Rio de Janeiro, Saturday, October 18th. Within a walking distance from the famous beaches of Ipanema and Copacabana, in a school building in the Cantagalo slum, the 2nd edition of the festival of urban dance Favela em Dança took place. What for ? To underline the value of artistic interventions in slum areas and emphasize the local culture. The event, totally free, was targeted at professional dancers as well as amateurs and also at those who were simply curious. The idea was to raise interest...

The Festival Lumière 2014 came to an end on Sunday. Pedro Almodóvar was the guest of honour of the year, and most of his films were broadcast during the festival. What is more, the film director himself got to choose films on the program : the “cinema inside him”. Pedro Almodóvar explained to us that there are often references to the cinema in his films. In fact, having been a big cinema buff already in his youth, he says he was raised with movies. Thus, the impact is significant, ranging from...

When it comes to films, we often hear about « classics » and “cult movies”. Same titles keep coming up, and for film-lovers, it is considered inacceptable not to have seen these films. What makes these films so unforgettable for generations through ages, while many others have been forgotten ? During the Festival Lumière, most films shown on the screen were not the most recent: the very essence of the festival is to pay tribute to cinema and its early age. Thus, presence of the Lumiere...

Selected by Pedro Almodovar and considered as the first “snuff movie”, Peeping Tom follows Mark Lewis’ video camera, an elegant young man traumatised by the sociological experiments about fear his father subjected him to. His ultimate goal : to capture his own death. The film shines a light on a voyeur. “This movie is an offence to the nation”,“it is a disgusting movie”, “harmful and damaging”. The British response was cutting when the film was released in 1960. It was only in 1979, when Martin...

City of colors and smells, Dakar lives at the path of a joyful and incessant hullaballoo that always brings me back to my childhood memories. Paris, Charles De Gaulle airport, gate E58. Five hours and 4700km later I finally arrive in Dakar, capital city of Senegal in West Africa. After my first step out of the plane, I immediately feel my whole body enveloped by the warm humidity, typical from the region, mingled with the exotic smells of the city. Over there a sensory world is...

Brazil, like the rest of the BRICs and many less economically developed countries (LEDCs), has an economic development model that is inspired by the one used successfully by the four Asian states, Hong-Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea, known as the Asian Tigers. Yet, Brazil cannot expect the same outcomes. The export-orientated strategy combined with an outward look aimed at attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) has left Brazil at the mercy of external factors upon which much of its...

Providing developing countries and in particular Sub-Saharan Africa with aid – under many forms, social, economic, humanitarian – has been our priority since the post-independence era in the 1960s. NGOs are in their hundreds of thousands trying to make the world a better place, fighting fatal illnesses, handing out food and water, providing teachers, the list goes on. There is an unmistakable moral imperative for humanitarian organisations to get involved in crisis situations like the Tsunami...

While Facebook just celebrated its 10th year of existence last February, new social networks have been innovating all while facing the “giants”. Ello is the latest social network to emerge and everyone has hope for its future. Here is an opportunity to explain. “Your social network is owned by advertisers. Every post you share, every friend you make and every link you follow is tracked, recorded and converted into data. Advertisers buy your data so they can show you more ads. You are the...

ISIS ISIL IS... The "new" Al Qaeda is everywhere we look. The amount of information and articles can be overwhelming. When filtering through, one aspect that should be more accentuated is who funds IS, or better, how has this group become perhaps the wealthiest terror group in history in under a year. For any group or entity, funding is key. It is what enables them to carry out their political and military agenda, what provides a "salary" for their fighters. Funding means more advanced...

Like many other countries around the world, Lebanon opened the doors of its public schools this Monday, 22nd of September; but unlike elsewhere, thousands of students will find themselves left without a place at school.  The Syrian refugee crisis threatens the beginning of the upcoming school year in Lebanon. The equation made it impossible to accommodate the large number of newly arrived Syrian youth last year, and the situation seems to be equally difficult this time around. The wave of...