“The other” has always held a fascination: people who come from a different culture, who dress differently, who wear their hair differently, who have different attitudes and values.

This curiosity about those who are different feeds the arts and culture. Artists, playwrights and novelists all explore the question of how different we are from each other.

In Shakespeare’s “Othello,” the Moor of Venice is such a deep mystery because he is black. But the passions of life that he experiences are common to all mankind. He is different, but oh so the same. From the time of Shakespeare, up to the age of television and international travel, views about lands afar were shaped by the arts. Canaletto’s paintings brought Venice alive for generations of Europeans who had never traveled there.

With the age of Victorian exploration, the museums in London became full of ethnographic exhibits that would fascinate the public who had not seen such extraordinary objects as an American Indian totem pole, an Eskimo anorak, an African witch doctor mask or an Arabian scimitar. These objects, everyday to the people who had made them, would arouse awe and wonder, and this, in turn, fueled imaginative stories about the world outside of Europe.

Only a very few were rich enough to travel to these exotic lands, and the stories they brought back would make them very popular on the speaking circuit. The temptation to exaggerate the difficulties they had faced in their travels, or the customs they had seen, must have been great, for no one would be invited to a dinner party to tell a bland and simple tale. So, the 19th century European view of the world beyond its borders became one of savage cannibals and heathen tribes, all of whom were a danger to the European traveler.

Those who are friends and allies are more easily understood. We take time to learn how they think and act, and easily forgive their foibles. But it is human nature to do the opposite with those whom we perceive as a threat. The Ottoman Empire, although a useful ally of Britain against Russia at the time of the Crimean War, was a rival to British interests in the Middle East. This rivalry fed misunderstanding and mistrust, much of which can be seen in the portrayal of Turks and the lands of the Ottoman Empire in the arts and culture of the 18th and 19th centuries.

These stereotypes hung on into the 20th century, too. For example, in Lawrence of Arabia’s memoirs, the depiction of his enemy is most unflattering. Very few visitors to Turkey today have actually watched the film “Midnight Express,” but we have all heard about the scenes depicting cruelty. All these images have seeped into the public psyche. When I first visited Turkey in the 1980s, an English lady I knew who was in her 90s was amazed. “My father fought against the Turks at the end of the last century,” she said. “He always said he would rather be killed than captured by a Turk, and now here you are going there… times are changing.”

It is just this very issue of perception and reality that makes Andrew Wheatcroft’s book a vital addition to the study of the Ottomans. The first six chapters are a fairly standard, clear and informative overview of Ottoman history and life, from the fall of Constantinople through to the end of World War I.

But in the course of his research, Wheatcroft discovered that the image of the Ottomans that we have in the West was skewed. The fall of Constantinople was termed “the darkest day in the history of the world,” and from then on, Europeans regarded the Turks with a mixture of horror and fascination. “Only a few writers did not make the Turks out to be subhuman,” according to Wheatcroft.

As he discovered that his own view of the Ottomans, shaped by the culture he had been raised in, did not stand up against the evidence, Wheatcroft addresses head on his prejudices. In the final two chapters, he calmly and succinctly, clearly and incisively, challenges the twin stereotypes of the Lustful Turk and the Terrible Turk.

Much of this misunderstanding came from ignorance. The harem was misunderstood by Western travelers because, as men, they were not admitted! Much of the misunderstanding also came from willful distortion to make a rival into an enemy. The Turks were seen so much as the antithesis of all Western values that the phrase “turning Turk” was coined to mean renouncing the social codes of the West.

The city of Stamboul became irresistible to travelers from 1800 onwards. They expected to find the city of their imagination: exotic, Oriental, full of mysterious veiled women. Artists and engravers had, after all, discovered what sold best! “European visitors, inflamed with Romantic notions, came expecting to discover the imaginary Orient” — and were disappointed.

But the Ottomans were not only misunderstood by the West. To their eastern neighbors, they were an alien and occupying force.

Wheatcroft recognizes that just as Europeans disdained the Turks, educated Ottomans repaid the compliment, accusing Westerners of ignorance and insensitivity. It was too easy for Western men to imagine scarlet lusts and violent passions of the hidden harem. But many Ottoman officials took offense at the way Christian men and women mixed together at parties. One visitor to London wrote, “We returned to our lodgings and prayed to God to save us from the wretched state of these infidels.”

