Ivone Silva - Cubo

Uma fantástica rábula de Ivone Silva... BRILHANTE

Artigo do "The Independent" - Edição Online

Madonna: For the first time, her friends and lovers speak out
How did a destitute dance student become the princess of pop?
By Lucy O'Brien

She wasn't an overly charismatic personality. You'd never have guessed she'd become a world famous pop star. That's why it was so surprising to many of us when she became big. I remember going to the store and seeing her face on an album. I thought, 'Oh my God, that's her. I don't believe it!' Everyone was very shocked. How did she get to be there?" says Wyn Cooper, one of Madonna's former boyfriends and, in 1972, director of the first film she ever starred in, aged 14 – a short Super 8 student movie that featured her with a fried egg on her stomach.

"She was a little bit aloof. She took herself more seriously than most of us did at that age. She was a cheerleader, so that put her into the jock category, but she was also a free spirit and a thinker, so that made her more of a freak. She read more than your average high-school student," says Cooper, now a poet living in Vermont. He met Madonna when she was 14 and had just started at Adams High in their home town of Rochester, an affluent rural suburb just north of Detroit. He was in the year above, and quite struck by her. "I remember thinking, there's an interesting, pretty girl. She seemed kind of shy. We developed a friendship and hung out. I had a Mercury Capri with an eight-track tape player. Madonna and I would hop in the car, drive around and listen to [David Bowie's album] Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars while enjoying a little marijuana."

It is stories like these that fascinated me when I was writing a biography of Madonna. Having written books about Dusty Springfield, Annie Lennox, and a history of women in popular music, I was keen to get to the heart of one of our greatest living pop icons. I wanted to find out what really motivated her, how she had managed to achieve such extraordinary success – and in so doing, spoke to people close to her who've never spoken before. An intriguing picture emerged.

Madonna is the highest-earning female singer of all time, but contrary to the myth of the feisty alpha-female who danced her way to stardom, Madonna's early years show a complex personality and a more chequered path to success. Traumatised by the early death of her mother (who died of cancer when Madonna was five), she channelled her feelings of loss into a restless search for love and recognition. Madonna's primary means of expression was dance: "The thing that stood out was how well she could dance," recalls Cooper. "Everyone would get out of the way and watch her. She combined The Temptations with little syncopated routines, a cross between that and modern dance and Broadway musical. Her thing was a real mish-mash, but it worked."

Dance was a form of escapism. The eldest girl in a family of eight children, Madonna found home life difficult. Her father Tony Ciccone, a defence engineer for General Dynamics, worked long hours, and she didn't get on with her stepmother Joan. Required to change nappies and help with chores, Madonna doesn't recall this period as being much fun. "I resented it, because when all my friends were out playing, I felt like I had all these adult responsibilities... I saw myself as the quintessential Cinderella," she said.

Achievement and approval were important to her, but she also cultivated a rich inner life, and at 16 Madonna took a sudden left turn, drifting away from the school "jocks" to ballet, bohemianism and existentialism. "There was a real transformation," recalls former schoolfriend Kim Drayton. "In the sophomore year she was a cheerleader with smiles on her face and long hair; very attractive; then by her senior year she had short hair. She was in the thespian society, and she didn't shave her legs anymore, you know, like all of us did, and she didn't shave her armpits. Everyone was like, 'Oh, what happened to her?'."

Madonna, the stage persona, was an invention, a powerful projection fed by a childhood diet of Hollywood films, Broadway musicals and offbeat poetry. It was as if this fermented inside her for years until she found the right outlet. As soon as she started ballet with Christopher Flynn, a charismatic, gay dance teacher who ran classes in Rochester, Madonna's life took off. He encouraged her interest in the arts, taking her to concerts, art galleries and gay clubs in Detroit. "Madonna was a blank page, believe me, and she wanted desperately to be filled in," he once said.

Madonna's escapades in Detroit marked her out from her schoolmates. The race riots in 1967 had left the area in turmoil. Car manufacturing industries were beginning to pull out, and there were strong social divisions. " Detroit was a ' no-go area in the Seventies," recalls Drayton. " Back then, it was 'black people live in Detroit and you don't go there, you don't mix with those kind of people'. My grandparents lived in Woodward Avenue, at Nine Mile, and you were never allowed to go to Eight Mile. You know, Eminem's Eight Mile. That was the dividing line between white and black, between right or wrong."

