Welsh Music, Film, and Books Symposium: 10/06/2007

Saturday 16 June 2007

The Welsh and New York's Ellis Island -- Take your mini-cam!

Looking for your Welsh cousins in America?

In the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, legend tells us that Ellis Island was named for a Welsh pub owner who gave the Island his name!

Fancy a quick trip to the States while the dollar is still so low against the pound? Why not make your own amateur Welsh home movie, and share it with the world?

This is a perfect year to visit New York City, and while you're there, check out the Welsh history at Ellis Island. There's an electronic board where you can select 'Welsh' to see where all the Welsh immigrants to America are living today -- pretty cool!

Take a Welsh flag and a mini-cam along, and take some video or photos of you and your mates in front of Niagara Falls, the Empire State Building, The statue of Liberty, etc., and we'll post the streaming video here in the Welsh Music, Film, and Books Symposium at the end of the summer, just for fun!

Zoom Airlines now has cheap charter flights, non-stop Cardiff to Toronto. Spend a night in Toronto and visit the Welsh Speaking Canadian Chapel, celebrating their 100th Anniversary this summer with lots of festivities!

I suggest you get the Canadian Trains/Amtrak train from Toronto to New York City -- the scenic travel across New York State is worth the time and price! Either go to Montreal first, and then travel south along the Hudson River, or take the train past Niagara Falls and then via Buffalo to NYC.

Visit Zoom Airlines Here.

George Bush is bringing Ellis Island into the news again, with the Immigration Reform Bill that he's trying to pass. He's a lame duck, and the bill is flawed, but Ellis Island rocks!

According to Reuters:

Ellis Island's past returns in immigration row

By Daniel Trotta Thu Jun 14, 10:47 AM ET
ELLIS ISLAND, New York (Reuters) - Ellis Island, once the gateway to America for millions of immigrants, is having a make-over after years of neglect that nearly allowed nature to destroy a national treasure.

But experts caution that, in all of the nostalgia, the country should remember past debates over who should be allowed into the United States.

The restoration of the back end of the 32-acre (13-hectare) island in New York harbor comes as the immigration debate rages anew and President George W. Bush's reforms are stalled.

"I do think it's interesting that we worship Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty and yet we want to pull up the gang planks now that we're here," said Kenneth T. Jackson, a history professor at New York's Columbia University.

Some 12 million immigrants, nearly all European, passed through Ellis Island before entering the United States, mostly from 1892 to 1924, though it remained operational until 1954.

Newcomers marveled at views of the New York skyline and the Statue of Liberty on a nearby island, providing memories passed down through the generations.

As many as 100 million Americans have ancestors who passed through Ellis Island, where a French renaissance-style brick palace built in 1900 welcomed hardscrabble immigrants who left the Old World behind.

That main building, with its cavernous arrivals area and soaring ceiling, was repaired in the late 1980s and attracts ferries full of American and foreign tourists.

A new project led by a group called Save Ellis Island is attempting to raise public and private funds for a $250 million rehabilitation of a labyrinth of 30 buildings that were part of a 750-bed hospital for sick newcomers.

This follows the restoration unveiled in April of the ferry building, where processed immigrants boarded boats to New York City and the New Jersey shore.

Private donations for the restoration have come from rich Americans whose ancestors arrived through Ellis Island.

Wednesday 13 June 2007

Gaelic Language Makes Big Comeback in New Scottish Feature Film 'Searchd'

Seachd: The Inaccessible Pinnacle is the first feature film in Scottish Gaelic.

It is a film from the Scottish Gaelic community starring local Gaelic-speaking actors from the Highlands and Isles and was filmed entirely on the Isle of Skye (An t-Eilean Sgitheanach) off the West Coast of Scotland.

Seachd is not a Hollywood film. The film was shot across just 25 days on a tiny budget, but it is a film with a big heart and it represents the lives of people living in a part of the world that has yet to be shown on the big screen.