As Westerners worked with Turks on government projects during the Tanzimat era, an Ottoman and a Western European would look at the same event and see things differently. Wheatcroft concludes, as the Ottoman Empire and the West came closer together in economic and political terms in the 19th century, the depth of understanding broadened.

A clear contrast is seen between the attitudes of two great British prime ministers: Gladstone and Disraeli. Disraeli was in the camp of “enthusiasts who find fulfillment in contact.” He described even the meanest merchant as looking like a sultan. Gladstone was one who “abominated every aspect of the alien world.” He described the Turk as an abomination.

In recognizing that contact did little to modify the stereotypes so deeply rooted in the West, Wheatcroft raises the question of how much power the images of art and literature create. The Ottomans are, he notes, the focus of fear and hatred in literature and portraits with remarkable consistency. Even though he comes from a bygone era, the Byronic mix of lust and cruelty continues to color European attitudes.

That contemporary Europeans rated the Ottomans as far as they did or did not measure up to Western standards is the main premise of “Dissolving Images.” Following peace with Russia, the Ottomans ceased to be feared for their warlike virtues, and this was replaced by envy and despising. Newly reformed Western Europe expected the same, at a quicker pace, in Turkey.

These were Wheatcroft’s conclusions in 1993. But some 15 years later, they are just as relevant for a European Union and Republic of Turkey trying to draw closer together. Everyone involved, on both sides, in Turkey’s EU ascension talks needs to read the last two chapters of “Dissolving Images” honestly and question in their heart whether they are viewing reality through Orientalist tinted lenses.

Despite Turkey being among the countries whose populations read the least number of books in a year, some promising campaigns have prevailed in the country.

The “I love reading” campaign at İstanbul’s Bağcılar Atatürk Elementary School, which has been categorized by the European Union as a Transnational Young Entrepreneurship Project, could be seen as a step in the right direction to remedy people’s lack of interest in books.

In the “I love reading” campaign, aiming to get students to enjoy reading books, students come together with a famous Turkish author once every month after reading one of his or her books.

So far, Selim İleri, Sevinç Çokum, Ahmet Ümit, Sunay Akın, Nalan Barbarosoğlu, Ali Çolak, Ayşe Kulin, H. Salih Zengin, Haydar Ergülen, A. Ali Ural, Cemil Kavukçu, Ömer Erdem, Fatih Erdoğan and Beşir Ayvazoğlu have visited the school and had conversations with the students on their books to create awareness of reading and literature. In addition to the authors, renowned journalists Uğur Dündar, Banu Güven, Cem Erciyes, Abdullah Kılıç and Ahu Tanrıkulu also visited the school under the program.

After this campaign had been included among projects funded by the EU, Sweden was selected as the project’s partner. The reason behind choosing Sweden is its prominent place in the field of children’s literature.

The students were advised to read books by Swedish authors Ingelin Angerborn and Ulf Nilsson, who came to Turkey and talked to the students last month. Furthermore, 10 children living in the suburbs of Sweden will have the opportunity to meet famous Turkish authors in the campaign.

For the project, a book called “I Love Reading” has been put together. It includes works by the authors participating in the project and was handed out to the Swedish students in Stockholm. Ten of the most successful students who participated in the project came to İstanbul with two teachers to join the student-author meetings in Bağcılar. They met with the writers whose books they had read and asked them some questions on their books. In addition to meeting the authors, the Swedish students also visited sights in İstanbul and celebrated Republic Day on Oct. 29 with their new friends from Bağcılar Atatürk Elementary School. As a result, a cultural bridge has been built between Stockholm’s suburbs and İstanbul’s Bağcılar district.

Bağcılar Atatürk Elementary School has not had an excellent past. The school was founded in 1975 with three classes and seven teachers but was not able to meet the needs of Bağcılar’s ever-growing migrant population. After relocating to a bigger, new building in 1993, the elementary school was badly damaged by the Marmara earthquake in 1999 and was demolished in 2005, when it was understood that the school could not be retrofitted. It was rebuilt in 2006. However, the school building still has problems as it was designed without taking the nearby river into account. The conference hall which has been used in the project was flooded after a heavy rain.

