CARNAVAL

Estou no carnaval de Salvador.

Vou sair TODAS as noites. E em algumas noites, para a Barra e para o Campo Grande.

Estou filmando pra Prefeitura e para a Central do Carnaval, e para o Chiclete, e para o Afrodisíaco, quer dizer, Vixe Mainha (foram processados e tiveram de mudar o nome), e para o Babado Novo, e......

Não vou poder assistir o Carnarock. Uma pena, pois parece que vai ter algumas bandas interessantes, e eu realmente estou precisando ir para uns shows de metal. E alterna. E punk rock hard-core. Aliás, tem banda de metal lírico, Power metal, punk melódico (o que é isso, emucore?), e outras coisas....

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"O código Da Vinci" em questão
José Augusto Ribeiro


Como foi o debate da crítica Walnice Nogueira Galvão e do teólogo Luiz Felipe Pondé sobre o best-seller

Na leva, vai J.K. Roling e Paulo Coelho.

Minha opinião: livro fácil, de história fraca, mas a possibilidade de relação com o real instiga a leitura. No meu caso, tenho muito apreço a tudo que se relacione ao Santo Graal e ao rei Arthur. A idéia do feminino no livro, para a minha pessoa, é ultrapassada. Porém para o mundo é importante que o sexo oposto (ao meu) tenha o seu valor respeitado.

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O micromínimo comum
Giselle Beiguelman

Dispositivos móveis ditam as tendências no meio digital e desespetacularizam a criação

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Muita arte e alguns vinténs
Carlos Adriano


Livro do economista holandês Hans Abbing procura explicar por que os artistas são pobres

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A democracia vista de perto
Renato Sztutman


O antropólogo Marcio Goldman estudou durante seis anos o envolvimento político de um grupo social em Ilhéus, na Bahia

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Livro
Carlos Miranda


Argentino relê o concretismo brasileiro


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Escudos narrativos sobre o diretor Manoel de Oliveira
Pedro Maciel Guimarães

Leitura interessante para pretensos video-cine-película-audiovisual-makers e cinéfilos.

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O papa e o tesão
Carlos Alberto Dória

Um texto confuso sobre uma Igreja confusa e um Papa confuso. Interessante.

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"Eu, você e todos nós", primeiro filme da artista multimídia Miranda July, é destaque no cinema americano independente

Leia.

Bafta, o Oscar Inglês


O Segredo de Brokeback Mountain: 4 prêmios/ 9 indicações
O Jardineiro Fiel: 1 prêmio/ 10 indicações


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Filme bósnio "Grbavica" ganha o Urso de Ouro em Berlim

Para Kalil, Rodolfo, Murilo, Euvaldo...

A Sessão Dupla do Comodoro, do dia 01 de março, irá mostrar dois notáveis filmes do cinema fantástico contemporâneo: O CONTO DAS DUAS IRMÃS, de Ji Woon Kim, um dos ícones do jovem cinema coreano, e um filme surpresa que será revelado antes da primeira sessão.

21.30 - O CONTO DAS DUAS IRMÃS

23.30 - FILME SURPRESA

As sessões, como sempre, começam às 21.30, no CineSesc, e as senhas gratuitas estarão à disposição à partir das 21.00 horas na bilheteria do cinema.


O CONTO DAS DUAS IRMÃS
A Tale of Two Sisters (aka Janghwa, Hongryeon) - áudio:coreano; legendas: inglês
Ano: 2003
País: Coréia do Sul
Gênero: Terror
Direção e roteiro: Ji Woon Kim
Diretor de fotografia: Mo-gae Lee
Montagem: Hyeon-mi Lee
Música original: Byung-woo Lee
Elenco: Su-jeong Lim, Geun-yeong Mun, Jung-ah Yum

SINOPSE
Após o suicídio da mãe, duas irmãs muito unidas são internadas num hospital psiquiátrico. Quando recebem alta e retornam para casa descobrem o pai, um intelectual afásico, casado com uma mulher estranha e cruel.

PRÊMIOS:

FANTASPORTO (Portugal) - Melhor filme, melhor diretor, melhor atriz (Su-jeong Lim) e Prêmio Especial do Júri Orient Express

GÉRARDMER FILM DESTIVAL - Grande Prêmio de 2004, Prêmio 13ème Rue (para o diretor) e Grande Prêmio do Júri Jovem

SCREAMFEST - Prêmio "Crystal Skull" de Melhor Filme de 2003


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Festival É Tudo Verdade traz realidade segundo Herzog

É tudo Verdade.

São Paulo, 23/março a 02/abril.
Rio de Janeiro, 24/março a 02/abril.

Filmes de Herzog no Festival:

- "O Grande Êxtase do Entalhador Steiner", sobre o campeão de esqui Walter Steiner;

- "Lições da Escuridão", sobre a Guerra do Golfo;

- "Sinos do Abismo: Fé e Superstição na Rússia";

- "Pequeno Dieter Precisa Voar", sobre o prisioneiro de guerra alemão Dieter Dengler;

- "Juliane Cai na Selva", sobre uma sobrevivente de desastre aéreo;

- "O Diamante Branco", que reconstitui um experimento científico;

- "Além do Infinito Azul", que trata a hipótese de a Terra tornar-se inabitável.

