By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 25 1997 (IPS)

The countries and peoples that speak Portuguese have in common not only a language but a poetic, melodic, rhythmic and thematic identity. Music creates a sense of community in a way that neither politics, economics nor governments can ever imbue.

This conviction inspired Sergio Gomes to head-up Project “Enlace” (Link), which seeks to complete before the year 2000 an inventory of songs that best express the cultural community of Lusophone countries. The archive will be together on 22 compact disks (CDs) and in a reference record library.

The idea emerged as a gesture of solidarity toward the people of East Timor, a former Portuguese colony that for more than two decades has been suffering from the violent occupation of their island by Indonesia.

The initial proposal, formulated by participants of the second International Congress of Journalism in the Portuguese language, held in Rio de Janeiro, December 1994, called for taping all the songs and singers of Portuguese-speaking countries on one single disk titled “Coming Together (Enlace) for Timor.” Obore, a support center for journalists and communications projects based in Sao Paolo and headed by Gomes, produced the disk, with a single theme and title: “The Sea.”

The CD, presented by the Brazilian delegation to the 600 participants at the third Congress of Lusophone Journalists in April this year in Lisbon, became the first recorded work of Project Enlace. Others were to follow.

From an initial goal of 10 recorded CDs, the center now aims to produce 22 – each one with a definite theme, launching them during the 500th anniversary of the landing of Portuguese in Brazil – which will be celebrated on April 22, 2000

The plan foresees the manufacture of 10,000 copies of each disk, a total of 220,000 CDs. Half will be distributed at no charge to some 3,000 radio stations in Brazil, 500 in Portugal and a still to be determined number in the other Portuguese-speaking countries, as well as radio programs heard by lusophone migrants all over the world.

One fourth of the copies will be given to the sponsors that financed the almost three million dollar cost of the project and the rest will be sold. The income produced by sales will be earmarked for the creation of a record library about music in the lusophone world, in Sao Paulo.

The CDs will also be sent to embassies, to music writers, universities, and research centers, said Gomes, coordinator of the project which is officially coordinated by the Uniemp Institute, an organization that links universities and the private sector in Sao Paulo.

El Mar, the first CD in the series with a run of 10,000 copies, will be launched in January, said Oswaldo Colibri Pitta, on the heads of the project. Next will be “Carnival” in January.

The 22 themes, prospective titles of each CD, will range from “Popular Movements,” to “Migrations,” moving to “Rhythms/dances/percussion,” to “Human Rights,” “Religiosity,” and “Slavery.”

The time period and sequence of the record releases depends mainly on the negotiations for recording rights. “Enlace” is a ‘cultural not-for-profit project,’ and it’s not creating a new product but only gathering songs already recorded,” explained Gomes.

The problem now is to convince the companies that own the music rights and, with whom the singers are under contract, to allow the reproduction of songs to be included in the Project Enlace disk, said Colibri.

Each CD will be accompanied by a pamphlet containing the song lyrics, translation of local expressions or dialects, and biographical details of the composers, singers and even the address of the companies that provided the music, so that one can know where to find the original recording, said Gomes.

The CD series began with “The Sea” because “the sea was the path for the ancient explorers, and with them the spread of language – the thing that joins and separates us,” the coordinator of the project explained.

Brazilian singers such as Paulinho da Viola and Marisa Monte, the Cape Verdean Cesaria Evora, the Portuguese group Madredeus, Angolans Bonga and Felipe Mukenga and the Orchestra Marrabenta Star of Mozambique will all appear on the first CD.

East Timor will have a presence only as an instrumental theme, “Beira Mar” (The Sea Shore) of local folklore. “It was all we could do,” said Gomes, noting that Project Enlace will motivate journalists, researchers and interested members of the public to gather other relevant and interesting details in the discography of these countries.

For this effort, Obore has created a page on the internet, where he explains the project, provides updates on its progress and asks for support. The electronic address is http://www.obore.com/enlace.htm.

The project also calls for the promotion of lusophone music to resist the “era of monoculture,” – the trend toward cultural uniformity, which Gomes fears will arrive by the end of the century.

