‘Music for the environment’: Italian Embassy hosts Green Embassy Concert by Instituto Reciclando Sons
Music, art, sustainability, and solidarity will be the themes on the at the Embassy of Italy in Brasilia this June 10 at 8 pm as it hosts the 'Concerto Embaixada Verde' by the students of the Orchestra and Choir of the Instituto Reciclando Sons, presenting a repertoire of Italian and Brazilian music
Active in the Structural City area, until recently the largest open-air landfill in Latin America, the Institute offers music education courses in contexts lacking educational opportunities.
"The Instituto Reciclando Sons is a commendable reference structure, promoting cultural and recreational activities for children and young people exposed to serious social, health, and environmental challenges," says Ambassador Francesco Azzarello. "The Italian Embassy in Brasilia is particularly pleased to participate in a project of Italian cultural valorization, which is part of the broader context of the follow-up to the first 'Green Embassy Week', which took place last March."
The Embassy welcomed, in parallel with the concert, around one hundred children and young people aged between 6 and 18 years, protagonists of the specific monthly program "Educação Ambiental Lixo Zero" launched by the Embassy. They experienced, through games, learning basic techniques of home composting and visited the facilities of the Diplomatic Headquarters for the treatment and disposal of waste, benefiting from the explanations of specialized employees.
The concert program will begin with the National Anthem of the Italian Republic followed by the National Anthem of the Federative Republic of Brazil and renditions of, "Oh, my nights of love," by Carlos Gomes (Maria Tudor opera), "Watercolor," BY Toquinho (in Italian and Portuguese), "La Misión," by Ennio Morricone, "Watercolor from Brazil," BY Ary Barroso, and "The Prayer," by Carole Bayer Sager/David W. Foster (in Italian and Portuguese).
It will be a beautiful moment of art, culture, sustainability, and solidarity, said the Insitute on Instagram.
.The event will also be available on the Embassy's YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/italyinbrazil/).
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International Festival brings the world’s sights, scents, tastes, and national histories to Brasilia
Cultural fest resumes, setting tone for spectacular post-pandemic fashion
By Lisulo Imukusi
The scents of Kenya’s Zanzibar, of cloves, cinnamon, and cardamom, of Jasmine wafting through the air mixing in with the tangy, rich, and slightly salty flavors of feta from Greece next to the creamy and fluffy texture of humus from Israel and more set the mood and the atmosphere that welcomed visitors at the Brasilia International School’s student-produced International Fair this past April 29 after a two-year pandemic presential absence.
The evening's hustle and bustle unfolded amid Nigerian agbada-attired and Indian salwar kameez-wearing students passing others in kimonos, hijabs, and kufiyahs, typical national dresses and national colors that blended into a multi-cultural celebration that turned the warm Friday evening at the Christian school’s Asa Sul campus into a lively mini-United Nations in Brasilia.
But there was more food and more flavors to turn the ordinary into the exotic. Jasmine again fragrant in Thai rice mixed next to Rwandan sweets, then, around the corner Zambia’s typical nshima vegetables and Lake Tanganyika kapenta fish under rich Zambian colors, one more turn and seaweed-wrapped rolls from Japan and the oddly sweet and smokey Jollof rice from Ghana, spicy too, and the even American chocolate chip cookies completed the visual and sensory instruction that was the festival
Brasilia International School, a member of the Network of International Christian Schools, has students from all around the world, including the U.S, India, Ghana, Australia, Argentina, Canada, Cameroon, China, Greece, France, Iraq, Italy, Israel, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Morocco, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Pakistan, Senegal, South Africa, South Korea, Venezuela, Zambia and Zimbabwe along with Brazil and other countries. The school is home to all these cultures and more, literally the world in one school campus.
Established to serve primarily the international community in Brasilia, BIS offers an American curriculum, providing U.S.-style education based on a Biblical worldview. With a staff base roughly matching its student mix of about 60% Brazilian and 40% non-Brazilian.
The International Fair is a traditional event for BIS, the school says it has successfully organized and coordinated the event for the past 15 years. Due to the covid pandemic, the school did not have the event for the past two years. In 2020, but the oncoming pandemic changed the fair plans and families made videos about their cultures, which were shared it on the school’s YouTube channel. In 2021, with students back in person but COVID still very much in our fears, the Fair took the form of a car parade where parents drove through a car line to see the students waving their flags. “But nothing compares to having our community here celebrating the nations,” says the school.
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The event, under the coordination and oversight of School Headmaster Clark Skip-Hults with the elaborate assistance from Business Manager and Event Translator Nathan Caze, Event Coordinator Priscila Nascimento with support from the rest of the school’s staff, concluded with a spectacular and colorful Parade of Nations with students proudly joining under the flag of the country where they came from, and then a feast of the foods from all cultures.
The International Fair was structured in three parts: 1. The academic part where students present the countries they had been researching, 2, The Parade of the Nations and, 3. The National foods, where every family brought a dish traditional from their culture. “It is such a rich part of our event that I dare to say it's everyone's favorite,” said the headmaster.
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| School Headmaster Clark Skip-Hult and event translator Nathan Case |
“Our school is very similar,” he concluded. “Last year people talked about closing our school, and while it wasn't closed it was pruned back to 76 students last July. Here we are tonight a healthy miraculous school of 200 students."
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| The author in traditional Zambian Siziba attire |
To happy applause, the proud and happy headmaster then led the attendants to a spread of national foods that was as much a treat of flavors as it was of exotic scents and a visual explosion of how people manifest their love in foods around the world.
