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Gleaming Faces, Dark Realities: Dušan Makavejev's Man Is Not a Bird and the Representation of the Working Class after Socialist Realism
Bérénice Reynaud
Matthew Victor Pastor – An Interview
Kitano, Takeshi
Alice in Wonder-Mall and Wonder-Beach: The AFI/Fest and American Film Market
Road Trip Through A Cinematically-Constructed America: The Imaginary Geography of Hollywood Cinema, 1960-2000 by Christian B. Long
Europa Europa
Unexpected Encounters: The 33rd Vancouver International Film Festival
As Bill, who had met me at the airport with the Festival sign, is driving me to the hotel, I learn much about him. He's a retired law professor. In his youth, he lived in the US, and had been close to the ONCE group, an Ann Arbor-based avant-garde collective that included visual artists and architects, composers Bob Ashley, Gordon Mumma, David Behrman, Pauline Oliveiros, "Blue" Gene Tyranny, as well as filmmakers such as the legendary George Manupelli (1931-2014), the author of the experimental "Doctor Chicago" trilogy and the founder of the Ann Arbor Film Festival, who had just died a couple of weeks before the VIFF started. (1) Bill is one of the 750 volunteers that make the VIFF work – most of them as interesting, literate and engaging. The Festival's reliance on such an extraordinary body of volunteers is evidence of how much the local audience is invested in it, and why it can only thrive and remain excellent in spite of dark economic clouds. So the VIFF is this rare event – a festival for a public of cinephiles that treats its foreign visitors with the greatest amount of care. This year, handicapped by a badly twisted ankle, I had been worried about my ability to attend the screenings, but, with the help of the fleet of volunteers, I could go everywhere I wanted, and, in a crunch, Vancouver cab drivers are among the most courteous in the world, even for short rides. Try to beat this!
Encounters in a Posh Restaurant
Looking at the schedule after getting my credentials, I found a gap, and Bill told me he was planning to attend a film that hadn't been on my radar – so I went there as well. Lone Scherfig, a female "member" of Dogme 95 with impressive credentials (such as Italian for Beginners, 2000; Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself, 2002; or An Education, 2009), brings the point of view of a double outsider (Danish and female) to depict the horrifying behaviour of young males of the British upper classes (Oxford students to boot) and their out-of-bound sense of entitlement. An adaptation of Posh, by British playwright Laura Wade, that had been successfully performed in all the right places in London, the film was depicted as a fictional description of The Bullington Club, to which the likes of John Cameron had belonged in their student days – which had initially made me suspicious (under the cover of denouncing the wicked mores of the ruling class, wasn't the film going to be just a complacent display of said mores?) And indeed, starring la crème de la crème of this other privileged caste, successful young actors (Max Irons as the main protagonist, Miles; Sam Clafin as his friend/antagonist, Alistair; Douglas Booth as decadently aristocratic Harry; Holliday Grainger as Lauren, a middle-class student who enters into a relationship with Miles; Natalie Dormer as an escort hired by Harry for the club's dinner; Jessica Brown Findlay as, Rachel, the daughter of the restaurant owner who works as a waitress), The Riot Club is a commercial film, in which, however, female degradation (a keystone, alas, for so many all-men clubs and fraternity houses) is never turned into a spectacle. The escort takes a stand, refuses to kneel under the table and walks out with dignity. Thinner-skinned, but no less brave, Lauren, unexpectedly summoned as a bad prank against Miles, manages to extricate herself from the rowdy gathering, deeply hurt, but with her sense of self intact. Rachel, potentially threatened, is not molested. Horny and vexed, drunk, their bellies filled to the brim and their egos satiated with the idea that the less privileged "love [them] and want to be [them]," the pack turn to trashing the place and then displace their anger onto the body of another man, the restaurant owner who had refused the cash contemptuously offered to pay for the damage.Scherfig's critical stance on dominant masculinity informs her mise en scène – which makes The Riot Club stand apart as a courageous work.
The Riot Club
Changing Encounters
The major change in this year's VIFF was the stepping down of Alan Franey, who had been its director for 26 years. He remains as Director of Programming (with Jacqueline Dupuis as Executive Director) and seems very happy about it. The one thing to regret is the catalogue; produced as collectible books since 1993, they contained accurate and sharp descriptions of the program that made them an invaluable resource for film scholars. They occupy a whole shelf in my house. Even though they were sold for a (modest) price, I was told they were losing money; this year a glossy but slim program, with an inconvenient format (it won't fit neatly on a bookshelf) and extremely short blurbs, has been made available for free. The much-talked about shifting of venues – due to the closure of the main festival hub, Empire Granville 7 Cinemas, two years ago, and, more recently, of the Ridge Theater – while mildly disorienting for the out-of-towners, tapped onto the wealth of Vancouver resources, as screenings were organised at the glamorous Center for the Performing Arts (with 1,850 seats), a multiplex in a shopping mall (Cineplex Odeon International Village), the prestigious Simon Frazier University etc… in addition to the traditional Vancity Theater (the Festival's headquarters) and the Pacific Cinematheque. The number of screenings was only infinitesimally reduced, and only, comments Franey, because some commercial venues were not available on certain days.
The second most noted change, however is the revamping of one of the VIFF's most beloved offerings: after 20 years of introducing the first or second features of promising young Asian filmmakers to international attention (among the award winners one finds Koreeda Hirokazu's Maborosi, 1995; Hong Sang-soo's The Day a Pig Fell to the Well, 1996; Jia Zhangke's Xiao Wu, 1997; or Diao Yinan's Uniform, 2003), the Dragons and Tigers Competition is no longer taking place. "It had run its course," said Franey. In its stead, a "Best New Director Award" (in which some Asian films were competing) has been instituted, and its main award was shared by a French film, Axelle Ropert's Tirez la langue, mademoiselle (Miss and the Doctors, 2013) and a Filipino film, Mikhail Red's Rekorder (2013). Curated by Tony Rayns since 1994, with the collaboration of Shelly Kraicer (for Chinese movies) since 2007, the Dragons and Tigers section remains a highlight the VIFF, without a specific competition attached to it, but with a couple of high-profile "Special Presentations."
A Meeting in a Street Stall
The first one was a single screening of Ann Hui's latest work, Huangjin Shidai (The Golden Era), a shimmering variation on the life of the female writer Xiao Hong that has made ripples since its world premiere at the Closing Night of the latest Venice Film Festival. By ripples I mean that it has divided audiences, both internationally and in its domestic market (the Best Director Award received at the Golden Horse is a sign that the film's fans are gaining ground…) By choosing Li Qiang (with whom she had already worked for Yima de houxiandai shenghuo [The Post-Modern Life of My Aunt, 2006]) as her screenwriter, Hui knew she would invite controversy, because the man wasn't going to deliver a linear biopic. He had attracted much attention through the ellipses, unrepresented moments and fractured structure of Gu Changwei's Kong que (Peacock, 2006). Misunderstood at first (and rejected by a couple of major festivals), Peacock went to win a Silver Bear in Berlin (launching the career of two exciting young mainland actors, Zhang Jingchu as the sister and Lu Yulai as the younger brother) and is now recognized as one of the major films of its decade. Among Li's strength is his capability for capturing the ambiguities and opacities of human interaction, and for crafting complex female characters. One of his weaknesses, at least from a conventional point of view, would be the sheer accumulation of details, which creates contradictions, forked paths, unexpected transitions, and requires a robust editing strategy.
Huangjin Shidai
Hong Kong cinema is itself on a forking path. On the one hand, intimate stories with local flavour are enjoying a revival – as in Hui's own Tin shui wai dik yat yu ye (The Way We Are, 2008) and Tou ze (A Simple Life, 2011) or, showcased at the VIFF this year, Jessey Tsang Tsui Shan's seductively personal Ho Sheung Bin Chuen (Flowing Stories). On the other hand, the lure of the Chinese market is just too strong to resist, as may be the desire to explore one's Chineseness through the prism of what is happening on the mainland. Even before 1997, Hui has been at the forefront of this double fascination/contradiction (maybe because she was born in Manchuria, maybe because of her aesthetic generosity); she was one of the first Hong Kong filmmakers to collaborate with mainland Chinese production companies (such as Sil-Metropole) and shoot on the continent, starting with Shu jian en chou lu(Romance of Book and Sword, 1987). In addition, she has demonstrated a passionate interest for the fate of women during the Republican era (1911-49… a time when the "new woman" was hotly discussed in artistic circles), through her adaptation of two novels by Zhang Ailing (Eileen Chang, 1920-95), Qing cheng zhi lian (Love in a Fallen City, 1984) and Ban sheng yuan (Eighteen Springs, 1997). She links Zhang and her Xiao Hong, by entrusting the part to Tang Wei, who had played a classical Zhang heroine in Ang Lee's Se, jie (Lust, Caution, 2007).
Born in 1911 – the year of the founding of the Chinese Republic – Xiao Hong came sooner, left much sooner, at 31, and led a harder life than Zhang Ailing: she eloped from an arranged marriage, was almost sold to a brothel to pay the debts of an insolvent lover, knew abject poverty, and gave birth to two children she never saw grow up. After wandering through China from Harbin to Beijing, from Qingdao to Shanghai, from Wuhan to Xi'an, she sought refuge in Japanese-occupied Hong Kong where she died of tuberculosis in 1942. Recognition eluded her while she was alive: greatly admired by the modernist writer Lu Xun, her work was too lyrical, poetic and personal to be truly appreciated by the left-wing Northeast Authors Group she and her well-known lover, the writer Xiao Jun, were part of. The zeitgeist of the time was to put art and writing at the service of the anti-Japanese struggle and the Communist ideals as they were being coined in Yan'an. (She was eventually "rediscovered" in the 1980s). How to tell the story of such a contradictory character, whose material conditions of existence were so tied up to the turbulent destiny of the short-lived Republican era? (Whether or not it was a "golden era" is left open. Xiao Hong had another idea of what her "golden era" could be: away from Xiao Jun).
Hui explores micro forms in the centre of the maelstrom. A gaze, a gesture, an incomplete sentence, the glittering surface of the sea when a boat is about to depart. Having come up with a bit of money, starving Xiao Hong and Xiao Jun go to a street stall to get some treats. They look at each other and at the food with an equally devouring passion. Eating well, with gusto, yet eating quickly when one has been hungry for so long, it's art meeting life, lust encountering wisdom, the happiness of getting satiated subsuming the fever of the quest. The film abounds with such scenes, suggesting the ineffable quality of the present moment, fleeting as soon as it is perceived, dragging the heroine along with her, lost in time, lost to death. What is left but traces – footprints in the snow or scars in the witnesses' memories. In its splendid complexity, The Golden Era outlines a poetics of the trace – conveying the type of emotion that overcomes us when we look at the remnants of a meal or an unmade bed.
Scenes from a Stolen History
Also in Special Screenings (and winning the audience award) was Vancouver no Asahi (The Vancouver Asahi), a fine example not of life imitating art but of film production inspired by a film festival. Tony Rayns had followed Japanese director Ishii Yuya's career (from his early Mukidashi Nippon [Bare-Assed Japan] in 2007 to his award-winning Fune wo Amu [The Great Passage, 2013]). In turn Ishii discovered Vancouver and the layers of Japanese history hidden in its spectacular waterfront. Japanese citizens had emigrated to British Columbia after 1877 and, by the 1930s, there were about 20,000 of them, subject to racism, confined to menial jobs and concentrating in small enclaves, such as Japantown in downtown Vancouver. In 1914, a group of young men working on the docks, in the sawmills or the fishing boats, formed their own baseball team, the Asahi. Effortlessly, repeatedly, mercilessly beaten by heftier Caucasian opponents, they were a recurring joke until they decided to put brain over muscle, and design a strategy; in the 1930s they became the stuff baseball legend is made of. Their string of victories came to a halt, though, after Pearl Harbour, when Canadian citizens of Japanese origins were deported into internment camps (they were not allowed to move freely until 1949). (2) Shooting in a Japanese studio, but inspired by books of photographs from the era, Ishii reconstructs the wharves, smoky sports bar and working-class kitchens of Japantown, not overdoing the appropriate patina that signifies "the 1930s," but expressing a palpable emotion of having been in Vancouver and sensed the echoes of this still-largely-repressed history. Playing the game of commercial cinema (to the delight of screaming young Japanese girls who flooded the auditorium), he cast bankable teen idols in the main parts – but chose actors/singers, who have a particular physical relationship to their own bodies, for the main parts. Satoshi Tsumabuki (award-winning actor as well as bassist and lead singer for the band Basking Life) plays Reiji Kasahara (who westernises his name as "Reggie"), the leader and core of the team, while the role of the pitcher, Roy Naganishi is entrusted to 28 year-old Kazuya Kamenashi, a member of the popular Japanese boy band KAT-TUN (founded in 2001). As Reggie's hardened immigrant father, Keiji, who refuses to learn English or change his ways as a traditional Japanese man but is slowly touched by his son's efforts, one recognises the great veteran actor Kôichi Satô. The Vancouver Asahi is a story of male bodies. How a bigger-than-life stature like Keiji's got subjugated, humiliated, exploited in the production lines of the West, reducing the man to a few silent grunts and explosions as a domestic tyrant. How young workers acutely felt the "inferiority" of their own size when faced with bullying Caucasians and then found their inner strength. How the bodies of thousand of Japanese immigrants were deported and reduced to invisibility. And in the end, Ishii offers us the image of another body, a brief encounter with a very old man, the last survivor of the team.
The Vancouver Asahi
Chance Encounters in Kindergartens
It is also the secrets encoded in a male body that makes Haihil (Man on High Heels) by South Korean theatre and film auteur Jang Jin such an exciting movie, while successfully operating within the sometimes predictable tropes of genre. It is a violent cop-gangster film as Korean cinema has been adept at producing them, as well as an Asian melodrama, with soapy flashbacks and the ploy to be given "one chance only" at happiness… or gender reassignment surgery. This does muddy the ending, or rather the "coda" (post-ending), a bit, while the film is spectacularly sandwiched in-between two exhilarating fight scenes. In the opening sequence, Yoo (Jang's fetish actor Cha Seungwon) manages to arrest and handcuff a gang boss surrounded by a team of eager bodyguards (and screaming bar hostesses) in the private room of a karaoke club, with the sole power of his martial arts skills. Yoo, a macho man among cops, is known for fighting without weapons. At the end, he comes to rescue a damsel-in-distress in a gloomy warehouse where he fights a couple of dozens opponents, wearing a stylist women's outfit. The secret behind Yoo's machismo is his homosexual longings and his desire to become a woman and be at peace with himself. But what is a woman exactly? While neither Jang nor his protagonist have an answer for this (does Yoo forgo surgery not because he has missed his flight but because his male body is "too good" at fighting the baddies?) but the representation of Yoo's relationships with his fellow cops or his gangster foes, always on the borderline between homophobia and homoeroticism, as well as his gradual involvement with the transgender community, offers an engaging deconstruction of masculinity.
Man on High Heels
"A tough guy with a weakness for children," Sheng Li (TV star Huang Haibo), the eponymous protagonist of Sheng Li (Uncle Victory) is another paradoxical figure of masculinity. A former kindergarten-owner-cum-gangster, he crippled another tough guy in a dispute about money and is just released from prison after a ten-year stretch. China has changed, so have its women (as our hero discovers when the taxi dancer he tries to pick up, Sun Xiaomen (Zhang Xinyi) turns out to be a hard-as-nail professional nurse), its (post)industrial landscapes (fields of ruins alternating with zones of "urban renewal"), its cops and its gangsters. Intent on reopening a kindergarten, Sheng Li does not think twice about beating up the members of an opera troupe whose performance interferes with his musical choices for the children.
Born in Liaoning Province, and inspired by the story of his uncle, Zhang returned to an area he knows very well, the cold, simultaneously austere and chaotic expanses of the Northeast, already the setting of his previous film, the international darling Gang de qin (The Piano in a Factory, 2010). Precious oddities in the midst of current Chinese production, both films were shot in 35mm by Taiwanese-born DP Chou Shu, known in particular for lensing visual artist Yang Fudong's 35mm black and white installations. While seductive, the film's structure, with unexpected flashbacks and a few surprising temporal ellipses (in particular in the unfolding of the unusual love affair between Sheng Li and Sun Xiaomen), is not as immediately legible as that of The Piano (the latter film, however, still cultivated the art of digression to a certain extent), but conveys a similar emotion for the plight of a working-class anti-hero out of sorts with his surroundings and faced with the ineluctable passing of time. Having gone through censorship at minimal cost (the original title of Tattoo was discarded) and hailed by the powers-that-be as the "best Chinese movie of the year," Uncle Victory was invited in competition at the latest Shanghai International Film Festival… only to have all presentations to the press and public cancelled after Huang Haibo's highly publicised arrest for being caught with a prostitute. Headed by Gong Li, the Shanghai jury showed its independence by awarding it the Grand Jury Prize, but, ineligible to be showcased in another "A" category film festival, suspected of bringing trouble, Uncle Victory remained an orphan until its international premiere in Vancouver. (3)
