La Linea

Last weekend when we were in Cologne we did of course attend Saturn and Mediamarkt. I was very happy to find a big Loriot Box ..... and La Linea. Though it was expensive (€ 21,00) I bought the La Linea DVD.

La Linea (very short cartoons on TV from the 70's) is so simple but yet so very funny. I love the little guy and his adventures. I hope that others do remember the cartoon as well.

Time for a laugh with Maxine...

INTERNATIONAL GERMAN BEAR PRIDE

By the way, I was in Cologne last weekend .... and it was GREAT!

This evening in the screeningroom of the Fraterhuis. We had "Requiem" tonight a german movie about exorcism and a schizophrenic girl in catholic Southern Germany of the 70's. A great movie by the way.

Paul my colleague there took the picture.

The day after...

Today's the day after ... the day with the hang on, too bad it's not the hang over after a big party. It's the day of the elections for the Dutch parliament and although I can't vote here in this country I feel ashamed about the result of the elections.

Two things especially struk me:

1. 9 of the 150 seats of the Dutch Paliament will go to a the ultra right wing party of Gert Wilders (Party for Freedom). His only three point in the elections were: With us you'll pay less taxes, better educational system and against immigration and agains "further islamisation" of the country.
2. 2 seats will go to the Party for the Amimals of Marianne Thieme. Well, I love animals, but I definately hate one issue partys! Their endlessly repeated slogan in the campaign was: "Who's good for the animals is good for people". And that's not even their own thought. It seems that they took it from Mahatma Ghandi.
   

I mean how stupid can the Dutch be to give their vote more then 600.000 times (a lot in this small country) to those two parties that only exist by their simple one-liners. People get real, life isn't that easy!!!

The more I think about it, I am in favour of the introduction of a stupidity tax, as proposed bij Edina Monsoon in one of the episodes of the BBC sitcom "Absolutely Fabulous".

Counties and states I visited...

The tool is shit! I didn't work any more so I got rid of it!

Summer Flirts...

gay animals

Who's saying that homosexuality is against nature?



An article in magazine Nature (October 26, 2006, pg. 895) called "Snapshot: But is it natural?" by Alison Abbott and the recent exhibition "Against nature" in the Naturhistorisk Museum in Oslo proofs the opposite.

"We hope to reject the all too well known argument that homosexual behaviour is a crime against nature"

<Oslo Natural History Museum>




Sex in general between animals (as between humans) is often a matter of enjoyment, rather than reproduction, and that this applies to animals of the same sex as well as opposite sexes. Homosexuality has been observed among 1500 species.


"Our closest relatives

Humans belong to the primates together with two species of chimpanzees, gorilla, orang-utan, siamang and gibbons. Homosexuality is known from all groups, but there are great variations between species regarding gender, age and frequency, and even from group to group within the species. Compared to the other apes, human homosexuality is neither extremely frequent, nor particularly rare, and in our species too, the practice varies from one culture to the next

Against nature?
The Church Council of Nablus in 1120 AD wrote the first law where homosexuality was labelled a “Crime against Nature”. In the Renaissance, such texts found their way into the laws of many countries, leading to widespread oppression against homosexuality on the basis that it is “unnatural”.

We may have opinions on a lot of things, but one thing is clear: Homosexuality is found throughout the Animal Kingdom. It is not against nature."

<Oslo Natural History Museum>

:-)

The IFFR poster for 2007

Novecento

What went wrong with 1900? Last Thursday I was supposed to screen ...


Novecento
Italië, 1976.
Length: 316 minuts (2 parts)
Directed by: Bernardo Bertolucci
Written by: Franco Arcalli, Bernardo Bertolucci, Giuseppe Bertolucci
Produced by: Alberto Grimaldi
Cinematography: Vittorio Storaro
Music: Ennio Morricone
Cast: Robert De Niro, Gérard Depardieu, Burt Lancaster, Dominique Sanda, Stefania Sandrelli, Donald Sutherland, Sterling Hayden

What is it all about:
Set in Italy, the film follows the lives and interactions of two boys/men, one born a bastard of peasant stock (Depardieu), the other born to a land owner (de Niro). The drama spans from 1900 to about 1945, and focuses mainly on the rise of Fascism and the peasants' eventual reaction by supporting Communism, and how these events shape the destinies of the two main characters.

The disaster
I had just begun to screen part 1 of the movie (162 min.) and went to the nearly sold out theater to check the sound. It was then (10 minutes in the movie) when a guy in the first row shouted out loud that this was not part 1 but part 2. Since we saw sceens from 1945 a lot of poeple in the theater thought the same. I don't know the movie very well. So I went to the screening room to check the boxes. They were all right: the movie should be part 1, but what if the last cinema where the movie came from had mixed things up...? While I was thinking, the guy from the first row come to me and said: "What are you doing about this? Will you stop the movie and tell the people what's wrong? I know the movie all too well to know that this is part two and I don't want to see it any further. If you don't tell everybody I will." Given n ot much of a choice I stopped the movie and told everybody that a gentleman had told me that something might be wrong. While this was supposed to be part 1 it could be part 2. People who wanted could get a free ticket. Some people wanted to see the rest of the movie, regadless which part this was. So I started it again after 80% of the people had left.
Then the worst nightmare became true: the movie I was screening was part ONE!!!