Petra

 

Some years ago, we did a wonderful trip, it was our honey moon, and we decided to travel to Bali.

We flew with Royal Jordanian, and the plane stopped over Jordan for one day and a half, so we took the opportunity to visit Petra which is about 300 km. from Amman.

Petra is one of the seven marvels of the world. When you arrive at Petra you have the sensation of being in another time, in the past, it’s impressive, you can walk for the whole day, it’s enormous and some people rent a donkey to cross Petra.

You can walk between impressive rock walls. In your visit to Petra there is an exciting moment, when you are arriving at “The Treasury”, you have an incredible view. The palace of Petra is called, as I said before “The Treasury”, it is 42 metres high. It’s totally sculpted in calcareous rock.

The monastery is another important building in Petra, it’s so huge that the doorway is taller than many houses. When Petra was inhabited, people lived from aromatic plants trade. In the year 60 before Christ, Petra was conquered by the Romans.

The wind has sculpted wonderful shapes in calcareous mountains.

Petra was the setting for the film “Indiana Jones”.

You can observe in these photos the colours of the rock inside the buildings. The hydraulic system was very sophisticated for that time, with chambers and tunnels.

The theatre has a capacity for 4000 people. In the year 551 Petra was destroyed by an earthquake and it has never been inhabited again.

Nowadays, you only can see souvenirs sellers and tourists.

Now, you can see some photos that we took in Petra.

Bali

The second part of the trip was Bali, after many hours of flight we arrived at Yakarta, and after that, we took another plane to Denpasar (the capital of Bali).

Indonesia is an archipelago of more than 17.000 islands, but only about 6.000 are inhabited. Yakarta is the Indonesian capital, and Bali is the most touristy island in Indonesia.

Once we were in Bali, we spent about 10 days in Ubud and 10 days in Kuta, but we travelled around Bali on a motorbike that we had rented.

Ubud is the artistic heart of Bali, the streets in Ubud are full of handicrafts shops, silver, wood figures…you can spend many hours and rupees (Rupee is the Indonesian currency) (1 € = 12.000 rupees), there is a traditional market in Ubud´s streets. Ubud is a very quiet town. You can go to watch traditional dances. There is a famous forest called “Monkey Forest”, where hundreds of monkeys are in complete freedom and the tourists can enjoy themselves with them.

In Bali, religion is very important; most of the population is Hindu. There are many rituals and ceremonies, every day women put tributes to the Gods and Spirits in front of their houses and shop doors. These tributes are made of flowers, rice and incense, on a little bamboo tray.

Women carry spectacular towers of fruit on their heads, to offer them to the Gods in the temples.

Gamelán is the traditional music of Bali and it’s played with bronze bars, bamboo chambers, small gongs, drums….It sounds nice but, in my opinion, it’s a bit boring and mindless.

A temple is the most important structure in the Balinese culture.

There are many important temples, Tana lot is one of them, it is on a big rock and it is only accessible when the tide is out.

Besakih is the largest and most important temple on the island, in fact, it’s a collection of temples, it’s known as “The mother temple”.

You must enter the temples with legs and shoulders covered.

In the north of Bali we find Bratan Lake, with some temples in the middle of the lake.

Batur is an active volcano, there are some beaches near Batur, (Lovina, Candidasa …) they have volcanic sand.

Kuta beach is a very long beach, the sea is not very quiet, and there are big waves, it’s the surfers’ paradise, it’s full of Australian and Japanese surfers.

On this beach you can see many women with a particular hat that give you a massage for only a few rupees. They have a number written on the hat, so you can recognize them if you come back to the beach.

The landscape in Bali is wonderful, with an exuberant vegetation, waterfalls, coco-palms, flowers and rice terraces.

The rice crop is very important in Balinese economy.

There is a very common small lizard in Bali which you can find everywhere, on the walls, ceilings, inside the houses, outside the houses, it’s called Gecko and it makes a peculiar noise.

This was a wonderful trip, but the distance and the amount of hours of flight, make it difficult to repeat.

Now, you can see some photos that we took in Bali.