The waning pandemic has many missing key events like these, but there is always next year.
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Um Jardin na Minha Lente: Unveiling the beauty of flowers through the lens of Christoph Diewald
Photographic exposition commemorates the 37th anniversary of Brasilia’s Botanic Gardens turning weeds into works of art
By Milan Sime Martinic
The walls of the exhibit area of Brasilia’s Botanical Gardens are blossoming with stunning natural beauty in an exhibit that amplifies the garden experience with splashes of color and photographed botanical life through the lens of German-born and longtime Brasilia-resident photographer Christoph Diewald.
His commemorative exposition, Um Jardim de Miha Lente, organized by the Jardim Botanico de Brasilia and produced by Pictura Fine Art explores the remarkable beauty and variety of plants that can be found at the botanical gardens and in the Cerrado biome of central Brazil. The exhibit opened on March 4, and it runs through March 13.
The photographs' larger-than-life perspectives are unique because of their considerably complex composition and execution. There is a reverence in Diewald’s lens, and it is evident in the way he captures excruciating details that give you macro views of leaves, petals, and pistils, and the tendrils that stretch out and twine around below a flower. It takes considerable patience, talent, art, and skill to complete that composition.
The concept for the exposition came from a mentoring program when the 74-year-old Diewald was spurred and inspired into a collaborative project to display his art. It led to the careful selection of 25 pictures of flowers and leaves from a databank of over 1000 of his pictures. Diewald himself has thoughtfully curated the exhibition to project a sense of wonder and mystery through their display and interaction.
In his photographs one sees parallels with the eloquence of 1980s renowned American photographer Robert Maplethorpe, an unconscious kinship Diewald recognized after-the-fact, when exposed to the powerful work of the master photographer.
Self-taught without any formal photographic instruction, Diewald has developed techniques of his own that are evident in his use of negative space, depth of field, leading lines, and framing that give his work impact in their detail, making them engaging to the viewer.
To take in all the splendor of the exposition requires patience to immerse yourself in each piece of a plant so carefully focused that the senses and the mind have to reconcile the knowledge that it is merely nature and beauty captured so well that it does not seem real. The rewards can be life-enlarging, as when suddenly seeing the reticulate venation on the back of a leaf in labyrinthine detail; this texture, like life itself. interconnected with the whole, complicated in its structure, smooth in its beauty from afar, in elaborate grainy nearness to your senses.
The art and skill behind the ability to put that image in front of you come from a lifetime of experience seeing life in its important, often unseen detail, not all of it behind a lens. Diewald came to Brasilia in 1994 as a World Bank economist focused on the conservation of tropical forests.
Here, his childhood love for photography and photographing plants encountered the opulence of plant species and the mechanisms to protect and preserve their diversity. Entwined with his respect and appreciation for nature, put his lens and focus on the plants of the Cerrado savannah and the rich examples of plants endemic to the area, Diewald has been perfecting his art and botanic photography style with a passion that reflects not only the talent but also the inner beauty and aesthetic of the artist.
Recognized by the capital city’s Botanic Gaden in its effort to integrate art and nature, Diewald’s art and style are now on display for Brasilia to see, but the real richness is on both sides of the lens, in the exuberance of Cerrado flora so splendidly captured, and in the eye and the art of Diewald. Both enrich the culture and beauty of the area.
The show celebrates the March 8th anniversary of the Botanical Gardens and continues through March 13 in the Exhibit Hall of the botanical garden’s Visitor Center. Open Tuesday through Sunday, 9 A.M. to 5:30 P.M.
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###Beauty and the Beast musical comes to Brasilia this March
Live Orchestra, 30 actors, singers, dancers, 120 costumes, and 4D special effects to make the great fairy tale come alive
By Milan Sime Martinic
Mrs. Potts singing "Beauty and the Beast" just as Belle and the Beast come down the great staircase and end up waltzing across the ballroom will cap the emotions of old and young in Brasilia this March as a cast of 30 actors and dancers in some 120 costumes will gain grandeur with special effects, 4D technology and the live music of a full orchestra immersing the audience in the special musical production of the ancient and timeless tale at the Ulysses Guimarães Convention Center in the Plano Piloto this March 12.
Poetry of old times, rhymed in Portuguese in a text adaptation by Lucas Cavalaro will be sung live, taking the audience through the tale’s grandiose scenarios as the musical superproduction immerses the theater in the magic of the soundtrack performed by the Espirito Santo philharmonic orchestra.
The full-length musical foray will last an hour-and-forty minutes as the 4,000-year-old tale takes its modern adaptation by 18th century French songwriter Madame de Beaumont into one of the great classic fairy tales that transform a beastly heart into the prince of the precocious beauty’s dreams.
This presentation is a national-level production by general director Bruno Souza, with stage direction by Manuela Littiérry, choreography by Gabriela Evangelista is under musical direction by Maestro Ettore Veríssimo following the text adaptation by Lucas Cavalaro. Production of the musical is by Palavra & Som Entretenimento.
The single performance in the capital city will take place Saturday March 12, at 15:30h, with doors opening at 14h.
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Warner Brothers to Premiere "Hermanoteu na Terra de Godah" Film this Feb 9, at Cine Brasilia
The cast has just finished a one-week run of the theater spectacular at the Teatro Da Caesb in Aguas Claras and will be present at the film release.
Originally created in 1995, the theater version upon which the film is based is very much revered by the Brazilian public, and still somewhat extremely current. It is an unpretentious satire on old films about the Old Testament using notorious facts, local references, and historical characters to make fun of everyday reality.
