Le Havre - Aki Kaurismäki

Le Havre is the second biggest harbor-city of France, however it is also the name of the new film of the Aki Kaurismäki. Those who know the style of the Finnish director will find in this movie the most pure Kaurismäki: the long shots with little movement of camera and the simplified performance of the actors, as well as the deepness of the content which tells the stories of the most unlucky people. Kaurismäki's Le Havre is a critic to the Fortress Europe which treats the clandestine immigrants like criminals.

The director of Le Havre, Aki Kaurismäki

The film, shot in French, counts in the cast with two fellow countrywomen of Kaurismäki, the actresses Kati Outinen and Elina Salo, veterans of the Kaurismäki cinema, who have acted in several of his previous films, as The man without a past (2002) or The match factory girl (1990). The main character, Marecel Marx is played by the French André Wilm, who takes the risk to help an African boy who escapes from the police because his crime is to walk free in the streets of Europe. Kati Outinen plays the role of Arletty, the wife of Marcel Marx. Arletty speaks with a strong foreign accent, which she probably exaggerated by the wish of the director. However, Arletty's accent joined to the fact that she says all the sentences like learned by heart and with a very serious face can make of her quite comic or surrealistic to the eyes of the native French-speakers.

Le Havre had its premier in Finland a week ago, the 9^th September. Translating is always a difficult task and seems to be common that the translators consciously or inconsciously tend to stilisice the original textes when translating. This sometimes brings even to distorsions of the content. This seems to happen in the Finnish subtitles of Le Havre by the substitution of the French term 'inmigrant' by the one of pakolainen (refugee) when translated to Finnish. The difference of meaning is considerable. According to the most of Finnish media Kaurismäki's film is a critic about the situation of the refugee, however at least the original French version doesn't seem to speak about that but about the even larger phenomenon of immigration.

The Finnish term pakolainen refers to the person who scapes from his country because of a horror which threatens his life, usually a war or a political persecution. An exact similar term in fact doesn't exist in English or French, and the term refugee (in French réfugié) or asylum seeker would be the closer matches. As the translator of Le Havre worked also in the production of the film itself, it is also possible that Kaurismäki expressed her -to the translator- his wish to change the term inmigrant in Finnish by that of the person who scapes forced by a thread (pakolainen) to underline the misfortune that such situation suposes to the people who are on it. We will have to ask Kaurismäki personally.

The Finnish Sauli Niinistö invites non-EU-countries to help Portugal

Traslated by Roberto Blanco R.


”Finland has to carry the responsibility of all the things even if there is going to be a change of government”, says Sauli Niinistö, one of the most important Finnish politicians. Picture Kaisa Rautaheimo (S.K.).

The previous spokesman of the Finnish Parliament, Sauli Niinistö (from ’National Union’, the main Finnish center-right party) asks for changes in the help-packet which is being designed for Portugal. He reminds that the details have not been yet decided, so that it is possible to influence on them.

According to Niinistö a problematic situation could be avoid joining more countries to those which will take responsibility of helping economically Portugal. In that case the money that every EU country would have to loan to Portugal would be smaller, included also the participation of Finland, that half of the Finnish citizens oppose, according to recent surveys.

Niinistö proposes that the same system used in the rescue operation in Ireland is used now with Portugal. In that one participated the European Commission and the International Monetary Found, which is composed of 185 countries.

”In the case of Ireland the participation of EU countries got limited to a third of the whole help-packet”, Niinistö points out. ”But the help-packet to Portugal has been designed quite exclusively inside Europe”.

Jyrki Katainen (from the same party than Niinistö), who is leading the negotiations inside Finland about the help-packet to Portugal and the Finnish EU-commissionaire Olli Rehn emphasized that supporting Portugal is essential to avoid a new world-wide financial crisis. However, Niinistö expects larger reasoning.

”Why would only the EU-countries be payers if in fact it’s about saving worlds economy? It doesn’t make sense”, he points.

