Word: nia
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Brazil's favelas, the vast urban slums that are desperate even in the best of times. Walk through São Paulo's sprawling Brasilândia, though, and you don't sense the relentless doom and gloom gripping other cities in the world. Take Efigênia Francisca da Silva, who exudes middle-class expectations and remains positive despite the tsunami of bad news. Thanks to a government scheme to encourage entrepreneurs, the once dirt-poor housewife has received some $8,000 in low-interest bank credits in recent years and now owns three shops that sell everything from...
...Lula" is President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (no relation to Efigênia), and most Brazilians believe he's the reason their country is surviving the current downturn better than other places. In past crises, Brazil was usually the nation in need of the largest life preserver. If it wasn't drowning under fiscal recklessness, it was being held under by draconian austerity plans. Brazil, the old joke goes, is the country of the future - and always will be. Now, in the middle of the worst global downturn for decades, Brazil could finally be the country...
Somewhere between low-brow movies and art-house fare is a sweet spot occupied by films that explore weighty subjects while still managing to entertain in a populist sense. Indonesian director Nia Dinata hit that spot in 2002 with Ca-bau-kan (The Courtesan), which looked at Chinese-Indonesian identity during the republic's early years. Since then, she has directed two more films, Arisan! (The Gathering, 2003) and Berbagi Suami (Love for Share, 2006), and co-directed another, Perempuan Punya Cerita (Chants of Lotus, 2007). Each one depicts subjects rarely discussed in Indonesian society, such as homosexuality and polygamy...
...Dinata's small but entertaining corpus is now available as The Nia Dinata Collection, a slickly packaged DVD boxed set that is a thing of wonder in a country where original DVDs are more difficult to find than their pirated counterparts. It is all the more to be cherished given that she now spends rather more time producing movies through her company, Kalyana Shira Films, than she does directing them. Indonesia needs more taboo tacklers like this...
...This song coincidentally shares its title with a Saul Williams book, Williams’ musical forays being one of the more accessible reference points for “She’s” bold take on musical synergy (especially the song “Om Nia American” on Amethyst Rock Star). “Stiff Fruit” ends things on a less chaotic note, sounding like an extraterrestrial campfire jam with Four Tet, with more than enough lyrical S’mores to go around...