JaZzArt en València

Why would I decide to be your bridge?

Why would I decide to be at all?

Why would I decide to be deciding all these things

if I were not so small…

Small as I stand shoulder to shoulder next to God’s creation,

but tall within the light that warms my soul.

I am your bridge,

so you can cross if so you wish,

or if you don’t,

perhaps half way you’ll stop and fish…

C.2021, Francis Bravo Cabrera, 06 DEC 2021, València, España 🇪🇸

The Church of Aya Sophia, (Άγια Σοφία), constructed in Constantinople in A.D. 360 as a temple to Christ, to wisdom, to faith and to beauty. It holds priceless treasures of Byzantine iconography.

Cheers…

This is a new section for VALENCIARTIST that I, as a lover of film, want to share with all of my readers and followers. Movies…some…are like good books. They teach us, they reach out and touch our hearts, they populate our memory and they provoke us to come back to them, sometimes over and over again. This happened to me with this film from 2018. When I first saw it I sort of just glanced by it without thinking too much. Now I have watched it again and so many things about it jumped out at me that I had to write this review.

First I thought I was a big «fan» of Pepe Mujica, (José Alberto Mujica Cordano, born in Montevideo, Uruguay on the 20th of May 1935). He was the 40th president of his country, from 2010 to 2015. And the movie is about his life, or should I say, about a part of his life that spans a few years before he became a politician and president. So therefore I immediately liked the movie. Again, or so I thought…

But now I see the movie, directed by Álvaro Brechner, (Uruguayan film director and writer who lives in Spain), in a totally different light. I now see that it is nothing more than a propaganda film. The writer, the same Álvaro Brechner, is trying to say that the atrocities committed by a right wing military government are horrible, true and unequivocal violations of Human Rights. But is he not aware that his protagonists were terrorists? Of course not. To him they were «freedom-fighters» because he does not bother to mention that his protagonist and all those others who, supposedly, suffered abuses were communists trying to take over the country.

Although I am not a defender of any type of dictatorship, or of any type of totalitarian, or authoritarian regime, I do understand that sometimes governments have to do things to guarantee that communists do not take over power. That was what the Uruguayan government was doing back in the sixties and seventies. The government was trying to protect the future of the country that was threatened by the Tupamaros who were terrorising the population.

Pepe Mujica was a terrorist. He formed part of the Tupamaros, who were nothing more than an armed insurgent group of urban guerrillas that were trying to disrupt civil order and topple the government of Uruguay. Naturally the government had to have a policy of containment. In the film we see the reaction of the government at work on a young Mujica arrested and imprisoned for his participation in the terrorist group. Then we see endless scenes of how he was mistreated and how he barely managed to survive the dungeons where he was made to live for twelve years.

The movie is worth seeing but do not be fooled. Yes, if this was true, then the treatment was inhumane and unacceptable. But why is it always one sided? Where are the films showing how the communists treat their political prisoners? There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence and first hand narratives from prisoners released from Cuba’s dungeons that had to endure insufferable conditions for far longer than Mr. Mujica had to. Yet, no one makes films decrying the abuses of communist regimes. It seems…according to Hollywood and other film producers…that the only governments that commit such atrocities are right wing ones. And this, my friends, is propaganda.

«A Twelve Year Night» is on Netflix. Take a look, let me know what you think…

Cheers…

Today I saw a report about an “artist” whose work is being sold online, as nft, at auctions and that has already made 300.000 US dollars.

But there is no such artist. The artist is AI! However the programmer and the human artist behind this fallacy talk about this artificial thing as if he was a real artist.

For me art remains strictly and absolutely within the realm of humans and only humans. No machine can make art. Just as no animal can make art.

We shouldn’t be fooled by these gimmicks or by their “creators” who tell us that their AI artist is advancing and developing his art.

In conclusion, we’ve many artists, human ones, as it should be. We need technology to advance health care and other industrial aspects, and not to meddle in the arts.

