HAPPY HIPPO!

L. is back to Ballet after 14 years... this is how she feels - A HAPPY HIPPO!!! :)

Lemon Tree - by Eran Riklis

The Lemon Tree won the award for Best Film at the Berlin International Film Festival.

Synopsis from the official website:
Salma, a Palestinian widow, has to stand up against her new neighbor, the Israeli Defense Minister, when he moves into hisnew house opposite her lemon grove, on the green line border between Israel and the West Bank. The Israeli security forces are quick to declare that Salma‘s trees pose a threat to the Minister’s safety and issue orders to uproot them. Together with Ziad Daud, her young Palestinian lawyer, Salma goes all the way to the Israeli Supreme Court to try and save her trees.
Her struggle raises the interest of Mira Navon, the Defense minister’s wife, who is trapped in her new home and in an unhappy life. Despite their differences and the borders between them the two women develop an invisible bond, while forbidden ties grow stronger between Salma and Ziad. Salma’s legal and personal journey lead her deep into the complex, dark and sometimes funny chaos of the ongoing struggle in the Middle East, in which all players find themselves alone in their struggle to survive.

My rating: **** - Very good film, beautiful photography, the political side gives way to the simple ideas of the human relationships. I definitely recommend it. Although I thought the romantic story created within it between Salma and the laywer was not necessary.

Dina: Amor de Agua Fresca (Love of Fresh Water)

This music is a classic of portuguese 90's culture. It was sung by Dina in 1992 for the portuguese representation in the Eurofestival. I think everyone that was around still knows the lyrics by heart! I had arrived in Lisbon 6 months before and I must say I learned my portuguese accent with Dina's help! hahaha!
The lyrics are just the most absurd ones, but in a way it just stuck!
Enjoy it!




LYRICS:
Translation to english is beneath each verse, so that everyone can grasp the intensity of the lyrics...

Quando eu vi olhos de ameixa e a boca de amora silvestre
Tanto mel, tanto sol, nessa tua madeixa, perfil sumarento e agreste
(When I saw the plum eyes and the blackberry mouth.
So much honey, so much sun, on your hairlock, juicy and rustic profile)

Foi a certeza que eras tu, o meu doce de uva
E nós sobre a mesa, o amor de morango e cajú
(It was the certainty that it was you, my grape jam
And us on the table, the strawberry and cashew love)

Peguei, trinquei e meti-te na cesta, ris e dás-me a volta à cabeça
Vem cá tenho sede, quero o teu amor d'água fresca
Peguei, trinquei e meti-te na cesta, ris e dás-me a volta à cabeça
Vem cá tenho sede, quero o teu amor d'água fresca, ohoh...
(Got it, Bit it and put you in the basket, you laugh and my head goes round
Come here, I'm thirsty I want your love of fresh water... ohohoh)

Tens na pele travo a laranja e no beijo três gomos de riso
Tanto mel, tanto sol, fruta, sumo, água fresca, provei e perdi o juízo
(On your skin you have orange smell and in the kiss three slices of laughter
So much honey, so much sun, fruit, juice, fresh water, I tasted and lost my mind)

Foi na manhã acesa em ti, abacate, abrunho
E a pêra francesa, romã, framboesa, kiwi
(It was on the lit morning within you, avocado, ???
And the french pear, pomegranate , raspberry, kiwi)

Peguei, trinquei e meti-te na cesta, ris e dás-me a volta à cabeça
Vem cá tenho sede, quero o teu amor d'água fresca
Peguei, trinquei e meti-te na cesta, ris e dás-me a volta à cabeça
Vem... vem... vem cá, tenho sede, quero o teu amor d'água fresca

Ah... foi na manhã acesa em ti, abacate, abrunho
E a pêra francesa, romã, framboesa, kiwi

Peguei, trinquei e meti-te na cesta, ris e dás-me a volta à cabeça
Vem cá, tenho sede, quero o teu amor d'água fresca
Peguei, trinquei e meti-te na cesta, ris e dás-me a volta à cabeça
Vem cá, tenho sede, quero o teu amor d'água fresca

Peguei, trinquei e meti-te na cesta

My TAP plane from Lisbon to London arrived ahead of time today... so we had to fly around up there for aprox. 15 min.
I knew there were quite a lot of airplanes arriving in Heathrow at a time... but it's really amazing to see it from up there! There were so many of us just flying around, it resembled a flock of birds waiting to get fed! The sun was coming down and the sight of this all was just surreal! We do live in an era where everyone is flying around - just like the Jetsons family!


Anyway... when we finally landed, the plane turned right and as I looked through my window I could see all the other planes coming down in such an organized manner... one after the other, one could see only the lights, that went from the runaway up to the sky! Beautiful! I wish I could have photographed it!

Photos from the attacks on Gaza - NYTimes

Salvem os ricos (contemporâneos)

Em tempos de crise uma musiquinha natalicia para nos animar!
MERRY XMAS TO ALL!!!

Frequency and Volume meets Babel

For its eighth Curve Art commission, the Barbican Art Gallery has invited the artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. The artist has taken over the awkward curved space and created the installation Frequency and Volume.

When entering the curve, there is a ninety-metre long interactive installation. Walking through this installation, ones own body becomes the instrument of tuning and volume for each of the 48 radios that Lozano-Hemmer has incorporated into this complex, computerized system of broadcasting. “Without the public, the pieces cannot unfold”, said the artist. Each step gives way to a different frequency – music, news, white noise. At the same time the viewer’s shadow is being projected on the gallery’s wall, working as the volume setter for the radios - the closest to the wall the higher the sound.

Being there twice on different days I had two completely different experiences. One was a quiet introspective walk through the installation, where it was my choice what to hear, where to stop, how to manage the work. On the other hand, experiencing it on a Sunday packed with people, it was like being in a shadow theatre, there was no control whatsoever of people’s movements and the cacophony in the installation was unbearable – in some way it felt as being in Babel.

Not far from the Barbican, just across the Millennium Bridge in Tate Modern’s far West End, is currently the exhibition of Brazilian artist Cildo Meireles. Standing tall in a corner room is the impressive five-metre tower built of radios, Babel. The base is made of very old radios that could probably belong to our great grandfather’s collection, the rest of the tower is completed by a wide variety of all kinds of radios. The artist found them in flea markets around Brazil. The room is lit in a very celestial blue, a tone that doesn’t exist in real life. The radios are all turned on, each one in is tuned in a different frequency and their dials produce innumerous points of light throughout the room. It varies from pop music, to news broadcast, to sometimes only the white noise of an untuned radio. Coming into the room, its title’s analogy is completely obvious. It could be the real thing.

Two different artists, from two different backgrounds, working under two different medias that speak to the public in two very different ways, end up creating, for the viewer, a thin line of concurrence.

Although having a 30-year gap between their making, both the works equally appeal to a sense of liberty and freedom over the political order, something that in many ways has remained immutable. They equally criticize the amount of information that is sent out through the media and the chaos this creates in everyday life.

Meireles builds a symbolic monumental tower that comes as a conduit for so many critiques of society; at the same time, Lozano-Hemmer describes himself as a designer of anti-monuments that are critiques to the fetish of power representation. Be it coincidence or paradox, there is without doubt an encounter between both installations.