Here comes the summer! You are planning to travel this summer. In your everyday working life, it is the most fantastic and entrancing moment when you’re biting into your sandwich during your lunchtime and searching for the tourist agents. You haven’t yet decided where to go. You may go for an ancient temple in the east, a gothic castle in the west, an emerald sea in the south or even a beautiful mountain in the north. In front of your computer monitor, you’ve found the right tourist agent, but suddenly the advertisement of the tourist agent is slightly changing. All the words from the advertisement make a billowy wave that starts spinning in your mind.

Dual Mirage Part 2

Tourists Dream

Dual Mirage Part 2: Tourists Dream begins by presenting the moment when we are dreaming of travelling somewhere and what the engaging free and enchanting moment interprets in the global society. The place that we want to travel is somewhat in-between idealised and practical space, artificial and natural space. The moment longing for somewhere else other than here is as an instantaneous escape and is done in search of other utopia. It is presented as future and nostalgia. It is a mirage.

Tourists Dream also explores the mirage generated at the point at which the service industry circulates, within the ‘transitional space’. This is achieved by considering industries such as the tourism and hospitality industry, financial sector and real estate business, all of which are highly entangled with each other.

Dual Mirage Part 2  Tourists Dream Contributors: Mora Bendesky, Hyunjoo Byeon, Oksun Kim, Uin Kim, Jungmin Kwon, Eunu Lee, Jeong-Hoo Lee, Sôm Lee, Hyemin Son, Gee Song, Juhee Youn

Part 2 Event

The event of Dual Mirage Part 2 consists of the launch of the book and also the video screening. The launching of the publication of Dual Mirage Part 2: Tourists Dream will be introduced by artist Hyemin Son. It is then to be followed by the video screening Tourist’s Dream by the invited curator Hyunjoo Byeon. Both the book and the video screening share and develop the idea of transitional movement in various aspects of global society, reinforcing the theme of tourists’ dream.

Artists: Kyungah Ham, Yang Ah Ham, Stuart Hawkins, Adrian Paci, Lisl Ponger, Jaye Rhee, Hiraki Sawa, Bo Kyung Suh
Curated by Hyunjoo Byeon

Accompanied by the launch of the book Dual Mirage Part 2: Tourists Dream, the video screening Tourist’s Dream draws into varied tourists’ dreams and the underlying political, cultural and socio-economical elements that construct the migratory movements in this age of global mobility. Through the artworks by eight international artists, Tourist’s Dream navigates how global mobility transforms the way to perceive the world and expands geographies by positioning oneself in a space away from everyday life; examining also the effects it has on the diverse migratory movements in our time. In addition, it explores mirages which tourism provides by rebranding spaces in a capital-saturated society and interrogates a fantasy to consume a given culture.

The artists emerged from their common interests in the issues surrounding today’s migratory movements such as tourism, the tourist industry, territoriality, cultural identity, mobility, dislocation, migration, and global communication initiate an essential convergence in Tourist’s Dream. Kyungah Ham’s Travel & Journey (2003-05) investigates a fantasy to experience exotic cultures and cultural hierarchies in tourism by exploring the phenomenon of theme parks in Asia which replicate the symbolic monuments and landmarks of Europe and America. In her Tourism in Communism (2005), Yang Ah Ham travels to the only possible tourism area in North Korea, Mount Kumgang, developed by South Korea’s Hyundai Group. The artist depicts that tourism can be only a superficial exploration which is isolated from ordinary life, as the video was also shot on a touristic horse-drawn carriage. Stuart Hawkins playfully illustrates the artificiality of a touristic approach through her journey in search of the anthropologically perfect native CoCoMan in Souvenir (2006).

The journey reveals the pervasiveness of globalisation that is profoundly connected with the media culture, and it has caused a strange reaction in that it seeks out notions of pure cultural authenticity. Lisl Ponger´s déjà vu (1999) captures our desires for distant lands with its documentary sequences. This collective cliché of exotic otherness, combined with a series of narrations in various languages without subtitles, exposes the western-centered mode of perceiving the world and its hidden colonialism, consequently raising the awareness of our limited perception of reality. In Centro di Permanenza Temporanea (2007), which is named after an Italian refugee camp, Adrian Paci transforms an airport, a symbol of global mobility in our time, into a displaced space. A group of people standing on an aircraft boarding staircase represent migrants who are stranded “in between”, yearning for a better life, and thus an inhumane side of our ever-globalising world is revealed. Whilst Paci draws into the harsh reality of migratory movement in this age, the tiny humans and animals wandering around in the artist’s flat in Hiraki Sawa’s Migration (2003) poetically represent a restless journey in our lives and portrait our nostalgias in the global age. In Mediterranean (2009), Jaye Rhee creates her own Mediterranean setting in her studio with objects which embody images of the location of the Mediterranean. Rhee discloses how tourism and its industry construct common desires through distributing a signified image by envisaging the place with objects that can be found in daily life. In the work Citydel (2005), two separate videos parallel the passers-by looking at a girl in a bikini and a girl who enjoys her vacation on the artificial island in the Han River, which is located in the middle of Seoul. By creating a subtle rupture between them, Bo Kyung Suh questions what we dream for through traveling and where mirage exists.

Project Space 2:
Friday 6 August 2010, 6-9pm
Rivington Place
London EC2A 3BA UK

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Robert McGeehan:
“You just don’t know what you’re talking about on this as well as everything else”

George Galloway:
“we’ve already worked out that I’m stupid and the 80,000 people who elect me every 4 years, they must be stupid too. We’re all out of step except Uncle Sam over here, the whole parade ground.”

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Racism was the last taboo, these type of show had never tackled. While class war, sexism, etc…had already been through the big brother machine… Having said that…Isn’t it the very function of CBB and his ‘brother’ show BB to higlight the ills of our society and to somehow weather the storm…?

And my point is…although I feel for the poor Shilpa….she is actually – bless her – bearing the brunt of what a lot of us are experiencing on a daily basis whether at work or at school or while being stopped and searched in the streets….She is almost a martyr for a just cause….

