Children Of Heaven

By Heidi Noroozy

You know that poverty is truly desperate when a child’s most treasured possession is her single pair of shoes.

This is the premise of Children of Heaven, the 1997 movie written and directed by the Iranian filmmaker, Majid Majidi. It was the first Iranian film to be nominated for an Academy Award. (Last year’s A Separation was the first to actually win the Oscar.) Children of Heaven tells the story of nine-year-old Ali, who loses his little sister’s pretty pink shoes on the way home from the cobbler, where he’s taken them for repairs.

“How can I go to school without shoes,” his sister, Zahra, asks when he confesses his carelessness.

Ali is a resourceful boy, though, and he comes up with a plan. Since Zahra goes to school in the morning and Ali in the afternoon, they will share his well-worn sneakers. Zahra wears the shoes for the first half of the day then races home and quickly hands them over so Ali can dash off to his own class. It’s like a two-person relay race through the narrow, cobblestone alleys of South Tehran, driven by necessity, not the hope of a medal.

The first few days, Ali is late, with increasingly dire consequences. The first time the headmaster catches the boy sneaking up the stairs to his classroom, he reprimands him. The second time, he sends him home with instructions to bring his father back to school the next day.

Too proud to tell the headmaster the truth of his circumstances, Ali will do almost anything to avoid being sent home. Not only would it mean missing class – and school is his ticket to a better life, one free of the worries and drudgery that shape his parents’ world – but he has been careful to avoid letting his mother and father know about the lost shoes. As he tells Zahra when he asks her to keep their little secret, “Baba has no money for a new pair. He will have to take out a loan.”

Things start looking up for the siblings when Ali enters a long-distance foot race between competing schools. The third-place prize is a pair of new sneakers. Ali has no interest in first or second place, whose awards are far beyond his immediate need (a week’s vacation on the Caspian Sea, for instance). But if he wins the sneakers, he can give them to Zahra, and they won’t have to share his shoes anymore (which are rapidly wearing out).

The film has a simple premise, yet it is packed with emotional tension worthy of a thriller. In one scene, Zahra loses a sneaker on her mad dash home after class. The shoes are too big for her, so one falls off and tumbles into the joob (the water-filled gutter than lines Tehran streets). The suspense mounts as the shoe tumbles over rocks and around debris in the gushing stream. Zahra races along the street, grabbing frantically for the sneaker, her fingers just about to close around it. One inch more and she’ll have the prize. But then comes another eddy, sweeping it out of her grasp. When the sneaker gets caught in a culvert, just out of reach of her small hands, I felt the echo of her frustrated tears in the prickles behind my own eyes.

In Children of Heaven, Majid Majidi tells his story through the eyes of children, which gives the film a sense of innocence that softens the bleakness of the character’s lives. And yet, along with their wide-eyed view of the world, these kids are wise beyond their years. They live adult lives with adult cares. Zahra’s school-free afternoons are filled with household chores, for her mother is ill and not supposed to do heavy work. Ali must run errands for the family while his father is toiling away at the company where he works as the tea “boy.”

Majidi also has an eye for the kind of detail that adds poetic nuance to the fictional world he has built. Life may be harsh in the slums of South Tehran, but that doesn’t mean the people are hard. Small acts of generosity abound, like the time Ali’s mother ladles out a bowl of soup from the family’s meager meal for an elderly neighbor who is even sicker than she.

In another scene, Zahra spots her lost shoes on the feet of a schoolmate and follows the girl home then discovers that the girl’s father is a blind rag picker who supplements his family income through donations from kindhearted shopkeepers. Zahra realizes that some people are even worse off than herself and she abandons her plan to ask for the return of her shoes.

One thing is for sure: watch this movie and you’ll never take your shoes for granted again.