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Parece que o filme "Aeon Flux" é uma merda

Mistérios da Carne


O diretor sino-americano Gregg Araki é uma das figuras mais conhecidas e ousadas do cinema gay de arte, que perturbou platéias com "Geração Maldita" (1995), para depois se perder em produções esquisitas como "Estrada para Lugar Nenhum" e "Splendor- Um Amor em Duas Vidas".

Ele volta à forma num filme premiado em Seattle e Bergen, abordando um tema difícil e ainda tabu: a sedução de menores. É uma história de um garoto loirinho e bonitinho, que foi seduzido por seu professor de ginástica, com quem manteve uma longa relação. Mas, como autoproteção, apagou da memória essa parte do passado e considerou que foi abduzido por extraterrestres que abusaram dele.

A figura central, porém, Neil (muito bem interpretado por Joseph Gordon-Levitt, do seriado "Third Rock from the Sun"), rapaz assumidamente gay que ganha algum dinheiro como michê na cidadezinha do interior onde mora.

A história de cada um deles vai sendo construída, com alguns detalhes sórdidos, até o encontro dos personagens e a revelação final. O filme é bastante bem realizado e, sem dúvida, perturbador.

Não vi no filme qualquer tipo de denúncia ou indignação, mas até um certo desfrute ou mesmo um prazer erótico do diretor em descrever aquelas situações que moralmente são condenáveis e desprezíveis. Entretanto o filme ilustra o mal irreparável que causa nos adultos que passam por esse tipo de experiência quando crianças.

Título original: Misterious Skin (EUA, 2004)
Diretor: Gregg Araki
Elenco: Kelly Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Brady Corbet, Elisabeth Shue, Michelle Trachtenberg, Bill Sage, Chris Mulkey
Extras: Trailers, sinopse e ficha técnica
Idioma: Inglês e Português
Legendas: Português e Inglês
Duração: 105 min. Cor
Distribuidora: Paris

(retirado de Uol Cinema, escrito por Rubens Ewald Filho)

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"Cidade Baixa" leva prêmio na Bélgica

O filme brasileiro "Cidade Baixa", do diretor Sérgio Machado, recebeu neste fim de semana o Grand Prix do Festival Internacional dos Filmes de Amor, na Bélgica.

"Cidade Baixa", há três meses em cartaz em Londres, foi o primeiro trabalho individual de Sérgio Machado, que começou a carreira em sua cidade natal, Salvador, como roteirista e diretor do premiado curta-metragem "Troca de Cabeças".

Trata-se do 15º prêmio que o filme recebe. Outra produção brasileira, "Madame Satã", já recebeu o mesmo prêmio.


p.s.: Lázaro Ramos também estava em Madame Satã, no papel principal.

Filosofia e sociologia entram no currículo do ensino médio

O Ministério da Educação (MEC) quer tornar obrigatórias as disciplinas de filosofia e sociologia no ensino médio de todo o País. A proposta foi enviada para discussão do Conselho Nacional de Educação (CNE) e a decisão deve sair até o fim de março. Atualmente, as matérias já são oferecidas em redes de ensino de 12 Estados, obrigatoriamente ou como opção para os alunos.

Esta é a primeira vez que a questão volta a ser debatida nacionalmente desde 2001, quando o ex-presidente e sociólogo Fernando Henrique Cardoso vetou um projeto de lei que pedia a volta das disciplinas. Na época, ele alegou que faltavam professores para cumprir a futura demanda.

"A questão da falta de professores exige atenção, mas faltam também para física, química e biologia no ensino médio. Isso não pode ser obstáculo para que elas façam parte da grade curricular", diz a diretora de Ensino Médio da Secretaria de Educação Básica do MEC, Lúcia Helena Lodi.

Professores - Em 2004, formaram-se no País 245 profissionais em Filosofia que optaram por fazer Licenciatura, ou seja, tornaram-se professores. O MEC não tem números correspondentes para sociologia. Sabe-se apenas que cerca de 2.300 concluíram o curso de Ciências Sociais.

"Um mesmo professor pode dar aulas em várias escolas", diz o presidente do Sindicato dos Sociólogos do Estado de São Paulo, Paulo Roberto Martins. O documento do MEC pede que as disciplinas sejam oferecidas em "pelo menos duas aulas semanais em pelo menos uma das séries do ensino médio, cabendo à escola estabelecer uma carga horária adequada (...)".

São Paulo começou a oferecer as disciplinas em 2005. Depois de uma consulta às escolas foi decidido que os 1º e 2º anos teriam aulas de filosofia e que, nos 3º anos, poderia ser escolhido entre sociologia e psicologia. Hoje, há 1.800 professores de filosofia na rede. Neste ano, com a criação do período integral em 500 escolas, elas passaram também a oferecer a disciplina para alunos de 1ª a 8ª séries.

"Não adianta dizer que não tem professor. É preciso oferecer a disciplina justamente para estimular as pessoas e as universidades", diz Valéria de Souza, da coordenação de estudos e normas pedagógicas da Secretaria Estadual da Educação.

Velho debate - A discussão atual retoma um velho debate sobre interpretações da Lei de Diretrizes e Bases da Educação (LBD), de 1996. Segundo parecer de 1997 do próprio CNE, a LDB fala em "domínios de conhecimentos de filosofia e sociologia" e isso não necessariamente significa obrigatoriedade das disciplinas.

