On Tuesday, 10 November, around 10:30pm, Brazil suffered a nationwide blackout that left about a third of the country’s population shrouded in complete darkness. Entire states were left without any source of electricity, including São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. In most places, chaos reigned as cities came to a complete standstill: people were stuck in traffic, out in the street, on the tube, even in elevators. The overwhelming scale of the blackout meant there was nowhere near enough manpower to deal with the situation. It was several hours before power was restored and things went back to normal. The official government line was that a large hydroelectric dam that supplies a majority of the country was hit by lightning during a heavy storm, causing a disastrous short circuit. If this is actually what happened, I don’t quite understand how there aren’t some security measures that prevent something like this from happening. I’ve heard of blackouts before, but 60 million people? That’s the equivalent of the UK, Ireland, and France all losing power simultaneously. It’s simply ridiculous.

My own personal experience of the blackout was fascinating to say the least. I had been working on a short film documentary in São Paulo and we were filming a scene in a restaurant involving many small interviews. Suddenly, all the lights began to flicker and then quickly went out. Shortly after, a few lights automatically turned on account of the restaurant’s generator. Everyone in the film crew became frustrated at the prospect of the scene being ruined but fortunately enough had been filmed beforehand, so it wasn’t too bad. We packed all our things and jumped into the van, onto our next location, another restaurant in São Paulo’s city centre.

As we drove along the streets, we started to notice all the other buildings in the neighbourhood were dark as well, even the traffic lights were down. We began to suspect it was something bigger than we imagined but the more we drove, the more we realised that this on a completely different scale. Arriving at one of São Paulo’s main avenues, we were met with total gridlock and complete darkness. Someone turned on the radio and we began to hear phone calls from listeners around the country, all mentioning a lack of electricity in their area. It was just unbelievable, I really couldn’t get my head round it: how can so many people lose power at the same time? The thought that we wouldn’t be able to complete the scheduled shots for the day were soon replaced by the fear that we might not even make it to our respective homes. At least we were safe inside the van, a privilege that many did not have. The notion of what those who would take advantage of the blackout would be doing was also unnerving: would there be looting, muggings, widespread violence? In the end, there was very little of the three, there were just a lot of drunk people in the streets, presumably who had been at the bar but saw no way of getting home, and so proceeded to drink more.

Whilst most of the filming wasn’t too affected (the blackout forced the director of photography to improvise some more creative lighting for the remaining interviews in the street) one particular shot was completely compromised. They had set-up a camera at the second bar that would be recording in time-lapse photography, capturing 24 hours there and reducing it to minutes in the editing suite. With a set-up such as this, you normally prepare yourself for most eventualities, such as rain. A blackout is probably never going high in the list. Apart from the odd flash of car headlights or the dim flicker of candles, the camera was recording darkness and nothing else.

In the end everything worked out fine and despite a few setbacks, we managed to get nearly everything we wanted. This, of course, is far from the case of the Brazilian government. Having recently secured the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics, I’m not quite sure how either FIFA or the Olympic Committee will view an event like this. For all the promises that Brazil will never suffer another blackout again, faith alone isn’t going to convince these organisations. If Brazil didn’t already have enough on its plates in dealing with the crime, the transport infrastructure, the building of new facilities, and much more, it’s now got to make sure that the country actually has electricity too!

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Saturday evening saw the third edition of the Planeta Terra Festival, which translates as the Planet Earth Festival. Rather than an eco-friendly gathering as the name might suggest, Planeta Terra is an indie rock festival that brings together international artists and Brazilian bands across two stages. This year, headliners included Primal Scream, Sonic Youth, and Iggy Pop on the main stage while the Ting Tings, Patrick Wolf, and Metronomy. In a year where many of São Paulo’s older longer-running festivals took a break on account of the crisis, Planeta Terra is one of the few that has managed to hold its ground, surprisingly so considering how young it is.

My evening began with a drizzly start. The festival had started at four in the afternoon and in typical Brazilian fashion, my girlfriend and I didn’t arrive there until about 10pm, which of course meant that we missed every Brazilian band on the lineup (since international acts always get priority) as well as Primal Scream. Ah well, at least we arrived in time for Sonic Youth. As the godfathers of alternative rock walked on stage, the heavens above began to open. Yet many received the rain with open arms after the scorching 35-degree heat of the afternoon. Complete with full-blown distortion, wailing guitars and spoken lyrics, Sonic Youth tore mercilessly through their set, with Thurston Moore very occasionally mumbling a few words. If their energy levels were perhaps not as high as they might’ve been a few years ago, one can forgive them due to the fact they played perfect renditions of their beloved alt rock anthems. I was hoping that they’d play ‘Teen Age Riot’ from their seminal album ‘Daydream Nation’, but alas it was not to be.

As their set closed, the rain finally came to a stop, and so we went to the other stage to see the insufferable Ting Tings (my girlfriend really likes them). The fact that they have such an absurdly stupid name unfortunately doesn’t people enough people off them here in Brazil; on the contrary, they’re actually very popular here. As their set starts, lead singer Katie White comes on holding a piece of a paper with some Portuguese written down and reads it to the crowd, spouting words to the effect of “Hello São Paulo, my Portuguese is shit. Let’s dance!”. Riveting stuff. With only an album under their belt so far, they play it almost in its entirety, missing out slower songs such as ‘Traffic Light’ (I have had to hear the album many times at my girlfriend’s house, wouldn’t you know?). Truth be told, some of the songs weren’t terrible pop songs, if just felt like rehashed formulas. Essentially, it wasn’t as torturous as I thought it would be. Their encore, on the other hand, truly was. Drummer Jules De Martino returned to the stage to a small programmed synthesizer which at the touch of a key, played different songs. Starting with a few opening bars of ‘Walk this Way’, he quickly “mixed” into ‘Rapper’s Delight’ followed by the Ghostbusters’ Theme before moving to his drums. One girl in front of me turned to her friend and said she didn’t know he was a DJ as well. Soon after, White came back on and they launched into ‘Shut Up and Let Me Go’ and ending with their hit ‘That’s Not My Name’. I really can’t think of another artist who has successfully managed to write two more grating songs than those. But they are met with massive applause and leave the stage confident that they have conquered Brazil too now. The thought alone makes me shudder.

Going to a festival with your girlfriend is always a diplomatic operation, even more so when your tastes differ quite so much. Watching the Ting Tings meant we missed Iggy Pop. This is now the second time I’ve missed him at a festival, last time I was in a queue for an hour waiting to collect my ticket since the specific ticket company’s tickets only arrived after the festival was well underway. As we rushed back, we did catch a chorus of ‘The Passenger’ and ‘Lust for Life’. I suppose that’s better than nothing. At least I was sure I wasn’t going to miss the act I was intent on seeing, French electronic artist Etienne de Crecy. Like many of France’s musical exponents of late, Monsieur de Crecy plays electro, sort of an all-encompassing genre nowadays but something along the lines of driving basses, distorted synthesizers, and some harmonic chords thrown in to the mix as well. All this was accompanied by a pretty spectacular light show which involved lines being projected onto a nine-square cube structure with de Crecy in the middle square.

If it wasn’t quite Daft Punk’s Alive show from 2007, it was still thoroughly impressive. As the video above shows, the changes in the music reflected in the light projection were well-chosen; it was a minimalistic concept where the smallest of changes produced large effects and which fitted very well with the flow of de Crecy’s electronica. The only shame was that it started raining again during his show, and since he was the last artist on the main stage, many had decided to forego the performance and head home instead.

It was a fun few hours and it ended spectacularly, but I’m still not convinced that Brazil is the place for music festivals. Unlike in Europe where festivals celebrate a diversity of acts and stages, each one offering something different to the punters, Brazil keeps the scope very limited. It seems that the organisers are more interested in making a profit than putting on a show, and the UK is proof that the more successful festivals are those where the music comes first. Last year, TIM Festival here in São Paulo decided to take the opposite route and took its already paltry number of acts and spread them out across several days whilst charging obscene prices for tickets. It’s not surprising to see that this year, they are “taking a break”. By the looks of it, there’s still some time before Brazil finds its Bestival, let alone its Glastonbury.

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So yesterday was the last day of the São Paulo International Film Festival, one of Brazil's most prestigious film festivals. With about 400 films packed into two weeks, there's a film that suits everyone's taste. Last year, I was lucky enough to catch the full two weeks as I had just arrived and had very little on my plate, meaning that I was able to watch many films during the festival. I think I watched something like 7 films, so about 1 every other day. This year, I didn't get to watch a single film! I've been working so much lately that I simply have not had even a few spare hours to while away amongst São Paulo's cinephiles.

I'd been working for the film festival itself since September, working as their English translator for their website and their festival catalogue. I would have thought that working in the festival would've gotten me some perks such as free tickets or some free merchandise, even a badge would've been something. But no, there was none of that. The one thing I did get was two tickets to the opening ceremony, which sounds much glitzier than it proved to be. For starters, there were no drinks or canapés, not even orange juice or water. You had to pay for everything. What kind of festival ceremony doesn't serve free drinks? Sod the film, I came to get drunk amongst the stars, or at least hidrate myself. We were then forced to mill around for about an hour for no apparent reason before the ceremony actually began, which took another hour in itself: rather than a simple introduction and some thank yous to the sponsors, a representative from each sponsor came up and gave a "short" speech. The groans in the audience became more audible with every sponsor that appeared onstage; when they called the sports minister on to talk about something or other, it sounded like there was a chorus of school-kids moaning. Eventually, two hours after the film should've started, the festival directors left the stage and the projectors were turned on. Up pops Ken Loach's ode to that French rapscallion Cantona, 'Looking for Eric'. It was a great choice to start off the festival, a mix of action, comedy, and tragedy, much like a football match. I only was a little irritated since I'd seen the film a few weeks before on the plane, on a screen the size of my palm, thus the surprise factor was little ruined. I guess I have to correct myself then, rather not seeing a single film, I didn't see a single film I hadn't seen before. But enough of that, onto the Two Erics.

Eric Bishop (Steve Everts) is a postman in Manchester whose life is in crisis. He can't control his two sons, he can't face his first wife, the mother of his daughter, and he can't deliver his mail. Lost in the world and with no one to turn to, who looks to his idol for guidance, Eric Cantona, "the best football player that ever lived". One night, as he looks at a life-size poster of Cantona, he is visited by the man himself to receive advice on how to get his life back on track.

Despite being produced by the French footballer himself, 'Looking for Eric' is not simply a film about football. In fact, it's far from a film about Cantona. The eponymous Eric is the English Eric, not the French one. It is his story we follow, the story of a working man trying straighten things out in his life. The focus is always on Eric's development throughout the film, and though the subplots may sometimes seem in parallel to his story, their purpose is simply to be another challenge for Eric; we are not interested in whether or not the issues get resolved as much as we are in interested in how Eric will deal with them, which is where football comes in. Whilst football is often mentioned throughout the film, from Eric's recounting of Cantona's best goals (including footage of them) to the arguments over team loyalties, it's never the centrepiece of the film. It only serves as a metaphor for the things lacking in his life: solidarity, support, confidence, unity. And it is football that eventually helps him resolve his issues, represented by his friends and Cantona.

Loach finds a balance between the different aspects of the story and styles of the film, such as the British social realism of working-class people versus the more fantastic elements of the film, or the lighter tone of scenes involving Eric's friends compared to the darker, gritter mood given to Ryan's subplot. The film never seems to jump around from these quite contrasting elements, with Paul Laverty's script keeping them flowing smoothly scene by scene. Unlike past films, Loach's comic touch perhaps adds a more approachable quality to the film, making it so satisfying to watch, especially its exuberant ending.

The actors all deliver great performances, each one suiting his or her role in the story: Gerard Kearns as Eric's rebellious teenage son who reveals himself to be a child in need of a parent; Stephanie Bishop's Lily balances the conflict in the film with her soothing nature, sharing some touching moments with Steve Everts; John Henshaw and Justin Moorhouse provide some brilliant comic relief as Meatballs and Spleen respectively (the scene where the postmen are gathered at Eric's house trying out a self-help exercise is hysterical). Even with all this support, Everts still has a lot to live up to as the film's protagonist, and yet he shines as Eric, the explosive, insecure, loving parent/postman. And of course, last but not least, Eric Cantona, who plays none other than lui-même.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about the film is that depsite not being focused on football, it conveys a strong sense of the passion of a football fan. The goals one never forgets, the feeling of camradarie with other fans, the notion that a football match is the only place where one can let loose and forget all inhibitions, no matter who you are or what you do, and the security that notion offers. These ideas only appear in the film explicitly once, but one can feel they are floating around throughout the film. It is these ideas that Eric years to retrieve, it's what he needs to retrieve to find the Eric he is looking for. As a famous French philosopher once said:

"When the seagulls follow the trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea".

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As part of the never-ending celebrations of all things French here in Brazil, which has so far included everything from electro popstar Sébastien Tellier to cubist Matisse, photgrapher Henri-Cartier Bresson has been honoured with an exhibition of more than 100 photographs from around the world. Considered the father of photojournalism, the exhibition brings together images that span his career, from more famous ones such as Behind the Gare St. Lazare (perhaps his most famous photograph) to others displaying the breadth of his travels around the world.