Off The Beaten Track: Shamini Flint

Practicing law in Malaysia and Singapore before becoming a successfully published author, Shamini Flint traveled extensively around Asia for work before resigning to become a stay-at-home mum, writer, part-time lecturer, and environmental activist – all in an effort, she says, to make up for her “evil” past as a corporate lawyer! In addition to writing two excellent children’s novels – Diary of a Soccer Star and Diary of a Cricket God published by Allen & Unwin, Australia and Puffin, India – Shamini also writes cross-cultural crime fiction (our favorite kind), taking her main character – of whom The Guardian says, “it’s impossible not to warm to the portly, sweating, dishevelled, wheezing Inspector Singh” – through Malaysia, Bali, Singapore, and Cambodia to solve all kinds of perplexing murder cases. With the publication of Shamini’s latest novel in this excellent series, her protagonist finally makes it to India, the land of his ancestors. A bit like Shamini, in fact.

“Incredible India!” That’s the advert that’s been running for the last year or so on television here in Singapore and probably the rest of the world too. In it, India casts its spell on a wide-eyed man of Caucasian origin who sums up his experience on a postcard – Incredible India! My feelings about the motherland are far more conflicted so an entire novel – my latest crime fiction, Inspector Singh Investigates:  A Curious Indian Cadaver – hasn’t been sufficient to air my thoughts.

Both my grandfathers arrived by boat in Malaysia (then known as Malaya, which was a British colony) almost a hundred years ago. They settled in a small fishing village called Kuantan and set about carving a future for their children. One was a nurse, the other an estate clerk. Having found jobs, they sent for wives from back home and committed themselves to the production of numerous progeny. Their assimilation was impressive in that they adopted local hobbies – mahjong and badminton – and learnt to speak Malay, the native language of the country. Their daughters were raised to be teachers and the sons doctors. I often wonder whether they thought of themselves as Malayan at this point or whether they assumed, as so many of their peers did, that this sojourn in the tropics was temporary and would end with their triumphant return to their ancestral villages some day.

However, when Malaysia became independent in 1957, a choice was forced upon them and both chose to remain, abandoning any dreams of returning to India to accept citizenship of this new land while it was on offer.

Their offspring, the teachers and doctors, produced children who were lawyers and doctors (with a couple of engineers and accountants thrown in), and my grandparents were cremated knowing that they had achieved what they set out to do. All their dreams had been economic – the bottom line was the bottom dollar –  and in the success of the grandchildren, they were content.

Which is how it came to be, that I, a lawyer by training, grew up a Malaysian, unable to speak more than a few words of Tamil or Malayalee (the languages of my grandfathers) and never having been to India. The irony, of course, was that, in multiracial Malaysia where ethnicity determines university places and access to government jobs, my Indian-ness was singularly important. So there I was – an Indian in Malaysia, comfortable with my identity, wont to speak of the depth of Indian culture in a smug tone and to take pride in the Indian economic miracle. I did not go as far as some of my elderly uncles who – sitting pretty in Singapore or Malaysia – would attribute much that was good in the world to India or an Indian.

Apparently, for instance, an Indian discovered gravity long before Newton, penicillin before Fleming and invented the games of rugby, cricket, and football in the village square. My all-time favourite was when an aunt told me in in no uncertain terms, ‘Shakespeare was also Indian, you know.’ And don’t lets get started on Ben Kingsley …

So much vicarious pride! What fine Indians we were! Until the day I made my first trip to India in the late ’80s and discovered I wasn’t Indian at all. There were two dimensions to this. First of all, I didn’t feel I belonged. But more importantly, no one in India thought I was Indian, not even for a moment. My distant relatives were shocked at my short hair and kept asking if I was a boy. They didn’t like it if I went sightseeing on a hot day in case I was burnt any darker by the sun – fair skin being a pre-condition of marriage unless the dowry was to set you back a long way. Strangers pointed at me on the streets because of my short sleeves and jeans. And every single taxi driver overcharged me on the grounds that I was a foreigner and wouldn’t know any better. Finally, I fell ill and spent the rest of the holiday making use of the hotel facilities. I had severe culture shock in the place I had always assumed, in some distant but comforting way, was home.

I’ve been back many times since and India has changed a lot. I’m no longer viewed as an escapee from Mars/the zoo/prison. But this is largely because we have a reached an understanding, India and I. I am just another tourist from some foreign land – like the Chinese or the English or the Russians. From my point of view, I can appreciate the history (as if I was in Rome), the architecture (as if I was in London) and the food (as if I was in Beijing). I am a stranger finding beauty and culture and inspiration in a complex and fascinating land. But I know that I’m not an Indian anymore, and that is a huge loss.