After these unfortunate events, the school’s destiny changed with the appointment of Turkish teacher Yusuf Çopur two years ago. Putting the project into practice with his wife, Kezban Çopur, who also teaches Turkish, the director of the school, Gencer Doğutürk, and the Bağcılar district education chief, Kadir Kuş, Yusuf Çopur has increased the rate of book reading among the school’s students from 10 percent to 87 percent. After the project kicked off, every student in the school read 37 different books in 13 months.

“Bağcılar can be described as one of the suburbs of İstanbul that receives increasing numbers of migrants every year. The socioeconomic status of the students’ families is below the average in Turkey. Developing a love of literature and reading books is, I think, the best way to protect students whose circumstances leave them more vulnerable to picking up bad habits like using heroin and alcohol and committing crimes,” said Çopur. His slogan is “One who is friends with books is an enemy of violence.” This month’s author is Feyza Hepçilingirler, and the teacher’s dream is to host internationally popular Turkish author Yaşar Kemal in the project.

Turkish writers Ali Çolak, Selim İleri and Ahmet Ümit (L to R) participate in a panel discussion with Turkish and Swedish students at the Bağcılar Atatürk Elementary School as part of the EU-funded “I love reading” campaign.

What Swedish students say

Simona Araya: Before my visit to Turkey, I supposed that I was going to a country that had low quality roads, thus, my family was also concerned about my visit. It was not easy to convince them. But the time I have spent in Turkey has been the best part of my life.

Sandra Petterson: It is really a great feeling to meet with an author whose book I have read. It is the first time that I have met an author and had my book signed. I like Selim İleri’s “Gelinlik Kız” (Girl to become a bride), Cemil Kavukçu’s “Ablam” (My elder sister) and Ali Çolak’s “Mavisini Yitirmiş Yaşamak” (A life having lost its blue). I asked the authors what I was wondering about their pieces and shared my opinions with them. Turkey is a country in which very good people live.

Maximillian Wangklev: I experienced the time in Turkey as if I was in a dream. Through the project I have met Turkish author and poets. I appreciated the poems of A. Ali Ural and Haydar Ergülen. After returning to Sweden I will tell people how Turkey is fascinating and beautiful. I have particularly started to be curious about Turkish literature and Turkish poetry.

What authors say

Selim İleri: This project brings hope for a bright future. It is a breath of fresh air that the project has gained an international dimension. Despite my story “Gelinlik Kız” having been included in many anthologies, nobody has ever been able to put elegant questions like these students.

Ahmet Ümit: “I love reading” helps not only Turkish students but also Swedish ones to realize their dreams. The students I met today said it was their first time to come together with a writer. They read passages from “Bab-ı Esrar” (The door of secrets). It is very beautiful that love is the common language of humanity.

Ömer Erdem: I find significant the meeting of the writer and the students who read the books of this writer. Young people who are exposed to books in their early years, I think, become more aware and stronger in life.

Nalan Barbarosoğlu: This project is important as regards helping students to see literature as a part of their life. Both the Turkish students and their Swedish friends prove their love of reading with the deep and skillfully put questions they asked me.

Cemil Kavukçu: The books students are encouraged to read and the interviews with the writers have improved the student’s level of perception. The books I supposed I had written for older readers were examined very carefully by the students, and I felt I was talking to literary critics when I had conversations with the students.

Ali Çolak: I believe this project provides a remarkable contribution to educate the students to become individuals beneficial to society. Swedish students read our books very carefully and took notes the parts they found important.

A. Ali Ural: My experience at Bağcılar school is the biggest compliment in my career as a writer. The students’ interest in poetry affected me. I was impressed when I saw the same level of attention from the Swedish teachers and students. I have never received as many interesting comments on my poems as I did today.

H. Salih Zengin: I have met with students many times, but in this school’s students I observed enormous self confidence and ability for self expression. I think it stems from their reading books and having talks with authors.

Haydar Ergülen: I thank those who realized this project, which brings together a wide range of writers with students curious about literature and Swedish teachers and students with ours under the roof of a love of literature.

Sunay Akın: I will always remember this school. How can I forget these students who love reading so much?

Beşir Ayvazoğlu: “I love reading” is a unique project which prepares students for the future. It is even possible to imagine a generation having gained the reading habit — it’s very exciting. I am very happy to meet these careful little readers.

Fatih Erdoğan: The event is excellent in terms of giving children access to books and their authors. Today we talked about literature, books and life with both Turkish and Swedish students.

