FIL 2015, Guadalajara, Mexico

In a previous article it's mentioned how Mexico has established policies and programs to overcome its low levels of readership. One of those initiatives is the Feria Internacional del Libro (FIL), or International Book Fair in English, a nine-day exhibit scheduled yearly at the end of November. Since 1993, the FIL has facilitated a link between authors, publishing houses and readers, placing books at the center of many cultural happenings that seek to attract the attention of locals as well as visitors, and has been consolidated as the most ambitious fair for the publishing industry in Spanish language after the Buenos Aires event of the same name. It’s estimated that the 2014 edition was visited by 760,000 people, and the number is expected to grow this year.

Guadalajara FIL’s scope is not limited to Hispanic culture, as yearly editions have had as guests other language speaking countries or “cultural zones”, such as Canada, Germany, Italy, Brazil, the United States, Israel and the United Kingdom (guest of 2015), promoting their culture with an emphasis on literature, but not limited to it. The U.K.’s cultural offerings include the island’s prestigious education services, in coordination with its permanent representation in Mexico, The British Council; as well as visual arts exhibits, cinema presentations, theater and other performance spectacles, such as jazz and folk concerts.

The U.K.’s publishing industry is pushing a challenging program at the FIL this year, with the inclusion of comics and the graphic novel in discussion panels. British storyteller Karrie Fransman is one of the guests whose narrative about a Middle-Eastern refugee across Europe will bring forward an expected discussion about this social phenomena that’s rapidly changing the course of History and Geopolitics. Fransman’s comics are narrated with great empathy from the point of view of a teenager who not only is forced to leave his homeland, but also encounters enormous difficulties in his way through Europe.

This positions comics as a privileged and necessary platform for slow-paced reflection and solidarity, in opposition to the celerity and almost sensationalist logic of news outlets in electronic media. She will be talking with one of Mexico’s renowned comics author, Bernardo Fernández, “BEF”, in one of the most exciting panels of the FIL, as well as offering a workshop on comics-making for youngsters aged 13-18, and a collaborative drawing experiment (a “slam”) with artists Ed Vere, Valeria Gallo and Abril Castillo.

The U.K.’s focus on literature has other equally exciting panels of debate that will range from the intersection between literature and popular culture, to the current perspectives on race, class and sexuality that enrich the interpretation of literature. Philippa Gregory, who’s been called “the queen of British historical fiction”, and whose novels have been adapted to very popular television shows such as The Tudors or The Wise Woman. A Respectable Trade, will be having a conversation with Welsh author Joseph Dunthorne and Mexican writer Guadalupe Nettel on the subject of love, and she’ll be talking about History and Fiction in a dedicated panel with writers Joanne Harris and Cortina Butler.

Iain Sinclair will be discussing the centrality of London in his work, while internationally acclaimed author Irvine Welsh will share a panel –and maybe a pint– with the famously irreverent writer and publisher Guillermo Fadanelli, in what promises to gather lots of attention from the public. Identity issues and literature are scheduled to be discussed by Brits Joanne Harris, Ned Beauman, Sunjeev Sahota and Nick Barley. It will be interesting to see how British authors have received well-established subgenres from the Latin American tradition, specifically the Magic Realism, which will be pondered in a panel conducted by Mexican writer Alberto Chimal.

The conversation about literature in all its forms, from the traditional printed book to its relation with videogames, poetry as performance and the practice of blogging, will seal this year’s FIL dedicated to the United Kingdom. There’s more to come, though:

Musical activities keep gaining more space at the FIL. Many genres are covered: Aurora chamber Orchestra will play their versions of English icon John Lennon; Indie rock band Spector, named after the legendary music producer from the 60s Phil Spector, is scheduled for a concert, as well as three groups of contemporary Scottish, Northern Irish and Welsh folk: bands Sam Lee & Jon Whitten, Jarlath Henderson & Hamish Napier, and Peatbog Faeries. The popular Cinematic Orchestra will be one of the last acts, playing their classics and new material. The music representation will also include a jazz band formed in England by Gary Crosby. Jazz Jamaica is one of Britain’s best fusions of Caribbean rhythms.

The Cinema section presents 11 films of various genres, most of them released in 2014 or this year, such as Carol Morley’s The Falling or the upbeat documentary Pride by Matthew Warchus. These recent pictures will be presented next to two classics: John Baptist Lucius Noel’s Epic of Everest (1924) and Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lodger (1927), one of his early silent films that has been digitally restored by the British Film Institute and will be accompanied by live music, in the second presentation of this cinematic jewel, after its 2014 presentation in Mexico City.

