Last week I was back in Chicago for the workshop meetings of the Connected Learning Research Network. During two days members of the different research teams discussed some of the emerging themes we have been finding in our studies about youth, learning, and digital media. Besides having a great dialogue and feedback, experiencing the downtown…
For a long time I have been interested in the popular arts. Their vernacular power and their low brow sensibility have captivated my attention and triggered my curiosity. Whenever I am immerse in a culture I always try to devour the popular imagery and language, and discover the carnivalesque in everyday life. During my time…
“We are not Japanese, we are not Americans, we are not human beings, we came from planet Peelander” yelled Kengo Hioki at the terrace of the Elysium while a camera man was interviewing him. Hioki San was wearing a single piece yellow chicken outfit that had a P and a white star in his vest….
During the summer I lived in São Paulo, Brazil, in 2010, I became a regular visitor of the website CatracaLivre (Free Turnstile). The site helped me a lot to organize my cultural life and to experience the city in a diverse and rich way. In a South American megalopolis of the size of Sampa, with…
Although the practice of building a film music score by selecting a number of pre-recorded songs has been well established since the 1970s, this method of “composing” was limited to specific genres, styles, and particular periods of time. It was not until the 1990s that the “compilation score” became a practice in which the directors…
The Republic of Colombia has a long history of violence that goes back to its birth in 1810 and expands through more than two centuries. Colombians have grown up in the middle of an armed conflict that has had different phases, cycles, and scales. The last decade has been a phase characterized by spectacular military…
Directed and written by Jacques Tati, and produced by Jolly Film and Specta Films, Play Time was released in France in 1967 after three long years of expensive production and postproduction processes. The expenses of the movie were so huge and its reception so poor, that both producers and director went bankrupt. Even worst, Tati…