The Life in Exile of Angel Parra

Often overshadowed by his famous mother Violeta, one of the leading influences who helped shape the sound of the Chilean Nueva Cancion (New Song) movement, Angel Parra's life is in many ways just as interesting, taking him far beyond Chile.

His exile was originally involuntary. Due to his left-wing political ideals and his links with the Popular Unity party of Salvador Allende, after the 11th of September 1973 coup d'état (documented by Cuban film-maker Santiago Alvarez in his film The Tiger Leaps and Kills, but it will Die...it will Die) Parra was initially held at the National Stadium, before being transferred to the Chacabuco prison camp, where he was kept until February 1974.

He used his time there to help set up a committee to organize cultural activities for the prisoners. Before being released, Parra sang to the rest of his inmates, in a performance that was recorded covertly by Luis Corvalán and released in 1975 on an album titled Chacabuco. It was also during his time in prison that he wrote "La pasión según San Juan, Oratorio de Navidad" (The passion according to San Juan) which was eventually recorded and published in Europe.

After his release, he fled first to Mexico to avoid further persecution, before moving to France, which was at that time home to the largest worker's party in western Europe, the Parti communiste français (PCF). It was here that, in addition to being able to record and release his music again, he shared his testimony about the human rights violations he suffered under the US-backed military dictatorship.

One of the first albums he recorded after settling in France was Angel Parra a Paris, which was originally released in 1978 as a double LP, being Angel's most extensive production to date. Most of the songs are composed by Parra himself, some of them drawn from previous albums and combined with studio versions of songs previously only recorded live. There are also some cover versions of songs by his mother Violeta Parra as well as others composed by people like the Cuban troubadour Carlos Puebla. Other albums Parra released around this period are the Chilean popular guitar album La prochain fois (The next time) along with the last album he recorded with his sister Isabel in 1981.

Also in 1978 he made a small cameo appearance in El Cantor (The Singer), a TV movie produced in the GDR (East Germany) inspired by the life of his colleague, the murdered Chilean singer-songwriter Victor Jara. The film was written and directed by the US-born actor and singer Dean Reed (who played Jara in the film) who, like Parra himself, had known Jara in Chile before his murder.

With the successful referendum to restore democracy, Parra returned to Chile in 1989, and during the 1990s he began to see some of his albums reissued in his birth country. However, he continued to make his home in Paris, where he eventually died of cancer in 2017. He is buried in Pere Lachaise, along with other famous exiles like Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde.

You can buy one of my renditions of Parra, this one in pen and ink, from my Red Bubble shop here.

Britain's role in Vietnam

Vietnamese propaganda poster c.1960s

(translator unknown)

When we think of countries that have interfered aggressively against the people of Vietnam over the previous century the Americans are probably the first country that comes to most people's minds, with the French a close second, perhaps followed by Japan, and then China. 

What is less well known is Britain's role in trying to restore French colonialism on the Indochinese peninsula after World War 2 which, like British diplomatic support for US sanctions after the Vietnamese military victory of 1975, is rarely mentioned in official histories.

Most historians, and consequently even some peace activists, tend to look favourably on the stance that Prime Minister Wilson took to the American War, refusing to send British troops to kill and be killed, but preserving the "special relationship" by providing diplomatic support for the US war of aggression. Its image of a cautious approach to foreign policy is as comforting as it is misleading.

This much I was aware of. 

I also knew about the diplomatic support that Prime Minister Thatcher later offered the US during the post-war economic embargo it imposed on the Vietnamese as punishment for their victory. This is less discussed on television documentaries than the period of the war itself and Wilson's stance, and I only know about it because of the work of independent journalists like John Pilger. 

Pilger has also drawn attention to Thatcher's role in lobbying the UN on behalf of the USA to cut shipments of powdered milk to the war-ravaged nation, which Vietnam had been receiving through the UN's food aid programme. (I still wonder why this woman had such a callous disregard for children's nutrition, be they Vietnamese or British.)

On the other hand, I had been far less aware of Britain's role in trying to restore French colonialism to the Indochinese peninsula following the Japanese defeat in WW2. I owe much to the work of historian John Newsinger for bringing this history to light.

The key events happened in the autumn of 1945. 

On September 2, President Ho Chi Minh read his famous speech to a large crowd in Hanoi, proclaiming the independence of the new Democratic Republic of Vietnam and reading from their Declaration of Independence. So grateful were the Vietnamese for the material support the Viet Minh national liberation army had received from the US in order to defeat the Japanese military occupation that large sections of the newly drafted Declaration are modelled after the US Declaration. US intelligence officials have been identified applauding in the crowd, presumably hopeful that the new nation of Vietnam would be a useful client state in the region.

On September 6 however we see the first British troops, commanded by General Douglas Gracey, begin arriving in the southern city of Saigon. Viet Minh control is weakest here in the south of the country, and the British seek to exploit this weakness by proceeding to introduce a form of martial law, disarming the nationalists and arming newly released POWs.

By September 23, with Gracey's support, the French were able to seize power in Saigon by taking over the city hall and arresting any Vietnamese they thought were connected to or sympathetic to the new government in Hanoi. 

The historian George Rosie records one clash that took place between 80 members of the British Indian Infantry Brigade (Gracey, like the author George Orwell, came from that tier of British society born to parents living in British India, but educated at private schools back in the UK) that resulted in the deaths of at least 60 Vietnamese.

It was only due to considerable pressure that General Gracey was forced to open negotiations with the Viet Minh, who he had refused to recognise up until this point. However, this was merely a ploy to buy time for reinforcements to arrive.

English language film poster for Memories of Dien Bien

(source: IMDB)

The rest is pretty well known history. The French continued their attempts to restore their colonial domination of Indochina until they were finally defeated at the battle of Điện Biên Phủ in 1954 (a period depicted in the 2004 film Memories of Dien Bien). By this time the Cold War was underway, and the USA was fully in the grip of its anti-communist fervour, so was more inclined to view the new socialist government in Hanoi far more negatively than when it was fighting against Axis-aligned Japan.

