Dark Past Research Articles

The Closed Hand: Images of the Japanese in Modern Peruvian Literature by Rebecca Riger Tsurumi (review)

Reviewed by: The Closed Hand: Images of the Japanese in Modern Peruvian Literature by Rebecca Riger Tsurumi César Ferreira Riger Tsurumi, Rebecca. The Closed Hand: Images of the Japanese in Modern Peruvian Literature. West Lafayette: Purdue UP, 2012. Pp. 313. ISBN 978-1-55753-607-5. The theme of The Closed Hand: Images of the Japanese in Modern Peruvian Literature is the role of Japanese culture in contemporary Peruvian letters. Rebecca Riger Tsurumi posits that Peruvian writers present conflicting views about Japanese culture and its place in mainstream society. Japanese characters are seen either negatively or as the object of satire or victims of Peruvian nationalism after WWII. She also examines Nisei (second generation) writers who provide perceptions of immigration and personal experiences. While documenting Japanese emigration to Latin America at the end of the nineteenth century, the author also focuses on initial literary expressions of Japanese culture by contextualizing Japanese immigration that was triggered by the lack of manual labor. Even though Japanese assimilation was difficult throughout the twentieth century, Japanese-Peruvians came to the forefront when Alberto Fujimori, a Nisei son of emigrants from Japan, became president in 1990. The Nisei are the largest group among the approximately 80 000 Peruvians of Japanese descent. The first manifestations of oriental imagery in Latin American literature appeared in modernista prose and poetry by Rubén Darío, José Martí, and others, who first stressed the ideographic nature of Japanese literature and haikus in Spanish. In another chapter, the author examines Fushía, a Japanese-Brazilian adventurer in Mario Vargas Llosa’s La casa verde (1966). His dark past begins in Brazil and ends in the Peruvian Amazon. After becoming a cult figure that plundered Indians and routinely kidnapped women, he is ravaged by disease, persecuted by the authorities, dying, and seeks refuge at a leper colony. Riger Tsurumi questions this portrayal of Fushía, who undermines the traditionally positive image of the Japanese community in Peru. In passing, she also examines two minor female characters in Vargas Llosa’s Travesuras de la niña mala (2006). The author proceeds to examine images of Japanese people in the stories “Matavilela” and “Muerte de Sevilla en Madrid” by Miguel Gutiérrez and Alfredo Bryce Echenique, respectively. Gutiérrez explores social tensions by examining the persecution of Japanese-Peruvians during World War II; seen through the eyes of a child, this story narrates an assault on a store owned by a Japanese family in the 1940s. In contrast to this hard-core realism, Bryce Echenique tells the story of a Japanese tourist who accompanies the protagonist Sevilla in a humorously absurd trip to Spain. According to Riger Tsurumi, the tourist’s caricaturesque portrayal and the protagonist’s tragic journey illustrate the thorny lack of communication between East and West. [End Page 162] In other chapters, the author focuses on Las dos caras del deseo (1994) by Carmen Ollé and Puñales escondidos (1998) by Pilar Dughi. Ollé’s novel examines the role of a young Japanese descendant, who seemingly embodies traditional Japanese values, but her youthful approach to race and sexuality permits the novel’s protagonist to abandon her monotonous lifestyle and deal with her lesbian desires. In Dughi’s novel, Japanese literature also serves as a catalyst for change for the protagonist. This thriller explores her personal transformation through Japanese writers Endo Shusaku, Abe Kobo, Dasai Osamu, and Mishima Yukio, which stimulates her to rethink traditional views about society, religion, and love. In another chapter, the author discusses two short novels by Mario Bellatin, who questions the relationship between reality and fantasy in his works. El jardín de la Señora Murakami (2000) focuses on a young female whose misfortunes typify the contradictions between tradition and modernity in Japanese culture. And irony and satire abound in Shiki Nagaoka: Una nariz de ficción (2001), which tells the story of an aspiring writer whose fascination with text and photography make him a cult figure upon his death. Known for his experimental writing and his explorations of Japanese culture, Bellatin’s fiction always draws attention to the art of storytelling. While several writers discussed in this study depict Japanese culture from an...

