HARLEM'S BACK DOORS

Sorry for disappearing. Life keeps me busy and away from my computer so I can´t find the time to blog as much as I wish but I have a million things I want to write about. They will get here sooner or later. Please be patient!

The death of Michael Jackson propelled me to Harlem, to cover the tributes that happened there. I'm sure everybody is already sick of reading about it. It's been a ten days overdose and I won´t fuel it. I just wanted to share the best thing I found in Harlem this week. It has nothing to do with the king of pop but with a sweet human being still alive who was looking for some attention. He also knew how to sing, but he couldn't care less about MJ. He shared some Nat King Cole's love with me and some friends.



He and this t-shirt that I regret I didn't buy are my memories on the MJ post-mortem week.

SILVERDOCS' GOT SOUL (I)

Soul Power. That´s the title of one of the best musical documentaries I've seen in years. The soul is not only in the title and in the soundtrack, it´s at the heart of a movie made by Jeffrey Levi-Hinte that will make you wish the seventies were still here. I can't forget a marvelous scene in which Celia Cruz takes her shoe in her hand and uses it against the ceiling inside a plain to keep rhythm with musicians such as James Brown, Bill Withers and BB King during the 13 hours trip (that become a 13 hours musical party) that brought the best of African-American musicians to play in Zaire in 1974 just days before the famous boxing fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman.



Levi-Hinte worked as an editor in the documentary 'When we were kings', that amazing film about that powerful "rumble in the jungle" fight that got an Oscar award in the nineties. He had seen all the footage and painfully had to leave aside the three days concert because it didn't fit in that movie. Now, thanks to David Sonenberg (who also produced 'When we were kings') Levi-Hinte has been able to bring back to life a soul festival that will make you wish you were born black (Tom Waits said to me once during an interview: "When I saw James Brown for the first time the only thing I wanted from then on it was to be black!" After watching Soul Power, I definitely understand him.

On Friday Levi-Hinte was at a screening of Soul Power at Silverdocs Film Festival in Washington DC. He brought with him Fred Wesley, one of the musicians that played that festival and who confirmed that The Crusaders, The Spinners, Big Black, Celia Cruz and the long list of performers -including many Africans such as Miriam Makeba- played "above their performance level" and that it´s definitely in the movie.

For years there were legal disputes that prevented any body to touch the concert footage. When those were finally over, Levi-Hinte approached Sonenberg with the idea of cutting a movie to be released in DVD. "But when I looked at the footage again after ten years, I realized it was too good to waste it in a quick editing so I ended working on it for three years". The result is worth the wait.

Nobody except the Zaire people (now Congo) who attended the concert had seen it until now. The power of Soul Power is not only in the performances. There's the details about how the concert came to life -the fight was delayed but they couldn't delay the festival- there's the incredible clothing of the times - and the hairdo's, specially Miriam Makeba's African-punk style-. Even better, there were the conversations they had... remember: it´s the time of black power, it´s the time of James Brown' funky tune " I'm black and I'm proud'". All those little moments in the movie are priceless.

Almost none of the musicians had been in Africa before. "There was the excitement of going to find our roots" said Wesley after the screening (where he playes a couple of tunes too!). None of them was aware, though, that Zaire was run at the time by a bloody dictator called Mobutu Seseko who blessed their performance. That part is not in the movie. But you won´t care because the film it's not about politics, it's about music. On July 10th Soul Power will be in the theaters. Whenever is available on DVD I will throw a soul party at home!!!!! Jose Castillo, I will wait for you to dj after the concert!!

SHELL WON, MAYBE CHEVRON WON'T

I wrote already about the trial that should have started in New York last week against Royal Dutch Shell for the killing of seven Nigerian activists, including the writer Ken Saro-Wiwa. It was suddenly suspended and then... magically... settled. Shell didn't want to go to court, it would have been too dangerous for its reputation to have Nigerians revealing dirty details of its activities in the Niger Delta. It was easier to pay 15.5 millions and avoid witnesses to explain openly how oil companies pollute, destroy and kill in almost every country they operate in. After more than a decade struggling, the plaintiffs consider the settlement a real victory: "This shows that corporations cannot act without accountability” said Jennie Greene, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which brought the case on behalf of the plaintiffs. I am not so sure about it. The 15.5 million dollars are peanuts for a company as big as Royal Dutch Shell and it won't make any difference in the polluted and violent landscape in the Niger Delta. Although it's true that it's a symbolic precedent in the fight against corporate impunity, I agree with El malcontento, "it's a scandal that they sign a check and get free of responsibilities" (in Spanish).