The soundtrack to Seachd features some of Gaeldom's greatest living vocalists and musicians - and ancient Gaelic instruments such as the Carnyx (Celtic battle horn), the metal strung Clàrsach (Gaelic harp) and the triplepipes (the predecessor of the bagpipes).

As it's said in Gaelic: Làn fhìrinn na sgeòil -- The truth is in the story. When a young man, Angus, visits his dying Grandfather in hospital he cannot hold back his boyhood quest for the truth - the truth behind the death of his parents and the truth behind his Grandfather's ancient, incredible, fearful stories.

Stories from the whole swathe of Gaelic history of poisoned lovers, bloody revenge, water-horses and Spanish gold.

His Grandfather hijacks Angus' life for one last time leading him to one of Scotland's most treacherous mountains, The Inaccessible Pinnacle on the Isle of Skye, and an ancient truth he never expected to find.

Làn fhìrinn na sgeòil. Tha Aonghas air a bhith air tòir na fìrinn o òige, miann a tha a' teannachadh na inntinn 's na chorp nuair a thuigeas e gu bheil am bàs gu laighe air a Sheanar.

Tha fios aig Aonghas gu bheil an t-àm dha eòlas a chur air an fhìrinn mu bhàs a phàrantan 's cuideachd mu sgeulachdan a Sheanair. Sgeulachdan iongantach, eagalach a thug air cuairt tro eachdraidh nan Gaidheal iad le gaol, sabaid, eich-uisge agus òr Spàinnteach nam measg.

Tha Aonghas 's a Sheanair a' gabhail aon chuairt eile còmhla, cuairt a tha gan toirt gu mullach Sgùrr Dearg 's gu fìrinn ris nach robh dùil sam bith.

Simon Miller's Searchd Official Website

Gyda bob hwyl i bawb, Mark

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh-American Family Genealogy, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh Music, Film, and Books Symposium, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Celtic Cult Cinema on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai Razing Ziggurats, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai's Post-Evangelical-Granola on the World Wide Web.

Tuesday 12 June 2007

Canadians and Cymru Share Film Culture for Young Welsh Filmmakers at Newport and Glamorgan

Skillset Screen Academy Wales hosted two days of crash seminars for young Welsh film school students and new graduates.

Masterclasses were held on the Caerleon and Trefforest campuses for Welsh film students.

The sessions were led by Canadian Film & TV expert Sherry Lawr, who is also a professor in the Media Arts Depratment of Canada's world famous Sheridan Insitute School of Arts, Animation and Design.

Sherry Lawr has worked as a producer in the Canadian television industry for more than 20 years.

Specializing in news and current affairs programming, Sherry spent 12 years with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation working in Toronto as an Associate Director, Line Producer and Coordinating Producer on a number of award winning programs including The Journal, The 5th Estate and Marketplace.

In 1994 Sherry left CBC to help launch Studio 2 at TVOntario. As Coordinating Producer she was responsible for all production aspects of the show. In 1997 she launched her own lifestyle program with host Maureen Taylor, and in 1998 became the Head of Production for TVOntario.

For the past 8 years she has been a Professor and Program Coordinator of the Media Arts program at Sheridan College in Oakville. Sherry continues to work in the industry on a freelance basis and last year line produced CTV’s The Next Great Prime Minister.

Professor Lawr 'Sherry' led the Newport and Glamorgan film students in a session on Monday considering pre-production planning. The cutting edge technology of Pre-Viz was discussed, as well as the rudiments of the film business.

Toronto has emerged in the past two decades as a world class centre for film and the arts, and the industry and academic ties between Ontario and Wales go way back. The Welsh speaking church in Toronto is among the largest in North America, and will celebrate its 100th anniversary this summer.

Accompanying Professor Lawr was Sandy McKean, ‘Sandy’ McKean, Sheridan Institute's Associate Dean of Media and Journalism programs. Sandy talked with Welsh film students after the sessions about their careers. Sandy told the Newport and Glamorgan students about his distinguished career in television and journalism.

