News from home

Chantal Akerman was born in the mid fifties, in a jewish protestant family. Both her

grandparents and her mother were sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Only the

later, Natalia Akerman, survived. Akerman’s mother is a central figure in her film career,

and Chantal seems to capture the depths of her, both as a value and as a problematic

figure, from a feminist point of view. And with saying this, and enjoying a certain

transparency that only cinema can achieve, I also believe that Akerman’s cinema comes

from a certain sense of time and its melancholy and comes from certain places and their

own sense of time. It’s like a whole universe can emerge from the banal sadness of any

given sunday. A universe made from the “saudade” of every trashcan, alley, hallway and

wall. And although I haven’t seen her entire oeuvre, the films of her that I like the most are

“Jeanne Dielman” “Tu, Il, Elle” “Hotel Monterrey” “La Bas” and “News from Home”. “News

from Home”, particularly, is a film that has moved me deeply, maybe because I have

certain things in common wih it. The letters from her mother, which are read as a

background for images that show a New York very different from the capital of the arts that

some snobs want to see in the city. This is a New York not of tourism, but of trash bags

floating in deserted alleys, and nocturnal figures coming in and out of the subway and in the streets.

Caetano and Transa

 Even though it’s difficult to define what’s my favorite band, songwriter or singer, I would

say that ,at least this summer, it would be the Transa album by Caetano Veloso. Some

aspects that I can say about Veloso are his longstanding career in music, with lots of

records, some of them recorded with his sister, Maria Betania.

I listen more to her music in other seasons of the year, like the fall, more specifically her amazing album Drama. You could say that Caetano’s music genre is bossa nova, but with elements of progressive rock, jazz etc.

I like his music specially in this time of the year, summer. It’s not that I like summer, I hate it but I can stand it with help of Caetano’s music. The great thing about Transa is that is listenable both in the beach, with a piña colada in your hand, and under any roof of santiago. “It’s a long way” is one of the most powerful songs in the album, because it builds a great castle of rythms, tempos, intensities, changes from english to portuguese and viceversa etc.

Kowloon Walled City

This photograph was taken by Greg Girard, a canadian photographer who visited Hong Kong since 1974, and many other countries in Asia. The Kowloon Walled City was a ruined urban settlement in Hong Kong, extreme densely populated, where lived working class people affected by the live conditions in this place. Many of their buildings were evicted or uninhabitabled, until its demolition in 1993.

The photograph shows a town which architecture is practically disappearing in the whole world, because of the proliferation of new buildings, as a part of the gentrification that is changing radically the urban landscape, even here in Santiago. In the Girard's photograph we can see the weight of the time over windows, walls and apartments. Also, we appreciate the singular intervention made by the neighbors.

The image was captured by Girard before to the Kowloon's demolition, in the same year of 1993, as a part of the graphic book "City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City", which he published with his friend and coworker Ian Lambot.

I like this photograph, because it remembers me the Yasujiro Ozu's cinema. In the Ozu movies, there's an idea of modernity against the japanese cultural traditions (family, marriage, sexism, etc.). For example, in An autumn afternoon (1962), there are frames very similar to this photograph. Ozu shows fronts of buildings with clothes hanged up, the wind blowing between the curtains, and mainly, the lethargy and calm of the inanimate objects.

This is not garbage

Well, first of all, this post is not about a festivity, but it's about a very important date for me. I'm refering the last day of every month, because it's the date in which inhabitants of Santiago throw their old things, and many people recycle it, between them, me. I'm not sure about the origin of this day, but certainly during the dictatorship (1973-1990) you couldn't just throw your garbage in the street, because the military were patroling all nights. So, the free recollection of useful old things must be started after that period. Six years ago, I was moving home, from Chillán to San Borja neighborhood in Santiago. I had no idea about this recycling day, and my new apartment was almost empty. I was worried about how to get the money to buy furnitures, when suddenly, a night, walking down Portugal avenue, I saw piles of old furnitures in each corner. Then, I collected a lamp, a table for my living room, a bedside table and a juice extractor, all of that in perfect condition and conservation. Since that moment, every end of months I explore the Santiago streets in search of something useful for my home. I like this days, really celebration days for me, because me and many people have the possibility to get things that in other way, we should buy, generating more garbage in this contaminated and sad world.

My blading solutions to everyday life

I'm going to tell you a bit of a sad story, but don't worry it ends in a happy way. The story is about my "minipimer". Maybe for english native speakers, this term may be uncommon, but I'm only talking about an immersion blender. According the Wikipedia, is a kitchen blade grinder used to blend ingredients or purée food in the container. Now, here comes the sad part of this story: When I was a baby, or little Fernanda, I didn't have any teeth in my mouth, neither, as a family, we had a "minipimer" that could make our lives happier, we only had an old vacuum cleaner in which we later discovered, by opening it, my lonely baby tooth, the first one of my life. Years passed and teeth appeared, and now, me: adult Fernanda, learned how easy life could be just by pressing a button: THE BUTTON OF THE "MINIPIMER" (before pressing the button, you just have to connect it). Now I can grind everything I want. Every morning with the immersion blender, I shake some eggs with a lot of oil and a garlic clove, then later I put the sausage in a fresh slice of bread. Its texture and flavor is what I love, by the strength of my hands shaking a fork, I couldn't get the same experience that melts in my mouth and make endures life in this big city, Santiago o
f Chile.

SOAP OPERAS AND CINEMA

Well when I was a child, I felt very bored watching movies, I only wanted to watch soap operas with my aunt Guti. My parents didn't allow me to do that, because they said that it was so dramatic, and problematic, and sad, all things denied for a little girl. Anyway I watched every soap opera on mega and chilevision channels. The exaltation of quotidian life problems seemed to be funnier than Bananas in Pijamas, I really loved Marisol's life, a poor woman with a poor and sad life, full of lies, misery, etc. She lost her baby immediately when it was born, and for a lot years she didn't find him, or her, I didn't remember. I remember Esmeralda too, in one chapter Enrique Iglesias appeared, yes, the same guy who threw from stage a gold seagull in Viña del Mar Festival. Well, I love melodrama but I hate Chilean Cinema because the directors (rich people) seem
to be always apologizing for it, with a plastic way to do things.

late spring

well, this is the first entry that I write in blogspot platform. My name is Fernanda, now I'm living in Santiago, but I was born in Chillan, a little city in the south of this country. I am twenty seven years old and I am living in this city because I am studying cinema here, at university. I am in a 5th grade, and I just want to leave this place! I like a lot of things, if I could mention some of them these would be, seeing movies, being with friends, going to cinema, sawing flowers or trees in the backyard of my house, reading... I like foggy days and southern weather, I don't really like Santiago very much, except for its old galleries and little streets. Summer makes me be depressed, I wish spring stays for a long time.