CITIZENFOUR, um documentário a ver.

Slow Journalism

MAGNÍFICO projecto, que foi referido em Macau pelo Adelino Gomes, durante um workshop com jornalistas: 

Out of Eden Walk 

In January of 2013, veteran foreign correspondent Paul Salopek set about reporting a story that began 70,000 years ago, when our early human ancestors first moved north from their African Eden and began to explore the world. Over the next seven years, Paul will retrace that epic migration from one end of the earth to another, documenting the evolution of landscapes both human and geographic.

Paul started his journey at Herto Bouri in Ethiopia’s Great Rift Valley, setting out on foot with his nomad companions for Djibouti.

Herberto

 
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TO sing you must first open your mouth. You must have a pair of lungs, and a little knowledge of music. It is not necessary to have an accordion, or a guitar. The essential thing is to want to sing. This then is a song. I am singing.” (Henry Miller)
E como cantava bem o Herberto nos seus melhores dias... Mesmo o inculto, ou aquele que não tem a menor inclinação para a poesia, será capaz de ver beleza nisto, porque isto é respiração, é uma pessoa a cantar por dentro. E que bem que canta:

As mães são as mais altas coisas
que os filhos criam, porque se colocam
na combustão dos filhos, porque
os filhos estão como invasores dentes-de-Ieão
no terreno das mães.

E através da mãe o filho pensa
que nenhuma morte é possível e as águas
estão ligadas entre si
por meio da mão dele que toca a cara louca
da mãe que toca a mão pressentida do filho.
E por dentro do amor, até somente ser possível
amar tudo,
e ser possível tudo ser reencontrado por dentro do amor.

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Minha cabeça estremece com todo o esquecimento.

Eu procuro dizer como tudo é outra coisa.
Falo, penso.

Herberto Helder (RIP)

Transcrição do poema de Herberto Helder pintado na parede do quarto da Real República Palácio da Loucura

HISTÓRIA O senhor do monóculo usava uma boca desdenhosa e na botoeira, a insolência duma rosa. Era o poeta. Quando passava - figura subtil e correcta, toda a gente dizia que era o poeta. - Era, portanto, o poeta... Mas um dia o senhor de monóculo quebrou o monóculo, guardou a boca desdenhosa e esqueceu na mesa de cabeceira a flor que punha na botoeira, a insolente rosa... Entrou nas tabernas e bebeu, cingiu o corpo das prostitutas, jogou aos dados e perdeu, deu a mão aos operários, beijou todos os calvários - e aprendeu. E o mundo, que o chamava poeta, esqueceu; e quando o via passar limitava-se a exclamar: - o vagabundo! Mas o senhor do antigo monóculo, da antiga figura subtil e correcta, sentia vozes dentro de si, vozes de júbilo que diziam: - É o Poeta! É o Poeta!... Herberto Helder

 "VI, claramente visto, o lume vivo" (Camões)

Adelino Gomes em Macau. Foi um privilégio observar como pensa bem o jornalismo.

(Foto PB)

One of the most famous Portuguese journalists, Adelino Gomes, took part in a workshop for journalists on Friday, focusing on freedom of expression and its limits in the aftermath of the terrorist attack on the newsroom of the French satirical newspaper “Charlie Hebdo.” The event was promoted by the European Union Academic Programme in Macau (EUAP-M), in partnership with the Portuguese and English Press Association (AIPIM) and the Rui Cunha Foundation, the latter of which hosted it. Over 20 local journalists attended the workshop.

Macau should lead Hengqin’s development

I have always wondered why Hengqin Island was left undeveloped for centuries. The land is obviously uneven and lumpy, which makes it harder to build there. Until the 1980s, Zhuhai was little more than a fishermen’s village, with plenty of space available in the mainland.
It’s also an historical fact that Hengqin Island – or Mountain Island, as the Portuguese prefer to call it – has been involved in what could be deemed a “soft territorial dispute.” By soft, I want to emphasise that nobody was hurt in the process of fighting for the island’s sovereignty; that is, if the deaths caused by the pirates that swarmed the island during the 19th century are not taken into account.
(Read more here) 

Ilha da Montanha/Hengqin (foto PB)

"Unframed - Immigrants about to head back to their starting point, revue par JR, U.S.A., 2014"
Colour print, mounted on dibond, plexiglas
125 x 187cm / 49 1/4 x 73 1/2 inches.
© JR-ART.NET Courtesy Galerie Perrotin
 

A place all can call home

“A weed from catholic Europe, it took root
Between some yellow mountains and a sea,
Its gay stone houses an exotic fruit,
A Portugal-cum-China oddity.

Rococo images of Saint and Saviour
Promise its gamblers fortunes when they die,
Churches alongside brothels testify
That faith can pardon natural behavior.”

W.H. Auden

Sometimes, after leaving the newsroom late at night, I like to have a stroll in the old Macau. I pass the house where someone once told me the poet Camilo Pessanha lived, and then I head to Senado Square, enjoying the fact that the beautiful Mediterranean square is so quiet and almost empty at that hour. I then walk through the arched sidewalks of the avenue known as “San Ma Lou” (which could be translated as new horse street) and gaze upon the decrepit commercial mansions that stand there. The imposing Hotel Central, once described as Asia’s biggest and most luxurious casino (or, as 007 creator Ian Fleming wrote, “the largest house of gambling and self indulgence in the world”), is still operating. Hookers whistle at me as I pass on the opposite sidewalk, evidence that the place “long ago started its descent into shabbiness and eventual demolition,” like Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel.
Some of the mansions here are of Portuguese style, while others – like the Tak Seng Pawnshop – are clearly of Chinese origin, reminiscent of Macau’s mixed soul.
Turning left, I enter the famous Rua da Felicidade (Happiness Street), which is deserted at night. The words about the street’s heyday uttered by the late Macanese writer Henrique de Senna Fernandes come to mind:
“By day, the Rua da Felicidade was like any other street in the Bazaar. The windows of the ‘flower houses’ remained shut, because their residents were fast asleep after the previous night’s harvest. In the early afternoon, one could hear the clacking of mah-jong tablets and the plucking of string instruments as pupils set out on their apprenticeship to become sing-song girls. As evening fell, the lanterns were lit, and one by one, the houses were illuminated. That was when the sing-song girls, or pei-pa-chais, began to get dressed, to put on their carmine make-up, and perfume themselves. The fussiest among them spent hours in this ritual, surrounded by mui-tchais and the apprentices, who later on would become sing-song girls themselves.” [translated by David Brookshaw from the book Nam Van]
I walk down the street and head to the Inner Harbor. Once a hub for fishermen and “tancareiras” (tanka women), the place has lost the close relationship with the waterfront it once had. A lot has been destroyed in the district. Centenary houses were replaced by uncharacteristic buildings. But some of the ancient residences are still there, magnificently beautiful at night, transporting us to former times. My stroll ends close to the churches of St Joseph and St Lawrence, at the heart of what was once called the “Christian City.”
Macau strikes me as a vintage place where these old remnants and stories mix with the effervescence of the casinos and the neon exuberance. Religious and debauched at the same time. Decadently old but still full of novelties and surprises. It is sometimes incomprehensible for those who try to decipher its multiple layers, yet a place all can call home.
(My column, published here)