El Haouma, that is, the neighborhood

09/06/2015 admin 0
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A dead city

21/01/2015 admin 0


Sydney, a (post)colonial city

22/11/2014 admin 0
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The ghosts of San Berillo

21/03/2014 admin 0

Different cities follow one another on the same site and under the same name, writes Italo Calvino, born and dying without knowing one another, without communication among themselves. At time even the names of the inhabitants remain the same, and their voices’ accent, and also the features of the faces; but the gods who live beneath names and above places have gone off without a word and outsiders have settled in their place. It is pointless to ask whether the new gods are better or worse than the old, since there is no connection between them… We recommend you another Italian documentary movie: Edoardo Morabito and Irma Vecchio’s I fantasmi di San Berillo (2013), first prize at Torino Film Festival. The demolition of this old neighbourhood in the centre of Catania (Sicily), in 1958, was the biggest urban evisceration in post-war Italy, linked (as everything in the country) with Vatican’s Società Generale Immobiliare: 30.000 people where displaced towards the peripheries. It was the same year in which brothels were banned: prostitutes were forced to work underground, and what was left of San Berillo turned into one of the biggest “red light districts” of the Mediterranean. So the story of the neighbourhood went on for another half century, until 2001, when a new police operation evicted again prostitutes and transvestites from their houses and streets. Today many plots are still unoccupied, and some became new favelas (see this 2012 video). The documentary shifts visually from past to present, and the images are associated with the fascinating words of writer Goliarda Sapienza, born in San Berillo in 1924.

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The Secret

08/02/2014 admin 0

In the middle of January, many neighbourhoods of Naples still celebrate the ritual of the cippo di Sant’Antonio. After New Year’s Day the young boys search the whole city for firewood, also very far from their neighbourhoods. Every gang gathers its woods in a secret place – “il segreto” – to protect them from the raids of the other gangs; they wait for the day of the bonfire, among the frenzy of the search for wood, and the clashes among the gangs, sometimes real, sometimes imaginary, to defend the treasure from the attacks of the “enemies”. Everything happens in the streets, almost twenyfour hours a day: at morning they often skip school, by night they guard the hiding place. To accomplish their aim, the gangs pass over all the obstacles, either if it is their neighbours complaining for the yellings, or the police threatening them to confiscate the firewood. At a closer look, though, an internal set of rules can be found: codes and habits that are preserved from one generation to another. They are the same children that in school appear empty, lazy, apathetic, or the opposite, uncontrollable and agitated. During the days of the “cippo” you see them passionate, interested and disciplined. In the adventurous game they built with their own hands, they appear transformed, until the final catharsis arrives: when the fire is lit, they dance around it, singing, and throwing in the flames the firecrackers and their own clothes.

  • IL SEGRETO (2013), a film by cyop&kaf about the ritual of the “cippo” in Naples’ Quartieri Spagnoli neighbourhood; special mention of the Jury at the Torino Film Festival, selected by Paris international festival Cinema du Réel [trailer][webpage][review in Quinlan]
  • La sfida del cippo e la città alla finestra“, by Luca Rossomando, Repubblica Napoli 1/15/2013 [here also translated into spanish], and “Il segreto di Sant’Antonio“, Napoli Monitor n. 53, march 2013.
  • cyop&kaf generally paints, even if at times it stumbles on writing, urbanism, photography. When it took a videocamera for the first time, it had already spent three years before in a dialogue with Naples’ Quartieri Spagnoli. The first fruit of that long work was a book, QS, then a movie, Il segreto: two pieces-synthesis, that together try to account the complexity of a neighbourhood corroded by prejudice. To look behind and inside the appearance, often brutal, of things. See also the video Quore Spinato [trailer] and the reportage Fuoco e fiamme [link]
  • Napoli Monitor, review of reportages, drawings, researches and chroniques, explaining Naples and other cities since 2007 [webpage]

