viernes, 31 de agosto de 2018

ANCHE ALLA MOSTRA DI SAN SEBASTIAN, SPAGNA. MOSTRA DI VENEZIA. IL FILM SU STEFANO CUCCHI "SULLA MIA PELLE” A VENEZIA FA INFURIARE SINDACATI DI POLIZIA E CARABINIERI


A sinistra Stefano Cucchi, a destra l'attore Alessandro Borghi che lo interpreta nel film "Sulla mia pelle”

Alla prima a Venezia "Sulla mia pelle", il docufilm sulla storia di Stefano Cucchi, ha strappato sette minuti di applausi a scena aperta, dai critici, dagli spettatori e dalla famiglia di Stefano. Ma il videoracconto della vicenda, che arriverà nelle sale a processo ancora in corso, non è piaciuto affatto ai sindacati delle divise, sentiti dal quotidiano Il Tempo, il quale riporta anche che la pellicola è stata finanziata per 600 mila euro dallo Stato.

Il Cocer, organo di rappresentanza dei Carabinieri, ha espresso un giudizio molto duro, pur sottolineando di non aver intenzione di vedere il film. "Ci sarebbe da indignarsi se si accertasse che lo stesso è stato prodotto con il contributo dello Stato. Infatti apparirerebbe alquanto strano che, con un processo ancora in corso per appurare la verità, organi dello Stato abbiano finanziato un film che sposta in una sala cinematografica un processo che proceduralmente, in uno Stato di diritto, andrebbe svolto in un'aula di Tribunale".

Parla al Tempo Gianni Tonelli, ex segretario del Sap (Sindacato Autonomo di Polizia) oggi onorevole in quota leghista, in passato è stato protagonista di aspre polemiche con Ilaria Cucchi, sorella di Stefano: "Rabbrividisco. Mi chiedo: si può mandare in mezzo mondo un film che dà allo spettatore un'idea non suffragata da sentenze? Ed è vero che lo Stato ha finanziato il film con 600mila euro? È questa la cultura italiana da esibire in una mostra internazionale? Io non mi farò intimidire, e da parlamentare andrò in fondo a questa storia"

Sulla stessa linea anche il commento di Franco Maccari, presidente nazionale di Fsp Polizia di Stato: "È impossibile contenere o sdegno per l'ennesima storia di ordinaria criminalizzazione di chi veste una divisa. A quando un film sul carabiniere Giangrande ferito a Palazzo Chigi? O sui poliziotti uccisi dal terrorismo rosso? A quando un film, pagato dallo Stato, sugli eroi in divisa? Basta con le gogne, le piaghe e le cicatrici che tanti appartenenti alle Forze dell'Ordine portano a vita 'sulla loro pelle'"

Più pacate nei toni ma simili nella sostanza, infine, le parole del segretario del Sappe, il sindacato di polizia penitenziaria, Donato Capece: "La storia processuale ci ha visti oltraggiati e infamati senza uno straccio di prova: sia la sentenza di primo grado che quella di appello hanno assolto i poliziotti penitenziari. Lo hanno accertato due Corti e lo ha confermato infine la Cassazione. Nessuno deve più aprire o sollevare sospetti, ci aspettiamo da anni scuse che ancora non arrivano. Il carcere, e chi in esso lavora, non c'entra nulla con la triste vicenda Cucchi. E sarebbe giusto che questo venisse evidenziato nel film".

Alessandro Borghi è il protagonista del film “Sulla mia pelle”, diretto da Alessio Cremonini e presentato al 75esimo Festival di Venezia. Il film è ispirato al caso di Stefano Cucchi, geometra romano morto il 22 ottobre 2009, sei giorni dopo essere stato arrestato per detenzione di stupefacenti. La storia di Stefano è probabilmente la più nota tra quelle riguardanti i presunti abusi delle forze dell’ordine in carcere, grazie alla battaglia portata avanti dalla sorella Ilaria. “In un mondo stellare questo film ci porterebbe alla sentenza, ma non succederà - ha detto Alessandro Borghi in un’intervista. Quello che vogliamo è che le persone si avvicinino alla storia di questo ragazzo e alla tragedia di questa famiglia”.

http://www.lavocecosentina.it/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=3057:il-film-su-stefano-cucchi-sulla-mia-pelle-a-venezia-fa-infuriare-sindacati-di-polizia-e-carabinieri&Itemid=305

THE MISUSE OF AN ANCIENT ROMAN ACRONYM BY WHITE NATIONALIST GROUPS


SPQR initially stood for Senatus Populusque Romanus (the Senate and Roman people), but a growing number of white supremacists have adopted the acronym to symbolize their movement.
Sarah E. Bond


This is an ancient marble copy of a shield called the clipeus virtutis awarded to Augustus in 27 BCE and hung in the Senate House in Rome. The central inscription notes its award by the “Senatus / Populusque Romanus” (Senate and Roman People) as a means of legitimizing the unprecedented honor using the language of the Republic. The shield is now on display in the museum in Arles (image by Carole Raddato via Flickr and used by permission).

