“The grandmother of French New Wave cinema” talks with LA Review of Books producer Michael Kurcfeld about her 1962 photograph series and film on Cuba, along with her views on filmmaking and the recent terrorist attacks in Paris. Shot at her home/studio in Paris in Nov 2015.
Granma 71
Agnes Varda’s Cuban Memory
Agnes Varda’s Cuban Memory
From April 29 to June 10, a hundred images of Agnes Varda can be seen by Cubans at the National Museum of Fine Arts in an exhibition that accompanies the 20th French Film Festival in Cuba. French Film Festival in Cuba
Author: Pedro de la Hoz | pedro@granma.cu
April 26, 2017 21:04:16
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
Benny Moré captured by Agnes Varda.
Agnes Varda arrived in Havana in the last weeks of 1962. She did not shrink from the recent events that had kept the world on edge, with the Island at the center of one of the most critical episodes of the Cold War, the missile crisis and the danger of nuclear war.
Shortly before, she married Jacques Demy, in his second marriage. He was two years away from becoming a famous filmmaker with the musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. She, of Belgian origin but French by adoption, had debuted on the big screen with the film La Pointe Courte in 1954, which dealt with the relationships of a couple in a fishing village from which she took the name of the work, and appeared as one of the most disturbing personalities of the so-called nouvelle vague (new wave) since the 1961 release of Cleo de 5 a 7, a sensitive reflection on the boundaries between life and death.
Since she traveled without a film crew, Varda chose to record reality with a small Leica camera and ordinary black-and-white film. She wanted to know what was happening in the streets of the city, among people she loved, laughed, danced, and did not stop to philosophize amid challenges and tensions arising from a revolution threatened by a powerful neighbor.
She was not an improvised photographer. In the early 1950s, after studying Art History, she worked as such for none other than the National Popular Theatre of Paris, directed by Jean Vilar.
But the idea of portraying Cubans did not mean for her to return to the field of photography, but to use the images in a film. In February 1963, she revealed her purpose in an interview published in La Gaceta de la Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba: “I’ve been struck by how much people move and how they move, and I want to give you an idea about that. But I am going to express it with an opposite procedure: by means of fixed photos, which I will then animate based on the intermediate movements. Thus was born Saludos, cubanos (Salut les Cubains), which premiered in 1964.
In the winter of 2015, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris asked the mythical filmmaker – at that time she was revered for La felicidad (1965), Daguerrotipos (1975), Sin techo ni ley (1985, winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival) and Jacquot de Nantes (1991) and had just become the first woman to be awarded the Palme d’Honneur in Cannes – to collect the Havana photos for the first time.
She thought that the curatorship would opt for other images, for example, according to her words “a portrait of Salvador Dalí, another of Eugene Ionesco or things from the Europe of the 50s and 60s, considering that Cuban photographs were never conceived to be exhibited”.
Varda/Cuba was a rediscovery. There were Fidel Castro, smiling despite the fact that when the photographer found him she asked him not to smile; those who had learned to read from the 1961 national literacy campaign who later decided to train as teachers, cane cutter volunteers, teenage loves, and children’s games.
That’s where the great Benny Moré appeared, with his unbeatable singer’s stamp even when he knew he had been wounded to death, and a very young Sara Gómez, dancing a cha cha chá dressed as a militia member for the days when she dreamed of being the first Cuban filmmaker.
From Saturday, April 29 to June 10, Cubans can see a hundred of Varda’s images. The National Museum of Fine Arts will display them in an exhibition that accompanies the 20th French Film Festival in Cuba.
Some will succumb to nostalgia. Others will not, because they will see in that graphic testimony, more than an unrepeatable moment, the trace of what was carved in time, of a resistant spirit.
http://www.granma.cu/cultura/2017-04-26/memoria-cubana-de-agnes-varda-26-04-2017-21-04-16
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Published on Jan 28, 2016
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Agnes Varda’s Benny More video.
The eight years of “spring”
The eight years of “spring”
Libya is a very clear exponent of what U.S. military intervention has left the world.
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A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
Libya devastated by endless conflict. Photo: Sputnik
In 2011, the Middle East underwent a reconfiguration of its political map through protests stimulated from outside, and interventions disguised as aid. This series of events went down in history as the “Arab Spring”. However, the similarity with the word that refers to one of the most festive seasons of the year is only in nomenclature, as this geographical region has since been plagued by continuous internal crises, resulting in a climate of permanent instability.
