for being an excellent caretaker of the animals. In March he came down with malaria and was sent to Palestine to recover.
In early 1942, as Japanese forces invaded South East Asia, van der Post was transferred to Allied forces in the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), because of his Dutch language skills. By his own statement, he was given command of Special Mission 43, the purpose of which was to organise the covert evacuation of as many Allied personnel as possible, after the surrender of Java.
On April 20, 1942, he surrendered to the Japanese. He was taken to prison-camps first at Sukabumi and then to Bandung. Van der Post was famous for his work in maintaining the morale of prisoners of many different nationalities. Along with others, he organised a "camp university" with courses from basic literacy to degree-standard ancient history, and he also organized a camp farm to supplement nutritional needs. He could also speak some basic Japanese, which helped him greatly. He wrote about his prison experiences in A Bar of Shadow (1954), The Seed and the Sower (1963) and The Night of the New Moon (1970). Japanese film director Nagisa Oshima based his film Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1982) on the last two of these books.
Following the surrender of Japan, while his fellow POWs were repatriated, van der Post chose to remain in Java, and on September 15, 1945, he joined Admiral William Patterson on HMS Cumberland for the official surrender of the Japanese in Java to British forces representing the Allies.
Van der Post then spent two years helping to mediate between Indonesian nationalists and members of the Dutch Colonial Government. He had gained trust with the nationalist leaders such as Mohammad Hatta and Ahmed Sukarno and warned both Prime Minister Clement Attlee and the Allied Supreme Commander in South East Asia, Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, whom he met in London in October 1945, that the country was on the verge of blowing up. Van der Post went to The Hague to repeat his warning directly to the Dutch cabinet. In November 1946, British forces withdrew and Van der Post became military attaché to the British consulate in Batavia. By 1947, after he had returned to England, the Indonesian Revolution had begun. The events of these post-war years in Java are examined in his memoir The Admiral's Baby (1996).
That same year, Van der Post retired from the army and was made a CBE.
His works
With the war over and his business with the army concluded, van der Post returned to South Africa in late 1947 to work at the Natal Daily News, but with the election victory of the National Party and the onset of apartheid he came back to London. He was later to publish a critique of apartheid (The Dark Eye in Africa, 1955), basing many of his insights on his developing interest in psychology. In May 1949 he was commissioned by the Colonial Development Corporation (CDC) to "assess the livestock capacities of the uninhabited Nyika and Mulanje plateaux of Nyasaland".
Around this time he divorced Marjorie, and on October 13, 1949, married Ingaret Giffard. He went on a honeymoon with Ingaret to Switzerland, where his new wife introduced him to Carl Jung. Jung was to have probably a greater influence upon him than anybody else, and he later said that he had never met anyone of Jung's stature. He continued to work on a travel book about his Nyasaland adventures called Venture to the Interior, which became an immediate best-seller in the US and Europe on its publication in 1952.
In 1950 Lord Reith (head of the CDC) asked van der Post to head an expedition to Bechuanaland, to see the potential of the remote Kalahari Desert for cattle ranching. There van der Post for the first time met the hunter-gatherer bush people known as San. He repeated the journey to the Kalahari in 1952. In 1953 he published his third book, The Face Beside the Fire, a semi-autobiographical novel about a psychologically "lost" artist in search of his soul and soul-mate, which clearly shows Jung's influence on his thinking and writing.
Flamingo Feather (1955) was an anti-communist novel in the guise of a Buchanesque adventure story, about a Soviet plot to take over South Africa. It sold very well. Alfred Hitchcock planned to film the book, but lost support from South African authorities and gave up the idea.
In 1955 the BBC commissioned van der Post to return to the Kalahari in search of the bushmen, a journey that turned into a very popular six-part television documentary series in 1956. In 1958 his most famous book was released under the same title as the BBC series: The Lost World of the Kalahari, followed in 1961 by The Heart of the Hunter, derived from 19th-century Bushmen stories by Wilhelm Bleek.
Van der Post described the Bushmen as the original natives of southern Africa, outcast and persecuted by all other races and nationalities. He said they represented the "lost soul" of all mankind, a type of noble savage myth. This mythos of the Bushmen inspired the colonial government to create the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in 1961 to guarantee their survival, and the reserve became a part of settled law when Botswana was created in 1966.