Cheers…

Art is art because it is art…well because it is made by humans…and art can be figurative or abstract, but mostly either good or bad…

Cheers…

The nomenclature used to name the variants of corona-virus began earlier this year. The WHO decided to use the Greek alphabet to name them, it started with alpha and went on down the list. However, the new variant, Omicron, has skipped a couple of letters. Why? It should have been Nu, but they said that is sounded too much like «new». Then it should have been Xi. But the WHO said that Xi is a «common Chinese last name». Really? So why is the WHO so afraid to offend the Communist Chinese?

Is is that they don’t want to offend the Chinese dictator Xi Jinping? Did not this pandemic, this virus originate precisely in China?

What do you think?

Chapter 5
(The Plaza de España)

By 0500 hours we had reached the river. It was still dark, cold, humid, foggy and miserable. I was wondering what the hell we were doing here so close to the border of another country… one that I also won’t name…and whatever for. But I am not here as a tourist and I certainly didn’t plan the trip, so I just sat there and waited, an explanation would come, eventually.

We had descended from the plateau where the city lay by chopper. We flew north east until we reached a clearance in the jungle. There the chopper touched down and we hopped off. A small white van was waiting and a guy dressed in black waved us to it. It was a very dark night…

We were Sandra, Smokey, Zeno and myself. They were these three guys dressed in black that we did not know. Counting the driver, we were eight. One of them, the one in charge, had a sombre look about him, but was very quiet and soft spoken. He looked to be about fifty, with an athletic build and a reddish beard, he looked sharp with his shaved head and tiny round rimmed glasses. Actually he looked somewhat like an XVIIIth Century poet or philosopher. The other guy looked just like him except for the beard and the glasses. He was also sombre and did not speak, at least not to us, I did see him whispering something to number three.

Then suddenly our bald, bearded leader said, “This country has been suffering the effects of a civil war since 1960…” then his words just trailed off. He did not finish the sentence.

The road was dark, no lights, no houses, no traffic, nothing. I was trying not to doze off but I was losing that battle. There was nothing to see, no one was saying anything, so falling asleep, I concluded, was a viable option, after all no one said we couldn’t.

But then I saw lights up ahead. It looked like a police check-point on the road. Our driver slowed down, shut off the headlamps and stopped about sixty metres, I would say, from the police at the check-point. Smokey asked what we would do.

“Silence,” came the quick reply from red beard.

Two of the guys took out their weapons, HK G3’s. They threw open the doors of the van, hit the deck and began firing on who we thought were the police manning the check-point. Sandra, Zeno, Smokey and myself crouched low, as low as we could inside the van, just in case there was return fire. But there was none.

When they stopped firing the two men got back in the van and the bearded one told the driver to continue, to get the hell out of Dodge and fast.

“Ok, so they know we’ve arrived,” he said looking at me.

“Who?”

“The fucking commies.” Said one of the other guys.

I started wondering who the hell these guys were. When the Colonel called me and I met him at his place in the city, Sandra, Zeno and Smokey were already there. We were told to go to a specific location where we would be flown to our destination. Nothing else was said. When we arrived we met red beard and the other two and all red beard said was get in.

“As I said before, this country is in the middle of a civil war. I know it doesn’t look like that in the capital. And with the police walking around with machine guns and with all the private security guards you see guarding banks and stores, you may think things are calm and under control, but they are not. They’ve been trying to implement communism here since 1960, when Castro took over Cuba. They’ve not given up. This nation’s military is, well, doing as much as they can but they don’t have the hardware to fight these Soviet-trained and Soviet armed bastards.” Red beard looked at me as if he was waiting for a reply, but I really had nothing to say.

“We’re here to lend a hand,” said one of the other two, “do you need to know anything else?”

“No sir,” I said.

“Good, then listen carefully, your assignment has changed, shall we say, a bit. You’re going to join the mariachis at the Plaza de Espana in Z—–.”