Having gone to see the Walker Evans exhibition only a few weeks ago, it was fascinating to see how distinct each photographer's style was and yet how in many ways, they share similarities. The curators of each exhibition seemed to pick up on differences more, demonstrated by the organisation of the photographs: whilst Evans' work was neatly separated out into series and also chronologically, the Cartier-Bresson was much more wild, with photographs with seemingly nothing in common side by side, apart from the vivacity that united them all which Cartier-Bresson managed to capture (and, arguably, instilled in them himself). Most of Evans' work was austere, capturing the harsh conditions of an economically fragile nation, compared to the Francophone's more "colourful" portraits of life. And yet they both strive to bring together elements of journalism and art to their photography; Evans may be tied to the former and Cartier-Bresson to the latter, but one pick out these elements in both their work nonetheless.

I'd seen some of Cartier-Bresson's work before, in my godfather's books, on the internet, on posters, etc., but much of it was still unknown to me. To see such a variety of his photographs in one place truly felt like a privilege. There seems to be so many sensations running through each picture, from joy to sadness, from serenity to excitement, from tragedy to comedy. Some images seemed so composed and based on pre-existing styles of art, such as the picture above, whose winding stairs reminded me a lot of German Expressive Cinema, and yet others seemed authentic and vibrant reflections of life that were captured without preconceptions or pretensions. One particular photograph that I was amazed by was of a stream in Japan; a little foam had built up on top of the water and had been dragged by the current, forming wisps of white against the darkness of the water. It the lines looked so meaningful and purposeful, it was as if it had been painted on the water.

But I would have to say that personally, Behind the Gare St. Lazare still ranks as one of the most impressive photographs I've ever seen (of the relative few I have seen). A clear example of "the decisive moment" Cartier-Bresson came to be known for, the picture shows the moment before a man steps into a perfectly still puddle of water. On closer inspection, one sees that the man's actions are also mirrored by a dancer on a poster on the wall behind: layers upon layers of reflections. Asked about how the picture came about, he replied, “There was a plank fence around some repairs behind the Gare Saint-Lazare train station. I happened to be peeking through a gap in the fence with my camera at the moment the man jumped". As the French would say, pas de quoi.

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Last Sunday, I went to see a Brazilian production of Tom Stoppard’s ‘Rock ’n’ Roll’. My knowledge of Stoppard only extends as far as watching ‘Shakespeare in Love’ (which he wrote the screenplay for) and knowing about ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead’, a play about two minor characters from ‘Hamlet’ who take centre stage and become the main focus of the entire play; incidentally, there’s a film version of the play with Gary Oldman and Tim Roth playing the eponymous characters but I haven’t got round to seeing that either. Having missed its initial run at the NFT back in 2006, a production directed by Trevor Nunn, I was reminded of it when my cousin mentioned seeing it in San Francisco earlier on in the year. When it appeared here in São Paulo, I jumped at the chance to see it, spurred on even more by the thought of what a Brazilian perspective might bring to an English play.

The story follows Jan, a philosophy lecturer in Cambridge in the 70s who decides to go back to his native Czechoslovakia to fight for his communist beliefs, much to the dismay of his mentor Max. As the years roll by, we see how Jan and his friends are treated by the regime whilst simultaneously following the lives of Max and his family in Cambridge. All the while, we see that the one thing that speaks to these characters, that sets generations apart, that divides governments from the people, and keeps one’s faith and beliefs intact is rock n’ roll.

First off, I’ll apologise in advance for the cheesy pun in the title. I thought of going for something like “Rock ’n’ Roll crashes like a Led Zeppelin”; probably a much better title, but then I didn’t think it was that bad. Plus, you can never go wrong with a Rolling Stones reference.

The play is essentially about 3 things: communist theory versus examples of its practical use; the difference between the brain and the mind, i.e. rationality and sensibility; and the power of rock ’n’ roll. Over the course of its 3 hours, it delves deep into the three topics and their inter-relationship, not only within the play but on a wider context as well. I must admit that much of the detail in the dialogues that explored the first two subjects was lost on me, though perhaps that’s because I wasn’t aware of many of the Portuguese technical terms. I feel that to understand it better, I’d have to read the text again in English to have a better grasp of it.

On a more dramatic level however, I felt it somewhat hard to relate to the characters. Since it was an adaptation for a Brazilian audience, it was inevitable that they should tailor it in ways that would make more sense to those sitting in the stalls and beyond. Yet it seemed that they’d pushed this too far, made it too Brazilian. It’s more than likely that this decision was made due to its length and thematic content, but I couldn’t help thinking that this added “Brazilianness” distracted from the play’s text; people seemed to be laughing more at the slapstick tone the production adopted (at times) than Stoppard’s ironic dialogues.

This may sound a somewhat elitist attitude to take yet I’d rather propose it as a cultural observation, especially after what my Brazilian cousin said. She saw it her in São Paulo as well as San Francisco and our opinions were the complete opposite: she felt more at home with the Brazilian production than the more austere American one, which I imagined I might’ve enjoyed more. It makes me wonder then, whether theatre is not as universal an art form as something like cinema: does a play require more adaptation than a film, or can it simply be translated and left at that? Or, conversely, do films actually require more than just subtitles for us to truly understand them?

This is probably too large a question to be answering here and now, best left for a rainy day. As sorry as I’d feel for anyone who’d attempt to tackle that question, I felt even more sorry for the man sitting behind me during ‘Rock ’n’ Roll’. In one scene, Jan and … are having a prolonged discussion about communist theories and its many heroes and central figures. Towards the end of the scene, one of them makes a joke about Karl Marx that drew a laugh from the audience. I overheard the man behind me turn to his friend and ask, “Who’s Karl Marx?”. The poor guy was probably dragged along to the play and didn’t imagine he’d have to be sitting through 3 hours of this on a Sunday night…

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Tuesdays are always great for a jaunt to a museum here in São Paulo; not because of some astrological reason of the alignment of the planets on Tuesdays, or some numerological notion of Tuesday being the second day of the week (or third, depending on where you're from). It's simply because museums are free. This does of course mean that they are inevitably much fuller than one would expect during the week, but it's a concession one must be willing to make in such circumstances. Last week, I went to take advantage of this at the São Paulo Art Museum (MASP) to see a new photography exhibition that has just opened here on the work of Walker Evans (pictured above).

Born at the beginning of the 20th century and living until the mid-70s, Evans was best known for his work during the Great Depression when he travelled across the United States documenting its effects for the Farm Security Administration. Emblematic 8x10 photographs from all four corners of the economically-crippled power lined much of the walls in the exhibition, showcasing bleak landscapes and impoverished farmers. On top of this governmental work, Evans also toured Alabama with writer James Agee to do a story for Fortune magazine on the lives of three rural families. The story never ran but Agee's text and Evans' photographs were developed into the seminal book concerning the Great Depression, 'Let Us Now Praise Famous Men'. This series of photographs was also on display at the exhibition; unlike his others on the same subject matter, Evans opted for a much more personal insight into these families which included many close-up portraits. The aesthetic beauty here comes from the shades of gray that bring life to the faces of his subjects, falling in between the searing white Alabama sun and the dark shadows cast on the barren fields.

Evans also went to Cuba on an assignment in the mid-30s for Carlton Beals' book 'The Crime of Cuba' about dictator Gerardo Machado. The different environment provides a fresh and interesting contrast to the Depression photographs. Whilst Evans still captures the poverty on show as he did in his home country, such as a photograph showing a poverty-stricken mother begging on the street with her three children sleeping around her, there was clearly a fascination with this wildly different culture. One particularly enigmatic photograph shows an elegantly dressed cuban man standing in the street; the stark contrast between the man's dark skin and his crisp white suit makes him stand out remarkably from his surroundings.

The exhibition was largely chronological which allowed one to see Evans' development as a photographer relatively easily. In his early work from the mid- to late-20s, much of it demonstrated more aesthetic concerns; many photographs showed his interest in geometric patters and ideas of perspective as well as relations between light and darkness. Much of it was reminiscent of De Chirico both in terms of his use of forms and shapes and of chiaroscuro. As a whole, the exhibition presents Evans' development of a concept of photography as documentary art, not only capturing reality as the camera sees it but also drawing out aesthetic elements within that. Over time, one sees how Evans' sensitivity to capturing human expression became the priority at the expense of traditional notions of aesthetics. This is most evident in his 'Subway' series, which saw the photographer taking pictures of passengers of subway trains in New York. The framing and focus is often imperfect and the lighting somewhat muddy. Yet there is something undeniably intriguing about the photgraphs as they present images that vary from comic to tragic, and always verging on poetic.

Most of his photographs are found in art museums these days. Should you chance upon an exhibition of his in the near future, it'll certainly be worth the visit.

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My 3 weeks in London were mostly filled with nostalgic catch-ups, meeting people I hadn't heard from in a year, if not more. But between all that, I did also manage to watch one film, Lars Von Trier's 'Antichrist'. To call it grossly controversial is an understatement.

The story is a simple one: an unnamed couple, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe, mourn the death of their child who fell out of a window whilst his parents were having sex. Feeling the burden of guilt upon their shoulders, Dafoe, a therapist, decides to take his wife to their cabin in the woods to deal with the grief, their so called "Eden". Through a series of exercises, Dafoe tries to remedy his wife's constant anxiety attacks, but he soon learns that his wife may not have been all that she seemed. Cue all the explicit violence that you will doubtless have heard of by now.

If reducing the film to such a dismissive synopsis seems unfair, I assure you it's only because it's exactly how the film seems to treat the subject matter. Von Trier has always been for his themes of mysogyny, his emotional manipulation of the audience, his struggle to push the boundaries of tasteful (and tastless) cinema, and I do applaud him for that. Yet 'Antichrist' just seems like a step in the wrong direction. For all the theological and mythological sybolism that the film offers, 'Antichrist' is not that far from the gorefests of 'Saw' and 'Hostel'. Von Trier may start off with a true desire to explore the darker sides of the human condition, but he soon gives in to the shock factor that lacks any substance. The infamous shot of Gainsbourg performing a clitorectomy is so graphic that it completely removes one from the dramatic moment; up until then, you're involved with Gainsbourg's unstable character, torn between sympathy for her grief but disgust at what she's done to her husband. The tension mounts as you see her grab the scissors and you're on the edge of your seat. And then comes the close-up and all that suspense vanishes instantly.

I won't lie and say that the film is terrible, some of the cinematography is truly stunning and the first half of the film is compelling. But it certainly doesn't merit the accolades it's apparently receiving, especially when so many of Von Trier's other films offer so much more. If this film is being deemed art because it puts aside narrative conventions in order to make the audience respond in an emotional level, then I would say that even those works of art which purport to do the same thing have some meaning behind it; as 'Antichrist' wears all its meaning on its sleeves, it's hard to see anything behind showing us a bleeding vagina. On a last note, I can't help but find it horrendously ironic that the director who fervently espoused purely aesthetic cinematic devices in his Dogme 95 manifesto opens his film with the most over-the-top montage sequence I've seen in a long time. For all its beauty, I couldn't help but think of this scene of a student film from Family Guy.

This week I saw an altogether different film, the sublimely uplifting "Up" (excuse the pun), Pixar's new film. Pixar have been producing masterpiece after masterpiece in recent years; last year's 'Wall-E' seemed to be their piece de resistance, capturing astoundly beautiful images and some truly magical scenes. What surprised me most about the film is how adult it is, particularly the opening 20 minutes; a wordless introduction to Wall-E and his world, the film dares to challenge its younger audience's attention span whilst evidently intent on mesmerising the older people in the cinema. When I went to see the film, there wasn't a single child there. Pixar had topped it with 'Wall-E' and there was no way something could be better. Or so I thought...

'Up' is the story of 78-year old Carl Frederiksen, all alone in the world after his wife's recent passing away. All his life, he'd promised to take his wife to South America to see the great waterfalls there but sadly she never made it. Intent on fulfilling that dream, Carl ties hundreds of balloons to his house and lifts off into the skies, beginning his slow journey southwards. What he didn't count on was for any company on the trip, especially not little cubscout Russell, only after his last badge to fill his sash. And so, amid adventures with talking dogs, childhood heroes, and colourful birds, Carl learns the true meaning of paradise.

As ever, Pixar delivers another terrificly fun and touching tale. In essence, this is a buddy movie with two unlikely lead characters, both of whom are simply excellent. Behind his gruff exterior, Carl is a romantic at heart, trying to desperately to live the dreams he and is wife had; Russell, meanwhile, is a curious little trooper whose befriending of Dug the talking dog and Kevin, a large, multi-coloured dodo lookalike, only seems to get in the way of Carl and his watefalls. The film does become more focused on action-adventure towards the end, with Carl and Russell trying to escape from the villainous Charles Muntz, making for some spectacular chase scenes in, on, and under a huge blimp in the sky. But the film's most outstanding sequence is not within its action-packed denouement, but rather at the very beginning of the film, a montage of the lives of Carl and his wife Ellie, charting their first meeting as 6-year old aviators all the way to Ellie's death, beautifully scored by Michael Giacchino. Its tone is so melancholic and its theme so adult, something never before seen in a Pixar or Disney film.

Perhaps it's not so surprising nowadays to see relatively dark subject matter be included in kids' animated film. After all, Japan has always treated animation as just another form of storytelling with no specific audience demographic; it's only in the West that the cartoon has been designated as something predominantly for children. I'm sure some parents will decry the notions of death and loss (which appear more than once in the film, albeit subtlely) being presented to their kids. Then again, I doubt if many parents could explain the concept of death in such a touching and meaningful manner.