To achieve this, weekly radio programs are being produced which already have found time slots on Brazilian Catholic Radio and Popular Radio Network of Italy, both of whom are making an important contribution to this effort outside of the lusophone countries. Eight shows have already been aired. (FIN/IPS/mo/dg/c-pr/lv/97)

Excerpt:

If the casual movie-goer checked out the most popular trends in U.S. cinema today, the list would include violent, cynical crime movies; romantic comedies; and mawkish films about angels who help out humans.

Now a new film – ‘A Life Less Ordinary’ – by Scottish director Danny Boyle combines all of the above!

This bizarre, adventure-packed comedy has two young lovers (played by Ewan McGregor and Cameron Diaz) meeting each other through an unintended kidnapping and are then paired for romance by two strangely violent angels (Delroy Lindo and Holly Hunter).

Boyle and fellow Scot John Hodge, the screenwriter – who teamed up with Boyle and McGregor for last year’s ‘Trainspotting’ – put so many different elements into their mix that it becomes clear they actually intend to subvert the idea of U.S. blockbuster movies entirely.

The Scottish trio, who put out the heroin-soaked comedy ‘Trainspotting’ and the bitter thriller ‘Shallow Grave’, are new to U.S. audiences, with ‘A Life Less Ordinary’ their first U.S. collaboration. All are tipped for bigger things in America, with McGregor slated to play the hero of the next ‘Star Wars’ movie by director George Lucas.

‘A Life Less Ordinary’ shows, however, that success in the United States matters much less to Boyle and Hodge than presenting a skewed, acidic view of what America comprises. The United States of the movie is inhabited by a greedy capitalist (Ian Holm) who tries to replace McGregor with a robot; a group of vaguely deranged mountain rednecks, one of whom barks like a dog; a brain- damaged dentist; and a handful of shopping malls and bars.

Heaven, by contrast, is a stark white office building where angels act like police officers and face the threat of being downsized back to Earth.

Predictably, that vision has not enthralled U.S. audiences, who have largely stayed away since ‘A Life Less Ordinary’ opened here in October. But then, audiences who loved the angels in recent movies like ‘Michael’ and ‘The Preacher’s Wife’ may be be offended by Hunter and Lindo, whose plan to unite the young lovers involves scaring them with explosives and assassination attempts.

Nor are conventional fans of romantic comedy likely to enjoy the moment when Diaz and McGregor first kiss, only to leave behind a trail of spittle between their mouths, which glows innocently as the sun shines on it.

Like ‘Trainspotting’, ‘A Life Less Ordinary’ is thus really about taking on the most hoary conventions of modern cinema. Thus, although bursts of violence reminiscent of Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Pulp Fiction’ splatter across the screen, Boyle adds an element of cartoon-style surrealism to those scenes: Since the angels are most often the victims, they tend to dust themselves off and start anew.

Even the main characters, McGregor’s idealistic janitor Robert and Diaz’s bored socialite Celine, seem in on the movie’s spirit of subversive humour. When Celine tries to rob a bank and informs the teller, “I’d like to make a deposit,” Robert mumbles to her, “I thought we agreed – no cliches.”

Of course, the film has plenty of cliches anyway. Celine starts out as the archetype of a spoiled rich girl, so bored that she amuses herself by shooting apples off her butler’s head. The angels are so out of touch about romance that they have to revisit their own humanity by writing love letters and reading amorous novels.

Nevertheless, Boyle and Hodge treat such conventions wittily and lightly, and the actors all play their roles with a sly, self- mocking tone. Particularly good is McGregor, who carries out Diaz’s kidnapping with pathetically ineffective good manners, and then bawls, “I’m doing my best under very difficult circumstances!”

Hunter also is effective as an angel who is part genuinely dangerous femme fatale, and part danger-resistant cartoon character.

‘A Life Less Ordinary’ is helped by the fact that some of the movie’s best moments borrow from the glamour and magic of the films that are often being parodied. When Celine and Robert join in singing ‘Somewhere Beyond the Sea’, the backwoods bar in which they are singing miraculously is transformed into a Hollywood musical stage, and the two young lovers suddenly become debonair dancers.

Even filmmakers who are cynical about Hollywood, it seems, find some wonder in the old cliches.