A partir de então, a adoção ou não de filosofia e sociologia ficou por conta de cada Estado. O entendimento hoje do MEC é de que o trecho da LDB exige sim que os alunos cursem as disciplinas de filosofia e sociologia.

"Não será uma matéria pacífica no conselho", diz o presidente da Câmara da Educação Básica do CNE e futuro relator do novo parecer, Cesar Callegari. Ele, no entanto, adianta que vai defender a volta das disciplinas.

"Isso vai requalificar o ensino médio, que perdeu muito na área de humanas", diz. Depois de pronto, o parecer precisa ainda ser homologado pelo ministro Fernando Haddad. Hoje, Callegari e outros integrantes do CNE se reúnem com dirigentes do MEC para discutir a questão.


Apoio - A posição de Callegari tem apoio de várias associações de professores pelo País. "As disciplinas são essenciais no processo de desenvolvimento do aluno, da capacidade de crítica, raciocínio, análise e ajudam até nas outras matérias, como matemática e ciências", diz o presidente do sindicato dos professores no Estado de São Paulo (Apeoesp), Carlos Ramiro.

De acordo com o MEC, a disciplina de sociologia foi obrigatória no País entre 1925 e 1942 no que seria o equivalente ao ensino médio de hoje. Filosofia nunca foi uma exigência, mas sempre esteve presente em currículos de vários Estados.


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Caros Amigos
Uma palavra ou duas

Não vou entrar no mérito se a revista é boa ou não, cada um que decida por si só.

Hoje vou comentar sobre o design gráfico da mesma.

Interessante o fato do desenho da revista ser quase todo, por assim dizer, monótono (sem trocadilho). Pelo meu entender, eles tentam fazer isso para que o leitor aprecie o texto pelo texto em si, e não por causa da diagramação, figuras, chamarizes, etc.

ok.

De alguma forma, esta revista, que pretende ser elucidativa, questionadora, e trazedoura (isso existe?) de informações relevantes para a nossa vida sócio-político-economica, esquece (será?) de um ponto: sem atrativos, só vai ler quem quer mesmo ler.

Pra mim isto é um problema, no seguinte sentido: Eu leio, você lê, mas acontece que nós em grande maioria já sabemos, ou melhor, já estamos no âmbito informacional dos assuntos tratados na revista. Em outras palavras, ela se torna uma revista especializada, direcionada para um público (muito) fechado e pequeno (idem no muito).

Se a intenção é informar e questionar, não seria melhor que a revista alcançasse (tá certo isso?) um número maior de leitores? E para isso, não seria melhor melhorar o lei-au-ti? Para atrair mesmo, para se tornar mais simpática. Nem precisava ser colorido (ok, ela já é colorida), mas mais interessante visualmente? Por mim não, e creio que por você também não, porque nós lemos (ou leríamos, ou o fato de não ter um desenho interessante não seria fator de repulsa e afastamento entre nós e ela). Não seria interessante que esta revista chamasse os que não a lêem? Para que eles possam participar da discussão, se inteirar sobre os acontecimentos, coisa e tal.

Só uma pergunta.


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Connecting the world, one mesh at a time
By Holden Frith, from UK Times Online


Fans of the internet are fond of describing it as an engine of freedom, opportunity and wealth creation. In many ways they are right: the internet can be a limitless classroom for those bypassed by formal education, and a marketplace and forum for people otherwise excluded from economic or political life.

The problem is that the people who could benefit most are the least likely to be connected. The digital divide between rich and poor prevents the benefits flowing to disadvantaged Britons, as well as the vast majority in the developing world, guaranteeing that familiar inequalities persist in the virtual world.

One technology that promises to help bridge the divide both at home and abroad is wireless mesh networking. In basic terms, the mesh provides an alternative to established methods of linking computers together and connecting them to the internet. In practice, it can be used to build large networks far more quickly and cheaply than has previously been possible.

As a result, wireless networks are viable in unexpected places. New Orleans, still without a phone service after Hurricane Katrina, recently began building a free, citywide network using mesh technology, while the whole of Macedonia is now one big wireless hotspot. Networks are also providing web connections to people in the parts of the UK untouched by phone-based broadband, as well as in developing countries that have never had effective telephone networks.



The British company LocustWorld is a pioneer within this growing market. Its co-founder, Richard Lander, explains how meshes differ from other networks. Instead of having a central server which determines how data passes between computers, he says, the mesh creates a network of equals, in which individual computers find the best way to communicate with each other.

"Lots of intelligent devices all fit together to form a resilient network, and the more devices there are on a network, the more routes there are through it," Mr Lander says. "You can continue to grow it organically, piece by piece, and it will organise itself.

Data finds its way through the network in much the same way that we find our way around a city. "You don’t have a map of every route in the country in your head," he says. "You store the routes around where you live or work, or the routes you use most often. If you need to find a street in London you buy a London A to Z, or ask directions on the way."

At the heart of the network is the MeshBox, a wireless access point and router contained in a box about the size of a video recorder. A single box will provide internet access to anyone within range, but a network of several of these nodes can cover large areas as the signal leaps from box to box, spreading from each as it goes.