Forging a Modern Democratic Imaginary: Police Sovereignty, Neoliberalism, and the Boundaries of Neo-Korea

This article examines the formation of “Neo-Korea” —the constitution of the social and political imaginary of the present as a radical break from the dark past. Democracy and neoliberalism, dominant imaginaries of contemporary Korea, required forgetting. This article shows how new tactics of policing protest initiated in 2000, in the still-churning wake of the financial crisis, actively reprogrammed social memory, dramatizing a Korea of democracy and free markets. The analysis reveals the complex entanglement of biopolitics and sovereignty: the administration of neoliberal subjects and the banishment of those unfit for the new Korea. Their combined deployment constituted a politics of the new — the threshold of normative inclusion into the new Korea and the dramatic refashioning of the guise of the state. Contrary to the Foucauldian telos of the transition from a premodern theater of state power to the biopolitical technologies of modern liberal governmentality, the article demonstrates the continued salience of theatrical sovereignty in the formation of modern democratic imaginaries.

What I’ve Learned Along the Way

In this biographically reflective essay, the author identifies two themes that have informed his public history work in communities with historical secrets, in civil rights history, and on the architecture of racial segregation: the importance of acknowledging and remembering the “dark past” and of asking questions from the perspective of place. His projects have taught him to look for the pukas or gaps, to cast down his bucket and engage nearby history, to think ecologically by hitching case studies to broad patterns of meaning, and to accept that the impact of projects may be catalytic rather than conclusive. He argues that the interpretive fluidity of history is a mystery to the general public and suggests that sites and museums teach what history is, as well as what history happened at a property. He offers a way to do this by “telling the whole story” through recognizing the history of site management and exhibiting the process of site interpretation.

유대인 뮤지엄 전시공간의 조형적 표현 특성에 관한 연구

Today, museums are designed with specific purposes with themes to raise issues based on themes, history, culture or other special focuses. Among many of these thematic museums, Jewish museums are built around the world in order to let the future generations know the history and dark past memory of the Jewish people. Accordingly, the aim and significance of this study are to analyze the characteristics of design expressions of the museum architecture of Jewish museums done by various architects to help visitors empathize the dark period of the Jews during the holocaust. This particular study will be focused on analyzing 7 museums under the theme of holocaust and Jewish people's life affected because of the tragic event. Spatial organization, exhibition space composition, exhibition techniques such as the exhibition storytelling or scenario and natural light distribution will be analyzed to find expressional characters of Jewish museum's design and how the design form strengthen the museum's purpose. To achieve the aim of the study, targets for the theoretical discussion and case analysis regarding the design approach are discussed in chapter 2, characteristics of the cases are analyzed and synthesized in chapter 3, and finally the conclusion in chapter 4. The study found, that distinctive characters of spatial expression have direct impact on visitor's understanding of the museum purpose and it helps viewers to empathize and to be educated about the situation. Well designed architectural form, spatial organization, choice of materials and colors as well as story telling techniques of the museum will solidify the meaning of the exhibitions inside. Results found in the study will be the guidance for future study on thematic museum planning.

Bringing the dark past to light: the reception of the Holocaust in postcommunist Europe

Despite the Holocaust's profound impact on the history of Eastern Europe, the communist regimes successfully repressed public discourse about and memory of this tragedy. Since the collapse of communism in 1989, however, this has changed. Not only has a wealth of archival sources become available, but there have also been oral history projects and interviews recording the testimonies of eyewitnesses who experienced the Holocaust as children and young adults. Recent political, social, and cultural developments have facilitated a more nuanced and complex understanding of the continuities and discontinuities in representations of the Holocaust. People are beginning to realize the significant role that memory of Holocaust plays in contemporary discussions of national identity in Eastern Europe. This volume of original essays explores the memory of the Holocaust and the Jewish past in postcommunist Eastern Europe. Devoting space to every postcommunist country, the essays in Bringing the Dark Past to Light explore how the memory of the dark pasts of Eastern European nations is being recollected and reworked. In addition, it examines how this memory shapes the collective identities and the social identity of ethnic and national minorities. Memory of the Holocaust has practical implications regarding the current development of national cultures and international relationships.

John-Paul Himka and Joanna Beata Michlic, editors. Bringing the Dark Past to Light: The Reception of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Europe.