An Englishman in the East

Born in London, England in 1910, and winning a scholarship to Chigwell School as a child, during his lifetime the British journalist and novelist Alan Winnington would travel the world.

As a young man, following a chance meeting with Harry Pollitt in a pub in 1934, he joined the Communist Party of Great Britain, and he soon became a branch secretary. His career in journalism began when he landed a job with a photo agency, and soon he was writing for socialist newspapers like the Daily Worker (as the Morning Star was known at the time) which he continued to write for from the 1940s up until the 1960s. For the first few years after WW2 he became “our man in Beijing”, when he reported on the early years of the newly independent People’s Republic of China for the Daily Worker, while also working as an advisor to the new Xinhua (New China) news agency.

Uncomfortable Truths

His location in Asia meant he was ideally placed to report on the Korean war when it broke out in June 1950, and he would anger his own government by reporting on both the Korean and later the Vietnam wars from the communist side. Along with his colleague, the Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett (who was equally ostracized for his reporting by his own birth country), Winnington would expose the use of biological weapons against Koreans by the USA.

For this brave reporting both men had their passports removed for many years.

From China to Germany

By 1960 Winnington had learned to speak Chinese fluently, but had already become skeptical of Mao’s approach to building socialism at least two years earlier because of the "Great Leap Forward" and other campaigns, which he described as “stupidities.” He left China with his Sino-British wife Esther and their two children, settling in East Berlin while they attempted to negotiate the return of his British passport with the help of Lance Samson, a German Jew who also worked for the Star.

The British government were still considering a charge of treason or espionage, possibly with a death sentence, as punishment for his reporting during the Korean war, so even after the restoration of his passport he did not return permanently to his country of birth, choosing instead to remain in Berlin. Sadly, his wife wanted to return to Britain, and their marriage broke down when she decided to move with their two children back to Britain, where she married Samson with whom she had a third child. Their daughter Polly would subsequently grow up to become an author in her own right.

After making the decision to remain in the east, Winnington began a new family with a lady named Ursula Wittbrodt, who he had met in 1963 and who would become Ursula Winnington when they married in 1967. He did not receive his British passport until a year later. (Burchett had to wait until Gough Whitlam’s Labour government came to power in 1972 before his birthright was restored.)

Winnington continued to work as a correspondent for the Morning Star from his new home in the GDR, and also served at times as an Asia advisor to the East German government. During the Vietnam War he repeatedly had the opportunity to travel to the Far East where he reported from both China and Vietnam.

From Journalism to Crime Writing

Alongside his journalistic work however, Winnington was increasingly beginning to develop a career as a novelist and author of crime fiction, among them novels in German like Heart failure, Inspector Gullet and The Death Curve, The Presumed Dead Man and Angler's Alibi. He also wrote children's books, such as a fantasy novel in two volumes about a robot horse called "Silver hoof", which was set in the Himalayas. During his time in China, he had developed a considerable love and admiration for the people of Tibet, writing Tibet: Record of a Journey (1957), which these stories reflected.

He even had a very brief foray into acting, appearing in a small film role as a Chief of Intelligence Service in the 1967 East German film Die Gefrorenen Blitze (Frozen Flashes), although he seems to have enjoyed more success with writing. His crime novel Police Alibi was made into a film for East German television in 1971 (Tod in der Kurve), while Milliony Ferfaksa (Fairfax’s Millions) was turned into a feature film in 1980 by the Russian Dovzhenko Film Studios.

His autobiography Breakfast with Mao was first published in a small German print run, as he had still been writing it when he died on 26^th November 1983. Described by the historian Edwin Moise in the London Review of Books as “marvellously readable” it only appeared in English in 1986 when Lawrence and Wishart published it as From London to Beijing: Memoirs of a Foreign Correspondent 1914 to 1960.
Nine short novels, six of which belong to the crime and detective genre, the aforementioned two children's books and four travel books about China and Asia have also been published in English at some time or another. Yet despite this diverse oeuvre it appears that Slaves of the Cool Mountains remains the only one of his books currently still in print in the English language, and he currently has no English language Wikipedia entry.

Today Ursula Winnington is mainly known in Germany as an author of cookbooks, where she has been called the “Chef Queen of the East”, with some of her books reaching a total circulation of over one million copies, including her Kleines Kochbuch für Kinder (Small Cookbook for Children) (1977). Since 1992, Klatschmohn Verlag has reissued three of her most popular books, and in 2008 she published another book Liebe, Lust und Leckereien (Love, Lust and Treats). In 1995, long after Winnington’s death in 1983 and the reunification of Germany in 1990, she opened The Gecko in Berlin, a shop for exotic furniture and gifts from all over the world, and continues to make her home in Berlin.

Revival of Interest from Korea

Alan Winnington remains almost unknown in the country of his birth, and the English speaking world more broadly. Unlike Burchett, who is mainly remembered for his Daily Express article of 1945 which exposed the reality of nuclear radiation sickness following the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Winnington does not even have an English language Wikipedia entry. He is remembered, it seems, only in Germany.

With this in mind it is therefore quite noteworthy that recently the media organisation Ahim and South Korean journalist Im Hyoin have been bringing Winnington’s revelations about US atrocities in Korea to light once more, if only in South Korea, among them Winnington’s work exposing the notoriously under-reported Sincheon massacre. This atrocity even inspired a painting by Picasso which sits in the Picasso Museum in Paris. It is a painting as stark and brutal as his earlier painting Guernica inspired by fascist atrocities in the Spanish Civil War but which still remains far less well known. 

This should give us pause to reflect upon how, thirty years after the Cold War ended, its logic continues to distort our own historical memory.

Notes:

https://grahamstevenson.me.uk/2008/09/20/alan-winnington/

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v08/n20/edwin-moise/our-man-in-beijing

http://www.urbananxieties.org/blog/category/alan-winnington

Cómo llegué a la edad adulta sin ver nunca una película vietnamita (versión en español)

Cuando la serie documental The Vietnam War de Ken Burns y Lynn Novick fue transmitida por PBS en los Estados Unidos en el otoño de 2017 (fue lanzada en DVD en el Reino Unido) se encontró con críticas mixtas. Oliver North escribió para Fox News, denunciando la descripción de "los heroicos" GI estadounidenses como un grupo de fumadores de marihuana, y también quejándose de la exclusión de entrevistas con figuras como Henry Kissinger. De hecho, los cineastas parecen haber tomado una decisión deliberada de evitar entrevistar a nombres grandes y potencialmente divisivos, optando en cambio por un enfoque centrista en el que las historias de la gente común tienen prioridad.