Dean McKean 'Sandy' headed development and the management of CBC Newsworld and his most recent title was Director, CBC TV News, Administration and Staff Development, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Sheridan Institute

Academi Sgrin Cymru Skillset / Skillset Screen Academy Wales (SSAW)

Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries

Gyda bob hwyl i bawb, Mark

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh-American Family Genealogy, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh Music, Film, and Books Symposium, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Celtic Cult Cinema on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai Razing Ziggurats, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai's Post-Evangelical-Granola on the World Wide Web.

Sunday 10 June 2007

Welsh Author Grahame Davies's New Novel on Simone Weil, Post-national Wales

"The wisdom of Plato is not a philosophy, a search for God by means of human reason; Plato’s wisdom is nothing but an orientation of the soul toward grace.” -- La Source Grecque

Grahame Davies has just published a new novel about Simone Weil . . .

A marvelous new novel about the dramatic life of Simone Weil has just been released. The novel is called, 'Everything Must Change' by Dr. Grahame Davies. Grahame Davies is a brilliant young Welsh writer who has won awards for his poetry at the Guardian Hay Festival at Hay-on-Wye, Wales, in prior years.

Grahame Davies' new novel about Simone Weil juxtaposes two stories: first, the religious and philosophical development of Weil, and her struggle against the Nazis during World War II; and the other story is a post-modern, post-national romance about the life of Welsh nationalist and her personal Bildungsroman, as a metaphor for the evolution of the trans-Devolutionary Welsh nation.

I have not been able to put Grahame Davies' book down, since I started it last week! 'Everything Must Change' by Grahame Davies is a great summer read!

Louis Dupré of Yale University if among prominent philosophers who have considered the 'Christian Platonism' of Simone Weil.

Louis Dupré is the T. L. Riggs Professor in the Philosophy of Religion at Yale University. He has authored The Other Dimension, Transcendent Selfhood and A Dubious Heritage and co-edited Light from Light; Anthology of Christian Mysticism. His most recent books are Passage to Modernity: An essay in Hermeneutics of Nature and Culture and Religious Mystery and Rational Reflection.

Susan Sontag's essay on Simone Weil in the New York Review of Books might be the most famous article about Weil, to date.

Sontag said of Simone Weil:

"Some lives are exemplary, others not; and of exemplary lives, there are those which invite us to imitate them, and those which we regard from a distance with a mixture of revulsion, pity, and reverence. It is, roughly, the difference between the hero and the saint (if one may use the latter term in an aesthetic, rather than a religious sense)."

"Such a life, absurd in its exaggerations and degree of self-mutilation—like Kleist's, like Kierkegaard's—was Simone Weil's. I am thinking of the fanatical asceticism of Simone Weil's life, her contempt for pleasure and for happiness, her noble and ridiculous political gestures, her elaborate self-denials, her tireless courting of affliction; and I do not exclude her homeliness, her physical clumsiness, her migraines, her tuberculosis."

"No one who loves life would wish to imitate her dedication to martyrdom nor would wish it for his children nor for anyone else whom he loves. Yet so far as we love seriousness, as well as life, we are moved by it, nourished by it. In the respect we pay to such lives, we acknowledge the presence of mystery in the world—and mystery is just what the secure possession of the truth, an objective truth, denies."

The most prestigious and respected scholarly source on the philosophy and life of Simone Weil is the American Weil Society, which holds conferences and symposia:

The American Weil Society

The purpose of the American Weil Society is to promote scholarly discussion of the thought of Simone Weil, issues important for understanding her thought and issues on which her thought bears, and to promote interest in her thought.

It also seeks to provide an organization by which those interested in Simone Weil may have access to each other and each other's work.

The Society is a member of the Conference of Philosophical Societies and its annual meetings are listed in the conference calendar of that organization.

Gyda bob hwyl i bawb, Mark

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh Music, Film, and Books Symposium, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai Razing Ziggurats, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Celtic Cult Cinema on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai's Post-Evangelical-Granola on the World Wide Web.