Uncle Victory
Encounters in Motion
It's a no less intriguing vision of the changes affecting contemporary China, as they unfold against a landscape that still resists interpretation, that is offered in Harvard Sensory Lab-trained J.P. Sniadecki's latest work, Tie dao (The Iron Ministry). Over a period of several years, Sniadecki criss-crossed China by train, taking a digital camera with him. In addition to his status as outsider (both privileged and at a disadvantage), what differentiates Sniadecki's approach from previous "train documentaries" made by Chinese filmmakers (the most famous being Ning Ying's Xi wang zhi lu [Railroad of Hope, 2002], about peasant women going to work in the Xinjian Autonomous Region, but I also remember a black and white film by maverick filmmaker Wu Haohao with fondness) is that the latter are what Thom Andersen calls "literal filmmakers". They follow a linear journey, respecting the geography of the landscape. Sniadecki works from a Cubist-style form of accumulation, splicing together sequences taken at different times while a train is rushing through different parts of China. As in his previous Yumen, he twists the documentary genre toward the edge of surrealism, with palatable effects and endearing instances of black humour (sassy societal comments by a teenager; blasé outlook from members of ethnic minorities; a butcher cutting meat in the back of car…): China as a train heading to an unknown destination. So The Iron Ministry's most accurate mirror image may be Fruit Chan's horror comedy, Na ye ling san ngor jor seung liu wongkok hoi wong daibo dik hung van (The Midnight After), also shown at the VIFF after its Berlin premiere and a successful domestic release in Hong Kong, in which a minibus, reluctantly driven by Lam Suet (the charismatic "fat man" of so many Johnny To movies) and going from Mongkok to Taipo, enters a twilight zone, in which the macabre vignettes enacted are actually not-so-subtle allegories for Hong Kong's political future.
The Iron Ministry
Encounters on the Edge
There was room in the Dragons and Tigers section for films exploring avant-garde strategies, for artistic and/or political reasons. The most daring was Dang'an (The Dossier) in which independent producer/filmmaker (and former director of the Beijing Independent Film Festival) Zhu Rikun adopts a method à la Straub-Huillet to film Tibetan writer/dissident/blogger Tsering Woeser as she reads from the secret dossier compiled by Chinese authorities about her – and talks at length about her relationship to this material. The first part ends on a chilly tone: discussing how many documents are missing ("they destroyed the parts that concerned them"), Woeser concludes "and then the dossier ended. You are still alive physically, but your life within the system is over." In the second part, Zhu goes on to film Woeser vérité-style, as she drives back to Tibet, still the subject of minute surveillance; her physical presence within the cinematic field is, in itself, an act of resistance (gone from the system, but still here) as was Zhu's own body when a hidden camera was filming him talking back to the police in his first short film, Cha Fang (The Questioning, 2013).
Tsai Ming-liang's Xi you (Journey to the West) is a luminous response to the question of whether there is still room in the world for the cinema he makes. Tsai had announced that Jiao you (Stray Dogs, 2013) would be his last movie, and that he would from now on devote himself to art installations. There is much to rejoice that he may not consider Journey to the West (which after all, is only 56 minute long) as "a movie" and that FIDMarseille had the good idea of producing it. It is the spin-off of another precious gem by Tsai, Walker (2012), produced by the Hong Kong International Film Festival, in which Lee Kang-sheng, dressed as a Buddhist monk, walks through the busy streets of Hong Kong with excruciating slowness.
Journey to the West borrows its title from the famous 16th century Chinese classical novel that recounts the legendary pilgrimage of the Buddhist monk Xuanzang into the Indian subcontinent to procure sacred sutras. Modern commentators have reinterpreted the journey as a metaphor for the way China has sought inspiration, modernisation and democracy from Western countries. Here Tsai, a peripatetic filmmaker himself, takes his peripatetic actor/hero into Marseille, the city that once held the keys to France's colonial endeavour, then became a centre for all sort of traffics and criminal activities, a hotbed for post-colonial racial tensions, while retaining a healthy working class ethics. (This is also the city where I was born, and yes, Tsai does capture some of its mystique…) Great films often rest on a simple idea – in this case, a surrealist concept (courtesy of Lautréamont): (4) as beautiful as the encounter, in a French southern metropolis, of Tsai's Lee Kang-sheng and Leos Carax's Denis Lavant.
Conflicted Encounters
Like Uncle Victory, Rakhshan Banietemad's Ghesse-Ha (Tales), arguably the best Iranian feature of late, reached the VIFF through a chequered path. The film was completed two years ago, but couldn't be shown in Iran. The 2013 election of the more moderate Hassan Rouhani as president seemed promising, and Tales was shown in the Fajr Film Festival in Tehran to sold-out audiences in February 2014. Later, it received its international premiere in Venice where it won the Best Screenplay Award. (5) The tenth dramatic feature completed by "the first lady of Iranian cinema" since 1989, (6) it is an intelligent, reflexive venture, a construction en abyme subsuming the work done, both in documentary and fiction, in the last 20-odd years. Protagonists from previous films and previous epochs reappear, graced or burdened with new experiences. In the opening sequence, a filmmaker boards a taxi and shoots the streets of Tehran through the car window. The driver starts talking to him: "I can slow down, to make shooting easier." Then he adds that he has a story to tell, worth recording. From what he narrates – after convincing his mother to sell her house to buy a visa to go and work in Japan, he got swindled and got briefly involved in drug trafficking to make up for his financial loss – we recognise, slightly aged, Abbas, Mrs Tuba's older son from Zir-e poost-e shahr(Under the Skin of the City, 2001).
After dropping the filmmaker, Abbas is hailed by a woman (Mehraveh Sharifinia) carrying a child, apparently a prostitute. Off-screen, we can guess she makes him a proposal he violently rejects: "Get out!" "The child won't be a problem," she says. He looks at her in the rear view mirror, has a glimmer of recognition and, in a technique inspired by the 1001 Nights, (re)presents her own story to her, at the third person. There was this girl, Masoum, our neighbour; she was my sister's best friend. One day her asshole junkie brother beat her up and cut her hair. She disappeared. The woman silently cries. When Abbas stops at a pharmacy to get fever medicine and a toy for the kid, she slips out. His mother, Mrs Tuba (Golan Adineh) appears in three of the tales, first at the end of the first sequence, then in two attempts to get payment for the workers of her factory. Documenting Mrs Tuba's struggle, the unnamed videomaker films a violent scuffle between the workers and the security guards who block his viewfinder.
In another segment the once-young bride (Atefeh Razavi), so cruelly misled in Nargess (1992), is now the victim of violent domestic abuse, seeking refuge in a women's shelter, like the one documented by Banietemad in Angels of the House of the Sun (2009). Working in the same shelter, the doctor (Shahrokh Foroutanian) who, in Gilane (2005), couldn't helpthe heroine's son, a bed-ridden veteran of the Iran-Iraq, hears a voice from the past on his phone line. Even an anti-hero like the petty bureaucrat from Kharej az Mahdoudeh (Off-Limits, 1989) has a complex cameo, both comical and touching. The reoccurrence of these characters creates a cinematic world of its own, like a reverse image in a mirror gliding over the ever-changing realities of Iranian society, with narrative figures echoing each other, triggering memories, inviting us to compare trajectories and gauge the impact of social difference.
Banietemad has a particular gift to capture the mysterious interdependence uniting men and women in Iranian society, in spite of (and maybe because) the intimate misunderstanding that separates them. After being temporary wife to Rasul, the rich widower of Rusari Abi(The Blue-Veiled, 1995), Nobar (Fatemeh Motamed Arya) is now married to a working-class man, involved with Mrs Tuba in the fight to get back wages. He is a good man, cooking and taking care of the kids while his wife is at work, yet self-conscious about his lack of formal education. When Nobar receives an unexpected letter from Rasul's lawyer, she needs to muster treasures of energy and tenderness to soothe her husband's jealousy and his feelings of inadequacy.
In the last sequence, Sara (Baran Kosari), the drug-addicted daughter of Khoon bazi (Mainline, 2006), having now kicked the habit, rides on the back of a van driven by Hamed (Peyman Moaadi). She works for the women's shelter and is rescuing an HIV-positive girl, Samira, who has just attempted suicide by cutting her wrists. While the van dashes through the city at night, Sara and Hamed, catching only glances of each other on the rear-view mirror (an echo to the first tale), exchange sassy remarks throughout a masterfully choreographed sequence that conveys the emotional and spatial complexity of their interaction. He questions her motivations for doing this kind of social work; she criticises the turn taken by his life after he was expelled from the university for student activism. As the tension grows, we gradually understand that, under the sarcasm, deeper layers of feelings are at stake, as Sara, eventually, puts it bluntly: "Are you attracted to me?" In fact, he is – but there is something in the back of his mind. And she is probably attracted to him too, but, for reasons that become painfully transparent, she believes that her only ethical choice is to deny it.
This last tale reaches unexpected emotional resonance, leaving the spectator on a melancholy cliffhanger. No happy ending seems possible – at least not that night. Maybe the protagonists will continue this conversation in another film. In the coda, the videomaker gets his camera back…
A film that took me by surprise was Razredni sovražnik (Class Enemy), the debut feature of the Slovenian director Rok Bicek (winner of the Best Film Award at Venice Critics Week in 2013). The title itself, coming from a former communist country, is ripe with irony. Class struggle is not depicted in Marxist terms, but as the battle of wills between a group of high-school students and their new teacher, the "enemy" of the title. Gradually, though, it is the entire school system that is viewed in a hostile manner by the students.
Class Enemy
When the beloved Nusa (Masa Derganc) goes on a maternity leave, her much less congenial replacement, Robert (Igor Samobor), tries to change the work habits of the class. What follows is a series of fractured lines filled with misunderstandings and the possibility of violence. It culminates with the ill-fated encounter between Robert and Sabina (Dasa Cupevski), a gifted but vulnerable pianist. From the point of view of some students, Robert and Sabina were alone in a room, and something quite improper may have happened. What the spectator sees is Robert humiliating Sabina by depreciating her artistic abilities. Shortly afterwards, Sabina commits suicide. The students revolt against Robert, come to class wearing masks in the image of Sabina, occupy the school's radio etc…
However, the complexity of the situation increases. Depending on their opinion on the issue, and their involvement in various forms of protest or activism, students draw new alliances among each other, friendships are tested, loyalties shift, couples break up. Sabina's parents do not believe that Robert is to blame, and it is revealed that Sabina was in fact adopted, and that an insensitive remark by another student may have unsettled her. Interestingly enough, when Nusa comes back, the unrest does not die down. What is definitely shifting is the balance of power between the students and the institution. As a school official aptly puts it, "before they used to be afraid of us; now we are afraid of them."
When Evil Encounters Popular Culture
One of the festival's highlights was without question the presentation of the four episodes of Bruno Dumont's P'tit Quinquin (Li'l Quinquin), originally produced for television. The title points at the desire to plunge into some of the questionable aspects of French popular culture. The eponymous lullaby was written in the 19th century in the Picard language, called chti or chtimi (a slightly altered and heavily accented version of French, a patois spoken in the Northeast of the country and in the neighbouring Wallonia part of Belgium), and it became a nationalist anthem in the 1870 war against Prussia, as well as a source of local cultural pride. The words chti or chtimi are also used to designate the inhabitants of the area, while French mainstream comedies, such as Dany Boon's box-office success Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis (Welcome to the Sticks, 2008) have celebrated their no-nonsense, lower working class and solid values. Ch'ti culture implicitly believes in a racially homogeneous society, is highly suspicious of anybody who comes from "down south" and hostile to dark-skinned foreigners. This is Dumont's territory, as explored in La Vie de Jésus (The Life of Jesus, 1997), here on a mode that is novel for him, the burlesque. Calling his main protagonist "P'tit Quinquin" is tapping onto the folklore of la France profonde (the deep-seated fantasies of the average French people) and our hero – a tough, manly, pragmatic, mischievous yet serious pre-teen boy (Alane Delhaye) – quite fits the bill. A David facing up to the Goliaths of the police and the adult world (or, as the French would rather say, quoting a popular cartoon, "Astérix the Gaul challenging the Roman Empire"), he is in love with the youngest daughter of the farmers next door, Eve (Lucy Caron) – the only romantic moments of the film take place between these two kids – and with his buddies goes to beat up local foreign boys to protect "our girls" from their dirty gazes.
Li'l Quinquin
Two bumbling cops, tic-faced Commandant Van der Weyden (played by Bernard Pruvost, a professional gardener in real life), who may think of himself as a reincarnation of Louis de Funès, (7) Inspector Clouseau, (8) or even Colombo (even though he can't find the culprit) (9) and his second-in-command, Lieutenant Carpentier (Philippe Jore) who believes he's acting in an American TV series, are called onto the splendid landscapes (framed in Scope) of the Boulonnais area to investigate a series of gruesome murders: the bodies of interracial lovers are discovered stuffed in the insides of mad cows… The farmer husband of the first victim drowns in a manure pit. The naked body of his (married) mistress is found on the beach. It seems that an invisible avenger has taken the local peasants to task for their sexual misbehaviour, bringing to mind memories of H.G. Clouzot's Le Corbeau (The Raven, 1943) – much admired now but quite controversial as having been made under German occupation and depicting the inhabitants of the French countryside as spineless, mean and ready to inform against their neighbours. The murderer's agenda may have to do with enforcing racial purity (if the farmer hadn't cheated on his wife, maybe she wouldn't have thrown herself in the arms of a black man)… that is, until Aurélie Terrier (Lisa Hartmann), Eve's older sister, is killed.
When Aurélie enters the diegesis, something is clearly off. At the funeral of the first victim, a conventionally pretty teenager – long hair, fresh face, bland expression, mini-skirt – sings a pop song in English, a rather silly, repeated address to an unspecified youououououou…. (We can surmise that Aurélie does not speak English well enough to understand the lyrics, and, due to her faulty delivery and out-of-tune singing, neither can we). That the song is totally inappropriate for the occasion does not faze the teen, who delivers the musical number till its last note. Ensconced in the mediocrity of her dreams, Aurélie is a one-trick-filly, a broken record repeating the same tune ad nauseam, an echo of the jolie môme (pretty chick) of Léo Ferré's hugely popular song:
You know only one rhyme
For happiness
You have to make it rhyme
Or shed tears… (10)
Dumont is quite sympathetic to her plight – as Ferré was for his jolie môme, this forgotten female that never mattered in the world, "only a dot on the 'i' of life's sorrows, only one of these things that you water and then forget" (11) – making us aware that this silly song is her signature, the mark of her presence, her chance to be singled out of the anonymous peasant crowd. And singled out she is. The priests can't help giggling at her performance at the funeral; local kids clap loudly when she sings in the talent show; and Mohammed (Baptiste Anquez), the son of the second victim, is so turned on that he attempts to flirt with her. Aurélie didn't expect that by exhibiting demure sexiness on stage she would catch the eye of a black teen. So when he awkwardly courts her, she's numb, she has no reaction, she's not even there. It is her girlfriend, Jennifer, who comes to the rescue, insults Mohammed, calls him a "nigger" and a "monkey" and urges him to return where he came from.
When, crazed with rage and frustration, Mohammed locks himself on the top floor of his parents' house, screaming "Allah Abkar", "Shame on France", and shooting at the crowd, Van der Weyden accurately contends that Aurélie humiliated him. Not Jennifer (by insulting him, at least she recognised him as a subject). Aurélie reduced him to invisibility. Mohammed wasn't even a speck in the eyes of the girl who was only "a dot on the "i' of life's sorrows." She remained silent – when Mohammed was speaking to her, and when Jennifer was insulting him. This, to Dumont, is a figure of evil. "Evil is committed," said Hannah Arendt, "by people who don't know the difference between good and evil…." And so after Mohammed's suicide, Aurélie ponders, vaguely worried. Did she do anything wrong? Dusk is falling. Around her, pigs are gathering, grunting.
Aurélie's fate has been described as a "Pasolinian monstrosity", (12) but it also resonates with the lyrics of some French popular tunes, one of the most arresting being Rachel, the vengeful song of a jealous man finding himself in love with a whore, written by another anarchist singer/composer, François Béranger:
If the little pigs don't eat you.
There may be some left over for me. (13)
If the invisible avenger is now punishing Aurélie's implicit act of racism, then our interpretations of the first murders is all wrong… Yet, as Béranger's song suggests, her death could reveal something even uglier: the rage against a woman who fails to recognise the passion her body may trigger in any man, whatever his creed or race. We are, indeed, deep in Dumont's territory at its most suffocating (let's think of Flanders, for example), but the looser structure of the TV serial allows for other forms of free association. As in Michael Haneke's Caché (2005), we scrutinise every corner of the image in the vain search of a clue. The husband of a victim crosses the screen on a motorbike, his face hidden by a helmet. Li'l Quinquin's idiot uncle (15) takes on a threatening pose or laugh without reason. Does this mean anything? Who is/what is the "human beast" that committed these outlandish crimes?
By creating a palimpsest in which multiple references to popular and cinematic culture are interwoven with philosophical concerns about the nature of evil, P'tit Quinquin is a cornerstone in Dumont's oeuvre, delocalising the question, opening up multiple grids of understanding. The last words of dialogue, uttered by a defeated Van der Weyden are "I am laughing out loud" (Je rigole). Dark humour as the last word? Surrealism as a way to decode the enigma? As beautiful as the chance encounter, in Li'l Quinquin's cradle, of Beauty and The Three Little Pigs…
Vancouver International Film Festival
25 September – 10 October 2014
Festival website: http://www.viff.org/festival
1. http://www.mlive.com/entertainment/ann-arbor/index.ssf/2014/09/a_remembrance_of_ann_arbor_fil.html,
accessed November 14, 2014.
2. By contrast, in the US, the exclusion order striking Japanese Americans was rescinded in 1945.
3. As I am writing this, the film still cannot be screened publicly in China. The filmmakers hope that keeping a low international profile will help the case in the long run. So every foreign screening of Uncle Victory is both a precious opportunity for the audience as well as an act of courage.
4. Lautréamont's original line, "as beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table," became the inspiration for the Surrealists' "exquisite corpse" strategy.
5. Tales, however, has still not been theatrically released in Iran.
6. In addition, Banietemad has completed a dozen documentaries.
7. French comedian Louis de Funès starred in a series of highly successful comedies about a manic "gendarme" (country policeman) directed by Jean Girault between 1964 and 1982.
8. Inspector Clouseau movies were produced with Peter Sellars in the role from 1963 to 1978, and then with Alan Arkin, Roger Moore and Steve Martin in the 1960s, 1980s and 2000s respectively. Needless to say, they were widely distributed in France.
9. Produced in the US between 1971 and 1983, the series was largely broadcast in France.
10. T'as qu'un' rime
Au bonheur
Faut qu'ça rime
Ou qu'ça pleure
(translation mine). Released by the anarchist composer/songwriter/singer Léo Ferré in 1960, Jolie Môme was his most famous song, and later became an essential part of Juliette Gréco's repertoire, especially after 1972, the year Dumont was 14.
11. T' es qu'un point
Sur les " i "
Du chagrin
De la vie
Et qu'un' chose
De la vie the
Qu'on arros'
Qu'on oublie
(translation mine)
12. See Carole Desbarat, "P'tit Quinquin, la dernière oeuvre de Bruno Dumont," Esprit, October 2014, p. 130. In Pier Paolo Pasolini's Porcile (Pigsty, 1969) Jean-Pierre Léaud plays the son of a German industrialist who enjoys sex with pigs, and ends up being devoured by them – as Sebastian in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Suddenly Last Summer (1959) was devoured by the Third World thugs he had seduced.
13. Si les p'tits cochons te mangent pas
Il en restera p't-être pour moi
The phrase "if the little pigs don't eat you" is vernacular and means "if nothing happens on the way, you'll have a brilliant future." In Rachel (1973) Béranger twists the meaning by inserting a reference to the sailors ("the pigs") who are feasting on Rachel's body, and, in the coda, hopes to become a pig himself and devour his beloved.
14. I am using the word "idiot" instead of the politically correct term because in the French countryside people still talk about "the village idiot", but also as a reference to Dostoyevsky, whose novel poses he question of what it meant to be the witness of evil.
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How Lockheed Martin is dominating the European fighter market
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Ginger Lacey - Fighter Pilot
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Adopting ASaC: Merlins take over Royal Navy surveillance role
Now responsible for covering the Royal Navy's airborne surveillance and control mission, alongside its established maritime patrol helicopter roles, the Fleet Air Arm's Merlin Helicopter Force is adapting to meet the challenges of a new operating environment, as we report
USAF to start retiring Joint STARS fleet this year
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Bears in the mountain national parks
Bear basics
The mountain national parks
© Chris Mahoney / Parks Canada
Historical Range | Current Status | Threats | Biology | Habitat | Social Behaviour
Historical Range
In North America, grizzly bears (Ursus arctos) once ranged from the Pacific Ocean to the Mississippi River and from Central Mexico to the Arctic Ocean.
Today, the prairie population of grizzly bears is locally extinct (extirpated) in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. It was extinguished through human intolerance, market hunting, rapid conversion of habitat to agricultural fields, and loss of key prey (buffalo).
It's estimated that up to 20,000 grizzly bears remain in western Alberta, the Yukon and Northwest Territories and British Columbia. The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) lists grizzly bears as a "Special Concern" species due to characteristics that make it particularly sensitive to human activities or natural events. In Alberta, the grizzly bear is designated as threatened, while in British Columbia, it is blue-listed.
The current estimate of the grizzly bear population on provincial lands in Alberta is 691, and up to 16,000 in British Columbia. Within the four contiguous Rocky Mountain national parks, population estimates are:
Banff National Park: 65
Jasper National Park: 109
Yoho National Park: 11-15
Kootenay National Park: 9-16
Note: many of these bears do not spend their entire lives within the parks.
Habitat fragmentation and loss caused by an increasing human population is one of the biggest threats to grizzly bear survival, along with accidental human-caused mortality along our transportation corridors (roads and rails).
Grizzly bears have one of the lowest known reproductive rates of all North American land mammals. The age of first reproduction ranges from 5-8 years. A female produces young every 3-5 years. In the mountain parks, research indicates that on average, female grizzly bears have offspring every 4-5 years.
Mating takes place from mid-May to early July. Males will travel long distances to mate with available females. Bred females experience delayed implantation; the embryo does not implant in the uterus until November or December, but only if the bear has enough fat reserves to sustain her and the developing fetuses through hibernation. Female bears going into the den leaner than normal in the fall may emerge in the spring with fewer and/or smaller cubs. This highlights how important habitat quality and diet is to reproductive success.
Amorous grizzly bears in Banff National Park
Cubs are born in the den in late January to early February and weigh about half a kilogram (~1 lb). While the female dozes for another several months, the cubs nurse on milk rich in fat. By the time the female emerges from the den with her cubs-of-year, they weigh around 8 kg (18 lbs). A healthy young-of-year cub can weigh up to 45 kg (~100 lbs) by the time the family group dens in the fall.
Offspring typically remain with their mothers for at least three years. During this time, the female nurtures, protects and educates her young, which increases their chances of reaching maturity and reproducing. While under their mother's care, offspring learn how to forage and move through the landscape to access seasonal habitats. Natural mortality is highest for young-of-year and is usually related to nutrition. Adult male bears sometimes kill offspring. Bears that survive to become mature adults can live 20-30 years in the wild; however, most die human-caused deaths at an earlier age.
Grizzly bears have an excellent sense of smell, and good eyesight and hearing.
Up until the late 1800s, the Canadian prairies were part of the grizzly bear's home range. This adaptation to open spaces may be why today's Rocky Mountain grizzlies seem well suited to meadow clearings and avalanche paths, where they can more readily detect a threat.
Good grizzly bear habitat includes an adequate seasonal food supply, appropriate denning sites, the presence of some type of cover or shelter, access to mates, and isolation from human disturbance. Since nearly half of the mountain national parks are composed of rock and ice, habitat is fragmented. Consequently, concentrated seasonal food sources and other life requisites are widely dispersed in a patchy distribution that can change from year to year.
Though classified as carnivores, grizzly bears are omnivorous. They selectively eat a variety of plants at specific stages of growth throughout the year; meat constitutes about 15% of their diet. Bears have about seven months to meet their nutritional requirements for the entire year. They must move up and down in elevation and across the landscape to take advantage of these widely scattered food sources.
When bears leave their dens in late March to mid-May, food is scarce. Snow lingers at higher elevations. The bears are lean and in need of nutrition. Avalanche chutes and steep sub-alpine grasslands with sunny west and south aspects become snow free first and support a diversity of grasses and flowering plants. Important food sources include the roots of the legume Hedysarum, and the bulbs of glacier lily and spring beauty. Winter-killed wildlife offer an important pulse of protein and fat.
Freshly emerging grasses and sedges in meadows, and along streams and rivers at lower elevations, are also important foods. Introduced plants such as clover and dandelion, which green up early along roadsides and disturbed areas, also provide important forage for bears that will risk human presence associated with such sites.
Grizzly bears typically spend spring in the valley bottoms searching for food and then move to higher elevations as snow disappears and vegetation greens up later in the season. By late spring, horsetail (Equisetum) becomes an important source of food along streams and in wet areas in mature spruce forests. Grizzly bears also prey on newborn calves of elk and other ungulates if the opportunity arises.
By mid-summer, favoured cow parsnip flourishes on avalanche slopes and moist east and north facing slopes near treeline. Bears flip rocks to lick up insects such as ants and ant larvae. Insects are also torn out of rotting logs and trees.
Spring/Early Summer
Hedysarum roots
Glacier lily bulbs
Spring beauty bulbs
Cow parsnip
Horsetail (equisetum)
Deer, elk or moose calves
Carcasses of winter-killed ungulates
Late Summer/Fall
Buffaloberry
Bearberry
Grouseberry
Currant berries
Blueberry/huckleberry (west of Great Divide)
Whitebark pine nuts
Ants, ant larvae, grubs
Ground squirrels and marmots
Deer, elk, bighorn sheep, mountain goats
Carcasses of elk weakened or injured during the fall rut
Hedysarum roots (especially if berry crop fails)
By mid-July to early August, the fruits of berry producing shrubs begin to mature. In the Central Rockies, berries are the important high quality food source for bears. They concentrate their efforts where these sun-loving plants flourish—along dry forest edges and in open forest. On the drier east slopes of the Rocky Mountains, buffaloberry is most common. Near the Great Divide and on the moist west slopes of the Rockies, blueberry and huckleberry shrubs also grow. Burned forests are important sites that support berry producing shrubs and Hedysarum.
Grizzly bear focused on buffaloberries
Once a hard frost hits, the larger berries drop and bears turn to the tiny berries of low-growing bearberry, crowberry and grouseberry. Whitebark pine nuts stashed in squirrel caches also provide important calories. Ground squirrels, fat after a summer of feeding, are dug out of their burrows. As winter approaches, bears enter a state called "hyperphagia" and may eat for 20-23 hours a day to store enough fat to survive through hibernation.
In some years, the berry crop fails. Bears then rely heavily on Hedysarum roots. They must forage more widely and intensely, using precious energy. With fewer food options and wider travels, food-stressed bears are more likely to get into improperly stored human garbage and other artificial attractants.
Through late fall to hibernation, bears rely once again on Hedysarum roots. Depending on the individual bear and opportunity, ungulates such as elk may become prey.
In the Rocky Mountains, grizzly bears have evolved with dynamic landscape events like fire, avalanche and flood—these natural disturbances cultivate the diverse habitats that bears and many other species rely on.
Shelter or Cover
For grizzly bears, trees and shrubs provide cover for security. Shrubs and forest edge allow females with offspring to stay out of sight and avoid detection and close encounters with dominant bears or people.
Bears also need cover for protection from the weather. Bedding sites (day beds) are generally made near the inside edge of dense forest. Day beds are resting sites that allow bears to maintain a comfortable body temperature on a hot or a cool day.
Grizzly bears have adapted to living in food scarce wintry northern climates by hibernating for up to six months of the year. They dig winter dens into steep slopes with a north or east facing aspect in the sub-alpine where high snow accumulation insulates against the winter cold. Females with cubs are the first to den up, typically in mid-November. Males in particular stay up as long as they have food available to them, which can be well past Christmas.
Entrance to a grizzly bear den in the subalpine
Bears select and use habitats based on social interactions with other bears and the presence or absence of human activity. Grizzly bears are not territorial but establish home ranges that vary in size depending on the individual bear and habitat quality. Home ranges may overlap and are usually not aggressively defended.
Although the size of home ranges may vary greatly, the average home range in the Central Rockies is:
Males: 1000-2000 km2
Females: 200-500 km2
To survive and successfully raise their young, adult female bears need safe, predictable, quality habitat within their home ranges. Female offspring establish their home range in the vicinity of their mother, but males usually travel or disperse farther away.
Grizzly bears are solitary animals, except when with offspring or a mate. Their large body size and the patchy, widespread nature of their food sources keep bears at a low density. However, bears will warily tolerate each other at concentrated food sources like a coastal salmon stream or a large patch of ripe berry bushes. At such times, body postures, facial expression and vocalization help out individual bears and reduce the chance of confrontations that could result in serious injury. Grizzly bears will defend their own individual space, their cubs, and food.
The fact that grizzly bears once lived in a prairie landscape may explain some of their behaviour when threatened. On the prairies, grizzlies lacked areas of shelter for retreat, so became accustomed to standing their ground when confronted. Grizzly bears are more likely to defend themselves when surprised and seem to have a more aggressive temper than black bears.
Grizzly bear guarding an elk carcass
Rub trees (trees that generations of bears repeatedly rub and scratch), droppings and urine also communicate a bear's presence and perhaps social status. Social status is generally based on size as a reflection of sex and age. Adult male bears tend to be dominant. Dominant bears have the pick of the best habitat and food sources. Generally in this social ranking, after mature males, mature females with offspring follow, then single adult bears, and at the bottom of the social ladder, sub-adult (teenage) bears.
Click here to see how important rub trees are to a bear's social network.
Once independent of their mother, sub-adult bears must establish their own home ranges and fit into the landscape. These bears are curious and on a learning curve. On an evolutionary scale, this curious behavior probably helped bears find food in a wide variety of landscapes. Today, it also makes young bears vulnerable to danger from humans. Young, naive bears are more likely to tolerate people in order to access high quality habitat near human activity and developments; consequently, they are more likely to die a human-caused death.
Females with offspring are also more likely to use habitat near people, both to avoid dominant males that pose a threat to their young, and to access much needed natural bear foods. Bears using habitat near people often forage at night or early and late in the day when human activity is typically low. This avoidance behaviour helps prevent bear-human conflict, but usually with an energetic cost to the bear. If there are no good or bad consequences, the avoidance response can wane as the bear becomes more and more tolerant of human activity. They become bolder or less wary around people.
This grizzly bear family uses habitat on the fringes of the hamlet of Lake Louise
©Alex Taylor
The need to provide secure quality habitat where adult female bears and their offspring can forage on a daily basis with minimal human disturbance is vital to maintain wary bear behaviour, and the health of the regional bear population. It takes a big land base to support a self-sustaining population of grizzly bears; even the mountain national parks do not provide enough habitat by themselves. Cross-boundary cooperation and management is essential.


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PREVENTION CONNECTION
What's New in Prevention?
Por Los Niños
Parenting in Prevention: A Community Cafe Approach
The Partnership has long been aware that young people whose parents talk to them about the dangers of drug and alcohol use are 50% less likely to engage in substance use. This statistic has significant value today, in the midst of the current opioid epidemic that is plaguing Connecticut.
As a prevention measure, the Por Los Niños (For The Children) initiative employs a family engagement model to prevent substance use among Latino youth and families in Hartford. The Partnership collaborates with Family Life Education whose mission is to build stronger communities through family engagement that leads to self efficacy for families in Hartford. To accomplish this, the initiative engages parents in community cafes and other educational events that teach them how to identify youth substance use and have conversations about drugs and alcohol use. This program also seeks to raise awareness through a bilingual, community-informed public awareness campaign. By connecting and convening schools, community organizations, law enforcement and other community aspects, Por Los Niños aims at addressing substance abuse prevention by strengthening community connectivity and resources.
View the Previous What's New In Prevention Story, E3 Prevention Program Promotes Healthy Decisions.


A plot of land of 1540 m2 which is divided into 2 plots, one is agricultural land and the second has a construction and storage rooms. Each plot has it´s own independent entrance and both have a surrounding wall. There is water available on this land.


Let me tell you something. I'm not a fan of buffet restaurants. I mean they are nice but I really don't subscribe to the idea of them presenting me loads of food when I can be happy with just a plate of nachos (anything will do). So almost all of my buffet trips were free. And so Ice and her friend asked me if I could join them in one of their buffet trips - for free, now who am I to decline such offer eh?
Our group date was set at Buffet 101 in Robinson's Magnolia, Quezon City. It was lunch time on a midweek so I wasn't expecting much crowd but I was wrong. People were already lining up outside the restaurant at 11:00 a.m. for that day's lunch buffet (11 a.m. to 2 p.m.).
We called prior that day for the reservation and we just needed to confirm it from the receptionist that immediately showed us our already reserved table. All three of us were first-timers in this restaurant and neither of us knew how to "plate" beautifully for the happy food photos. So we got a problem over there. Lemme show you first the buffet spread.
And here's what we got on our plates. Please take note that we all love eating that we surely forgot to take photos of some plates. I was overwhelmed with all the stuff they have that I never get to taste all of them (well, I didn't plan to in the first place).
And from that point my camera battery got tired. I had some spare batteries which were all drained too. I didn't even get to take a few shots of the whole buffet area. Well that's Carla ladies and gentlemen. Slow claps.
Moving on, we had some pizza which were just ok. I also had blueberry and strawberry crepe which tasted bad. And everything tasted just normal and ok. Nothing stood out. Drinks were free flowing and you can choose from sodas, juices, hot stuff and fresh fruit shakes.
And so we moved on to the desserts. I only had fresh fruits and nothing fancy at all. Unlike the two girls who feasted on the pastries and the frozen yogurt. They enjoyed everything especially the mango and coffee panna cotta. They didn't dig the Marble cheesecake, Chocolate mini cupcake and Strawberry panna cotta - they didn't finish it at all. We also had watermelon shakes (pineapple was the other option for that day) which took years before they could serve it.
Overall, the two enjoyed their Buffet 101 experience. When they asked me if I did too, I showed them my typical not-so-sure-non-approval look. I dunno but I wasn't happy with this one. Compared to my Vikings food trip, this one didn't even touch my foodie soul. Maybe because of the very snobbish staff. Or maybe because of the bad buffet floor plan and traffic. Or maybe because of the not-so-comfy seats and odd table height. See, I am not even mentioning the quality of their food 'coz I think my buffet food palate is not that reliable in the first place. A happy buffet place for me is when I get to experience the total package of a nice place, good service, good food and good company. This particular buffet experience lacked a few of those - and that's not the good company part.
or may be you can try Yakimix Glorietta the next time. I heard they have a lot of good stuff there too.
nagutom ako sa pagbabasa kahit na karamihan were "just ok". i hear you.
obviously, we still have to sample those buffets that sprouted in manila like mushrooms after we left. with your review of buffet 101 here, i think want to dunk my fork and bring my appetite at vikings first.
.. i consider myself as "lugi" on buffets - i am a picky eater at di ganun kagana kumain.
OMG, I haven't tried eating in Buffet 101! Thanks for sharing the photos, now I know how the food looks like. I always have that thought that Buffet101 is better than Vikings, thanks for making me re-think about that. Haha!
aside from Vikings, do you know any buffet restro that you can recommend, please?
gumagaling ka na magplating infernes!
Kaylangan po ba na mag pa-reserve sa Buffet 101?
Is this better than vikings?
Siguro nga pag kumain ka sa buffet type na resto, u may want to consider food that u do not usually outside. Although baka iba nga unh lasa but it will give u chance to eat other food that is unusual to ur taste buds.


OBJECTIVE: To examine the prevalence of and risk factors for having a blood lead elevation among young children in a predominantly rural state. METHODS: 20,720 North Carolina children at least 6 months and < 6 years of age were screened between November 1, 1992 and April 30, 1993 using either capillary or venous measurements of blood lead. Children were tested through routine screening programs that target low-income families and, hence, were not randomly selected. Eighty-one percent of the children were screened through local public health departments, and 19% were tested at private clinics. RESULTS: The estimated prevalences of having an elevated blood lead level among those tested were: 20.2% (> or = 10 micrograms/dL), 3.2% (> or = 15 micrograms/dL), and 1.1% (> or = 20 micrograms/dL). Black children were at substantially increased risk of having a blood lead > or = 15 micrograms/dL (odds ratio (OR) = 2.1, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.7 to 2.5). Children aged 2 years old had an elevated risk (OR = 1.4, 95% CI = 1.1 to 1.7) compared to 1-year-olds, and males were at slightly increased risk (OR = 1.2, 95% CI = 1.0 to 1.4). Living in a rural county was nearly as strong a risk factor as race (OR = 1.9, 95% CI = 1.6 to 2.4). The effect of rural residence was even greater among certain subgroups of children already at highest risk of having an elevated blood lead. The type of clinic (public vs private) where a child was screened was not associated with blood lead outcome. These same trends were seen for children with blood lead levels > or = 20 micrograms/dL. CONCLUSIONS: Among children screened from rural communities, the prevalence of elevated blood lead is surprisingly high. Though few physicians have embraced universal lead screening, these data support the need for greater awareness of lead exposure in children living outside of inner-cities.


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El mariscal Manuel Deodoro da Fonseca (5 d'agost del 1827 - 23 d'agost del 1892) derrocà l'emperador Pere II i esdevingué el primer president de la República de Brasil.

Nascut a Alagoas, en un poble que avui porta el seu nom, Fonseca feu una carrera militar, neutralitzant la rebel·lió Praieira a Pernambuco el 1848, una revolució que seguia el model de la Revolució de 1848 a Europa. També va entrar en acció durant la Guerra de la Triple Aliança (1864-1870), assolint el rang de capità, i el 1884 va ser nomenat primer mariscal de camp, i després mariscal. El seu coratge, competència militar i estil feren d'ell una figura nacional.

Com a governador de Rio Grande do Sul, Fonseca freqüentava la companyia d'intel·lectuals republicans com ara Benjamin Constant o Rui Barbosa. El 1886, avisat de què el govern imperial estava ordenant la detenció de republicans prominents, Fonseca se'n va anar a Rio de Janeiro i va posar-se al capdavant de la facció de l'exèrcit que estava a favor de l'abolició de l'esclavitud.

L'emperador Pere II havia propugnat l'abolició de l'esclavitud durant dècades, havent alliberat els seus propis esclaus el 1840, però opinava que aquest procés havia de ser gradual per a no perjudicar l'economia. Durant la seva tercera regència, sa filla, Isabel, Princesa Imperial del Brasil, va abolir l'esclavitud el 1888. Els oligarques, enfurismats, van tenir un paper important en el cop d'estat que tingué lloc poc després. El prestigi de Fonseca el va posar al capdavant del cop militar que va derrocar l'emperador el 15 de novembre del 1889, i va estar un breu temps al capdavant del govern provisional, que convocà un congrés constituent per a crear una nova constitució per als "Estats Units de Brasil". Ben aviat, emperò, va trobar-se amb la resistència dels líders republicans civils.

La seva elecció com a president, el 26 de febrer de 1891, amb una curta majoria a favor, va rebre el suport dels sectors militars. Uns quants dies després, va fer el jurament a Quinta da Boa Vista, el palau imperial de Rio de Janeiro, ara el Museu Nacional de Rio de Janeiro.

El govern de Fonseca, dividit pels conflictes polítics i personals entre el president i el seu vicepresident Floriano Peixoto, va trobar-se amb una forta oposició al Congrés, que va emprendre una tàctica d'obstaculització. Una sèrie de decrets presidencials arbitraris empresos pel president va enfortir la resistència del Congrés contra Fonseca. El Congrés va començar a posar-se del costat de Peixoto. Aquesta situació va arribar al seu zenit quan Fonseca va dissoldre el Congrés Nacional i va declarar l'estat d'emergència, el 3 de novembre de 1891. Un grup de diputats va oposar-se a aquesta decisió i va trobar suport entre els alts oficials de la Marina, incloent-hi l'almirall Custódio José de Melo. El mariscal es trobà amb una guerra civil imminent. El 1891, va dimitir i va passar la presidència a Floriano Peixoto.