If a stunning ‘princess’ out of Bollywood’s finest can suffer racism …then it says a lot about what ordinary Asians (and others by proxy) are going through on a daily basis….
If people are ready to behave in such a way on National Tv…then it says a lot about our society…and I am not only talking about Jade who has been made the ‘EscapeGoat’ (To use a Goodysm) but also Danielle and Jo, who often were more plain in their speech, albeit behind closed doors and far away from Shilpa….

If people can reach the level of ‘fame’ and income reached by the three Witches and still behave so appallingly against a particular individual while displaying a level of ignorance and miseducation seldom seen on National Tv.. it does say a lot about the society we are living in…

Rather than brushing it under the carpet let’s expose the ills of our society in prime time TV. And yes (poor Shilpa) thank you for your grace and dignity in such a horrid time…

I also applaud the 30 000 peoples whichever background they are hailing from who complained about her treatment. Ultimately, the producers are rubbing their hands and seemed to be willing to keep that storyline alive…Although I was for the show to be kept on-air, they also have a duty of care for the people they do invite on the show and if their livelihood or safety might be at risk by appearing on a Tv Show, then they should take their responsibility of course and inform the ‘contestants’ properly.

Next? The ‘storm’ will hopefully go away, new standards of behaviors and etiquette will be introduced on national Tv…As for our daily lives? Do not expect much I suspect, although Gordon Brown must have just been able to salvage the Anglo-British trade relations. As for Jade, who is said to be on ‘suicide-watch’… I suspect her camp has hired the PR machine that got Kate Moss off the hook and turned cocaine addiction to ‘Cocaine Chic’….What will be the PR Buzz word for that: ‘Goby Chic’ …’Chavy Chic’…? But I’m just an old cynical…

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A year ago, the festival Jazz Britannia was such a success that the Barbican along with BBC Four are bringing to us this year, a 3 day festival which celebrates the evolution of British folk music from the end of the Second World War right up to its modern day revival. From the 2nd to 4th February ‘06, the Barbican holds a series of live events encompassing three themed concerts, free music, films and talks. Tying in with the event is BBC Four’s very special three-part documentary series of the same title that engages with the disparate and sometimes argumentative elements of the contemporary folk scene.

To kick off on Thursday 2nd February, Which Side Are You On? is a night that features two of the biggest names in folk music of the British Isles and will be hosted by the force that is, Billy Bragg. The monumental Scottish firebrand singer-songwriter Dick Gaughan, will take to the Barbican Hall stage alongside Martin Carthy, a mainstay of the English folk scene.

Daughters of Albion on Friday 3rd February brings together some of England’s finest female folk artists and singer-songwriters in a themed concert to sing songs of experience. The set list places ancient folk ballads alongside West Country trip hop and 21st Century R’n’B. All performances will be accompanied by an ensemble featuring ex-Pogue and master multi-instrumentalist David Coulter, guitarist Neil MacColl and Van Morrison’s drummer Liam Bradley, all arranged by MD Kate St John. Artists include June Tabor, Sheila Chandra and Norma Waterson.

The final night, Into The Mystic celebrates the current resurgence of interest in the psychedelic, mystical, neo-folk of the late 1960s and early 1070s. It explores how this renewed interest has been reflected on a new generation of artists today. It will feature artists from pioneer bands such as Pentangle, The Incredible String Band, Donovan and Vashti Bunyan.

Meanwhile, the BBC 4 series will be divided into three one hour episodes which chronicles how the music was coerced into a revolutionary soundtrack by the Left in the 50s, how the hippie generation bent it into progressive folk-rock in the 60s and 70s only for punks like The Pogues and Billy Bragg to bring things back to basics in the 80s and 90s. The story of folk will be told by a stellar cast of musicians, live performances and archive footage and the debates that arise in its argumentative world will be discussed.

www.barbican.org.uk/music

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Tom Hunter tells these stories using carefully staged, large format photographs, restaging them in compositions that often directly refer to classic paintings of the past, many of the paintings to which Hunter has referred for his compositions can be found in the National Gallery. Using his friends as models, Hunter directs them to use gestures, body language and facial expressions in the same way as the characters seen in paintings by historic artists.

Left: The Fight between the Lapiths and the Centaurs piero di cosimo c. 11500-15 (The National Gallery, London)

Hunter first came to public attention in 1998, when he won the John Kobal Photographic Portrait Award, with a photograph entitled Woman Reading a Possession Order. With its meticulously arranged composition and sensitively captured light, it is a direct quotation from Vermeer’s painting, A Girl Reading a Letter by an Open Window (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Gemäldegalerie, Dresden). Hunters reputation was further established with a series of engaging, puzzling and compelling photographic re-workings of other paintings from the past. They provoke thoughts about issues that are relevant in our everyday lives, however shocking.

Girls’ Sex Acts in Club: Court. Cop ‘It can only be described as having sex through clothes’

Living in Hell and Other Stories continues Hunters’ interest in the stories of inner-city life that take place in his own locality, having lived in Hackney since the age of 19. Tom Hunter is not a photo journalist. His photographs are not literal reconstructions of the actual events. It is not the specific details of the story that attract him; rather it is the idea of a story that is provoked by the eye-catching headline. The idea of turning to his local press as a source for inspiration was suggested by the example of Thomas Hardy. Thomas, like hunter, was born and brought up in Dorset and would trawl through back copies of his local paper to find the stories of public hangings, wife selling and other unlikely events that he eventually wrote about in his novels.

Murder: Two Men Wanted

‘Living in Hell’ was the headline printed in The Hackney Gazette above the story of a 74-year-old woman whose house was infested with vermin. Borrowing from the National Gallery’s Four Figures at a Table by the Le Nain brothers, Hunter composed a photograph with the help of a retired actress and several hundred cockroaches bought over the internet. The Le Nains’ paintings of around 1643 show a woman and children in a modest peasant interior. She has the expression of a care-worn older woman tempered with a quiet sense of self-respect; in Hunters 2005 version the woman has no companions, she is alone. She sits wrapped up against the cold, the electric heater switched off. The sofa is filthy and worn, decaying food lies uneaten. A naked electric light bulb illuminates the room and shows literally hundreds of cockroaches crawling over every surface. This harsh lighting starkly reveals her shocking fate. The Le Nain’s dignified poverty is ripped from its original 17th century context and in 2005, becomes brutally undignified.