John-Paul Himka and Joanna Beata Michlic, editors. Bringing the Dark Past to Light: The Reception of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Europe. Get access John-Paul Himka and Joanna Beata Michlic, editors. Bringing the Dark Past to Light: The Reception of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Europe.Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 2013. Pp. x, 778. $50.00. The American Historical Review, Volume 118, Issue 5, December 2013, Pages 1648–1649, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/118.5.1648d Published: 25 November 2013

Dark Past, Grey Present or Bright Future? Foreign Investorss Access to China's Telecommunications Industry and a Political Economy Analysis of Recent Industrial Policy Moves

Amid the global economic downturn, Eurozone crisis and Libya war in 2011, Alibaba, Yahoo and Softbank’s dispute over Alipay brought China’s telecoms industry and, more importantly, foreign investment policies into the global spotlight. This article considers Chinese legislative framework regulating foreign investment in China’s telecoms industry, and more importantly, two transactional models, that is, the CCF and VIE structures, foreign investors have adopted in the past three decades to access China’s restricted telecoms industry. This article attempts to unveil the underlying reasons foreign investors creating and utilizing these transactional models and, more importantly, China’s recent regulatory instruments Chinese authorities have taken in tackling the VIE structure in telecoms industry. From a political economy lens, this article offers a possible rationale underpinning such movements in light of China’s policy direction.

Sirkka Ahonen, Coming to Terms with a Dark Past How Post-Conflict Societies Deal with History

Article Sirkka Ahonen, Coming to Terms with a Dark Past How Post-Conflict Societies Deal with History was published on February 1, 2013 in the journal Comparative Southeast European Studies (volume 61, issue 2).

Black Travesty

Quincy Troupe is a visionary poet who is always reaching out to walk and dance words upon a single page. Quincy uses his imagination through dialog with certain looks of rhythm of words which bounce off the page of unforgotton sound. Quincy prances accross word that burst from childhood dreams that make you smile. Perhaps there is an explanation to why he creates hope to the deturbed voices in our head. It is through language that he decodes similes, metaphores and apostrophes out of clarity that trace our roots to our dark past which is from the eye of the beholder. Quincy's words bounce back at us with words of wisdom from the voice that humms in our head. Quincy maps his experience into beautiful shcemes of imprisoned thought. Quincy has mirrored a managerie of space on a blank page using pain and agony to slowly develop an illusion for movement. Quincy's sentex is the blues in space that echoes in the air in spoken tongues. It is from dreams we pulsate life through shared idioms of time. When we can identify in how sorrow has touched our lives, we believe in fear itself will keep us alive. Fear is an invisible ploom we live through rituals from desire. It is from this madness we imagine love is far deeper than fear itself.

A Thousand Mornings

72 World Literature Today reviews He compares poetry to prose and asks why one writes poetry when no one has asked for poetry at the library for a year except for himself. His poem “Working Temperature” describes how he falls in love with poetry at the end of each novel he reads. His relationship with poetry is like that of a thief lurking by, trying to steal what he wants. Poetry as a profession doesn’t pay. He continually struggles with this, yet it doesn’t stop him from conversing with other poets such as Homer, Horace, Rumi, Whitman, and Shakespeare . How can one live and go on with all the bad news around us, he asks in “Fruit Trees,” as did Adorno after the Holocaust. In the middle of the book, he has a fourteen-part poem, “Zvezdara,” about his ulcer and hospitalization. Even at the hospital, he can’t live without poetry and easily debates with dead poets about his colonoscopy , or therapy. He jokingly writes, “All roads lead to the toilet. / Rome is now far away.” In a sense, in this poem he sees his youth dying away. He hopes his three-year-old son will have a better future, yet he “cries silently,” knowing the history of violence is bound to recur, as in “Bodrum” and “On Behalf of Life’s Lessons.” He is afraid of death, of occupying armies. Muslims in his community, including himself, had to circumcise their boys secretly during communist times in Eastern Orthodox Serbia. He ends the book with a rather gloomy prediction of how not even reincarnation is news anymore, as it is preempted by news of “war, floods, and sellers of fog.” This moving book of contemporary poetry by Enes Halilović is essential reading. These are poems, in Gibran’s words, of “immeasurable beauty”—making art out of pain. Biljana D. Obradović Xavier University of Louisiana Mary Oliver. A Thousand Mornings. New York. Penguin. 2012. isbn 9781594204777 If all the poems in A Thousand Mornings were as remarkable and well made as “Hum, Hum,” which mines childhood pain in a powerful way, it would be a worthwhile book indeed. “Hum, Hum” succeeds by offering more ambiguity than the typical Oliver poem. Rather than the simple praise of mystery that typifies her work, this poem enacts mystery, from the surprise arrival of bees in the beginning, through a dark past, to a pressing onward at the end. As such, I recommend the 2011 issue of Georgia State University’s literary journal, Five Points, in which “Hum, Hum” first appeared (14:2). The majority of the poems in A Thousand Mornings, though certainly accessible, repeatedly come to rest in self-congratulations. “If I were a Sufi for sure I would be / one of the spinning kind” Oliver proclaims with a pat on her own back at the end of “If I Were.” In “Good-Bye Fox,” she ventriloquizes nature for the purpose of self-affirmation: “you’re okay in my book,” says the fox in response to the poet’s wit. In “The Moth, the Mountains , the Rivers,” Oliver preaches outright: “Strange questions, yet I have spent worthwhile time with them. And I suggest them to you also, that your spirit grow in curiosity , that your life be richer than it is, that you bow to the earth as you feel how it actually is.” A similar poem is “Three Things to Remember,” which begins with “As long as you’re dancing , you can / break the rules” and then immediately concludes with “Sometimes breaking the rules is just / extending the rules. // Sometimes there are no rules.” One fears this may be what Facebook and Twitter can do to contemporary poetry. “You fuss over life with your clever / words, mulling and chewing on its meaning,” that talking fox affectionately chides Oliver, but the charge does not hold up. This metaphor of chewing on meaning is itself among the most worn-out of clichés. In “The First Time Percy Came Back,” we are told that the dead dog is “unreachable. As music / is present yet you can’t touch it.” Such easy sentimentality is a betrayal of the poem’s emotional stakes...

Stalinist Justice as a Site of Memory: Anti-Jewish Violence in Kyiv’s Podil District in September 1941 through the Prism of Soviet Investigative Documents

Stalinist Justice as a Site of Memory: Anti-Jewish Violence in Kyiv’s Podil District in September 1941 through the Prism of Soviet Investigative Documents Drawing on the materials of the Soviet judicial authorities’ investigation of an anti-Jewish pogrom in Kyiv in the fall 1941, the essay explores peculiarities of Soviet retributive justice and mnemonic practices in Kyiv in the aftermath of Nazi occupation. The article makes an argument for the importance in the general structure of the investigation of the so-called “milieus of memory”, social set tings of the urban neighbourhoods where episodes of the recent dark past were widely discussed both during the Nazi rule and following the re-establishment of Soviet power. These milieus proved absolutely indispensable for the start of the case. Moreover, rather than being an unproblematic informational resource for the NKGB investigators, the narrative accounts of witnesses and perpetrators in combination with peculiarities of official information gathering exerted a profound influence on the choice of suspects, as well as the general direction and the outcome of the investigation.

NHS privatisation means regression to a dark past

NHS privatisation means regression to a dark past

NHS privatisation means regression to a dark past

NHS privatisation means regression to a dark past

NATIONAL IDENTITY IN THE VANQUISHED STATE: GERMAN AND JAPANESE POSTWAR HISTORIOGRAPHY FROM A TRANSNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE

ABSTRACTThe defeat of Germany and Japan in 1945 required historians in both countries to reevaluate the past to make sense of national catastrophe. Sebastian Conrad's The Quest for the Lost Nation analyzes this process comparatively in the context of allied military occupation and the Cold War to reveal how historians in both countries coped with a discredited national history and gradually salvaged a national identity. He pays special attention to the role of social, discursive, and transnational contexts that shaped this process to highlight the different courses that the politics of the past took in postwar Germany and Japan. The picture that emerges of German and Japanese historiography and the respective attempts to come to terms with the past is at odds with the conventional narrative that usually praises West German historians and society for having come to terms with their dark past, as opposed to postwar Japan, which is usually regarded as having fallen short by comparison. There was in fact far more critical historiographical engagement with the past in Japan than in West Germany in the 1950s. Reasons for the divergent evolution of the politics of the past in Germany and Japan should not be sought in the peculiarities of postwar national history but rather in an entangled transnational context of defeat, occupation, and the Cold War, whose effects played out differently in each country. These conclusions and others reveal some of the opportunities and special challenges of comparative transnational history.

Dark Past, Grey Present or Bright Future? – Foreign Investors’ Access to China’s Telecommunications Industry and a Political Economy Analysis of Recent Industrial Policy Moves

Amid the global economic downturn, Eurozone crisis and Libya war in 2011, Alibaba, Yahoo and Softbank’s dispute over Alipay brought China’s telecoms industry and, more importantly, foreign investment policies into the global spotlight. This article considers Chinese legislative framework regulating foreign investment in China’s telecoms industry, and more importantly, two transactional models, that is, the CCF and VIE structures, foreign investors have adopted in the past three decades to access China’s restricted telecoms industry. This article attempts to unveil the underlying reasons foreign investors creating and utilizing these transactional models and, more importantly, China’s recent regulatory instruments Chinese authorities have taken in tackling the VIE structure in telecoms industry. From a political economy lens, this article offers a possible rationale underpinning such movements in light of China’s policy direction.