In this situation lives Libya, a nation that for four decades had traveled paths of stability and progress under the hand of President Muammar Gaddafi, a leader who promoted social and economic development in this North African country.
What happened? An accurate formula of manipulation, lies and “humanitarian intervention” designed by the US government and supported by the European Union (EU) was applied against Libya, which sounds suspiciously familiar to the situation facing the Venezuelan people today.
The opposition forces were armed to fight Libya’s army, a conflict was constructed in the media that, it is known, had as real scenario of development film and television studios, hired extras, stuffing extras, where battles, massacres, bombardments were filmed, in the best style of Hollywood cinema. Through this, they manufactured the necessary pretext that “justified” the intervention of the US-NATO duo, under the pretext of “preserving human lives”.
Invented bloggers emerged, supposedly writing from Tripoli about events in real time, but months after the end of the staging it became known that the vast majority of that “citizen journalism” was made thousands of miles away from Libyan land, from comfortable offices in London, New York or Berlin.
In order to sow chaos, the international mass media carried out a “mythification” of the Libyan president, spreading the story that he was governing through blackmail and humiliation.
This false image, paved with fake news about the execution of civilians in the confrontation between the army of Gaddafi and the militias, was amplified by the large newspapers and right-wing publications, which gave them greater validation.
All these lies responded to the simple reason that in this country there are the largest reserves of light oil in Africa and the Western oil companies wanted to take them. Also, months before, Gaddafi had urged African and Muslim countries to adopt a single currency: the gold dinar. In that way, the dollar would have been excluded, threatening the empire’s currencies.
But the truth had nothing to do with this story. The media montage combined with the actions of the US and NATO bombings not only ended the life of the Libyan leader, but also turned that nation into the failed state that it still is today.
FORTY YEARS OF PEACE
Libya was an Italian colony until the Second World War when, by agreement of powers such as Britain and France, and the United Nations, it was administered by both countries. The British ruled the destinies of the regions of Cyrenaica and Tripolitania, and the French occupied the area of El Pezzan, until 1951 when the nation achieved its independence.
However, until 1969, when Gaddafi overthrew the monarchy of King Idris, the people of that country lived in difficult conditions. They had low rates of development, as exemplified by an article entitled “Libya according to the UN and the harsh reality,” by Thierry Meyssan, a French journalist and political activist, which states, among other elements, that only 250,000 inhabitants of the 4 million total knew how to read and write.
With independence and the subsequent construction of a state characterized by social achievements, Libya reached one of the highest indices of human development and the highest nominal per capita GDP in Africa.
Several sources say that Gaddafi led his country to set an example for Africa and the Arab world by unifying the nation and creating institutions and ministries to strengthen institutionality.
The movement promoted by Gaddafi was known as “The Green Revolution”.Among its achievements were the beginning of an agrarian reform, the impulse of a social security system, putting health within the reach of all and that the profits of resources such as oil, could be really exploited by the people.
In order to achieve this objective, the Libyan government nationalized the so-called black gold industry, taking those large incomes to subsidize minimum human rights such as access to drinking water or education, which before were considered true luxuries.
The Libyan leader allowed peasants who wanted to till their own land to do so and the state helped them to do so. It also promoted housing as a right for all as well as access to electricity.
According to Telesur, loans of any kind had a zero percent interest rate and the Central Bank of Libya was a sovereign institution at the service of citizens.
Gaddafi worked for the cooperation of African countries through the African Union (AU), founded in May 2001, with the aim of finding a way to empower these countries without the intervention of Western powers.
FAREWELL TO DEMOCRACY
El País, a well-known Spanish newspaper, included in many articles the vision of a Gaddafi obsessed with power and sex. However, in 2016, five years after his physical disappearance, they had to accept and publish that Libya was living a real nightmare, where the people were the least.
An example of this is political instability. Today, Libya has up to three governments, two in the capital, competing for leadership in the west of the country, and another in Tobruk, which dominates the eastern regions and controls the main oil resources.
On the other hand, Usef Shakir, an expert on the subject, comments for Sputnik that “Libya used to be secure and stable: the state worked well, the country was developing. Years later the country is in chaos and terror. Some of its cities are still under the control of armed groups. We can deduce that Libya has degenerated from a sovereign country to a mixture of fragmented groupings.