A Satyr mourning over a Nymph

National Gallery paintings depict the eternal themes of love, sex, violence, life and death and Tom Hunter has used these and reflected on them in an uncompromisingly contemporary way. He has turned newspaper headlines into commentaries on both the modern world in which we live and the classic themes seen represented throughout the National Gallery.

Cupid complaining to Venus by Lucas Cranach the Elder, c.1525
(the National Gallery, London)
Girls’ Sex Acts in Club: Court. Cop ‘It can only be described as having sex through clothes’

Tom Hunter : Living in Hell and Other Stories
Until 12 March
The National Gallery
Trafalgar Square
London, WC2N 5DN
Tel: 020 7747 2885
www.nationalgallery.org.uk
Admission Free

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The survey published by Channel 4′s Jon Snow on the 7th of August, highlighted what a certain section of the Muslim community made of the last events in Heathrow on the 10th of August. Coincidence, coincidence on the 07/8, three days before the incidents, John Snow of Channel 4, (The 3rd TV channel in the land) was publishing the results of that now famous survey on the Muslim community.

http://www.channel4.com/news/microsites/D/dispatches2006/

The Channel 4 survey showed that some sections of that particular community felt angered by the UK foreign policy and that it was only a matter of time before the terror alert of the 10th happened.

When they say first generation Muslim, read Muslims from the Indian sub-continent (Pakistanis, Indians, Bangladeshis…). Second and third generations, although hailing in majority from the same lands also includes an increasing numbers of members of the Africans Diasporas (North Africans from Algeria, Morocco … and Black Africans from Somalia, Nigeria…)

It is interesting to notice that one of the 10/08 plotters is said to be a young middle-class white man who converted to Islam 6 months ago. Albeit an interesting one, it is more than anything, a sensationalist fact, which implies that individuals on the fringe of society could have been ‘easily’ brainwashed and pushed to do such an act. But when one is glaring upon the calm and quiet suburban semi-detached houses, raided by the police forces on the 10th and bring to the mix what the C4 survey do reveal. One has to hammer home some alarming truths.

The results published, although predictable, highlighted again the chiasm between young Muslims and the older law-abiding generation who were simply in a broad sense happy to be offered entry to the country and a fairly comfortable way of life. It also showed an even wider chiasm with British society and its way of life as a whole, with some calling for the implementation of Shariaa (or Islamic law) in what they see as a godless land.

The younger ones have turned to a more orthodox approach to Islam than their elders with a minority of them turning to radical ideas and an even smaller one to direct action.

• A majority of those young people for example, thought that Lady Di was eliminated because she was bearing a potential heir to the UK crown of Muslim descent.
• Again, in their views 9/11 was an ‘inside job’ involving US security forces themselves.
• Iraq, Kosovo, Chechnya, Lebanon, Palestine, Are all seen as proof of a greater conspiracy against their faith and they seem to see little or no compassion from the rest of the population.

John Snow stresses that he had spoken to devout Muslim, but no real extremists, despite their strong views. They were all articulate, educated and in touch with their community.

This last alert although disruptive, can not be analyzed without the middle-east sub-plot at its core and on a more local level the Forest Gate security forces fiasco which saw 200 police officers arresting 2 Muslim men, destroyed their houses, injured one of them at gunpoint and released them a week or so later without charge. Or the unnecessary killing of a peaceful but scared Brazilian worker in the tube who was said to have connections with the 7/7 bombers.

Intelligence gathering within that community is a major issue and security forces trained to combat enemy-states from the old ‘iron curtain’ in Eastern Europe have not been able to adapt to this new kind of asymmetric warfare. Security forces have tried to recruit within that particular community, but last reports lately showed that the recruitment drive allegedly made them opened to infiltrations or maybe it was just internal resistance from organizations not inclined to be opened to broader section of the community.

Another survey about what the British public at large, think of the Muslim community will be quite interesting. You can easily predict a north-south divide on that issue. As Muslim communities in the north are on average, less integrated and less prosperous than their southern counterpart. Half or more of the 7/7 bombers came from up north where they literally live parallel lives with other communities. Whether there will be public or more subtle forms of backlash remain to be seen.

The battle-front is multiple, diverse and shifting all the time. Sensitivity is at its peak as shown by the ‘cartoon’ episode earlier this year throughout Europe and the rest of the world. Even a misplaced head butt at the world cup final took another signification when enlarged to the head butters origins and the words ‘terrorist (?)’ uttered or not…. Another proof of that sensitivity was screened when George Galloway MP and leader of the Respect movement went on live TV, the day after the survey was published and before the 10th of August, to defend his pro-Arabs views on SKY TV: http://news.sky.com/skynews/video/videoplayer/0,,31200-galloway_060806,00.html

An amazing outburst it was and definitely not the last on the subject. Whether one conflict fed the anger for the other one, the Channel 4 survey seems to agree. Whether one is firmly linked on the ground, to the other remains to be proven. However, in the global age we are living in, it is difficult to believe that events can stand alone without any connections to other events happening right now and involving fellow Muslims conclude the survey and as we know, the survey was published BEFORE the foiled plot. Cautiousness and fore thinking are required in these dark hours and a fair advice would be to give the last events a week or two to simmer, before drawing any definitive conclusions.

The dividing lines are cultural, generational, religious and ultimately racial. It is indeed, the biggest challenge faced by secular, tolerant Europe for this century and maybe the next to come.

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Paulo Gerbaudo looks at the parralels between film and war then and now Loin du Vietnam is both a failure and an inspiring experiment in war cinema. The film – a politically committed documentary dealing with the war in Vietnam – after its release in 1967 proved a commercial flop and was the victim of harsh critiques and early oblivion. One rare copy of the collaborative work of a number of great politically committed directors of the period such as the French Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais Claude Lelouch, Chris Marker, William Klein, Agnés Varda and the Netherland’s director Joris Ivens has been recently screened at Cine Lumiére of the Institut Francais.

The project of the film sprang out of the convulse atmosphere of 1967 during the escalation of military operation in Vietnam, and was the result of incipient ‘68 politics with their stress on participation, assemblies and direct democracy. The film, while dealing with a decisive political issue of the period, also aimed at questioning the French film industry and the one author canon to stress the importance of collaborative work of the film crew and of different directors. On the other hand the challenge was to realise an alternative representation of the war as seen in its multifaceted and often “distant” manifestations.