Despite the prejudice that divided the city there was a rich musical cross pollination which later influenced Madonna's sound. Right back to her early childhood in the working class suburb of Pontiac, she had a strong interest in black style. She remembered dancing in backyards to Motown 45s with her black girlfriends. This later fuelled her dance-orientated pop music, and gave her the edge.

Madonna was still at school when she made her trips to Detroit gay clubs. In the early 1970s gay culture was taboo. "Just leaving Rochester, our safe little haven, and to see the world in Detroit's eyes, would be so different," says Drayton. For a Catholic girl raised in stultifying suburbia, the gay underground represented freedom and release.

"In school I felt like such a misfit ... I kept seeing myself through macho heterosexual eyes. Because I was a really aggressive woman, guys thought of me as a really strange girl. I didn't add up for them. I felt inadequate," Madonna told the US gay and lesbian magazine The Advocate in 1991. "And suddenly when I went to the gay club, I didn't feel that way any more. I had a whole new sense of myself."

In the mid-1970s, it was a subculture that was pre-Aids, yet buoyed up by Gay Liberation campaigns. In its hedonistic pursuit of pleasure there was a theatricality that captivated her and became one of her key reference points.

The main club that Flynn took Madonna to was Menjo's. Originally a ritzy supper club where Al Capone used to take his mistress, it opened as one of Detroit's premier gay night spots in December 1974. "It was the hottest dance club in the city. We were open seven days a week from noon to 2am, and there were always people waiting in line," recalls one of the co-founders, Randy Frank. "Madonna used to come here and act all crazy and giddy and dance around. She was the centre of attention. She didn't drink, she was just the life of the party. She was a cool chick. She had beautiful eyes. I remember her eyes – God, they were beautiful." She has described herself as a "gay man trapped in a woman's body" , motivated by the Hollywood sirens of high camp. At Menjo's she also discovered her yen for sexual freedom and experimentation.

Combining a driving energy with judicious application, Madonna won a dance scholarship to the University of Michigan in 1976. "She was a product of her environment," says Brian McCollum from the Detroit Free Press newspaper. "I've heard people say here, 'I knew a Madonna in high school. I knew somebody who had that personality and that attitude and that vibe." Madonna was to take the work ethic of Detroit and apply it to her showbusiness career. Detroit turned out many self-motivators because, according to songwriter Gardner Cole, a native from the area: "There was nothing to do. The winters are so brutally long there, unless you're into snow-mobiling or ice-fishing there's nothing to do but stay indoors. We called it 'wood-shedding'. Like if you were into music, you'd go into a room and keep playing and playing."

At university Madonna learned about Martha Graham, the "Picasso of modern dance", and Alvin Ailey, a black choreographer from Texas who combined ballet with African tribal dance. When she later went on to tear up those dancefloors in New York, Madonna wasn't doing the latest disco shuffle. She was a whirling dervish of all her influences: "I was Twyla Tharp, I was Alvin Ailey, I was Michael Jackson. I didn't care, I was free," she said. In her stage shows she was to return again and again to those sources of inspiration.

Impatient to get to "the centre of everything", in 1978 Madonna dropped out halfway through her course and went to New York. She scraped a living as a dancer and an artists' model before playing drums in a ska/pop band The Breakfast Club. By 1980 she had branched out to form her own act with boyfriend Steve Bray (later a producer on albums like True Blue and Like A Prayer). Despite this bold move, Madonna was floundering. She was living on her wits, relying on favours from friends and had no fixed address. After she became famous, Andy Warhol wrote in his diary: " Keith (Haring) said that when Madonna was sleeping on his couch, the stories he could write about people she had sex with..." And Bray remarked that being Madonna's boyfriend was a difficult job: "Some people are very upfront and some are like, 'You'll find out eventually you're not my boyfriend and that I'm seeing 12 other people.' That was more her approach. I learned not to count on her in that department."