Va morir a Rio de Janeiro el 23 d'agost de 1892.

Heroi de la Pàtria
En virtut de la Llei Federal núm. 7919, de 1989, el Congrés Nacional del Brasil va decretar la inscripció del mariscal en el Llibre dels Herois i Heroïnes de la Pàtria, un memorial cenotàfic situat dintre del Panteó de la Pàtria i de la Llibertat Tancredo Neves de Brasília.

Referències

Presidents del Brasil
Persones d'Alagoas
Distingits amb l'Orde de la Creu del Sud
Morts al Brasil
Llibre dels Herois i Heroïnes de la Pàtria

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Home » PDF 'Immunology Made Ridiculously Simple Pdf'
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Essentials of Clinical Immunology
Released on 2013-12-17 by Categories - Medical
Essentials of Clinical Immunology provides the most up-to-date, core information required to understand diseases with an immunological basis. Clinically focussed, the sixth edition of this classic text presents theoretical and practical information in a simple yet thorough way. Essentials of Clinical Immunology covers the underlying pathophysiology, the signs and symptoms of disease, the investigations required and guidance on the management of patients. Perfect for clinical medical students, junior doctors and medical professionals seeking a refresher in the role of immunology in clinical medicine, this comprehensive text features fully updated clinical information, boxes with key points, real-life case histories to illustrate key concepts and an index of contents at the start of each chapter. A companion website at www.immunologyclinic.com provides additional learning tools, including more case studies, interactive multiple-choice questions and answers, all of the photographs and illustrations from the book, links to useful websites, and a selection of review articles from the journal Clinical and Experimental Immunology. This title is also available as a mobile App from MedHand Mobile Libraries. Buy it now from iTunes, Google Play or the MedHand Store.
Released on 2015-01-28 by Richard Coico,Geoffrey Sunshine Categories - Medical
Author: Richard Coico,Geoffrey Sunshine
Immunology: A Short Course, 7th Edition introduces all the critical topics of modern immunology in a clear and succinct yet comprehensive fashion. The authors offer uniquely-balanced coverage of classical and contemporary approaches and basic and clinical aspects. The strength of Immunology: A Short Course is in providing a complete review of modern immunology without the burden of excessive data or theoretical discussions. Each chapter is divided into short, self-contained units that address key topics, illustrated by uniformly drawn, full-color illustrations and photographs. This new edition of Immunology: A Short Course: • Has been fully revised and updated, with a brand new art program to help reinforce learning • Includes a new chapter on Innate Immunity to reflect the growth in knowledge in this area • Highlights important therapeutic successes resulting from targeted antibody therapies • Includes end of chapter summaries and review questions, a companion website at www.wileyimmunology.com/coico featuring interactive flashcards, USMLE-style interactive MCQs, figures as PowerPoint slides, and case-based material to help understand clinical applications
Medical Microbiology and Immunology Flash Cards E-Book
Released on 2016-08-16 by Ken S. Rosenthal Categories - Medical
Author: Ken S. Rosenthal
Publisher: Elsevier Health Sciences
Completely revised to correlate to Murray's Medical Microbiology, 8th Edition, these beautifully illustrated, clinically focused flash cards by Ken S. Rosenthal, PhD, cover the essential microbiology, immunology, and infectious diseases concepts you need to know for course exams and the USMLE Step 1. Perfect for individual or group study, they're ideal for quickly mastering must-know information in this challenging field. Exquisite full-color illustrations depict microbial organisms, the clinical appearances of their related diseases, and available treatment options. Case studies mirror the USMLE's emphasis on clinical applications. Microbe Cards, Concept Cards, and Disease Cards provide data on microbial infections, important concepts, and an overview of infectious disease. Completely revised to correlate to Murray's Medical Microbiology, 8th Edition.
Pharmacology Made Incredibly Easy!
Released on 2016-06-07 by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins Categories - Medical
Author: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
Publisher: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
Get all the basics on drug therapies—and administer drugs confidently and accurately—with the newly updated Pharmacology Made Incredibly Easy, 4th Edition. Written in the enjoyable, award-winning Incredibly Easy style, this easy-to-follow, fully illustrated guide offers step-by-step direction on the medication process, from assessing patient needs, to planning care, to implementation and positive outcomes. Strengthen your understanding of your class materials, get ready for the NCLEX® or certification exam, and administer drug therapies—safely and effectively! Build a strong platform of pharmacology knowledge and skills with. . . NEW and updated content on the newest approved medications and dosages and NEW tables listing: NEW vaccines and treatment for biological weapons exposure NEW treatment and antidotes for chemical weapons exposure NEW herbal drugs content NEW icons and images that clarify content Revised and updated content on the concepts of pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, and pharmacotherapeutics Pharmacology basics – How drugs are derived, developed, classified, and administered; classes of drugs by body system; their uses and mechanisms "Nurse Joy" and "Nurse Jake" illustrated characters offering tips and insights throughout Quick-scan format with concise, bulleted content Hundreds of illustrations and diagrams explaining key concepts and providing clear direction on administering drugs; drug distribution, absorption, and metabolism; potential drug interactions; adverse reactions; how different classes of drugs work in different body systems Special chapter features: Just the facts – A quick summary of chapter content Advice from the experts – Experienced practitioners' insights Prototype pro – Actions, indications, and nursing considerations for common prototype drugs Nursing process – Patient assessment, diagnosis, outcome goals, implementation, and evaluation for each type and class of drug Pharm function – Illustrating how drugs act in the body; recognizing and treating adverse reactions Before you give that drug – Warnings to consider before you administer a drug Education edge – Information to share with your patient Quick quiz – End-of-chapter questions with answers/explanations, to help you remember the essentials End-of-book multiple-choice Q&A; Quick Guides to Medication Safety, Ophthalmic and Dermatologic Drugs, and Abbreviations to Avoid; Glossary of essential pharmacology terms.
Lippincott Illustrated Reviews: Immunology
Released on 2021-01-14 by Thao Doan,Fabio Lievano,Susan M. Viselli,Michelle Swanson-Mungerson Categories - Medical
Author: Thao Doan,Fabio Lievano,Susan M. Viselli,Michelle Swanson-Mungerson
Lippincott® Illustrated Reviews: Immunology, 3rd Edition, offers an engaging, vividly illustrated presentation and all of the popular learning features of the Lippincott® Illustrated Review series to reinforce essential immunology concepts and connect basic science to real-life clinical situations. Like other titles in this series, this dynamic resource follows an intuitive outline organization and boasts a wealth of vibrant illustrations and study aids that clarify complex information and ensure retention. Whether used as a review text for a short immunology course or paired with Lippincott® Illustrated Reviews: Microbiology for a combined microbiology/immunology course, this revised and updated edition familiarizes readers with the latest practices in immunology and emphasizes clinical application to deliver unparalleled preparation for exams and clinical practice.
Released on 2016-06-02 by Massoud Mahmoudi Categories - Medical
Author: Massoud Mahmoudi
This highly practical, easy-to-read, fully updated and expanded resource offers a wide range of targeted guidelines and insights in allergy medicine. Written by a leading allergy clinician -- along with a renowned group of nationally recognized expert contributors in allergy and immunology, pulmonary, and infectious diseases -- this title is a proven resource for front-line general practitioners, especially primary care physicians. The most clinically relevant information is provided on the pathophysiology, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of all major allergic disorders. Each chapter has a section on "Evidence-Based Medicine" that introduces one to two recent research publications on the subject, and several chapters have been written by new authors. Covering the entire scope of adult and pediatric allergy and asthma and organized by specific organ which guides the reader to diagnostic and therapeutic solutions quickly and easily, the book offers a wealth of outstanding illustrations, key concepts, management protocols, and updated references. An invaluable contribution to the field, Allergy and Asthma: Practical Diagnosis and Management, 2nd Edition will be of immense value not only to primary care physicians, but also to fellows in training, residents, nurses, nurse practitioners, and medical and allied health students.
Easy Paediatrics
Released on 2011-05-27 by Rachel U Sidwell,Mike A Thomson Categories - Medical
Author: Rachel U Sidwell,Mike A Thomson
Publisher: CRC Press
Written by the same author team as the successful and well-regarded Concise Paediatrics for postgraduates, Easy Paediatrics is a textbook specifically written for medical students. Easy Paediatrics is structured in a systems-based fashion, with additional chapters on subjects such as history and examination, development, genetics, emergencies and surgery. The material is presented logically with presentations, clinical findings, investigations and management options, and useful boxes covering differential diagnoses, causes and complications are also included to complete the picture. Clinical photographs and illustrative diagrams are provided throughout to help the student visualise what they are reading about, and the book is enhanced by a companion website, which contains OSCE-style clinical scenarios and MCQs for all the body systems, so the reader can test what they have learned. Presented in an easy-to-remember style, Easy Paediatrics gives the medical student everything they need to succeed in their paediatrics modules, without bombarding them with excess knowledge that will not be covered in their exams.
Oxford Handbook of Infectious Diseases and Microbiology
Released on 2016-12-01 by Estée Török,Ed Moran,Fiona Cooke Categories - Medical
Author: Estée Török,Ed Moran,Fiona Cooke
Fully reviewed and revised for its second edition, the Oxford Handbook of Infectious Diseases and Microbiology maintains its position as the must-have guide to all aspects of infectious diseases and microbiology. Reflecting the current approach to joint postgraduate training programmes, the handbook takes an integrated approach to both subjects. It covers the basic principles of bacteriology and virology, along with specific guidance on individual diseases and conditions, all in the accessible Oxford Handbook style. Now including new topics on important subjects such as microbiology specimen collection, commonly used media, molecular diagnostics, and antimicrobials in pregnancy, as well as incorporating new guidelines from WHO, NICE, and BASHH among others, this handbook ensures that the informaiton you need is accessible, clear, and easy-to-understand. Practical and comprehensive, this handbook includes coverage of National Frameworks and current legislation, together with information on topical issues such as bioterrorism and preventative medicine. Fully reviewed by specialist senior readers, and with useful links to up-to-date clinical information and online resources, this is an important addition to the Oxford Handbook Series.