The ad hoc nature of the mesh makes it easy to start small and expand where necessary, without the complex reprogramming involved with adding to a traditional, top-down network. As the mesh becomes more dense its stability increases due to the greater number of potential connections: if one node fails then the network will direct data through an alternative route. Two separate meshes can even merge into a single network if they grow to the point of overlapping.

They are also relatively cheap to set up. Unlike phone or cable-based internet systems, mesh networks require minimal physical infrastructure and can be installed quickly, cheaply and without extensive training.

In mountainous Bolivia, LocustWorld worked with the International Institute for Communication and local technicians to install a two-square-mile mesh in the town of Sopachuy. The remote town had only about a dozen phone lines for a population of 1,500, but in less than a day and for a few thousand pounds, the team built a network capable of providing internet and telephone services to most of the town.

The same qualities make mesh networks attractive to small internet service providers aiming to fill the UK’s broadband blackspots. Speednet Scotland uses a mesh network to provide wireless broadband access to the area surrounding Troon, Ayreshire, where many telephone exchanges were unable to support broadband until recently.

The company was set up in 2004 and now has 150 customers, each paying either £15.99 per month for a 750Kbps connection, or £24.99 per month for 1.5Mbps. This is slightly more than they would pay for telephone-based broadband, but mesh customers don’t have to pay for a BT line, a prerequisite for most other services. Speednet Scotland also lets users connect their home phone to the mesh instead of the standard phone network, and for a monthly fee of £5 offers unlimited calls to landlines in the UK and 33 other countries.

Although the BT exchanges in the area have now been upgraded to support broadband, Speednet Scotland has managed to keep all its customers. The company’s founder, Brian Mcilwraith, explains that his three MeshBoxes, each of which cost £250, can outperform the established telecoms infrastructure. "We can get a better service through the internet than BT can," he says. "The copper lines have been in the ground for a number of years and they’re not always up to standard, especially in our rural communities."

Mesh networks have long been an area where small companies can compete with the big boys, but with growing interest – and investment – from technology giants such as Cisco and Intel, the market may soon be a lot more crowded. At LocustWorld, Mr Lander is not put off by the competition. "It’s not a question of one company replacing another," he says. "Cisco’s advertising is paying dividends for LocustWorld, raising interest in people who never would have thought of using a mesh."

The growth of meshing will undoubtedly present new challenges. One obstacle is regulation, both in the developing world, where bureaucracy can prove insurmountable, and the developed world, where telecoms companies are strongly lobbying against citywide mesh networks that threaten their business. Wireless security will also be a concern for some, although proponents of the technology argue that an encrypted mesh provides more comprehensive protection than the unencrypted cable network that most people rely on.

As with other relatively new the issue of standards and compatibility may also take some time to settle down, and as more companies become involved there is a risk that a proliferation of competing, incompatible standards could lead to frustration. Mesh remains an emerging technology, but with increasing numbers of villages, towns and cities throughout the world opting to install meshes, it is certainly emerging fast.


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É sempre bom saber sobre o seu país pela visão dos outros.



A totally Tropicália revolution
Interview by Will Hodgkinson - Timesonline

In 1960s Brazil an explosion of popular culture reverberated around the world. The stars of Tropicália are now reuniting at the Barbican


Tropicália was Brazil’s psychedelic revolution. Formed under the shadow of a military dictatorship in 1968 and destroyed in the same year, when its leaders Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil were imprisoned and exiled to England, it was a musical and artistic movement that changed the country for ever. It put Brazil’s youth culture on the international map by combining high art with low trash, Brazilian folk music with rock’n’roll. Its chief members were the poetic intellectual Veloso, the spiritually inclined musician Gilberto Gil, the glamorous, militant singer Gal Costa, the avant-garde songwriter Tom Zé — all from Bahia, the black heartland of Brazil — and from São Paulo, the maestro Rogério Duprat and the teenage rock band Os Mutantes. Their philosophy was reflected in a song by Veloso: It is Forbidden to Forbid.
The impact of Tropicália is comparable with that of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones in the West, but John Lennon or Mick Jagger were never jailed simply for expressing themselves. Now, as the Barbican prepares to host a three-month Tropicália festival, the Tropicalists have become international icons, celebrated as much by American musicians such as Beck and David Byrne as by a new generation of Brazilians. And in a reversal of fortune that marks just how far the country’ s political climate has shifted since the 1960s, the one-time cultural revolutionary Gil became Brazil’s Minister of Culture in January 2003. Have Gil and the others lived up to the promise of freedom they made in the late 1960s? This is the question I have come to Brazil to answer.



Tropicália’s roots can be traced to 1967, when Gil heard a traditional instrumental group called Banda de Pifanos de Caruaru playing in the northern city of Recife. He saw a link between the Banda and the Beatles, and wanted to combine both in a movement that would revolutionise Brazilian music.

“It was a feeling, an intuition,” says Gil, who accepted his government post at the request of Brazil’s leftist President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva. “When I saw the Banda playing, and saw how they managed to express something through their simple instruments, I realised they had a similar character to the Beatles. I knew that the Beatles were the new thing. And I also knew that the Banda was the tip of the root. That inspired me to try to bring rock’n ’roll elements into Brazilian music, as well as the experiments of Stockhausen and the avant-garde, and use open speech to talk about society, politics and the source of life itself.”