A mediados de enero, en muchos barrios de Nápoles se celebra aún <strong>el ritual del <em>Cippo di Sant’Antonio</em></strong>. Después de las fiestas de año nuevo, los chavales empiezan a buscar leña para quemar, incluso muy lejos de sus barrios. Cada pandilla acumula su leña en un escondite – <em><strong><a href=”http://www.cyopekaf.org/il-segreto/#1″ target=”_blank”>il segreto</a></strong></em> – para protegerla de los asaltos de las pandillas de otros barrios. La espera del día de la hoguera, el 17 de enero, se consuma en búsquedas frenéticas y en las peleas, a veces reales, otras veces imaginarias, para defender el tesoro de los “enemigos”. <strong>Todo acontece en la calle, casi venticuatro horas al día</strong>; por la mañana se salta la escuela, por la noche se hacen turnos para vigilar el escondite. Para llegar al objetivo, las bandas están dispuestas a pasar por encima de todo, sean los vecinos del barrio que se quejan del ruido, sea la policía que amenaza con secuestrarlo todo. Observando más de cerca, pero, se descubren reglas y códigos de comportamiento que se transmiten de una generación a la otra:<strong> son los mismos niños que en el colegio aparecen vacíos, perezosos, desmotivados, incontenibles e irrequietos; en los días del <em>cippo</em> en cambio se los ve apasionados, atentos y disciplinados</strong>. En el juego aventuroso que han construido con sus manos aparecen transformados, hasta la catársis final, cuando se enciende el fuego y se baila, cantando y tirando en las llamas los petardos y la ropa.
<li><strong>IL SEGRETO</strong> (2014), una película de <strong>cyop&amp;kaf</strong> sobre el ritual del <em>Cippo </em>en el barrio <em>Quartieri Spagnoli</em> de Nápoles; de una idea de <strong>Luca Rossomando</strong>. Mención especial del jurado en el <a href=”http://www.torinofilmfest.org/?action=article&amp;id=427″ target=”_blank”>Torino Film Festival</a>, seleccionado para el festival internacional <em>Cinema du Réel</em>, Paris <strong>[<a href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0pPPZpHEV0″ target=”_blank”>trailer</a>][<a href=” http://www.cyopekaf.org/il-segreto/#1″ target=”_blank”>página web</a>][<a href=”http://quinlan.it/2013/11/24/il-segreto/” target=”_blank”>reseña en <em>Quinlan</em></a>]</strong></li>
<li>”<a href=”http://napolimonitor.it/2014/01/16/24309/la-sfida-del-cippo-e-la-citta-alla-finestra.html” target=”_blank”>La sfida del cippo e la città alla finestra</a>”, de <strong>Luca Rossomando</strong>, <em>Repubblica Napoli </em>15/1/2013, y “<a href=”http://napolimonitor.it/2014/02/07/24493/il-segreto-di-cyopkaf-la-prima-napoletana.html” target=”_blank”>Il segreto di Sant’Antonio</a>”, <em>Napoli Monitor</em> n. 53, marzo 2013. <strong>
<li><strong>cyop&amp;kaf </strong>dibuja, aunque a veces tropieza en la escritura, en la urbanística, en la fotografía. Cuando ha cogido la cámara de video por primera vez, llevaba tres años dialogando con el barrio <em>Quartieri Spagnoli</em> de Nápoles. El fruto ha sido primero un libro, <a href=”http://www.cyopekaf.org/books/qs-un-libro-dai-quartieri-spagnoli” target=”_blank”>QS</a>, y ahora una película, dos obras-síntesis que juntas intentan dar cuenta de la complejidad de un barrio corroído por prejuicios. Para mirar detrás y dentro la aparencia a menudo brutal de las cosas. <strong>Ver también el vídeo <em>Quore Spinato</em> [<a href=”http://vimeo.com/84214894″ target=”_blank”>trailer</a>] y el fotoreportaje </strong><strong><em>Fuoco e fiamme</em> [<a href=”http://napolimonitor.it/fotoreportage/quartieri-spagnoli-fuoco-e-fiamme” target=”_blank”>link</a>]</strong><strong> </strong></li>
<li><strong>Napoli Monitor</strong>, revista de reportajes, investigación, dibujos y crónicas, activa desde 2007 [<a href=”http://napolimonitor.it/” target=”_blank”>página web</a>]</li>

The protector of Phnom Penh

21/09/2013 admin 0
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WHOSE megaevents?

11/07/2013 admin 0


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A photographic and critical “gentrificatour” in Madrid’s Malasaña neighborhood

01/03/2013 admin 0


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Concrete geographies: displacements and trails on the territory, “Cicle Nòmades” with Xavier Ribas

16/12/2012 admin 0
This sunday 16th at 6:30pm the anthropologist Maite Marín and the photographer Jordi R. Renom invite us to the last nomadic trip organized in "El Centre", Ateneu democràtic i progressista de Caldes de Montbui, doubtlessly so interesting as the previous sessions of Nòmades cycle, that are taking place since one year ago. In this session they will show us the photographic project of Xavier Ribas, and starting from it we will hold a debate among photography, urbanism, architecture, anthropology. To the conversation are also invited the urbanist-photographer-arquitect Kathrin Golda-Pongratz, the architect Emanuela Bove from Repensar Bonpastor, and the anthropologist Núria Sánchez Armengol, a member of our research group. The work of Xavier Ribas Nòmades deals with issues such as limits, frontiers, expulsions from territory, everyday life, simbolic violence and historical memory, starting from photos taken in peripheral territories. Xavier Ribes has been working since 1994 on different projects in urban peripheries. "...Peripheries are not all the same. In Barcelona is not the same thing if you visit Besós or Llobregat, or if you go to Nou Barris, Pedralbes, or Sarrià… I'm interested in periphery, among other issues, because it is a counterpoint, or countervision, to the city thought from the center. If contemporary city differ in something, these are their peripheries more than in their urban centers. So, we could say that the true character of the cities is in there, and that peripheries, more than equalize, generate identities". [link on blog "a sangre" by Francisco Navammuel]

Tijuana’s Flowers of the Rancho

24/10/2012 admin 0
Our friend Anna BOSCH had been giving a workshop in participatory photography at Rancho Las Flores, a spontaneous settlement in Tijuana: shanties and self-made houses less than 1km from the most frequently crossed international border in the world. In few cities the inhabitants are so heavily influenced by images built from outside: Tijuana is represented alternately as borderland or as "center of the universe"; as a city without law, or as a "perfect place" for US tourists.
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Words of Women from the Egyptian Revolution

27/04/2012 admin 0
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Carnival King of Europe: against the domestication of the festival

21/02/2012 admin 0
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The Pinheirinho massacre

31/01/2012 admin 0
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Istanbul, a city without limits. Documentary movie

15/11/2011 admin 0
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26/10/2011 admin 0