Muchos de la izquierda también han criticado el continuo fracaso de los cineastas estadounidenses para pensar más allá de los parámetros establecidos, como la persistente suposición de que se trataba de una noble intervención perseguida con buenas intenciones que Estados Unidos podría haber ganado si hubieran estado más decididos, o si la prensa hubiera sido más servicial tal vez. periodistas independientes, veteranos de Vietnam y activistas por la paz como John Pilger, S. Brian Willson y otros están más interesados en desafiar a cineastas como Burns y Novick para enfrentar la dura pero posiblemente necesaria realidad de que una razón clave por la que Estados Unidos perdió la guerra de Vietnam fue porque tenían tanto derecho a estar allí como la Unión Soviética de estar en Hungría o Checoslovaquia.

El lanzamiento de este nuevo documental y las diversas críticas que lo rodean me hicieron pensar en cuánto mis propias percepciones de ese conflicto han sido moldeadas casi en su totalidad por las películas y programas de televisión estadounidenses. A pesar de que crecí en un país, Inglaterra, que tenía la mentalidad cautelosa bajo el Primer Ministro Harold Wilson de negarse a comprometer tropas a la guerra (aunque Wilson también se negó a unirse a los Primeros Ministros de Suecia y, finalmente, a Australia al criticar abiertamente a los Estados Unidos. agresión), mi percepción de Vietnam y el pueblo vietnamita fue durante muchos años moldeada por una lente de fabricación occidental.

Esta percepción contribuye a una percepción con demasiada frecuencia unidimensional y a veces insultante de los vietnamitas como actores de apoyo en una historia estadounidense, como enemigos en su propia tierra, que persiste en grandes sectores de la sociedad occidental.

Mientras Burns y Novick han hecho un servicio al registro histórico al buscar las historias de personas del norte y del sur de Vietnam para sus series, todavía se verán en el contexto de una serie documental producida y financiada por Estados Unidos, finalmente hecha para un público estadounidense. También existe la preocupación de que esto pueda alimentar nuevos fracasos de la comprensión intercultural y una falta de voluntad para enfrentar las duras verdades que podrían impedir esa agresión imperial en el futuro.

Este es un fenómeno que no es exclusivo de los Estados, pero que impregna gran parte de la cultura occidental, incluido mi propio país. En realidad, es transmitido notablemente bien por el personaje central en la novela debut del autor británico Alex Garland The Beach (1996). Si esto fue intencional o no, no tengo idea. Si ha leído el libro, recordará que relata la narración en primera persona de un joven viajero de Londres llamado Richard que se siente atraído por el sudeste asiático en un año sabático, más por el clima cálido y las drogas baratas que por cualquier deseo significativo de entender y conectarse con la gente (en este caso los de Tailandia) y su cultura.

El autoengaño de la narración en primera persona de Richard se ilustra con sorprendente claridad por su deseo de establecer una clara distinción entre lo que él describe como "viajeros" y "turistas", con Richard clasificándose a sí mismo como un viajero. Esta es una distinción lamentablemente no confirmada por su propio comportamiento. A pesar de que la historia se desarrolla en Bangkok y el golfo de Tailandia, somos testigos de que Richard tropieza con fantasías derivadas de un joven que pasó viendo programas de televisión estadounidenses como The A Team y películas como la épica Apocalypse Now de Francis Ford Coppola (1979).

La tragedia subsiguiente se erige como una advertencia dramática de lo que puede suceder cuando los occidentales ricos ven una región económicamente subdesarrollada simplemente como un patio de recreo para sus propias fantasías en forma de Hollywood. Apocalypse Now, por supuesto, simplemente usó Vietnam como un telón de fondo contemporáneo conveniente para un recuento de la novela de la Segunda Guerra Mundial Heart of Darkness de Joseph Conrad, que tiene lugar en el Congo, de la misma manera que el protagonista de Garland y sus amigos usan las islas del Golfo como telón de fondo para sus propias aventuras hedonistas.

El viaje que los cineastas y documentales estadounidenses han tomado durante el último medio siglo parece haber sido un proceso de llegar lentamente a aceptar la humanidad del pueblo vietnamita y la legitimidad de su lucha por la independencia nacional. Sí, fueron y siguen siendo oficialmente un estado de partido marxista-leninista, pero solo porque la revolución de 1917 en Rusia parecía ofrecer un modelo viable y un aliado dispuesto en ese momento para los países económicamente subdesarrollados que buscaban industrializarse en un espacio de tiempo muy corto.

No olvidemos que Ho Chi Minh y sus colegas basaron la declaración de independencia vietnamita de 1945 en la propia declaración de independencia de los Estados Unidos. ¿Quién puede decir cómo podrían haberse desarrollado las cosas si Estados Unidos no hubiera tomado la trágica decisión de suplantar los intereses coloniales franceses en lugar de apoyar la independencia nacional vietnamita, o viera su política exterior deformada y subvertida por la lógica de la política real de la Guerra Fría? Pero estoy divagando...

Esta perspectiva es algo que debe ser bienvenida, incluso si una comprensión más profunda del papel de sus países en el mundo a menudo permanece excluida de gran parte del discurso estadounidense convencional.

En 1968, por ejemplo, el año de la masacre de My Lai, Hollywood todavía estaba produciendo propaganda bastante tradicional como la película de John Wayne The Green Berets. En la década de 1970, cuando quedó claro que Estados Unidos había perdido la guerra, los cineastas estadounidenses recurrieron a hacer dramas cargados, estudios de personajes de las torturadas psiques de veteranos individuales como Taxi Driver de Martin Scorsese (1976) y The Deer Hunter de Michael Cimono (1978), ambas películas que ayudaron a lanzar la carrera como actor de Robert de Niro.