Gil had left Salvador to live in São Paulo by the time of the Recife trip. On his return he presented his ideas to the left-wing community in the city of which he and Veloso were a part. “They reacted negatively. Electric guitars were considered imperialist, and there was this idea that Brazilian music should be kept pure. But Brazil has never been pure.”

My first port of call on arriving at São Paulo, an urban sprawl so confusing that even the taxi drivers get lost, is the dark, book-lined flat that Tom Zé shares with his wife, translator, manager and all-round godsend Neusa. Zé, an elfin sprite who looks remarkably young for his 69 years, has remained true to Tropicália’s experimental philosophy. He recently completed an operetta, Estudando o Pagode, which tells the story of the repression of women through the ages. Zé’s instrument of choice for this is a ficus leaf. When rolled up into a cylinder and blown, this common piece of foliage creates a high-pitched squeal that Brazilian children use to annoy adults. I turn on the tape recorder and Zé says: “Hello my England children, this is a message for you!” Then he blows a ferocious ficus rasp.

“I am very lively right now,” Zé tells me. “I only got to do what I dreamt much later than the others involved in Tropicália. Caetano and Gil were able to do great things in their youth, but my time came later.”

Zé has mixed feelings about Tropicália. It was Veloso and Gil’s vision; Zé just happened to be thinking along similar lines. But when Tropicália died, Zé’s career went with it. By the late 1980s he was working in his cousin’s petrol station.

Around that time David Byrne, the lead singer of Talking Heads and the founder of the Luaka Bop label, came across some Tom Zé albums in a second-hand shop in Rio. Luaka Bop put out a Tom Zé compilation in 1992 and Zé was saved from a retirement spent pumping petrol. “David Byrne was a salvation for me, a denial of death,” he says. “When Tropicália ended I was buried alive, a footnote in history. Only David Byrne was capable of taking me out of that grave.”


A few hours after meeting Tom Zé I’m sitting in the self-built house and studio of Sérgio Dias Baptista, the guitarist and founder member of Os Mutantes, on the outskirts of São Paulo. Dias, a cheerfully irreverent man who looks very much like a Brazilian Paul McCartney, is apprehensive. The original members of Os Mutantes — Dias, his elder brother Arnaldo Baptista, and Baptista’s teenage sweetheart and former wife Rita Lee — are preparing to meet for the first time in 30 years in a few days’ time. If the meeting goes well Os Mutantes will be playing at the Barbican for a reunion that many — including Kurt Cobain, who wanted Os Mutantes to support Nirvana on a tour of Brazil — have tried and failed to engineer.

The Baptista brothers met Rita Lee at a high school battle of the bands in São Paulo in 1966. Inspired by a shared love of the Beatles, Os Mutantes played on a series of Heath Robinson-like contraptions built by Sergio and Arnaldo’s elder brother Claudio and were soon making appearances on local television. No doubt aided by their wild costumes — they would dress as witches for one show, conquistadors for another — they came to the attention of the classical arranger Rogério Duprat, who felt that they would make an ideal band for a young Bahian singer he had heard about called Gilberto Gil. In 1967 Mutantes backed Gil as he played his song Domingo no Parque at a festival in front of a left- wing audience who believed that electric guitars were the tool of the imperialist devil. A lot of eggs were thrown.

“Caetano and Gil were oriented in politics and philosophy, but were naughty,” explains Dias. “We were just kids — in the beginning of our song Dom Quixote there is an excerpt from Ben-Hur because we saw it the day before going to the studio. Everything we did was a product of pure excitement; pure joy.”

This wasn’t to last. In 1970, after making their third album, A Divine Comedy, a druggy masterpiece that contains an ode to Lucifer and a lament for a broken fridge, the band’s lifestyle tore them apart. Arnaldo began taking LSD daily. He married Rita Lee on December 31, 1971, the day before Lee turned 24. The marriage was over before she hit 25.

“I didn’t leave. They chucked me out!” Rita Lee told me by e-mail, when I asked her why she walked out of Os Mutantes in 1972. Arnaldo Baptista left two years later, his mental health in decline. In 1982 he jumped out of the window of a psychiatric institute and was in a coma for the next two months. “I was somehow disconnected with the world and I wanted to get out. So I thought, if I jump, either I die or I’m free. So let’s try it,” says Baptista when I meet up with him and his wife, a former fan, at his house in Belo Horizonte. He jumped — and woke up with the woman who would become his wife at his side. His only comment on the proposed Os Mutantes reunion is: “I will believe it when it happens.” (In fact it did — the group will play together at the Barbican.)

Rio is a world apart from São Paulo. Along the coastline of the Zona Sul anything more than shorts and a T-shirt is overdressed: those with toned bodies opt for a bikini or briefs accessorised with a pair of Havaianas flip-flops. Caetano Veloso has an apartment that takes up a floor of a smart block in Ipanema and looks out on this sandy catwalk of narcissism. He cuts a distant, glamorous figure. He has been married twice but makes no secret of his attraction to men, and although he ’s from Bahia, Veloso seems to embody the sprit of Rio’s Zona Sul, with its louche bossa nova soundtrack and its beautiful neighbourhoods less than a mile from notoriously crime-ridden slums.