”Why don’t Britain, Sweden, Denmark, Poland or United States, Japan and China want to save World’s economy?”

Based on an article published in the Finnish magazine Suomen kuvalehti

Article in Spanish about the results of the Finnish Parliamentary elections

Visual present in the capital of the coal

A miror of the past, the remins of the iron era.

Here some pictures of Katowice, the capital of the Polish region of Silesia. This region was not always Poland, it has been Poland less than a hundred years. People from Silesia are also said to be very proud of their region. And it's not about a critic, it's about a landscape with without doubt is often astonishing for the eyes of a foreigner. In this visual chapter about images of the not best known Katowice the few (but big and centric) modern buildings and the larger mothern infrastructures don't appear. This chapter is reserved to the elements of the past which remain in the new EU-Poland, the best example of it are the railway lines, the trains, the iron transportation, which was and is still basic to one of the main reasons of the existance of this big industrial urban metropolis: the coal. Katowice and Silesia have also the atmosphere of the working-class area, which reminds of the unexistance of middle class for decades in that area of the world.

Barriers

Private road

Colour between grey

Big boys conversation

Dirty play

Capitalism, a love story

Capitalism is unfaithful.
A big love story it must be for put up with it, with Capitalism. That's the message of Moore in his last movie. The love is not, however, too present in the film, and it can only be supposed for the bankers and other profiters of the system. Seen from an European point of view, the situation can be seen a little bit differently. Cause we have also capitalism, but truly saying a more social one. But even us in Europe we have some similarities with the situation showed by Moore in his film. One of the main points in his explanation of how the destiny of America has fallen in hands of the economic power is the fact of how economic power has been able to pressure* the legislative power, the Congress and Senate to vote by contributors paying seven hundred thousand millions of dollars (700.000.000.000 $) to the banks theoretically for that they don't go bankrupt. In America people have not right to social rights like in Europe, but here we have been also paying bank's bills without always the biggest guarantees. So, the film tries to show how the economic power only tries to defends its interests and how without legal limits it acts against the interests of people. In fact, it seems to be also that while thousands and even millions of people are thrown out of their houses in United States for not being able to pay the bills other little minority makes business of this, even of people death (necessary to see the film for understand this point) and gets payed millions while peoples money is used to finance the stability of banks and banks doesn't use their money for any social purpose. In fact, according to the film, which quotes the study of an American economist in the States 1% of the population owns 99% of the wealthiness of the country and the 99% of the rest of the people owns only the rest 1%. So, Michael Moore, argues in favor of democracy for that the constitution and peoples political rights and rights to dignity were applied in politics across their votes. The documentary finishes with the electoral campaign of Obama, which promises socio-economic rights to the people. Economic power tried to stop his way to he White House, and even if Obama is not a socialist, neither a revolutionary, as banks and their payed republicans argued, some changes have begun to have place, as the public health care program, which doesn't appear in the film, but which is already a reality, but as Moore shows during his record, many other changes are necessary, necessary for a more equilibrated society, where ones welfare would not be built on the basis of the exploitation of others or the unbalance of the welfare of the society.
So, it seems that love arrived to its finish. Its the time of reforms.

Poland's presidential crash; first insights from a train to Warsaw

Click here for the article in Spanish

A man's cell phone rings and the news flies. So are transmitted within minutes the news today. In a carriage that seems from another era, in a train cabin. Five young people and a serious businessman of disturbing coldness. In this environment comes the news. In a train from Poznan to Warsaw, few minutes after 11 a.m.

One of the youth has the privilege of being the first to receive the news and responds incredulously to what they're telling to him and he thinks that it's a joke. Who speaks is his own mother, but in front of so significant news the holiest seems liar. I have the luck to be in the heart of the events, for who tells the stories it's better to live by his own what he's going to tell. Lucky to be in Poland, lucky to be just in the way to the capital, where not everything happens, but a big part, and finally the chance to know the young man who gets the exclusive.