To do this Loin du Vietnam undertakes an expressive experiment in the documentary format by mixing together heterogeneous materials that compose an instable collage, notwithstanding the intelligent work of Chris Marker in the cutting room. In the film different inspirations and footage, documentary and fiction, converge. The long monologue scene by Godard about the political role of the cinematography in face of the war together with scenes from La Chinoise, interviews with Fidel Castro and Ho-chi Minh sided by brief visual clips and other cinematographic virtuosities. However some of the best moments of the film are the ones that stick more directly to documentary cinema, such as the war and everyday life in Hanoi under American bombings filmed by Joris Ivens and his wife, William Klein’s documentary footage about demonstrations in the United States and Lelouch’s sequences from an American carrier.

The film represents the war in Vietnam in the form of a historical tragedy staged on different scenes. Not only battlefields, but also North Vietnamese villages, American barracks, occupied cities, TV sets in living rooms, and demonstrations in the streets of Europe and America. Hence war emerges not as a simple military confrontation but rather as a mechanism of violence and conflict spreading its tentacles through supply lines, news programs, minds and hearts.

The two themes, evoked in the film’s title, Vietnam and distance, grasp a pair of great ideas which is what the film is all about. First of all, Vietnam within this film is not just a name for a particular country in South East Asia, 10 000 miles away from American shores, but also the name for a particular political, military, social and cultural conflict, characterised by harsh oppositions both in national and international politics. Thus the film represents Vietnam not only as a war between nations but also as a civil war, as any modern war has to be. In a long sequence by William Klein in front of Wall Street, during a huge peace demonstration in New York, a group of brokers shout “Bomb Hanoi! Bomb Hanoi!”. Demonstrants engage along the march path in harsh verbal confrontations with war supporters. New York appears kidnapped by a vibrant hysteria.

The film then slides along a theatre of operations that spans through the globe. Going from the streets of Paris crowded by demonstrants and policemen to a village in North Vietnam where people are assisting to a theatre show blaming Johnson and United States, to a paddy field where a unit of the National Liberation Army is training in hiding, to the mountains of Cuba. Distance, in turn, can be read as the description of the condition of civil populations in western country during such a war and its being exposed to a mediated war fought far away but capable, at the same time, of destabilising internal society and politics. As New Yorker reporter Michael Arlen put it, the Vietnam War, was a “living-room war”. Distance is also the principle that underlies the hypertechnological war machine deployed by the U.S. in Vietnam: a system controlling death and destruction from afar. The image that opens the film is a load of bombs being moved from a supply ship to a carrier. Lelouch’s camera follows those bombs while they are stored and eventually armed on the aircraft. In the middle of the ocean, far away from the dead bodies of the American bombings it enables, the carrier becomes a metaphor of a war machine that acts from afar. Distance thus emerges as instrumental to power. A removal of the horror of war through the media and thanks to its being out-of-sight. As one of the demonstrants appearing in the film says “Americans support the war because it is far away. Would they think the same, if their cities were attacked?”. The answer is as elusive today as it was then, best exemplified in the voting patterns of the American people post 9/11.

Notwithstanding the timely political rethorics that in some parts of the film tend to lean towards an apology to Vietnam, the work provides a vibrant description of the conflict in Vietnam and the social unrest that surrounded it. After the release the work was also criticised for its ‘easy ironies’, but it is actually through those ironies that the film shows the hypocritical goodwill justifying a distant war. This is also what the film does through the way it is cut. For example by joining a popular pro-war song with the reality of a Saigon populated by prostitutes, or by showing a speech of general Westmoreland through a damaged TV screen.

Viewing such a film today inspires a reflection about the similarities and differences between the media propagation of that war and of the current one, the war in Iraq in which the U.S. and its coalition are engaging in. Vietnam was a fortunate topic for cinema, and before that, it was extensively and crudely covered by television and newspapers. The American army had, at least initially, favoured the work of journalists and camera men on the front (much more than ever happened before and after that) for propaganda reasons. So Vietnam became the first televised war, and the war began losing consensus when too many dead corpses on the screen began to disgust the American public’s dinner time.

The Iraq war has undergone a more technically developed coverage that pretends to transmit battle images in real time (through embedded journalists) as if it were a football match and always jumps quickly to the site of an attack or a bombing. In this rapidity of news coverage something has been lost. The media war coverage of Iraq has not only censored the images of blood, tortures and body bags. It has also disminished the importance of other aspects of such a war: the conditions of the civil population in the occupied country and the unrest uniting millions of people across the world in the biggest anti-war protests ever. This erasure of such decisive aspects of war is what Au loin du Vietnam tries to overcome by following the many links that the war ties through conflicts and solidarities all around the globe.

Iraq wars have, until now, not been as fortunate as Vietnam in their representations within contemporary cinema. The only fiction titles deserving attention are David O. Russell’s Three Kings (1999), the recently released Jarhead (2005) by Sam Mendes both dealing with soldiers’ stories during the 1991 conflict in Kuwait when Iraq invaded. Also Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) and Robert Greenwalth’s Uncovered: The War On Iraq (2003), both documentary films, deal with the current war in Iraq even though focusing on its role in American politics. Moreover all these films and documentaries are somehow limited to an internal vision of war as seen through the individual experience of American soldiers, citizens and their nation’s destiny and fail in providing a radical representation of war in all its complexity.

With its real-time – as much tempestive as anaesthaetised – war representation, television has produced an overload of recurrent images about the war in Iraq, restraining any space for debate, comprehension and radical analysis. In this condition it is hard to develop a committed war cinema without getting lost in easy political pedagogy a là Michael Moore or in rank paternalism in Live 8 fashion. Au loin du Vietnam can, in contrast, be an inspiration for a cinema that intends to observe war and represent what the war in Iraq means not only in terms of military and political experiences and events, but also in everyday life’s impact, in London as in Baghdad. A cinema able to document its incumbence on western countries and its consequences on the civil population of Iraq. A cinema capable of seeing war at a distance.