Este tema fue desarrollado y refinado durante la década de 1980 con cada vez más referencia a la experiencia vivida de personas reales (blancas, occidentales) de ese período. Desde el disc jockey de las fuerzas estadounidenses interpretado por Robin Williams en Good Morning Vietnam (1988), y su lento despertar de que la historia que había vendido su gobierno era realmente una mentira, hasta Ron Kovic, cuyo viaje del joven patriota idealista al abierto activista por la paz es representado por Tom Cruise en Nacido el cuatro de julio (1989) de Oliver Stone.

Mientras que Estados Unidos exportó su producción cultural al resto del mundo, e incluso cuando el gobierno vietnamita de finales de la década de 1980 implementó políticas de "renovación" económicas favorables al mercado que eliminaron muchas de sus principales políticas socialistas, la mayoría de la gente en el oeste permaneció efectivamente ciega a las voces y perspectivas vietnamitas.

Ocasionalmente se puede encontrar una representación en estas películas estadounidenses de los vietnamitas como personajes más de una dimensión en una historia estadounidense, pero no se reconoce el hecho de que, a pesar de su subdesarrollo, Vietnam logró invertir en su propia industria cinematográfica de cosecha propia, donde los personajes vietnamitas toman el protagonismo en sus propias historias. El Vietnam Film Studio se estableció en Hanoi poco después de la partición en la década de 1950. El gobierno de Vietnam del Sur, respaldado por Estados Unidos, también tenía su propia industria cinematográfica con sede en Saigón, y permanecieron entidades separadas hasta la reunificación en la década de 1970.

Sin embargo, hoy en día cualquier persona en esta era de globalización que busque en Internet películas vietnamitas clásicas encontrará muy poco disponible en DVD o en servicios de transmisión de video para espectadores de habla inglesa, en contraste con la diversidad de películas de Japón, Corea del Sur e incluso China que están ampliamente disponibles para el público de habla inglesa.

Aquellos genuinamente interesados en encontrar perspectivas vietnamitas sobre "la guerra estadounidense" (como se la conoce en Vietnam) deben confiar en festivales de cine especializados ocasionales o recurrir a publicaciones aleatorias en sitios web para compartir videos donde, si tienen suerte, pueden encontrar una versión con subtítulos.

Por lo tanto, este artículo está diseñado deliberadamente para llenar el vacío que existe en la mente de muchos occidentales con respecto a la cultura vietnamita, y en particular el cine vietnamita.

Quizás la mejor película vietnamita para hablantes de inglés para empezar es el documental de 1998 de Tran Van Thuy Tieng vi cam o My Lai (El sonido del violín en My Lai), que dura solo media hora. Es particularmente bueno para cualquier persona que disfrutó de Nacido el 4 de julio, ya que se centra en otros veteranos estadounidenses convertidos en activistas por la paz, en este caso Hugh Thompson y Larry Colborn, que presenciaron la masacre por sus compañeros soldados y valientemente intervinieron para detenerlo. El equipo de filmación vietnamita graba el regreso de Thompson y Colborn a la aldea tres décadas más tarde para encontrarse con los sobrevivientes, y el resultado es una película sincera, conmovedora y finalmente esperanzadora sobre la importancia de la memoria y el anhelo humano de paz y reconciliación.

En contraste, el largometraje de Dinh Hac Bui Ha Noi 12 ngay dem (Hanoi 12 días y noches) (2002) es una película de guerra bastante típica, pero sigue siendo interesante de ver para apreciar mejor la perspectiva vietnamita. La película trata sobre el bombardeo de Hanoi por bombarderos estadounidenses B-52 que tuvo lugar durante 12 días y noches en el período previo a la Navidad de 1972, antes de que las conversaciones de paz comenzaran en París. Estos ataques provocaron la condena no solo de aliados naturales como China y la Unión Soviética, sino también de los gobiernos de las naciones occidentales, algunos aliados de los Estados Unidos. como el gobierno de Gough Whitlam en Australia (cuyo pueblo ya había sufrido mucho por su apoyo a los estadounidenses), otros firmemente no alineados como el de Olof Palme en Suecia.

Quizás una de las experiencias más gratificantes de ver esta película como occidental no sea simplemente la novedad de ver una película de guerra de Vietnam hecha desde el punto de vista de los vietnamitas del norte, sino la oportunidad de ver a actores de descenso europeo interpretando pequeños papeles secundarios en una historia vietnamita, a diferencia de lo contrario al que Otro contraste es el enfoque más central en la experiencia de los personajes femeninos que uno ve en una serie de películas vietnamitas sobre la guerra (Mua gio chu'o'ng, o Temporada del torbellino en inglés (1978), Canh dong hoang, o El campo abandonado (1979) y Bao gio cho den thang mu'o'i o Cuando llega el décimo mes (1984) siendo bastante buenos ejemplos),

En las películas vietnamitas se ve a las mujeres no solo como esposas y madres, sino también como participantes importantes en el esfuerzo de guerra, mientras que en las películas estadounidenses (la película Full Metal Jacket de Stanley Kubrick de 1987 es un ejemplo notorio) las mujeres vietnamitas son más propensas a ser representadas como prostitutas.

Una crítica de Hanoi 12 Días y Noches desde un ángulo puramente artístico es que parte de la actuación es un poco nervioso. Esto se compensa con un final mucho más triunfal de lo que estamos acostumbrados a ver en la mayoría de las películas estadounidenses sobre esta guerra en particular, un recordatorio de que para el pueblo vietnamita la guerra terminó con una victoria triunfal contra otro invasor extranjero y la reunificación de su país.

Una película mucho más temprana y artísticamente más impresionante, con un final más ambiguo, es el conmovedor drama de Hai Ninh Em be Ha Noi (Girl from Hanoi) (1974), que se desarrolla (y de hecho fue producida) durante las secuelas inmediatas de la misma campaña de bombardeo estadounidense de diciembre de 1972. La película utilizó verdaderas bombas como lugares para contar la historia de una joven, Ngoc Ha, que está buscando desesperadamente a su familia, violín en la mano, que han estado desaparecidos después del bombardeo de su ciudad. Para mí, las similitudes con el bombardeo alemán de la Luftwaffe de Londres son palpables.