Ayşe Kulin: I encountered bright eyes here. I am very pleased to come together with my little readers.

Ingelin Angerborn: A bewitching atmosphere. I had never thought that “Fortune Star” [her book] would be appreciated so much. The students asked very good, smart questions. Their words are bigger than their ages.

Ulf Nilsson: I do not remember any other time when I have kissed so many kids. I hugged all of them. They read my book carefully. I am very happy.

Former Vice President Walter Mondale last night offered pointed advice to President Obama as he attempts to prod Congress on health care and a plethora of politically difficult legislation: Push harder.

And on the topic of the animosity toward Obama and his legislative priorities, Mondale acknowledged that he agreed with former President Jimmy Carter, who recently said that racism was behind some of the criticism.

But the focus of Mondale’s address to a gathering at George Washington University was the state of Obama’s presidency and what Obama needs to do to succeed.

REUTERS/Mike SegarWalter Mondale

Frank Sesno, a professor at George Washington and director of the School of Media and Public Affairs who moderated the event on politics and public affairs, pointed out that Mondale had served in Congress at a contentious time, too.

“…It was a very partisan time,” Sesno said. “I mean, Vietnam was ripping the country apart for part of that time. And, you had civil rights that was ripping the country apart. And, so, do you think that it [Congress] is somehow nastier now, or more divided than before?”

Mondale’s said that while the country was divided in many ways during his time in Congress, the lawmakers seemed more able to come together on legislation.

“All of the civil rights legislation, none of it would have passed without a strong delegation of Republicans,” he said.

Mondale attributes the increased vitriol in political discussions to a movement that, he said, gained critical momentum with former President Ronald Reagan. (Mondale lost the presidential election to Reagan in 1984.)

“People really were getting tired of government,” Mondale said. “They really thought the economy could do it all — that if you just let the economy rip, [and] you don’t regulate it, all kinds of magic occurs.”

Mondale described it as a rising wave of “economic fundamentalism” and “religious rigidity.”

“And, I think those sort of ideological positions, which they insist on pressing on the American people, had its effect everywhere, including on Minnesota,” Mondale said. “And, sort of the cost of the harshness of that argument was that I think we lost a lot of civility.”

Criticism and racism
Sesno also asked Mondale about criticism of Obama, posing this question: “Your former boss, Jimmy Carter… said the other day that he thinks race is responsible for some of [this criticism of Obama]. Do you agree?”

Mondale paused to consider his answer. After a moment, he said, “Yeah.”

“Having lived through those years when civil rights was such a bitter issue… I know that some of that must still be around,” Mondale said.

But, he cautioned, he did not want to overstate the case or accuse any specific person of being a racist.

“I find it’s hard to talk about because I think most Americans are not racist — he [Obama] wouldn’t have been elected with the tremendous support that he got. People had to consider this when they voted, and so I think we are a country that [has] made a lot of progress,” Mondale said. “But, some of these debates, and some of these issues as they’re being discussed — I think I see an edge in them that’s a little bit different, a little harsher, than I have seen in other times.”

Role of VEEP
Sesno also asked Mondale about the role he played in strengthening the position of vice president.

Reading from a memo that Mondale wrote to Carter outlining the problems that he would want addressed before accepting the job of vice president, Sesno said:

“Generally speaking, you write: The vice president has performed a role characterized by ambiguity, disappointment, even antagonism… competition with the President, you go on, conflict with the White House staff, lack of meaningful assignments, lack of authority and inadequate access to vital information…”

“Great job description,” Sesno concluded.

“[And] that’s just part of the list,” Mondale said.

Under the Carter-Mondale administration, the vice presidency became a stronger, more substantive position, and has remained that way since, former Vice President Al Gore said in a documentary of Mondale’s life in public service, which was shown at the event on Wednesday.

According to Gore, U.S. vice presidents in America can be grouped into distinct categories: “Pre Walter Mondale and Post Walter Mondale.”

Sesno then asked Mondale, an advocate for activist vice presidencies, to evaluate Cheney, considered one of the most activist vice presidents in U.S. history.

Mondale was unequivocal: “I believe Cheney went off the rails,” he said. “I think that the vice president is in a position where they have to be very careful about obeying the law and when they speak to the American people they have to be careful.”

Mondale said the Bush-Cheney administration abused the law numerous times, and then lied about it.