It should be noted that since 2011 more than 5,000 people have lost their lives and almost one million have fled their homes because of fear and insecurity. Also, crude oil exports have fallen by 90% and the losses of its GDP are accounted for around 200 billion euros over the last eight years, according to figures collected by Middle East Monitor.
Women’s rights, respected during the former president’s government, are outraged without the slightest remorse. According to Amnesty International’s official website, “the ongoing conflict is particularly damaging to women, disproportionately affecting their right to freedom of movement and to participate in political and public life”.
Libya is a very clear example of what US military intervention has left the world: chaos, political instability, appropriation of resources by Western transnationals and an “oasis” where terrorist groups, local militias and others converge, in addition to being an example of human trafficking and extortion to those who arrive there in search of a quick way to Europe through the Mediterranean.
IN CONTEXT:
In January 2011 several Middle Eastern countries were shaken by revolts, uprisings, protests and covert interventions that resulted in a reconfiguration of the map of the region. These events were referred to by the West as the “Arab Spring”.
It began with the so-called Tunisian revolution, whose starting date is usually counted from the immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old young man who protested against the police, on 4 January 2011.
Behind all these uprisings soon became visible the hand of Western powers, as always, with the U.S. and France, among other countries at the forefront.
An external intelligence report, quoted by French journalist and intellectual Thierry Meyssan, said that on February 4, 2011 NATO organised in Cairo a meeting to launch the “Arab Spring” in Libya and Syria. According to the report, John McCain chaired the meeting.
SOURCE: TELESUR
New Technologies and Mental Health
Cuban Psychiatry Studies the Impact of Technologies on Mental Health
When Cuban society advances towards computerization as a priority, it turns out, in the opinion of Dr. Miriam de la Osa O´Reilly, head of the Psychiatry Service of the Hermanos Ameijeiras clinical-surgical hospital, that the theme chosen for the IX Cuban Congress of this specialty is very timely: Frontiers of Psychiatry and the Impact of New Technologies.
Author: Lisandra Fariñas Acosta | lisandra@granma.cu
14 March 2019 00:03:09
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Photo: Yaimi Ravelo
In the danger of living an excessively “connected” 21st century, and increasingly dependent on computers or cell phones, psychiatry finds new and enormous challenges, said Dr. Miriam de la Osa O´Reilly, head of the Psychiatry Service of the Hermanos Ameijeiras clinical-surgical hospital, to Granma during the first day of the 9th Cuban Congress on this specialty.
We are talking about behavioral addictions, which can range from distorting reality, showing dependence on devices to having communication and socialization problems, and even suicidal attitudes, all related to the misuse of mobile phones and different social networks on the Internet.
When Cuban society moves towards computerization as a priority, in the opinion of the specialist, the topic chosen for the appointment is very topical: Frontiers of Psychiatry and the Impact of New Technologies.
The congress, which seeks to be a space for reflection, scientific exchange and professional commitment, on a science that gains in maturity and experiences on the road to human improvement and well-being. It brings together more than 250 Cuban delegates and some twenty countries at the Havana Convention Center through Friday, March 15.
“We have tried to make the scientific program address the main problems of mental health in the population, while constituting an update on topics specific to this century. Among these are the advantages and dangers of using the Internet, but also the development of neurosciences and nanotechnology in psychiatry,” said the president of the organizing committee.
We communicate all the time, and there is a network like a highway, in which one can advance in time, distance, friends and knowledge is extraordinary. But that same goal implies, if not used properly, multiple dangers, she said.
That’s why psychiatry professionals insist, from the promotion of health and prevention of diseases, on being aware of the problems that so-called TICS can bring; an alert that involves the media and the rest of society, especially when Cuba connects more and more, insisted Dr. Osa O´Reilly.
Healthier contents should be placed in the social networks that are being created and in the existing ones. They should be directed to the well-being of people. At the same time, a critical reading of those messages that we consume daily is needed. And let’s not lose sight of what the smallest members of the household consume, she warned.
The young population is the most affected by this misuse, explained the specialist. And there are plenty of examples, ranging from nomophobia or fear of being without a mobile phone for a long time, the need to check it even when the person wakes up at dawn, to the controversial selfies, which have caused death in the search for new, exuberant places… and the construction of a virtual life in networks like Facebook, dissonant from reality and which can lead to depression.