Tras la reunificación, los vietnamitas fueron sometidos a sanciones económicas castigadoras, y estos años claramente difíciles se reflejan en los valores de producción de sus películas, la mayoría de las cuales todavía se estaban realizando en blanco y negro hasta bien entrada la década de 1980. Sin embargo, a pesar de estos contratiempos, el director utiliza una cinematografía impresionante para contar la desgarradora historia de una joven que lucha por continuar la vida normal en una tierra devastada por la guerra, incapaz de decirle a su padre e hijo pequeño que su esposo ha sido asesinado.

Si bien sigue siendo difícil encontrar ejemplos en el oeste de los vietnamitas que enmarquen sus propias perspectivas sobre la guerra, excepto en el contexto de las entrevistas de los documentales occidentales, en los últimos años se ha realizado un esfuerzo concertado para llevar más películas vietnamitas contemporáneas a las pantallas del mundo de habla inglesa.

Por ejemplo, cada dos años la Asociación Vietnamita-Americana de Artes y Letras organiza un Festival de Cine Vietnamita, que en 2016 fue organizado por el complejo Village Cinema Sunshine en Melbourne, Australia, donde proyectó trabajos recientes de cineastas vietnamitas de varios países de todo el mundo. Se incluyeron la comedia Taxi, Em Ten Gi, (Taxi Driver, ¿Cuál es tu nombre?), la película de acción Lat Mat (Face Off), Trot Yeu (Love) y Cau Vong Khong Sac de Tuyen Quang Nguyen (Rainbow Without Colours). En ese mismo año, en el 60º Festival BFI de Londres, Inglaterra proyectó nueve películas, incluida la galardonada Tôi thay hoa vàng trên co xanh (2015), la historia de Victor Vu sobre dos hermanos jóvenes ambientada en la década de 1980. Todas estas películas, y hay muchas más, demuestran hasta dónde ha llegado la industria cinematográfica vietnamita de los viejos, en blanco y negro.

Muchas de estas películas que solo están disponibles para la gente en el oeste a través de sitios web de intercambio de videos en las redes sociales reciben miles de visitas. Si tienes la suerte de vivir en un área con una gran población de expatriados vietnamitas, puedes encontrar una biblioteca local bien equipada con programas de cine y televisión vietnamitas en DVD, como lo hice una vez mientras visitaba el suburbio de Flemington en Melbourne no hace mucho tiempo.

Espero que podamos esperar un momento en que mucho más de estas películas clásicas, junto con la tarifa más contemporánea, puede ser remasterizado para la televisión occidental y el mercado de streaming de Internet, o para comprar en DVD, para que podamos entender mejor entre sí. Cuando esto sucede, un mundo de verdadera comprensión y paz, en lugar de una mera cesación de las hostilidades, puede ser posible.

Puede leer la versión original en inglés aquí: https://thefreakydoodlesofrussmcp.blogspot.com/2018/11/how-i-reached-adulthood-without-ever.html

A little bit of Arabia in the heart of Paris

Pictures taken at the Grand Mosque in Paris, France last September 2019.

I haven't been to Morocco since 1994, but for a brief moment in time it almost feels like I have left the streets of southern Paris behind and I am deep in the Casbah of Tangier.

According to Mrs McPherson, during WW2 this majestic building was used as a makeshift school for Jewish children, whose families were being sheltered from the Vichy government of Nazi collaborators by Algerian partisans involved in the French Resistance.

As a counter-balance to the intense history associated with the Grand Mosque is the cafe which occupies one corner of the site, where beautiful mint tea again transports me back to a Tangier of the mind.

I simply cannot do justice, at present, to the beautiful intricacy of Islamic design, so I am letting the photographs speak for themselves.

Anti-war Art

The creation of art that attempts to convey the sterile horror of war has a long history indeed.

Vasily Vereshchagin (1842-1904) was a Russian landscape painter of the nineteenth century and, for a time, an official war artist for the Russian army. His paintings often reflect his own direct experiences. 
He is often categorised as an anti-war artist because of the devastated landscapes he painted drew closely upon his own direct experiences, and were depicted in his distinctive crisp, unflinching classical realism. These paintings are like a "morning after" image, displaying the sterile destruction of life and civilisation that remains once the heat of battle has died down.

Vereshchagin dedicated 'The Apotheosis of War,' to "all great conquerors, past, present, and to come." It can be found today in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, which houses a great deal of his works. 'The Ruins of the Theatre in Chuguchak' (below) can be found in the Russian Museum in St Petersburg.
What makes paintings like these so powerful and disturbing to me is how often images like these have been repeated and recreated in the real world in the century and a half that has elapsed since their creation.

The lifelessness of Vereshchagin's landscapes are echoed by those of the British war artist of WW1 John Nash. The hideous mound of skulls in 'The Apotheosis of War' has been seen in the twentieth century too many times to count, perhaps most infamously and presciently in Cambodia of the 1970s.
In the last century we have seen the power of photography replace painting to convey the reality of war to the public. Think of those photographs of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which the Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett, who defied a ban on western reporters visiting the cities following the US atomic bombing, described as "a warning from history".
In the twenty-first century independent journalists like the British photojournalist Guy Smallman have produced similarly stark images on landscapes in Afghanistan. 
Others increasingly rely more on video, which can be easily distributed via social media to anyone with an Internet connection. For example, this footage shot by the British independent journalist Vanessa Beeley of Daraa al Balad in Syria I feel captures the same spirit of Vereshchagin's unblinking vision, which bears witness to our own inhumanity.

Today some of the best anti-war reportage is that which is created by the perpetrators themselves, and it is merely left to conscientious individuals to alert the general public to its existence, as US Army Private Manning did back in 2010.

