Saudi Arabia’s first film festival
But organizers of the festival are careful not to call it a “film festival.” Instead, all announcements refer to the screenings as “visual shows.”
There have been no cinemas in Saudi Arabia since the Islamic awakening of the 1980s, and while it’s still unclear whether or not any cinemas will open, the festival is a sure sign of progress.
There were no protestors at the festival unlike at Saudi Arabia’s first international book fair held in Riyadh earlier this year.
And while film festival-goers were sparse and critics have compared the experience to early Sundance Festivals. With only 16 films, most being low-budget shorts, and screening in Jeddah’s Science and Technology Center, the festival is a long cry from festivals in Europe or the USA, but it’s quite a step for a country without a single cinema.
Filed Under Media & Society
The best of blogging and journalism together
In 2004, the word of the year was Blog. In 2005, podcast lost to truthiness. So podcasts and blogs have been obviously important in recent years. However, there are still doubts about the professionalism of Bloggers. As anyone can do it, then it might not be professional enough, or so goes the claims of many professional journalists. This is changing. These changes have been reported here in Benetton Talk and now we continue to talk about his subject. Jay Rosen, New York University-based professor of journalism, writer of the watchdog blog: PressThink.org, will change this conception with a single action. He is proposing and initially funding a news source blog that will actively post journalistic researches done by Bloggers. He is proposing a way to fund high-quality, original reporting, in any medium, through donations to a non-profit called NewAssignment.Net. This is a great idea that will diversify media outlets. Professional amateurs changing the world.
Filed Under Media & Society
Old and lonely in Japan
When one thinks about Tokyo, no one would imagine their aging population, poor and lonely. As with all developed countries, the birth rates are alarmingly low and the welfare system is exhuasted. In my country (Singapore), there is no welfare system and we are forced to save 20% of our income for our old age, so the government doesn’t have to look after us.
And in most Singaporean chinese families, the children give back token sums of money to their parents and support them through old age. It is a duty to carry out, although it’s difficult to make a sweeping statement that everyone does this.
Hearing Kakizaki’s story is heart wrenching.
Filed Under Modern Life
Grass is always greener on the Canadian side
There’s so many jokes about Canadian kindness, politeness and amicable respect.
Well, it must have some truth to it. In fact, listen to this.
A handful of buildings in Canada ’s biggest city will grow plants on thier roofs to try to help the environment and reduce global warming. Toronto’s Green Roof Pilot Program will give a grant of about $18,000 for every roof on which grass or vegetation is planted.
Despite the help, for admission of the city authorities, the program is not really working, because they are quite complicated to build. But the grant is still available and this is only the beginning of a project of which goal is to aim at any good environmental impact, not just to make the city look nicer.
The jokes are right. These Canadians are so nice, if only their close neighbours could learn a bit.
Filed Under Environment
Counting war victims
Number of victims. Numbers and victims. Of disaster, hunger and, of course, war. I’ve always thought that big numbers are cold enough to hide the reality of people dying. I mean: we listen to, I don’t know, one thousand victims of something and this number just crosses our life, hitting just a bit. This because it’s just a number, we actually in most of cases don’t realize how huge is the amount of cadavers and destroyed life that composes it.
It’s so hard to be hitten by an idea, such as a number is.
But it’s enough to make a simple grafic out of any of the horrible war report we daily have.
Something that shows a bit the actual amount of victims in Iraq, or in the Israeli/Lebanese war.
Something that simple, would be enough I won’t say to shock us, but sure to impress us.
Filed Under Human Rights
Soy craze… what’s it all about?
Soy? What the hell? There’s so much of it everywhere and so suddenly. Soy snacks, Soy milk, Soy burgers… And even when it’s not in the product name, there’s still Soy in it: breakfast cereals, biscuits, cheeses, cakes, dairy desserts, noodles, pastries, soups, dog food…
50 years ago Soy was not eaten in the West in any quantity. In 1965, global Soybean production was 30m tonnes. By 2005, the world was consuming nine times that a year. But why? For the love of God, why all the Soy?
Filed Under Food
Prayers get out of temples
The Meenakshi temple in Madurai, India is one of the most sacred sites for Hindus yet not everyone is able to make a pilgrimage into central Tamil Nadu to be blessed by the goddess.
But they’ve recently solved this problem.
Now there’s a website where members can put in advanced requests for temple priests to say prayers for special occasions, birthdays or anniversaries. And for an additional fee, Prasadam, eatable sugar coated blessings, can be mailed anywhere in the globe.
The website offers bookings up to 90 days in advance and services range from 300 to 3,180 ruppes($6-$75).
World-wide prayer through the World Wide Web!
Filed Under Media & Society