“I think the record is pretty bad and it hurt our country, and I’m sorry about it,” Mondale said. “And I’m pretty direct about it because it hurts me because I think it diminishes public respect for the process.

“This is an important principle in America,” he said. “…We are stronger when the President complies with the law, regardless of the enemy.”

Intelligence gathering
On some of the mysteries surrounding intelligence gathering and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Mondale said Obama should support some kind of truth commission, like the one that Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has proposed.

“There is a big dark hole surrounding what happened in those six or eight years. There is a big debate about what happened,” Mondale said. “I think we would all be better off if we could take Pat Leahy’s recommendation and have a truth commission to get into it. And just let’s get the facts.”

Still, Mondale said, Obama has done “very well” in confronting what he described as a “range of miserable issues,” including the financial collapse and the subsequent bailout, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mondale also praised Obama’s Cabinet selections, including Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.

“I think Secretary Gates is going to go down as one of the historically superb” secretaries of Defense, Mondale said.

Another plus of the Obama presidency? Without mentioning Bush, Mondale quipped: “I think it has been a long time since we had a President [who was] articulate and clear. I find it a great relief just to hear someone who makes sense.”

Wilson Webb/Focus FeaturesWriter/director Joel Coen and actor Richard Kind on the set of “A Serious Man.”

Joel: “It’s semi-autobiographical, I guess you could say, in the sense that the story takes place in a community very much like the one that we grew up in — Minnesota in 1967. And also there are a couple of very superficial similarities to our family — [Danny's] father is an academic, and our father was a university professor. But [our father] wasn’t really anything like the character in the movie, and the story is made up and doesn’t really have anything to do with anything that happened in our family.”

When pressed, Joel — who favors futzing with his Adam’s apple, while Ethan attends to a fingernail — does admit that he and his younger brother “were big ‘F Troop’ fans.”

A-ha!

Saddling up with the Dude?
On the subject of what the brothers were digging so long ago, I ask whether the 1969 Western “True Grit” — reportedly slated for the Coens’ “reimagining,” with “El Duderino” Jeff Bridges in talks for the John Wayne role — was a movie on their teenage radar.

Ethan: “Actually, yeah, we did see it as kids. It made very little impression on us. Subsequently, we both read the book [on which the movie is based], and the book made a huge impression. I guess [the book is] kind of why we’re interested in doing [our version].”

Joel: “Would our movie be a ‘remake’? The other day we were trying to figure out what you’d call it.”

Ethan: “I mean, if we did an adaptation of the Bible, would that be a ‘remake’ by virtue of the fact that the Bible has been made into other movies?”

Hmmm. For the secular Coens, “True Grit” is the classic “good book” — but maybe everything does go back to the Bible after all.

More roundtable quotes from the Coens

On making the Minnesota of 2008 look like the Minnesota of 1967: “Those [suburban] developments of the late ’50s and early ’60s remain quite pristine,” says Joel, “so about half [of what's in the film] is just as it exists now. But [the neighborhoods are] full of old-growth trees now, so almost all of those [trees] were removed by computer.”

On what Ethan, in the “Serious Man” press kit, calls “the whole incongruity of Jews in the Midwest”: “To us,” says Ethan, “the [flat Midwestern] landscape with Jews on it is funny, you know? Maybe this is part of why we put in that little story [set in a shtetl] at the beginning of the movie, to kind of frame it. You look at a shtetl, and you go, ‘Right — Jews in a shtetl.’ And then you look at the prairie in Minnesota and you kind of think — or we kind of think, with some perspective on it, having moved out, ‘What are we doing there?’ It just seems odd.” Joel: “Mel Brooks once had a song called ‘Jews in Space.’ I guess that’s sort of the idea.”

The whole world is captivated by the movies coming out of the major American film studios, but it is one thing to see the movies and another thing to get behind the scenes, find out how they were made and go on rides that put you right into the midst of the most popular movies of our time. You can do all of this at the Universal Studios themeThis festive fright-fest was a nice surprise from what I was originally expecting.

This festive fright-fest was a nice surprise from what I was originally expecting. This is another horror remake (from the people behind ‘Final Destination’ – great film), but un-like so many others; it did manage to come up trumps; such as ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.’ This is a remake of Bob Clarke’s 1974 classic slasher movie, ‘Black Christmas’; which actually came four years before John Carpenter’s ‘Halloween’. Some fans lay claim that it was the original slasher flick.