The interviewee also mentioned other organic consequences of these addictions, such as vision disorders or orthopedic disorders, when adopting incorrect postures for a long time in front of a computer or mobile phone.
On the other hand, for Profesor de la Osa, in this technological era, the cornerstone of the specialty continues to be clinical training, she said.
Based in the capital, the 9th Cuban Congress of Psychiatry was extended in a group of pre-congress courses to the provinces of Artemisa, Santiago de Cuba and Holguín.
On the closing day this Friday, Doctor of Science Pastor Castell-Florit Serrate, director of the National School of Public Health of Cuba and president of the National Council of Scientific Health Societies, stressed that Cuba recognizes the complexity of mental health problems and their social determination, as well as the right of the population to it. In addition there’s to the provision of information and communication with patients and families, and to understanding and support until recovery and continuation of the life project.
Dr. Carmen Borrego, head of the Mental Health and Addictions section of the Ministry of Public Health, signified the high knowledge and responsibility of the professionals of this branch in Cuba, who work in a wide network of services in the country and exceed one thousand specialists.
The urgent need for a resistance front
from the left
The urgent need for a resistance front
If democratic forms of government have been subjected to the harshest tests in recent times, nowhere have they been so fiercely attacked and placed in such a serious disruption as in our America.
Author: Raúl Roa García | internet@granma.cu
November 4, 2018 22:11:08
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
“Peace is the supreme aspiration of the man who feels freedom as an imperative of conscience. Photo: Archive.
If democratic forms of government have been subjected to the harshest tests in recent times, nowhere have they been so ferociously attacked and placed in such a serious disruption as in our America. From south to north, military lodges, lords of the earth, merchants of power, wild oligarchies and big companies, in a sinister consortium, have been abolishing the fundamental freedoms of man and of the citizen, without the UN and the OAS giving them a break, The cynical adulteration of the popular will, or the violent substitution of constitutionally-elected governments by autocracies using typical totalitarian rhetoric, characterize this dramatic process, which threatens to be generalized to the whole continent.
Pseudo-Marxist fifth columnism and imperialist greed today lord it over a beam of invertebrate nations, at the mercy of unscrupulous swords, gamonales, politicians, bankers and businessmen. Scarce governments of popular roots, the majority undermined by administrative corruption, social imbalances, electoral demagoguery and colonial exploitation, complete this gloomy picture. There is no doubt that the fate of democracy is cast. The unavoidable urgency of forming a broad front of resistance to the unbridled aggressiveness of the enemies of popular liberties is obvious.
It is indisputable that the democratic conception of life, society and the state is consubstantial with the spirit and historical development of our peoples; but, no less, that conception is currently threatened by the most regressive and rapacious forces of our time.
The central question to be debated is how to galvanize the democratic regime, to the point of promoting, in the peoples, the passionate determination to defend it, at the price of life, in all contingencies and avatars. A democratic regime without economic content, without a broad social base and without the active participation of the people in the orientation of public power, is a useless piece of junk at this historic juncture of transition. There can be no room for circumlocutions or euphemisms.
The fundamental problem facing democracy at this time is how to organize society without compromising freedom. On a universal level, it is now imperative that democracy clearly distinguishes subjective rights from patrimonial rights. Questions concerning the human person can only be resolved with the “discovery and establishment of a fairer legal structure, which allows the problem to be reduced to its true terms”.
Economic rights can already exist only in function of society. No individual interest, which pretends to oppose the social interest, is legitimate. If we aspire for man to recover his “lost fertility” and to develop, to the full, his aptitudes and powers, it is indispensable to socially discipline things. The task ahead of the democratic movement is extremely complex.
In the particular case of our America, we have to count on what history has given us. In material and cultural terms, much progress has been made so far this century. Considering the process as a whole, we must agree, however, that the economic, social and administrative structure of the Latin American peoples is in need of a substantial transformation. This transformation must go hand in hand with respect for public liberties and an international policy of militant repudiation of all regimes that violate human dignity.
It should be insisted that only through clean elections, administrative honesty, public freedoms, economic welfare, social justice, diffusion of light and consolidation of sovereignty can the representative institutions in this hemisphere be saved. The opportunity is unique to provide content and historical projection to the fight against the American dictatorships.
