/ARTS WEEKLY/FILM-ITALY: But There’s a Mafia Outside the Movies, Too

A spate of new films on the mafia comes with a health warning - the mafia may have gone off the news, but it is not gone yet.

MEDIA-LATIN AMERICA: Telesur Goes on the Air Under Fire from US

Sunday will be the first day of broadcasting for a new Latin America-wide TV network aimed at competing with U.S. and European international news stations.

/ARTS WEEKLY/US: Film Exposes Plight of 9/11 Rescuers

While Washington continues to spend billions of dollars on its global "war on terror," thousands of ordinary people who took part in cleaning up the World Trade Centre site after the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks are left wondering if they will ever receive a single penny from the government for medical treatment.

/ARTS WEEKLY/INDIA: Bollywood Gets Serious About HIV/AIDS

Song and dance against a verdant valley. Good pitted against evil. Fantastical villains. Bright colours. Spectacle and turmoil. No more, no less, this is Bollywood as the Indian film industry has been known for decades.

/ARTS WEEKLY/TELEVISION-CHILE: Battle of Prime Time Soaps Heats Up

Chile has not joined the ranks of Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela - Latin America's big producers of soap operas that are sold around the region and the world.

/ARTS WEEKLY/FILM: Indian Cinema Examines Lesbian, Gay Themes

A city known for film literacy and great directors like Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak and Mrinal Sen this eastern metropolis witnessed something unique recently - a film award instituted on the theme of gay rights.

/ARTS WEEKLY/-IRAQ: Book Checks Hearts and Minds, Won or Lost

When journalist Aaron Glantz drove into Iraq from Jordan in a battered orange and white checkered taxi on Apr. 29, 2003, he was surprised to find most of the civilian neighbourhoods in Baghdad relatively unscathed by the U.S.-led bombing campaign.

/ARTS WEEKLY/ARGENTINA: Tracking Dictatorship’s Missing Children on TV

For more than 27 years, the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo have been searching for young people who were kidnapped as small children during Argentina's 1976-1983 dictatorship or were born topolitical prisoners in clandestine detention centres.

/ARTS WEEKLY/CULTURE: South India Promotes Temple as Living ‘Wonder’

Hype is growing. Chances are slim. Yet the people of Tamil Nadu State's oldest and culturally most active city - Madurai - are upbeat that their 16th-century Meenakshi Sundareswarar Temple will be voted as one of the seven new wonders of the world.

/ARTS WEEKLY/CULTURE: Maori ‘Marae’ Integral to New Zealand Tourism

Atop the Te Mata peak, in freezing 6C weather, visitors to New Zealand are treated to a traditional 'Powhiri' or Maori welcome ceremony.

/ARTS WEEKLY/CHILE: Book Reveals Truth of General’s Apocryphal Memoirs

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, and that is certainly the case with one of the best-selling novels in Chile this June, 'Cadáver tuerto' ('One-Eyed Corpse'), in which author Eduardo Labarca confesses to having written the 1976 "memoirs" of General Carlos Prats, assassinated two years earlier.

FILM-INDIA: Nair Returns to Roots for Another Take on Immigrants

In the cruel heat of a Kolkata summer, Mira Nair was in a hurry to wrap up the shoot of 'The Namesake' in early June and see her film on the editing table by September.

FILM-US: Media With a Message Stars At Youth Festival

At first there is nothing odd about the picture on-screen: a cyclist on the bustling streets of Manhattan, protected by a helmet, gloves and a cycling suit. Then the camera captures a wider angle, and the audience sees that the cyclist has only one leg.

FILM: Mexico-US ‘Devil’s Highway’ A Killer

In May 2001, a group of 26 undocumented Mexican immigrants crossed the border into the United States and headed north through an Arizona desert area so barren and hostile it is known as the Devil's Highway.

/CORRECTION*/ARTS WEEKLY/BOOKS-TIBET: The Karmapa’s Dance of Politics

It is over five years since a 14-year-old Tibetan monk made a dramatic escape over the Himalayas to India, travelling over 1,500 kilometres from his monastery in Tibet, evading Chinese border troops and risking death by exposure to the cold.

/ARTS WEEKLY/FILM: Of Music, a Man, and Social Revolution in a Feared Slum

Anderson Sa was 10 years old when he first witnessed a murder. Outside a store in Vigario Geral, one of the most violent of Rio de Janeiro's 600 favelas, or shantytowns, a man was dragged out of a car, beaten, and then shot in the head. Anderson's reaction as a 10-year-old boy?

/ARTS WEEKLY/JAPAN: 21st Century Museum Shows the Way to Oldies

Dare to breakaway from tradition and be different. That's the challenge thrown by a new Japanese museum to its older counterparts, as they struggle to survive with falling visitors and dwindling budgets.

/ARTS WEEKLY/FILM: Where Drugs, Immigration, and Corrido Music Collide

A young man arrives at a fork in the road and neither choice before him presents a lesser risk to his survival, neither one is less traveled, and neither one is morally higher or lower than the other.

/ARTS WEEKLY/LITERATURE-CHILE: New Anthology Celebrates Work of Leftist Literary ‘Misfit’

'Restaurant Chile' is a newly released anthology of poems by José Angel Cuevas, a collection of works spanning the 26-year career of this self-described "misfit", a respected writer who nonetheless prefers to dwell on the fringes of the country's literary elite.

/ARTS WEEKLY/BOOKS-THAILAND: Of ‘Lady Boys’ and Men in Hair Bands

The glossy cover greets you with a loud splash of neon pink and yellow, with photographs symbolising the very epitome of Thailand emblazoned on the book that entices one into flipping the pages of this pop art-inspired coffee table book.

/ARTS WEEKLY/LATIN AMERICA: Microcinemas and Digital Alternatives

Digital technologies and microcinemas are providing an alternative for getting non-commercial films distributed and screened more widely in Latin America, while offering lower-cost options for independent filmmakers to produce their works.