Facebook and Twitter in 16th Century Rome

By Patricia Winton

They pre-date Twitter and Facebook by about 500 years, but they have served a similar purpose. For half a millennium, Rome’s Statue Parlanti (talking statues) have provided the Roman people a place to make public comments despite many attempts to silence them.

Pasquino laden with comments

The first of the talking statues, a badly damaged ancient Roman marble of Menelaus, was unearthed in 1501 during excavations for the Palazzo Orsi. Cardinal Oliviero Carafa, for whom the restoration was being done, placed the statue in a small square near Piazza Navona.

Carafa was a patron of the arts, bringing the first printing press to Italy and assembling a great library. He sponsored a poetry-in-Latin contest and displayed the winning poems on the base of the as yet unnamed statue. Others began posting their own poetry. Soon, papers with satiric messages lampooning Roman rulers (i.e. the papacy) began appearing among the poetry.

The statue soon came to be called Il Pasquino in honor of a nearby tailor. Signor Pasquino often worked in noble houses, plying his needle and thread. 
He melted into the background as he worked and overheard much gossip. He had a particularly acerbic wit and regaled his patrons and neighbors with these stories. The satirical poems and the tailor’s pithy utterances became known as pasquinate, giving origin to the English word pasquinade, a satirical piece of writing (usually about a person) posted in a public place.

Because it was dangerous to criticize the ruling popes, notices were posted in the dead of night and always anonymously. One of the earliest pasquinate read, "Quod non fecerunt Barbari, fecerunt Barberini.” That is, what the Barbarians did not do, the Barberini did. That barb was directed at Pope Urban VIII of the Barberini family who, among other things, melted down the bronze doors to the Pantheon to craft the altar canopy in St. Peter’s and make cannons.

The popes repeatedly tried to stop the postings. When Pope Adrian VI threatened to toss the Pasquino into the Tiber, someone posted a bill saying that the statue, like a frog, would talk louder under water. Finally, the military placed guards around the Pasquino, so the sly Romans began posting pasquinate on other statues around the city. 

Altogether, six statues came to talk through these posts. One of these, the Marforio, engaged in a dialog with Pasquino. After a satirical comment appeared on the Pasquino, a response would be posted on the Marforio and vice versa.

One famous exchange between the two occurred during Napoleon Bonaparte’s era:

Marforio

Marforio: È vero che i francesi sono tutti ladri?

Pasquino: Tutti no, ma BonaParte! 

Marforio: Is it true that all Frenchmen are thieves?

Pasquino: No, not all of them, but Buona Parte. The Roman dialect for “a great deal of them” plays on Napoleon’s name.

The most recent attempt to silence the talking statues began in 2009 at the height of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s legal battles involving corruption and sexual scandals. The Association of Residents in Rome’s Historic Center teamed with the municipal agency charged with keeping cultural sites in good repair. They began a campaign to restore the six statues by cleaning and repairing them and setting up barriers to keep people from getting too close. The association established a website to report on the project’s progress, but they also encouraged people to post on the website instead of the statues.

Pasquino with bill on piling

Many Romans are outraged by this campaign. They say it’s censorship and that a Roman cultural tradition has been muted. During the restoration, the statues were covered and completely inaccessible. On the eve of Berlusconi’s trial, a group called Nessun Dorma ("None Shall Sleep," title of an aria in Puccini's Turandot) posted signs on 150 other Roman statues with such slogans as “Italy is not a brothel,” “the body of Italy is not for sale,” and “the game is over.”

The statues do look lovely, cleaned of grime and paste. Pasquino is behind a chained barrier with concrete pilings designed to keep cars from hitting him – something that happened a few years ago. Initially, a sign board where people were encouraged to post comments stood beside the statue, but that has disappeared. Currently, there are a few comments posted on the concrete pilings of the barrier. I won’t be surprised if pasquinate don’t begin reappearing on the statue’s base before long. It’s hard to stamp out a 500-year-old tradition.

Everyone stopped to read the notices
 

I blog each Monday at Italian Intrigues.I hope you'll drop by. This week I wrote about Italian Easter breakfast.