Trailer for 'Up' in HD

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In an age when digital technology is taking over the film industry and analogue film is slowly but surely becoming a thing of the past, one can trust always artists to still make extensive use of celluloid film. Rosalind Nashabishi is a video artist who works almost exclusively with 16mm film, yet rather than it be a simple artistic preference over digital film, she uses the technology to define her work in such a way that makes it part of the work itself.

At her current exhibition at the ICA, she presents several films which demonstrate a range of ideas that she explores in her work: in 'Eyeballin'', she anthropomorphises everyday objects around us showing the emotions they can have, juxtaposing them with images of the robotic and uniform New York City cops; in 'Jack Straw's Castle', a film commissioned especially by the ICA, she shows mixes the real and the theatrical by showing scenes of Hampstead Heath both in the day, capturing the natural environment around her, and at night, in which we see a film crew lighting a scene, producing a dream-like cinematic world.

Her most interesting piece is 'The Prisoner', a film indirectly inspired by Proust's homonymous fifth volume of his work 'In Search of Lost Time'. In the film, we follow a woman as she walks around the South Bank, accompanied by the suspenseful sounds of Rachmaninoff. Yet Nashabishi sets up two projectors side by side with the footage passing through one camera first and then the second, producing a 6-second time delay. The effect is not of mirroring or a feeling of repetition but rather creates a sense of unease; it seems as if the one woman is being followed by another. In a brilliantly simple Hitchcockian narrative, Nashabishi manages to produce a tense drama in which the viewer is omniscient but the character is entirely oblivious.

Perhaps it is this narrative quality that set 'The Prisoner' apart from her other films at the exhibition. This creation and manipulation of narrative from the simplest fragments of film desconstructs it and pushes storytelling to its boundaries, making us question what our conception of a story is: whether it needs a beginning, middle and end, or whether it can be even simpler than that, like 'The Prisoner' demonstrates.

The exhibition will run until the 1st November and is free.
http://www.ica.org.uk/Rosalind%20Nashashibi+21364.twl

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The design world has taken over the streets of London this past week with the London Design Festival. You can find countless exhibitions around the capital as well as some installations such as this year's festival centrepiece The Tournament, a giant chessboard designed by Spaniard Jaime Hayón in the middle of Trafalgar Square. Unfortunately, the installation was only there for a few days and has now been removed.

Luckily, most of the exhibitions won't finish for some time. The V&A Museum is housing quite a few at the moment, one of which I went to at the beginning of the week, Telling Tales. The exhibition is comprised of pieces mostly by Dutch designers and are all inspired by fairy tales. Whilst much of it would be considered design art, designers such as Tord Boontje and Jurgen Bay comment on how they wish for their pieces to have functionality as well; part of the appeal of these objects is that they reflect the unfamiliar and mysterious atmosphere of the fairy tale world. There's also a very interesting section inspired by Heaven and Hell which includes a marble seat and lamp that is simply stunning.

The exhibition runs until 18th October and is free.
http://www.vam.ac.uk/microsites/telling-tales/

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Space: the final frontier. Most of us will never even set foot in a space shuttle much less visit the Great Beyond, so a trip to Planet Bestival will just have to do. For those 40,000 astronauts who made the trip two weekends ago, I think that's more than they could ever ask for as this year's space-themed Bestival, the last festival of the season, was by all accounts a hugely tremendous success and a well-deserved one too. After last year's torrential downpour over most of the festival reduced Robin Hill Country Park's beautiful green fields to mud-covered marshes and flooding several areas of the festival site (aptly so, perhaps, since the theme was 'Under the Sea'), 2009 saw three days of glorious sunshine over the Isle of Wight. I even managed to come back with a tan, something I haven't experienced in England in a long time. Equally, the skies were so clear that at night, one could stare up and look at the stars and all their constelallations, freed from the light pollution that makes such a spectacle impossible to behold in London.

Onto the festival: after a few cans of warm Carling and tucking into some home-made pasta that would last me the weekend, Friday began with Passion Pit on the main stage, a band from Massachusetts who play a dreamy and melodic electro-pop with high-pitched wails. I'd heard some songs of theirs before which I had enjoyed but I'd been told that live they weren't so spectacular. Thankfully at Bestival, that wasn't the case: they put on a great show with lots of energy, spurred on by the crowd and the sun beaming down above them. Whilst I may have no idea what the singer was singing about, it was without a doubt a great to start to the weekend. Following on from Passion Pit were Friendly Fires hailing from St. Albans. Whilst often lumped into the same category as much of the indie-electro out there, Friendly Fires do have more of a percussive edge to them than most bands. They make extensive use of percussion instruments in their recorded songs as well as their live performances and they even draw inspiration from Brazilian percussive music. It was a shame, then, the sound levels were completely off: the bass dominated every other sound, leaving the intricate rhythms of the high-pitched percussive instruments muddled and the synths completely non-existant, particularly in a song like Paris' whose shimmering chords in the chorus are as important as its pounding dance beat.

Next was Florence and the Machine, the Mercury Award Nominees. I'd seen them before and decided to go for a stroll instead to explore the site a bit more. What's great about Bestival is that while it remains a medium-sized festival that packs a wide variety of artists, it also houses lots of strange little wonders. Towards the far end of the site, I came across a large inflatable wedding chapel that was playing wedding classics (when I walked in, it was Hot Chocolate's 'You Sexy Thing') with the DJ dressed in a bride's gown and a woman dressed as a priest and singing over the top, karaoke style. More fun was to be had here later on. I quickly headed back to the main stage for Soulwax and their rock-tinged electro. As ever, they put on an excellent show, every sound as crisp as clear as it should be. The same could not be said for MGMT, or so I heard. Several friends went to see them and could only comment on how terrible the sound quality was and a lacklustre performance to go with it. I'd gone to see Pivot instead, an instrumental band from Perth, Australia. Musically, it was exceptional, but unfortunately the behemoth that is MGMT drew away most of the crowd, meaning that in a tent that can fit 10,000, there were 200 at most. Whilst Pivot delivered a great performance, they looked frustrated which they can't really be blamed for. It was somewhat odd that they were placed at the time-slot anyway, it would've made much more sense to give them an earlier one.

It was now back to the main stage for Massive Attack, a band I've seen many times before. Yet they turned out to be another band suffering from sound levels. My friends and I had to push our way right near to the front to be able to hear them over normal conversation volume. Once that problem was resolved, we were able to enjoy a set full of greatest hits amid a some new songs from the upcoming album. They finished the set with 'Unfinished Sympathy', signalling a massive (no pun intended) sing-a-long, or at least as large a sing-a-long as Massive Attack could draw.

It was over on the main stage for Friday but the night was still young; whilst some friends went to see Bat for Lashes in one tent, a few of us went for another stroll as I led them to the inflated wedding chapel. We got there and found the chapel was closed but next was a small tent named the White Wedding Disco, playing indie classics such as 'Take Me Out', 'Last Nite', 'Mr. Brightside'. What was only meant to be a curious peek inside turned into a half-hour boogie; every song that finished was followed by a song that was simply too good to say no to. I also came to the realisation that this faux wedding reception would soon become a reality: this is what it would be like at any of my friends' weddings. At least the music would be good.

Finally escaping from the Wedding Disco, most of my friends went over to catch 2manydjs and their genre-clashing, rule-breaking DJ sets. Recently, they've employed some visuals into their sets which consists of showing the album cover to the song they are playing and then mixing it visually into the album cover of the following song. Fantastically elaborate visualisations and yet, ultimately a very simple idea. In the meantime, I went to catch a DJ I'd been waiting to see for a long time: Fake Blood. Fake Blood aka DJ Touché aka Theo Keating first made his name as one half of The Wiseguys in the mid-to-late '90s and probably made his biggest hit with 'Ooh La La' which was used in a Budweiser ad. As Fake Blood, he makes bass-heavy remixes with chopped up vocals. As a personal stamp on his remixes, he always 'makes' the singer say the words 'Fake Blood', the most impressive being his remix of Little Boot's 'Stuck on Repeat' at 1:44. His DJ set was truly masterful, jumping seamlessly from a range of styles but always maintaining a direction throughout: lots and lots of bass. By the end of it, I was exhausted from dancing so much and wanted nothing more than to get some sleep to prepare me for the next day.

Saturday began much in the same way Friday did: warm Carling and cold spaghetti. I couldn’t wait to jump into my fancy dress costume, seeing everyone around me in their outfits already. Some of them were truly inspired, such as Han Solo in carbonite costume, probably my favourite. I went as Space Ghost this year, a cartoon character from the ’60s. I’ve got some photos that I’ll post on here later on. Off we went to see the first band of the day then, The Mummers, who sound like a more orchestral and poppier version of Bjork. Upon arriving there, we found that The Mummers had been replaced by Mercury Prize Winner Speech Debelle. I'd hadn’t heard much about her, despite all the surrounding critical acclaim. Personally, I wasn’t too impressed really; it had a very summery feel but just felt like a watered-down, repackaged pop with Debelle raping over it.

Much more entertaining was another pop sensation over on the main stage, the king of camp that is Mika. Now I’m certain that I’ll be crucified for saying this by my friends, but his set was a true delight to watch. With a number of great pop songs under his belt, Mika is exactly the kind of thing that fits in so well with a sunny, mid-afternoon slot at a festival: easy to process, uplifting and just pure fun. Perhaps it’s because the year away in Brazil has meant that his songs haven’t been played to death in the same way that I’m sure has happened here. Needless to say, I went to see his performance by myself.

Most of the rest of Saturday was spent in the Big Top tent, watching all the artists on the Mad Decent record label; these included DJs L-Vis 1990, Boy 8-Bit and label head honcho Diplo, plus live acts Major Lazer and Buraka Som Sistema. 5 hours of a lot bass and a lot dancing. There were highs and lows, highs being L-Vis 1990's bass-heavy house and Buraka Som Sistema's own brand of portuguese dance music called Kuduro, very similar sounding to dancehall. This of course did mean that I missed out on Kraftwerk and their pioneering electronic beats, whose set was unanimously called THE performance of the weekend. Still, I'd seen them before and Buraka's performance was blisteringly good so it's definitely not a regret.

To end the evening, I went to see Lindstrom and his balearic disco beats. An hour and half of 80s cosmic synths with a modern feel, he finished and left the crowd wanting much more. Lindstrom's released two hugely critically acclaimed albums with his partner in crime Prins Thomas recently, as well as his own solo work such as his last effort 'Leftovers', with songs such as 'The Magnificent'.

The last day was a much more chilled affair: on the main stage, the mood was folky with Fleet Foxes playing 2nd headliner, whilst Elbow would be closing the festival. Early on though, it was Music from the Penguin Café, an instrumental band who use lots of string instruments (cellos, violins, mandolins, etc.). You might've heard their songs before on various adverts. After that, it was over to the Red Bull tent for Introducing, a 10-piece band who play a live version of DJ Shadow's seminal album 'Endtroducing'. Whilst it is impressive to see them perform the album from start to finish using only live instrumentation when the album was made entirely from samples, there's a sense that you might just as well be listening to the album itself. Had they perhaps added a personal stamp to it, it would've added an extra element to the show. But nonetheless, their musicianship is something to admire.

As the sun began to set for the last time at Bestival, we headed to the Big Top tent again to catch The Big Pink with their noise pop à la My Bloody Valentine and The Jesus and Mary Chain. They were among the highlights of the festival, their highly-distorted, wailing guitars over programmed beats and lush synths, all held together by the driving basslines. This a truly a band to look out for in this next year. Following on from them was The Field, aka Swedish minimal techno producer Axel Willner. Unlike other techno that I've heard, The Field has a much more melodic and almost ambient quality to it. The songs slowly build but have a constant kick drum and hi-hat throughout this progression; it's like the perfect soundtrack for a long train journey, as you watch the landscapes go by. For their live show, it was a more intense performance, with a live drummer and an additional bassist. Songs that are normally low-key acquired the conventional loud-quiet-loud structure so common in music. I suppose he felt that for a festival crowd, a more energetic performance would be necessary, which would probably be the case for the uninitiated. Still, it's a shame since what makes his album so interesting is what he decided to avoid.

We then headed to the far end of the festival site for Blastival, an event that I’d seen on the lineup but which didn’t have much description to it. We got there a little late and found that it had already started: a short play about Michael Santos, a Spanish-sounding alien who’d come from outer space to explore Earth and who was going back to his home planet. Or something like that. It was really only a simple pretext for a large fireworks show. As the fireworks went off for about 20 minutes or so, we also watched as the large wooden platform on which the “play” had been performed was set alight and crumbled under the force of the towering flames. The fire was so big that even at the distance we were, about 200 metres or so, we could all feel the heat on our faces. This was all complemented by the soundtrack that accompanied the spectacle over the large speakers around us: John Paul Young’s ‘Love is in the Air’. One couldn’t have picked a more appropriate song to capture the atmosphere at that moment as well as over the whole festival. As the fire continued to burn, we slowly made our way back to our tents, wishing our bodies still had enough energy to get us back there, let alone dance anymore. And like that, it was over for another year: 3 blissful days in a field. That’s something that I definitely miss in Brazil, not only because of the atmosphere but also because of the lack of corporate branding that are omnipresent in Brazilian festivals. This feels like a festival genuinely set up and organised by and catered for festival-goers. It would be naïve, of course, to assume that profit isn’t an interest, especially since the festival has grown in size every year. But even so, it’s managed to retain its original feel, an intimate boutique festival. There’s always the fear that a festival like Bestival, become ever-more popular, will become too big for its own good and lose this quality about it. Perhaps it’s something inevitable which we just have to accept. In any case, until that day arrives, I’ll still be frequenting Planet Bestival for many years to come.

