Proiezione fotogafica: BLEEDING BLOSSOMS di Shades of Women

L'associazione Shades of Women propone per il secondo anno una interessante serie di proiezioni di reportage di fotografe in giro per il mondo, a documentare il dramma di molti popoli in guerra. Puoi leggere qui un'intervista con Ilaria Prili, fotografa ed organizzatrice di questa serie di eventi.

Nadia Shira Cohen - Arab spring
Her personal website is www.nadiashiracohen.com

Rena Effendi - Georgia conflict
Her personal website is www.refendi.com

Simona Ghizzoni - Just to let you know that I’m alive
She works for Contrasto.

Sofie Amalie Klougart - Going to war.
Her personal website is www.sofieamalieklougart.dk

Benedicte Kurzen - Nigeria, a nation lost to the gods.
Her personal website is http://benedictekurzen.com

Ilvy Njiokiktjien and Elles van Gelder - Afrikaner blood.
Her personal website is http://www.imagesbyilvy.com

Lana Slezic - Forsaken
Her personal website is http://www.lanaslezic.com

Here is a link to the next event of this series that I attended.

Interessantissima proiezione di drammatici documentari di guerra e rivoluzione al Teatro Due di Roma, in Vicolo due Macelli. Sala piena, fotografia di alto livello. Da consigliare la prossima proiezione del 5 novembre.

Teatro Due Roma

teatro stabile d’essai

Vicolo due Macelli, 37 (M Piazza di Spagna)

Tel. 06/6788.259 – fax 06/6793.349

www.teatrodueroma.it

teatrodueroma@virgilio.it

info@shadesofwomen.it

www.facebook.com/shadesofwomen

Film review: Lust, Caution (2007) by Ang Lee, ****

Synopsis

After Brokeback Mountain andThe Hulk, multitalented director Ang Lee returns to Asia with this Mandarin-language erotic drama. Lust, Caution pairs celebrated actor Tony Leung (2046) with gifted newcomer Tang Wei. In 1938, China is occupied by the Japanese, but it's not only the country's neighbours who are hated by the loyal Chinese. The nation's resistance also centres on those who willingly collaborate with Japan. Wong Chia Chi (Tang Wei) is part of an acting group, but their sights are set beyond the stage: they want to use their abilities to attack Mr. Yee (Leung), a known traitor. Wong poses as a businessman's wife, and she begins to lure Mr. Yee in, but they're separated before she has her chance. Three years later, they meet again in Shanghai, and a heated affair begins. As Wong grows closer to Mr. Yee, there is doubt that she can aid in her lover's downfall.

At times, Lust, Caution evokes memories of Wong Kar-Wai's In the Mood for Love. Both are heat-filled period films that feature Leung, but while the earlier picture focused on a love that was never consummated, Lust, Caution allows its lovers to realise their passion as often as one could imagine. Despite this, it never allows the sex to get in the way of the plot or the images. Director of photography Rodrigo Prieto has worked with directors as diverse and impressive as Oliver Stone, Julie Taymor, Spike Lee, and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, and he continues this fine tradition with his second pairing with Lee after Brokeback Mountain. Here Prieto has a head start thanks to beautiful costumes and beautiful people, but this is another film that is simply gorgeous to look at.

Book review/Recensione: Non dire nulla (2012), di Paola Viola, *****

Review

Paola Viola spent a few months in Kenya for an NGO (Una Mano per un Sorriso - For Children). Paola started taking pictures not so long ago, but in this first collection of B&W images she displays rare talent and high sensitivity. Paola tells us about the daily life of a part of Kenya that tourists never see, and that we should all know. From her trip, she takes back strong emotions, which she relays to us through her pictures and her short text in English and Italian.


Recensione

Paola Viola ha passato alcuni mesi in Kenya per conto di una ONLUS (Una Mano per un Sorriso - For Children). Paola non fotografa da molto tempo, ma questa prima collezione di immagini (tutte in bianco e nero) dimostra un talento innato ed una spiccata sensibilità. Paola racconta la vita di tutti i giorni di una parte del Kenya che i turisti non vedono mai, ma che dovremmo tutti conoscere. Ciò che ci riporta dal suo soggiorno, con le immagini forti ma anche con brevi e puntuali testi di accompagnamento, sono emozioni preziose.

Compra il libro su Amazon.it

Book review: Andrew Zimmern visits Taiwan (2009) by Andrew Zimmern, *

making dim sum in a Taipei restaurant

Synopsis

One chapter of a book about the author traveling around the world to try different foods. This chapter is about Taiwan, or so I thought when I bought it. In reality only half of it is about Taiwan and then only about dim sum.


Review


Disappointing. I bought it to learn about food in Taiwan, and all you get is one restaurant in Taipei he visited. One that is in all the guidebooks and that just about any foreign tourist will probably end up trying. I did too. It was very good, but did not need this audio-book. Anyway, the first half of the piece is about the author's food experiences trying Chinese food in New York!

Look elsewhere if you are interested in finding out more about Taiwanese food. Which, by the way, is absolutely excellent, possibly the best Chinese food in the world. Perhaps because in mainland China the rich traditions of Chinese food were repressed for decades during Maoism, though they are obviously nurtured again to their full, amazing variety.

You can buy this chapter about Taiwan as an audio-book or the whole book by clicking below.

making dim sum in a Taipei restaurant

Book review: The Dark Tourist (2010), by Dom Joly, ***

Sinister looking WW I artillery on Monte Grappa

Synopsis

'Dark tourism is the act of travel and visitation to sites, attractions and exhibitions which have real or recreated death, suffering or the seemingly macabre as a main theme'

Ever since he can remember, Dom Joly has been fascinated by travel to odd places. In part this stems from a childhood spent in war-torn Lebanon, where instead of swapping marbles in the schoolyard, he had a shrapnel collection -- the schoolboy currency of Beirut. Dom's upbringing was interspersed with terrifying days and nights spent hunkered in the family basement under Syrian rocket attack or coming across a pile of severed heads from a sectarian execution in the pine forests near his home.

These early experiences left Dom with a profound loathing for the sanitized experiences of the modern day travel industry and a taste for the darkest of places. The more insalubrious the place, the more interesting is the journey and so we follow Dom as he skis in Iran on segregated slopes, picnics in the Syrian Desert with a trigger-happy government minder and fires rocket propelled grenades at live cows in Cambodia (he missed on purpose, he just couldn't do it).