(Pro)Motion Pictures: Len Lye in the Thirties

This article examines Len Lye’s film-making in the 1930s within a broader visual arts context, seeking to clarify the nature and extent of his involvement in British documentary film culture at this time. In particular, it demonstrates how Lye's method of fusing 'live action', found footage, and animation techniques created the possibility of a radical documentary practice that could reconcile promotional advertising and commercial art with avant-garde abstraction and kinaesthetic experimentation. In particular, the article focusses on Lye's N. or N.W. (1937, 35mm, b&w, 10 mns), arguing that his work from this period should be regarded as central - and not marginal - to any serious reassessment of Britain's “Documentary Movement” of the inter-war era, and its relations to any history of the cinema and visual culture.

Political agendas through popular education : Mexico and Spain in the thirties. 'Agendas pol??ticas detr??s de la escolarizaci??n : M??xico y Espa??a en los a??os treinta'

Resumen tomado de la publicaci??n

Changes in feed crop acreages--14 states, a study of the acreage of hay and other feed crops as they have been affected by the drouths of the thirties, the recent government programs, and changes in livestock numbers,

Processed.

Fictionalising Trauma : The Aesthetics of Marguerite Duras's India Cycle

Marguerite Duras (1914−1996) was one of the most original French writers and film directors, whose cycles are renowned for a transgeneric repetition variation of human suffering in the modern condition. Her fictionalisation of Asian colonialism, the India Cycle (1964−1976), consists of three novels, Le ravissement de Lol V. Stein (1964), Le Vice-consul (1966) and L'amour (1971), a theatre play, India Song (1973), and three films, La Femme du Gange (1973), India Song (1974) and Son nom de Venise dans Calcutta desért (1976). Duras’s cultural position as a colon in inter-war ‘Indochina’ was the backdrop for this “théâtre-text-film”, while its creation was provoked by the atrocities of World War II and post-war decolonisation. Fictionalising Trauma analyses the aesthetics of the India Cycle as Duras’s critical working-through of historical trauma. From an emotion-focused cognitive viewpoint, the study sheds light on trauma’s narrativisation using the renewed concept of traumatic memory developed by current social neuroscience. Duras is shown to integrate embodied memory and narrative memory into an emotionally progressing fiction. Thus the rhetoric of the India Cycle epitomises a creative symbolisation of the unsayable, which revises the concept of trauma from a semiotic failure into an imaginative metaphorical process. The India Cycle portrays the stagnated situation of a white society in Europe and British India during the thirties. The narratives of three European protagonists and one fictional Cambodian mendicant are organised as analogues mirroring the effects of rejection and loss on both sides of the colonial system. Using trauma as a conceptual prism, the study rearticulates this composition as three roles: those of witnessing writers, rejected survivors and colonial perpetrators. Three problems are analysed in turn by reading the non-verbal markers of the text: the white man as a witness, the subversive trope of the madwoman and the deadlock of the colonists’ destructive passion. The study reveals emotion and fantasy to be crucial elements in critical trauma fiction. Two devices intertwine throughout the cycle: affective images of trauma expressing the horror of life and death, and self-reflexive metafiction distancing the face-value of the melodramatic stories. This strategy dismantles racist and sexist discourses underpinning European life, thus demanding a renewal of cultural memory by an empathic listening to the ‘other’. And as solipsism and madness lead the lives of the white protagonists to tragic ends, the ‘real’ beggar in Calcutta lives in ecological harmony with Nature. This emphasises the failure of colonialism, as the Durasian phantasm ambiguously strives for a deconstruction of the exotic mythical fiction of French ‘Indochina’.

Form and Function of Proteins. Historical Background and the Indian Effort in Macromolecular Crystallography

Global efforts in macromolecular crystallography started in the thirties of the last century. However, definitive results began to emerge only in the late fifties and the early sixties. India has a long tradition in crystallography. The country had a head start in theoretical and computational structural biology, thanks to the efforts of G.N. Ramachandran and his colleagues in the fifties and the sixties. However, macromolecular crystallography got off the ground in India only in the eighties, particularly after the Bangalore group received adequate support from the Department of Science and Technology under their Thrust Area Programme. The Bangalore centre was also identified as a national nucleus for the development of the area in the country. Since then work in the area has spread widely and is being carried out by several groups, mainly led by scientists trained at Bangalore or their descendents, in about thirty institutions in India. In addition to the Department of Science and Technology, the effort is now supported by other agencies like the Department of Biotechnology and the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. The problems addressed by macromolecular crystallographers in India encompass almost all aspects of modern biology. Indian efforts in macromolecular crystallography have also become an important component of the international efforts in the area.

Macromolecular Crystallography in India in the Global Context

The most spectacular applications of crystallography are currently concerned with biological macromolecules like proteins and their assemblies. Macromolecular crystallography originated in England in the thirties of the last century, but definitive results began to appear only around 1960. Since then macromolecular crystallography has grown to become central to modern biology. India has a long tradition in crystallography starting with the work of K. Banerjee in the thirties. In addition to their contributions to crystallography, G.N. Ramachandran and his colleagues gave a head start to India in computational biology, molecular modeling and what we now call bioinformatics. However, attempts to initiate macromolecular crystallography in India started only in the seventies. The work took off the ground after the Department of Science and Technology handsomely supported the group at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in 1983. The Bangalore group was also recognized as a national nucleus for the development of the area in the country. Since then macromolecular crystallography, practiced in more than 30 institutions in the country, has grown to become an important component of scientific research in India. The articles in this issue provide a flavor of activities in the area in the country. The area is still in an expanding phase and is poised to scale greater heights.

The portrait of the first poster artists of Spanish cinema: From the genre scene to the realistic portrait

The article, which is part of a more detailed piece of work, aims to highlight the use of the portrait on the film posters of the first Spanish poster artists before the Star-System was introduced in Spain. For this it is posed the evolution that occurs in the representation of the characters in the film poster from the second decade to the beginning of the thirties in the twentieth century, a historical period of profound influences of the artistic and advertising vanguards in our poster artists´ work. However, in the late twenties moving from the simple inclusion of the scene based on the picture of a film, to the chromatic and realistic representation of the star´s face. These were the years when the influence of the major North American studios began to show in Spain. Nevertheless, it highlights their technical and compositional freedom and their influence on subsequent poster artists, as many of them will integrate the portraits and settings on their posters, following the guidelines of the major studios or the independent ones. But without forgetting their own personal way of painting the film stars’ faces on their posters.

Women artists of the international avant-garde: the case of "Abstraction-Création" (1931-1936)

Women’s contribution to abstract art in the interwar period is a subject that, to date, has received very little attention. In this article we deal with the untold story of the participation of women artists in Abstraction-Création, the foremost international group dedicated to abstract art in the 1930s. Founded in Paris in 1931, the group took on the work of two previous collectives to become a platform for the dissemination and promotion of abstract art and consisted of around a hundred members. Twelve of these were women, whose writings and works were published in the group’s annual magazine, abstraction creátion art non figuratif (1932-1936), and who participated in a number of the group’s exhibitions. Compared to what had occurred in previous groups, the participation of women, although reduced in number, was comparable to that of the male artists and being members of the group had a generally positive impact on the women’s careers. However, all this came at the expense of relinquishing any gender specificity in their work and the public presentation of it, and demonstrates that the normalization of women’s contributions to the avant-garde could only be brought about alongside a questioning of the more dogmatic views of modernity.

The Perils of Moviegoing in America, 1896-1950

The Perils of Moviegoing in America is a film history that examines the various physical and (perceived) moral dangers facing audiences during the first fifty years of film exhibition.

Chapter 1: “Conflagration”
As early as 1897, a major fire broke out at a film exhibition in San Francisco, with flames burning the projectionist and nearby audience members. From that point until the widespread adoption of safety stock in 1950, fires were a very common movie-going experience. Hundreds of audience members lost their lives in literally thousands of theatre fires, ranging from early nickelodeons to the movie palaces of the thirties and forties.

Chapter 2: “Thieves Among Us”
Bandits robbed movie theatres on hundreds of occasions from the early days of film exhibition through the end of the Great Depression. They held up ticket booths, and they dynamited theatre safes. They also shot theatre managers, ushers, and audience members, as a great many of the robberies occurred while movies were playing on the screens inside.

Chapter 3: “Bombs Away”
Bombings at movie theatres became common in small towns and large cities on literally hundreds of occasions from 1914 to the start of World War II. Some were incendiary bombs, and some were stench bombs; both could be fatal, whether due to explosions or to the trampling of panicked moviegoers

Chapter 4: “It’s Catching”
Widespread movie-going in the early 20th century provoked an outcry from numerous doctors and optometrists who believed that viewing films could do irreparable harm to the vision of audience members. Medical publications (including the Journal of the American Medical Association) published major studies on this perceived problem, which then filtered into popular-audience magazines and newspapers.

Chapter 5: “The Devil’s Apothecary Shops”
Sitting in the dark with complete strangers proved worrisome for many early filmgoers, who had good reason to be concerned. Darkness meant that prostitutes could easily work in the balconies of some movie theatres, as could “mashers” who molested female patrons (and sometimes children) after the lights were dimmed. That was all in addition to the various murderers who used the cover of darkness to commit their crimes at movie theatres.

Chapter 6: “Blue Sundays”
Blue laws were those regulations that prohibited businesses from operating on Sundays. Most communities across the US had such legislation on their books, which by the nickelodeon era were at odds with the thousands of filmgoers who went to the movies every Sunday. Theatre managers were often arrested, making newspaper headlines over and over again. Police sometimes even arrested entire film audiences as accomplices in the Blue Law violations.

Chapter 7: “Something for Nothing”
In an effort to bolster ticket sales, many movie theatres in the 1910s began to hold lotteries in which lucky audience members won cash prizes; by the time of the Great Depression, lotteries like “Bank Night” became a common aspect of the theatre-going enterprise. However, reception studies have generally overlooked the intense (and sometimes coordinated) efforts by police, politicians, and preachers to end this practice, which they viewed as illegal and immoral gambling.

Historical fictions : the historical novel in Australia during the 1930s and 1940s

The thesis examines historical novels written in Australia during the 1930s and 1940s, providing close readings of Xavier Herbert's Caprocornia, Miles Franklin's All That Swagger, M. Barnard Eldershaw's Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Katherine Susannah Prichard's goldfields trilogy, and Eleanor Dark's The Timeless Land. No attempt has been made at encyclopaedic completeness. The organising principle behind the study relates, instead, to the question of the status of the historical novel as a genre. The thesis considers the importance of genre in literary theory, and reflects on the construction of Australian literary history, which in the post-war period has consistently involved a debunking of historical fiction. In the first chapter, various approaches to historical fiction are considered, special attention being paid to Lukacs's The Historical Novel. This leads on to an examination of Marxist approaches to literature, including Frederic Jameson's The Political Unconscious, in order to establish some of the coordinates of the subsequent analysis. While Lukacs's study represents an inadequate theoretical basis for an examination of the historical novel, his popular frontism suggests a useful context for an examination of historical fiction written in Australia during the 'thirties and 'forties, raising the question of the relationship between literature and ideology during this period. The thesis, however, embraces a wider ideological spectrum than the Popular Front, including P.R. Stephensen's 'Australia First' Movement, as well as Katherine Susannah Prichard's communism. The next two chapters are devoted to a consideration of Capricornia and All That Swagger, novels P. R. Stephensen praised in the columns of The Publicist for being 'authentically Australian'. The thesis is generally concerned with the question of the relationship between Australian nationalism and literary production, a concern which is taken up in the following chapter, where Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Prichard's goldfields trilogy are examined in connection with the Popular Front. Eleanor Dark's development as a writer forms the subject matterof the concluding chapters of this study, when the significance of the historical novel for writers of her generation is established through considering the importance of the historical novel within her oevre.

International trade in Latina America and the Caribbean 2009: crisis and recovery

Includes bibliography

For God'sake! Lift the embargo to Spain

Intorno alla metà degli anni trenta la Spagna diventò il centro dell’attenzione del mondo e tutte le grandi potenze internazionali, vecchie e nuove, vennero coinvolte, in misura diversa, nella guerra civile. Già nell’agosto del 1936, un mese dopo l’esplosione del conflitto, tutti gli Stati più rappresentativi caldeggiavano l’ipotesi di una politica comune di “non intervento”. Il ruolo guida in tal senso venne assunto dal governo inglese, capace di dissuadere, in tempi estremamente rapidi, il governo frontista francese di Leon Blum dall’intento di sostenere economicamente e militarmente il legittimo governo repubblicano spagnolo. La preoccupazione che il conflitto potesse degenerare in uno scontro più generale fu quindi la ragione principale per la quale qualche settimana dopo nacque il “Comitato di Non Intervento”, cui aderirono ben ventisette nazioni europee tra cui Francia, Inghilterra, URSS, Italia, Germania e Portogallo. Il mio progetto di ricerca dottorale esamina il ruolo, le scelte ed i relativi dibattiti in merito all’unica grande potenza, gli Stati Uniti d’America, che, pur scegliendo di rimanere neutrale, si astenne dal partecipare al suddetto Comitato. In ambito statunitense particolare rilievo assumono due aspetti del dibattito politico sulla Spagna: il primo maturato in seno all’Amministrazione Roosevelt, il secondo elaborato dalla componente Liberal della coalizione del New Deal attraverso i settimanali, “The Nation” e “The New Republic”. Il confronto pubblico acceso dalla guerra civile spagnola fu infatti l’occasione per la società civile americana per dibattere apertamente e francamente circa l’opportunità e la capacità della nazione di assumere o meno un ruolo internazionale corrispondente al prestigio socio-economico in via di acquisizione a livello mondiale. Approfondire ed esaminare il dibattito sulla guerra civile spagnola negli USA significa dunque andare alla ricerca delle radici culturali di quello che sarà uno dei più vasti ed articolati confronti politici e teorici del ventesimo secolo: l’internazionalismo americano.

Intellectual alienation in a fragmented society and universe, as illustrated in the work of Wolfgang Koeppen (1906- )

This text is concerned with the intellectual and social alienation experienced by a twentieth century German writer (1906 - ).·the alienation begins in the context of German society, but this context is later globalised. The thesis first discusses the social and· intellectual origins and the salient features of this alienated stance, before proceeding to a detailed analysis of its recurring symptoms and later intensification in each of the author's main works, chronologically surveyed, supported by reference to minor writings. From the novels of the thirties' showing the burgher-artist conflict, and its symbolic dichotomies, the renunciation of traditional German values, and the ambiguous confrontation with new disruptive socio-political forces, we move to the post-war trilogy (1951-54), with its roots in the German social and political experience of the thirties' onwards. The latter, however, is merely a background for the presentation of a much more comprehensive view of the human condition:- a pessimistic vision of the repetitiveness and incorrigibility of this condition, the possibility of the apocalypse, the bankruptcy and ineffectiveness of European religion and culture, the 'absurd' meaninglessness of history, the intellectual artist's position and role(s) in mass-culture and an abstract, technologised mass-society, the central theme of fragmentation - of the structure of reality, society and personality, the artist's relation to this fragmentation, intensified in the twentieth,century. Style and language are consonant with this world-picture. Many of these features recur in the travel-books (1958-61); diachronic as well as synchronic approaches characterise the presentation of various modes of contemporary society in America, Russia, France and other European countries. Important features of intellectual alienation are:- the changelessness of historical motifs (e.g. tyranny, aggression), the conventions of burgher society, both old and new forms, the qualitative depreciation and standardisation of living, industrialisation and technology in complex, vulnerable and concemtrated urban societies, ambiguities of fragmented pluralism. Reference is made .to other travel-writers.

Interfaces e lacunas na assistência prestada ao adolescente soropositivo

O objetivo desta dissertação foi estudar as várias interfaces e possíveis insuficiências no atendimento prestado aos adolescentes que vivem com HIV / AIDS. Assim, a área de pesquisa concentrou-se em algumas unidades de saúde da área do Rio de Janeiro - Programa municipal 2.2. O primeiro capítulo descreve um esboço histórico da formação do Estado moderno e as bases para a política social sustentável do Estado capitalista contemporâneo culminando com a análise da construção de um modelo de proteção social no Brasil, depois dos anos trinta. Desta forma, o Estado é visto como uma área atravessada por paradoxal interesses conflitantes e as políticas sociais, administradas no interior do estado, sendo fruto de processos históricos, econômicos e políticos. No segundo capítulo, os problemas da política de saúde no Brasil são discutidos, enfocando as orientações das políticas sobre a AIDS e a adolescência. Em primeiro lugar, os aspectos históricos sobre as políticas de AIDS são analisados e, em seguida, há uma investigação do conceito de adolescência e os princípios norteadores do Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente e do Programa Saúde do Adolescente. No terceiro capítulo o material coletado na pesquisa por profissionais de saúde é analisado e relacionado com o estudo documental com a crítica das políticas destinadas. A conclusão mostra que, apesar de todo o progresso clínico e / ou farmacológico para o tratamento de pessoas vivendo com AIDS e na formulação de políticas públicas para garantir os direitos, os adolescentes precisam de espaços de boas-vindas nas relações sociais, onde nem a família, a religião, a escola e seus pares estão preparados para essa proximidade. Outra questão importante é a incapacidade dos profissionais de saúde para lidar com os vários aspectos da doença. Contas de contenção e abuso são comuns, revelando que as unidades de saúde nem sempre desenvolvem o seu potencial para cuidar.

L'évolution de la réponse normative de l'OIT en situation de crise économique et financière

De l’avis de nombreux observateurs, le monde a connu en 2008 une crise économique sans précédent depuis la Grande dépression des années trente. Au premier chef des victimes de ces dérives de l’économie globale figurent les travailleurs du monde entier. Investie depuis 1919 d’un mandat de protection à l’égard de ces derniers, l’Organisation internationale du Travail (OIT) se doit d’être une force de propositions en ces périodes difficiles. La présente étude se propose d’analyser l’évolution des réponses normatives produites par l’OIT au lendemain des crises économiques et financières mondiales depuis sa création. Il s’agira également de mettre en corrélation le degré d’audace de l’Organisation et la composition de la scène internationale qui préside à chacune des époques considérées. Le premier chapitre sera pour nous l’occasion de montrer comment l’OIT, née dans un contexte de crise économique dans les années vingt puis confrontée en 1930 à une autre crise majeure, a su tirer profit de ces situations qui confirment sa raison d’être et la pousse à s’enquérir de nouvelles compétences (chapitre I). Nous ferons ensuite étape dans une époque marquée par la prolifération de nouvelles organisations internationales avec lesquelles l’OIT entre en concurrence : l’ère onusienne. Nous verrons comment la position de l’Organisation sur la scène internationale influe sur sa réactivité face aux crises économiques et politiques du moment (chapitre II). Forts de ces considérations historiques, nous serons enfin à même de comprendre la souplesse normative caractérisant la réaction de l’OIT face à la crise de 2008. Nous serons également en mesure de comprendre comment cette crise historique a modifié l’ordre mondial et influé sur la position de l’Organisation dans l’agencement international (chapitre III).