Glossy black plastic toys
 Monday. 31.May.2004 | Comments (3) | Permalink 621

Thanks to Ana for telling me that the Catalan director who attended the Film School Exhibition this week raved about my documentary in a newspaper interview. That was nice. There is little to say about the film sessions. Apparently the Iranian professor who would bring the Teheran University's films was detained in London because the travel agency did really messed up with the visas. It seems if your're coming to Portugal and have everything legal here, you can't spend three hours in a room somewhere else in Megafortress Europe waiting for the next flight because you surely must be a terrorist if you come from a country without direct flights. Pricks.

Nevertheless I watched the films from Spain and Brazil (and also from the ESTC in Lisbon). The São Paulo ones didn't make my cup of tea and I found them very predictable thematically and aesthetically, hence disappointed since they showed to have plenty of resources. As for the Spanish who will always spend mega-budgets and resources in their college films, I found the ones from Madrid a bit bland in comparison to the sexual aggressiveness of Catalan shorts such as Nito (I guess Pedro Almodovar and Bigas Luna are quite important references at the ESCAC). My favourite film in the exhibition though was I Love You, precisely out of the Barcelona school, a very tense vampiresque affair with gorgeous photography. As for the Lisbon ESTC, they really should have avoided sending simple exercises which are not films at all along with the real shorts, among which I liked one which successfully emulated those old 1940s Portuguese comedies. ···

A Wikipedia entry for the word 'desenrascanço' is currently making the rounds in Portuguese weblogs. Because it's as scientific and as accurate as the concept of an internet connection (with quality of service!) over carrier pigeons. 'Desenrascanço' (you read that 'the-zen-rascan-so') is simply a slang word for the slacker art of coming up with some last-minute solution for a problem - and as a rule the solution will end up doing more harm than simply avoiding the problem (unless avoiding the problem is exactly that last-minute solution - a very common scenario). What I don't get is the article's connection between 'desenrascanço' and those fake academic 'traditions' which consist in the ritual bullying of freshmen. Unfortunately 'desenrascanço' has far greater scope, and it is a true defining quality of being Portuguese - even perhaps what separates us from the Spanish. ···

This compreensive chart of weblog/CMS software features will come in handy eventually, I'm sure. ···