“Our pretension was to live up to our hero, João Gilberto,” says Veloso in a slow Bahia lilt. “But Tropicália was the opposite of what João Gilberto did with bossa nova, which was a refinement of the good way of making popular music in Brazil. We wanted to open ourselves to imperfection, to let traces of reality show. And we attempted to have a courageous attitude towards our political and historical situation.”

Although it seems that Veloso has tired of being a genius in recent years — his last album consisted of cover versions of American songs— he has done enough to provide the Brazilian songbook with a staple of poetic masterpieces. Lost in the Paradise, Alegria, Alegria and Panis et Circenses are experimental but elegant and poignant; political but indirect. “We were from the left. We went on the marches against the dictatorship,” says Veloso.

“But artists are not purely political animals.” As Gal Costa states: “The intention of Tropicália wasn’t a political one. It was more the idea of internationalising Brazilian music, to bring the revolutionary spirit of the hippy era to Brazil.”

Veloso wrote Baby, one of the most beautiful of all of the Tropicália songs, for his friend Gal. The pair had met in Bahia as teenagers and bonded over a belief that João Gilberto was the best singer in Brazil. “João Gilberto appeared on radio singing Chega de Saudade,” says Costa. “From then on I would sing his songs in the bathroom, and when I met Caetano he understood what I wanted to do. I was humble, but I knew I was good. I was a good lover too.”

As Tropicália blossomed from an idea into a movement, Costa moved from singing in a pure bossa nova style to combining that with Janis Joplin-style shrieks. Somehow the unlikely pairing worked and she became Tropicália’s hippy diva.

By December 1968 Tropicália had its own short-lived television show, Divine, Marvellous. On the Christmas edition Veloso held a gun to his head while singing a traditional song. This coincided with the military’s passing of the International Act No 5, which ended the most basic of human rights and made torture a routine part of the interrogation process. At 3am on the morning after the show Veloso and Gil were arrested and taken to solitary cells in a jail in Rio.

“I would sleep on the ground with nothing but a filthy blanket and my head next to a loo,” Veloso recalls. “There was a little slot at the bottom of the door for the guards to put my food in. I thought I might be there for the rest of my life. At first nobody said anything to me. Then it was: ‘Stand up! Take this! Get up! Go in!’ Only the last two weeks were dedicated to any questions.”

“In the end they gave us lots of ridiculous reasons for putting us in jail,” said Gil. “Like ‘you work for the communists, you want to destroy our youth . . .’ The real reason was: you are too enigmatic and we can’t understand you, so it’s better that you are in jail.”

Prison was followed by four months under curfew in Salvador. They could not see their families, make music, or leave town. Gil asked the colonel in charge for a solution to their problem. The solution was to leave Brazil. On July 5, 1969, Veloso and Gil arrived in London, where they stayed for two and a half years.

“Jail changed me a lot,” said Veloso. “I went crazy because I couldn’t stand it, or understand it. I learnt that these things in life are serious . . . I knew that we were touching serious issues in Brazilian life, but I didn’t expect that strong response. Gil, I think, did expect it, and he was better prepared for it than I was.”

With Veloso and Gil out of the picture and Os Mutantes going towards straightforward rock’n’roll, it was left to Gal Costa to keep Tropicália alive. “I remained here in Brazil, trying to uphold the ideology of Tropicália — the dictatorship couldn’t kill it because of my presence. Holding a guitar for me was like holding a weapon . . . a weapon I used to defend myself.”

In 1972 Brazil went through the “Economic Miracle” and the Government loosened up. Veloso and Gil returned to the country as vanguards of freedom. “The hero worship lasted for maybe two weeks,” says Veloso. “Now the Left wanted us to be their symbols, and there was a lot of expectation on my first show in Rio. I disappointed everyone by quoting Carmen Miranda and playing songs by João Gilberto.”

In the following years Tropicália became something, according to the Brazilian music journalist Silvio Essinger, “that was taught in schools. You could only find the records in second-hand shops.” Veloso, Gil, Gal Costa and Rita Lee all became famous singers in their own right with few links to their old movement. But over the past decade a new generation of musicians has rediscovered Tropicália. The first was Nação Zumbi, who emerged from Recife where it all began in 1967 to cannibalise everything from Nirvana to samba and somehow make it all sound Brazilian. Then came a collective of postTropicalist musicians based in Rio that include Caetano Veloso’s son Moreno, the producer Kassim and the experimental songwriter Totonho.

Totonho lives in a small flat on the poorer part of Copacabana that backs on to the side of Sugar Loaf Mountain. By day he runs a youth club for favela children and in the evening he makes atonal, experimental records. His latest, Sabotador de Satelite, is a conceptual protest album, set in the future, about the environmental chaos humans have wreaked by colonising the solar system. “There’s no point in writing about the Earth because the damage is done,” he says. “So I decided to complain about the shopping malls on the Moon.”

Totonho sees Tropicália as the only honest expression of what it is to be Brazilian. “There is no purity in Brazil, racial, musical or otherwise. I didn’t hear Caetano and Gil until I was 26, but I instantly understood what they were doing.”

Kassim, the producer of the moment in Brazil, and Moreno Veloso are also continuing where Tropicália left off. They are part of a big band called Orquestra Imperial that plays samba songs in an avant-garde style, and Kassim recently made an album from the bleeps of a Nintendo Gameboy. “There are people of my generation who feel you cannot mix samba with anything,” Kassim says. “That’s when I feel close to Tropicália, because Caetano and Gil were told the same thing over 30 years ago.”