picture by Dolores Ochoa, AP

But maybe there is hope. Another similar case is actually in development in Ecuador against Chevron-Texaco. An Ecuatorian lawyer representing 30,000 people is fighting alone against the monster. The battle between the indigenous communities in the Ecuadorian Amazon (nearly destroyed by oil drilling) and Chevron started 16 years ago. The lawsuit alleges that Texaco, which was acquired by Chevron in 2001, unleashed 18 billion gallons of toxic wastewater across an estimated 1,700 square miles of rainforest (check ChevronToxico web for details) . Plaintiff's lawyers say Texaco's dumping represent 30 times more than the crude spilled in the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska. Hundreds of people have died of cancer and thousands are sick. According to a report by a court-appointed expert, Chevron could face $27 billion in damages. That's not only real money, it would be an unprecedented victory for environmentalists and local communities alike. Unfortunately, Chevron has also the money to make this process as long and as tortuous as possible so the sentence could still take years.

Picture of Bryan Patrick from his award winning series The Devil's excrement for the Sacramento Bee (Ecuador, 2003)

If you are curious about this case you should see the documentary Crude, (playing in New York on June 13 at the Human Rights Watch Festival) by director Joe Berlinger (director of great titles such as Paradise Lost and Metallica: that kind of monster). Crude is quite good although it probably pays too much attention to Trudi Styler, one of the celebrities who has embraced this cause. In the other hand, the involvement of stars in this fight has brought lots of attention to their lawsuit and recently even 60 Minutes did a story on it. I don't know how to feel about celebrity-activism but it seems that lately journalists take an interest in forgotten stories only when there is a famous face behind so, I guess in this case we have to thank Sting???

A new cult movie is born: STINGRAY SAM

Stingray Sam is a name every film lover should know by heart. If the director of this surreal, smart and wonderful movie was named Robert Rodriguez, Stingray Sam would be already a cult movie. Don't worry, cult followers like myself are already working on it. The director's name -and main actor- is Cory McAbee. He might have a budget 100 times smaller than the one of the famous ex-indie director and none of his popularity but even if McAbee could eventually envy his pal budget, he has no need to envy his talent: he's got tons of it. And sooner or later the film world will know it.

Talent means to be able to transform any plot, even the most impossible one, into a very good movie. Get this: (as it says in its website) "A dangerous mission reunites STINGRAY SAM with his long lost accomplice, The Quasar Kid. Follow these two space-convicts as they earn their freedom in exchange for the rescue of a young girl who is being held captive by the genetically designed figurehead of a very wealthy planet".

You could expect everything from a synopsis like that one. Choosing that plot for a Saturday night movie it's a risky bet for a moviegoer. I wouldn't have seen it last weekend at the Rooftop Film Festival in Brooklyn if it weren't because my friend Scott Miller was the DP and I know he always chooses interesting projects. I trusted him but I never thought I would be falling in love with a space-cowboy, laughing out loud for over an hour, and even singing along - yes, and I hate musicals!-. I was amazed and entertained by a film that is uplifting, ironic, sweet, clever and fun in a way movies are not any more. This space-cowboy-musical-action film is a little treasure filmed in black and white (good job, Scott! I heard your work will be featured in the next issue of American Cinematographer!)- and features a series of exquisite collages (by John Borruso) that serves to illustrate part of the plot: planets have turned into prisons, wealthy men get pregnant, greed bankrupts financial investors, Stingray Sam is a lounge singer living in Mars...

It's format it's interesting too: it's done in six chapters that are independent from each other, but whose connection follows the style of serials of the 50's. Small screenings like mobile phones will be perfect recipients for Stingray Sam.