Pamiętanie dla upamiętnienia", ,,pamiętanie dla korzyści" i „pamiętanie, żeby zapomnieć": różne modele pamięci o Żydach i Zagładzie w postkomunistycznej Polsce

The paper considers the memories of Polish-Jewish relations during the Holocaust in Poland in the aftermath of the intense public debate about the Jedwabne massacre of July 10, 1941, since 2002 till the present. Jan Tomasz Gross’s slim monograph Neighbors, published in May 2000, triggered a debate that generated a process of self-critical assessments of the Polish national past in relation to Jewish and other ethnic minorities, the so-called cultural renewal of public memory. Ten years later there is still a sharp split between groups of Polish politicians, public intellectuals, journalists, historians and members of society at large in how they evaluate the dark aspects of the Polish-Jewish relations during and after WWII. The paper examines the main modes of remembering Jews and the Holocaust: “remembering to remember”, “remembering to benefit”, and “remembering to forget”, and the different manifestations of these three modes, and discusses what has made it difficult for Poles to integrate the dark past into popular historical consciousness and public memory.

Jedwabne before the Court

On 10 July 1941, Jewish inhabitants of the little town of Jedwabne were burnt alive in a barn by their Polish neighbors. This was probably the worst act of violence inflicted on Jews by the Poles during World War II. By examining postwar legal proceedings related to the Jedwabne massacre, this article looks at the attitude of Polish authorities towards crimes committed by the Poles on Jews during the war as well as the reaction of the local community to its own dark past. Although a group of perpetrators were put on trial in 1949 and 1953, criminal court files reveal the indolence and ineffectiveness of Communist Poland’s justice in such cases. The documents also expose a conspiracy of silence among residents of Jedwabne and their solidarity with the defendants. On the other hand, a scrutiny of civil court proceedings discloses mechanisms of appropriation of the victims’ property by the perpetrators. An analysis of a subsequent investigation into the Jedwabne case carried out in the 1960s and 1970s proves that it predominantly aimed at erasing the truth about Polish involvement in the crime, and as its result German gendarmes were officially pointed out as the sole culprits. Only after the restitution of democracy in 1989 was Poland able to openly confront black pages of its history including the Jedwabne massacre.

The Emperor of Lies (an excerpt)

LT>§ o rsi O N UJ o o x Q. 2] n H o z That man memory was announced the of day, theghetto, engraved in front when forever of the everyone Chairinthe memory oftheghetto, whentheChairman announcedin front of everyone thathe had no choicebutto letthechildren and old peopleoftheghetto go. Oncehe had madehisproclamation that afternoon, hewent tohisoffice on Baluty Squareand satwaiting for higher powerstointervene tosavehim.He had already beenforced to partwiththesick peopleoftheghetto. Thatonlyleft theoldand theyoung. Mr.Neftalin, whoa fewhoursearlierhadcalledtheCommission together again, hadimpressed onhimthat allthelistsmust be completed andhandedovertotheGestapoby midnight atthelatest. Howthen couldhemake itcleartothem whatanappalling lossthisrepresented forhim?Forsixty-six years 1havelived andnot yet been granted the happiness of being called Father, andnowthe authorities demand ofmethat I sacrifice allmy children. Had anyoneofthem aninkling ofhowhe felt atthis moment? ("WhatshallI saytothem?" hehadasked Dr.Miller whentheCommission metthat afternoon ,andDr.Miller hadextended hisravaged face across thetable, andonhisother sideJudge Jakobson, too,hadlookedhimdeepintheeyes, and theyhad bothsaid: "Tellthemthetruth. Ifnothing elsewilldo,you'llhavetotellthem that." Buthowcanthere be Truth ifthere isno Law,andhowcanthere be anyLaw ifthere is nolonger anyWorld?) With the voices ofthedying children roaring inhishead,theChairman reached for thejacket MissFuchshad hungup forhimon thehook on thewall ofthebarrack hut,fumbled with thekeyinthelock, andhadscarcely openedthe doorwhenthevoicesoverpowered himagain. Butthere wasnoLawstanding outside hisoffice door, andnoWorld either, merely what remained ofhispersonal staff intheform ofhalfa dozen clerks exhausted bylackofsleep, with thetireless MissFuchsattheir head,neatly dressed onthis dayasonallothers ina freshly ironed, blue-andwhite -striped blouse, with herhair ina chignon. Hesaid,"IftheLordhadintended toletthis, Hislastcity, gounder, He wouldhavetoldme. Atthe very least Hewouldhavegiven mea sign." Buthis staff juststaredback uncomprehendingly . "Mr.Chairman, theysaid,we are already anhourlate." When A lie, does Rabbi a lie Fajner begin? A lie,RabbiFajnerwould say,has no beginning. A lierunsdownward likea rootlet, branching an infinite number oftimes.Butif youtracetherootlets down,youneverfinda moment ofinspiration and vision,onlyoverwhelming desperation anddespair. A liealwaysbegins with denial. Something hashappened - yetyoudo not wanttoadmit that ithas. Thatishowa liebegins. Vienna /Stockholm Translation from the Swedish BySarah Death Steve Sem-Sandberg (b.1958, Oslo) isaSwedish writer, journalist, and literary critic. Defattiga iLodz, winner of the August Prize (Sweden's most important literary award), isbeing translated into more than twenty-five languages. Editorial note: From De fattigo itodz (Albert Bonniers Forlag), copyright©2009 by Steve Sem-Sandberg, forthcoming asThe Emperor of Lies from Farrar, Straus &Giroux (US) and Faber &Faber (UK). Englishtranslation copyright©201 1 by Sarah Death. Published by arrangement with FSG. Editorial note: Toread a review-commentary on four recent "reality novels," including The Emperor of Lies, seeAnna Paterson's "The Improbable Reality of Europe's Dark Past" onthe WLT website. July -August 201 1i21 ...