How true have Veloso and Gil, the men that created it, been to Tropicália? “I don’t think any of us have lived up to what we created then,” Veloso concludes. “But what guided me to Tropicalism guides me to what I’m doing today.” For Gil, its significance was deeper. “It became a religion in the sense of having an open mind, of being aware of our globality, our many-faced reality.” As to Gil’s appointment as Minister of Culture, Kassim and Moreno Veloso approve. “Our ministers have always been rich,” says Kassim. “And they have never had any idea about culture. Gil is seen as a man of the people.”

Now Gil spends his weekdays wearing a suit, sitting at parliament in Brasilia, and his weekends playing concerts. How can Tropicália, the ultimate countercultural statement, equate with his new job? “Because the spirit of Tropicália is still within me,” he says. “The spirit is the one thing that will never change.”


Tropicália: A Revolution in Brazilian Culture, Barbican Art Gallery, London, Feb 16-May 21 (www.barbican.org.uk/artgallery 020-7638 8891). A fully illustrated catalogue, Tropicália: A Revolution in Brazilian Culture, accompanies the exhibition. Edited by Carlos Basualdo, the 370-page book, published by Cosac & Naify (£25).


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Connecting the world, one mesh at a time
By Holden Frith, from UK Times Online


Fans of the internet are fond of describing it as an engine of freedom, opportunity and wealth creation. In many ways they are right: the internet can be a limitless classroom for those bypassed by formal education, and a marketplace and forum for people otherwise excluded from economic or political life.

The problem is that the people who could benefit most are the least likely to be connected. The digital divide between rich and poor prevents the benefits flowing to disadvantaged Britons, as well as the vast majority in the developing world, guaranteeing that familiar inequalities persist in the virtual world.

One technology that promises to help bridge the divide both at home and abroad is wireless mesh networking. In basic terms, the mesh provides an alternative to established methods of linking computers together and connecting them to the internet. In practice, it can be used to build large networks far more quickly and cheaply than has previously been possible.

As a result, wireless networks are viable in unexpected places. New Orleans, still without a phone service after Hurricane Katrina, recently began building a free, citywide network using mesh technology, while the whole of Macedonia is now one big wireless hotspot. Networks are also providing web connections to people in the parts of the UK untouched by phone-based broadband, as well as in developing countries that have never had effective telephone networks.



The British company LocustWorld is a pioneer within this growing market. Its co-founder, Richard Lander, explains how meshes differ from other networks. Instead of having a central server which determines how data passes between computers, he says, the mesh creates a network of equals, in which individual computers find the best way to communicate with each other.

"Lots of intelligent devices all fit together to form a resilient network, and the more devices there are on a network, the more routes there are through it," Mr Lander says. "You can continue to grow it organically, piece by piece, and it will organise itself.

Data finds its way through the network in much the same way that we find our way around a city. "You don’t have a map of every route in the country in your head," he says. "You store the routes around where you live or work, or the routes you use most often. If you need to find a street in London you buy a London A to Z, or ask directions on the way."

At the heart of the network is the MeshBox, a wireless access point and router contained in a box about the size of a video recorder. A single box will provide internet access to anyone within range, but a network of several of these nodes can cover large areas as the signal leaps from box to box, spreading from each as it goes.

The ad hoc nature of the mesh makes it easy to start small and expand where necessary, without the complex reprogramming involved with adding to a traditional, top-down network. As the mesh becomes more dense its stability increases due to the greater number of potential connections: if one node fails then the network will direct data through an alternative route. Two separate meshes can even merge into a single network if they grow to the point of overlapping.

They are also relatively cheap to set up. Unlike phone or cable-based internet systems, mesh networks require minimal physical infrastructure and can be installed quickly, cheaply and without extensive training.

In mountainous Bolivia, LocustWorld worked with the International Institute for Communication and local technicians to install a two-square-mile mesh in the town of Sopachuy. The remote town had only about a dozen phone lines for a population of 1,500, but in less than a day and for a few thousand pounds, the team built a network capable of providing internet and telephone services to most of the town.

The same qualities make mesh networks attractive to small internet service providers aiming to fill the UK’s broadband blackspots. Speednet Scotland uses a mesh network to provide wireless broadband access to the area surrounding Troon, Ayreshire, where many telephone exchanges were unable to support broadband until recently.

The company was set up in 2004 and now has 150 customers, each paying either £15.99 per month for a 750Kbps connection, or £24.99 per month for 1.5Mbps. This is slightly more than they would pay for telephone-based broadband, but mesh customers don’t have to pay for a BT line, a prerequisite for most other services. Speednet Scotland also lets users connect their home phone to the mesh instead of the standard phone network, and for a monthly fee of £5 offers unlimited calls to landlines in the UK and 33 other countries.

Although the BT exchanges in the area have now been upgraded to support broadband, Speednet Scotland has managed to keep all its customers. The company’s founder, Brian Mcilwraith, explains that his three MeshBoxes, each of which cost £250, can outperform the established telecoms infrastructure. "We can get a better service through the internet than BT can," he says. "The copper lines have been in the ground for a number of years and they’re not always up to standard, especially in our rural communities."