Upon the triumphal arches, the altars, and the coins of Rome, SPQR stood for Senatus Populusque Romanus (the Senate and the Roman people). In antiquity, it was a shorthand means of signifying the entirety of the Roman state by referencing its two component parts: Rome’s Senate and her people. While today the abbreviation is used rather innocuously in most instances, recent reports have shown that a growing number of white supremacist groups have begun to adopt the ancient acronym to symbolize their movement — and use it in a militaristic mode starkly different from the ways in which the Romans actually applied it.
A July 2018 post on Pharos, a website committed to exposing the modern appropriation of classical texts and imagery by hate groups, addressed the manipulation of SPQR by white nationalist groups in the United States and consulted classical scholars about the history of the phrase. The issue was brought to the site’s attention when debate arose about a SPQR flag flown outside a student rental house in Athens, Ohio late last year. The question was whether a local activist group was justified in labeling the flag as a Nazi symbol. The Pharos site is run by Vassar College classicist Curtis Dozier, who spoke to Hyperallergic about Pharos’s extensive documentation of the use of SPQR: “The examples we documented connected the symbol to European racial and cultural purity, idealization of military power and violence, and admiration of Hitler and Nazi ideology.” But in order to understand the roots of this troubling appropriation of ancient language and iconography — and to distinguish its various uses by groups, some of whom simply wish to admire ancient Rome — we must first look back at the long history of the acronym. A historical examination accentuates the fact that SPQR underwent several visual manipulations throughout antiquity, the late middle ages, and then under the fascist regime of Mussolini, both in literature and visual art.
 Most of our literary references to “Senatus Populusque Romanus” come from the late Republican era statesman and rhetorician Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BCE), though Caesar, Livy, Augustus, Pliny, and many other late Latin authors used it as well. Cicero saw it as an essential compromise of power within the constitution of the republic: two groups that checked each other’s authority. The most prevalent use of the acronym for the phrase is not in texts — which allowed for expansive writing — but upon numismatic evidence (i.e. coinage) where space was limited and thus often had familiar abbreviations.
In comments to Hyperallergic, ancient historian and classical numismatist Liv Yarrow noted the absence of SPQR coins during the period of the Republic and its later use as a means of justifying autocracy while harkening back to an earlier age:
SPQR is wholly absent from the Republican [era] coins series (a fact I had to spend some time double checking). Yes, arguments from silence (or absence) are difficult to make in ancient history because of fragmentary survival rates.

A silver denarius of Augustus minted between 20 BCE-19 BCE with the obverse bearing the laureate profile of Augustus and the reverse side portraying an altar inscribed (image via the American Numismatic Society [ANS])

Yarrow is careful to note that we begin to see the shorthand SPQR minted on coins under Augustus, the originator of the Roman Principate. This was the man who ushered in the imperial period and later stood as a model for men like Mussolini:
SPQR does begin to appear on the coinage just at the moment that Augustus is trying to legitimate his own extraordinary public honors, and his claims to have “restored” the republic. Augustus built his restoration on a rhetoric of decline (“I’ll make Rome great again”). He advocated a “return” to greater religiosity and morality, but his actual reshaping of Roman society established an enduring monarchy.
Augustus would use the full phrase within his Res Gestae Divi Augusti, an epic biographical inscription listing all of his deeds, which was sent out across the provinces in both Latin and Greek. On his coinage, he shortened the legitimizing phrase to just SPQR in order to preserve the myth that the Republic still lived on.
What is notably missing from the ancient coinage known today (searchable within the American Numismatic Society’s Mantis Coin database) and from pieces of classical art that survive from antiquity are images of SPQR imprinted on the actual military standards and vexillations carried by the Roman army. While Roman coinage sometimes have standards on them with SPQR inscribed on the edges, it is difficult to find any evidence that they were ever on military flags carried by the army. Military historians like Rosemary Moore, a professor of ancient history at the University of Iowa and a veteran herself, noted to me the complete omission of such detail by ancient authors and artists:
The absence of evidence is of course not evidence for absence. It’s not surprising that there are gaps in our knowledge of the ancient world, because much evidence has been lost. At the same time, it’s worth thinking about why some modern people would like to see SPQR on a Roman military standard — it has to do with how they imagine Rome was, or ideas, even ideologies, they want to associate with Rome.



