Professor Andy Kaufman

In Poland, there is a locality “invaded” by tiny sculptures of little men. With more than 180 different statues, it became a new and peculiar tourist attraction

In Poland stands the city of Wroclaw, which has a surprising peculiarity, as it brings together dozens of tourists eager to see the gnomes who “live” in its streets. And it is that small sculptures of little men are scattered throughout the city.

The city was for a long time German and was known under the name Breslau, or in Castilian Wroclaw, and today it is known as Wroclaw.

The tourists, have as their favorite activity find the largest number of gnomes distributed throughout the city.

The city plagued by gnomes has nothing to envy in beauty to the other locations of Poland, which can be compared even with the capital Warsaw and the second most important town in the country, Krakow.

Wroclaw is full of those tiny sculptures. They are found in corners, windows, bridges, emerging from the sewers, in the doors, or simply erected in the main square.

There are more than 180 statuettes of bronze gnomes scattered throughout the city. With different expressions, each one is doing different activities, from playing golf, kissing, teaching or even making fun.

It’s origin

The gnomes of Wroclaw have their origin in the resistance and social protest against the authoritarianism of the communist government in the 80s. While the government eliminated all the graffiti that would be with criticism of its government, the movement of the Orange Alternative painted gnomes in the same places where the government had covered those graffiti using humor as a sign of protest.

On the other hand, the phenomenon of the gnomes is based on the Polish characters of the “krasnoludek “, a series of goblins that fight the bad luck product of the evil duende of the Oder. They have as their task to neutralize the actions of the villain of the gnomes.

It was in 2001 when the government decided to honor the figures that are nationally recognized as wise and duty and thus was installing the statuettes of the gnomes in every corner of the city.

Today they are already considered small and funny, and visitors from the world come to “hunt” the different gnomes all over the city and in this way they know the locality of Wroclaw in a different way.

Thus, the different tourist spots that stand out of the city such as the Plaza Mayor, the Hansel and Gretel houses or the Cathedral of Santa Isabel have a unique distinctive thanks to the tiny sculptures.

She is the second director in the whole History of the Festival that takes home this award.

Like Father Like Son. Sofia Coppola, daughter of the great director Francis Ford Coppola, it is clear that he has inherited the gift of his father. The director has made history by winning the Best Direction at the Cannes Film Festival, something historic, as it had only been achieved in the distant 1961, Yuliya Solntseva, for ‘ ‘ The epic of the years of fire”. Sofia could not be present at the gala and thanked “her support for films directed by women.”

It has taken 56 years for a female filmmaker to win the Best Direction award at the Cannes Film Festival. Sofia Coppola, daughter of the mythical Francis Ford, has made history by winning it again with the movie The Seduction, a film of love and desire located at the time of the American Civil War and starring Nicole Kidman.

Coppola, author of titles as prominent as The Virgin Suicides or Lost In Translation, won the Cannes jury, which was chaired by director Pedro Almodóvar. A woman who stands out in a profession that, as you can see, has always been dominated by men. Undoubtedly, this award will hopefully continue to open the way because talented directors, we have many.

Sofia Coppola: Surrounded by stars

‘The seduction’ is the sixth feature film by Sofia Coppola and is based on the novel by Thomas Cullinan, the story was taken to the big screen in 1971 directed by Don Siegel and starring Clint Eastwood. Now the filmmaker, 46 years old, has told, in addition to Kidman, with Colin Farrell, Elle Fanning, Coppola has been the star of a Cannes festival where we have been able to see.

The best and the worst in the dress of the actresses. The film will arrive on August 18 at Spanish cinemas so we will have to be careful to see this film that looks very good. We hope that with this award we will not have to see again 56 years for a woman to receive the prize.

The premiere this weekend of “Project Rampage”, the new destruction and chaos film of Dwayne “La Roca” Johnson, promises to annihilate his rivals in the undercard and win the number one box office.

Johnson embodies in the film a primatologist who maintains a special bond with George, a gorilla of extraordinary intelligence who becomes a huge and savage creature when exposed to a gas from a catastrophic genetic experiment.