Las Meninas – Diego Velázquez’s The Maids of Honor

By Edith McClintock

Las Meninas (1656), Diego Velázquez

Have you ever been fascinated, entranced—even spellbound—by a work of art? I’ve experienced it many times with dance, music, theater, even architecture. With literature, it’s too frequent to count. But it’s only happened a few times with a painting. Perhaps it’s the setting that works against paintings. Museums or galleries can be overstimulating, with too many pieces, one after another.

When rushed, as one often is when visiting a museum—either because your partner is impatient, or your schedule is tight, or the crowds are pressing you forward—the colors and textures and feelings can blend. I’ll often leave a museum or art show with a sense of enjoyment or disappointment but have little remembrance or feeling for individual pieces. (It’s especially bad when the exhibit has free mojitos sponsored by Bacardi, as is all too frequent at Art Basel Miami. Alas, those days are gone for awhile.)

There is, however, one painting I’ll never forget. I was thirteen and I’d been anticipating seeing it, but only because I’d given a presentation on Diego Velázquez in my art class the preceding year, and generally had a crush on all things Spanish. Despite that, I didn’t love the reproductions of his 1656 masterpiece I’d seen in art books. They were too dark, and I was drawn to the pretty French impressionists.

Close up of the
Infanta Margarita

I finally saw Las Meninas in 1986 during a summer trip to Madrid with my family. The atmosphere at the Prado helped. It was alone in its room and had been since 1899, in recognition of its growing acclaim as a masterwork of western painting—so important, that it has never been loaned out. It was imposing, monumental really, dominating an entire room. The figure of the Infanta (the Princess) Margarita glowed in the darkly lit space. The entire piece was luminescent and much more beautiful than I’d expected—probably because of its then-recent restoration.

But it was more than just the painterly technique. I was drawn into King Philip IV’s Spanish court: the young infanta surrounded by her maids of honor, a chaperone and bodyguard, plus two dwarves. Velázquez, the artist, looking beyond the scene to me, the audience, standing in the place of King Phillip and Queen Mariana who are possibly being painted and reflected in the mirror. Or maybe Velázquez is painting Las Meninas itself on the large canvas, reflected in a mirror that is the audience.

Meninas (1957), Pablo Picasso

The work raises questions about reality and the connection between the artist, the observer, and the artwork. It didn’t feel like an intellectual concept, though, but rather a reality under Velázquez’s gaze, the infanta’s slight preen, the direct look of the German dwarf Maria-Bárbola. Even my older sister, who’d spent most of that summer inventing ways to torment me in public, stopped her leg dragging and loud clattering in English (her own performance art piece), and fell silent in awe.

Like many great works of art, the painting has been endlessly analyzed and reinterpreted over the past 356 years, from the role of the artist in Velazquez’s time, to the history and protocol of the court, and each of its members. Up until the early 1800s, the painting was known mostly within the Spanish court circles, and Goya, another famous Spanish court painter, was one of the first to be deeply influenced by it. He used aspects in several royal portraits, including The Family of Charles IV (1800) and The Family of the Infante Don Luis de Borbón (1784). Like Las Meninas, the artist is there, possibly painting the scene, although his relationship with the royal family and audience is distant and not as inviting (see photo at bottom of blog).

Velázquez Painting the Infanta Margarita
with the Lights and Shadows of His Own
Glory (1958), Salvador Dali

Pablo Picasso may have painted the most famous reinterpretation in 1957. He shut himself up for four and a half months with a photograph of Las Meninas, producing 44 canvases, some of the painting in its entirety, but some recreating single figures or small groups. And his homage, in turn, spun its own imaginings, including Velázquez Painting the Infanta Margarita with the Lights and Shadows of His Own Glory (1958) by another Spaniard, Salvador Dali. Personally, although I’m not a huge Dali fan, I prefer his reinterpretation over the Picasso series. 

By the mid-20th century, reinterpretations of Las Meninas spread in tone, technique, and geography. In Spain, painters used humor, irony, and parody to critique the sociopolitical conditions of Franco’s Spain and its appropriation of Velázquez for propaganda. Beyond Spain, the piece inspired artists as varied as the American portrait painter, John Singer Sargent (who painted my favorite reinterpretation), Edgar Degas (who painted a version without ever having seen the original in person), and the Chilean-born multimedia artist Juan Downey, whose video, Las Meninas of 1975, was inspired by seeing the painting at the age of 22, as well as a critique of 17th century Spanish colonialism. 