The visual arts have a very diverse representation, with polemic artist David Shrigley showing his sardonic Lose Your Mind exhibition, consisting of sculptures, prints, drawings, oils and video-animation. George Blacklock and Gary Oldman’s duo Slipping Glimpsers have a multimedia project that’s gathered plenty of attention in the U.K.

Fashion designer Amanda Watkins will present her work with local children of Mexico’s Monterrey city “Cholombianos”, and finally Words and Pictures is a British Council collection that includes work by David Hockney. All these cultural activities are followed by discussion panels that seek to link science and literature, as well as talks by personalities who’ve had important academic experiences in the island, such as the ex rector of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, José Narro.

To complete FIL 2015, there are more than 70 activities that include book presentations and signings, colloquia, prizes, tributes and mentions, panels on politics, sciences, comics, political cartoons, elections, journalism, forums for book publishers, digital editions workshops and a special section for children and youngsters.

Particular authors and Latin American countries will have their own small sections-panels, such as the Julio Cortázar chair, or the Seamus Heaney and the Salvador Elizondo roundtables. Small South American country Uruguay always has a significant presence and on this occasion, a panel will be set up to discuss new authors and tendencies in what is one of the region’s richest literary countries. Quebec has an important representation as well: there are three panels dedicated to new tendencies in dramaturgy, fiction and poetry, presented by Larry Tremblay, Louise Desjardins and Mathieu Blais.

Every year the FIL offers its prize in Romance Languages to a distinguished author. Spaniard Enrique Vila-Matas will receive the honor in a discussion panel composed by academic Juan Antonio Masoliver, writers Cristina Fernández Cubas, Eduardo Lago, Ignacio Vidal-Folch, Guadalupe Nettel and journalist Josep Massot, who will be talking about Matas’ four decades of continuous activities in literature.

For an event of this magnitude, the FIL has managed to find a balance between its main events and the inclusion of small and independent publishing houses and authors, as well as academic presentations that are rarely heard of by large audiences. 

Archived site: 

https://web.archive.org/web/20180719235204/https://www.bookwitty.com/text/fil-2015-guadalajara-mexico/565d332dacd0d00de4a9aae9

https://www.bookwitty.com/text/fil-2015-guadalajara-mexico/565d332dacd0d00de4a9aae9

I’d rather jump off a sixth floor: the case of Sexto Piso, independent publisher

I’d rather jump off a sixth floor: the case of Sexto Piso, independent publisher

It’s no secret Mexico has a problem with its reading habits: UNESCO has recently (2012) shown the average Mexican reads less than three books per year, one of the lowest numbers in developing nations. These poor results have persisted for decades, despite official initiatives to promote this activity in all sectors of society. So how exactly do you plan to open a publishing house under these conditions?

The case of Sexto Piso is a rarity: around 2003, a group of Political Science students in the country’s largest public university –National Autonomous University of Mexico, with its campus in the south of Mexico City– decided to translate and publish their mentor and friend Roberto Calasso, an Italian author and publisher with plenty of experience in his country and other European countries. Calasso not only offered his expertise in matters such as rights acquisitions, but gave them exclusive rights to some of his titles.

Sexto Piso’s founders didn’t have marketing studies or strict business plans when they set up the company. Despite its logo, which shows a man jumping off a sixth floor (a “sexto piso”), becoming publishers wasn’t exactly a leap of faith: they cultivated a selection of mostly foreign and obscure authors and topics, hired more than competent translators and printed high quality editions, catering to the knowledge and interest of a very specific sector: the highly educated middle class of the capital.

Surprisingly, Sexto Piso’s main obstacle wasn’t a low number of readers, disinterest in their obscure or rescued classics, or difficulties in buying rights: they had to fight very hard to get a space in bookstores that were very reluctant to exhibit other titles than their proved formulas. The publishers worked hard for their spaces and began a fast rhythm of editing carefully selected and diverse materials, from Political Science to Philosophy and Science Fiction. Some of their first publications were Morris Berman’s The Twilight of American Culture (“El crepúsculo de la cultura americana”), novels by the somewhat obscure Stanislav Lem and Milorad Pavic, and titles of classic writers that hadn’t been translated to Spanish, such as David Hume, Etienne de La Boétie or George Orwell.