“What the…”

“We know you play the guitar and you sing and you speak Spanish,” he looked at me and smiled, the red beard looked like it was on fire…

C.2021, 01 DEC 2021, Francisco Bravo Cabrera, Valencia, Spain

Like I have always said, art is the search. Not necessarily the search for something original, but the search for a different way to express something deep, something meaningful, something frivolous or even something simply decorative. Art is all that. It is a message, it is an alphabet, a design, a decorative piece, a piece of shit perhaps, but to the artist it should be the result of the search. As an artist gets deeper into the search he discovers that there are many ways to express feelings and emotions, to transmit messages or to decorate a room…

If there is not a process of discovery, the search, chances are that you won’t find anything…

(Francisco Bravo Cabrera, Omnia Caelum Studios València)

Cheers

¿Has visto la peli 7 Prisioneros?
Una corta reseña

Peli brasileña dirigida por Alexandre Moratto (Sócrates, 2018) que aunque pasó por algunos festivales de cine ahora la distribuye Netflix. Se destacan los actores brasileños Rodrigo Santoro (300, 2006), y Christian Malheiros (Sócrates, 2018).

7 Prisioneros (titulo original 7 Prisioneiros) hecha en 2021, diría yo que es del género realismo socialista y también del cine que llaman “slice of life”. Se basa en la lucha de clases en Brasil, vista desde el punto de vista de la vida de un chaval de dieciocho años, Mateus, (Christian Malheiros) y de otros tres chicos, todos pobres campesinos marginados que apenas tienen para comer. Viven en el campo y en la miseria hasta que un personaje, aparentemente de la confianza de los tres, los convence a ir con él a São Paulo donde les espera un buen trabajo o sea, el futuro.

Pero todo era mentira. Cuando llegan a Sao Paulo son llevados a un polígono industrial donde los obligan a currar en un negocio de chatarra que lo dirige un tal Sr. Lucas (Rodrigo Santoro). Enseguida los chicos comienzan a darse cuenta que han sido víctimas de un engaño. Lucas en cortos días los convierte en esclavos, los amenaza de muerte, no solo a ellos pero también a sus familias y Mateus se da cuenta que este negocio lo dirige una mafia que está por todas partes de São Paulo.

Los guionistas, (Thayná Mantesso, Alexandre Moratto), crean, dentro de ese almacén de chatarra, donde transcurre casi toda la peli, un micro-cosmos donde todo lo rige una mafia. A mí esto se me parece mucho al sistema marxista-leninista que le imponen los comunistas a la ciudadanía cuando se apoderan de un país. EL estado lo es todo y el pueblo, que ellos llaman la masa, tiene que obedecer, trabajar y callarse la boca. El trabajo no lleva a mejor vida, sino que es obligación para cumplir con las demandas del estado. El proletario bueno es el que…como hizo Mateus…se adapta y se une al patrón y así logra algunas recompensas. El que se resiste…el proletario malo…recibe castigos y más trabajo.

En este mundo, aberrado y horroroso, nada cambia, nada mejora. Aquí, construyendo el comunismo, siempre serás esclavo. Pero si vendes tu moral y tu cultura y te unes al partido/sistema y te conviertes en un sicario como Lucas, vivirás un poco mejor, pero jamas serás hombre libre. Los demás seguirán arrastrando sus cadenas.

Para mi 7 Prisioneros es una peli de propaganda. Se ve cómo, a través del condicionamiento operante, Mateus cambia y se convierte en un ser tan despreciable como Lucas. Me da la impresión que quieren decirnos que hay seres que deben ser esclavos y otros que tienen el derecho a esclavizarnos…

A little bit of you…

a piece of me.

Sweat breaks off our skin and we sprinkle the floor with the gin we drank in better days when we thought we were truly free.

No, it wasn’t honey, we toasted with bile and not champagne, no honey moon with us remained.

And it wasn’t freedom.

Shackled hands and shackled feet to the altar we were led by a glorious man of many wars a sailor tried and true, with voices pouring from his head that made us dream of youth…

A hefty chunk of you,

and a bit more of me,

leads us to days when we suffer dearly and crave to live one more second of laughter or a minute of tears.

Because if from you and from me there exists only shadows,

from me and from you there is nothing.

C.2021, Francisco Bravo Cabrera, 28 de noviembre 2021, València, España