By Isabel Canal

Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban is a novel by JK. Rowling which was published here in Spain by Salamandra in 2000. The main characters are:Harry Potter who is the main character. In this 3^rd part he is 13 years old and as in previous books he has spent his summer holidays with his aunt Petunia, his cousin Dudley and his unt Vernon, 3 muggles (non-magic people) who have made life difficult for him since he arrived in their house after his parents were killed.Ron Weasley. He is Harry´s best friend. He met him in the 1^st year in Hogwarts at the railway station. Ron is a poor boy with 4 other brothers and a little sister, all of them red-haired. He is always with Harry and from the first day at school he has become his best support.Hermione Granger. She is also one of the most important people in Harry´s life. Although her parents are muggles, she is very intelligent and she is like Harry´s and Ron´s mother: always telling them what to do: their homework, their behaviour…Her intelligence has helped them a lot and it will help them in this book too.Sirius Black. A dark magician who has escaped from Azkaban (the magical jail). He is said to be really dangerous but at the end of the book we can see that he isn´t.Dumbledore. He is the best magician in the world and also Hogwart´s headmaster. He has helped Harry with everything since he was born. In fact, he was the person who left him in his aunt´s and uncle´s house when he was a baby. * PLOT In this book after his summer holidays, Harry restarted his magical studies in Hogwarts just at the same time as Sirius Black escaped from Azkaban. One day Harry heard that Sirius was trying to kill him. He tried to continue with his life at school, going to class, doing his homework and playing Quidditch, that magical sport he has discovered 2 years ago and in which he has become one of the best players at school. But this couldn´t be possible while dementors were round the school. They were a kind of ghost but with only their presence they could take your happiness and make you a person without feelings. At the end Sirius met Harry and he could explain to him that he wasn´t a criminal and they discovered the most incredible thing: Ron´s pet, Scabbers, which had been in his family for a long time was Petter Petigrew the one who Sirius wanted to kill, the one who was the actual culprit. Although he was the responsible for Lily and James Potter (Harry´s parents) deaths, Harry decided not to kill him and helped Sirius to hide himself far from those people who wanted to catch him, wasn´t he going to help his godfather! * PERSONAL OPINION From my point of view it is a good book, really interesting from the beginning to the end. It wasn´t difficult to read,you can follow it well, but you can also learn new vocabulary. To sum up I would recommend this book as an entertaining one and I think I would try to read the rest of them in English. * ABOUT THE AUTHOR Joanne Murray Rowling who writes under the pen name JK Rowling is a British writer who has become richer than the Queen of England with the selling of Harry´s adventures and who received the Prince of Asturias prize in 2003.by Sarai Allende

I am going to talk about the history of cinema.

I have chosen this topic for my speech because, although nowadays we can enjoy new technologies which allow us to take or emit images and music easily, I find it interesting to remind you that everything started a hundred years ago, more or less, with the invention and development of some gadgets and ideas which now could be considered childish

During my speech I am going to show you some pictures related to something I want to say.

1-In this picture you can see the title I have chosen.

Why a brief history?

The first thing I would like to say is that summarizing a hundred years in a few minutes forces me to choose some events from history, a choice that it obviously is subjective.

At this point I would like you to consider the problem of subjectivity and objectivity of images and mass media in general so, to illustrate this, I am going to propose to you a little visual game:

2-If we have a look at this picture, what do you think it represents? (Maybe you are thinking of a woman…, a special kind of woman…)

3-Now, look at this one taken from a different angle. (The woman has a baby and a dog)

The new perspective might change the thoughts we were thinking about.

In conclusion: the same image may offer different points of view and it always depends on the person who decided what to show us and how to do it. The only thing we can do is think about it so, “welcome to the world of manipulation”.

4- In this picture you can see a bison from Altamira and a Chinese Shadow

(Apart from this) Human beings have always wanted to reflect the reality as accurately as possible:

From Primitive Men from Altamira, who drew bisons with eight legs to simulate movement, till the ancient Chinese civilization with their Chinese shadows.

(Do not try to search for the eight legs because it is another picture)

We can consider this as the prehistory of the cinema but, jumping forward in time, up to the XIX century we find the direct precursor of the cinema.

To make this possible it would be necessary to mention two previous inventions:

On the one hand, “the roll of film”, an evolution from photographic plate, whose success is attributed to George Eastman and T. A. Edison.

On the other hand “the camera”, which lets us take 24 photos per minute, simulating real movement.

5-(In this picture you can see them both with their inventions)

6- In this picture you can see some antecedents of the camera:

“The Magic Lantern”; a machine devised to animate drawings/pictures.

“The Photographic Gun”; invented by Marey in 1882. It was a gadget which could take multiple/several photographies per second (12). The term “shooting a film” was possibly derived from Marey’s invention.

Bearing in mind all this, we are prepared to attend the first cinematographic session in history. It was celebrated in Paris on the 28 of December of 1895 thanks to Lumiere Brothers who went down in history as the inventors of cinema as we know it these days.

7- In this picture you can see Louis and Auguste Lumiere and their first camera.