What all these heterogeneous books had in common was their singularity and their dedicated design, the discreet but recognizable covers with their funny falling man logo, a clean typography and acid-free paper that was a luxury in those years, but has become a standard in many local artisanal publishing practices. Within a year, Sexto Piso won the 2004 International Young Publisher of the Year Award, opened an office in Spain (the main market for Spanish language literature) and has become a shift in the paradigm of how and what to publish in one of the most difficult markets for literature, such as Mexico.

The editorial house, now with more than 300 titles divided in six collections ("classics", "narrative", "essay", "actualities", "illustrated" and "kids"),  bases its success in the taste of its board members, exercised almost as a curation of a work of art in itself: a solid, perfect catalog that’s been possible against the odds. More than 10 years since its foundation and without having become massive, Sexto Piso has grown steadily in Mexico despite the low levels of readership that all surveys show, and in a permanently stagnant economy.   

Another component of their growth is the opening of a section dedicated to illustrated books and graphic novels, a collection called “Sexto Piso ilustrado” (“Sexto Piso illustrated”). One of the first titles and on-going projects is the 2006  adaptation of Marcel Proust’s In Search Of Lost Time volume I, by French comics artist Stéphane Heuet, and translated to Spanish by Conrado Tostado. Heuet’s adaptation of the French classic took many years to complete and proved how a visual adaptation to the form of comics is far from a substitution of the written text, but a rich and demanding narrative with its own merits.

The illustrated collection of the editorial house is not only following the guidelines of some of the finest art and comics publishing houses, such as Fantagraphics or Drawn and Quarterly, but competing with them in the growing market of Spanish-speaking readers in the United States, acquiring rights and signing authors such as Peter Kuper, whose “Diario de Oaxaca” was an astonishing drawn and written diary that offered a personal and intimate insight into one of Mexico’s most brutal political confrontations of recent years, the civil protest led by teachers in the state of Oaxaca, and the repression that followed in 2006.

Sexto Piso’s method of work wasn’t new; Spain’s Anagrama and Siruela, or  Argentina’s Amorrortu, among others, have been following an approach of singular titles with attention to design and a particular audience in mind for many years, and with great results. But it’s Sexto Piso’s merit to have defied the very real obstacles of the Mexican editorial industry and perhaps even the commonplace of "a disinterested audience that doesn't read", who, in response, maintains alive and in prosperity one of the country’s most important independent cultural projects.

As part of the third edition of "Celebrating Mexico", a program that shows two-minute short films of various successful Mexican personalities from diverse areas (arts, science, entertainment, gastronomy, sports…), Latin American Discovery Channel and its various networks are presenting, from September 2015 to September 2016, a video-clip of Eduardo Rabasa and Felipe Rosete, two of the founding editors, talking of their company's place is Mexico's editorial landscape and the role of editing and writing, as they show what a common day is like in the workshop press and in their offices. They can be watched during the commercial breaks of the networks regular schedule.

Local TV show Central Once recorded a program centered on the company's main collections, as well as an interview with Eduardo Rabasa. Their great collection of covers and high quality pressings can be seen next to shots of graphic novelists working on their desks. It's on Youtube, in Spanish.  

http://www.bookwitty.com/text/565824aeacd0d03c098a1cc0

Mexican Independent Comics: how do they survive?

Up until the 1970s, Mexico had the most successful comics industry in the world, if you measure success by the number of printed issues and the frequency of it. In the 1930s, one of the best known comics of the country, Pepín, had a million issues printed weekly, even more than what the wildly popular Manga genre prints today.

In the past century, comics were the cheapest and most effective mode of entertainment among Mexicans; they were read not individually but collectively, sometimes by whole families or groups of friends that could easily read and share the contents with illiterate people who had no access to text-only books, but could easily interpret the stories that the images told.

The introduction of the TV and, in a lesser degree, the internet, caused the medium of comics to lose a great number of its audience. Mexico replaced its beloved stories of popular characters and common situations for the electronic artifact, and the comics industry went downhill ever since.

Downhill means that by the 1980s, most of the publishing houses had closed, and the national titles had been substituted by stories of American superheroes, that have never ceased to be published. Comics artists and writers struggled a lot to find work or had to leave the sector of comics. A few of them found in populist narratives the formula to maintain a somewhat large audience, but industrial comics narratives had effectively lost the hearts of Mexicans.