From the outside, this looks like just another of your basic ‘there’s a psycho hacking up a bunch of pretty girls, who are running up the stairs instead of out of the door,’ and to a certain extent that’s correct, it’s the way this is conveyed which is interesting and enticing to watch.

The story: crazed killer, Billy Lenz, escapes his psychiatric ward and is determined to make it to his childhood home, where he was abused, by Christmas. Problem is, it’s years later and the home is now a Sorority house. It’s Christmas Eve and a who’s who of teen/horror girl stars are there to welcome him, including Melissa (Michelle Trachtenberg , ‘Buffy the vampire slayer’ fame), Heather (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, ‘Final Destination 3’), Dana (Lacey Chabert, ‘Mean Girls’) and Kelli (Katie Cassidy, ‘When a stranger calls’ remake.)

This movie is actually pretty good, it has a constant feeling of being watched that runs right through it and adds a sparkle to the scares, and the tension is kept high. The actresses, although spouting some awful lines at times, also say some good ones. The acting is good, and because most of the leading ladies are stars, and most of them horror stars, the audience doesn’t guess which one is going to make it to the rolling credits. The story-line builds well, and there is a mounting tension, as the killer first phones the girls, and then starts to do away with them.

A similar storyline to the original ‘Halloween’, with a killer coming home for the holidays, there are also many similar P.O.V shots of the killer, watching the girls throughout the house. The Christmas theme bleeds in nicely with the plot, and it comes across in places (especially, the flash-backs to Billy Lenz’s childhood) like something, director, Tim Burton, would dream up. The film gets darker and darker as we move through it, with some very violent scenes, and the music by Shirley Walker is great; capturing horror and Christmas all in one twisted melody. Also, the use of red and green lighting throughout (owed to Christmas) is very cool, and creates a great atmosphere.

Due to it being set in a Sorority house, and this no longer being 1974, some of the dialogue just doesn’t cut it. I can’t imagine many of these girls’ staying in the house with a crazed serial killer, just because they can’t find their ‘sorority sister,’ believable in 2007 – sad, but true. There is, unfortunately, the obligatory shower scene, but it’s used for scares, not thrills, and so works.

Right from the start you can tell, this isn’t your usual run of the mill slasher, it actually has a back story, and we do find ourselves caring for some of the characters, for example, Kelli, played by Katie Cassidy is great; plus if you hated ‘Dawn’ in ‘Buffy the vampire slayer’ – you are gonna love this movie.

It was quite surprising to follow the story and its continuos resemblance to what is happening today in a not too far away country and not too strange neighborhoods.

I must confess that the day I watched the trailer of “V For Vendetta” at the movie theater I wasn’t any close to be willing to pay a ticket for watching that guy with a funny mask on his face. It seemed to me it would be one more of those simple movies extracted from a not very known “comic” (at least for me) that are appearing in theaters quite often these days. But now that I watched it, I think I was judging this movie wrong and not being totally fair with the writer and director.

It was quite surprising to follow the story and its continuous resemblance to what is happening today in a not too far away country and not too strange neighborhoods. In the movie is England that has been taken over by a group of fanatics that have concluded that their reason to live is power and the imposition of his world model and ideas over everyone and everywhere. There is a continuous war outside the borders and inside democracy is over; meanwhile fear is alive. People has lost the power of questioning reality and take conscience of the terrible consequences of living under such a decadent regime. It is a model based not in reason not in justice. Is the model “fascists” preach, where obedience and a “clock-like” functioning of the society in the interest of a few “chosen ones” is needed.

But suddenly there is a problem menacing the “status-quo”, they (without knowing) have created their own finisher. It is a figure that appears to us as a mix of revenge with a revolutionary mind, its name is “V”. Though the movie makes it closer to a simple vengeance thirst of this character, which is a bad point for the writer, but anyway; the film put us in front of tyranny being challenged by a single questioner, a single doubt of what has been happening to that society and his menace to multiply those doubts once the right time has come, this is…The 5th of November.

There is also the human side of “V”, he meets the girl in the movie thanks to his opportune showing while she is about to be raped by a group of secret agents of the “fascist” regime that have catch her walking at the wrong hours. You are not even the owner of your time as long as the preachers of “England Prevails” are in power. She escapes safe thanks to “V” but only to be initiated into the world of those who will change that world. She will be the guest and prisoner of “V” until she finally learns that there is nothing to fear but fear itself.