It almost won the Audience Award in the last Imagine International Film Festival of Amsterdam -'Let the right one in' won over it by a few votes only- and it definitely won over the whole audience that was at the Rooftop Film screening with me. Stingray Sam made it to Sundance but people was too busy looking at the official competition movies to pay any attention to it. That kind of thing happens too often at any film festival, though... Any way, if distributors are smart, Stingray Sam will be traveling soon to a theater near you. Or even to your phone! You can catch it on June 8 in New York at the Brooklyn International Film Festival. Here a review. This is the trailer:

HUGO CHAVEZ: 'THE OPRAH OF THE LEFT'

To be fair, I have to confess that the line is not mine. "Hugo Chavez is the Oprah of the left" was the only interesting quote that Lawrence Weschler, a journalist from The New Yorker, said last week during a conversation -it should have been called a monologue- with Eduardo Galeano at the New York Society for Ethical Culture. The encounter was organized to mark the publication of Galeano's new book, Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone. Since Hugo Chavez recommended to Barack Obama to read Galeano's classic title 'Las venas abiertas de America Latina' (and gave him the book), the Uruguayan writer has become a best-seller in the USA. The same thing happened after Chavez recommended to the whole world to read Noam Chomsky´s Hegemony of Survival during a speech at the UN in 2006. That book, published three years earlier, climbed best-seller lists at Amazon overnight.

'It's the best way to sell books, to have them featured in the Oprah show', said recently Carolyn Reidy, CEO of Simon and Schuster. Hugo Chavez is definitely taking Oprah's place when it comes to left-wing writers. So, in part thanks to Chavez, Galeano visited New York and before a full house of his readers, the writer read a few fragments of 'Mirrors...'. Then, he was unsuccessfully 'interrogated' by Weschler. Early on it became quite clear that Weschler questions didn't seem to please Galeano. "If you had to recommend to Chavez or Obama one book, which one would you choose from all the books that you have read?" The answer: "It's very dangerous to read only one book".




It was a real pleasure to listen to Galeano. He was, in fact, the conductor of a conversation that was mainly a sharp, sweet, tough and ironic monologue about all the things he is been always concerned with: inequalities, injustice, Latin America, the underdogs... I would rather give you Galeano himself than trying to reproduce what he said. The video up there is just Galeano reading a timeless piece in Spanish sometime ago .

This one is a link to the New York event I talked about, good sound, bad image (but we are talking about words, right?), in English. Courtesy of Hugo Chavez. Dear Hugo, who's next?

CRAVING MONEY FROM E-BOOKS

Books. How many do we read every year? Does anybody really believe that having an electronic gadget will improve our reading habits? Will we read pirated books in the future as we used to listen to pirated music? Is the publishing world safe or it will crumble like the record industry did courtesy of Napster and iTunes? Four people still in charge of the business tried to answer to some of these questions on Thursday in New York at the opening of BookExpoAmerica, a massive gathering of publishers from NorthAmerica whose size can easily overwhelm the visitor (there are 1500 exhibitors) but whose content this year, besides new book titles and the usual autograph booths, could actually be reduced to one simple question: How the future looks like for the publishing world?


If we had to judge by the words of Brian Murray, CEO of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide; Carolyn Reidy, CEO of Simon & Schuster, Inc.; John Sargent, CEO of Macmillan; and David Steinberger, CEO of Perseus Books Group, the future is shiny and bright. Sitting comfortable on their chairs, looking at us up from a stage, they tried to sound in charge of the future. "We have learned from all the mistakes the record industry made and we are trying to go as fast as we can. The big challenge for us it's working with all these other industries we did not work with before, such as the software and electronic industries" said Brian Murray. In fact, that was the biggest mistake of the record industry: delaying their entry in the legal digital world, with the clear consequence of having other players –aka iTunes- taking over a business that they could have controlled if they were smarter.

So far, though, it doesn't look like publishers are the big players in the digital e-book world either: it's Amazon who, thanks to the success of the e-reader Kindle, controls this apparently booming business (funny enough, Amazon doesn't release numbers although publishers say only about 2% of their sales come from e-books). But prices of $ 9,95 for an e-book aren't good enough for publishers. They 'd like more profit -it sounds familiar?-, and to me that's probably their biggest mistake. "If it is true that people buy more e-books than physical books, lets say a 30% more, then 9,95 it's a fair price. If not, the math doesn't work for us" said John Sargent, CEO of MacMillan. It seems he' s not aware of an already going on campaign of readers against e-books which exceed the ten dollar price. In fact, the paradox is that it's possible to find paper books online that cost less than their e-book version! You can't donate or share an e-book with friends or libraries but a publisher saves thousands of dollars publishing digitally so, those readers have a point. But as it happened before with iTunes, big bosses aren't happy about the profit Amazon is making with Kindle so they seem impatient to see a future in which any electronic device will allow readers to have e-books on them. "That will be the real revolution of e-books" Carolyn Reid said. They are already working on how to profit from those. Kindle is already a missed business for them.