Storytelling as Installation

Angela Blakely and David Lloyd: Never Again--giving voice to survivors of the Genocide Queensland Centre for Photography Brisbane, Queensland, Australia June 12-July 11, 2010 Witnessing the pain of others is an experience for which we are never fully prepared--but one we are always at the edge of encountering. An exhibition of Angela Blakely and David Lloyd's photographs at the Queensland Centre for Photography told the latest chapter in the tragic story of Rwanda. The photographers first visited from 1994-95 and returned in 2006 and 2008. This exhibition shared stories from survivors of the Rwandan genocide, chronicling their pain. Visitors may have expected to encounter powerful documentary photography. Blakely and Lloyd's work, however, transcends the genre by immersing viewers in an ongoing narrative of daily survival. Upon entering the gallery, viewers were presented with seven ways of experiencing survivors' stories. The first consisted of four life-size images of women dressed in colorful traditional clothing--each accompanied by didactic panels relating the traumatic experiences that invisibly scarred each woman. After reading the panels, the viewer's gaze would often return to each woman's face, their perspective transformed. In the same gallery space, seven other images were presented with information panels, each attached in a diptych frame format. The images depicted buildings, leafy laneways, and rooms that appear as benign records. Yet all of these places have stories--dark secrets of massacre, betrayal, and horror--revealed on their text panels. These places, like the faces in the previous series, hide dark pasts of unspeakable acts of atrocity. Blakely and Lloyd present seductive images and then, in a turn of the narrator's page, reveal the horrifying truth. The gallery is not just a space for displaying photographs; it is also a place for telling stories. In employing the gallery installation as a device to enhance the story, Blakely and Lloyd depart from many of their documentary peers. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Another gallery space contained black-and-white photographs from the series Rwanda Mission (1994 95). To contemporary eyes, this earlier work exhibited a kind of reality that was once horrific and unexpected, but has become familiar. In an effort to avoid viewer familiarity, this exhibition highlighted other ways of storytelling that were fresh--not relying solely on photographs in frames alone. Next, the viewers encountered a long wall displaying a continuous line of black frames filled with black mount board on which small white letters spelled out names. Occasionally, a face loomed from the dark with a deep feeling of absence. The linear frames formed a family tree with the faces representing the living and the names representing those murdered in the genocide. …

Cruzando fronteras: Todo sobre mi madre (1999) de Pedro Almodóvar

The present article on Pedro Almodóvar’s All About My Mother (1999) is based on the hybridity that characterises the director’s whole work. The aesthetics of hybridity allows us to show the multifaceted positions of the director, his sensitive and subtle combinations of a dark past and a colourful present, of different national and international cultural elements like his homages to Latin American artists such as Caetano Veloso, Chavela Vargas, Agustín Lara. Furthermore we have to add the links to literary and filmic genres, and above all to sexual genders – masterly represented here by means of Almodóvar’s sense of the theatre.