That threat adds to the presence of a wolf and a crocodile that has undergone the same mutation and that make the US on the stage of a huge battle, while the protagonist tries to get the antidote to reverse the transformation of animals.

Naomie Harris, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and Malin Akerman complete the cast of this film called to raise about 40 million dollars (32.3 million euros) in its debut, according to industry estimates.

The other big premiere of the week is “Truth or challenge”, a horror movie with touches of black humor directed by Jeff Wadlow (“Kick-Ass 2: With a pair”, 2013) and a very young cast in which appear, Lucy Hale, Tyler Posey, and Violett Beane.

The film tells how some friends, during a vacation in Mexico, enter a diabolical game in which they must overcome twisted tests if they want to survive.

The comedy “Overboard” and “Borg vs McEnroe” also arrive in theaters.

In “Overboard”, the Mexican Eugenio Derbez gives life to Leonardo, a selfish and capricious “playboy” who belongs to the richest family in Mexico, while Anna Faris plays Kate, a single and hardworking mother who has been hired to clean the millionaire’s yacht

“Borg vs McEnroe”, meanwhile, narrates the rivalry during the 1980s of tennis players Björn Borg and volatile John McEnroe.

Katy Perry and Ryan Phillippe have had a great time at a party organized by Elton John. Do not miss because they sparked.

It seems that Katy Perry that being alone is not going much. Apparently, the singer and actor Ryan Phillippe flirted during Elton John’s birthday party on Saturday, according to rumors that several media outlets pick up. There are several images that indicate that something happened between them that day. We will see if it is confirmed or was simply a rollete.

Katy Perry is about to release her second single, Still Feel Like Your Man, but she took a break to attend Elton John’s birthday party. We already know that as he does on the night of the Oscars, his parties are well known and nurtured by celebs. On this occasion, among the guests was one of the beau and fantasy of many during the nineties, the attractive Ryan Phillippe, who for obvious reasons, is very good, caught the attention of the singer. To us, we are like Justin Timberlake.

Apparently, the singer was shocked because even at one point Ryan laid a hand on Katy’s knee, according to a source citing Hollywood Life. So the night must have been entertaining. Everything indicates that the actor liked his blond hair, the artist’s new look.

Katy Perry and Ryan Phillippe: Loving Past

It must be remembered that Ryan, a former husband of Reese Witherspoon, ended a five-year relationship with model Paulina Slagter last year. Perry also recently ended a romance with Orlando Bloom, so they are both single and can do whatever they want.

It seems that Katy is close to surprise us with an unexpected relationship, not because of the speed, but because of the famous one in question. We’ll see if this time it lasts longer. What is clear is that lately, she is on fire, since last week she announced that she had done “something more than kissing” with other girls.

Amid a festive atmosphere full of colors, music, and dances, a group of Indian women raises their long wooden poles to hit the men of the rival town, who protect themselves as they can behind their shields, in a special and advanced celebration of the Traditional Holi from India.

It is the “Lathmar” Holi (literally “beat with sticks”), a variant of the popular Hindu festival of colors that is celebrated during this weekend in two small villages in the state of Uttar Pradesh, in the north of the country.

The party, which began on Saturday in Barsana to continue on Sunday in the neighboring town of Nandgaon, attracts thousands of people who throw tons of colored powder, known as “gulal”, shouting “Happy Holi!” a week before the rest of the Indians celebrate Holi.

“The men of Nandgaon come to play the Holi with the ‘gopis’ (shepherds) of Barsana, like Lord Krishna with Radha”, tells one of the people in charge of the main Hindu temple of the locality, seated in the high altar.

According to this legend, the god Krishna, always young and mischievous, went from Nandgaon to visit his beloved Radha, who lived in Barsana, laden with colored powders.

There, at the insistence of her provocations, Radha and her friends ended up throwing her from the town with blows.

From early in the morning, a stream of people packed the narrow streets of Barsana with their ammunition ready to paint the faces of everyone who gets in their way.

The traders in the area do not stop selling multicolored bags, while the younger ones use handguns and buckets of water to soak up the most neglected.

The crowd constantly climbs and descends the stairs that lead to the temple of Radha Rani, where the festivities take their most apotheosis point: there, before the main altar, a curtain covers and uncovers the image of Krishna, which the attendees try to reach with their colored powders.

Other more devotees throw themselves to the ground and wallow in “gulal” formulating their prayers for the Hindu god, no matter how dirty their clothes are.

In the entrance courtyard to the temple, hundreds of people play, sing and dance different Indian rhythms, some of them too uninhibited after consuming “bhang”, a drink made mainly with milk and cannabis, typical of this festival.

Afternoon, the men of Nandgaon arrive in Barsana dressed in orange turbans and with their shields prepared, and go up to the temple forming rows among the assistants, who fill them with water and “gulal”.

After concluding their prayers to Krishna, the “invaders” descend to the village and that is when the local women, covered with long veils that cover their faces, prepare their wooden sticks to hit with force and “expel” the visitors that go to conquer them.

“It’s the tradition (…) My grandparents, my parents and now we were doing it since we were little,” says the young Rajat, 24 years old and coming from Nandgaon, with his shield ready, just before going down the stairs and receive his “punishment”.

At the meeting, there are also dozens of foreign tourists who dare to challenge the Indians with their cameras, perfectly protected with garbage bags and plastic to avoid spoiling them, in order to immortalize such a curious and colorful picture.

Among them, a group of friends comes from Madrid on a photographic journey and whose first stop is this “authentic” festival.

“We had vacationed for the April fair and we have canceled them to come to the Holi fair”, assures Efe Paco, soaked to the top after a child threw a bucket of water from the balcony.

When the sun begins to fall, the thousands of people who on Saturday approached Barsana retire from the village, exhausted and with all the clothes stained, but still with forces for the “battle” that the next day is celebrated in the neighboring town.

Now the tables are changed and it will be the women of Nandgaon who hit their rivals with their sticks, amid a new explosion of colored powders, music, and fun.

Tomorrow will open its doors Art Dubai, the largest showcase of international art in the Persian Gulf, which in its twelfth edition will bring together works from 48 countries and its artistic director, the Spanish Pablo del Val, qualifies as “the most global fair in the world”.

Del Val affirms to Efe that the main hallmark of Art Dubai, which is celebrated between March 21 and 24 in Madinat Jumeirah, is its “internationality”.

“When you go through the corridors you turn into Willy Fog, with continual changes of the continent, and you have a gallery from Ghana in front of one from Saudi Arabia or Australia, the representation by nationalities is brutal,” explains Del Val.

For this reason, for the collector “it is a must” because Art Dubai is a meeting point for the art of the regions of the Middle East, North Africa, and Southeast Asia.

“This mixture of geographies is quite unique and being in Dubai there is a specialization on the region (of the Middle East) that you do not see anywhere else in the world,” says the director.

Within this international artistic offer, there will be two galleries in Madrid, Espacio Valverde, and Elba Benítez, and the latter will exhibit the works of one of the outstanding Spanish contemporary artists, Cristina Iglesias.

Meanwhile, Latin American artists will have their space in the galleries of Chile, Peru, Argentina, Brazil and other countries that will bring their works to Dubai from the other side of the Ocean.

“Latin American galleries, reluctant to come from a distance, have realized that all Ibero-American languages and vocabularies are reflected in the cultures of the Middle East,” says Del Val, who predicts that “next year the participation of Latin American galleries will be even bigger. ”

The global nature of the fair defines the profile of the collector who visits Art Dubai, where this year there will be 105 galleries, in which the works of emerging artists are exhibited, as well as others of recognized prestige.

“The type of collector that we receive is that little romantic who is looking for new things and who is more interested in following the career of a young artist than spending a million on a very established one,” says Del Val.

In addition, the Spanish add that Art Dubai is “a pair of discoveries”, which offers the collector “very interesting” works at “very affordable prices”, young artists who have “a long career ahead” and “are in the hands of galleries important. ”

Aside from collectors, among the local public each year there is more patent interest in art, Del Val emphasizes.

“Emirati participation is getting bigger and there are already large collections here, owned by Emirati, quite conceptual and interesting, not traditional but of the latest trends,” he says.

The director considers that “the country is very awake” regarding art and “the artistic ecosystem in the country is increasingly anchored”.

The recent opening of the Louvre Museum in Abu Dhabi has been a fundamental “push”, according to the Spanish, which highlights the “revolutionary” contribution of the French center in the Persian Gulf.

For Del Val, United Arab Emirates “is a crossroads, is the second residence of many people, hosts micro-society and culturally is exciting because it has been based on respect and in that kind of cultural miscegenation.”

Currently, “there are different bets” in the Arab country, from the Louvre in Abu Dhabi to the galleries in Dubai, while in the emirate of Sharjah “the most radical projects” are located.

“Everyone who comes to the Emirates and is interested in culture has the obligatory visit to the three cities, each capital is having its importance and is part of the puzzle” that shapes the new Emirati artistic panorama.

For some, he was the chronicler of the wars that Russia fought against the Tsars in the mid-nineteenth century, for others, a pioneer who extended the borders of realism, but all agree that Vasili Vereschaguin portrayed, as nobody in his time, the horror and death on the battlefield.

The Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, one of the most important Russian art galleries in the country, has collected 180 paintings and 120 drawings by the painter in the largest exhibition of his work in almost 130 years, inaugurated this week.

“Vereschaguin shouts through his work that war is evil, transmits as nobody else this message in” The apotheosis of war “, his most famous painting, anyone who only sees that canvas once or its reproduction, cannot forget it never, “said Zelfira Tregúlova, director of the Muscovite museum, to Efe.

The pyramid of skulls overflown by crows, the arid Asian steppe, and the trees destroyed by the fire, and in the background, a destroyed city: despite its harshness, is for many the greatest pacifist manifesto in the history of universal painting.

“Dedicated to all the great conquerors: past, present, and future,” wrote Vereschaguin in the framework of “The Apotheosis”, a basic piece in the cycle he painted after spending two years in the Russian Turkestan, in full conquest of the Muslim kingdoms that extended over current Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan.

Although he was trained from a very young age as an officer of the Navy and served a few years in the imperial army, it was in the brutal campaign of Turkestan that he saw with his own eyes death, victory and defeat in its tragic dimension.

Since then he was always pushed to return to war to express his nonsense, reaching the peak of his talent by portraying the bloody conflict that faced the Russian and Ottoman empires in the Balkans between 1877 and 1878.

He painted his other masterpiece, “Los Vencidos, Requiem”, after witnessing hundreds of bodies of Russian soldiers scattered in the field, naked and disfigured by the victors.

As he said later, he chose to use “much softer tones” than he remembered seeing, but despite everything, he was always the object of harsh criticism by his contemporaries, who accused him of a sincerity that many saw as obscene.

“Despite his strong personality, he was also, like many geniuses, very vulnerable.When the Turkestan cycle canvases were thrashed by critics after his first exhibition in Russia, in 1874, he destroyed much of that exhibition in one night” said Tregoulova.

Before Vereschaguin, the war in Russian painting was always the expression of victory, the faces of heroes, the epic of battles, but from his work, which breaks with established and goes far beyond realism, it shows it as desolation, destruction, and tears.

“His work is unlike any other painter of his time because he was very different from them all, he had the classic qualities of a romantic, but his independence, his willpower and his desire to do only what he wanted they made him an advance, “explains the director of the Tretyakov.

Generally, it is framed within realism, but over the years its style changes evolve into the saga of the creator and adopt symbolist, even post-impressionist traits.

“Actually, it is all this at the same time, sometimes it is carried away by the beauty of what it sees before and transmits it as it sees it, and at other times it rises to the philosophical level, as in the ‘Apotheosis of war’ or in ‘Requiem’ “, says Tregúlova.

Often criticized by the imperial government of the tsars, he had as much success in life as so few of his colleagues.

No less than 200,000 people visited one of their exhibitions in St. Petersburg in 1880, an extraordinary figure for the time.

Chronicler of battles, literary and historian, traveler and ethnographer, “like no other Russian painter, Vereschaguin saw himself entitled to portray war and peace in the countries in which he spent most of his life”, concludes Svetlana Kapírina, responsible of the exhibition.

The Ibero-American Cinema Platinum Award is set to reveal the names of the nominating films in its fifth edition, whose awards ceremony will be held on April 29 in the Riviera Maya, in southern Mexico.

On Tuesday, 20 candidates will be announced in Mexico City, selected by the Executive Committee of the Platinum Award with the support of advisors, among them, the members of the jury of the last edition.

During the announcement, will also be revealed the presenter of the ceremony, which will take place at the Teatro Grande Tlachco, in the archaeological-ecological park of Xcaret.

The complex in the Riviera Maya was the chosen venue to receive the ceremony, which in its previous editions went through Panama City (2014), Marbella (2015), Punta del Este (2016) and Madrid (2017).

Among the pre-selected films are “Uma Mulher Fantástica”, by Chilean Sebastián Lelio, “Zama”, by Argentina’s Lucrecia Martel, and “Last Days in Havana” by Cuban Fernando Perez.

Lelio’s feature film, which is also nominated for an Oscar for best non-English language film, and Martel’s feature as favorites, have been pre-screened in eight categories including best film, directing and screenplay.

Within the category of best actress, may appear as selected Chilean Daniela Vega (“A Woman Fantastic”), Mexican Ana Valeria Becerril (“Las Hijas de Abril”) and the Spanish Emma Suárez (“Las Hijas de Abril”) and Penelope Cruz (“Amando Pablo”), among others.

Javier Bardem (“Amando Pablo”), Argentina’s Leonardo Sbaraglia (“El Otro Hermano”) and the Mexicans Daniel Giménez Cacho (“Zama”) are among the favorites in the category of best actor. Luis Gerardo Méndez (“Road to Mars”).

In addition, this year the Platinum Prize introduces as a novelty the incorporation of two new categories: better male and female interpretation in miniseries or television series.

The number of productions participating in this edition reaches 848, a record in the history of the awards and that reflects its growth, since in 2014, in the first edition, 701 works were entered.

The next step on the way to the Platinum Prize trophy will be on March 14, when the five final nominees in each category will be announced.

The Platinum Prize for Ibero-American Cinema is promoted by EGEDA (Entity for the Management of Audiovisual Producers’ Rights) and FIPCA (Ibero-American Federation of Cinematographic and Audiovisual Producers).

The French government confirmed on Friday that a painting found on a bus in the Paris metropolitan area is from Edgar Degas and was stolen in 2009 at an exhibition in Marseille.

The Ministries of Culture and Finance reported that “the first elements” of the expertise carried out by technicians of the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, to whom the work belongs, called “Les Choristes” (The Coristas), confirm this information.

The picture was found last 16 by customs agents during a blitz in the region of Ferrières, Brie, on the A4 road, but none of the bus passengers claimed ownership of the painting.

“Les Choristes” is a monotype, halfway between the painting and the engraving, which Degas performed shortly before being presented at the Impressionist exhibition of 1877.

The work was part of the collection of Gustave Caillebotte and in 1894 became part of the French national collections.

According to the creator himself, it represented a scene from the opera “Don Giovanni” at the end of the first act, when the compromise between Massetto and Zerlina was celebrated.

With an estimated value of 800 thousand euros (more than R $ 3.2 million), the work was stolen from the Cantini Museum in Marseilles, where it had been loaned, at the end of December 2009.

French Culture Minister Françoise Nyssen celebrated the “happy reunion of a precious work whose disappearance was a great loss to the French Impressionist patrimony” and highlighted the work of the customs agents.