Van der Post's fame and success were now assured. He had become a respected television personality, had introduced the world to the Kalahari Bushmen, and was considered an authority on Bushman folklore and culture. "I was compelled towards the Bushmen," he said, "like someone who walks in his sleep, obedient to a dream of finding in the dark what the day has denied him." Over the next fifteen years he had a steady stream of publications, including the two books drawn from his war experiences (see above), a travel book called A Journey into Russia (1964) describing a long trip through the Soviet Union, and two novels of adventure set on the fringes of the Kalarahi desert, A Story Like the Wind (1972) and its sequel A Far-Off Place (1974). The latter volumes, about four young people, two of them San, caught up in violent events on the borders of 1970s Rhodesia, became popular as class readers in secondary schools. In 1972 there was another BBC television series of his 16-year friendship with Jung, who died in 1961, which was followed by the book Jung and the Story of our Time (1976).
Ingaret and he moved to Aldeburgh, Suffolk, where they became involved with a circle of friends that included an introduction to Prince Charles, whom he then took on a safari to Kenya in 1977 and with whom he had a close and influential friendship for the rest of his life. Also in 1977, together with Ian Player, a South African conservationist, he created the first World Wilderness Congress in Johannesburg. In 1979 his Chelsea neighbor Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister and she called on his advice with matters dealing with southern Africa, notably the Rhodesia settlement of 1979–80. In 1981 he was given a Knighthood.
In 1982 he fell and injured his back and used the downtime from tennis and skiing to write an autobiography called Yet Being Someone Other (1982), which discussed his love of the sea and his journey to Japan with Plomer in 1926. (His affection for that country and its people, despite his wartime experiences, had first been explored in 1968 in his Portrait of Japan). By now Ingaret was slipping into senility, and he spent much time with Frances Baruch, an old friend. In 1984 his son John (who had gone on to be an engineer in London) died, and van der Post spent time with his youngest daughter Lucia and her family.
Even in old age Sir Laurens van der Post was involved with many projects, from the worldwide conservationist movement, to setting up a centre of Jungian studies in Cape Town. He remained a captivating speaker and storyteller both in public and in private. A Walk with a White Bushman (1986), the transcript of a series of interviews, gives a taste of his appeal as a conversationalist. In 1996 he tried to prevent the eviction of the Bushmen from their homeland in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, which had been set up for that purpose, but ironically it was his work in the 1950s to promote the land for cattle ranching that led to their eventual removal. In October 1996 he published The Admiral's Baby, describing the events in Java at the end of the war. For his 90th birthday party he had a five-day celebration in Colorado, with a "this is your life" type event with friends from every period of his life. A few days later, on December 16, 1996, after whispering in Afrikaans "die sterre" (the stars), he died. The funeral took place December 20 in London, attended by Zulu chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, Prince Charles, Lady Thatcher, and many friends and family. His ashes were buried in a special memorial garden at Philippolis on April 4, 1998. Ingaret died five months after him on May 5, 1997.
In an incredible twist of fate, a Scottish doctor (James McAvoy) on a Ugandan medical mission becomes irreversibly entangled with one of the world's most barbaric figures: Idi Amin (Forest Whitaker). Impressed by Dr. Garrigan's brazen attitude in a moment of crisis, the newly self-appointed Ugandan President Amin hand picks him as his personal physician and closest confidante. Though Garrigan is at first flattered and fascinated by his new position, he soon awakens to Amin's savagery - and his own complicity in it. Horror and betrayal ensue as Garrigan tries to right his wrongs and escape Uganda alive.
This oral poem, also known as the Hilali epic, recounts the saga of the Bani Hilal Bedouin tribe and its migration from the Arabian Peninsula to North Africa in the tenth century. This tribe held sway over a vast territory in central North Africa for more than a century before being annihilated by Moroccan rivals. As one of the major epic poems that developed within the Arabic folk tradition, the Hilali is the only epic still performed in its integral musical form. Moreover, once widespread throughout the Middle East, it has disappeared from everywhere except Egypt.
Since the fourteenth century, the Hilali epic has been performed by poets who sing the verses while playing a percussion instrument or a two-string spike fiddle (rabab). Performances take place at weddings, circumcision ceremonies and private gatherings, and may last for days. In the past, practitioners were trained within family circles and performed the epic as their only means of income. These professional poets began their ten-year apprenticeships at the age of five. To this day, students undergo special training to develop memory skills and to master their instruments. Nowadays, they must also learn to inject improvisational commentary in order to render plots more relevant to contemporary audiences.
The number of performers of the Hilali Epic is dwindling due to competition from contemporary media and to the decreasing number of young people able to commit to the rigorous training process. Pressured by the lucrative Egyptian tourist industry, poets tend to forsake the full Hilali repertory in favour of brief passages performed as part of folklore shows.
Inscribed in 2008 on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (originally proclaimed in 2003).