A vexillarius holds a Roman vexillum (military flag) on a painted plaster depiction of Julius Terentius performing a Sacrifice in 239 CE from Dura Europos in Syria (image via Yale University Art Gallery)

Despite that video games, movies, and myriad modern pop culture images that associate SPQR with the Roman army of the Republic (509–31 BCE), this seems to be a modern fiction. Even normally reputable sources like the online Ancient History Encyclopedia fall prey to perpetuating the idea of the link between the army and the acronym. In an entry for Roman military standards, they note:
In the time of the Roman Republic the Standards were imprinted with the letters SPQR which was an abbreviation for Senatus Populusque Romanus (Senate and People of Rome). The Standard, then, represented not only the legion or cohort which carried it but the citizens of Rome, and the policies the army represented.
In order to illustrate this point, the encyclopedia notably uses an artist’s rendering from Sega’s video game Rome II: Total War, which not only falsely depicts the Pantheon beside the Colosseum, but also shows a Roman standard-bearer holding the famed Roman aquila (eagle) with SPQR inscribed underneath it.
Although Constantine would use SPQR as part of his propaganda in the early 4th century CE, it fell out of favor in the period of the later Roman empire. It would resurface in the high medieval period. And just as Augustus had manipulated the iconic abbreviation for his own agenda, it would again be repurposed and reinterpreted to fit the needs of the institution and the institutor.

The only extant vexillum from a Roman standard is now in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Russia. It notably does not have SPQR on it, but does have the goddess Victory holding a wreath to crown a victor (image via Wikimedia)

Professor and medieval historian Carrie E. Beneš tracked the precarious use of SPQR as “a word or image with a meaning beyond itself” for various political and cultural movements in a pivotal article for the journal Speculum. She mentions that it was used in a popular uprising in Rome in the 12th century as locals tried to reassert their ancient civic rights, and by a papal notary in the 14th century who viewed the abbreviation as referring to Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. In her research, Beneš demonstrates that SPQR became a heraldic visual symbol rather than a simple abbreviation from 1100–1400 and “That cultural ambiguity meant that the symbol generally had to depend on its immediate context for its meaning and implications.” In remarks to Hyperallergic, the historian elaborated:

The acronym retained a sense of authority even as it ceased to make literal sense, and that fact was exploited in the Middle Ages by pretty much everyone who wanted to channel and lay claim to the authority of ancient Rome: the Roman commune, the papacy, the Roman emperors (who were actually German, but that didn’t stop them), and so on. That’s really the first period in which we see the symbol’s astonishing flexibility and malleability, as well as its allure for multiple people or groups wanting to evoke or lay claim to a particular vision of ancient Rome.
SPQR and this false vision of Rome continued to be a canvas upon which others could both project their own meaning while still conjuring a familiar visual connection to the bygone power of an empire. This was to become particularly true with the political movements of the early 20th century. In her study of classical reception within Italy under the reign of Mussolini, Lorna Hardwick, a professor emerita of classical studies at the Open University, noted the dictator’s appropriation of Roman symbols, buildings, and texts so as to conjure legitimacy and forward racist propaganda:
From the establishment of Mussolini’s power base in 1922 until the proclamation of the dictatorship in 1925, ancient Rome was appropriated as a model for current political and military organization and as a symbol of Italian unity. Then the image of Rome took a new direction during the invasion of Abyssinia and the declaration of an Italian empire in 1936. In the third phase in the late 1930s a climate of increasing racism was created and the Romans and the Latin language were used to define the supposed physical and spiritual and cultural superiority of the modern Italians.
Il Duce’s appropriation of the visual imagery of Rome included the rebuilding of the Senate House (the Curia Senatus) in Rome, the re-inscribing of Augustus’ aforementioned Res Gestae on a new gleaming white marble slab for his new Ara Pacis Museum, and the use of SPQR in his own propaganda. His stamps of power used the familiar Roman abbreviation. Mussolini also popularized the use of SPQR manhole covers seen across the urban landscape of the city even today, though the practice predated him by a number of years. In Nazi Germany, Rome’s eagle standard would itself later become a  symbol used by Hitler in order to unify his party under the banner of another antique symbol. Encouraging popular unity through the use of a familiar symbols of power is and was a common tactic of Fascism.