An Introduction to Venezuelan Cinema

In attempting to write an article about the recent history of Venezuelan Cinema one thing that becomes apparent very early on is just how difficult it is to find Venezuelan films translated for the English-speaking market. 
Location is one reason. Like film-makers from other parts of the Global South, Latin American film-makers often struggle to reach western, and especially English-speaking, audiences. 
Politics may be another. The last few years has seen Venezuela subject to quite severe economic sanctions imposed by its rich neighbour to the north, so this would undoubtedly affect the countries' film distribution.
By way of an introduction, I will try to provide here a very brief overview of what I see as some of the highlights of Venezuelan cinema over the last three or four decades. I hope that this gives film buffs in the west a better understanding of Venezuelan film-making not just before the election of Hugo Chavez in 1998, but before the uprisings of the early 1990s, right up until the present day Maduro years of collapsing oil prices, economic sanctions and allegations of internal mismanagement.

El cine soy yo (The Moving Picture Man) (dir. Luis Armando Roche; 1977)
This drama starring Juliet Berto was Venezuela's entry into the 10th Moscow International Film Festival. It tells the story of a moving man who becomes a film projectionist, and who shares his movies from a van disguised as a red whale!

Bolivar, a Tropical Symphony (dir. Diego Risquez; 1981)
This art house film from painter and film-maker Risquez became the first Super 8 film to be selected for the Directors' Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival. It could be loosely described as a biographical drama. It forms part of the directors' ambitious 'American Trilogy' which took as its subject the history and mythology of Latin America.
You can view a clip here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ix6ndXmvxiU

Orinoko, New World (dir. Diego Risquez; 1984)
Part of the same trilogy, this anthropological drama uses simple sounds, devoid of any dialogue, to recreate what the Americas would have been like before Spanish colonialism. We see indigenous people engaged in activities such as art and fishing, celebrating rituals, dances and local indigenous beliefs. 
You can watch a short clip here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqNF5s2COrU

Amerika, Terra Incognita (dir. Diego Risquez; 1988)
This is the final part of the directors' art house trilogy, although I can find almost nothing about it online.

La Casa de Agua (The House of Water) (dir. Jacobo Penzo; 1983)
This was the Venezuelan entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards, although like Terra Incognita I have been unable to find detailed information about it.

Oriana (dir. Fina Torres; 1985)
Set in a hacienda or ranch, this drama tells the story of a lady named Maria, who returns to the house where she spent time as a child in order to uncover the secrets of her aunt, the Oriana of the title, who has left the property to her in her will. 
This film won the Camera d'Or Prize at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival, and if you are lucky enough to own an American region DVD player you should be able to buy a copy online.

Jericho (dir. Luis Alberto Lamata; 1991)
This historical drama is set during the early 16th century. It concerns a priest named Santiago who joins a Spanish expedition in order to bring Christianity to the natives. Once there the expedition discover there is fierce resistance from the native peoples, and the entire expedition is murdered, with the priest being the only person spared. Santiago initially attempts to continue his mission of religious conversion before he decides to join the natives in their own way of life...until another expedition of Spaniards arrive.

Amanecio de Golpe (The Coup Awakened) (dir. Carlos Azpurua; 1998)
Historical drama about the 1992 attempted coup (the last one conducted by leftist elements in Venezuela, subsequent attempts having come from the right-wing opposition). The film was produced with international support from film companies in Canada, Cuba and Spain, which appears to be a not uncommon feature of Latin American film finance, and perhaps one reason why, after Chavez finally won power democratically in 1998 he set about creating the Ville del Cine film studios and Amazonia Films distribution company, launched in 2006 as a means of promoting local film-makers.
You can watch the trailer (again, in Spanish) here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ET0q6iJThQ

Punto y Raya (A Dot and A Line) (dir. Elia Schneider; 2004)
Taking its name from the anti-war song by Soledad Bravo, this action drama starring Edgar Ramirez is about Cheito, a street-wise Venezuelan conscript, who is thrown together with Pedro, a straight-arrow volunteer in the Colombian army, when the latter deserts his company and the other survives an ambush. They survive guerrillas, drug producers, corrupt narcotics officers, not to mention each other, as they make their way through the jungle. From being enemies they become allies, and finally friends, although their loyalties are tested along the way by women and politics. 
This film was a joint production with production companies in Chile, Spain and Uruguay, and won four international awards including the Special Jury Prize at Havana. It is also available on European region DVD!

Secuestro Express (Express Kidnapping) (dir. Jonathan Jakubowicz; 2005)
This crime drama is one of the few Venezuelan films to be picked up for distribution in the Anglophone world. It was made by a Venezuelan expat who lives in Los Angeles.

El Caracazo (dir. Roman Chalbaud; 2005)
This historical drama, which recounts the uprisings of 1989 and their violent suppression, walked away with awards at film festivals in Havana and Trieste.

Mi Vida por Sharon, o que te pasa a ti? (dir. Carlos Azpurua; 2006)
In a departure from earlier films like Amanecio de Golpe, this comedy concerns the attempts of Carlitos Lopez to recover a stolen car named Sharon, even if it risks his relationships with his ex-wife, girlfriend and family. 
Here is a clip: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2r7ull

Postales de Leningrado (dir. Mariana Rondon; 2007)
This is an award-winning coming of age drama about kids growing up in the left-wing insurgency of 1960s Venezuela. The director loosely based it on her own experiences as the daughter of FALN guerrillas. You can also find it on DVD. Yayyy!

La Clase (dir. Jose Antonio Varela; 2007)
This romantic drama from Ville de Cine is based on the novel by Farruco Sesto, which contrasts the different ways of life of different social classes in Venezuela. The film walked away with awards from the Merida and Malaga film festivals. You can view the trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNNAKwU3m5c

El Enemigo (dir. Luis Alberto Lamata; 2008)
Drama, in which two people from very different worlds are brought together in the corridors of a Caracas hospital. Here's the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0WVfmC9uQk

Macuro (dir. Hernan Jabes; 2008)
Drama. Sadly this is another film I can find almost no information about online in English. Anyone who has seen it is welcome to leave a brief review in the comments section of this article.