The American states have acquired the commitment to guarantee freedom and justice to the peoples by signing the Charter of Human Rights in the UN Charter of the Rights and Duties of Man at the IX Inter-American Conference in Bogota.
Peace is the supreme aspiration of the man who feels freedom as an imperative of conscience. The role that the leaders of the working forces will play is of the first line. No one like them will be able to contribute the most urgent and effective formulas for social improvement to strengthen the democratic regime.
Nor can the problem of the industrialization of our America be uncontroversial. Increasing the economic potential of our peoples is one of the most effective means of strengthening and consolidating the democratic regime and of putting at bay the imperialists of every sign and of every bay.
The American states have made a commitment to guarantee freedom and justice to the peoples by signing the Charter of Human Rights in the UN Charter of the Rights and Duties of Man at the IX Inter-American Conference in Bogota.
Peace is the supreme aspiration of the man who feels freedom as an imperative of conscience. The role that the leaders of the working forces will play is of the first line. No one like them will be able to contribute the most urgent and effective formulas for social improvement to strengthen the democratic regime.
The problem of the industrialization of our America cannot be uncontroversial either. Increasing the economic potential of our peoples is one of the most effective means of strengthening and consolidating the democratic regime and of putting at bay the imperialists of every sign and every bay.
The way in which the most developed countries can contribute to this increase in our economic potential must be considered, in the light of this question: could governments that are representative and respectful of public liberties and those that are born of the usurpation of the will of the people and deny their governed the enjoyment of the essential rights of man and of the citizen, be placed on an equal footing with regard to this aid? Nor can the question of the recognition of de facto governments be ignored. On this matter ,there are no guidelines within the inter-American public law, nor unanimity of criteria in the chancelleries.
If democracy needs both America to overcome the deep crisis it is going through, it is essential that the policy of good neighborliness be effectively restored. After the death of Franklyn Delano Roosevelt, on many osions the “good guys have been us and the neighbors them. May the government of the people, by the people and for the people, cease to be the government in the name of the people, without the people and against the people! And may they live on an equal footing, in peace and harmony, the America of Juarez and the America of Lincoln!
(Excerpts taken from the book 15 años después [15 years later], Editorial Librería Selecta, Havana, 1950).
Iran has grown in resistance
Iran has grown in resistance
In 40 years, the Islamic Republic of Iran has resisted all kinds of compromises on the part of the United States, in the imperial eagerness to destroy the Revolution
Author: Elson Concepción Pérez | mailto:internet@granma.cu
February 11, 2019 21:02:44
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
This economic war has been imposed on us, but we will stand,” said Hasan Rohani, Iranian president. Photo: AP
In 40 years, the Islamic Republic of Iran has resisted all kinds of compromises on the part of the U.S., in the imperial eagerness to destroy the Revolution.
There have been four decades in which significant advances have been made as a guarantee that its project looks towards the present and future, from the economic, scientific and peaceful nuclear development, among other achievements.
That February 11, 1979, the founder of the Islamic Republic, Imam Khomeini, who had returned to the Persian country after 15 years in exile in Iraq, Turkey and France, became the leader of his nation until his death in 1989.
According to Ayatollah Ahmad Yanathi, the current president of the Assembly of Experts, “Khomeini succeeded in restoring the dignity of Islam and taught the population to fight against the humiliation of the West.
History recalls that, in 1951, Iran managed to establish the first democratically elected government and as leader held the post of Prime Minister, Mohamad Mosadeq, who nationalized the country’s oil industry.
Two years later, in 1953, the U.S. and British intelligence services staged a coup d’état and wiped out the popular government of the time and entrenched Mohamad Reza Pahlavi in power.
Today, the same enemy of that time – the governments of the United States and its ally Israel as a spearhead – maintains and increases the threats against the country and applies more and more economic sanctions with the aim of surrendering to the population.
An unprecedented and very characteristic event of the current US administration of Donald Trump was the unilateral break with the Nuclear Agreement signed by Iran and five other powers in 2015, considered one of the greatest achievements in international relations in recent decades.
In that imperial greed that takes no account of the people at all, National Security Advisor John Bolton assured last year that Iran would not celebrate the 40th anniversary of its Revolution, frankly threatening to reverse that nation’s revolutionary process.
The Islamic Republic of Iran, whose project in all orders has its vision in the autonomous development of the different fronts, including the military, exhibited during these days of celebration a long-range missile with a radius of 1 350 kilometers.