Though desperate to make it, Madonna hadn't evolved a distinctive style. She was yet to come into her own as a songwriter. She sensed she needed a strong professional eye, someone to help her focus. And that person was Camille Barbone, who owned Gotham Records, the only recording studio in the Music Building where Madonna rehearsed. Madonna persuaded Barbone to come to a concert ( "She was very flirtatious. She knew I was a gay woman," says Barbone), and the latter was "blown away. She sparkled, in a very street way. Not fairy nymphette. It was hard and guttural and in your face. She very much typified the New York music scene."

Barbone became Madonna's manager, moved her into a new apartment and gave her a $100 a week salary. "Madonna had so much peripheral trash going on just to get what she needed to do her job. She was a street-savvy kid who'd pick up someone to go home with if she was hungry and needed a meal. That's how she survived. She was living in a hovel in a dangerous part of town. I wanted to give her a safe haven, because in a lot of ways she seemed wounded."

As a result, Barbone and the musicians she hired to play with Madonna became a surrogate family. They would joke and call her the Kid. "Did somebody feed the Kid today? She get's real grouchy if she doesn't eat."

Although Madonna likes to imply that she's always been a woman in control, much of her life in those early days was chaotic. Camille found herself taking charge of Madonna's ' dental appointments, cleaning up after her, and being on call during the night. "She'd call me at four in the morning, 'I can't sleep.' She'd show up at my door, 'Take me to a movie.' If she was hungry, I'd get her something to eat. I had to drive her around after a gig just to get her tired. She didn't want to miss anything."

Barbone and Madonna made a formidable team. It is interesting that it took a woman to see Madonna's real potential. "I was one of the few female managers around in a totally male industry. Men looked at Madonna as someone they wanted to bed as opposed to sign. My whole vibe in managing her was, 'You don't have to do that anymore. Let's do it based on the fact that you have a unique personality, you're an artist and you have so much to offer'," says Barbone. "I brought her into the mainstream music business in a way that she didn't have to fuck for it. I brought her credibility. Word got around that someone was investing money in her, someone with a studio and contacts. As a result, within the industry, they began to take her seriously too. "

Barbone knew it was important to surround Madonna with strong musical collaborators. "If you gave this one the tools, she used 'em. She'd milk the musicians' brains. They'd rehearse four times a week, and they went on stage tighter than hell."

Madonna was the first of a new breed of 1980s female artists; fusing punk attitude with a cartoon sexuality, and taking it a step further into the pop mainstream. "My role models were people like Debbie Harry and Chrissie Hynde. Strong, independent women who wrote their own music and evolved on their own," Madonna said. "They gave me courage."

Even though she had hip New York devotees, when she started out Madonna mainly attracted an enthusiastic crowd of teenage girls. They were responding to an honest, flesh-and-blood woman rather than some remote goddess. "Her hair was brown, all spiked up, and she wore the crucifix and accessories. She was a little plump, she wasn't chiselled in the way she became later," says her then-guitarist Jon Gordon. Barbone remembers that the female fans were the key to Madonna's initial breakthrough. Girls started to imitate her, wearing a scarf in the same way, fishnet stockings with pumps, errant costume jewellry, or paint-splattered chinos. "They wanted to be like her because she was the free spirit in their minds. They admired what she was possessed by."

Madonna recorded a demo, but when a deal failed to materialise, Barbone was unceremoniously dumped. The aspiring star was 24 years old, and already felt that life was passing her by. Barbone then felt hugely betrayed, but is philosophical now. "I didn't have enough juice to get her to the next level," she says simply. After leaving Barbone, Madonna was back to decrepit rehearsal studios and hustling for a deal. By this time, though, she had gained valuable live experience and had a vibrant network of clubbing friends and industry contacts. She went to the centre of alternative New York nightlife, which was focused first on the Mudd Club, and then on The Danceteria, a four-floor club located on 21st Street. It was here that she met Mark Kamins, party DJ for Talking Heads, and a roving A& R man for Island Records. When the Danceteria opened, he was there with cult British DJ Shaun Cassette, with a playlist from the Pop Group to James Brown, Grace Jones and Kraftwerk.