In that first commercial exhibition the 33 spectators could see 11 films for 1 franc. Each film was about 1 minute long and showed different scenes from ordinary life.

8- I am going to emphasize three of them which you can see in the next pictures:

The first is:

“Workers leaving the Lumiere Factory”, which two years later, funnily enough, inspired the first Spanish film, “People leaving mass in el Pilar Church” by Eduardo Gimeno.

9-The second film I have chosen is considered the first comic film in history:

“The gardener” or “The sprinkler sprinkled”; in which a gardener gets wet because of a trick/joke of a child.

The third is:

“The arrival of a train”, which is considered the first horror film because people got shocked when they watched a train that seemed to be coming out of the screen, towards the spectators/audience.

All these films showed scenes from ordinary life shot in only one plane, but very soon another French man, the magician George Melies, would start to make the cinema a spectacle. He is considered the first director, scriptwriter, author, designer … And, besides, he invented the first trick or special effect. It happened by chance since, when he was shooting the camera broke down and when, after being repaired, he went on, the scene had changed. So, at the moment the film was projected, the public could watch a man where there was a woman.

10- This is a Melies’ portrait and a frame of his film “A Trip to the Moon”

In these films the camera remained stationary and shooting from one position only. It was a kind of theatre shooting.

11-The next character in this brief history is David Griffith (in the picture with a melancholic face). He is known as “the father of film” due to the fact that he gave the future film-markers the “grammar” of films, contributing to the modern language of cinema. This means that he used the camera in new mobile ways, using different angles and focuses, flashbacks, simultaneous actions and he also edited the films.

The most well known and important film by D. Griffith is “The Birth of a Nation” because it gathered all the narrative resources developed till that moment, 1915. In spite of this ,the film was accused of racism due to the fact that a woman kidnapped by a black man is released by Ku Klux Klan.

Besides, D. Griffith directed the first film made in the small village of Hollywood, a melodrama titled “In old California” (1910).

12- In the picture a view of Hollywood in 1903 with only 5000 inhabitants and a present view of “Sunset Boulevard”.

About these first times of cinema I would like to mention a character I consider a genius; Charles Chaplin, well known as “Charlot” in his silent films but not many of his sound films such as “The Great Dictator”, a very critical film of dictatorships.

13- In this picture you can see the parody of “Chaplin-Himlet” playing with the world.

14- Following the history we have to go to 1927 to find the first film which incorporates sound, “The Jazz Singer”. It has only a few spoken lines since most of the sound sequences are musical performances by de Jewish singer Al Jolson who appeared on the film with his face made up in black.

From the 1930s the cinema started to grow and became the great industry that it is now. This period is known as “The Golden Age of Hollywood” and, during these years, the cinema developed different genres: musical, comedy, western, thriller….

15- In the late 30s the film “Gone with the Wind” (1939) began the era of super productions and went down in history as the first long and full colour film, although previously there had been others not so famous.

Now, I am going to speak about “the Start System” led by great film studios, actors and directors. What best represents this time is “The Academy Awards” known as “The Oscars”. The first ceremony was held in 1929, but it would be in 1941 when their famous and present system was introduced.

16- In this picture you can see the famous red carpet of the Kodak Theatre, where the ceremony takes place,

The most popular story about the origin of the name “Oscars” involves an executive director who seeing the little statue exclaimed “it looks just like my uncle Oscar!”. The name stuck and it has been called by this name ever since.

17- The first Spanish film which won the Oscar Award was “Volver a Empezar” (1982) by J. L. Garci. It is about a writer who after receiving the Nobel Prize, comes back to his home town. This town is Gijón and, of course, the film was shot here. Although, the first Spaniard who won The Oscar was Gil Parrondo, in 1970, working as Art Director in the film “Patton”. This artist was born in Luarca in 1921.

But not only is the “Dream Factory”, as Hollywood is known , the one which produces films, but I would like to remember the European cinema and its most important Festivals such as Berlin, Venetia, Cannes, and in Spain San Sebastian and Gijón.

18- In this picture you can see the different prizes of these festivals: the palm from Cannes, The Lyon from Venice, the Bear from Berlin and the shell from San Sebastian.

19- One final thing I would like to say is that I had the chance of working for Gijón Film Festival in the early 80s. At that time the festival was different from the way it is now since it was a specialized Festival dedicated to the childhood and youth.

20-I am ending my speech and there are a lot of events that I have not commented but, so far, as some of the most famous characters from cartoons say “that is all folks!”

Thank you for your attention.

Luarca is a little village located in the north-west of Asturias. It’s the capital of Valdés council and it has around 6 thousand people although, in fact, the population increases in summer.