A modern manhole cover near St Peter’s Square in Rome (image by Martin Cooper via Flickr)

In part due to Mussolini’s reawakening of Roman military standards and iconography, these remixed symbols have seeped into American culture as well. Historical fiction, TV shows, and videogames focused on ancient Rome have all perpetuated the use of SPQR as symbolic of the Roman military, which may have influenced white nationalist groups to adopt it as well. Their use of tattoos, t-shirts, and flags that provide an aesthetic rallying point and the visual equivalent of a dog whistle has not gone unnoticed by Dozier and others attempting to translate the icons of the alt-right. As the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) first documented in a guide to the use of hate symbols and flags following the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally in August of 2017, SPQR is often iconographically synthesized with the use of the fasces — a bundle of sticks symbolic of Roman magisterial power that was also reused by Mussolini — and the Roman military eagle as a symbol of Western white male supremacy.
Historians are quick to point out that Roman antiquity is not the only historical period that white nationalists have appropriated or borrowed from. Cord Whitaker, a professor of English at Wellesley College, noted:
Along with the adaptation of Mussolini-era uses of SPQR, the alt-right, neo-Nazis, and other racist groups have taken up the writings of Italian philosopher and pseudo-medievalist Julius Evola. Evola, especially in his Revolt Against the Modern World, invokes the Knights Templar to argue for a kind of spiritual knighthood that supersedes what he calls “exoteric devotional Christianity” with a more mystical chivalry. Evola’s thought was influential for Mussolini and informs alt-right arguments for the superiority of the Greco-Roman world, modern white claims to Greco-Roman heritage, and the belief that the European Middle Ages present an idyllic and homogeneously white time and place that, according to adherents, should be used as a model for the US’s conversion into a white ethno-state.



A late 15th-century copy of Roman writer Valerius Maximus originally made in France has a heraldic use of SPQR in the illuminations (image via the British Library).

Other historians have also pointed out the penchant for ignoring the factual history of the abbreviation and seizing upon their own fiction of the past. One of them is Dame Mary Beard, who has herself waded into discussions of race and ethnicity with some success, but who has also been criticized for colonialist language. She has written extensively on SPQR’s antique usage. In comments to Hyperallergic, she remarked that she suspected white nationalists didn’t find much to agree with in her 2015 bestseller S.P.Q.R.: A History of Ancient Rome:
If they actually read a few pages of my book, they found it wasn’t backing up their cause. So I don’t believe I got conscripted. In some ways it is a slogan that is very hard to pin down (which I rather like) … and the fact that it is still all over the place in modern Rome helps that un-pin-down-ability.
Still, Beard believes the appropriation is perhaps more prevalent in the U.S. and Italy than in the UK: “In general, the right-wing reaction to SPQR (the book) has been to deride it as modernist multiculturalism, or even more to tell me off for not appreciating Roman military genius.”
As Pharos and others have documented, a skinhead group within Rome has adopted the name SPQR.

The key to understanding the use and abuse of SPQR for over two millennia is perhaps flexibility. As Beard and Beneš have, Dozier similarly notes the ability of the symbol or text to be used in multiple ways.
[SPQR] is interesting because it’s so polyvalent (and the Beneš article shows that it has a long history of being polyvalent), and in a sense, is so contested (even though I think most tourists [or] historians etc. who use it don’t realize it’s also a hate symbol) … those of us who love antiquity, love SPQR, love Rome, need to be aware that it can be used as a hate symbol and also to be vigilant that those connotations aren’t allowed to become the predominant ones.
While not all applications of SPQR are meant to reference white supremacist ideals, the current work of classicists, medievalists, and modern historians to isolate, translate, and then underscore its current abuse has been heartening to many who wish to understand how the past has become distorted in the lens of the alt-right. Yarrow perhaps put the concerns of ancient historians best: “That SPQR should reappear in our current political climate is concerning, not only because it seeks to use history to legitimate racist agendas, but because historically the phrase was used to justify autocratic, authoritarian rule.” Recognizing the shades of difference between the Senatus Populusque Romanus of the republic and the SPQR of Augustus and Mussolini means first understanding the fine line between upholding a republic that represents multiple voices rather than supporting an autocracy that allows for only one.
https://hyperallergic.com/457510/the-misuse-of-an-ancient-roman-acronym-by-white-nationalist-groups/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=August%2031%202018%20Daily%20-%20The%20Misuse%20of%20an%20Ancient%20Roman%20Acronym%20by%20White%20Nationalist%20Groups&utm_content=August%2031%202018%20Daily%20-%20The%20Misuse%20of%20an%20Ancient%20Roman%20Acronym%20by%20White%20Nationalist%20Groups+CID_711bde5ab3feb8eb25500729935912a9&utm_source=HyperallergicNewsletter

NEIL YOUNG AND DARYL HANNAH REPORTEDLY MARRY IN CALIFORNIA


Guitarist Mark Miller appears to confirm wedding after wishing pair well on Facebook


Daryl Hannah and Neil Young had reportedly been dating for about four years. Photograph: Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty for SXSW

The singer-songwriter Neil Young and actor Daryl Hannah are said to have married during a small ceremony in California at the weekend.
The couple reportedly wed on Saturday in Atascadero, after a ceremony on Young’s yacht near the San Juan islands.
 The guitarist Mark Miller appeared to confirm the news on Facebook when he congratulated the couple. He later clarified that he had not attended the ceremony. “I only knew about it because one of my friends attended the ceremony in Atascadero and announced it on his page,” Miller said.
The administrator of Young’s blog also congratulated the pair, and referred to comments from attendees, who described the event as “a shindig”. 
Hannah posted a cryptic image to her Instagram account the following day. She captioned the picture of an owl: “Someone’s watching over us … love and only love.”
Young and Hannah had reportedly been dating since 2014, when Young filed for divorce from Pegi Young, his wife of 36 years. On the media scrutiny surrounding his relationship with Hannah, Young said: “We didn’t pay any attention to that. It doesn’t matter. We don’t give a shit. We don’t care, because they don’t know what they’re talking about. And if they do know what they’re talking about, we still don’t care, but we’re happy for them. It doesn’t matter. What matters is us, not the press.”
This year, Young appeared in the Netflix film Paradox, a fantasy western musical directed by Hannah.
At 72, it marks another chapter in Young’s life and work, as he continues to press on with new music. He has released six albums in the last four years, including two with a new backing band, Promise of the Real, who feature Willie Nelson’s son Lukas among their number. Long irritated by what he perceives as low quality digital music from Apple, Spotify and others, he has also recently created an ambitious online archive of his work in high-resolution audio. In December 2017, he sold off 418 lots of his possessions at auction, raising over $300,000 from his model train collection alone.
Hannah continues to act – her most high profile recent role was Angelica Turing in the sci-fi Netflix series Sense8, a show whose cult popularity was so strong that fans successfully lobbied for a final “goodbye” episode after it was cancelled, which aired in June this year. But she is also a high-profile activist, having long campaigned against the Keystone oil pipeline system in Canada and the US. She has been arrested numerous times for her protests – including twice in front of the White House – and she and Young led a Washington-based march together in 2014.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/aug/29/neil-young-daryl-hannah-marry-california-wedding

LA HISTORIA DEL MUNDO EN UN PUÑADO DE CAMAS


Daniel Samper fabula sobre rincones íntimos de de grandes personajes de la Humanidad
JUAN CRUZ
Daniel Samper ha hecho una excursión por camas famosas y ha encontrado en ellas a personajes como Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf, Antoine de Saint Exupèry o Al Capone. Incluso ha vislumbrado qué pasa en la cama de un hombre solo, el futbolista sueco Zlatan Ibrahimovic, que afirma que se basta consigo mismo. De ese encuentro con camas ajenas, el escritor colombiano, columnista de El Tiempo de Bogotá, académico en su país, y humorista de corazón y de verbo, ha dado de sí Camas y famas (Aguilar). Aquí está su relato de algunas de esas camas famosas.
Oscar Wilde. “Era homosexual, claro. Y en algún momento estuvo casado y tuvo hijos. La mujer, Constance, lo acompañó siempre. Le dijo: ‘El día que quieras volver, vuelves, pero me dices la verdad’. Estuvo a punto de regresar, por un día o para toda la vida. Pero su novio, el perverso Douglas, se lo volvió a llevar. Ella murió apenada, antes que Wilde. Y este dejó de existir a los 50. Antes le puso nombre a la tumba de la amada que lo esperó en vano. Constance y él tuvieron una correspondencia ardiente. Y él vivió apenado por esta mujer tan buena que le daba dinero para mantener a sus novios, a algunos de los cuales que acogió en la casa del matrimonio. Ella lo sabía todo; era periodista, defendió la ropa liberada de corsés. En tiempos de igualdad ella hubiera tenido igual o más trascendencia que su marido. Él fue el descubridor de la conversación moderna, que ahora está sepultada por Twitter. No todo lo que dicen que dijo es suyo, pero es igual: podía haberlo dicho también”.
Saint-Exupery. “También pudo haber sido un tuitero, con ocurrencias a veces muy banales, en El principito. ¡Cuando filosofa es de un aburrimiento terrible, como Paulo Coelho! Saint-Exupèry sabe que tiene que morir en un avión, es una pérdida de tiempo morir en una cama. Cuando conoce a su amor, Consuelo, queda profundamente enamorado, la invita a subir al avión, la obliga a experimentar peripecias absurdas, se tira en barrena con ella a su lado y le dice: ´Si no me das un beso no aterrizo`. Al final del acoso, ella accede, y él le espeta: ´ Pero en la boca`. Si no me dices que te casarás conmigo sigo para siempre en el aire`. Indignada y maravillada, esa misma noche se prometen y se acuestan juntos. Un tipo raro, un machista enamorado de su propio éxito con las mujeres”.
Potemkin. “Hizo más que inventar el acorazado. Fue el amante de Catalina la Grande de Rusia. Era un tipo muy ilustrado, con él habría hecho yo un viaje alrededor de Rusia. No era un lector extraordinario, ella sí lo era. Catalina leyó a Voltaire y a los revolucionarios franceses. Potemkin no leía ‘pero tenía orejas’, se quedaba con todo. Era muy bueno en la cama. Ella lo dice; es lo que le encantó de él. Debía tener dos cosas enormes, una era el humor. Le fascinaba Potemkin”.


Virginia Woolf. “Era bisexual, aunque sexualmente era muy fría. De hecho, se podría pensar que con Vita Sackville, su gran compañera, no tuvo más que dos o tres relaciones físicas en la cama. Tampoco impresionaba su relación con su marido, Leonard. Lo que a ella le importaba eran las amistades profundas que en algunos casos la llevaban a la cama. La carta que le deja a su marido, pisada por una piedra antes de tirarse al río, es preciosa: ´Es difícil pensar que alguien pueda haber sido tan feliz como nosotros`. Estaba muy descontenta con la vida y al tiempo tenía cara de broma y tentación de tomadura de pelo. Hacía interpretaciones cómicas, fiestas. Su grupo de gente era mucho menos triste que lo que aparenta Virginia Woolf. Una autora extraordinaria que cambió la literatura y cuyo aspecto era tristón como su final. Y, sin embargo, le encantaba la vida social con sus amigos. De esos personajes cuya vida pública no coincide con el aire en el que viven su vida privada”.
Al Capone. “Aquí no pongo foto de ella, Mae Coughlin; un tipo de Estados Unidos compró todos sus retratos y para conseguir los derechos de uno solo hay que pagar millones… Al Capone fue el mejor padre y el mejor esposo del mundo. De Pablo Escobar, otro bandido, se decía lo mismo, y cayó precisamente gracias a eso, a que era buen padre y llamó por teléfono a su familia para saber si no les pasaba lo que la policía que lo buscaba estaba diciendo… Al Capone no cayó por esas bondades, sino por evasión de impuestos”.
Zlatan Ibrahimovic. "Lo elegí entre los egocéntricos que no necesitan a nadie al lado. Cuando lo llaman para la selección sueca dice que todo eso es una mierda y no va. Luego el equipo nacional se clasifica y él dice: "Estoy dispuesto". Y no lo llevan, claro. Su narcisismo es de chiste, de hombre enamorado de sí mismo, ni Cristiano se hubiera atrevido a tanto. Al entrar en su casa, en Malmoe, se ve una fotografía extraordinaria, gigante, del tamaño de una pared: es la foto de unos pies horribles, son los suyos, con las uñas rotas, llenas de mierda, rodeadas de pelos… Pues eso es lo que te recibe en su mansión, la foto de los pies a los que tanto debe".

¿Qué ha aprendido haciendo estas búsquedas en camas y famas ajenas?
-Que incluso los personajes que hemos comprado de niños en cromos de blanco y negro en realidad son multicolores. Otra cosa: cada quien se organice como quiera en la cama siempre que la felicidad que procuren sea entre adultos, con consentimiento y sin causar daño a nadie. Para pasar el río puedes hacerlo en canoa, transatlántico, nadando o con la ayuda de un amigo o una amiga: lo importante es que nadie se entrometa, ni la Iglesia ni el Estado.

https://elpais.com/cultura/2018/08/29/actualidad/1535564748_871774.html

jueves, 30 de agosto de 2018

“LEHMAN TRILOGY”, DE STEFANO MASSINI-SERGIO PERIS MENCHETA, CON DARÍO PASO, POR ALICIA PERRIS



EL MICRÓFONO DE ALICIA PERRIS – 

El 15 de septiembre de 2008, dentro de nada se cumple una década, Lehman Brothers anunció su bancarrota. Así se desató la mayor crisis financiera de la historia, que aún no ha concluido, ni siquiera se han corregido muchos de los errores y despropósitos que llevaron al fiasco más grande de la economía mundial, junto con el Crack del 29, de repercusiones y daños impredecibles entonces.


“163 años antes, el primer Lehman desembarcaba en el puerto de Nueva York desde su BavIera natal con una maleta llena de sueños. Este es el relato de una familia que cambió la historia del mundo”.

El famoso director italiano del Teatro Piccolo de Milán, Stefano Massini, colaborador de La Repubblica y la Rai, escribió un texto sobre los Lehman, traducido a más de 14 idiomas y estrenado en medio mundo, que dirige y recrea ahora en musical el actor y creador Sergio Peris-Mencheta. Estará en Madrid hasta el 23 de septiembre con la escenografía de Curt Allen Wilmer y estudio Dedos, vestuario de Elda Noriega y un gran equipo de montaje y producción perfectamente cohesionado. A los mandos de Prensa, las siempre disponibles y entregadas, María Díaz de Estrategias de Comunicación y Sonsoles Abascal de los Teatros del Canal que hicieron posible ver la función y realizar esta entrevista para este El Micrófono de Alicia Perris en Radio Sefarad.

Entre el grupo de actores de Lehman Trilogy, Litus Ruiz, Pepe Lorente, Aitor Beltrán, Víctor Clavijo, Leo Rivera y (a la derecha de la imagen) Darío Paso , de una larga tradición familiar de teatro, que incluye a su abuelo Alfonso Paso y a su bisabuelo, Enrique Jardiel Poncela y que amablemente acude a la emisora para una conversación en vivo.

Se trata de un proyecto tentador, envolvente, ¿antisemita tal vez? (hay que comentarlo, claro), que evoca los rituales de las tradiciones religiosas judías, sus celebraciones, sus fiestas, su música y su autoridad económica y emprendedora también en los grandes cambios que se relatan en Lehman Trilogy. Una geografía que, con un humor digno de ser judío, establece una perfecta secuencia diacrónica de sucesos que esclarecen la historia económica, social y política del mundo tal como hoy lo conocemos y soportamos, desde 1850.
Alicia Perris



Bibliografía cinematográfica:

...Margin Call (2011) Inspirada en el hundimiento de Lehman Brothers y el escándalo de las hipotecas subprime, con un elenco actoral que incluye a Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Stanley Tucci, Demi Moore. Escrita y dirigida por J. C. Chandor.
…Los últimos días de Lehman Brothers, 2010 Producción de la BBC.
…Inside Job, 2010, documental sobre el comienzo de la crisis económica en 2008,
…Malas Noticias (Too Big To Fail, 2011), de la HBO, dirigida por Curtis Hanson y protagonizada por William Hurt y Paul Giamatti. Inspirada en el espectacular éxito editorial de Andrew Ross Sorkin, periodista de The New York Times.

http://www.radiosefarad.com/lehman-trilogy-de-stefano-massini-sergio-peris-mencheta-con-dario-paso/

miércoles, 29 de agosto de 2018

INSIDE QUINTA DA REGALEIRA, THE MYSTICAL PORTUGUESE PALACE IMAGINED BY A BUTTERFLY-OBSESSED MILLIONAIRE


Alexxa Gotthardt


Quinta da Regaleira, Sintra, Portugal, 2017. Photo by Susanne Nilsson, via Flickr.