"New York was so musically creative then," Kamins says. "The late 1970s was a very bad time. The Bronx was burning. There was no work. We were political, but there was nothing to motivate us other than music. There were no rules. Musically everybody experimented and wanted to try something new. The Danceteria was a very special place, like Warhol's Factory." Sade worked behind the bar, Keith Haring and the Beastie Boys were bus-boys, LL Cool J was the lift operator.

"It was one of those places where we lived. When the club closed, Keith went to the subway and painted his little figures until we opened the club at noon and started cleaning. He lived at the Danceteria, we all lived there. It was more than a club. Everybody there was doin' something."

To many of the "in-crowd" Madonna was outré. "She seemed like this girl from out-of-state who wasn't totally in the know yet," said artist Futura 500, while another Danceteria regular claimed: " She'd do outrageously stupid things. Like there was a girl who worked at the Danceteria who had a really striking style and wore her hair a certain way. One day Madonna came in with her hair cut and dyed the exact same way. We'd say, 'Is she nuts?' She says she ate out of trash cans, that she felt lonely – there was no reason to feel lonely, it was such a supportive scene, it was a community, but Madonna was so competitive!"

Madonna wasn't totally accepted by the downtown crowd, but she didn't care. She was happy just to soak up the creative energy. One night she approached Kamins' DJ booth with a demo of "Everybody", a song she'd been working on with Steve Bray, "I threw it on the cassette," says Kamins, "and it worked." He shrugs his shoulders. "I'm not sayin' the place went crazy, but it worked." Madonna became his girlfriend, and they moved into a small lat on the Upper East Side. "We had no money and we were sleeping on milk crates. She wasn't a home-maker," he remembered. "To Madonna, a boy friend was secondary to her career." Via Kamins, Madonna was offered a $15,000 two-singles deal by Sire Records – nothing spectacular – but it gave her the opportunity she'd dreamed of.

The recording session for "Everybody" took place in the summer of 1982 in Blank Tape studios. "Everybody" combines Madonna's irrepressible treble with locked-down bass and drums. It was a song that Fab Five Freddy from Grandmaster Flash said he heard on a boom box hauled down the street by two Puerto Rican teenagers. It was hip. The track sets the blueprint for future Madonna songs, with her voice direct and cajoling over the beat. It's as if she is on the dancefloor, aware of everyone in the room – who wants to dance, who doesn't, who's about to, who's shy and who's not. She invites people to play. She gives them permission.

By the mid-1980s Madonna had achieved nine hit singles and the global fame she had always wanted. Former Danceteria DJ Johnny Dynell remembers going to the supermarket one day and seeing her on the cover of Life magazine. " Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. It almost knocked me out," he says. "Oh my God, I thought, the bitch did it. It's not the Village Voice, it's the cover of Life. For a long time I thought of her as the same as us, but then I realised: 'Oh my God, she's a millionaire. she's rich she's done it'." From the moment "Everybody" became her first hit, for Madonna, there was no turning back.

Lucy O'Brien's book 'Madonna: Like an Icon' is out now, published by Bantam Press (£18.99)

E COMO TODOS OS DIAS MATAMOS DIANA ALEGREMENTE

Fernanda Câncio
jornalista

Nunca me contei entre as fãs de Diana de Gales. Não me tocou a história da rapariga espigadota e tímida que casou com o príncipe muitos anos mais velho e que acabaria por se divorciar, dois herdeiros e ene peripécias pouco edificantes depois. Interessou-me, no entanto, a construção do mito - que precedeu a sua morte -, a forma como contribuiu para erodir de forma irreversível a imagem da monarquia e interessou-me a sua complexa relação com os media.

E, sobretudo, interessou-me a tragédia. Uma tragédia que parecia ter sido anunciada, de tão exacta no simbolismo. Lembro-me da manhã em que acordei para a notícia, de como estranhamente me comoveu, a mim que não sentia nada por Diana, de como me pareceu mentira de tão caricatural. Lembro-me também da longa discussão que se seguiu, ao longo de meses, sobre o papel dos media na morte de uma das suas maiores estrelas, das propostas, no Reino Unido, de um "código de conduta", dos protestos de que nada nunca mais seria igual, que nunca mais se perseguiria ou exploraria de modo tão cruel a imagem ou a vida privada de alguém.