One final mention has to go to this man right here. Unlike every other spaceman costume at Bestival, this is no cartoon or film character. This is Sonic the Manipulator, an alien from Mars who went out for a spin one day and accidentally ended up on Earth. Without any means to get back, he assumed the alias of Claude Woodward and lived in Perth, making his own type of cosmic music. Nowadays, he tours the world, playing to those who care to listen and trying to rebuild his ship to make it back to his home planet.

http://www.sonicmanipulator.com/

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When I left for Brazil last October, the idea was only supposed to be a year out, to get to know Brazil and specifically São Paulo, truly get to know what Brazilian life and culture is all about. 11 months later and it's now a very different story: having made numerous contacts in the film industry which I hope to build on, as well as falling in love with the city and the people (well, some of them at least), it looks like I'll be staying for a while longer. I guess in the end, 1 year just isn't enough. There are still many things I want to do and even more things I've yet to discover. What once felt foreign to me (despite being part of my cultural heritage) now feels like something I understand better, that I'm more connected with. There's such a rich, fascinating culture with such wide-ranging influences that it never ceases to surprise or amaze. I don't know how long I'll be staying, it won't be forever but from the looks of it, it won't be brief either. I'm writing this because to give a bit of context to the ironic situation that I now find myself in: having lived 21 years in England and gone to Brazil on holiday, I'm now doing the complete opposite. I never would've guessed, to be honest.

So I arrived back in London this afternoon. I wish I could say that the landing was as scenic as the picture above but in truth, it was pretty far from it. A little cloudy, a little windy, warmish; basically, your standard British summer day. In fact, I had a stop-over in Zurich which was even worse. There were near gale force winds there, it was so strong that it was practically raining sideways. On top of that, they decided that it would be a good idea to board the plane from the runway rather than go through that tunnel thing. Those pesky swiss. But now I'm back, and I'd be lying if I didn't say it's good to be back.

I'm staying for the whole month and will hopefully be doing as many cultural activies as possible, especially catching up on British films. And yet it seems that wherever I go, there's always a Brazilian film festival following me. I found out about 2 happening in September. One is the Cine Fest Brasil, taking place at Riverside Studios from 17-20 September. It's a small selection of films, ranging from documentaries to fiction feature-lengths. One particular film showing is 'Favela on Blast', a documentary about the origins of baile funk in Rio. I've already missed it twice in Brazil, so nothing's going to stop me this time.

Cine Fest Brasil

The other is at the Barbican, starting next Tuesday on the 8th and carrying on until 8th October. Less a festival and more a selection of films, it will include various Qs & As with filmmakers and actors involved in the films and will also be showing a range of documentaries and features. The films range from new releases to slightly older offerings, among which is 'Basic Sanitation', a hilarious story that explores most basic essences of filmmaking, entirely centred around a broken sewage system in a small town. If you've ever wanted to make a film and had not even the slightest clue of where the 'record' button on the camera is, then is the film for you. Equally, if you've got a degree in Film from NYU or you're Martin Scorsese protegé (or Martin Scorsese himself), this film is also for you.

Cinema of Brazil: Urban Tales

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"Brazil" and "football" are words that go hand in hand together. It's almost impossible to think of one without thinking of the other. It's the national pastime in every sense: playing, watching, and talking about it. For some, it's a religion; for others, it's a waste of time. Either way, there's no denying that football is truly a way of life in Brazil, from the kids playing barefoot in the streets to international stars like Kaká or Ronaldinho. And who could forget the World Cup, the period every 4 years where the entire country stops for a month (and that's no exaggeration: during the 2002 World Cup, due to time differences between Brazil and Japan, matches would be shown here in the early hours of the morning meaning that most people simply wouldn't bother going into work the next day). Aside from producing anything from countless spontaneous and unorganised street parties to a national day of mourning in Brazil, the World Cup has cemented Brazil as pioneers and exporters of the "beautiful game", with fans at all four corners of the globe and beyond. Brazil is football and football is Brazil. And yet, 51 years ago, it was a very different story.

Jump back to June 1958: Brazil had still not been World Champions, having lost in their own backyard 8 years earlier in the final against Uruguay and going out in the quarter-finals in '54. Eager to prove themselves in Sweden, they arrived with relatively little support, least of all from the Brazilian press who expressed very low expectations of its national team. It wasn't long until the other teams, along with the rest of the world, began to see the elegance and skill these players displayed. Among them were the likes of Dino Sani, Gino, Joel, Mazzola, Zagallo, Gilmar, Bellini, Garrincha, and an 18-year old Pelé (pictured above, centre). Together, they led Brazil to victory and sparked a new stage in development for the country, both internally and within the international community.

Of course I've come to learn about all this over many years, mostly through my dad. The first World Cup I remember was '94, Brazil's fourth title. I was 7 at the time, the same age my dad was in 1958. Some memories remain very clear in my head as if they were from yesterday; my most vivid one is watching Roberto Baggio missing his penalty against Taffarel in the final, meaning that Brazil were champions again. As part of the same generation as Kaká or Ronaldinho, 1958 seems a world away from me, even more so because archive footage is more difficult to come by. Thanks to filmmaker José Carlos Asbeg, this should never be a problem again.

I went to see documentary of his last night at the Football Museum in the Pacaembú Stadium (São Paulo's equivalent of Wembley) entitled '1958: O Ano Em Que O Mundo Descobriu o Brasil' (1958: The Year The World Discovered Brazil). Whilst it was primarily about Brazil's campaign during the 1958 World Cup, throughout the film director José Carlos Asbeg demonstrates how it was more than just a victory at an international sporting competition, it marked a turning point for Brazil culturally. Through interviews with journalists, football commentators, politicians, and the actual players themselves, we learn that 1958 was when Brazil truly established itself as a country of value and worthy of recognition within the world. A national inferiority complex was done away with once Bellini lifted the Jules Rimet. Yet what makes Asbeg's documentary so genuine and soulful is the clear admiration he has for the players, his childhood heroes. In a talk after the film, he commented on how he struggled to find archive footage to show entire plays that led to Brazil's goals rather than simply showing the final kick. For Asbeg, it's not the goal itself that matters as much as the whole team working as a single unit to produce that goal.

Towards the end of the talk, someone asked whether Asbeg had considered analysing the "art" of Brazil's football and what impact that had on the world afte 1958. Asbeg replied that his intention with his documentary was never to theorise, it was simply to pay tribute to those players who he had venerated when he was younger. Perhaps this is exactly what we need to remember our forgotten heroes, to feel the emotion and energy that the fans felt then. I may not have been there, but after watching Asbeg's documentary, I'm sure I won't forget 1958.

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Why is it that musicals have such a bad reputation amongst the majority of the general public? If you ask the average person (and as far as I can tell, you could do this in any country and it'd be the same), they'll say that they don't like musicals because they're over-the-top and too happy and colourful and they don't understand why everyone's singing and dancing for no reason. In all honesty, I used to be one of these people as well. Never giving musicals a chance, brushing them aside with the wave of a jazz hand. But then at university, I spent an entire term watching musicals for my film course and I subsequently fell in love with with them, head first. Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen, Vincente Minnelli, George and Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, all of these were new heroes in their own individual way. And when you put a few of them together, well, you just get something truly amazing such as this:

But the glory days of the musical have passed and unfortunately these days, we have only turgid efforts such as those with Zac Efron and co. Perhaps it's because musicals are always associated with high-budget production values that it's hard to imagine an independent musical, much less a short-film one. So it was to my surprise when I found that the São Paulo Internation Short-Film Festival this week had dedicated three screenings to musicals.

I went to a screening last night that showed 5 films: 'A Estória de Clara Crocodilo' ('The Story of Clara Crocodilo'), 'The Man from 301', 'Heartbeat', 'A Caixinha do Amor' ('The Little Box of Love'), and 'West Bank Story'. Before the films, there was an introductory speech by one of the festival's representatives who commented on the Brazilian musical tradition which I had been unaware of, so I was looking forward to seeing the two Brazilian shorts among the selected films.

First up was 'The Story of Clara Crocodilo', a sci-fi musical from the '70s about a freedom fighter who'd escaped from prison in a totalitarian state and who was being chased by the police. As he flees from the cops, a radio DJ is broadcasting his show on a pirate station, narrating the story. Crocodilo manages to escape the police and the film ends with the DJ revealing himself to be none other than Clara Crocodilo. I'm not really sure if I'd call it a musical since I always assumed that one of the main aspects of the musical was that the characters themselves sang. In this film, the soundtrack was constant (it was pretty much all tropicália) with the narrator speaking over the top whilst a chorus occasionally sang as well but none of the characters did. The film was evidently an allegory for the current political climate at the time (not a very subtle one) and it did have a very camp feel to it throughout, especially Clara Crocodilo's make up à la Ziggy Stardust. I wasn't quite sure whether this was intentional and purposefully provocative or just because it was the '70s. Probably both.

Next was 'The Man from 301', an Irish musical about 3 prisoners who tell the tales of their crimes and who all blame the man from 301, the true criminal behind all 3 crimes. In the end, it's revealed that there has never been a man from 301. Musically it worked very well since the main style used was blues, reflecting each character's depression at his incarceration. Thematically, it was somewhat confusing: the first prisoner is seen shooting up whilst telling his tale (suitably depressing); the second was a rather large, tough-looking man with his tranvestite roommate who together sang the song 'I Hate the Bitches'; and the third involved a man talking to his only friend, a dummy called Arthur. Were it not for the middle section, the film would work well as a portrayal of these characters' attempts to escape from their guilt by creating this figure and projecting their crimes onto him: the first prisoner uses heroin to help convince himself whilst the last one is evidently mentally ill and has convinced himself already. The bitch-hating prisoner just seems misplaced, possibly only there to add a touch of humour to the film, even if that humour is ultimately sinister.

'Heartbeat' was without a shadow of a doubt the best of the 5. A Swedish musical about heart surgery and immigration, it manages to tell a full love story with heroes, villains, and jumping acrobats in the way you can only do through a musical. A helicopter arrives on the roof of a hospital, the pilot gets out carrying a small briefcase, inside of which is a heart on its way to the operating table. The pilot rushes with the doctor to the OR, pushing his way past patients singing for attention. The pilot pleads to the doctor to let him see the recepient but she doesn't. In the OR, the surgeon is about to start the operation when immigration officers storm through the doors and declare that the patient is an Iranian woman who must be deported at once. After some negotiation, they allow the woman to receive the heart but state that she must still leave the country. The pilot, who sees all this happening through the door and who has fallen in love with the woman, decides he will marry her so she can stay. With the help of all the doctors, the patients, and some nifty choreography, he manages to bring the woman to the helipad before the officers get to her. Meeting each other for the first time, they are instantly enamoured and fly away into the sunset, with everyone waving them goodbye from the roof (including the immigration officers). What on paper seems like a bizzare topic for a musical, in practice works wonderfully. The filmmakers move from love ballads to rap to fully-fledged musical numbers seamlessly and as absurd as the whole thing is, it's thoroughly entertaining. The best moment is probably when the heart itself starts talking and orders the immigration officers to back off and let the patient receive him. Who would've thought that a hospital could be a place full of pirouettes and chorus dancers?

The second Brazilian film I saw was 'The Little Box of Love', a pastiche of '30s musicals down to every last detail, even the opening credits. A storeowner in a small shop announces to her 4 staff members that whoever sells the most stock by Christmas will become the new manager. Veronica (Cristina Mutarelli) is determined to grab the position since she considers herself the best salesperson of the 4. But when a young man, Fred (Marcos Pando) comes in and is charmed by the other young saleswoman Jane (Regina Rheda), he decides he will buy the shop's whole stock. Jane becomes the new manager and the shop begins to thrive, much to the chagrin of Veronica. Fred even asks Jane to marry him and the two begin a happy life together. But Veronica is selfishly persistent and decides to trick Jane into leaving the shop so she can take her position. After convincing that Fred only wants Jane for her money, Jane staggers out of the shop into the night and is never seen again. A year passes and the shop has gone bankrupt under Veronica and the workers all wander miserably out into a cold winter's night. Veronica goes to a bar where she happens to find Jane, who is now blind and is selling matches. The barman tells Veronica that he and his wife found her after she suffered some sort of psychological episode and they decided to help her until they could find out who she was. Veronica decides to repair the damage she's done and brings Fred (who's now become a priest) to Jane. Upon hearing his voice, Jane miraculously regains her sight and the two are reunited once more. Like with the other Brazilian, the musical factor seemed relatively small. In fact, there was only one musical number in the whole film. Nonetheless, the film is a terrific pastiche of the acting styles and stories of Hollywood films from the '30s. It's a film that manages to pay tribute and simultaneously poke fun at the melodrama and sentimentality of that period, and does both very well.