At the end there seems to be a split of the vengeance appetites of “V” and the revolutionary intentions that have been growing as the story develops. It becomes somewhat clear that everything coming from the old regime must die, including “V”, but he has left a final gift and maybe a lesson for those who want to learn it. Passions belong to individuals and can be very powerful forces; but revolutions can not be made by one or two individuals, revolutions are made by the conscience and willing of the people.

Something has arisen between the two men, it is like a storm coming from nowhere that has entered their lives and that will mark them forever.

After a number of months hearing once and again a ton of good comments about “Brokeback Mountain” movie I finally had the opportunity to watch this movie in the theaters. I know I’m kind of late, even Oscars have passed, but it took sometime for the film to arrive in my town.

Curious sensation what I felt when the movie started playing, after hearing so many comments about the film I was at the point from which I already knew, at least from the morbid side, what the story was about and who was whom on the screen. At least that’s what I thought.

It all starts in the distance; one truck passing by the hills and then we find one young man outside an office that seems to be far away from everything. Then our second character arrives almost pushing his old black truck. It is now that we realize what they are looking for…they need a job.

They are hired to take care of sheep in the mountains of Wyoming, they will spend the summer together in the mountains, they will live and work side by side during all those days. As they arrive to their destination, “del Mar” , feeling more confident, releases a few words from his mouth and starts talking a bit more and showing some signals of sympathy to his buddy. He is a tough young man with a family history with resemblance of a nightmare from one of those Dickens stories. No one suspects anything “out of normal” is happening in the story. Days seem to be passing without any great novelty.

But something new happens, something out of the regular tasks of those working days and nights at “Brokeback Mountain”. Something has arisen between the two men, it is like a storm coming from nowhere that has entered their lives and that will mark them forever. It seems to be just a passionate episode of the lonely at the beginning, a dream that none will ever know. But reality dictates something different, what just happened, will continue happening once and again, they are attached forever by a force that makes or bends the will of anyone; something we may call, love.

Summer is over and both men must go back to their worlds away from the mountain, to their previous lives, but inside them in a secret place they know those lives exist no more. They have been confronted with their most inner reality and it won’t go away.

They will marry wives and strive to pursue a “normal” life just to realize they are being a pair of fakes. They don’t belong to that traditional society, they belong only to each other since those day in the mountains. They finally decide and meet again outside “del Mar’s” home, a poor second floor apartment. He hasn’t had much luck in life since childhood and it seems to accentuate everyday, now even his wife knows about his preferences. We are inclined to conclude his only luck and fortune in life is what he feels for Jack, his “fishing buddy”.

Things go wrong at “del Mar’s” home, marriage brakes and he is left alone fighting for life in a society that would stone him to death if they only knew. But there are bright moments too, and those happen at “Brokeback” where he regularly meets Jack  who travels from far away Texas to meet the only love he has known.

By the end of the story there have been conflicts arising between the partners; too much distance and just a scarce proximity can not improve any relation. They have just had a bad encounter in their paradise, they part away with the promise of meeting again and fix what can be fixed when suddenly the story takes us to a scene where “del Mar” receives the notice of Jack’s death in a cold post card with letters that say “deceased”. Everything indicates he has been murdered, he was caught by those who won’t let the “others” happen. And now Ennis del Mar has been left aside from society, with his love eternally longing for Jack and a daughter that will get married soon and who doesn’t know his dad is a loner for a reason; and love won’t count.

From a play about the Bridgend suicides to a weather project in Snowdonia, the brand-new National Theatre of Wales proposes to put Welsh communities centre-stage. Artistic director John McGrath talks Lyn Gardner through his first ever programme – and explains why it all started with a website

Thirteen may be unlucky for some, but not for the National Theatre of Wales’s artistic director, John McGrath, who has just announced a baker’s dozen of productions to mark NTW’s inaugural year-long season. It’s an eclectic list, ranging from the first production for more than 50 years of The Devil Inside Him, a “lost” John Osborne play set in a Cardiff boarding house, written just before Look Back in Anger – to a new show, Mundo Paralelo, from the brilliant Welsh-based No Fit State circus. The 13th show of the season, which will take place in Port Talbot in April 2011, is to be Passion, a contemporary version of the old community plays that used to be performed amid the steel town’s smoking towers. Actor Michael Sheen, who grew up there, is creative director of the project and will also star in it.