Dez anos depois, aquilo que nos parecia, de Portugal, uma realidade distante e estrangeira - a proliferação do cor-de-rosa, a tabloidização de toda a informação - chegou em todo o seu esplendor. O "acordo de cavalheiros" que foi prometido no pós-Diana, a ideia piedosa da auto-regulação, o primado do bom senso e do respeito pelas pessoas, onde é que isso vai. O caso Maddie - que não por acaso foi comparado, no Reino Unido, em impacto e adesão popular, ao de Diana -, demonstra, caso houvesse dúvidas, a obscenidade da noção prevalecente do que faz sentido publicar. Durante meses, assistimos, nos media britânicos e portugueses, a uma histeria que, incrivelmente, subsiste. Todos os dias saem "notícias" contraditórias e infundamentadas que mais não são que palpites: o sangue é dela, não é dela, é de um homem, "afinal não se sabe". Ela morreu, foi raptada, foi drogada, houve um acidente, os pais estão inocentes, os pais estão metidos na marosca, o Murat é um malandro, o Murat é uma vítima, a PJ é óptima, a PJ não presta para nada. Anunciam-se "buscas" antes de ocorrerem, "prováveis detenções" que não acontecem, fritam-se hoje os mártires/heróis de ontem e vice-versa. Uma alegria. Interessa lá que estejam a decorrer investigações, interessa lá que esteja em causa uma criança de 4 anos, interessa lá que a publicação de tanta falsidade evidencie o quão afastados os media andam da sua suposta missão de informar e esclarecer, interessa lá que haja gente inocente a ser enxovalhada e perseguida, interessa lá que se destruam vidas. Não, nunca saímos do túnel de Alma. Ainda lá estamos, pé no acelerador, atrás de Diana, sempre com a bela desculpa de que se não formos nós, outros serão. Porque elas, as Dianas, "vendem". E toda a gente compra.

Diário de Notícias - 24/08/07

O Melhor de "Bandeira"

Promoção às três Comédias da Companhia Teatral do Chiado em cena no Teatro-Estúdio Mário Viegas - CTT - CHIADO

A Próxima Grande Produção da Companhia Teatral do Chiado

A Bíblia: Toda a Palavra de Deus (Sintetizada)

(The Bible: The Complete Word of God (abridged))
de Reed Martin, Austin Tichenor, Adam Long (os mesmos do ENORME êxito As Obras Completas de William Shakespeare em 97 Minutos, em cena há 12 anos na Companhia Teatral do Chiado)

A Bíblia: Toda a Palavra de Deus (sintetizada) - eis o título da nova produção da Companhia Teatral do Chiado, um espectáculo de comédia hilariante, dirigido e encenado por Juvenal Garcês, que promete pôr todos os portugueses a rir a bandeiras despregadas. Da autoria de Adam Long, Reed Martin e Austin Tichenor, este espectáculo resulta duma leitura muito particular dos textos da Bíblia e apresenta uma versão condensada dos principais episódios narrados nos livros bíblicos, do Génesis ao Apocalipse. Sem nunca perderem o humor, João Craveiro, Paulo Duarte Ribeiro e Tobias Monteiro encarnam, numa velocidade de cortar a respiração, as cenas mais emblemáticas da Bíblia, da criação do Homem ao sacrifício de Isaac por Abraão, do dilúvio e da Arca de Noé aos milagres de Jesus Cristo, passando pelo duelo entre David e Golias, Moisés e as Tábuas dos Mandamentos e a viagem dos Reis Magos, entre muitos outros.

De uma irreverência e comicidade inigualáveis, num estilo a que Juvenal Garcês e a Companhia Teatral do Chiado vêm habituando desde há muito o seu público, este espectáculo oferece uma reflexão condimentada de muito humor sobre algumas das questões suscitadas pelos textos sagrados e pelo Cristianismo, desmistificando sem desrespeitar, parodiando sem satirizar. Este espectáculo pede do público o que o teórico da comédia Neil Schaeffer descreve como uma suspensão das regras segundo as quais vivemos: as leis da natureza, as restrições da moralidade, o pensamento lógico, as exigências da racionalidade. O que A Bíblia (sintetizada) pede, à semelhança aliás do êxito As Obras Completas de William Shakespeare em 97 Minutos, da mesma equipa de autores, é, pois, uma suspensão da seriedade e uma entrega sem pudores ao discurso humorístico da obra, à genialidade da encenação e à irrepreensível qualidade das interpretações.