Artists have continued to reinterpret, recreate, and inspire new pieces based on Las Meninas, whether in sculpture (see Manolo Valdés below), print and paintings, or video, film, literature and theater, making it not a relic of an old master, locked away in a museum, but a living, breathing, dialogue between the artists and Velázquez. And for me, 25 years later after my first look, I too have not forgotten. Perhaps one day, I’ll attempt my own reinterpretation. Or more likely just hang a print on my wall. Although neither could do the original justice.

The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit (1882),
John Singer Sargent.

This is one of my least favorite interpretations, more because
I prefer Goya's later works on war and madness.
The Family of Charles IV (1800), Francisco Goya.

I love these sculptures by Spanish artist, Manolo Valdés.
Las Meninas, Bronze 2006, Düsseldorf, Hofgarten
Photo by Ralf Hüls

Reference note: You can find a more in-depth discussion, and the source material for artists who have reimagined Las Meninas over the years, on the Museu Picasso website. Click here for the influence of Las Meninas from 1656 through 1901, and here for a discussion of its influence during the 20th century and beyond.

For more, visit my author website and/or personal blog, A Wandering Tale. Even better, order a copy of Monkey Love & Murder on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or the Book Depository (free shipping nearly anywhere in the world).

Melbourne’s Laneways – A Love Story

While Alli is off exploring the wilds of the Barossa Valley in South Australia (translation: visiting lots of wineries and eating too much cheese), her brother Dave is stepping in this week. Dave is a writer, a blogger and an excellent parallel parker. You can harass him at his own website or on Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/thedavesinclair or on his website at www.davesinclair.com.au.

Years ago I was flying around Canada and picked up Air Canada’s inflight magazine. In it, their travel writer was talking about Melbourne.  He said the first time he visited the city, in his words, he hated it.  Sure, there were pretty bits but it seemed to be ‘just another city’.  It was bereft of attractions like Sydney, or weather of Brisbane and frankly, soulless.

Years later, he reluctantly went back and was shown around by locals.  It was as if he’d been shown a completely different city.  He finally ‘got it’.  He fell in love with the city that day.

Melbourne may be many things – obvious isn’t one of them.

If you ask a Melbournian what makes their city unique and you’ll often get the same answer – our laneways.  For the uninitiated, this is an odd response, until you experience them yourself.  The centre of Melbourne city is a labyrinth.  Sure, it has lovely wide tree lined streets, but once you step off the main path it’s a whole new world.  Down the kaleidoscope coloured graffiti walls is an endless supply of the unexpected.

Every few days, a new bar opens behind an unmarked door.  Brilliant culinary delights can be hidden around the next corner.  You just have to know where to look.  The only constant is that there will be something new and exciting just waiting to be discovered.

The fact that the laneway culture was created organically, with no final agenda, was conceived and supported by grass root Melbournian’s only makes it more special.

I’ve lost count of the times I’ve shown someone the city and I’m sure they thought they were just about to be rolled.  Walking past the stinking bins, piss stained walls and puddle laden cobblestones, I’m surprised none of them turned around and shrieked, ‘Just take my wallet, please don’t hurt me!’

Melbourne’s laneways can be considered art galleries (Hosier Lane), host music festivals (St Jerome’s Laneway Festival), fashion shows (here) or be renamed after local eminent local ‘dignitaries’ (AC/DC Lane, Dame Edna Place).

The art of the laneways is impressive and ever changing.  Tourists from all over the world are stunned by volume of brilliant graffiti that adorn walls throughout our laneways.  And due to its very nature, it is forever transforming.  Even Banksy pieces have been painted over.  There’s nothing permanent about Melbourne art.

Robert Doyle, the Lord Mayor of Melbourne (and borderline crackpot, but that’s another post) was pictured in The Age newspaper under a stencil of himself in Hosier Lane praising its street art as a ''legitimate expression of artistic intent''.  Not many cities have their civic leaders supporting graffiti (here).   The same article quotes another official saying “This is my laneway and a tourist attraction bringing in up to a thousand people a day because of the street art”.

