love, ani xo

everything you ever wanted to know about uruguay. right here. right now.


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Tuesday, September 12, 2006

carlos liscano

I posted an entry a few months ago on the uruguayan writer carlos liscano who was a political prisoner during the military dictatorship of the 70's and 80's in uruguay. he wrote a book called truck of fools about the 13 years that he spent tortured in a uruguayan prison. i noticed that the vancouver library didn't have this book so i made a request for them to purchase it and they did! i was the first person to borrow it, and i tried reading it but couldn't finish. mostly because it's too depressing and i don't know if the translation is that good. or maybe it's the writing that isn't too inspiring. i'm returing it soon, so if you live in vancouver and you're interested in this book you can borrow it.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

60's-70's Uruguayan music on CITR

Here's the track listing for today's show.

1- Los Encadenados - Es Dificil Callar
2- Los Shakers - Brak it all
3- Los Mockers - Let me try again
4- Los Delfines - 2 blind mice
5- Kano y los bulldogs - Sobre un vidrio mojado
6- OVNI 87 - Sueno un camino
7- Los Campos - Mi reino bajo el sol
8- Opus Alfa - Calma de un dia
9- Dias de blues - Vuela
10-Totem - Orejas
11-Psiglo - Es Inutil
12-Las Hojas - Your mother really doesn't appreciate too much our friendship but I don't mind
(something happened and track 13 didn't make it on the show) so now i'm making it available to download.
13-Genesis - En la ventana de un bar
14-Elegia - Destema

Books on 60's-70's Uruguayan rock: De la cuevas al solis by Fernando Peláez Bruno

The Magic Land A guide to Beat, Psychedelic and Progressive Rock music between 1966 & 1977 in Argentina and Uruguay.

Uruguayan Rock sites:
UruRock
Progresiva 70's
Uruguayan Rock on Wikipedia

On YouTube:
Los Mockers
Paint it Black
All the time
What a life
Don't go away
Oh Baby (We Got a Good Thing Goin')
Break it all

Urbano Moraes
Interview on TV Ciudad, Montevideo Talking about the 60s and 70s rock in Uruguay and his career playing with The Knacks, El Kinto, Rubén Rada and Eduardo Mateo and your solo albums.


If you live in Uruguay and are in a band or play music on your own, send me an email: iheartani at gmail.com
I'm working on a radio show of new Uruguayan music.

Saturday, July 29, 2006

the uruguayan invasion

i found this blog today with an entry about the uruguayan music invasion of the 60's. it's great to know that americans are writing and loving uruguay.

Thursday, July 27, 2006

ruido screening at the latin american film festival in vancouver!

i just finished translating an interview that oswaldo perez conducted with the director of ruido the interview will be in spanish in the next issue of la vanguardia de vancouver.

by oswaldo perez

You're going to enter into the mind of uruguayan filmmaker marcelo bertalmio, director of the black comedy Ruido which will screen during the latin american film festival at the pacific cinemateque on september 7th at 9:30pm.

ruido centers around a man living in poverty who seems to be getting into lots of bad luck. his wife is unfaithful, His bosses were jerks, classist assholes. At the end, he was in one of those dead end puzzles, an infinite labirynth that overwhealms him and makes him think of a desperate solution. He moves in a different world that isn't cruel. This is where the situational comedy becomes a little surreal and sends basilio on a trip that will make him revalue his life. The acting is brilliant, the music is amazing and the humour is light while touching on themes that are inherent in the depths of human psychology. this is what describes en existencial comedy for head bangers while at the same time could also be accessible to the whole public. a well made film from marcelo bertamio, one of the emerging uruguayan directors who's communicating through the language of celluloid. Coming up next is a window to his mind.

where do you live? how did you get the financing?

i live in barcelona and the financing was a very long and difficult process. with the help of our producer, natacha lópez, between 2001-2004, she was able to get 2 grants and attracted producers from argentina and spain.


why do you call it an existencial comedy for head bangers?

i noticed that with my head banger friends, i rarely went to see existencial films from bergman, antonioni or dreyer. our film is between kiarostami and bud spencer.

talk to me about the soundtrack

the original music is from maximiliano silveira, a uruguayan composer who did some excellent work. the existing songs are, with the exception of one, from uruguayan bands, that with my understanding, represent the local scene: motosierra, the supersonicos, astroboy and max capote. the only song that isn't uruguayan is manplanet, a band from minneapolis that unfortunately broke up 2 years ago.

what are the symbols of ruido? i see that there's a few clear ones like the noise inspector, but there should be others that arent's so obvious.

unfortunately we had to omit all the symbolisms in the shooting because different events were complicating things: the rain, 3 sunsets, the beach full of locusts...