Traditionally, it’s a fishing village but nowadays most of the people there work in tourism.

Luarca receives two different nick names: the first one is “The white village of the green coast” because, as you can see, most of the buildings in the harbor are painted in white.

The harbor is the most picturesque area of the village. Going for a walk through it, you can see the place where the fishermen bet on the fish and the factory where they used to put the fish in tins. It is a great place for having fun too because it has the best pubs and bars.

The other name that receives is: the village of the seven bridges. Most of them, take their names because of the areas they link, but there are some that don’t. One of them is the Kiss Bridge that takes its name from an old legend which tells the story of a temerarious pirate who had terrified the whole coast of the north of Spain. One day, he arrived in Luarca ignoring that the sir of the village was armed and waiting for him. The brave sir of the village took him as a prisoner and, while the sir and his soldiers were celebrating the capture, the sir’s daughter asked her father to take care of the prisoner and he agreed. At the time she was getting to the cell, they madly fell in love with each other and, when he recovered and they were planning to escape together, the sir of Luarca surprised them. Feeling desolated, they kissed while her father was cutting their heads off in the place where the bridge is built now on the river which crosses and divides the village.

Apart from legends, Luarca is famous for being the place where the well-known scientist Severo Ochoa has born. As you may know, he made an important discovery on RNA and ADN.

Although it may sound macabre, one of the most visited places in the village is the cemetery, where he and his wife are buried and also because it is said that is the seventh most beautiful one in the world.

On the top of the cemetery, it is my favorite place in the village which is called “La Atalaya” where there is a little church that has on it a venerate image for the people of the village. It’s not my favorite place because of the church neither the cemetery; obviously, it is because it has the most beautiful sights of the village: you can see the sea, which is quite relaxing and the village from the top.

For those ones who are keen on going to the beach, Luarca has three beaches: the first, the second and the third, Salinas’s one. The main difference is that the third has better waves and the others are calmer.

                         

As I said before, the population increases in summer and it is due to the parties they celebrate on July 16^th and August 22^nd.  The first one, it’s Rosario’s one, which is mostly for fishermen. They are the ones who organize everything and, if I can give my opinion, they do it really well.

It consists on a procession through the harbor and then, all the little boats, which are decorated for the occasion, go a little bit far into the sea which is really nice to see and, if you want, you can go with them too.

The second one, which is the most famous and it’s when the village becomes most crowded than ever. It’s S. Timoteo’s one. I don’t know how to describe it to you but mostly what people do is drink cider, loads of cider, and have fun. All the people in the village may say to you: “It’s the party of the village and, today, you’re allowed to do “whatever you want” In a good sense I mean. And it’s true: although if you don’t get on very well with somebody this day, he or she will greet you as if you were the best  of friends!! Which I think is quite funny.

In the photos you can see people wearing a large shirt most of them checked, it is called chambrón and it’s the typical suit of the party and most of them are the same because the different groups wear them to look different from the others.

Well, I would tell you more things but I think the best way to discover them is visiting the village which I strongly recommend.

By Rocio

Luarca (speech)

I´m going to show you some famous film scenes and then I´ll talk about them and how they unfluenced the history of movies.

Tarzan: Edgar Rice Burroughs was the novelist who first created Tarzan´s character in the early twenties but it wasn´t until 1932 when the movie called “Tarzan the ape man” was released. An actor called Jonhy Weismuller starred this first version of Tarzan and his yell has become even more popular than him. It´s thought that the yell was made with different voices but this is difficult to believe keeping in mind the poor audio technology of that time. However, Weissmuller claimed that the yell was actually his own voice, of his own invention, based on a yell he used when playing as a child. Burroughs family tried to make the yell and trademark but in 2007 they denied it because it couldn’t be considered as a song or something similar.

Gone with the wind. This film is about the story of a woman who lives in the American south during the Civil War and it´s based upon a novel by Margaret Mitchell. When it was released it was the longest and the most expensive film ever made. It also was one the first ones to be recorded in colour. Viven Leigh, who starred the role of Scarlet O´Hara, was an unknown actress after taking part in this movie with other actors such as Clark Gable. The film won 8 Oscars and it’s considered one of the best films ever.

The seven year itch. This film released in 1955 is based on a play presented in New York in 1952. It was directed by the famous Billy Wilder and the main characters were Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell. Thanks to this movie, Marilyn Monroe became an icon of beauty in the 20Th Century and her image has always been attached to this role and, concretely, to the white dress she is wearing in the scene. It was very controversial when she sung “Happy Birthday” to the president of the USA. Unfortunately, as you all know, Marilyn Monroe died at the age of 36 in strange conditions when she was at the pop of her career.