Mesh networks have long been an area where small companies can compete with the big boys, but with growing interest – and investment – from technology giants such as Cisco and Intel, the market may soon be a lot more crowded. At LocustWorld, Mr Lander is not put off by the competition. "It’s not a question of one company replacing another," he says. "Cisco’s advertising is paying dividends for LocustWorld, raising interest in people who never would have thought of using a mesh."

The growth of meshing will undoubtedly present new challenges. One obstacle is regulation, both in the developing world, where bureaucracy can prove insurmountable, and the developed world, where telecoms companies are strongly lobbying against citywide mesh networks that threaten their business. Wireless security will also be a concern for some, although proponents of the technology argue that an encrypted mesh provides more comprehensive protection than the unencrypted cable network that most people rely on.

As with other relatively new the issue of standards and compatibility may also take some time to settle down, and as more companies become involved there is a risk that a proliferation of competing, incompatible standards could lead to frustration. Mesh remains an emerging technology, but with increasing numbers of villages, towns and cities throughout the world opting to install meshes, it is certainly emerging fast.


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Empresa quer lançar gel anti-Aids nos EUA

ANTÔNIO GOIS, da Folha de S.Paulo no Rio

Um laboratório americano anunciou estar próximo de obter autorização da FDA (agência de controle de alimentos e remédios dos EUA) para comercializar um gel vaginal que se mostrou efetivo para impedir o contágio pelo HIV em mulheres.

A Instead, empresa com sede na Califórnia detentora da patente do produto Amphoragel, já obteve autorização para comercializá-lo como simples gel lubrificante, mas espera agora autorização para vendê-lo também como droga eficaz no combate ao HIV e outras doenças sexualmente transmissíveis.

Testes clínicos iniciais foram realizados por cientistas da Unicamp (Universidade de Campinas), após testes em laboratório. O gel, clinicamente conhecido como Acidform, foi desenvolvido pela Rush University, em Chicago. As pesquisas em Campinas mostraram que o produto era seguro para o uso vaginal. O objetivo do teste na Unicamp não era ainda provar sua eficácia contra o HIV, mas sua segurança.

Longa busca

A Instead não é única empresa a tentar produzir um gel vaginal que seja efetivo no combate ao HIV. A busca por esse produto foi intensificada após o aumento de contágio de mulheres em relações heterossexuais. Como o preservativo é o único método 100% seguro para evitar o contágio, as mulheres dependem hoje da cooperação de seus parceiros para se protegerem.

O efeito esperado do gel é manter a acidez da vagina num nível em que o HIV não sobrevive. O pH da vagina varia entre 3,5 e 4,5, o que protege a mulher do contágio. No entanto, como o sêmen tem um pH entre 7,2 e 8,0, a acidez da vagina aumenta para níveis superiores a 6,0 numa relação sexual. O que o Amphoragel faz é manter a acidez da vagina num nível abaixo de 5,0.

O Amphoragel não foi o primeiro produto a ser pesquisado com este fim. Há mais de 60 produtos em estudo. O N9 (nonoxynol-9), por exemplo, um espermicida conhecido e comercializado há muito tempo, não provou ser eficaz em reduzir as infecções sexualmente transmitidas, incluindo o contágio pelo HIV.

Eliana Amaral, pesquisadora do Departamento de Obstetrícia e Ginecologia da Unicamp, explica que o produto por ela testado em mulheres em Campinas não provocou irritações como o N9.

"Pesquisamos o produto em suas primeiras fases de testes clínicos. O que nossa pesquisa mostrou foi que esse gel era bem tolerado pelas mulheres e pelos casais, não provocando irritação genital que pode aumentar o risco de HIV, em vez de proteger. Há outros géis com formulação semelhante que estão em sua fase final de testes. Mas eles precisam ser pesquisados em milhares de mulheres, nos chamados estudos de fase 3, até serem reconhecidos como eficazes no combate ao HIV", afirma Amaral.

Um desses testes com o Amphoragel está sendo realizado neste ano com mulheres em Madagascar, na África, com apoio do Centro Norte-Americano para Controle e Prevenção de Doenças e pela Agência dos Estados Unidos para o Desenvolvimento Internacional.

Falsa esperança

Amaral estima, no entanto, que somente em dois anos, pelo menos, esses produtos estarão no mercado. "Por enquanto, não se pode vender uma falsa esperança de que eles já são 100% eficazes sob o risco de as pessoas abandonarem outros métodos de prevenção para usar o gel", diz.

O presidente da Instead, Joseph Pike, esteve na semana passada no Brasil acompanhando o ex-secretário de Estado de Saúde dos Estados Unidos, Thommy Thompson, que é membro do conselho da Instead e veio dar uma palestra no Rio a convite do sindicato dos Hospitais, Clínicas e Casas de Saúde do Rio.

Pike diz que já se pode afirmar que o Amphoragel é eficaz em manter a acidez da vagina num pH de 5,0. "Essa afirmação nós já podemos fazer porque temos um estudo, ainda não publicado, que mostra que o produto foi eficaz no combate ao herpes, que é mais resistente do que o HIV nessa fase de contágio. Também já sabemos que ele é seguro, tanto que já recebeu autorização da FDA para ser usado como gel. O próximo passo agora é conseguir a autorização para vendê-lo também como um produto que se mostrou eficaz na prevenção ao HIV", diz ele.



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