Yet, why do they feel more ready to the digital challenge than their record business counterparts? "We have done something good. We have made an agreement with Google -after a contentious lawsuit against their Google Book Search Service- that will allow us to have control of how books circulate around the web. Google is creating a registry of books and it will have to pay us and the writers" said Sergent. The settlement is already under investigation of the Justice Department because it seems it will give Google an exclusive license to profit from millions of books whose authors cannot be found or whose rights holders are unknown."The negotiations with authors are even more difficult than with Google" complained Sergent after the panel. Still, they will control every copyrighted book that is under the publishers' umbrella.


Surprisingly, he and his colleagues barely talked about piracy -isn't it out there threatening the business???- but Sergent said to me, after the panel, that "at least 9 out of 12 e-books that circulate online have a pirated copy". Carolyn Reidy, from Simon & Schuster, seemed not to be too worried about it: "We don't have any numbers, we know piracy is out there but we also know that it's much more difficult to copy a book than a song. Besides, most book files are protected" she said to me. "The record industry failed because people wanted single songs and record companies wanted to sell whole records. Books are different" Reidy said. Really? Her job might be trying to not spread the word about book piracy but she can't deny reality and she's probably well aware of sites where piracy is rampant like Scribd, Wattpad, and file-sharing services like RapidShare. I wonder... who will win the battle this time?

NIGERIA, NEW YORK, SO FAR, SO CLOSE

This is a very old story: we need things, a company provides, we don't give much thought about how those things get to us, we just consume them, we feel happy. That's how bananas entered the USA during the 20th century, through United Fruit Company, a multinational that in order to keep its power in Central America supported some of the most horrifying dictatorships in the area, Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica... all to provide us with things we learn to need.

So, where is the oil to power your car or your AC coming from today? From places like Nigeria -the 8% of the total US imports come from there, it is also the 4th provider of oil for Spain- Nigeria is the tenth most petroleum-rich nation worldwide. Almost twenty years ago an activist movement grew out in that country against Shell for appropriating land and polluting the air and water in the Ogoni homeland, an indigenous area around the Niger Delta region of southeast Nigeria, where most of the oil reserves land. According to Amnesty International 70% of the six million people in the Niger River Delta live off of less than 1$ US per day. The leader of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) was the author Ken Saro-Wiwa, who led a non-violent campaign against the environmental degradation of the area and against the corruption of the Nigerian government, at the time ruled by ruthless Sani Abacha.

In 1993, following protests that were designed to stop contractors from laying a new pipeline for Shell, the army raided the area and destroyed 27 villages, resulting in the death of 2,000 Ogoni people and displacement of 80,000. Saro-Wiwa was arrested along with eight activists that two years later were sentenced to death by a military tribunal. The execution provoked international outrage but it was quickly forgotten: everybody still consumes Nigerian oil pumped among others by Shell (on and off because of continuous attacks of its oil plants), and actually, the area is still immersed in a violent war that nobody wants to call 'war'. In the last few days this no-war has taken a very ugly turn:



After 13 years, a trial against Shell (now Royal Dutch Shell) was supposed to start this week in Manhattan federal court with a lawsuit by three alleged victims of attacks and relatives of seven activists killed from 1990 to 1995, including the writer Ken Saro-Wiwa. The plaintiffs claim Shell’s Nigerian unit assisted the government in the abuse and murder of opponents of the company’s operations in the Niger Delta. (here a link in Spanish)

The trial was once again postponed until June 2. It seems Royal Dutch Shell didn't like the idea of having powerful human rights attorney Paul Hoffman counseling the plaintiffs. Actually, they complained that Hoffman's company harbors a video that it is not to there liking. The judge refused to ban Hoffman from the trial but asked the website Wiwavshell.org to remove the video. Thanks to 21st century technology, it's very difficult to hide things from public view: