Vox Populae

VoxPop originally posted by annaverdon

A series of public opinion polls on the topic of Remembrance Day (Armistice Day). The questions asked were deleted, leaving only the answers following each other in seamless succession. The question I asked was:

As Remembrance Sunday approaches, the UK is about to commemorate fallen soldiers from World War I and II. Is it not more pertinent to extend the same recognition to soldiers who are currently doing military duty in Iraq and Afghanistan?

A Head to Head With a Killer Queen

Patricia Cornwell the second highest female writer in the world after J.K. Rowling. And like Rowling, her origins are just as saddening, fuelling her creative energy and inciting her to become a writer of such high calibre.

At the age of five, she was abandoned by her father on Christmas morning. To make things even more dramatic, she clung to his leg and pleaded him not to leave. Soon after this, she was molested by a security guard, leading to her first court appearance.

For six years, she worked in a pathologist's office in Virginia, examining murder victims that were often sexually assaulted.

Those experiences shaped her into being a crime writer and led to the development of her most iconic character, Dr Scarpetta.

Source:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/6560751/Killer-Queen-Patricia-Cornwell-Interview.html

VoxPop

VoxPop by annaverdon

Indigènes

Indigenous peoples in the past have been portrayed in the past as savage people, unenlightened and incongruous to the rapidness of modern society and the values that go with it. People who have watched cowboy TV series and movies like "The Naked Prey" are familiar with the archetypical primitive native who puts the cowboy or the white man through hell.

Thanks to the Native American civil rights movement in the United States and the works of human rights activists around the world, indigenous peoples in Africa, Australia, and the Americas were no longer associated with scalping and massacres. Instead, film makers went to the other extreme, portraying native peoples as passive victims of globalisation and the negative effects of the last century, as seen in Marco Bechis' film Birdwatchers (Terra Vermelha).

When Freddy Treuquil, a film director from Chile's Mapuche people organised the Native Spirit Film Festival, native film makers from around the world finally had the chance to deliver their own messages to a greater audience. Ultimately, the aim of the festival is to "to rescue the forgotten memory of respect for mother Earth".

Films in this year's festival include The Tunguska Project, about a Native Candian film maker visiting the Evenk people of Siberia, and Tainá-Kan, about how the Karajá of Brazil have drawn parallels between the origin of agriculture and events in the universe. President Evo shows the reaction of the Aymara to the land redistibution programme first implemented by Bolivia's first indigenous leader.

For many Western audiences that are accustomed to fast-paced drama and action, these films will take some getting used to. But if one is patient enough to watch these movies from start to finish, one can enjoy the fundamental messages that these films offer without dismissing them as preachy documentary style features.

For instance, The Voice of the Mapuche tells audiences how persecution from society makes our bond with the environment stronger.

Despite being aware of the dangers that modernisation bring to our world, these film directors do not demonize M.E.D.Cs (More Economically Developed Countries) and the way they have let greed guide their actions. Instead, they try to remind us what we are missing by ignoring the Earth as well as reminding us that it is up to us to find more meaning in life than consumerism.

Sources:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/nov/08/native-spirit-film-festival

http://countrystudies.us/united-states/history-133.htm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2009/sep/18/birdwatchers-brazil-amazon-tribe

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0479184/plotsummary

Visions...followed by Works

Decidedly, this is not a regular post for me. For once, I am not covering the news in the world of culture and the arts, but rather reviewing a particular website.

To begin with, the website is aimed at producing short films as a means of promoting a business through the use of videos. For instance, short films in the form of testimonials can be used in public relations to give customers an idea of the positive effect a business organisation is having on stakeholders. Likewise, short films can be used for the human resources department in order to attract potential employees.

The use of these video clips is especially important in an age where e-commerce is taking flight and more and more business organisations bring their projects online.

From the point of view of a journalism student, and by extension, an aspiring journalist, it is especially interesting to know that testimonials are shot in the same way as TV News bulletins.

For the initiation of PruHealth (the new private medical insurance business of insurance mogul Pru), UCA Farnham's Sean Walsh managed to secure the coverage needed by the company by getting interviews with BBC TV News, ITN, CNN, CNBC, SKY News, Channel Five News and BBC24.

Sources:

http://www.visionworkstv.co.uk/index2.php

"There is as much evil in us as there is good"

Such were the words spoken by award-winning film director Michael Haneke in an interview with the Guardian.

Austrian director Michael Haneke won the Palme D'Or at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival for his movie The White Band (Das weisse Band), a film shot in black and white and rife with graphic and disturbing depictions of violence and sexuality.

Haneke has made several controversial films in the past that have shown graphic violence and sexual explicitness and many of the characters in his films are forced to make difficult choices in extreme situations. For this reason, he has built up a reputation as one of the most pessimistic of film-makers in this century. Ironically, the numbing effect of the mass media on the human mind is a theme that is commonplace in his films.

The misdeeds and the outlandishly sadistic actions of the characters in his film also serve to highlight his idea of the innate evil in human beings:

"We're all continuously guilty, even if we're not doing it intentionally to be evil. Here we are sitting in luxury hotels, living it up on the the backs of others in the third world. We all have a guilty conscience, but we do very little about it." he says to Elizabeth Day of The Guardian.

Heneke does not shy away from such topics and does not admire what he considers to be the dilution or watering down of violence in cinema and in mainstream cinema and the media:

"The truth is obscene," he said with a shrug

In his latest film, a series of violent acts are carried out by children who all have some kind of contempt for authority figures, such as the parish priest, the baron who owns the land, and the head of every family. The children who carry out those acts of sadism become the Nazi generation whose minds are so weakened that they cling to Nazi ideology because it offers answers to these confused children.

"In places where people are suffering, they become very receptive to ideology because they're looking for something to clutch hold of, a straw that will take them out of that misery.

The less intelligent I am, the more easily I follow someone who is going to give me the answers."

Haneke's stark cinematography has led critics to say that his films glamorise violence, while he points out that there is more violence on television than in his work. Furthermore, he insisted:

"Art is there to have a stimulating effect, if it earns its name. You have to be honest, that's the only thing."

He does not deny his responsibility as a film-maker to entertain, although he finds it hard to live up to this responsibility when his audience "can only be entertained by distraction or by stupidities."
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Where do you find yourself agreeing with him? And where does he seem to be exaggerating? Does his undying belief in authenticity really justify the content of his films? I leave that to you to decide, everyone.

Until next time,

Journo-SEAL

Sources:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1149362/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/oct/25/interview-michael-haneke-white-ribbon

Pirates of the...Music World?

A group of like-minded individuals forming their own political movements to bring about change in ways that existing political parties cannot is nothing out of the ordinary. The individuals in question could be striving to save the earth, improve and protect human rights, or simply to bring freedom to the downtrodden.

Or...to do away with copyright laws and legalise music file sharing.

Swedish national Rick Falkvinge founded a political party known as the Pirate Party four years ago following a government raid on illegal peer-to-peer file sharing. The party aims to make file-sharing legal and to abolish copyright laws, sparking an outcry from officials in the music industry and several musicians.

Mr. Falkvinge was invited to the In The City music industry forum in Manchester, only to arouse fiery criticisms:

"Burn him at the stake" said one of the delegates present at the conference.

Yvette Livesey, organiser of the conference, has had her share of criticism for inviting Mr. Falkvinge to the event. However, she has her reasons for doing so:

"I think it is important to have these debates. If we'd had these debates 10 years ago, perhaps we wouldn't be in the position we are in now in the music industry," she said.

The closing down of the Swedish service The Pirate Bay and the subsequent arrest and incarceration of its founders on April 17th, 2009 has boosted already growing support for the party. The Pirate Party received 7% of Sweden's total vote at the European election in June, and 13% of German voters voted for the German Pirate Party. The movement has now spread to 32 different countries, although not all of them are formally connected.

If the Party should gain power and start winning seats in parliaments around the world, it could spell doom for workers in the creative industry. By manipulating or even abolishing existing copyright laws, performing artists, writers, and record labels will no longer be entitled to profit from their efforts.

According to Mr. Falkvinge, the creative industry is not feasible in economic terms:

"In economic terms, there is an enormous oversupply of people wanting to live off creativity, so there isn't enough demand to pay everybody.

In such an occasion, market forces dictate that there will only be so many successful creators."

Not surprisingly, artists such as James Blunt and Lily Allen have rallied against this movement.

Are adherents of the Pirate Party campaigners hoping to make the music world a better place?

Or are they freeloaders who are depriving creative artists the chance to fulfil their dreams simply because there is no demand in the economy for creativity?

I leave that for you to decide, friends.

Yours,

Journo-SEAL (Eric Alexandre Lafif)

Sources:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8314620.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8003799.stm