Zamora: Tierra y hombres libres (dir. Roman Chalbaud; 2009)
Historical drama about Ezequiel Zamora, who led a struggle in Venezuela during the late nineteenth century for land rights, a key factor in the entrenched inequalities of the nation at that time.
Here's the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9wBby9FESA

Libertador Morales (dir. Efterpi Charalambidis; 2009)
Comedy-drama about a motorcycle taxi driver who assumes the alter ego El Justiciero in order to fight the criminal gangs in Caracas.
Here's the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAPDQW1G4LI

Taita Boves (dir. Luis Alberto Lamata; 2010)
Historical drama. From the directors' summary on IMDB: “TAITA BOVES chronicles a thirst for revenge that devastated a country. It tells the true story of Jose Tomás Boves, a cruel man who became a legend during the Venezuelan War of Independence, the most violent in the Americas. He went from seafarer to pirate, horse smuggler to prosperous merchant, prisoner to military chief. Spanish by birth, he spearheaded a grass roots troop of slaves, mulattoes, Indians and mestizos that crushed Simón Bolívar and his patriot army. Respectfully referred to as "Taita" by them, he fought for the underprivileged and the poorest of the poor, and curtailed three centuries of order in this colonial region. This film is about his passions and power, his loves and misadventures, and a bloody saga that rocked Venezuela.”

Here's the trailer (in Spanish): https://vimeo.com/12434567

Habana Eva (dir. Fina Torres; 2010)

This romantic comedy from the director of Oriana was filmed in Havana, and walked away with an award at the New York International Latino Film Festival.

Dias de poder (Days of Power) (dir. Roman Chalbaud; 2011)

Drama concerning Caracas society during the 1960s, times of struggle and change. After the fall of the Perezjimenist dictatorship, Fernando Quintero, a revolutionary leader, ascends to power in the new administration, thus betraying his ideals to become an accomplice to the repression that he had previously fought. His son Efraín, holding to his old convictions, generates contradictions that make him an active adversary of the government and of his own father, leading to a tormented and instructive end.

Azul y no tan rosa (Blue and Not So Pink, released in the US as: My Straight Son) (dir. Miguel Ferrari; 2012)
A joint-production with Spain, this became the first Venezuelan film to win the Goya Award for Best Spanish Language Foreign Film.

Tiempos de Dictadura Tiempos de Marcos Perez Jimenez (dir. Carlos Oteyza; 2012)
Documentary about both the human rights abuses and infrastructure development of the twentieth century Venezuelan dictator.

Here's the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLt6jiZr478

Piedra, Papelo, Tijera (Rock, Paper, Scissors) (dir. Hernan Jabes; 2012)
Drama, in which a mistaken kidnapping sets in motion a delicate chain of tragic events.

Azu: Alma de princesa (dir. Luis Alberto Lamata; 2013)

Adventure drama, set in 1780. A group of slaves flee from a sugarcane plantation, looking for a cumbe. They are pursued by Don Manuel Aguirre, an obsessed landowner who has fixed his eyes on Azú, the beautiful slave who has an ancestral destiny. This story combines action, mysticism and the struggle for freedom and dignity in an environment filled with magic and the richness of the jungle.

Here's the trailer (in Spanish): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbmvR64RhbQ

Bolivar, Man of Difficulties (dir. Luis Alberto Lamata; 2013)

Biographical drama starring Roque Valero, focusing on the period in Simon Bolivar's life (from May 1815 until 1816) when he was exiled in Jamaica. The film, produced in collaboration with other international film companies including Cuba's ICAIC studio, explores the experience of the human being behind the heroic myth of the Latin American independence hero.

Desde Alla (From Afar) (dir. Lorenzo Vigas; 2015)

Armando, a wealthy middle-aged man, becomes involved with Elder, a young man from a street gang.

El Amparo (dir. Rober Calzadilla; 2016)
Historical drama, made as a Venezuelan-Colombian joint production, which won awards in Sydney and Sao Paulo. At the end of the 80's, by the creeks of the Arauca river, near the Colombian-Venezuelan border, two men survived the brutality of a shooting in which 14 of their mates were killed. They claimed to be mere fishermen, but the Venezuelan army accused them to be guerrilla fighters, intimidating them in every possible way and even attempting to remove them from the cell where they were guarded by a policeman. Their neighbours prevented their transfer, but the pressure they faced to give in and submit the official version was overwhelming.

Here's the trailer (with English subtitles): https://vimeo.com/180903350

La Planta Insolente (dir. Roman Chalbaud; 2017)
Historical drama. The film rescues, in an hour and forty minutes, the historic moment when Cipriano Castro, then president of Venezuela, proclaimed: "The insolent plant of the foreigner has profaned the sacred soil of the country!", at a time when the coasts of the country were invaded by imperial forces in 1902.

Here's the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9_RxkPzR9A

La Familia (dir. Gustavo Rondon Cordova; 2017)

Social realist drama, produced with Chilean and Norwegian assistance, set in the barrios of Caracas about a father and his son.

This article aims to give a brief overview of some of the highlights of Venezuelan cinema from the 1970s up until the present day. It is by no means exhaustive, and I hope to be able to write more extensively about this subject as I learn more. 
It often seems that when Venezuelan popular culture like film is discussed at all in English language media it is often seen through the somewhat distorted lens of western mainstream media, which of course all too frequently reflect the unquestioned political biases of the dominant culture. 
Anyone reading this who wants to see more articles in English about Venezuelan films from a more independent perspective, and thinks there are any important films I have missed out from this list is welcome to leave a comment below. 

The Popular Music of Venezuela

El Cantor del Pueblo (The People's Singer)

By pushing the sun,

the dawn gets closer.

- 'Sombrero Azul' by Ali Primera

Ali Primera was born on October 31 1942, in the small coastal town of Coro, Falcon State, in the north of Venezuela. During his tragically short lifetime he became one of the leading lights of the Venezuelan Nueva Cancion ("new song"), a movement that inspired musicians across Latin America during the 1960s, 70s and into the 80s, by combining both the instruments and rhythms of traditional indigenous folk music of the region with the politically-engaged themes of North American protest singers like Dylan and Seeger.