Interpretação: João Craveiro, Paulo Duarte Ribeiro, Tobias Monteiro
Encenação: Juvenal Garcês
Tradução: Célia Mendes, Patrícia Marques
Dramaturgia: João Craveiro, Juvenal Garcês, Paulo Duarte Ribeiro, Tobias Monteiro
Cenografia: Ana Brum
Figurinos: Ana Brum
Música: João Craveiro, Paulo Duarte Ribeiro
Desenho de Luz: Vasco Letria
Desenho de Som: Sérgio Silva
Adereços: Ana Brum
Contra-Regra: Ana Brum, Bruno Monteiro
Produção: Companhia Teatral do Chiado
Direcção de Produção: Luís Macedo
Marketing e Comunicação: Nuno Santos
Frente de Casa: Bruno Monteiro
Responsável de Bilheteira: Bruno Monteiro
Bilheteira: Cátia João, Mafalda Melo
Página na Internet da CTC: Bruno Monteiro

Local: Teatro-Estúdio Mário Viegas
Em cena a partir de 2007-09-20
Horário: Quintas, Sextas e Sábados, às 21h

Classificação: M/12

Uma comédia de bradar aos céus!!! Bilhetes já à venda!!!

BLOG: http://www.abibliasintetizada.blogspot.com/

Cartão de Aniversário enviado pela minha Avó.

"Querido Zé:

É nêste super-pimba cartão que te venho enviar um grande beijo de parabéns e os meus votos sinceros de muita saúde, felicidades e de tudo o que a vida tem de bom.

Vai essa notita para lhe dares o rumo que entenderes... e não vais muito longe! - Nós por cá estamos nesta santa monotonia, apropriada para a minha provecta idade e para o temperamento algo idoso do tio João.

Antes de almoço há um agradável encontro no café. Está o Luiz Cesár e o seu "escritório" ou seja, todos os jornais do dia, papeis, esferográficas e... longe da Sôtera e das confusões do Hotel! Aparece a tua mãe, a Conceição (do Luiz Carvalhas), a Guida, etc. À tarde, está calor e ficamos em casa. Leio 3 livros ao mesmo tempo. Levanto-me cêdo e venho ler a Divina Comédia - o Inferno de Dante. É terrível e morro de medo. À tarde, para amenisar, leio as Cartas de Inglaterra do Eça e à noite não dispenso um policial. Assim se vai passando o tempo.

Armados em turistas fomos passar um dia a Viseu para vermos o Museu depois das obras, fomos passar o outro dia a Aveiro para vermos (revermos) o túmulo de Sta. Joana, a Sé, etc, e acabou a excursão a três (o João, eu e o taxista) num bom almoço na Costa Nova. Enfim, vai-se vivendo menos mal!

Que trapalhada de escrita!

Mais um afectuoso beijo da avó muito amiga

Maria Eduarda

Sta. Cruz 9-8-07"

Michelangelo Antonioni

Michelangelo Antonioni morreu aos 94 anos
O cineasta italiano Michelangelo Antonioni morreu segunda-feira na sua casa de Roma, aos 94 anos, disse hoje fonte familiar à agência Ansa

O realizador faleceu «tranquilamente, na sua poltrona, tendo ao seu lado a mulher, Enrica Fico», referiu a fonte à agência noticiosa italiana Ansa.

O corpo estará quarta-feira em câmara ardente na Câmara Municipal de Roma, estando o funeral marcado quinta-feira em Ferrara, no norte de Itália, onde o realizador nasceu em 29 de Setembro de 1912.

«Com Antonioni morre não só um dos maiores realizadores, mas também um mestre da modernidade», declarou hoje o presidente da câmara de Roma, Walter Veltroni, num comunicado.