text:
Surprise! You're dead.
By Maria Zayas | Sep 10, 2007
Every Saturday night in September and October, the Green Room at the Funny Bone in Station Square will be putting on It's My Party and I'll Die If I Want To!, a comedic, interactive murder mystery. A McCaffery Mysteries production, this murder mystery gives the members of the audience more than some good laughs; it gives them a chance to participate in charity. McCaffery Mysteries, Inc.' is a non-profit organization benefiting both the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and the Animal Rescue League of Western Pennsylvania.
It's My Party and I'll Die If I Want To! is a surprise party for Ted's (Larry Herman) 50th birthday, hosted by his overly fatuous wife, Tiffany (Erica Skirpan). The audience plays the role of the party's guest, so expect Tiffany to greet you sometime during the play as "Francine, who just got out of rehab," or some such thing. Of course, there are other invited guests: Ted's senile and sour father George (David Bonta), and Ted's bitter ex-wife Sandy (Karen Walker).
Before Ted makes his appearance, the caustic conversations between the three fill the audience in on Ted's character. He is a "professional disappointment" in his father's eyes, is a womanizer in Sandy's, and, as Tiffany reveals, has entered into a mid-life crisis. Tiffany's "proper" and "sweet" nature causes her to only see a troubled, dear husband. However, Ted brings along an unexpected guest who forces Tiffany to further sink into denial about her husband's true nature.
Just after the audience screams out, "Surprise!" and sings "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow," Ted (wearing a "Vote for Pedro" shirt, no less) reveals that he will be leaving Tiffany for Promise (Kari Kleemook), a simple-minded, well-built teenage girl. He leaves an upset Tiffany behind to fetch Promise in his Mercedes, and all the characters exit the scene to deal with the situation in the ways they see fit.
Then the murder takes place. After everyone is inside, a guard (Matt Freas) enters to inform everyone that a murder has taken place in the parking lot. Promise enters the room and screams that blood has gotten on her skirt. It is revealed that Ted has been murdered by being repeatedly run over by his own Mercedes. Coincidentally, each of the characters has a key.
After some debate, the audience is left to help the guard figure out who the murderer is. The cast passes out some sheets filled with questions that the audience must answer. With three tie-breaker questions, the majority vote determines the ending, or, who killed Ted. To top it off, the cast hands out awards for "The Most Clueless," "CSI Detective" (the one who tried too hard), and the "Winner of the Day," who gets a T-shirt along with his or her certificate in celebration of accurateness.
The cast works well together. Although each character portrays a certain extreme (one is very stupid while another is very bitter, for example), the actors use the wit in the script to maintain a kind of balance; each overwhelming personality constantly thwarts another. For example, Ted's father and ex-wife take turns subverting his current wife Tiffany's edgy voice with their sardonic and unfeeling tones.
Playing the guard, Freas is one of the last actors to appear, and he offers a refreshing feel to the play. His tennis shoes and frequently befuddled expression seem perfectly fitting for a man who doesn't mind looking up a teenager's skirt as he tries to solve a murder mystery.
Artistic director and director Cory McCaffery Sigler keeps a good eye for using all of his cast's talents. Kleemook, who has a B.F.A. in musical theater from Youngstown State University, turns singing to a comedic ploy when Promise sings "I Will Always Love You" as an abrupt eulogy for Ted.
So, for anyone who is clueless as what to do on a Saturday night, a charitable, interactive murder mystery is not a bad idea. It's only 20 bucks plus a two-drink minimum — and you get to see naked ladies. They're on the walls.


When the Scottish Government announced it would remove tax breaks and make Scottish churches and charities pay full price for their water from 2010, Indigo was brought in to help fight the change.
Focal points such as World Water Day brought the issue to the top of the media agenda as well as online and offline petitions.
The campaign gained the support of 79 out of 129 MSPs and convinced the Government to retain the exemption.Both groups avoided a crippling hike in water rates.
in ticket sales and signing up more than 4,500 new donors.
This campaign cashed in on the rising popularity of all things green with a new approach. It used the contrasting images of glamour and recycling to get people to recycle.
Pelican PR launched Recycle Now Week, a summer campaign comprising more than 160 UK events, with television presenter Denise van Outen.
The team put van Outen in a dress made entirely from rubbish, and used the image as its celebrity figurehead.
The campaign gained coverage worth an estimated £900,000 in the tabloids, national TV, radio and news websites, as well as local and specialist media.
The wide reach of the campaign and fresh approach impressed the judges.
Having already scooped the consumer relations awards in both the West of England PRide Awards and the CIPR Excellence Awards, Dangling Carrot's campaign for Trunki luggage deserved its 'clean sweep' of CIPR awards.
But the campaign had a less than auspicious start.
Overcoming a lengthy route to market, lack of retail presence and limited resources turned out to be the least of its problems when a disastrous appearance on the BBC's Dragon's Den turned the launch of the world's first ride-on suitcase for toddlers into a PR nightmare.
To get over the product's difficult birth, Trunki brought in Dangling Carrot PR to help rebuild its image. Products were given names and characters were even 'christened' on Facebook. Journalists were won over with products matched to their own children, and the 'posh' Trunki was headed by a campaign entitled 'Too Posh To Push'.
The campaign was covered in the nationals and nearly 40 leading travel, family and lifestyle publications. Sales exceeded £2m and Mothercare, John Lewis and Harrods are among the 250 UK retailers now stocking its wares.
PR officer Andrea Jenkins has single-handedly revitalised South Wales Police Authority's approach to public consultancies with the 'Spend our Money' campaign.
This allows the public a chance to give feedback on police priorities. Jenkins also more than doubled membership applications and launched a dedicated website for the authority – the first of its type.
Trimedia's West of England office won the judges' praise both for its commitment to staff training and development, and its voluntary work in the South West. The agency has maintained its status as the biggest PR consultancy in the region, and won several national campaigns including the Environment Agency's Food Awareness campaign and promoting the Territorial Army's centenary.
Leeds-based Wolfstar set itself up to 'prove that specialist expertise can beat global agencies'. The social media and word of mouth agency has landed contracts from Sony Ericsson, Microsoft and Philips. In fact, it boasts a large number of international clients for a small agency. The five-strong staff do voluntary work one day a week, and support several charities. Judges noted its 'impressive' growth.


This entry was posted in Death and dying, Life, Spirituality, Uncategorized and tagged Abel's blood, Armistice Day, Malcolm Guite, Remembrance Day, silence, Two Minute Silence, Veterans Day by Gordon C. Stewart. Bookmark the permalink.
For a time when I was little, we believed we were celebrating the end of war even as we grieved those who were lost in guaranteeing it.


text:
Vincenzo Bichi (* 2. Februar 1668 in Siena; † 11. Februar 1750 in Rom) war ein italienischer Kardinal und katholischer Erzbischof.

Biografie
Vincenzo Bichi wurde am 2. Februar 1668 in Siena als Sohn einer adligen sienesischen Familie geboren. Er war der Sohn von Metello Bichi, Marquis von Rocca Albegna, und von Vittoria Piccolomini von Aragon und der Neffe von Kardinal Carlo Bichi. Die Familie brachte mit Metello Bichi, Alessandro Bichi und Antonio Bichi noch weitere Kardinäle hervor.

In seiner Jugend studierte er am Seminario Romano in Rom, wechselte dann zum Seminario Clementino und kam an die Universität La Sapienza, wo er am 30. Juli 1689 zum Doctor iuris utriusque promoviert wurde. Anschließend wurde er Referendar und Kleriker der Apostolischen Kammer (1695) und empfing am 26. April 1699 die Priesterweihe.

Am 11. Dezember 1702 zum Titularerzbischof von Laodicea in Phrygia ernannt, wurde er Päpstlicher Thronassistent und war Apostolischer Nuntius in der Schweiz (1703–1709) und Portugal (1709–1720).

Im Konsistorium vom 24. September 1731 wurde er vom Papst Clemens XII. zum Kardinalat erhoben und zum Kardinalpriester ernannt. Seine Titelkirche San Pietro in Montorio nahm Bichi erst Ende März 1732 in Besitz. In den Folgejahren wechselte der Kardinal des Öfteren seine Titelkirchen, bis er am 23. September 1743 von Papst Benedikt XIV. zum Kardinalbischof von Sabina befördert wurde. Am 10. April 1747 wurde Bichi schließlich Kardinalbischof des suburbikarischen Bistums Frascati.

Vincenzo Bichi starb am 11. Februar 1750 in seinem Palast in Rom in der Via Lata im Alter von 82 Jahren.

Literatur

Weblinks

Kardinal (18. Jahrhundert)
Titularerzbischof
Römisch-katholischer Bischof (18. Jahrhundert)
Apostolischer Nuntius in der Schweiz
Päpstlicher Thronassistent
Historische Person (Italien)
Geboren 1668
Gestorben 1750
Mann


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