In the margins, comics artists, publishers and readers had a few projects that reflected interests and practices very different from those of the dying industry. This was the decade where comics were exhibited at museums for the first time, acquiring a degree of legitimation and recognition that unfortunately didn’t translate into a renewal of the industry. But an independent community was established. The following decade (1990s) saw the foundation of El taller del perro, and new technologies such as the internet, facilitated networking and publishing.

But the digital has meant no substitution for the printed. In recent years there’s been a renewal of the 80s culture of fanzines, where independent comics fit right in. They range from cheaply photocopied issues to more artisanal printing and binding, and the internet’s social networks have proved to be a free and fast way to promote them.

One of the most interesting festivals of independent comics in Mexico, and a an accomplishment of equal and collaborative economy, is Zin Amigos (zinamigos.tumblr.com): a wordplay that links “zine” with the Spanish word “sin”, which means without. So it has two meanings: Zine friends (amigos) and Without friends. This is a collective of drawers and writers interested in self-publishing and selling to the readers without intermediaries, so they can keep the totality of the earnings and distribute them fairly among the makers of the zines, a trend that’s proved successful in the sector of independent book publishing.

Zin Amigos’ printing is also extended to t-shirts, posters and other kinds of merchandise. And of course the internet, mainly Tumblr, works as a platform to show their work and connect with their readers. The best part of it is that the readers are not passive: some of them become “ziners” too, but mostly their presence is manifested in the stories themselves, where they’re sometimes represented.

While the Mexican comics industry is not completely gone, it’s clear that the most interesting comics, the ones that say something about actual people and their ways of life, practices and dreams, are to be found in the networks established far from the industry.  

https://web.archive.org/web/20180719235207/https://www.bookwitty.com/text/mexican-independent-comics-how-do-they-survive/565754f1acd0d04e2bac3c93

The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston - Review

The museum in itself is a piece of gorgeous contemporary architectural art. I was lucky the day I visited (Early November, 2015) was sunny and warm. The exhibitions were fun and informative (I loved the Black Mountain College section) and the people guiding the visitors very chatty and helpful. I also respect a lot the effort required to stand on your feet for HOURS (breaks should be mandatory).

I visited the media room (see my photos) that has that huge window against the sea. The whole place gave me an impression of quietness and calm. After the visit I went to the little pier with the wood floors and rested there, admiring the view of the ocean and the takeoff of the planes. I couldn't find a restaurant so I got a lousy sandwich at the WTC's 7-Eleven, and came back to finish my meal. The construction of a massive building behind the beautiful ICA is terrible! But at least the ICA got the best part of the pier.

The ICA is pricey but still affordable for a student (unlike the $20 that costs the Museum of Fine Arts - yikes) and its store is just as expensive as any museum store. The building has four floors but it's well designed for accessibility.

I took the MBTA to get there. I got off the train at the grey South Station stop and took a bus (inside the station) to Courthouse station. Then it's a 5 minute walk to the ICA, but I got a little lost because there are not enough signs and the massive building being constructed blocks the ICA. You have to
go behind it.

Photos:

All photographs by Nayma Gonzalez ©

Direct link to Yelp review: https://www.yelp.com/biz/the-institute-of-contemporary-art-boston-boston-2?hrid=BpZNpZjiJJ6jVV-Ast6aSg&utm_campaign=www_review_share_popup&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_source=(direct)


Read Nayma G.'s review of The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston on Yelp
PDF version of this article:

 

PDF: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B89SajqekCOfUzc2cTJQbUlOMVU

Blackhat, Michael Mann

Blackhat, Michael Mann, 2015

En el último par de décadas, las representaciones cinematográficas del hacker han contribuido en mucho a la mitificación del experto en seguridad informática: Desde Hackers (1995) hasta las más contemporáneas The Social Network (2010) o Jack Ryan Shadow Recruit (2014), los escribientes de código informático son representados como genios asociales, capaces de infiltrar las redes de corporaciones bancarias, hasta sistemas de defensa gubernamentales.

Es lo propio del cine: crear mitos a partir de personajes inusuales, poseedores de cierta extravagancia y desapego a las reglas que aplican para el resto de los mortales. Ese es el caso de Nicholas Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth), un “hacker blackhat”, informático experto en seguridad dedicado a infiltrar ilegalmente computadoras, quien negocia con los gobiernos de Estados Unidos y China  su condena de 15 años en prisión a cambio de descubrir y detener a un peligroso ciber-criminal terrorista, tan astuto como él.