Cineasta da incomunicabilidade ou da dificuldade de viver e amar, dirigiu duas dezenas de filmes, entre os quais Escândalo de Amor (1950) e O Grito (1957), a trilogia constituída por A Aventura (1960), A Noite (1961) e O Eclipse (1962), e ainda O Grito (1957), O Deserto Vermelho (1964), Blow-up (1966), ou Identificação de uma Mulher (1982).

Consagrado internacionalmente, ganhou o Leão de Ouro da Bienal de Veneza em 1964, com O Deserto Vermelho, a Palma de Ouro do Festival de Cannes em 1967 com Blow-up, o Prémio Especial do Júri de Cannes com Identificação de uma Mulher em 1982, um Óscar de Hollywood pelo conjunto da sua carreira em 1955 e também um Leão de Ouro pela carreira em Veneza, em 1997.

Tinha dificuldade em deslocar-se e em falar devido a um acidente vascular cerebral que sofreu em 1985.

Fonte: Sol.pt

INGMAR BERGMAN - 1918 - 2007

Morreu Ingmar Bergman

Cineasta sueco tinha 89 anos

O realizador de cinema Ingmar Bergman morreu aos 89 anos em sua casa, na ilha sueca de Faarö (Gotland), anunciou hoje a filha Eva Bergman à agência sueca TT.

Ingmar Bergman morreu "calma e pacificamente" anunciou Eva Bergman, sem no entanto precisar as causas exactas da sua morte nem a data.

Segundo o jornal sueco Dagens Nyeter, o cineasta morreu hoje de manhã, por volta das 7h00 (6h00 em Lisboa). Corriam há vários meses rumores persistentes sobre a degradação do seu estado de saúde.

Homem do cinema e do teatro

Nascido a 14 de Julho de 1918 em Uppsala, a norte de Estocolmo, Ingmar Bergman realizou ao longo da sua extensa carreira mais de 40 filmes, entre os quais se destacam "Um Verão de Amor" (1951), "O Sétimo Selo" (1957), "Morangos Silvestres" (1957), "Em Busca da Verdade" (1961), "Lágrimas e Suspiros" (1972) "Sonata de Outono" (1978) "Fanny e Alexander" (1982) ou "Saraband" (2003).

Além da sua obra cinematográfica, Bergman foi durante toda a vida um homem de teatro, tendo encenado numerosas peças, nomeadamente as do seu ídolo de juventude, August Strindberg.

A sua carreira começou no teatro nos anos 40 com um estágio de encenação na Ópera de Estocolmo e em 1960 foi contratado como encenador pelo prestigiado Dramaten, o Teatro real de arte dramática.

Foi no entanto o cinema o seu meio de expressão de eleição. "Fazer filmes é para mim um instinto, uma necessidade como comer, beber ou amar", declarou em 1945.

Em 1955 alcançou o seu primeiro êxito internacional com a comédia "Sorrisos de uma noite de Verão", mas a partir do final dessa década os seus filmes tornaram-se cada vez mais sombrios, mostrando casais em crise ou seres amargurados pela ausência de Deus.

Cineasta das mulheres, como alguns o consideravam, proporcionará os seus mais belos papéis a actrizes como Maj Britt Nilsson, Harriet Andersson, Eva Dahlbeck, Ulla Jacobsson e Liv Ullmann. Teve aventuras amorosas com várias das suas actrizes, casou-se cinco vezes e teve nove filhos.

Tratado durante muito tempo com indiferença na Suécia, só muito recentemente foi reconhecido como um grande mestre do cinema no seu país, sendo agora atribuído um Prémio Bergman aos jovens talentos do cinema durante a cerimónia sueca equivalente aos Óscares.

Na opinião de Woody Allen, Bergman era "provavelmente o maior artista do cinema desde a invenção da máquina de filmar".

Fonte: SIC

Alegria dos 30 anos

(Início)

(Meio)

Cá estou eu. Faltam 20 dias para festejar os meus 30 anos de existência. Discreta presença. Frustrada sobrevivência.

Nada do que idealizei para a minha terceira dezena de vida se concretizou.

