A Concentration of World's Art - Ballet Folklorico de Mexico

People all over the world often call the United States “the melting pot,” because it’s a country made of world cultures and ethnicity. But few of us probably know the fact that there is another “melting pot” – Mexico – which is no less diverse than the United States. No matter which ethnic background you are from, you will find your own cultural heritage just by looking at Mexico’s folkloric dance, known as the Ballet Folklorico de Mexico.

The Widernet

Each year, more than three hundred used computers find their new homes in another continent: Africa, through The University of Iowa Widernet Project.

Submission to what?

Films are supposed to inform, educate or entertain, but one film did kill.

It is “Submission,” a 12-minute-long film performed by only one actress and shot in an incredibly simple setting. It agitated a fatal assassination of the film’s director and from then on tore apart the welcoming image of the Dutch society, which is historically known for its tolerance.

The screenplay of Submission was written by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a dissident Muslim woman who withdrew her faith in Islam and lived up to her “American dream” by climbing the social ladder from a political asylum to a member of the Dutch Parliament. The director of the film, Theo van Gogh, was an outspoken atheist and controversial filmmaker who attacked all religions through his work.

Maybe such a combination could predict the outcome of Submission. The short film tells the stories of four Muslim women through one naked actress dressing in a transparent chador while wearing a veil. On her body, verses from the Koran are painted. The actress questions Allah why Muslim women should be beaten by their husbands and raped by their uncles even though they sincerely submit their preys and wills to him. She questions why theses violent actions against Muslim women are in fact doctrines of the Koran. Ultimately, she questions the point of “submission” – the direct translation of the word “Islam.”

Morley Safer from the CBS 60 Minutes reexamines the whole story of Submission. He starts from the most dramatic moment – van Gogh’s death – by taking his audience to the scene where the film director was shot, stabbed and pinned a letter of hatred onto his chest with a knife in November 2004.

Then, by presenting a series of interviews with the screenwriter Hirsi Ali, van Gogh’s good friend and colleague Theodor Holman, scholar Paul Scheffer as well as a Dutch Muslim community leader, Nabil Marmouch, Safer tells the stories behind Submission from a number of perspectives.

It is noticeable how differently the above characters interpret van Gogh’s death. For Hirsi Ali, the assassination is the evidence of how a smilingly tolerant society, in which Muslim men indeed abuse and murder women, exercises terrorism. But for Marmouch, van Gogh’s ending is predetermined, not because he insulted Islam, but because insulted all religions. Although this Muslim community leader is critical of the suppression of Muslim women, he accuses Hirsi Ali for politicizing van Gogh’s death.

Equally noticeable is how the interviewer, Safer, provides his audience an in-depth look of the issue by challenging his interviewees. For instance, when Scheffer says: “You can’t live here with a holy book that is above or beyond our democracy,” Safer questions him: “But it’s not easy, because what you are asking these families to do is give up your tradition and become one of us.”

This is in fact where the problem is. While Muslim communities in the Dutch society are marginalized worse and worse, Hirsi Ali, who is often seen as heroic by the western world, leads no easy life. She has to hide herself and accept the fact that Submission is not going to be exhibited in a film festival, because the organizers are afraid of violence caused by both sides – the Muslims and the anti-Muslims.

Van Gogh’s death is no longer about a film that has made many people angry. It poses some serious questions to the Dutch society, or, perhaps to the contemporary world: How tolerant is our society? What are we going to submit to? Democracy? Faith? Or ideology?

60 Minutes dose not give us a conclusion or resolution, but maybe stating the fact that Hirsi Ali is not going to submit to threats by producing “Submission Part II” is a silent answer given by the American media.

Recycling Bid Sale

For professionals working in the recycling industry, electronic appliances don’t just mean refrigerators, microwaves and ovens. They mean many more things that most of us have never seen.

Living on Volcanoes

Raising a three-year-old kid in a traditional nuclear family, making a living out of a profession you are passionate about and having a couple of cute animals visiting your yard occasionally seems ideal to most of us. But if we were going to give this ideal way of life two prepositional phrases, say, “on active volcanoes” and “for two years,” and not to mention that the animals are one of the most exotic and least studied species on earth – the land iguanas, what would it be like?

This is exactly the life an Australian couple David and Liz Parer and their little daughter Zoe led on the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador from 1995 to 1996. The couple’s shared love of and passion in the nature have compelled them to produce some of the world’s finest documentary films of wild animals and bagged numerous major awards.

But trying to get close to wild animals may not be glamorous at all. On Fernandina, one of the most active volcano islands that could erupt at any moment, the Parer family once slept only 50 meters away from huge streams of lava that burst out of a volcano, running down the flank. Instead of running away, the Parer couple got as close as possible to catch the destructive moment with their cameras – they needed to understand why the land iguanas, the relatively untouched island animal, chose to live in such a deadly environment.

The inquiry all began with David’s uncle, Damien Parer, a very famous photographer and cameraman during the World War II, David recalled in an interview with the Australian television network ABC.

“He felt that war wasn't the explosion,” said David. “It wasn't the destruction. It was the human within that experience of conflict and how the individual responded.”

It was this idea that always struck David and Liz to capture the moment of battle, the moment of fear and the moment of courage – not with a human being, but with an animal in every moment of truth.

The iguanas living on volcano islands are just like human beings in a war: Some got exploded right at the moment when a volcano erupted; those survived had to carry on seeking their ideal location for incubation. But unfortunately, the most ideal location was also the most deadly – the center bottom of the Fernandina, where the heat and temperature was best for iguanas’ eggs to grow. This also meant the Parer couple and their crew had to go down there as well, to a place synonymous for “center of death.”

Using a long pole to carry his camera so that it could be operated only a few inches above the ground, which was the same height as the iguanas, David was able to transmit the feeling of “migration” to his audiences in front of their television sets. When the creatures dug holes, David got his camera ready at the entrance of the holes so that his audiences would be able follow the iguanas’ effort without distance. Of course, the price was pounds of dust in his hair, nose and camera.

The involvement of Zoe, the couple’s three-year-old daughter, in their journey to explore the Galapagos was also something that surprised many people. For two years, the little girl had no playmates – human playmates – but she got to play with iguanas, dolphins and turtles. Her growth on the volcano islands was perhaps also a testimony of human beings’ growth of knowledge about the world in which they live.

From birds stealing, breaking and sucking other animals’ eggs, to 200-year-old turtles still mating to have the next generation and to a sea lion giving birth to her baby who was accidentally stuck by the tissue that had been wrapped around him when he was in his mother’s womb, the couples’ philosophy behind their filmmaking – to capture the moments of truth in animals’ world – is perhaps also a mirror that reflects the moments of truth in human beings’ life.