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Those events just showed us that words can be as hurtful as actions. From Aragones the Spanish coach calling T. Henry a ‘N…r’ on a training pitch, to R. Atkinson leaving a mike opened at half-time of a game and delivering the ‘N…’ word again…to Matterazzi saying whatever he said, probably in the heat of the moment and ZZ reacting probably in the heat of the moment, the way he did…

Football and its rulers are not under scrutiny. The racists and closet racists are not safe anymore. What was tolerated decades ago is no longer and the son of immigrants will not accept any tampering with their rights and pride. Having said that, I don’t like the press game, which is trying to stir a story not out of the two main men, who both seem to regret what they respectively did, but through relatives, friends, lip-readers, anti-racists campaigners, far right so-called ‘leaders’ etc…

Yes Italy plays dirty but so did Portugal and other nations and France wasn’t that clean either. This World Cup will be remembered as a ‘morally dirty’ World-Cup from the negative tactics, to the poor refereeing and now racism…

FIFA has not been able to restore its dwindling image and proactive attitude in all those areas, as it is done in US sport on a regular basis.

The football authorities have to seriously start clamping down on racist behaviors or I can guarantee you that this is not the last incident of such nature we have seen on a football pitch, parole!

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Meeting at the UK Pavilion. Dealing with passes and accreditations. Sorting out the usual mumbo-jumbo required to cruise through the festival.

‘Volver’ from eternal ‘enfant-terrible’ Pedro Almodovar is on show and has the usual red-carpet treatment. Penelope Cruz – gorgeous in a white Balanciagga dress, or is it? – and Carmen Maura, the co-stars are with him. Penelope returns to our first director and says: “There is one and only one Pedro, he is my priority in all fields. He writes for women who are 14, 35, 50 or 80 years old, this film is perfect example; there are lots of female characters of all ages in his films. I’m sure that my career wouldn’t have been the same without Pedro, my life wouldn’t have been the same without him. I hope that in the future that this will continue. I am very grateful to possibilities given to me somewhere else, it is interesting, one can learn a lot, but I worked in the United States for seven years, and in Europe for about fifteen, but Pedro still remains truly exceptional for me.

As for Pedro Almodovar. You can’t help but feel that each film is a complex description of his obsession for his mother…A bit like Woody Allen and his New-York or Spike Lee and…well New-York too… This is what the master had to say: In Volver, I speak of the women around me when I was a child. I was brought up by women, the men being in fields, whom I practically never saw. Volver speaks of the way I grew up, listening to these women. I would hear them singing whenever I went along the riverbanks with my mother; I accompanied her from my very earliest age. That’s how I learnt a lot about dramatic art, there are many roles that I have written which were inspired by my sisters or my mother, by characters firmly anchored in reality, even if they belong to the realm of fiction. They are characters who spin extraordinary tales, which has always immensely impressed me.”

Another Palme d’or favorite is: Fast Food Nation which casts a critical eye on the fast food industry in the US, via the destinies of three main characters: a marketing executive of a fast food chain, an employee of the same chain, and a clandestine immigrant working for slaughterhouse. For this movie, Richard Linklater has been able to recruit A-list cast with Ethan Hawke, Greg Kinnear, Patricia Arquette, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Patricia Arquette and Bruce Willis.

Apparatchiks aplenty in sight for the tribute paid to Russian filmmaker Sergei M. Eisenstein yesterday with the screening of two of his films – Bezhin Meadow and October – Headed by the Cannes Film Festival President Gilles Jacob, the director of the Russian State Archives for Literature and the Arts Tatiana Goriaeva, the director of the Eisenstein Memorial Naum Kleiman, and the vice-president of the Russian Film Festival Kinotavr, Igor Tolstounov, a stellar night devoted to the director of the masterpieces The Battleship Potemkin and Ivan The Terrible.

20th & 21st May

We have been given a lot of business cards and collected a more impressive number. As always in Cannes, during the festival, we have late, late nights and early mornings (12:00 AM). The mix of sleep depravation, the crowd, the expectation, open the floodgate to a huge array of emotions from fascinating to scary, to fun, dull, exciting all in one. The mood changes minute by minute. Survival is the key here.
Samuel L. Jackson was dining in the Majestic on a table next to us. Al Gore on the red carpet… Otherwise you do see lots of people you think might be someone but you can never really be too sure. But that is not why we are here: We have to sell our projects and establish contacts/bridges with the industry.

The first French Film in the running for this year Palme d’Or, was Charlie Says It does re-introduce us to the films of filmmaker-actress Nicole Garcia, who was a Jury Member in 2000. Nicole Garcia returns to an essentially male world, twelve years after having directed the trio Gérard Lanvin/Bernard Giraudeau/Jean-Marc Barr in The Favourite Son. This time, the film revolves around a quartet of actors – Benoît Magimel, Jean-Pierre Bacri, Benoît Poelvoorde and Vincent Lindon – and a child – the famous Charlie embodied by the young Ferdinand Martin – whose destinies appear to criss-cross on screen. Not in a ‘crash’ way as Benoit Poelvoorde will put it: “This film is so ‘Nicole’. She is the one who entirely carries the film, the actors are relieved of any pressure. That’s why we clown around!” – Benoit stole a few grins with that one.

Nicole has made over the years, her business of filming complex male interactions and stories. Charlie Says could be another stone brought to her body of work:

“Men have this photo genius, this blend of robustness and fragility which fascinates me. They bear in them contradictions which make us wonder what they are going to become. It is these contrary tendencies which interest me. In Charlie Says, it is a question of variations on various kinds of men, about corpulences and various psychologies. This is a territory which I wanted to explore.”

After Wesh, Wesh (2002), a highly remarked debut feature film, Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche introduces us to ‘Bled number One’ in the section Un Certain Regard, the “follow-up” (or prologue) entitled Bled Number One. “The end of Wesh, Wesh,” he explains, “ends with a shot of a pond after a car chase between a cop and Kamel. We then hear a gunshot but we don’t know if Kamel has been killed or not. The only thing which I do know is that Kamel was a victim of the double punishment, therefore we could make a second film: double punishment, double film! We already foresaw a follow-up by making Wesh, Wesh. Whether it takes place before or after is of little importance. Why always consider time as something purely chronological?” Kamel is barely out of prison and is expelled to his country of origin, Algeria. This forced exile obliges him to cast a critical eye upon a country in full effervescence, transformation, torn between a youthful desire for modernity and tradition.

Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche wanted to show: “The energetic manner of filming can recall that of documentary cinema, but it is true that we aren’t for all that dealing with current events. It is another relationship with time, when it isn’t necessarily a question of filming some immediate reality, in realistic way. It is simply a proposal, just to present things, not to bear judgment. (…) To write Bled Number One, I didn’t return at all to Algeria to capture something about today’s youth there. I wrote this story based my holiday memories. But it is also because I felt that things hadn’t really changed, that time passes differently there. You have the time to reflect and be, faced with the elements. (…) A film is a gesture, a burst, a job, an enterprise, an action. An action in life, a pure lesson of life. It is here that we seize something alive. For it is necessary to remain alive, no matter what happens.”

Which leads us to what Cannes, has been famous for the world over; Parties…’Snooty’ French can do parties too: The Cannes Mix program has a DJ set headed by Fred Elalouf at the Beach Cinema.

The Menu? :

- Soundtracks of French films of the 60s and 70s
- Made in Bollywood

This didn’t give us enough opportunity to find our beds. We swapped showers for after-shaves and headed the next day. – After a brunch at the Majestic….always Brunch there if you can afford it! – for the international village, where we crossed the borders from Maroc to the Netherlands and back again. It reminded to some of us, the town of Basel in Switzerland where you can cross three borders within walking distances (France, Germany, and Switzerland). We also saw a film by Daft Punk. Very interesting.

We were also moved by Nanni Moretti’s The Caiman…Great filmmaker always seem to have that obsession, they tend to film time and time again. Nanni is no different. He again speaks about politic and democracy, but avoid acting in it, which is a first, five years after having won the Palme d’Or for The Son’s Room. It’s his 10th feature film, and the 5th presented in the Official Selection. Released in Italy in the middle of the controversial elections, a few days before Romano Prodi’s victory, The Caiman is the story of a young filmmaker (played by Jasmine Trinca, also in The Son’s Room) who wants to make a film about Silvio Berlusconi, and appeals to a producer in crisis of serie “Z” movies (Silvio Orlando, Moretti’s old buddy) to finance her movie. Moretti says: “The Caiman is a love story, a homage to cinema and a political films,” resumes the director, who clarifies his intentions: “I tried to tell, using the means of the motion pictures, a reality which we are no longer able to see or perceive. I think that our problem is one of habit: we’ve become used to characters and situations however truly incredible for the sake of democracy.’

Another particular highlight of the day was the last piece of a trilogy about China The Orphan of Anyang (2001) and Night and Day (2005). This time, the filmmaker allows his camera in the life of a schoolteacher close to retirement, who set out to search for his son. His wife, gravely ill, would like to see their son one last time before dying. He hasn’t given any news for a long time. The father will be welcomed by his daughter who does shifts as a hostess in a nightclub…Brace yourself for a solid family drama with confrontations aplenty.

“Luxury Car,” explains Wang Chao, “falls within the continuance of the reflections and criticisms already expressed in my first two films, on the reality and historic and political allegories of contemporary China. Here, the gap between the rich and poor, the distance which separates people from happiness, the contradictions between the social system inherited from past and the burden of the present are so many problems which I myself, as a full-fledged member of the people, feel all the weight and intensity. That’s why it made me decide to shoot the picture.”

On the party radar, at the Cannes Mix. The new wave soundtracks are honored. Can’t wait for my suit and sunglasses and rehearse my JL Godard ‘A Band apart’ moves…Which implies another night without sleep. I know, I know…

22nd & 23rd May

The ‘babe’s battle’, Halle Berry and Rebecca Romijn: Sublime visions of nature’s most famous achievement on the red carpet. For your eyes only…Their presence allegedly being required for the promotion of the third X-Men movie… As for the film, wait for the DVD release, or PSP, or Podcast, or Palm, or…On a more serious note, ‘Bamako’ by Abderrahmane Sissako. Born in Mauritania, raised in Mali, read film at the prestigious VGIK in Moscow before releasing his first work in 1990 (Le Jeu). After string of international awards (Fespaco, Perugia,…) Cannes awaited to be seduced in 2002 by Waiting for Happiness. ‘Bamako’ is out of competition…As is the seminal film about French ‘demi-god’ Zinedine Zidane. Helmed by Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno, acted by none other than double Z or ‘ZZ’ himself. The film celebrates the bizarre cult of Zidanemania, shot in real time during a Madrid game supported by no less than 17 high-tech HD cameras, aimed solely at the artist Thierry Henry refers to as ‘the man who do stuff with his foot, you could only dream of doing with your hands’…It’s a pity the film didn’t really try to develop a narrative we would follow but rather lays on the technological foundations pitched to us beforehand. But if you enjoy seeing master at work, be my guest!
To the International village and another trip to Germany and Canada, then South Korea…That’s where the buzz is at the moment…
Kidulthood by Menjah Huda from the UK was also screened over there at 12:00 PM…Couldn’t make it, but should be up for DVD viewing, back in London…

ON THE PARTY RADAR: For two nights, the Didier Riey Group, a gypsy jazz collective will take over the Cannes Mix programme opening for the outdoors screening, made of a selection of twelve animation-shorts by Canadian Norman McLaren, featuring Horizontal Lines, Stars and Stripes, and The Grey Hen. On Wednesday, The Holy Mountain a tale about a quest for immortality by Chilean director/artist Alejandro Jodorowsky. A student of the mime Marcel Marceau (other prestigious alumni include Michael Jackson….), friend of the surrealists Topor & Arrabal. ‘El Topo’ his first mainstream movie, became a cult classic in 1970. When work dried out in films for the Chilean director, he went into comic books, working with fellow cult author Jean ‘Moebius’ Giraud – Lieutenant Blueberry, adapted for the silver screen by Jan Koonen of ‘Doberman’ fame in 2004 – Van Hamme, Gal,…achieving cult-status within the comic book fraternity when releasing l’Incal and working on its follow-up: ‘The Meta-Barons saga’. If you want to grasp his influence in modern western comic-books, you would have to speak of him in the same breath as a Hayao Miyazaki(Nausicaa), Akira Toriyama (Dragonball), Katsuhiro Otomo, (Akira) or a Chris Claremont (X-men)…

24th & 25th May

TELEGRAM:

Was in Monaco. /Stop/ couldn’t be bothered to be in Cannes. /Stop/ had a few business dealings to handle. /Stop/. Didn’t have time to blog lately, sorry. /Full Stop/

Telegram, heh? What a funny thing…How many of you remember what it was to send a telegram at the other end of the world? Here we are taking this world for granted. Anyone who’s been on the French Riviera during that period of the year is aware of the fact that we are reaching the high points of the season with the Monte-Carlo tennis tournament, the Cannes festival, the Monaco grand prix, then Avignon festival in Provence, (equivalent to the Edinburgh theater festival…) and so on…We stopped in Grace and St-Tropez too…bumped into Michael Stipe, Robin Aubert, the director and lost our lawyer inside a casino…in Monaco…also known as the ‘Millionaire’s playground’ …
Formula One is the toy here…The noise, the smell, the gas, the sheer pollution it creates and with the little amount of overtaking opportunities, due to the tight confines of the roads, the Monaco Grand Prix must be an ecologist idea of hell.