Funded by a £3m grant, the NTW’s first season kicks off with A Good Night Out in the Valleys, which will be performed in the old mining institutes – the social and educational centres that sprung up in the late 19th century and were kept running, a penny at a time, by subscription from miners. In their heyday, some even had their own opera companies. “The valleys were the obvious place for us to start,” says McGrath. “It’s all about building a sense of ownership in these communities, and putting the people who live there at the heart of it. We have to listen hard to them. When they see the show, I hope that they will recognise their own stories, hear their own language.”

McGrath doesn’t mean Welsh – Wales already has a national Welsh-language theatre company, the splendid Theatr Genedlaethol. And though he was born in Mold, north Wales, just across the border from England, McGrath grew up in Liverpool. He’s doing a crash course in the language (he jokes that he’s “fluent between 8 and 10am every morning”), but, more importantly for the NTW, he comes with a reputation for pioneering work at Manchester’s Contact Theatre, where he built a young and diverse audience through participatory initiatives.

The challenge for McGrath is to build an audience for the NTW in a country that has a long tradition of amateur performance, but one of the lowest attendance rates at professional theatre in the UK. McGrath thinks the answer is to make theatre in, and with, those communities. One such is The Soul Exchange, which will premiere in January 2011 at the old Butetown Coal Exchange in what used to be Tiger Bay, south of Cardiff – the place where the UK’s first million-pound cheque was signed, but which remains an impoverished area, home to one of the most ethnically diverse communities in Europe.

Another part of the NTW programme will be a work focusing on Bridgend, the small town in south Wales that became the subject of intense media scrutiny after a spate of suicides by young people. Instead of commissioning a traditional play and staging it in, say, Cardiff, McGrath has commissioned playwright Gary Owen, a local boy, to return home to live with his mother and talk to young people; the piece that will result, Love Steals From Loneliness, will be performed in Bridgend itself. McGrath sees his job as much more than simply producing plays: NTW will also be aiming to spark a debate about the issues. Everyone will be encouraged to have their say.

Already, they are. If the Royal National Theatre is a listed building, and the National Theatre of Scotland “a theatre without walls”, then the new NTW sees itself as a community. NTW operates out of an anonymous-looking shopfront on a parade in Cardiff and has a staff of just nine; crucially, it maintains a thriving website, which is a beacon for debate about theatre in Wales and beyond. The programme reflects conversations that have been taking place not just inside the theatre world, but in cyberspace too.

“We’re aiming to make people partners,” says McGrath. “The National Theatre of Scotland has been a very useful model – it shows that being a national theatre is not just about giving grants to people. But Wales is a different place, not least because there are far fewer producing theatres and more of an arts-centre tradition. So we’ve got to form relationships.”

When McGrath put out a call requesting possible locations for performances, he was inundated with ideas. Many have been followed up. There will be outdoor theatre adventures made in collaboration with “pervasive gaming” experts Hide and Seek and played out on the beaches of North Wales. April 2010 will see a collaboration between Volcano Theatre and Welsh National Opera called Shelf Life, staged amid the book stacks of the old Swansea library, while performance artist Marc Rees will be taking over a chapel-turned-pound shop in the seaside town of Barmouth, curating a series of guided tours by Welsh and international performance artists. In the hills of Snowdonia, theatremaker David Harradine will create a project examining Welsh weather inside an aircraft-hangar-size space so vast it contains its own micro-climate. And in 2011, there will be the first-ever UK commission for the remarkable German company, Rimini Protokoll, who work with non-professional actors to create documentary theatre of astonishing intimacy.

It’s not so much a programme as a map – one that charts the psyche of Wales as well as its past and present, but which also looks outwards. One performance even takes place right off the map: Aeschylus’ The Persians, a hymn to the bitterness of defeat in war, which will be staged by Mike Pearson, founder of the legendary Welsh company, Brith Gof, on an army range in the Brecon Beacons normally out-of-bounds to civilians.

It all adds up to a year of work that is both radical but inviting, risk-taking but popular, and which places Welsh communities at its very heart. “We couldn’t do it without them,” says McGrath. “We wouldn’t want to do it without them.”