The songs of Primera were a cry of condemnation against exploitation and repression, which at that time was afflicting the hemisphere in the form of a seemingly endless cycle of CIA-backed military dictatorships, under which an extreme form of capitalism was unleashed upon the countries of south and central America and the Caribbean. But his songs were also a celebration of popular resistance.

He first began to write songs as a student in the 1960s, when he studied at the Central University of Venezuela, initially as a hobby. It was only when his songs 'Humanidad' and 'No basta rezar' were presented at the Festival of Protest Songs in 1967 to some success that he found himself propelled into the spotlight and began to take songwriting more seriously.

Even the most moderate progressives in Latin America at this time were liable to be targeted for disappearance, so with little to lose and potentially a world to gain, Primera accepted a scholarship from the Communist Party of Venezuela to continue his studies in Europe - Romania, to be precise -  where he lived and studied between 1969 and 1973. His first album Gente de mi tierra was recorded in Germany around this time. More albums were soon to follow, and he returned to South America a star.

Sadly, on February 16 1985 he became involved in a fatal car accident on the Autopista Valle-Coche in Caracas. He was just 42.

The album he had been working on at the time of his untimely death had only 4 songs completed, so his brother, the musician Jose Montecano, stepped in to record the remaining songs. They included familiar themes of social justice and peace, alongside what was for Primera new musical styles like 'gaita' - a musical form native to Zulia state, to the west of Lake Maracaibo. The resulting LP Por si no lo sabia (If you didn't know) was a success, even receiving some television promotion, which had eluded Primera during his lifetime.

It is possible to find a little video footage of Primera's performances online, notably from the 1983 Concert for Peace in Nicaragua. It was here that he performed his song 'Sombrero Azul', a message of solidarity to the people of El Salvador, which I quoted a part of at the start of this piece.

Today, a monument to Primera stands in Caujarao, close to the town of his birth in Falcon state. It was unveiled in 2005 by the new socialist Bolivarian government, which declared the music of Ali Primera a national heritage.

Soledad Bravo

Born in the Spanish town of Logrono, La Rioja on January 1 1943 and raised in Venezuela, Soledad Bravo has been one of the other great leading lights of the Venezuelan Nueva Cancion. Although equally proficient at singing traditional folk melodies as she has been at pop songs, Bravo made her greatest impact as a protest singer. Billboard declared that "her voice is an exceptional instrument," and the Madrid-based newspaper Diario described how "her voice captivates you, the range is so wide and its strength is amazing."

Bravo's left-wing political convictions seem natural when we consider that her father was a Spanish republican during the civil war of 1936-39. The family left Spain (then under fascist dictatorship) and emigrated to Venezuela when Soledad was just seven, and it was here that she attended school, and where she first began singing with a group. 

She continued to sing while studying at the Central University of Venezuela. Shortly after her graduation in 1967, Bravo was hired to perform daily on the morning television show 'Buenos Dias', which she appeared on for many years. 

Her debut album, Soledad Bravo Canta, released in 1968, included her interpretation of the Cuban troubadour Carlos Puebla's tribute to the recently murdered Argentine-Cuban revolutionary Che Guevera, 'Hasta Siempre.' 

The title comes from Guevara's well-known saying “Hasta la victoria siempre!” (“Until victory, always!”) and was the first and best known of many cover versions over the years.

Between 1969 and 1976, Bravo focused on popularising both the traditional and radical protest songs of Latin America, releasing three commercially successful albums - Soledad (1969), Soledad Bravo Vol. 3 (1970) and Soledad Bravo Vol. 4 (1973) - touring throughout other Latin American countries like Peru, Argentina, Chile and Mexico. 
Politically engaged folk music has always been a way of preserving and disseminating stories of popular struggle, of the successes and failures of popular movements, and just as British musicians like Ewan MacColl and Chumbawumba have sought out and recorded their own versions of traditional ballads and anthems of revolutionary movements of the British radical past, so too have the musicians of Latin America. Her 1972 double-album, En Vivo, featured songs of the Spanish Civil war, and she also released Cantos de la Nueva Trova Cubana in 1974, Nueva Trova being the Cuban version of the Nueva Cancion which was initiated after the revolution by artists like Carlos Puebla. 
When Bravo was invited to perform in Spain an appearance on Spanish television, in which she was accompanied by flamenco guitarist Manolo Sanlucar, helped bring her national recognition in that country. 
During the four years that she remained in Spain she recorded several albums, including one with Spanish poet Rafael Alberti in 1977, and a collection of songs of the Spanish Jews, Cantos Sefardies (1980), that received a Grand Prix Du Disque award in France. 
From Spain she next traveled to New York, USA, where she adopted a more tropical repertoire, working with salsa musician Willie Colon on the album Caribe (1982). Four years later, she recorded a self-titled album with accompaniment by Eddie Gomez, Airto Moreira, Paquito D'Rivera, Jorge Dalto, Ray Barreto, Yomo Toro and Spyro Gyra.”

Folk music can often be seen as sombre, despite moments of stunning tenderness and sweet simplicity, such as we hear in a peace song like 'Punto y Raya' (Dots and Lines), a song of such gentle subversiveness against war you almost don't notice it at first (especially if Spanish is not your first language). But we must not forget that the Venezuelan musical scene has always been quite broad and diverse. If, for example, you just want to get down in a mosh pit then the energetic ska beats of Desorden Publico may be more to your taste.

In contrast to the Nueva Cancion folk singers like Primera and Bravo, the group Los Amigos Invisibles sound like music from another era, which of course they are. Much like the "Bolivarian Revolution" they emerged during the 1990s, and English-speakers may find their humorous lyrics and cheeky music videos more reminiscent of bands like Madness (from the UK) or the B-52s (from the US).

It is anyone's guess how the country's present challenges will impact its cultural output. If the US-installed President takes root, then a lifting of the economic sanctions that have been strangling the economy for the last few years could make it easier for Venezuelans to export their culture to the world once more. If the international support the Maduro government has received enables it to resist foreign interference, it is anyone's guess what music such resistance could inspire.

Hopefully this briefest of overviews of some of the shining lights of Venezuelan popular music over the last half century shows that, where Venezuela is concerned, any outcome will likely inspire music with a unique richness and variety.