Aislado en una celda, donde se dedica a hacer ejercicio para mantenerse en forma, Nicholas Hathaway es una rareza entre la rareza: un hombre de aspecto atlético y de alto coeficiente intelectual, graduado del prestigioso MIT a pesar de sus antecedentes de clase trabajadora.

Menos en la línea del programador autista-sociópata y las redes de complicidad en las que se mueve (trazada con enorme pericia por David Fincher en The Social Network), y más cercana a las tramas del cine negro tradicional, Blackhat es el más reciente trabajo del veterano director estadounidense Michael Mann, bien descrito por el crítico Steven Rybin como un autor del género. Como Rybin, muchos críticos han atribuido a Mann una personalísima capacidad de estilización visual-sonora, impresa en sus películas policiacas –Manhunter (1986), Heat (1995), The Insider (1999) y Collateral (2004)– y la popular serie de televisión Miami Vice.

Cuenta Mann que comenzó a planear esta historia de cibercrimen internacional a partir del escándalo del virus informático Stuxnet en 2010, programado por los gobiernos de Israel y Estados Unidos para infectar la computadora de la central nuclear iraní Natanz, considerado el primer ciberataque entre naciones. Siguiendo el método de investigación empleado en sus películas hoy consideradas de culto, Mann se entrevistó con un grupo de hackers blackhat, con quienes compartió largas horas frente a monitores, viéndolos programar código malicioso a sabiendas de las consecuencias legales de su actividad. 

Si las ficciones más cercanas a la “realidad” y los documentales como Citizenfour (Laura Poitras, 2014) sobre el denunciante informático Edward Snowden, o Algorithm (Jonathan Schiefer, 2014) nos muestran a jóvenes programadores tan inteligentes como físicamente frágiles o que por lo menos pasan inadvertidos, Blackhat no apuesta exactamente a una búsqueda por la verosimilitud con la elección del galán musculoso Chris Hemsworth como protagonista, y menos aún cuando su cometido consiste no sólo en infiltrar el código de su contraparte desde la seguridad de una computadora, sino trasladarse a otro continente en su búsqueda e involucrarse físicamente en una tarea de persecución y defensa más propias de un agente policial de élite.

Empero este desliz de casting, los seguidores de Mann reconocerán desde los adelantos de la película las texturas visuales logradas por el director, en particular las tomas hechas en las locaciones asiáticas como Hong Kong y Yakarta, en un guiño al cine de Wong Kar-wai, en particular la estética atmosférica y expresionista de Chungking Express (1994). El crédito se lo lleva el fotógrafo neozelandés Stuart Dryburgh, responsable de las memorable The Piano y más recientemente, de AEon Flux la serie de televisión Luck, dirigida por Michael Mann, entre muchos otros títulos.

En interesante notar que con Blackhat, Mann y la productora Legendary-Universal responden a la invasión que la cinematografía asiática ha tenido en Estados Unidos en años recientes, no sólo con enormes títulos importados y dirigidos por maestros como el mencionado Wong Kar-wai o el sudcoreano Chan-Wook Park, sino remakes en inglés y a los mismos directores trabajando en el seno de Hollywood. Seleccionando a uno de los actores más taquilleros del momento, así como actores asiáticos o asiático-americanos de renombre –Tang Wei y Wang Leehom– y una trama global, Blackhat es para Mann, en su faceta de productor, una movida astuta que deberá tener en cuenta el resto de la industria estadounidense si le interesa penetrar el bullente mercado asiático.

Sin el romanticismo de Wong Kar-wai, el cine de Mann tiene un tono pesimista, trágico y “existencial”, siempre vertiginoso, aunque sin cruzarse necesariamente con el cine de acción. El apremio con que el protagonista de Collider se dirigía a su autodestrucción, por ejemplo, hizo de ese antihéroe protagonizado por Tom Cruise, un personaje fascinante y de los más celebrados en las carreras tanto del director, como de Cruise. Si Mann puede lograr algo semejante con Hemsworth, será un punto de viraje en la carrera del australiano y una muestra más del talento de uno de los autores más interesantes que ha dado la cinematografía estadounidense de los últimos años.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2717822/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

https://letterboxd.com/film/blackhat/