On a recent morning in the ancient Portuguese town of Sintra, mist rose from moss-encircled ponds and gathered around the tops of stone turrets and leafy palms. And through flowering vines and scatterings of tile-covered homes, you could just make out the silhouette of Quinta da Regaleira: an age-old estate steeped in opulence, mysticism, and the occult.
This is the landscape that Lord Byron once called “a glorious Eden”; an oasis where one could imagine that “every pool and stream has Nymphs in its waters,” wrote poet L.V. de Camões.
When I arrived in Sintra in mid-August on a pilgrimage to Quinta da Regaleira, a cool summer breeze moved through the town’s narrow streets; the air smelled of the ocean (the Atlantic borders Sintra’s western edge) and the hot-pink Bougainvillea blossoms that spill over courtyard walls. The environment was verdant, calm, and intoxicating—qualities that may well have attracted the eccentric millionaire António Augusto Carvalho Monteiro to the area in the late 1800s.
It was in this lush hamlet where he’d create Quinta da Regaleira, which he designed as a portal between the physical and metaphysical worlds. For Carvalho Monteiro, a journey through the landscape of shadowy grottoes, subterranean tunnels, dewy gardens, and seashell-encrusted fountains—all laden with mystical symbolism—represented the path to enlightenment, upon which he’d attain a greater understanding of himself and the world around him.
Carvalho Monteiro was born in 1848 in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro into a wealthy family of Portuguese descent. As a young man, he moved between Brazil and Portugal, studying law at Portugal’s Coimbra University. But Carvalho Monteiro’s passions were stirred by entomology (the study of insects), malacology (the study of mollusks), and ornithology (the study of birds).

Quinta da Regaleira, Sintra, Portugal, 2012. Photo via Flickr.


As early as 1871, in his early twenties, Carvalho Monteiro traveled to Dresden to meet Otto Staudinger, then the world’s foremost butterfly specialist. A deep, lifelong fascination with the natural sciences ensued.
After marrying and living in Brazil for several years, Carvalho Monteiro landed back in Portugal in 1876 to devote himself to his studies, becoming an active member of the Lisbon Geographical Society and the Portuguese Society of Natural Sciences. With his new wife, he settled in the grand Quintela Palace Farrobo on Lisbon’s stately Rua do Alecrim, where he housed his ever-growing collection of butterflies and moths (then the world’s second-largest), some 10,000 invertebrates, stuffed hummingbirds, art, clocks, iconography, and a vast library.
Around this time (records are minimal, so it is unclear exactly when), it seems that Carvalho Monteiro also became interested in classical mythology and esoteric philosophy. Books from his library point to an interest in alchemy, the medieval quest to formulate an immortality elixir, and Hermeticism, a philosophy in which wisdom is attained through contemplation of the mysteries of the universe. (Heremetics believed that the physical, mental, and spiritual planes were interconnected.) It’s been noted that the beliefs of the Freemasons, a secret society that uses symbols and coded language in rituals that have been linked to mysticism, also likely captivated Carvalho Monteiro.
But it wasn’t until Carvalho Monteiro purchased the country estate of Quinta da Regaleira in 1893, when he was in his forties, that he was able to fully express his passions. There, on a densely forested plot of land in Sintra that once belonged to the Baroness de Regaleira, he began to conceive of a temple to nature and spirituality, where the mysteries of the universe could be contemplated, wisdom attained, and magic conjured.
Construction began in 1898, after Carvalho Monteiro found the perfect person to realize his vision: Italian architect and set designer Luigi Manini. Manini was in the process of erecting a palace in the ornate, highly dramatic Manueline-Gothic style, its façade marked by imposing entrances and stone carvings that alluded to tempestuous seas, grand voyages, lionhearted heroes, and classical mythology. Carvalho Monteiro was sold, and enlisted Manini to help him build his Sintra arcadia.
Today, the two men’s magnum opus remains largely intact. When I arrived, I was greeted by the Promenade of the Gods—a path lined with statues of mythical beings that embody Carvalho Monteiro’s many passions, both earthly and otherworldly. There is Orpheus, the legendary hero-bard who entrances wild animals with his voice; Flora, the field-wandering nymph, patron of flowers; Dionysus, purveyor of wine and revelry; Demeter, mother earth; and Hermes, the fleet-footed god of travel who leads the dead to the Elysian Fields of the underworld. Some of the sculptures are partially obscured by thickets of bright-green palms and bushes dotted with orange, fuschia, and purple blossoms.
Here, as plants and gods mingle, Carvalho Monteiro makes his intention for Quinta da Regaleira clear: to connect the natural and the spiritual……….

https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-inside-mystical-portuguese-palace-imagined-butterfly-obsessed-millionaire?utm_medium=email&utm_source=14294392-newsletter-editorial-daily-08-28-18&utm_campaign=editorial&utm_content=st-V