The Iranian Ministry of Defense presented the new cruise missile called Hoveize, manufactured locally and successfully tested, according to the ISNA news agency. The authorities claim that their missiles are only defensive and deterrent.
According to Hispantv, with the victory of the Islamic Revolution, Iran designed great objectives such as economic independence, self-sufficiency, the creation of jobs and a standard of living for its citizens.
Among its achievements is the significant reduction of poverty in the country. In 1977, according to the World Bank, 46% of Iranians lived below the poverty line. This figure dropped to 8% in 2015, according to a World Economic Forum report.
Although Iran is ranked among the developing countries, it has made great strides in aerospace, becoming one of the pioneers in the field. In 2009, it launched its first home-made satellite, Omid, to join the small club of nine countries with such capacity.
Its scientific achievements also stand out in biotechnology. Genetic engineers have started important research in recent years, which has resulted in the production and export of dozens of biomedicines.
Iran is among the top ten countries in the world in stem cell research and technology. It has recorded great successes in animal cloning. It has also excelled in bone marrow transplantation, occupying the second position on the planet, after Italy, reported Hispantv.
The Persian country, undoubtedly, has made resistance a major reason, first to defeat their enemies and then to develop the people and make the nation self-sustainable.
An example of these days is the decision of Iran and Russia to use their national currencies in reciprocal exchange, which implies dispensing with the U.S. dollar.
Cuban doctors left in Brazil without a job
Cuban doctors left in Brazil without a job
The reality of the doctors who decided to stay in that South American nation is that they can no longer exercise their profession after the end of the More Doctors program.
February 5, 2019.
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
Bolsonaro fails with his supposed promise. photo: reuters
Faced with the attempt by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to sully the work and honor of the Cuban doctors working in the More Doctors program, Cuba responded with customary dignity. The Ministry of Public Health announced the withdrawal of our doctors.
The decision implied the return to Cuba of the more than 8,000 doctors working in Brazil on the program that began in August 2013.
Since his election in October 2018, Bolsonaro repeatedly attacked Cuba and the More Doctors program.
In addition to repeating his questioning of the quality and training of Cuban professionals and requiring them to carry out an examination to revalidate their degrees. Bolsonaro was thus undertaking it against the PAHO-Brazil-Cuba agreements.
Of the 8,332 professionals who were in Brazil, the majority decided to return to the Island, the dignified gesture of the Cuban doctors awakened the admiration of the world and made visible once again the validity of the internationalist character of the Cuban Revolution.
But what has been the fate of the Cuban doctors who stayed in Brazil?
A paper published by EFE on February 3 describes the desperate situation in which Cuban doctors find themselves in the face of unfulfilled promises and the latent reality of a system that is not interested in the health of the poorest and that used them as a disposable tool in the machinery of manufacturing lies and manipulation.
According to EFE, from Sao Paulo, Brazil, the doctors who did not return to the island after the end of the More Doctors program can no longer practice their profession in the South American country.
Some of those who stayed were granted the status of “refugees”, so as not to lose their status as residents and be able to obtain a job portfolio, “a procedure that takes time while they do not receive any income”.
The hope of re-entering Más Médicos as a way to obtain the necessary employment is fading, “to achieve this they must wait at the end of a long line, because the competition launched by the government to fill the vacancies made Brazilian doctors a priority.
Initial applications surpassed the number of vacancies, 8,517, but there are some 800 not filled because “some of the Brazilian doctors chosen gave up their positions because they were in areas that were difficult to access or lacked resources.
Meanwhile, the Cuban doctors who remained in Brazil are trying to obtain one of the 800 places, as soon as they have the right to access the competition, a possibility that has been delayed time and time again.
Getting a job in “anything” becomes the only possibility, the other is waiting for a revalidation exam to be held in order to compete in the labor market on equal terms with Brazilians, but the bad news is that since 2017 there are no exams, it can take years for one to be called.
Vertigo in its place
Vertigo in its place
Among the list of artistic works that at the time were misunderstood and even ignored, Vertigo, the film by Hitchcock, classifies as a case worthy of study.
Kim Novak and James Stewart in Vertigo. Photo: Movie still
Author: Rolando Pérez Betancourt | internet@granma.cu
January 25, 2019 21:01:41
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
Among the list of artistic works that at the time were misunderstood and even ignored, Vertigo, the film by Hitchcock, classifies as a case worthy of study.