how did you get the ideas for the film? walking down the beach, thinking of a crab's immortality, sleeping in a truck? in other words, how did you get inspired and how long did it take to turn an initial idea to the final production?

ruido has a few central ideas that came to me in different ways. the noise inspector is based on a friend's adventure, fernando acasuso, who really works as a noise inspector in montevideo. i don't remember where the patients came from, but i'm sure it doesn't come from fernando. the development of all these ideas as a script took me 9 months. writing in various neighborhood cafés.

what would you do if you only had one day to live?

answer questions for la vanguardia de vancouver!

in this chaotic industrialization that we live in, do you believe that human beings spend most of their time doing things that we hate, wasting time and forgetting to enjoy life? ruido is like giving you advice. or what is the moral of the story if there is one?

I agree with you, but ruido isn't a movie with a moral: it's made to tell a story and to make the viewer feel something and identify with the characters, but i don't want to show a certain point of view.

what is your definition of black humour in latin america?

i don't know. there's very little of it i think. i don't know if there’s much of it for that matter. what i like the most is the magazine "barcelona: european solutions for argentinian problems". edited in buenos aires. for me, black humour is garcía berlanga, one of my favourite directors.

what can we expect from uruguayan cinema in the next few years after all these excellent productions lately?

we can expect more excellent productions or on the contrary to not live up to our expectations.

what are your next projets?

a feature film entitled "1983". a comedy about military intelligence during the uruguayan dictatorship in the year 1983.

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

montevideo street art


artist: santiago

more from montevideo from crazi cow art's flickr. i remember seeing his gorilla head stencil on 18 de julio.

and dav's flickr

some stencils from argentina from nazza with links to other sites.

Thursday, July 06, 2006

sad news for uruguayan cinema

i just found out through my aunt in montevideo, that juan pablo rebella, one of the directors of 25 watts and whisky commited suicide today at 4am. he was 32.


juan pablo rebella on the right with co-director pablo stoll

i found this article in spanish.

it says that his body was found by his girlfriend and pablo stoll. both 25 watts and whisky are considered the 2 best films in uruguayan history. both films received many awards. they've been working on a script for the next film. he was born in 1974 and studied in a catholic university where he started working with pablo stoll. the news of his death is a surprise and it's leaving a void to anyone close to the culture of our country. words cannot describe the personal sadness of this loss.

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

uruguayan artist showing in seattle

"Born in Uruguay and living in New York, Marco Maggi is known for ambitious installations made from thousands of reams of paper, stacked, scattered, and slumped about the gallery. The reams have minute incisions on their surfaces and the flaps of paper are bent into delicate arches and some bewilderingly complex architectural forms. The overall effect is of a cross between the ancient ruins of pre-Columbian civilizations and computer circuitry, suggesting the growing obsolescence of paper in communication. The scores of blank pages alternately serve as reminders of potential expression. Maggi has exhibited nationally and internationally, including biennials in Korea, Havana, Sao Paulo, and is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, and many noted private collections."

unfortunately this show ended a few days ago. i got to see it while i was in seattle.

at the howard house



some other examples of his work here

his cv

art and feminism in uruguay

an article i found in an old issue of flash art. nov/dec. 1993

by ana tiscornia

"although we have known for some time that women had little to do with the contemporary formulation of the idea of art, it should be noted that feminist theory still has not defined its own terms on the subject. the parameters identifying relevance in an artistic construction continue to be those hegemonically established by men, although some attempts have been made by feminists to compensate for the unilateral view.

in this context, an exhibition of women artists at the galeria del notoriado in montevideo, organized by cotidiano mujer magazine, should be highlighted. the curatorial criterion may seem unrelated to art, since it presented work by the artist positions but rather the fact of belonging to the same non governmental institution. one of the pluses of the unusual selection though, was the simultaneous presentation of works by experienced and new artists.

with the installations by nelbia romero, incresasingly emphatic of a conceptual direction, the photographs by diana mines, a pioneer of artistic experiments with the camera, lucy duarte's paintings, which remain loyal to her own neo-expressionism, the journalistic photographs recontextualized by nancy urrutia, and the innovative works by younger artists, a wide spectrum of ideas emerged. tihs unique, inexpensive exhibition proved wrong the director of montevideo's museo de artes visuales, who told a foreign critic 2 years ago, "there are no important women artists in uruguay."

other 1993 events confirming the fallacy of the official, male position on the subject of women artists in uruguay, includes the success of the uruguayan representative at the venice biennale,, agueda dicancro, whose work was celebrated by the press. (dicancro had represented uruguay at the sao paulo biennial a few years earlier with similar success). also, the painter claudia anselmi has been selected by japan as the only uruguayan to participate in osala's painting triennal."