22nd September Day 2 San Sebastian Film Festival
Written September 25. 2006 in
Uncategorized22nd September
I was just going to Volver when we last met. Volver is a film that brings back images of “Arsenic and Old lace” it takes place in a Madrid that is a colorfully expressive of its rich diversity of immigrants from the different Spanish regions. Underlying the film is a social framework built on three generations of women all with dark secrets but expressed through warmth in their everyday life
Underlying the film is a social framework built on three generations of women all with dark secrets but expressed through warmth in their everyday life. Penelope Cruz seems to radiate even when struck by enormous adversity.
I am not a great Brad Pitt fan although I do enjoy his movies they tend to be superficial. It was only after I attended the press conference for Babel, and heard the comments from members of the press, that I decided to stay up to midnight to watch the next performance of what I can only say was a breathtaking film. Four stories linked by a Winchester rifle and a single incident on three continents.
Brad played a fifty year old man and trying to address problems in his marriage gave a performance that must make him think about becoming more of a serious actor. I would have to say that Yuriko Kikuchi’s as a deaf Japanese teenager was stunning. While here the press and film circus is discovering why San Sebastian is one of the places people come back to. The Observer newspaper in the UK published an article last year “Is San Sebastian the nest place to eat in Europe?” a bold statement to be made of any place and particularly a place this close to the French boarder…. John Carlin who visited he had “formed the opinion that you could spend your entire life trying – and failing – to find a place where they would serve you less than delicious piece of food.” I have to say I agree with him having lived here for nearly two years Gabriella Ranelli reflects that ‘the secret is that they approach their food with so much mimo. Mimo is what you do with babies you love it means to cherish but also to pamper.’ (http://observer.guardian.co.uk/foodmonthly/story/0,,1433609,00.html )
Day two of the festival starts with the announcement in the United States of a $2.1 billion contract to Boeing to provide tracking sensors and communications equipment allowing border patrol staff to keep a closer watch on the borders. The systems it has been said can spot people 14 kilometers away. The United States has around 1 million crossing the boarder each year mostly from Mexico. The emigrant’s season at the Festival saw a very relevant film to Spain Frontieres which follows a group of six Africans trying to enter Spain the “doorway to paradise.” Going through Tangier in the film although the summer has been full of African and Asian immigrants trying to land in the Canary Islands over 6,500 this year have arrived. The governor of the Canary Islands, José Segura said: "It is not the fault of the Spanish government. It is the fault of the government of those countries that, in effect, are demonstrating a remarkable incapacity to provide opportunities for development to their youth."In the UN General Assembly on Tuesday President Mbeki of South Africa (http://www.un.org/webcast/ga/61/pdfs/south_africa-e.pdf ) said:
“Precisely because of the absence of a global partnership for development, the Doha Development Round has almost collapsed. Indeed, because the rich invoked, without shouting it, the slogan of an over-confident European political party of the 1960 's, and directed this uncaring declaration to the poor of today - "l'm alright Jack!" - we have not implemented the Monterrey Consensus on Financing for Development, thus making it difficult for the majority of the developing countries, especially those in Africa, to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, and have reduced the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation to an insignificant and perhaps forgotten piece of paper .”
The lack of delivering the $125 billion from developed to developing countries after the Rio Conference in 1992 subsequently poisoned the relationships between north and south. In 2000 the Millennium Development Goals and the 2002 Financing Development conference in Monterrey was meant to put together a new global deal. If Mbeki is to be believed then it is not surprising that people after again seeing the promises not delivered on decide to take their own action. Secretary General Kofi Annan (http://www.un.org/migration/sg-speech.html) put it well at the opening of the High Level Dialogie on Migration last week when he said:
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“Migration is a courageous expression of an individual’s will to overcome adversity and live a better life. Over the past decade, globalization has increased the number of people with the desire and capacity to move to other places.” |
Photo COPYRIGHT - WHO / P. VIROT
He went on to challenge the negative view of migration when he said:
“the evidence on migration’s potential benefits is mounting. With their remittances reaching an estimated 167 billion dollars last year, the amount of money migrants from the developing world send back to their families exceeds the total of all international aid combined. And money is far from being the whole story. Migrants also use their skills and know-how to transfer technology, capital, and institutional knowledge."
Today I will see the film on Argentina in the mid seventies during the military government .more on that tomorrow…
Tags: film, san, un, felix, dodds, sebastian, festival, stakeholder, forum, volver, brd, pitt, penelope, cruzz, yuriko, kikuchi