Last December, the film’s 60th anniversary was celebrated with great fanfare, and Kim Novak, the leading actress, she retired from a ranch in Oregon in her retirement ranch in Oregon.. From there she didn’t go out even to look for gold nuggets in a cinematographic world that, in the 50s and 60s of the last century, had kissed her feet. She was, however invited to participate in the 2014 Oscar ceremony, a sort of tribute, she believed, like the one offered at the Cannes Film Festival.
Just a few minutes on the stage of the so-called Mecca of cinema that cost her the most bloody jokes and mockery in various media, because of the plastic surgery that made the two characters she played in Vertigo, at 25 years of age, look very remote.
Television and social networks were filled with images of the actress and comments, such as those leaked by Donald Trump, who was not president at the time, although he had already given signs of what Twitter unleashed would become in his hands: “Kim should sue her cosmetic surgeon,” wrote the magnate.
Before returning to her ranch, Novak defended herself on Facebook: “…I’m not going to shut up in front of tyrants. You can’t let people destroy your life. You have to stand up against them.¨
Known for not giving interviews, the actress agreed a month ago to a request from an AP journalist. The pretext was impossible to ignore. Vertigo, the film that launched her career, was 60 years old and in 2012 had moved from first place in the preference of critics and historians over the mythical Citizen Kane, after 50 years of the film of Orson Welles reigning in the polls conducted by the prestigious British magazine Sight and Sound.
An ascent in which the indisputable quality of the film mediated, unusual for the Hollywood of the 50s, the love story marked by the obsession of a man (James Stewart) who intends to resurrect the woman who fascinated him, and the unparalleled performance of Kim Novak (beautiful and sensual, but nothing outstanding until then in the field of acting).
It´s producers weren´t enthusiastic, and so it competed without pain or glory at the 1958 San Sebastian Festival, it was considered below Psycho and other Hitchcock films. However, step by step it opened the way to the reign of myths thanks to its values, and also to the music of Bernard Herrmann. It´s a film that today – dozens of books and studies conceived in its favor – is considered one of the most significant in the history of cinema.
In the AP interview, Kim Novak revealed that she identified so much with the character In Vertigo because it was exactly what Hollywood was trying to do with her: turn her into what she wasn’t (another platinum blonde who competed with Marilyn Monroe and was a worthy successor to Rita Hayworth).
It is known from François Truffaut’s famous interview with the suspense magician, that Hitchcock insisted Novak had not been well on her role, to which the Frenchman responded categorically that Vertigo was she. And he didn’t lack reasons, especially when you consider that the actress played two totally different characters. However, when referring now to Hitchcock, Kim Novak has words of praise for the director who, according to Tippi Hedren (The Birds, Marnie), was nuts about blondes and sexually harassed her to the point of threatening to ruin her career.
Also with Kim Novak?
He never behaved that way with me, she responded sharply. And she added: “Others did. And, although she didn’t offer names, she said that the reports of harassment and sexual assault that flourish in Hollywood today were always like that, only now they have lost their fear and are beginning to talk.
The passionate mission of continuing to invent our own model of socialism
The passionate mission of continuing to invent our own model of socialism
Cuba will live a moment of great expectation, on February 24th, when it submits the new Constitution to a referendum.
Author: Ariel Terrero | internet@granma.cu
January 24, 2019 21:01:43
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
CAPTION: The participation of workers in the planning, regulation, management and control of the economy is a key to ensuring effective decentralization. Photo: Freddy Pérez Cabrera
Cuba will live a moment of great expectations, when, on February 24 it submits the new Constitution to a referendum.This is logical, after creating these expectations among the discussions in nation as a whole, seasoned with the controversial passion that identifies Cuba. But I don’t believe that the conquest of votes is the most thorny challenge posed by the Law of Laws. Not by a long shot. The big challenge comes later.
Society and its institutions will have to legislate and implement the changes and ordinances assumed under the new Constitution. They are not a few. The complex goals it proposes, to broaden the transformations of the economic, social and political model of Cuban socialism, and to deepen the process of its updating…, which has not advanced at the speed that we Cubans dreamed of when we began it more than a decade ago.