Continuo a viver em casa dos pais. Cómodo... mas triste, quase humilhante. A minha mãe sempre disse que nunca quereria um filho a viver em casa parental depois de os mesmos completarem 30 anos. Era malinha à porta de casa e OUT. Ora, eu sou o 4º filho de 6 (daí este discurso supostamente cruel de uma mãe). Já sairam os 3 mais velhos antes da trintena e a 5ª filha sairá também antes de a completar. Quanto a mim, sempre pensei que abandonaria o conforto uterino (metaforicamente falando) a tempo. Imaginei-me a viver em muitos sítios bonitos, de aspecto saudável, integro... E agora?! Agora, até pensões no Martim Moniz me passam pela cabeça.

Chego aos 30 sem uma relação amorosa. Costuma-se dizer que "mais vale só que mal acompanhado". Não é pelo meu ódio aos ditos populares, sempre cheios de uma sabedoria saloia (tão útil quanto os escritos da Paula Bobone, as amarguradas recordações de infância de uma Filomena Mónica ou as experiências - de qualquer ordem - de Margarida Villa Nova com os aborígenes australianos), que refuto a veracidade de tal ensinamento "à la" Zé Povinho. Afinal o que me resta? Abraçar a minha almofada que tão achatada está dos 30 anos que já leva a apoiar a minha cabeça, noite após noite, dia após dia (isto ao Domingo, claro!)? E por falar nisso, ver se peço à minha mãe que a torne a encher de penas ou esponja... quem sabe se assim não dura mais uns 30 anos.

E porque amar é viver, e viver sem amar é coisa que não consigo, lá tenho que vasculhar na minha parte cardiaca uma réstia de um amor não realizado ou passado, para assim me puder lamentar da minha pouca sorte e arranjar um álibi para andar tísico pelas ruas até que apareça uma nova paixão que me distraia e me faça andar tontinho por aí, de sorriso nos lábios e triunfo no olhar.

Ponto da situação: Vive ainda em casa dos pais e não tem relação.

Relativamente ao trabalho gosto do que faço, o que já não é mau. De qualquer forma não me importava de mudar para algo diferente. O problema é chegar aos 10+10+10 anos a passar recibos verdes - que dão uma trabalheira imensa -, a descontar 150 euros de segurança social que, convenhamos, de seguro tem pouco e de social quase nada, dar ao Estado 200 euros mensais e ainda por cima não ter férias para aí há uns 3 anos (no mínimo)... já não tenho idade.

Bem feitas as contas, estou a meio caminho da minha morte, se ela não me vier ceifar mais cedo. Reconheco que estou a meio do meu trajecto para a "final curtain" por culpa minha... fumo muito, desporto nem vê-lo, vivam os doces com muito açucar e a almoçar muitas vezes no refeitório da Biblioteca Nacional, saúde é que coisa que não posso ter por muito mais tempo. Provavelmente trata-se de um suicidio lento e inconsciente (ou talvez não) que estou a cometer na ânsia de abreviar tudo isto. De qualquer forma, suicida ou kamikaze, é muito deprimente que se chegue a meio da vida (segundo os meus cálculos) a dormir em casa dos pais, sem um namoro ou perspectivas de o ter e a passar recibos verdes.

Do ponto de vista estético não tenho nada a apontar. As rugas para já não me incomodam, os cabelos brancos já são mais que muitos e até muito bem-vindos. Não é pelo charme que supostamente trazem os cabelos brancos que o digo. É sim pelo desespero que tenho de ser levado a sério por alguém, seja na rua ou lojas, seja no emprego, em casa ou na Mexicana.

Pergunta: De tudo isto, o que me valem os 15 anos a multiplicar por 2 que vou fazer?

Resposta: Valem muito.

Valem a família que tenho e as amizades que fiz; valem os livros que li, as músicas que ouvi, os espectáculos que já vi; valem por tudo aquilo que vivi e aquilo que ficou por viver; valem pelos medos, as alegrias, as desilusões e as conquistas por que passei; valem as gargalhadas, as lágrimas, os soluços e as palmas que dei; valem pelos que vi nascer, crescer ou morrer; valem cada abraço, beijo, murro ou estalo que espetei; valem cada abraço, beijo, murro ou estalo que me espetaram; valem por cada memória ou por cada esquecimento; valem muito de mim mas, mais ainda, valem tudo dos outros.