The final offering was Ari Sandel's Oscar winner 'West Bank Story' (picture above). A parody of 'West Side Story', the film follows two neighbouring rival falafel stands, Kosher King and Hummus Hut, who each day confront and fight each other. Amidst all this conflict, David (Ben Newmark), an Israeli soldier, and Fatima (Noureen DeWulf), employee of the month at Hummus Hut, are in love. Together, they try to bring peace between their families and end the conflict once and for all. The film is a successfully enjoyable musical in every sense, parodying West Side Story with all that finger-snapping and even poking a bit of fun at the genre in general. If the story takes a very clichéd route then it's symptomatic of the genre it's acknowledging, because after all, we always know how a musical will end (well, almost always). The focus here should be on the music, the dances, and the comedy, all of which Sandel pulls off superbly. As a final note, it's interesting to know that before the night of the Oscars, Sandel received a phonecall from the ambassador of Israel saying that if his film won, it would be the first pro-peace film to win an award, and it would speak for all those in Israel and throughout the world who are working to bring end to the conflict there. Perhaps the UN should take note: forget trade sanctions, you'll get a lot more attention if you make musicals. Mark my words.

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Breaking up is never easy. That final face-to-face confrontation when you bring out the old "it's not you, it's me" line and you hope the other person doesn't burst into tears in the middle of the restaurant; it's a situation no one ever wants to go through. So thanks to technology, people can avoid that unnecessary awkwardness and discomfort of their (ex-)significant others breaking down in front of them as their feelings are torn to shreds by sending an email or a short text message : "things not going gr8. reckon we shud c otha ppl. soz x p.s. its not u its me". You can imagine that their reaction would be 10 times as bad if they were to receive a message like this, but at least you don't have to be around to see it.

In reality, all that this new technology has done is make us more cowardly; taking the easy way out and just writing them a quick note and then erasing them for one's life. Even a phone call takes more courage since the other person has a chance to respond, even if he or she is not there with you. Perhaps more to the point is how one is supposed to react to something like this. You'd know that if this is how they've chosen to end the relationship, the chances of you getting in contact with them in the near future are slim to none. So what is one supposed to do? What exactly are you supposed to do with that text message or that email?

It's this question that became the foundation for French multimedia artist Sophie Calle's latest exhibition, 'Take Care of Yourself'. In 2006, she received an email from her last boyfriend in which he ended their relationship. A lot of points were made, about what they had agreed upon at the beginning of the relationship, things that had changed and things that hadn't changed, and so on. But basically, it boiled down to "it's not you, it's me". Not knowing what to do with the email (and always one to put her own personal life at the very heart of her art), she decided to send it to 107 women and asked each one to respond to it according to her profession. The result is a smorgasbord of analyses and interpretations, some of them so different from each other that one wonders whether they were even reading same letter. Among the 107 women, there were a few famous names (or at least that I recognised): musicians Feist, Peaches, and Miss Kittin; and actresses Miranda Richardson and Jeanne Moreau. There were also diplomats, criminologists, judges, lawyers, psychiatrists, and so on. Many of these gave very analytic profiles of the ex-boyfriend, picking up on specific phrases, form and style, tone, etc. These profiles would be displayed on the wall in huge prints, as seen in the photo above. For the artists she had asked to respond to the letter (this included everything from opera singers to performance artists as well a variety of actresses and musicians), there were a total of 33 TV screens showing their videos on loop with a bigger TV alternating between them all and allowing the public to listen to them too. Most of the actresses did a reading of the letter in their own way whilst the musicians choose parts of the letter and turned them into lyrics; Feist's interpretation was a particularly interesting one as she choose a single phrase from the letter and sang it over and over again, using a guitar pedal to add overlays and overdubs, creating an entire choir singing this single phrase. The ongoing, infinite chanting put across that anger that would be endlessly building upon reading the letter.

However, the more imaginative and more fascinating responses that I found came from the more unusual professions. A professional marksman responded by sending Calle the boyfriend's printed email back with 3 bullet-holes, each one over the word 'amour'. A cartoonist sent a short strip which in one panel had a man looking pleased with himself after finishing an email, surrounded by quotations books, philosophy books and thesauruses, and in the other panel, a woman looking miserable, reading an email in a dark room. A children's author sent back a short story that was a fable about a young man who, with the aid of the Devil, tricks a beautiful queen into falling in love with him. An 18th century historian compared him to a libertine, one who wished to break free from amorous passions but who could not control his lust. My favourite one was from a chess player who compared their relationship to a chess match: a picture of the board at the end of the match showed a white king (Calle) surrounded by 2 black, ineffective rooks while the black king lay fallen on the board witout a single white piece nearby. She commented on how it's an unwritten rule that chess match should never be abandoned. Since this one was, she didn't what to make of it.

As I looked at all these different responses, I began to wonder about the reason for the exhibition. Comparing a criminologist's psychological profile to a headhunter's description of the boyfriend may bring up some questions of self-perception and how we are viewed by others, but that didn't appear to be the motivation behind it all. Then it dawned on me that perhaps there wasn't actually any real meaning to it. Or rather, it was simply to show what all these women had thought; from an emotional point of view, all of it was unnecessary. Calle had been looking for an answer and in asking these women for their opinions, she had been looking in the wrong place. What she needed to do was ask herself and deal with it herself. One writer made the point that she was mistaken in thinking that she could deal with this emotional pain with "a squadron of women". This would only surround her with more contempt and anger. As she puts it at the end of her response "the choir you've formed around this letter is the choir of death". It's a reminder that at the end of the day, you're the only person who's going this painful experience and you're the only one who's going to be able to truly deal with it.

Of course my opinion is just another response to the letter, and were it to be followed, there wouldn't be any exhibition to talk about in the first place. Considering all the responses, if we examine and compare them, there's probably none that's more sensible, mature, and reassuring than that of Calle's mother. As she answers her daughter's letter, she says (in the way that only mums know now, I'm only paraphrasing of course), "These things happen, you just have to deal with them and try to move on. You'll meet many more people in your life, don't worry about that. And after all, maybe you can use this in a new art project of yours."

To see what your own response to the boyfriend's letter would be, here it is.

Dear Sophie...

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This weekend marked the 40th anniversary of Woodstock, hailed as the greatest music festival of all time. 600,000 attended, 3 million claimed they did. For some, it was a transcendental, once-in-a-lifetime experience they'll never forget; for others, all they can remember is that it rained all morning, and then cleared up in the afternoon. In any case, it's undeniable that it was home to some of the most renowned musical performances ever, the most famous one evidently being Jimi Hendrix's. Even so, one can't ignore all the other great performances over those 3 days, including The Who, Joe Cocker, Richie Havens, Sly & the Family Stone, Grateful Dead, among many others. For those of us who did miss it, the best we can make do with is Michael Wadleigh's film 'Woodstock', a 4-hour documentary that captures not only some of the great performances from the festival, but also takes a look at many other aspects of the event: the organisation, the crowd, the locals, the politics, the idealism, everything about Woodstock that made it more than just another music festival (a 40th anniversary DVD recently released includes an extra 2 hours of rare footage).

This sense of Woodstock being something more is delved into in this article with some of the key figures that brought the festival to fruition. Michael Lang and Artie Kornfeld talk at length about the impact they feel the festival has had culturally and politically, and the impact it continues to have to this day.

Woodstock 40 years on: The legend, the legacy

On top of all this, Woodstock is remembered this year with another film, this time a fiction feature-length. 'Taking Woodstock' is inspired by the true story of how the festival's location was decided upon. Based on the book by Elliot Tiber, the man who offered his 15 acres to the festival organisers, the film follows Elliot Teichberg (Demetri Martin) as he struggles to keep the bank from taking away his parents land and their motel. On hearing about the festival being banned from its original site, he contacts the organisers and offers his land. But as the festival starts to be set up and the people start coming in droves from around the country, it becomes clear that neither Elliot nor any of the other organisers truly knew the scale of their festival and the consequences it would have.

Whilst the idea of a Hollywood movie about Woodstock might be something to be suspicious of, especially considering the cliché representations of hippie culture that it's sold for so long, this film seems to have that idealism at its very core. Director Ang Lee, known for more sombre works showing American society such as 'The Ice Storm' or 'Brokeback Mountain', said in an interview he always wanted to make a comedy film with a heart and that this film was is it. The film comes out in the UK in November, so until then we've only got this trailer to go by.

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Last Friday, on the 7th August, São Paulo introduced a smoking ban in all closed environments across the entire state. There had already been a smoking ban before but it wasn't widely enforced. With this new ban, any establishment caught with someone smoking will be fined heavily. Clearly, this time they mean business. Yet, as too often with these laws, the pendulum has perhaps swung too far the other way.

Under the new law, "closed environments" are defined as anything that resembles a roof, even if that's an awning. This means that any bars, restaurants, cafés, etc. with outdoor areas in front are also subject to this new law. Smokers will be forced to be entirely outside the establishment's property to light up. Which to me, just seems like an overreaction. It's understandable that the state government wants to present a firm stance against it, but it seems unwise to demonise all smokers to the point of kicking them out in the street. There has to be some leeway, surely.

The interesting thing is seeing how clubs are tackling the issue since many of them don't have outdoor smoking areas. One solution I've heard about is to confiscate cigarettes upon entry of the club. Obviously they don't want to take the risk of someone having a sneaky cigarette but why not punish the offender instead of everyone? It'll be pretty obvious someone's smoking in a club by the small cloud above their heads. A friend of mine suggested that clubs without outdoor areas will end up suffering since punters will head to those that do have them. I doubt that's going to be the case since people aren't really going to stop going to their favourite haunts just because they can't smoke. No matter how adamant these smokers are, in the end, they will end up smoking less. It's inevitable. After all, humans are creatures of adaptation and can learn to adapt to any environment. And at the end of the day, between enjoying a drink with your friends or listening to your favourite DJ and smoking a cigarette outside in the street, what would you really pick?

Tied to this whole smoking issue is a film I saw last week, 'Thank You For Smoking'. It's a biting satirical look at the smoking industry's public relations department, spearheaded by the unflinching Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart). Born with the gift of the gab, Nick can convince anyone that the issue of smoking is not about health but it's about choice, freedom of expression, the foundations of America yesterday, today and tomorrow. And what is the America of tomorrow if not the children of today? With a cigarette in their hands, of course. The film takes a purposefully ambivalent position on the matter: it's hard not to love Nick Naylor because he's so effortlessly cool but at the same time you know he does his job simply because it pays the mortgage, he couldn't care less about the state of health of the thousands he's convinced to buy a pack of Marlboro or Lucky Strike. Equally, we know that those politicians who are in favour of crippling the tobacco industry are also doing it for their own gains (William H. Macy delivers a hilarious performance, a world away from the defenseless characters he's known to play). Choosing sides is clearly not the aim of the film, it's simply to show how it works. So if you've ever wondered how, in today's age, after all the information we know about tobacco and the harm it causes, how so many people are still smoking, it's all thanks to people like Nick Naylor, the true patriots of America.

By the way, the reason why sign above has that strange shape rather than just a circle is because it's the design of São Paulo's emblematic pavements, as seen below.

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So the big news is that I'm a godfather now. I was asked a few weeks ago by my cousin to be godfather to her son. Like me, he shares cultural influences from England and Brazil since his dad is British and his mum is Brazilian. As we have this similar cultural mish-mash, she thought I'd be the perfect candidate for the position. Unfortunately, I couldn't be at the baptism myself as I was working on that weekend, so I was represented by someone else. Nevertheless, I'm a fully fledged godfather now (aside from a few signatures here and there, but let's be honest, that's just bureaucracy). So as a godfather, I thought my first act of duty should be to actually meet my godson. He was born in February of this year, in London, so I hadn't had the chance to meet him. I decided, then, to go to the small town of Itambacuri in the state of Minas Gerais, where my cousin and her (whole) family had decided to hold the baptism. My visit there coincided with the town's main religious festival, a celebration of its patron saint, Our Lady of the Angels. I remember going to it 6 years ago and being overwhelmed by the number of family members I hadn't met and who were just itching to see me for the first time. I also distinctly remember a lot of shouting, mainly because everyone there equated having a sound opinion about a topic of conversation with who could shout it the loudest. And judging by how most people handle arguments, they're probably not alone in thinking that. It was an... eventful weekend, shall we say, one which I wasn't prepared for. This time, I was ready.

So off I went to Itambacuri, 18 hours on a bus. Yes, that's right, 18 hours. Consider that I was going to make the same trip several days later; for a weekend away, 36 hours on a bus is dedication, right? The trip was mostly filled by sleeping with the added luxury of a film screening: 'Big', dubbed of course. I normally hate dubbing but ironically, it made watching Tom Hanks for an hour and a half a lot easier. The only truly torturous stage of the trip was in the last few hours, when I wasn't tired or sleepy anymore and my book just wasn't doing it; to quote Addison DeWitt from Joseph L. Mankiewicz's 'All About Eve', it was making minutes fly like hours. Eventually, the driver put on another film to pass the time, 'Stuart Little' (incidentally, I didn't know that was co-written by M. Night Shyamalan. Never would've guessed it). The first few minutes of the film were fine until it started skipping, not just a few seconds but whole chunks of the film. The 90 minutes were over in quarter of an hour, the cinematic equivalent of speed-reading. Someone alerted the driver to it and he put the film on again to see if it would work; the same thing happened except it showed slightly different bits so you could sort of fill in the holes. Just about. The driver eventually gave up on the film and decided to remedy the situation by putting on a CD of Brazilian Country music. On repeat. A fair few people around me were singing along with it. Those were the longest 2 hours of my life.

We finally made it to Itambacuri and it was the complete opposite of what you'd expect from a small town; there were shopping stalls absolutely everywhere around the bus station on account of the festival. In fact, the bus barely managed to squeeze past them for us to get off. These stalls were selling anything you can imagine, from spare washing machines parts to those little lazer pens that were really popular when I was about 12. Weaving my way through the countless shoppers looking for the best deals on pressure cookers and colourful kids' socks, I made it to where I would be staying. Thankfully I got in just in time for lunch and was greeted with a plate of beans, rice, chicken, beef, and four different types of salad: exactly what I needed.