The other youth soon caught the thread of the conversation. They don't know each other from before this train trip, but the atmosphere is close and they look puzzled and their looks and gestures require the chosen boy to disgorge while he keeps on speaking. He receives all the information and account. Within minutes, at most within hours, everybody throughout the country hears the news, but trains continue their journeys.

"Now you live in a country without government -I say to them, for searching their impressions- you can do whatever you wish". The country's president has died in a plane crash with his wife and several other dozens of the representatives of the state.

I ask for explanations, for opinions. At the beginning these young people of the cabin seemed to say that both the Polish president and his twin brother (one of the most important Polish political scene in the country) were in the plane, which has been proven false. Maybe it was because they wished, or perhaps their unconscious. Can anyone wish the death of another person? We can discuss whether it is right or not, if it is unethical, but many people can rejoice in such misfortune.

Let's take a little explanatory backward. The president of Poland, Lech Kaczyński was not the most popular president who has been in the country. Many were his detractors, which was also something widely known among people in the rest of the world, at least between those who follow international news minimally.

Being young does not mean being foolish or thoughtless. An interesting reflection of one of the young of the coach, just after receiving the news proves it: "Now for a week people will be very united by this tragedy, but after a week all politicians will begin to fight again". And not only politicians, people also have political opinions and want to defend them. When people begin to say what you think usually there's somebody who thinks completely different.

After the Polish tragedy the country's institutions have decreed a week of mourning, the magnitude of the political tragedy is important, at least from the psychological and symbolic standpoint. A president is someone chosen by its people and even if he looses popularity after his election the death of the incumbent president it represents to lose the leadership that the nation had given to itself. Of course this is theoretical, and while many Poles can show their solidarity with the tragedy or wait silently while the manifestations of sadness take place, many others also for instance raise their voices, five days later of the crash to reject that the President becomes remembered as a hero.

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>> Direct from Liège, testimony of a visitor in Poland. You never know what will fall from the sky when you look at a pigeon that flies ... It's about being in the right place, chance and open your eyes and listen carefully.
More notes from the witty reporter soon ;)

R. B. R.

L'ordre economique mondial-OMC

En español (in Spanish)

'Battle in Seattle' est un film de l'Américain Stewart Tonwnsend sur la revendication réalisée pour milliards d'activistes altermundialistes pendant la sommet de l'Organisation Mundiel du Commerce (OMC) en 1999.
En ce année-là la ville américaine de Seattle vécut des batailles rangées où, pour première fois en l'histoire, les protestes citoyennes réussirent à perturber les réunions de l'organisation qui décide les normes du commerce global. Le gouvernement américaine pressa* pour utiliser les 'forces de l'ordre' contre les manifestants pour finir avec le contrôle de la situation que les activistes avaient réussi à avoir.
Le film raconte les faits d'une semaine historique d'une façon dramatisée travers d'une poignée de personnages entre les quelles il y a des activistes, des citoyens non impliqués en les protestes, des forces d'ordre, ainsi que le même maire de la ville, entre d'autres.
Dans un postérieur jugement le Tribunal Suprême des États-Unis a confirmé que les attaques de la police aux manifestants avaient violé leurs droites constitutionnels, les quels avaient été agressés brutalement sans avoir commis aucun délit préalable.
Le film de Stewart Tonwnsend se trouve dans le genre du drame historique et seulement au début il expose un positionnement idéologique critique avec le système économique actuel consistant a l'hégémonie du pouvoir occidental et sur tout des entreprises multinationales (qui montrent son pouvoir à l'OMC). L'information qu'il expose montre le fonctionnement de ça que on pourrait appeler 'le système d'exploitation mondiale' où nous habitons.

Donc, j'introduis le fragment explicatif sur l'OMC qui introduis le film pour que chaque personne puisse s'en former une opinion.