With preparations in full swing it is quite difficult to drive through the city. Remember, the Monaco grand prix is the last of its kind, as the race track is made of the principality’s own streets. It’s the world’s most famous street track…

An open city as was Rome in January 1945 when the remnants of the German army occupying the ‘eternal city’ are about to surrender …A priest and a communist worker, the two pillars of post-war anti-fascism in Italy will join together to defeat Nazism. The movie buffs among you will recognize the pitch for ‘Rome, open city’ and the birth of Italian neo-realism. Black and white movies, with strong ‘real’ characters shot in the streets, as Cinecitta the babylonesque studios built by Mussolini had been bombed during the war. Serge July, editor of left-wing daily newspaper Liberation, directed a short-documentary called ‘Once upon a time…Rome open city’ showing in Cannes…

Another graceful vision, Barbie Hsu. Her sensual and timeless interpretation left very few moviegoers untouched. The actress is the lead in ‘Silk’ by Taiwanese director, Chao Pin Su: “We tried to make the best possible feature film on all levels,” explains the director. “Usually, in all Taiwanese films, the action is relatively slow and the atmosphere rather dark. I believe that we impose limits on ourselves due to various points of view, even when due to creative talent. This time, we had the good fortune of securing solid financing, which allowed us to develop our ideas with complete serenity. The entire crew is very satisfied with it. This picture is really different from the rest of Taiwanese productions.”
As for Barbie: “It was a true challenge to take on this character, I had a lot of fun playing her. Furthermore, there are terrible deaths in the film, which I greatly enjoyed from this point of view. Not to mention the end, it really touched me.”

Another timeless vision, but this one celebrates a movie dynasty. Like the Douglas, the Van Peebles, etc…Here come the Coppolas! Sofia, the daughter of Francis is back in Cannes with Marie-Antoinette (Her third movie after ‘Virgin Suicides’ – Director’s fortnight – and ‘Lost in translation’). The film charts the life of. ..’Marie-Antoinette’, queen of France during the 1789 revolution and famous for answering to a starving crowd asking for bread: ‘Let them eat cake!’
For me, Marie Antoinette has remained, first and foremost, the symbol of a totally decadent style. I didn’t realize to what point these people, who were called upon to govern a country, were in point of fact no more than teenagers. Daily life in the Château de Versailles is also, for these adolescents, a form of apprenticeship set in a tense, difficult environment. It is this position and the complexity of the character of Marie Antoinette which interested me.” (Sofia C.)
A few recognizable faces in the casting like Steve Coogan (yes…I know!), Marianne Faithfull, Kirsten Dunst and Aurore Clement…However, Sofia is adamant she never tried to make a political statement: ‘I wasn’t making a political movie about the French Revolution, I was doing a portrait of the character Marie Antoinette and my themes are in the film. She was a symbol of decadence. It was very interesting to read and research more about Marie Antoinette, more about the human experience of this young girl who went to Versailles when she was 14 and how she developed in the Cour de Versailles. I thought she was an interesting character. I have always been attracted to the 18th century in France. I knew so little about the personal side of her. The story is about teenagers in Versailles so I wanted it to have the energy of youth, a teenage feeling to it.” I am making one if I tell you that the movie is adapted from a book written by Antonia Margaret Caroline Pakenham also known as CBE lady Antonia Fraser…?

Anyone who’s been on the French Riviera during that period of the year is aware of the fact that we are reaching the high points of the season with the Monte-Carlo tennis tournament, the Cannes festival, the Monaco grand prix, then Avignon festival in Provence, (equivalent to the Edinburgh theater festival…) and so on…We stopped in Grace and St-Tropez too…bumped into Michael Stipe, Robin Aubert, the director and lost our lawyer inside a casino…in Monaco…also known as the ‘Millionaire’s playground’ … Formula One is the toy here…The noise, the smell, the gas, the sheer pollution it creates and with the little amount of overtaking opportunities, due to the tight confines of the roads, the Monaco Grand Prix must be an ecologist idea of hell.

With preparations in full swing it is quite difficult to drive through the city. Remember, the Monaco grand prix is the last of its kind, as the race track is made of the principality’s own streets. It’s the world’s most famous street track…

An open city as was Rome in January 1945 when the remnants of the German army occupying the ‘eternal city’ are about to surrender …A priest and a communist worker, the two pillars of post-war anti-fascism in Italy will join together to defeat Nazism. The movie buffs among you will recognize the pitch for ‘Rome, open city’ and the birth of Italian neo-realism. Black and white movies, with strong ‘real’ characters shot in the streets, as Cinecitta the babylonesque studios built by Mussolini had been bombed during the war. Serge July, editor of left-wing daily newspaper Liberation, directed a short-documentary called ‘Once upon a time…Rome open city’ showing in Cannes…

Another graceful vision, Barbie Hsu. Her sensual and timeless interpretation left very few moviegoers untouched. The actress is the lead in ‘Silk’ by Taiwanese director, Chao Pin Su: “We tried to make the best possible feature film on all levels,” explains the director. “Usually, in all Taiwanese films, the action is relatively slow and the atmosphere rather dark. I believe that we impose limits on ourselves due to various points of view, even when due to creative talent. This time, we had the good fortune of securing solid financing, which allowed us to develop our ideas with complete serenity. The entire crew is very satisfied with it. This picture is really different from the rest of Taiwanese productions.” As for Barbie: “It was a true challenge to take on this character, I had a lot of fun playing her. Furthermore, there are terrible deaths in the film, which I greatly enjoyed from this point of view. Not to mention the end, it really touched me.”