The great challenge will come with legistion, which must be much more intense than what has been achieved so far. This is so that the other branches of the legal system start from the foundation of the Magna Carta. One of those branches is the law on companies, which has not yet seen the light of day although it was promised for 2017. It is fundamental to give solidity to a scenario that bets on the coexistence between multiple economic actors, who begin to discover the benefit of alliances between presumed antagonists – in tourism and agro-industries there have been successful experiences.
Several chapters in the new law point to a reordering of government and business administration structures. These favors a more radical decentralization of this country, accustomed for decades to a rigid verticality of economic and government organizations. Perhaps the most daring change is the redesign of territorial structures to give greater prominence to municipal administrations and local development management.
The Constitution also bases the path towards an economy on a diversity of forms of ownership. State enterprise, the main actor of the socialist economy, will share legal and legitimate space with cooperatives, mixed forms and private entities, among others.
The great challenge will not be so much the acceptance of that diversity or the liberation from the cursed aura of words such as private and market. The idea that non-state forms are also a vital link in the chain of production, services and the market has gained social consensus. This aspiration, however, stumbles in an environment lacking optimal conditions for the coexistence of dissimilar forms of property.
More important and difficult than the entry of private companies into the scenario is the granting of autonomy to state-owned companies, which is proposed in Article 26 of the new Magna Carta. Although State business organizations have advanced along this path, they still carry insufficiencies that, together with financial deformations such as the monetary and exchange duality and other trade anomalies, place these entities at a disadvantage compared to non-state rivals.
With better wages and fewer bureaucratic and financial ties, cooperatives and private companies come out on the market under better conditions than state forms. In contrast, these are left with advantages to access technologies, wholesale offers and resources from external markets, but they do not manage to take advantage of them in all their dimension due to the confluence of economic limitations, clumsy interpretations of planning and the subjection to a Cuban currency overvalued at the official exchange rate, among other obstacles.
To which side would the teeter-totter of property forms be inclined in this context? Difficult answer. Risk can inhibit central decisions and state disadvantage would then threaten non-state expansion, especially for small and medium-sized private enterprises that have entered the Cuban economy with a mask of cooperatives or self-employed workers.
The participation of workers in the planning, regulation, management and control of the economy, which was symbolically incorporated with popular debate into the constitutional project, constitutes an old aspiration of society and is a key to guaranteeing effective decentralization into enterprises and budgeted units of the State.
Official Biography of Spanish President
Official Biography of H.E. Mr. Pedro Sánchez Pérez-Castejón, President of the Government of the Kingdom of Spain
He served as a Member of Congress for the Madrid constituency and Councillor in the Madrid City Council and was leader of the opposition and candidate for the Presidency of the Government between 2014 and 2016.
Author: Granma | internet@granma.cu
November 21, 2018 20:11:30
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
Photo: Taken from Internet.
He studied Secondary Education at the Instituto Ramiro de Maeztu in Madrid, where he played in the basketball club Estudiantes.
In 1995 he graduated in Economics and Business Studies from the Real Colegio Universitario María Cristina, a centre attached to the Complutense University of Madrid.
He holds a Master’s Degree in Economics from the European Union at the Free University of Brussels and a Master’s Degree in Advanced Studies in European Economic and Monetary Integration from the Ortega y Gasset University Institute.
In 2012 he received his PhD in Economics from the Camilo José Cela University, where he taught Economics.
He worked as an advisor in the European Parliament. He was a member of the cabinet of the High Representative of the United Nations in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In 1993 he joined the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), of which he is its Secretary General.
He was a deputy in the Congress for the district of Madrid and Councillor in the City Council of Madrid.
He was leader of the opposition and candidate for the Presidency of the Government between 2014 and 2016.
He has been President of the Spanish Government since June 2018.
Married and father of two daughters.
Vigil Continues In U.S.
Vigil Continues In U.S. In Honor Of Synagogue Massacre Victims
October 29, 2018.
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
Several U.S. cities were the scene yesterday of vigils in honor of the victims of last Saturday’s mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where 11 people died and six were injured. Several Jewish organizations and interfaith groups held a service at the Adas Israel synagogue on Monday afternoon with the participation of the mayor of Washington, Muriel Bowser; and the governors of the neighboring states of Virginia, Ralph Northam; and Maryland, Larry Hogan. Other religious congregations, such as Temple De Hirsch Sinai and the Jewish Family Service, also organized a prayer service at their Capitol Hill shrine. (PL)