Most of the weekend was spent eating, sleeping, and sitting around talking. And spending time with my godson, of course. This consisted mostly of watching over him whilst he looked curiously around this new environment, with hundreds of wrinkled faces looking at him and making silly noises in the hopes that he'd giggle back (most of the time, he would). Most surprising was how unphased he was by the whole thing: random fireworks at odd hours of the day, cars slowly going past blasting church music on the radio, lots of people shouting about nothing in particular, and not once did he cry. He's even more laidback than me, and that's saying something.

In the evenings, there were concerts in the main town square with "Brazil's biggest musical acts" playing, none of which I had ever heard of. Curiously, rather than having only one stage, there were two stages set up within less than 100 metres of one another, facing each other. As one band would finish on one stage, the next band would start within a few minutes on the other stage, resulting in the entire crowd running from one side to the other. I suppose that it saves some time but I doubt it was worth it, financially or infrastructurally. I was told by one of my cousin's (a different cousin) friends who lived there that it's how concerts are normally done. I thought about correcting him but then I decided against it.

The main feature of the festival was on the Sunday evening, with a large procession walking around the whole town in honour of Our Lady of the Angels, culminating at the church on the hill (pictured above). At the back of the procession was an effigy of the town's patron saint, atop a float decorated with all kinds of flowers. All the houses along the procession's route were also decorated, each one in its own style. These varied from a few ribbons and candles to more intricate adornments; one house set up a small backdrop and had lots of little kids dress up as angels holding candles, a bit like a live representation of a fresco or something. If that sounds cheesy or corny from a more secular point of view, seeing it live is a more humbling experience since you see how important a religious festival like this is to these people. The procession was estimated at 20,000 people, almost the entire population of the town. As this festival has become so popular over the years, people from all around come to participate in the celebrations; I wouldn't be surprised if there were 40,000 people on that weekend, if not more. The house I was staying in happened to be on the route and we stood there for nearly an half an hour watching all those people walk by. I'm not a particularly religious person myself but it's hard not to feel the faith and importance they have for their beliefs.

And so the weekend was over and it was back to normal life for the folk of Itambacuri. The streets vendors were packing their pirate films and cheap underwear whilst all the friends and family who came to visit were slowly making their way back to their respective homes. My journey back to São Paulo was actually better than going there. My bus wasn't as nice as the other one so I was denied a few luxuries, such as a TV showing films, or a seatbelt. And there were quite a few kids crying for most of the journey (remember now, 18 hours). I did, however, manage to sleep about 17 hours (somehow), so it made much quicker. All in all, a great relaxing weekend and one which I would definitely do again. Thank god it's only one weekend a year, though...

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"Musical genius", "ahead of his time", "misunderstood": these are terms that probably have been thrown about too much since the dawn of time (or at least the dawn of music). Too often have musicians who show even the slightest bit of originality that differs from the norm been praised as torchbearers of creativity, especially with music's current state of affairs which sees the well of ideas dried up as bands are seemingly happy to rehash 80s electro pop again and again and again. So it's always refreshing when you come across an artist who merits those terms. Tom Zé, however, has been ahead of his time for about 30 years.

Originially from the northeast of Brazil, Tom Zé is a charismatic songwriter who fuses various types of traditional Brazilian genres such as samba, bossa nova, baião together with rock and funk to create a sound that is simply impossible to pigeonhole. He was part of the Tropicália movement of the 60s along with Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil but didn't reach the same heights of fame as they did and slowly isolated himself off from the music community, especially after the Brazilian military (in power at the time) began to imprison Tropicália musicians. Whilst Veloso and Gil eventually returned from exile in London to major commercial success in the 80s and beyond, Tom Zé remained in relative obscurity. This carried on until the 90s when David Byrne came across an old album of his and decided bring him back into the music community to record new material. Since then, Tom Zé has found a new much younger audience in Brazil, discovering his old records as well as his new ones, and a large international fanbase in the United States.

I, however, knew absolutely none of this on Wednesday night when I went to see his show. My friend invited me and I knew the name Tom Zé but had no idea what the show would entail. But I was told that he was like a Brazilian Frank Zappa, so at least I knew it was going to be something different. It turned out to be one of the best gigs I've seen in a long time. Despite not knowing any of the songs, there wasn't a single moment when I wasn't totally captivated by the energy of the music. It was melodic, it was percussive, it was soulful, it was humourous, and most of all, it was vibrant. Even at the age of 73, Tom Zé jumps about the stage frenetically as his makes his declarations about love, politics, and his favourite football player. Fortunately for me, this show was retrospective of his career, a bit like his greatest hits, so I got a very good overall impression of the man and the music. It was astonishing to see how his both his old material and his new material both sounded so fresh and exciting. It's as if he'd already started with a revolutionary musical formula and is now slowly developing and fine-tuning it.

Whilst this was certainly the best introduction I could have to Tom Zé, now comes the task of seeking out his albums which are much more conceptual than the concert was. Several of his albums are actual studies of Brazilian genres, such as 'Estudando Samba' and his most recent effort 'Estudando Bossa'. Deconstructing not only the music itself but also the history and the politics of it, he offers an ironic and irreverent tribute to these musical genres. Evidently, this is not easy listening by any means. But then when something is this creative and, to put it simply, this good, it certainly warrants a bit more effort on the patr of the listener. Even if that includes learning portuguese.

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About three weeks ago, a new series began on Globo TV, Brazil's biggest national TV channel, called 'Som e Fúria' (Sound and Fury). I'd been hearing a lot about it since I arrived last October, even working with people who'd been involved with it. It'd caught my attention because of two things in particular: it was about a company of actors putting on a performance of 'Hamlet', and it was directed by Fernando Meirelles. The idea of a Brazilian theatre production of a Shakespeare play appealed to me straight off, perhaps because it married two cultures which seemed so distant; a modern, Latin American take on an Elizabethan play held a lot of potential for me. And whilst I've heard many disgruntled remarks about Meirelles from those who'd worked with him, nevertheless I have a lot of admiration for his work thus far. I made sure, then, to keep my ear to the ground and not miss an episode once it started.

The first episode begins with Dante (Felipe Camargo), a director in a run-down theatre in São Paulo, trying to unblock the toilet while being reminded by his assistant that they're several months behind on rent. He tells her not to worry because, after all, the show must go on. After his efforts prove a success, he returns to his company of actors and begins to recite the beginning of their next production, The Tempest, with added lightning and thunder effects. As Dante delivers each word of the text, we see the actual production take place in front of us, as if we are seeing his vision of the play being performed right there and then. But, due to a few technical hitches, the light and sound effects give way and everyone takes a break until it's fixed again. It's a striking opening because it captures exactly the disproportion between the aspirations and the realities of any fringe theatre in the world but particularly one in Brazil: in a space where nothing quite works the way it should, the only thing that's alive and fully functioning is the desire to perform.

On the other side on the city, Oliver (Pedro Paulo Rangel) is directing a production of 'Hamlet' at the Municipal Theatre in the heart of the centre, an ornate and luxurious space whose productions have grown hollow and artificial. Oliver and Dante used to work together there back when the theatre still had some integrity but after a tumultuous production of 'Hamlet' many years ago, Dante vowed never to return. Yet with Oliver's untimely, Dante is called upon to take up his position and direct the play he had abandoned so long ago, forcing him to face the demons of his past and lift the Municipal Theatre out of the ashes and back to its glory days.

This was all established in the first few episodes, along with a few more sub-plots including amorous relationships and a corporate takeover of the theatre. The programme balanced ironic (and sometimes black) comedy with serious drama well and I was thoroughly intrigued to see how the story would develop. I particularly enjoyed the score, the recurring theme being bouncy and whimsical which worked perfectly as a counterbalance to the show's sarcastic humour. As I watched the credits to see who'd written it, I noticed at the end that the programme was based on another series called 'Slings & Arrows' (pictured above). I'd never heard of this programme so I decided to look it up. It turns out the original programme was a Canadian show from 2003 that had won several awards but which didn't receive much airtime outside of North America. Curious to see how the Meirelles' adaptation differed from the original, I had a look around and found that the first two seasons were all on Youtube. Here's where things get interesting.

To call 'Som e Fúria' an adaptation would suggest some sort of creative input from Meirelles and his team to make the story and the characters in the small Canadian town of New Burbage in 'Slings & Arrows' applicable to the Brazilian metropolis that is São Paulo. After all, to "adapt" means to "adjust or modify fittingly to requirements or conditions". But sadly, that is not the case, because 'Som e Fúria' is not just the same story as 'Slings & Arrows', it is an exact replica in every possible way you can think except in two aspects: it's in portuguese and it's in São Paulo. Bar those, there isn't a single difference between the two shows. The shots are the same, the dialogue is the same, the costumes are the same, the music is the same, everything is exactly the same; even the characters' names! Actually, there is one exception: Dante's character is called Geoffrey in the original. That's it. Nothing has been added to offer a Brazilian twist on the story, to perhaps comment on the current state of Brazilian theatre and the federal or commercial it does/doesn't receive, or the question the relevance of Shakespeare in Brazilian society today. Nothing at all. It's basically a very expensive translation.

So why do this? It doesn't really fall into the category of remakes since remakes are generally of older films that were originally successful and which will have a guaranteed success the second time round (of course, that doesn't always happen; Gus Van Sant's 'Psycho' is a good example of that). One could claim that Meirelles wanted more people to know about the story and the characters. It's been said that during the filming of 'Blindness', the Canadian producers gave him a DVD box set of the original show and he instantly fell in love with it. To be able to offer it to all Brazilian TV viewers, he selflessly worked away to "adapt" it and provide a Brazilian "version" of it so that anyone could watch it, even those who wouldn't have been able to read subtitles. Yet a TV show about a company of actors putting on a Shakespeare play is most likely going to appeal to a certain demographic, one which is most likely able to read and which would probably prefer watching the original version instead of a carbon copy (even though that last sentence sounds a bit patronising or sarcastic, it's meant to be entirely sincere; it would be naive to suggest that Meirelles and Globo TV executives thought it would have a mass appeal, especially since it's on around 11pm, not exactly primetime viewing). In the end, I can't help but think this was almost a disguised form of plagiarism. It may include a "based on 'Slings & Arrows'" credit at the end, but not many people who watch the programme are going to pay attention to that. It's been publicised and promoted as Meirelles' new mini-series, so as far as they know, it's entirely his project. I was speaking to a friend recently who worked on the show in the art department and when I mentioned it was based on a Canadian programme, he said he had no idea and that it was seldom if ever mentioned.

Of course the irony is that I would be ranting away like this were it not for Meirelles' "adaptation". I would've never heard of 'Slings & Arrows' and learnt how great a show it truly is. But that doesn't really excuse him, he could've easily worked away to get distribution for the show here in Brazil on one of the countless cable channels that show American TV shows with subtitles. At least that would've shown more integrity rather than offering a hollow and superficial version and essentially passing it off as his own. But enough bitterness for now, this post was originally intended to discuss the quality of 'Slings & Arrows', a great TV show that passed many people by. But words escape me now, so I'll leave you with the first episode and let it speak for itself. The episode is divided in six parts, all of which I'll put here, in order, to make things that much easier.

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It's another film festival this week in São Paulo. This time, it's all about animation. Anima Mundi is Brazil's biggest animation festival, showing films from all around the world, from Croatia to Japan to Hollywood. The festival has a competitive selection as well as special presentations, celebrating past animators as well as contemporary ones. This edition saw French animator Michel Ocelot and two Brazilian brothers, the Latinis, among those celebrated. I originally was going to review the festival for the film magazine I had written the two previews for, but for various reasons it didn't come together in the end. Ah well, there's always next year. At least I've seen one film I really wanted to out of the 10 I'd hoped to watch: Henry Selick's 'Coraline'.

If the name Henry Selick doesn't ring a bell, his work certainly will: he's the man who directed 'James and the Giant Peach' and 'The Nightmare Before Christmas', the latter being a truly stunning work of art. With 'Coraline', he returns once again to the technique of stop motion to produce something mesmering and enchanting. 'Coraline' is the story of a little girl who moves into a new home in a new town, far away from her friends. Her parents are constantly working and pay no attention to her at all; left to her own devices, Coraline explores her new house from top to bottom until she comes across a small door that seems rather out of place. Once she opens it, she discovers a parallel world where her Other Mother and Other Father are the loving parents who give her everything she wants. But as she soon discovers, this other world is not quite the dream she'd imagined at first, and in the end she must fight to protect those who truly love her, her real parents.

As with all fairy tales, the story is simple and straightforward. But what makes 'Coraline' so fascinating is that the moral or the lesson learnt is directed towards adults as much as it is to kids. It's not a simple question of "children, be careful what you wish for", it's also a case of "parents, fulfill your roles as guardians", or perhaps less didactic than that, just be good parents. It's clear from the characterisation of Coraline's parents that they're as much to blame for what happens to them all as Coraline is: they're both portrayed as self-involved workaholics for whom their daughter seems to be more a nuisance than anything else; she's always the last priority on their list, if there at all. In that sense, it's less of kids' film than a film that appeals and reaches out to all ages.