Com cada any per aquestes dates, el Dakar ja ha començat
i podem veure el resum de l’etapa al telenotícies i en programes de televisió
especialitzats. I per a seguir mantenint la tradició, incongruentment, aquest
ral·li de competició encara continua anomenant-se Dakar tot i que des del 2008
no finalitza a la capital senegalesa. Ni tan sols el ral·li africà per antonomàsia
continua recorrent el continent africà i en l'edició d'aquest any 2012 circularà per Argentina, Xile i Perú.
En cert sentit, s’ha perdut gran part del sentit de l’aventura
del primer dels París-Dakar, aquell ideat per ThierrySabine el 1977
per a utilitzar el desert, on s’havia perdut un temps abans durant una
competició, com a fons d’escenari per a demostrar les habilitats dels pilots i
de les màquines. La mort de Sabine en un accident d’helicòpter a Mali el 1986
probablement va fer distanciar més el Dakar del que havia estat la seva idea
original. Sense ell, el traçat va començar a canviar lleugerament. El 1992, per
exemple, ja no va acabar a Dakar, sinó que el ral·li va consistir en una cursa
que travessava Àfrica del Nord al Sud fins a Ciutat del Cap. I en anys
posteriors, en algun cas ni sortia de Paris. El 2005 el ral·.li va iniciar-se a
Barcelona, un tribut sens dubte a la multitud de participants (i guanyadors)
que Catalunya ha aportat al Dakar.
El Dakar és actualment un fenòmen mediàtic que es mostra
a més de 190 països del món i que mou milions d’euros. Aquesta popularitat és
la que van aprofitar els terroristes islàmics per a amenaçar el ral·li el 2008,
l’únic any en què s’ha hagut de cancel·lar. Ni els incidents (com la desaparició
de Mark Thatcher, el fill de la Primera Ministra britànica el 1982) o els
accidents (com la mort de Sabine o la d’altres pilots o vilatans) o el canvi de
continent han reduït la participació al Dakar, i encara avui en dia segueix tan
potent com al principi.
Això sí, l’essència d’aventura potser sí que ha estat en
part abandonada per una essència més comercial i la famosa música de
Jean-Michel Jarre (Révolutions) ja fa molt que no se sent com a sintonia del
Dakar...
A la feina em van donar un telèfon Blackberry. És molt útil, perquè pots mirar el correu actualitzat tan sovint com vulguis (quasi sempre massa sovint), i a banda d'això hi ha tota una sèrie d'utilitats descarregables de la pàgina web de Blackberry que et poden ajudar en la gestió diària o a omplir els moments buits esperant el metro amb petits i senzills jocs. De tant en tant entro a aquesta web per a veure quines novetats hi ha que siguin gratuïtes. La vida és prou cara com per a que a més a més haguem d'anar descarregant aplicacions de pagament, a part que la majoria d'elles no valen ni els dos o tres euros que solen valer. Però avui m'he trobat amb una gran sorpresa. Una sorpresa desagradable. D'aquelles que fan pensar. Entre les aplicacions de pagament per a descarregar-te n'hi havia una com a promocionada: "Limited Edition TRIMAVI Luxus Desktop Clock". Es tracta d'un simple rellotge de fons de pantalla que et va marcant l'hora. La Blackberry ja té un rellotge integrat al sistema, i va amb l'hora d'internet, que està sincronitzada amb algun rellotge atòmic de precisió nanosecúndica, així que l'única raó per la qual algú podria voler comprar l'aplicació és simplement la de dotar al seu telèfon d'un look diferent. Però quan veig el preu m'espanto de debò: 499,50€! Cinc-cents euros per una descàrrega? Per un simple fons de pantalla amb forma de rellotge? Quina mena d'imbècil compraria una futilitat digital com un rellotge de 500 euros? Un magnat rus, un príncep àrab? Al principi penso que deu haver estat un error tipogràfic. Ha de ser que s'ha mogut la coma dos espais... Però reviso a internet i veig que el preu en dòlars és similar. Analitzo més en detall l'oferta i veig que la publicitat del rellotge anuncia que només hi haurà 50 descàrregues possibles. No hi ha dubte, el preu és aquest, i es basa únicament en l'exclusivitat per a distingir-se. En comptes de fer el que fa la majoria de fabricants d'aplicacions (cobrar un o dos euros però vendre-ho a milions d'usuaris), aquest ha decidit tirar la casa per la finestra i vendre luxe digital a una selecció exclusiva de milionaris retardats. És l'exclusivitat que dóna el preu: ser una de les 50 persones més estúpides al món que s'han descarregat aquesta aplicació. La vanitat i les ganes d'aparentar de l'ésser humà gairebé sempre el porta a fer el ridícul...