Star wars. Star wars is a saga which contains 6 films, the episodes 4th, 5th and 6th were made first from 1977 to 1983 and the 1st 2nd and 3rd were made from 1999 to 2005 with completely different actors. The main ones in the first trilogy were Mark Hamil, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, Alec Guiness and in the second trilogy Hayden Christensen, Ewan McGregor, Samuel L. Jackson, Natalie Portman… Firstly, George Lucas presented the project to many people but everyone refused to finance it because it was too risky. However, George Lucas could finally release the film which was a complete success and made him millionaire. It’s been one of the first films to sell merchandising (books, toys, posters, costumes…)

Titanic The film is based upon fact: a ship called Titanic sunk in its first voyage from London to New York in 1912. 1500 people died and only a few of them were saved because of the lack of lifeboats. Of course, the love story between Jack and Rose wasn’t true. Thanks to this film, Leonardo Di Caprio and Kate Winslet became famous. The film won 11 Oscars, one of the most awarded ones and it was also the most popular (a world collection of 1.800 million dollars) As a curious fact, the cost of the film was much more expensive than the cost of building the Titanic. Nowadays, only two people who were at the Titanic when they were children are still alive.

Hope you liked it!

Chinesse Shadow Theatre

There are two types of shadow theatre: One made with your hands and another type made with silouettes. The type I prefer most is the second, so I´m going to talk about it because is one of my favourites activities in my free time.

Shadows with hands

Unlike other types of puppets, the shadow puppet itself is never seen in a performance, only the effect it creates. I´ll share what I´ve learned about the three parts of the shadow puppet effect: The puppet shape, the screen and the light.

The puppet shape

The first step is to draw your design on the postcard or, in my case in a black piece of plastic, which is, in my opinion, a better option because you can cut more details in it.

Next, I cut out the design with scissors, cutters and mini- drills. The different parts or the body of a puppet are joined together in the way that you can see in the photos.

Shadow joints

and shadow joints (1)

First of all, you must make the holes and then you have to pull a thread through the pieces of cardboard or plastic and put knots on both sides. I finish the knot with a drop of glue on both sides.

Instead of a knot you can also use fasteners. The result is not exactly the same. It depends on the type of movement that you expect from the puppets to choose the knot or the fastener.

Although I prefer only black and white shadows, you can get interesting effects by adding coloured plastic behind cut-out areas.

A scene from my group

A shadow from Turkey

The body of my puppets is controlled with wire. Simple puppets use just the main control wire, but more complicated puppets may need a second wire to operate a moving part.

Usually there is one wire attached to the upper body and another to the hand or elbow.

For most performances, two wires are about all a puppeteer can handle. Sometimes you must be able to let your puppets alone and standing up for a while, without your hands holding them, so that you can do other things, like changing the music, fading out the lights, etc.

I attach the wire to my puppets with staples. Previously, I bend the end of the wire 90 degrees with a pair of pliers, which gives a joint to the attachment point. See the diagram below

A character

You have to put the wire on the right side depending on which direction each figure must appear on the screen.

Many times you must do two identical puppets, one of them to move towards the left and the other one to move to the right. If the puppet is a “main character” you´ll probably have to do many copies, not only due to the different directions of their movement, but to their different size, depending on the distance you want to suggest to the audience.

Finally, you have to give a different voice to each character, which sometimes is a mess.

The screen

There are many different types of shadow screens: cotton, plastic, paper,…

Shadow screens must transmit as much light as possible, but at the same time, be opaque enough to hide the puppeteers.

Traditionally, the screen has been a piece of white cotton and this is the material I prefer most.

The light

Asian puppeteers use oil lamps. It´s romantic, atmospheric but nowadays we have better options. I´m talking about electricity.

Connecting lamps

I use a 150 watt halogen lamp put between my head and the screen, so the audience cannot see me. As simple as that!. See the diagram.

My backstage

Using a dimmer allows me to match the light to the space where I´m performing and it also makes possible fading in and out .

Scenery

Scenery can be made in the same way as the puppets. This is theory. In real life I wasn´t able to find a piece of plastic with the size I needed, so all my sceneries are made of DM, (a type of wood), cut with a electric saw and …a lot of patience.

Building a scenery

The ” theatre”

The theatre is only a box with a square hole in the middle.

I like working with wood so my theatre is a bit complicated but, essentially , it is a box with a hole in the middle.

Building a theatre,

…… my final theatre

By Manuel Santiago López

I hope you like it:

http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=ktUSIJEiOug