In many ways, it barely seems like a kids' film at all. The dark, gothic feel of the film doesn't exactly offer a child-friendly atmosphere, and many characters and scenes in the film would put off a 30-year old adult let alone a 7-year old kid; one character in particular is the Other Father, whose transformation later in the film is something truly unsettling. Many people comment on how Hollywood only knows how to make animation for kids and doesn't treat it with the seriousness that Europe or Asia does; 'Coraline' is proof that not every big-budget American animated film has to be saccharine-sweet or bright and fluffy to win audiences.

Aside from these issues of demographics or intended viewers, 'Coraline' is a visually arresting work of animation. The sets, the costumes, the puppets, the colours, they're all so delicately and precisely arranged and treated with such care and attention. Prior to the screening, we were lucky enough to have two animators from the film talk about the production process and, as always with stop motion, you see how pain-stakingly slow and large it all is. Yet they both stressed on how important it was to stray from stop motion as little as possible. This is clearly evident in the film since you can see that it doesn't have that sheen or perfection that CGI has, something that makes it look hyperreal. These characters we see onscreen exist in real life, we can feel and touch and see them, they are not just computer code. Perhaps it's an exaggeration to reduce CGI to simply code, but there's something about stop motion that makes it much more impressive, especially in scenes where intricate movements are appear so fluid and lifelike that you can't imagine how they could've done it. As one of the animators said during the talk, whenever you ask yourself that question, the answer is always "the hard way".

It's inevitable that when someone mentions the word "gothic" in cinema, the name Tim Burton suddenly lights up. But this isn't the gothic look of 'The Corpse Bride' or 'Sleepy Hollow', it's Selick's own brand of gothic, perhaps something more akin to Poe though adapted to the fairy tale world. Rooms are drowned in such expressive lighting, casting looming shadows on walls while only small corners are lit; objects seem massively out of proportion at times; choir-led music morphs from gleeful to foreboding within the same scenes; it all adds to the ominous feeling that pervades throughout the film. Selick also employs an array of colours that strays from the more monochromatic 'Nightmare Before Christmas' that gives a vibrancy to the whole film, from Coraline's blue hair to her pink house, and yet it remains firmly rooted in this dark world he creates.

What surprised me most of all is how self-aware the film was, though in a discreet way. The film's opening credit sequence is accompanied by a mechanical hand making a doll. The very essence of stop motion is captured in that one sequence; evidently, the doll is the puppet the animator creates and moves in the film, and yet the mechanical hand which makes the doll is created by is the very skeleton the animators. One of the animators during the talk described how their job isn't simply to move the puppet but to represent the character that puppet embodies onscreen by guiding him and being guided by him. The character exists outside of the film in that puppet. In the end, puppet and animator are both master and slave, both of them creator and creation, both dependant on each other. The mechanical hand making the doll captures this idea, showing it is itself as creator as much as it is a creation.*

It's unfortunate that I didn't come across this film before since 'Coraline' came out in Brazil in February and in the UK in May, so there's little chance to see the film in the cinema now. And this is certainly a film that deserves to be seen in the cinema. Nevertheless, it's a film I'd thoroughly recommend grabbing on DVD and watching to see it in the best possible available format. It's a film that captures your imagination and which you simply cannot turn away from. Watch out for a reference to 'Being John Malkovich'. If you've seen that film, you won't miss it.

*That's what 3 years of film theory does to you.

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I decided to take my camera for a stroll round the neighbourhood yesterday since it was such a beautiful day. When you're one month into winter and it's 20 degrees with the sun shining above you, there's really no excuse to stay inside. I live near an area called Vila Madalena, a place full of artists from every field imaginable; you can find an atelier on nearly every corner, working with a variety of materials, from clay all the way to gold; there are lots of jazz bars as well, playing everything from cuban jazz to dixieland; and you can also find some of the best restaurants in São Paulo. On top of all this, Vila Madalena houses a lot of graffiti, or street art, as is the more modern term. Through little streets and alleyways, one can find entire walls covered; and I don't mean just tagging or graffing like the pixação movement here, I mean colourful, vibrant, expressive murals. Some of them really do demonstrate why street art should be taken seriously (and fortunately, in recent times this has been happening much more). So off I went in search of these modern urban frescos.

I thought that I'd be hunting around for quite a while for the graffiti, imagining that they would be more isolated an scattered across the whole neighbourhood. After about 15 minutes, I saw a small alley with an entire wall covered with characters, shapes, and patterns. As I walked further along the weaving road, I came across a graffiti artist working right there and then. It really couldn't have been more perfect.

So I clicked away while she carried on working, occasionally giving me the odd glance but no more than that. I continued on walking and found that entire street was covered with graffiti; all the walls had become canvases for these artists, even the house fronts and garage doors.

As I carried on taking pictures, a girl came up to me and said that she was a journalist in Argentina doing a short piece on Brazilian graffiti and asked if I was willing to answer a few questions. She then went on to mention that she was also a ballerina (!) and was working on a piece inspired by the lines and shapes and curves in Brazilian graffiti and asked if I would take some pictures of her. So I did, no reason to say no really. It was all a bit of sudden and surreal experience, but then it sort of made sense in a strange way, considering I was surrounded by all these colourful characters inhabiting a different world, a world that shouldn't really exist, a world I had simply chanced upon but which I will come back to again and again as it changes and evolves.

To see the rest of the photos, just click here.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/32980285@N04/sets/72157621472460517/

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2 years ago, I remember picking up a copy of Time Out and reading about a documentary called 'Helvetica', a film entirely concerned with the eponymous font. It was on at the ICA and I remember asking all my friends if they wanted to come see it with me. I got the same reply from every person I asked: "Why would you want to see a film about a font?" I really should've just gone by myself but I think that as a result of everyone's disinterest of it, it must've rubbed off on me as well. So I didn't end up watching it and forgot about it. It wasn't until last week that I was reminded of the film when I saw that director Gary Hustwit has a new film out called 'Objectified', all about the everyday objects we use without giving them a second thought and the power and ingenuity the design of each one possesses. Of course, you only ever seem to find out about these things a little too late, and so I discovered I'd missed a screening of the new film in Sao Paulo, along with a Q & A with Hustwit himself. Typical. Anyway, I decided to seek out 'Helvetica' and finally got round to watching it yesterday.

Now, I'd say it's hard enough for even the most avid of cinephiles to be attracted to the idea of a documentary about a font, let alone your average punter. But I have to say that 'Helvetica' is a startlingly fascinating insight into a visual world that most of us will completely take for granted despite living within it every single day of our lives. It's truly astounding to see how omnipresent Helvetica is, from obvious examples like company names such as American Apparel or Orange to more subtle ones like street signs or the word 'Ambulance' on an ambulance in London. Hustwit offers a series of interviews with graphic designers and design writers who account for this proliferation, some suggesting that it's because Helvetica represents a finality in typeface, a font that can't be improved on, whilst others see it as something more bland that companies can, perhaps lazily, always rely on. Whatever the case may be, all of them can agree on one thing: its effectiveness. This is almost unanimously attributed to its neutrality, having no expression or emotion itself. As one designer notes, its neutrality means that the expression is entirely in the content and not the typeface, thereby making it a more genuine than other fonts which may try to convince the reader of its the legitimacy of its content. Another designer in the film, Michael Bierut, illustrates this with a direct comparison between two Coke adverts, one from '53 and one from '69. The '53 one has picture of a family happily drinking coke with a wedding style font underneath reading "Almost everyone appreciates the best!". 16 years later, and things have completely changed: all you have is a big picture of a large, icy coke on platter with the slogan "It's the real thing. Coke." in Helvetica underneath. The modernist transformation that the design world underwent is captured perfectly here, with Helvetica leading the way.

I'm positive that a graphic designer will have a much larger appreciation for the design elements of Helvetica which are occasionally touched upon in the documentary, but I think Hustwit's intention is to make the subject as accessible as possible and to pay tribute to the 50-year old font (though it's no 52). As a result of 'Helvetica', I'm probably going to pay a little more attention to all the words that surround me. It's hard not to really, even looking around my own, it's simply everywhere. And to give you an idea of what I mean, here's the trailer for the film.

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For a while now, I've been doing some work for Red Bull here in Brazil. It's pretty simple work really, they have a programme called Cliptomaniacs which is a clipshow in English of all the extreme sports events they organise around the world. Since there's such a variety of different accents one comes across which makes it very difficult for Brazilian translators to understand what's being said, I write a transcription of each show so they can then translate it. Which basically means I just have to write down what's being said. Easy stuff.

Anyway, Red Bull seems to have a complete monopoly on the world of extreme sports, from cliff-diving to snowmobiling to BASE jumping; the most extreme one I've come across is ski-BASE jumping, which is when people ski down a mountain, off a cliff, and then open up a parachute. Normally, these mountains are completely inaccesible unless you're dropped in by helicopter, so once you're there, there's no turning back. I know that most people that practice extreme sports love the thrill of the adrenaline, but I'm pretty sure that anyone who does ski-BASE jumping just has a death wish. Red Bull also like doing more zany events, like the Flug Tag, where people make homemade flying machines and try to fly as far as possible from a platform above water. Most machines fall straight in, but the point of the contest seems more about the absurdity of the design and the team than anything else really, and just a fun day out for all the spectators. However, working through a transcription of a programme now, I came across a clip that really pushes the limits of the downright ridiculous: Red Bull Paper Wings.

This is the annual Worldwide Paper Aeroplane Contest, where you can go head to head with fellow aviators to see whose paper aeroplane can fly the furthest or can stay the longest in the air. Now if people want to practice as a "sport", that's fine with me; after all, I've heard of much more ridiculous sports (extreme ironing, anyone?). But what this clip that promotes it. Just watch and you'll see what I mean.

Is it all the slow motion really necessary? Did the director really think that it would make the "sport" look more majestic and therefore convince me of its legitimacy as a demonstration of athleticism in any form whatsoever? The girl at 0:37 clearly seems to think so, as well as everyone else in that hangar (yes, a hangar; how appropriate). I mean you could talk about aerodynamics and aeronautical engineering or that's in the skill of the wrist-action, but really this is just a guy throwing a paper aeroplane and seeing how far it goes. And I'm cautious not to use the expression "boils down to" since you could apply that to football and say that's just 22 men on a pitch kicking a ball around for 90 minutes. But there's no boiling down here, that's all there is to it: folding a piece of A4 and throwing it in the air. Ultimately, I don't what actually annoys me more: the clip or the "sport" itself. I'd say it's probably a tie.

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Sports have always offered a fountain of inspiration for filmmakers around the world. Just think of the countless American football and basketball films Hollywood has produced, or even bobsleigh films (I'm sure you know exactly which film I'm talking about). On the other side of the pond, we have slightly more woeful efforts from the UK, such as 'Wimbledon' and 'Mean Machine', although any film with Vinnie Jones is always a winner in my book. The man's made an acting career out of being a violent thug, it's simply amazes me. And who could forget the 1981 football epic 'Escape to Victory', with its stellar cast including Michael Caine, Sylvester Stallone, and Pelé.

The fact is that sports can offer such fully-formed narratives that the films pratically write themselves: the classic underdog story of a bunch of misfits strung together by a disillusioned coach who struggle to triumph over adversity; you just can't help but root for them. Sort of like West Ham. What's even more intriguing is how actual sporting events are televised with a very similar cinematic language. Take a football match, for example: rather than always concentrating on the ball, which is what a spectator at the stadium is more likely to do, TV coverage provides us with a wide range of points of view that can create multiple stories within a game. Think of moments when a fight breaks out as a result of a foul; we see close-ups of players' faces as they taunt each other or defend their teammate's honour by hurting one of the opposition, not unlike a scene you might find in a film about rival gangs. This might as well be the Sharks and the Jets, only without the dancing. Or the way that the camera hones in on a player and captures his reactions throughout the match. He ceases to be another member of the team or even a football superstar and becomes an individual character with his own storyline, full of moments of glory and of failure. These examples aren't necessarily explicit in the coverage but you can certainly find them there. One documentary which highlights this cinematic aspect in sport is Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait; a film by video artist Douglas Gordon, it shows a match between Real Madrid and Villareal except filmed by Gordon's own cameras focusing solely on Zidane. It's a fascinating reinterpretation of how we watch the game, and for any football fan out there, it's a must-see.

I was reminded of this genre of films by an email a friend of mine sent me about a short film contest in which all the films were inspired by the Olympics. It's called the Olympic Short Film Contest, unsurprisingly, and consists of films from 4 different countries, 2 from each: Brazil, China, Spain and Switzerland. Via internet voting, one film from each country will be chosen for the final where there will be Jury Prizes and Popular Prizes to won. Each film is only 5 minutes long so you could very easily watch them all in no time at all. So far, I've only seen a few but one of Brazil's entries is a brilliant little story, well-executed, and demonstrates how cinematic sports really are, no matter what you're watching; even if it's bowls.