Another timeless vision, but this one celebrates a movie dynasty. Like the Douglas, the Van Peebles, etc…Here come the Coppolas! Sofia, the daughter of Francis is back in Cannes with Marie-Antoinette (Her third movie after ‘Virgin Suicides’ – Director’s fortnight – and ‘Lost in translation’). The film charts the life of. ..’Marie-Antoinette’, queen of France during the 1789 revolution and famous for answering to a starving crowd asking for bread: ‘Let them eat cake!’ For me, Marie Antoinette has remained, first and foremost, the symbol of a totally decadent style. I didn’t realize to what point these people, who were called upon to govern a country, were in point of fact no more than teenagers. Daily life in the Château de Versailles is also, for these adolescents, a form of apprenticeship set in a tense, difficult environment. It is this position and the complexity of the character of Marie Antoinette which interested me.” (Sofia C.) A few recognizable faces in the casting like Steve Coogan (yes…I know!), Marianne Faithfull, Kirsten Dunst and Aurore Clement…However, Sofia is adamant she never tried to make a political statement: ‘I wasn’t making a political movie about the French Revolution, I was doing a portrait of the character Marie Antoinette and my themes are in the film. She was a symbol of decadence. It was very interesting to read and research more about Marie Antoinette, more about the human experience of this young girl who went to Versailles when she was 14 and how she developed in the Cour de Versailles. I thought she was an interesting character. I have always been attracted to the 18th century in France. I knew so little about the personal side of her. The story is about teenagers in Versailles so I wanted it to have the energy of youth, a teenage feeling to it.” I am making one if I tell you that the movie is adapted from a book written by Antonia Margaret Caroline Pakenham also known as CBE lady Antonia Fraser…?

Left the sea, s… and sun…for gritty, rainy London. But Cannes is not over yet. I have to give you a few tips for the ‘Palme d’Or’ …This year’s festival has been very ‘serious’ and has featured movies with ‘gravitas’. The president of the jury is Wong-Kar-Wai filmmaker renown for his uncompromising style. Two films spring to mind, when thinking about the Palme d’or or Jury’s prize. The two have wars at their core: ‘The wind that shakes the barley’ by Ken Loach and the excellent ‘Day of glory’…

The movie is about the Algerian, Moroccans, and Tunisians, Senegalese soldiers or goumiers dead and forgotten during the Second World War, who liberated France from Nazism. The director, Rachid Bouchareb, has assembled a stellar ensemble cast, made of some of France’s finest actors: Sami Bouajila, Rochdy Zem, and the two icons of French’s suburbs youth culture, Sami Naceri (Taxi 1 to 3) and Djamel Debbouze (Amelie…).

Rachid Bouchared, the director knew straight from the get-go what would be the major stumbling block for such a movie and forecasted it in his approach: the cinema is a vehicle for encounters and emotions, perceived by audiences first as feelings, even if it gives them more to discover. It was only in this way that I could carry the story and creates a tie with the audience,” he adds. “I didn’t want to be didactic, which serves nothing. We developed the screenplay over two and a half years. We needed 25 versions to be able to step beyond history and concentrate on the human subject matter, on all the tiny details of daily life which reflect life far better than any speech.”

Sami Naceri as always very intense, took the bait with hesitation first, before putting ‘a lot into this film, to the point of even learning Arabic. I literally charged into the story. It isn’t a vindictive picture, nor political. But those in school should learn that these North Africans were the first to fall under German bullets for the liberation of Marseilles, Toulon and Corsica.” Djamel Debbouze, who is considered as one – if not the one – of the most bankable actor in France at the moment had to chip in to get the project going: ‘On the one hand, we come up with budgets in the several million euros to produce comedies where audiences want to see me slipping on banana peels, and on the other hand, I see that a project such as Rachid’s which was non-stop revised downwards. France still has difficulty in coping with its own past.”

Djamel Debbouze, the actor has fulfilled most of his dreams emerging as a disabled kid from the suburbs to one of France’s most recognizable face but the producer was looking for a strong project to sink his teeth in, refusing the usual farces, he is now renowned for: ‘ After Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra, I received a multitude of scripts of the kind Asterix vs. the North Africans or Rabin Hood, and I was extremely skeptical. While Rachid’s film presented pleasant and noble challenges to be defended. It was therefore perfectly normal and logical to go all the way for such a film. As co-producer, I am proud that Days of Glory is presented at Cannes, it’s all the better for us. To put together funds for this film, I was even compelled to go meet Sarkozy, which really taught me a lesson!”

R. Bouchardeb went one step further, by asking rai icon Khaled (worldwide hit, ‘Didi’) to score the music for the film, despite early reservations: ‘in normal times, I sing of love and peace, so I was somewhat taken aback when Rachid suggested to me working on the music of a film about war. He then explained to me that it wasn’t really a war picture, its goal was rather to honor those people who helped lead to the Liberation and who brought us the joy of doing certain things. It is out of respect for his people who died for us that I joined Rachid.”

From one master to another: Sydney Pollack, the American director and actor with more than 40 years in the trade and 20 films under his belt. His filmography includes ‘Out of Africa’, ‘Three days of the condor’ and as an actor, the last Kubrick’s work ‘Eyes wide shut’. The night is called ‘A Film master class with Sydney Pollack’. His first words were: ‘I just have to say that anything I am presenting that has the name” master class ” is enough to ring every alarm bell in my brain,”. A master-raconteur, Sydney Pollack cruise through the night dispensing words of wisdom like: To be absolutely honest, I don’t think of myself as a visual director. That’s an area that I work very hard in because it’s my weaker muscle. My stronger muscles are with performance. Because I feel that I am stronger in performance, I try to concentrate as hard as I can on the visual aspects of the movie because it isn’t my forte. There are great visual styles that I admire immensely like Bertolucci. The danger with somebody like me who comes from the theatre as an actor is to follow along with two-people talk scenes and I like to do those. My films are full of them.” Sydney Pollack was also presenting out of competition ‘Sketches of Frank Gehry’, the patron of the arts and founder of the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao among other things…

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