But not everything about laneways is positive.  A recent decision by the state government sold off Elliot Lane, and part Merriman Lane to developers to make way for a huge apartment complex. This has rightly stirred the ire of many.  This short sighted and almighty dollar focussed decision flies in face of what the laneways represent.

Selling part of what makes the city unique is tantamount to cutting off a part of our own body.  It can never be replaced, and it makes us less whole.  Keep it up and we may very well end up like the first impression of our Canadian cousin – soulless.

All images from - http://postglobalurbanism.wordpress.com/2011/02/

Otto Dix And The Portrait of Anita Berber

Photo by Bob Ramsak / piran cafe
http://pirancafe.com

By Heidi Noroozy

I am not an art critic or scholar, so I can freely admit to certain attitudes about art without blushing. Art works are supposed to be things of beauty, like a Persian carpet or a miniature painting. Who wants an ugly old thing hanging on the wall? Art should bring pleasure to the eye and joy to the heart.

Or so I once thought. But that was before I discovered the German painter, Otto Dix.

Known primarily for his anti-war themes and femme fatales, Otto Dix’s work can be best described as grotesque, filled with distorted human figures, bold colors, and dark images. Pretty it is not. Fascinating? Absolutely. His best known paintings from the 20s and 30s depict the instability, corruption, and decadence of the Weimar Republic, the terrible aftermath of World War I.

The first time I saw an Otto Dix painting was at the Staatsgallerie in Stuttgart, Germany, where I lived in the late 1980s. The museum held a special exhibition of this Expressionist painter’s work, combining pieces from its permanent collection with paintings on loan from other institutions. I wandered from room to room, at first completely disturbed by the ugliness, violence, and dark emotions sparking off the gallery walls.

I was thoroughly hooked once I reached the painting I still think of as “The Lady in Red,” a larger-than-life depiction of a woman in a violently red dress with matching lips and hair. She’s looking disdainfully over her thin shoulder, her body twisted slightly, hand on hip in a stance that, combined with the distaste on her face, comes across as a mockery of a model’s pose.

The work’s real title is Portrait of the Dancer Anita Berber, and, like many of Dix’s paintings, it depicts a real person. Born in 1899 in Leipzig, Anita Berber moved to Berlin at the age of sixteen and soon found work as a cabaret dancer. She earned notoriety for her nude performances on the stage as well as her penchant for hanging about hotel lobbies dressed only in a mink coat, a silver brooch filled with cocaine, and carrying a monkey.

Anita Berber in 1918

Berber was married three times, which didn’t stop her from entertaining a string of lovers of both sexes ( allegedly including Marlene Dietrich). She was addicted to cocaine, opium, and morphine as well as a homemade concoction of chloroform and ether, which she’d stir in a bowl with a white rose then eat the petals. But it was tuberculosis, not drugs, that caught up with her in the end, killing her at the age of 29.

Otto Dix painted his portrait of Anita Berber in 1925, three years before her death. In the painting, she looks far older than 26 – the result of hard living, or just the way Dix saw her? Whatever the reason, Berber was a logical subject for Dix, since she represented everything he criticized about the Weimar years and a generation so wounded by war that they buried themselves in excess and meaningless pleasures.

When the Nazis came to power, they viewed Dix as a decadent artist, dismissed him from his post as professor at the Kunstakademie in Dresden, and destroyed many of his paintings. The Portrait of the Dancer Anita Berber was among the works confiscated, but fortunately it survived, and the artist was able to buy it back from a Munich dealer after the war.

When I first saw Dix’s painting of Anita Berber, I didn’t yet know her story. In a room of images filled with the broken bodies of war’s casualties, the redness of her dress, lips, and hair seared its way into my brain. Perhaps it gave me an electric jolt that helped me appreciate the honesty in the disturbing images all around me.

That afternoon I spent with Otto Dix taught me more about war than any history class. I learned not just the horror of it (which goes without saying) but how it extends its terrible fingers past the battlefields and corrupts entire societies. It was a lesson well learned.