To watch the other films, just visit http://www.courtcircuit.ch/osfc/index.php/movies-and-votes/first-round/films-first-round

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I've said this too many times before but I'll say it again, it's simply astounding how many film festivals happen here in São Paulo throughout the year. More astounding is how specific some of them are. This week just gone was In-Edit, a film festival comprised only of musical documentaries. And yet the festival schedule is jam-packed with new films, shorts and feature-lengths, as well as a few special screenings of slightly older musical documentaries (e.g. 'End of the Century: the Story of the Ramones'). Originally started in Barcelona 7 years ago, it now has editions in Santiago, Buenos Aires, and now São Paulo too. There were many films I wish I could've seen, such as 'Favela on Blast', a documentary about the roots of baile funk in Rio, or 'Godfather of Disco', which told the story of Mel Cheren who, together with Larry Levan, transformed Disco in New York into a cultural movement during the 70s and 80s. As ever, time constraints meant I didn't get to see either of these (this is in fact the second time I've missed out on 'Favela on Blast' as it was screened at the São Paulo International Film Festival last year as well). The only film I did get to see was a documentary about Nina Simone, entitled 'Nina Simone: Love Sorceress...Forever'

I've never really known much about Nina Simone. Apart from the more famous hits such as 'My Baby Just Cares For Me', 'Sinnerman', or 'Mood Indigo', I couldn't say I knew much about her style. I didn't know of her impassioned nature and her captivating stage presence. I didn't even that she spoke with such a strong African accent, or at least that she started to after spending some time in Liberia. It would be great to say that I found this all out from the well-structured and insightful documentary I saw. Unfortunately, that's far from the case.

The documentary was based around three alternating sections: an interview with a French friend of Nina Simone (whose name escapes me now), shots of a girl driving around Paris in a taxi, and footage from Nina Simone's performance at the 1976 Montreux Jazz Festival. The French friend waxes lyrical about Simone's forceful personality as we are indulged with entire songs from the performance, occasionally interrupted by the girl sightseeing from the back of a car. In the end, it's revealed that girl in the car is a jazz singer on her way to a concert and was listening to a radio show about Nina Simone (presumably, the audio version of the film we've just watched). After being reminded of how important and inspiring Nina Simone was in her life, the singer performs 'Feeling Good' to her audience. And on that meta-note, the film ends.

I must admit that I thoroughly enjoyed watching the documentary, but that's not to merit the filmmaker at all. What was so thrilling to watch was Nina Simone performing, each word she sings carrying her grace, her frustration and her sadness simultaneously. The interview was far from dull or pointless, unlike the inclusion of the other jazz singer, yet they both distracted from the concert footage which was simply incomparable. Perhaps it was from watching it on a big screen and loud speakers, but the energy she conveyed was so powerful that at times, one felt like applauding her at the end of a song. Incidentally, several people did do that a couple of times during the screening. But evidently, the filmmaker shouldn't receive any credit for this type of audience reaction since he had nothing to do with that footage. And it's not hard to find at all, one can very easily buy the Live at Montreux DVD. It feels as if calling this film a documentary undermines the work of countless other documentary filmmakers who've worked hard to research material, facts, find out things that even the avid fan might not know. If it was meant to be an ode to Simone and specifically that performance, why not show more around the show, about her time in Africa that she mentions and the effect that had on her and her music? Instead, we simply saw her concert with a few bits and bobs in between. As one person said as I was leaving the cinema, "They should've just shown the whole concert, it would've been much better". I couldn't have agreed more.

Having said that, I highly recommend finding a copy of the DVD. She truly is an enigmatic performer, as this clip from the concert will show. It's 10 minutes long but it's worth every second of it.

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Success! My first articles for a magazine have now been published! And no editing either, mind you. As I mentioned last month, I had got in contact with an online British film magazine called Film & Festivals right when they were doing an edition on Latin American Cinema, and so after a few emails back and forth with the editor, I was writing two film festival previews. And now they're on display for the whole wide world to see (or at least anyone who visits the site). Hopefully I'll be able to go the festivals themselves as well and review them, though that still remains to be seen. I've also got some ideas for articles that aren't just simple film reviews, but that needs some work too. Still, it's a start. Mark Kermode, you better watch out...

You can find the magazine at www.filmandfestivals.com My articles are on page 10. Any feedback much appreciated.

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So the festival season has kicked off again and this weekend just gone saw 100,000 people head to a farm in Somerset, put up with rain, mud and cold with only a flimsy, paper-thin shelter to protect them, all for a 3-day bender and a week-long hangover. Oh, and some bands played as well.

I'm talking, of course, about Glastonbury, the UK's biggest festival (and probably the world's too), still going strong after 39 years of musical revelry. After last year's controversial decision to give a Jay-Z a headline slot, a move that proved to be a huge success, Glastonbury went back to basics this time around, choosing classic rock icons in the form of Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen. Yet every year, people have something to complain about: if it's not the commercialisation of the festival, it's that a hip hop artist like Jay-Z doesn't belong at Glastonbury. In 2009, it was that there was too much dad rock, with the average age of the Pyramid Stage performers being forty something. Be that as it may, it's too big a festival for something like that to be an issue; there's literally hundreds of things going on at the same if you'd rather not listen to 'Born in the USA', most of which you won't have a clue about and you'll end up delightfully discovering.

Another hot topic was the return of a recently-reformed Blur. Closing the festival on Sunday night, everyone was eager with anticipation to see whether the Britpop heroes could deliver. From every single review I've read, they more than delivered a performance to rival those unforgettable musical experiences that only Glastonbury can offer. 5000 miles away, sitting in front of my computer and watching the BBC coverage on Youtube, I can feel the sheer energy of the crowd as every punter left, right, and centre belts out the chorus yelps in 'Song 2'. I remember seeing Blur at Reading Festival in 1999 but it was without Graham Coxon and was in support of their album 'Think Tank'. 10 years on and they give the festival-goers what they really wanted: a greatest hits set full of sing along moments. I can honestly say that watching the videos from this weekend alone in my room has much more impact than that Reading gig did. You can see the smiles on the faces of the four of them and of every single person in the sea of people. It's proof that in no situation other than a festival, more specifically this festival, could a shared experience between so many people be so powerful. Divisions between performer and spectator disappear as everyone sings and celebrates together, with a touch of nostalgia and a teary eye. It's a gig like this that reminds me how incomparable Glastonbury is and how there's simply no excuse to miss out on 2010. I'm packing my wellies already...

Here's Blur's set closer, after two encores. Simply astounding.

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I started a stop-motion workshop today, at one of the many cultural centres São Paulo has to offer. It's a week-long, basic introduction to all forms of stop-motion from pixilation (as opposed to pixelation) to claymation, like 'Wallace and Gromit', as well as a bit of flash animation; and best of all, it's completely free.

I've never really thought about working with stop-motion much, probably because when I think of it, I think of something like 'The Corpse Bride' or 'Chicken Run', which look so impossibly precise that at times it's hard to believe they're stop-motion at all. I just think that I'd have no idea where to start. But more recently, I've been watching lots of shorts and music videos using the technique which show that you can make something very creative with limited resources. This short film is a good example of this.

It dawned on me that perhaps it's a filmmaking method I haven't explored yet but which I could use to produce some films on my own. So when my friend mentioned the workshop to me, I didn't even think twice about it.

Today's lesson was very introductory, with the teacher showing a few films he'd made and demonstrating the different techniques he'd used, some of the common mistakes that he encountered, and also some films he'd made at other workshops. Surprisingly, they were a lot better than I would've imagined, particularly one he'd made with a group of teenagers. Ultimately, today was pretty much an informal lecture whilst tomorrow is when we'll start to get our hands dirty, messing around with clay figures and doing some tests. The two things that did become very clear today were that stop-motion a huge amount of planning with little room for improvisation and that it takes a hell of a long time. Just think that on the last Wallace and Gromit film, 'The Curse of the Were-rabbit', it was stated that they only managed to produce 3 seconds of usable material a day. For an hour-and-a-half-long film, that's... well, you can do the maths.

Finally, I just thought I'd include a film mentioned during today's lesson. It's a 1952 film called 'Neighbours' by Norman McLaren, famed for many of his groundbreaking techniques in terms of combining and synchronising animation and music. 'Neighbours' mixes live action and stop-motion footage to produce a visually stunning film but which also offers a strong anti-violence message, delivered most effectively by the film's ironic punchline.

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Yesterday saw the first major BRIC summit, a meeting between the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India and China, the top four emerging nations in the world. Held in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, it marks the first step towards a public demonstration of political co-operation between the countries, representing a potential move from a mere economic acronym to something more. The four leaders (pictured FRTL: Manmohan Singh, Dmitry Medvedev, Hu Jintao and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva) discussed issues such as greater representation at major institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF, as well as calling for a more diversified global reserve currency, whilst being careful not to critise the dollar.

Despite being aware of the countries' economic development in recent times and the growing power they're having in the international community, I had no idea that they had formed an intercontinental economic bloc until today. The term BRIC was first coined in 2001 by Goldman Sachs who argued that by 2050, they could be among the four richest economies in the world, overpowering the current richest countries in the world. The report didn't suppose that they would ever form an economic bloc let alone a political coalition, but as time has shown, perhaps things are starting to move that way. Based on projected GDP growth and their expanding markets as suppliers of manufactured goods and raw materials (all of which you can read about here), BRIC could represent a new world order to challenge the likes of the US, the EU, and Japan.

Of course this is all based on estimations, hypotheses, assumptions, projections, etc. First of all, there's the political question of what each country wants: whilst Russia may show more intent on taking on the current giants (in particular the US), the other three may want to carry on the safe path of economic growth before comprising themselves. Then we have the differences in political structure, with Brazil and India being liberal democracies, Russia being a sovereign democracy and China being a one-party state. Other issues such as growing and reducing populations or relations with other neighbouring nations (e.g. India and Pakistan) show that the four countries are not all on the same wavelength as the BRIC summit might make it seem.

In any case, the Goldman Sachs reports are strictly economic and obviously can't take into account the political, social, and even natural changes that can occur in a year, let alone forty. What should be acknowledged is that these countries are moving forward, on the path of progression. One fact that would demonstrate this clearly is that for the first time in its history, Brazil offered the IMF £10 billion a week before summit; until now, they had only ever received loans from them.

Evidently, my interest lies principally in seeing what will happen to this country. Talking to peers, it seems that there's an innate pessism that the country won't change, that the government structure will remain corrupt and that economic inequality will remain enormous. I'm not sure whether it's out of disillusionment, apathy, or just plain ignorance, but seeing how Brazil is becoming an ever-present power in the world, it seems physically, scientifically, spiritually, everything-ly impossible that things stay the same and I can't understand how people still think this. The government will have to clean up its act and take greater care for its citizens, be it education, social welfare, safety if they're going to be taken seriously as a formidable global power. It won't happen overnight and in the short-term, I'm sure the constant reports of gang violence, political scandals, and poverty, it will seem as if things aren't changing at all. Call me a naive optimist, but to use a Tony's catchphrase from 1997, things can only get better. And I hope to be here to see it happen.

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I had a revelatory moment this afternoon, one of those moments where you go "oh, that's what it means". Not quite an epiphany, but probably as close as I'm going to get trawling the internet on a Tuesday at 3pm. But before revealing the revelation, some historical context is needed

Let me set the scene for you: it's a winter's Sunday evening, everyone's one tucked underneath their duvets and sitting on their comfy couches at home, the thought of leaving the house doesn't cross anyone's mind. It's 6 o'clock and 'The Simpsons' comes on TV, it's an episode I've seen about 100 times in which Lisa's musical mentor Bleeding Gums Murphy dies. To honour her idol, Lisa plays his only record at the local radio station whose weak frequency range is quadrupled by a lightning strike, sending the song across every radio station in Springfield simultaneously. Bleeding Gums suddenly makes a heavenly appearance in the clouds to give Lisa a final message, though he's rudely interrupted by Mufasa from the Lion King, Darth Vader, and James Earl Jones as the CNN announcer, all saying their respective popular lines of dialogue. When Mufasa appears, he says "You must avenge my death Kimba... I mean Simba". I never understood that joke and for whatever reason never bothered to look it up. Until today...

It turns out that 'Kimba the White Lion' is a 1960s anime series by Osamu Tezuka, heralded by many as the God of Manga and the Father of Anime. The story follows Kimba, a young cub born on a circus train whose father was killed by a hunter. His mother teaches him his father's ways and tells him he must return to the wild where he belongs. In his many adventures, he meets lots of animals as well as humans and discovers that all species must learn to coexist together for there to be peace in the world. If the story isn't exactly the same as 'The Lion King', many of the situations are very similar; I'd strongly suggest looking at this site which shows a close comparison of the characters and situations in both films whilst this site gives more of a historical background to the whole debate with many references suggesting that Disney intended to make a Kimba remake before turning it into "an original story". I mean, Jesus, the characters' names are practically the same! But Disney being Disney stick to their official line: it's just a coincidence. The Simpsons meanwhile, with its gluttonous love of pop-culture references, couldn't help but poke fun at the controversy at the time by including the joke in the aforementioned episode.

So there you have it. The joke finally made sense to me and I'm sure I've ruined The Lion King for any Disney fans who didn't know it was pure plagiarism. Everyone's a winner!

Reading this back, I'm starting to think the interest factor is on a very personal level and that many people didn't even know or care about that joke in the first place. More interesting is how I came across my discovery in the first place. I was doing some research for a couple of articles I'm writing for an online British film magazine called Film & Festivals. It's a magazine written by filmmakers for filmmakers, providing information about festivals all over the world even including entry deadlines; there are also interviews with industry personnel from all walks of life, showing the diversity that exists within the worldwide film industry. I got in contact with one of the writers in the hope to write some sort of contribution, most likely a film review, and by a stroke of luck I was contacted by the editor who told me the next issue would be focused on Latin American Cinema and that they needed someone to write previews for several Brazilian film festivals that are happening in the next months. I must've done something right in the past year to deserve this much luck. Or perhaps fortune favours the bearded.

To find out more about the magazine and read past issues, check out www.filmandfestivals.com

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