Month: November 2019

A Yemeni man stabbed three actors at a performance in the Saudi capital, police said on Tuesday, in the first such attack since the ultra-conservative kingdom began easing decades-old restrictions on entertainment.The knife-wielding assailant was arrested after state television footage showed him storming a musical performance in Riyadh’s King Abdullah Park by what appeared to be a foreign theatre troupe.Police said the victims were in stable condition after the attack late Monday, which comes as de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman pursues sweeping reforms that mark the biggest cultural shakeup in the kingdom’s modern history.”Security forces dealt with a… stabbing attack against two men and a woman from a theatre group during a live performance,” a police spokesman was quoted as saying by the official Saudi Press Agency.Police identified the assailant as a 33-year-old Yemeni expatriate but did not give details of his motive or the nationality of his victims.The King Abdullah Park is one of the venues hosting the two-month “Riyadh Season”, an arts and entertainment festival that is part of a broad government push to open up the kingdom to tourists and diversify its economy away from oil.Prince Mohammed has introduced mixed-gender concerts, re-opened cinemas and lifted a decades-old ban on women drivers as part of a drive to modernise the Muslim kingdom.In scenes that were unimaginable just two years ago, Saudi Arabia has staged glitzy performances by a host of international artists, from South Korean boy band BTS to pop icon Janet Jackson and rapper 50 Cent.Last month, the kingdom hosted its first ever women’s wrestling match as it attempts to shrug off its ultra-conservative image.The knife attack has left many Saudis shocked, with some on social media denouncing it as an act of “terrorism”.”Every instigator against entertainment is a partner in this extremist act,” one Twitter user said.’Collision course’Saudi officials warn that introducing such wide-ranging reforms in a society steeped in conservatism is fraught with peril.While they are wildly popular among Saudi Arabia’s mainly young population, the reforms risk angering arch-conservatives, including hardline clerics and the religious police whose powers have been clipped in recent years.”The risk of this sort of attack against the recent introduction of public entertainment, which many clerics have been inciting against, is a key reason (the government) has pursued a zero tolerance policy towards their public attacks against change and reform,” Saudi analyst Ali Shihabi said on Twitter.Earlier this year, human rights campaigners reported the arrest of religious scholar Omar al-Muqbil after he criticised the Saudi General Entertainment Authority for hosting such concerts, saying they were “erasing Saudi society’s original identity”.”Liberals and conservatives in the kingdom are on a collision course and that probably worries Saudi leaders the most,” Quentin de Pimodan, a Saudi expert at the Greece-based Research Institute for European and American Studies, told AFP.”After this attack we can expect a sharper crackdown on those opposed to Saudi’s entertainment push.”Saudi Arabia has already drawn international censure for its sweeping crackdown on critics, including clerics, intellectuals and women activists.The kingdom has faced international scrutiny over its human rights record since last year’s murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents in Istanbul.Developing the tourism and leisure sector is one of the foundations of Prince Mohammed’s Vision 2030 plan to prepare the Arab world’s largest economy for the post-oil era.The General Entertainment Authority has said it plans to pump $64 billion into the sector in the coming decade.Some Saudis, however, view the push for entertainment as an attempt to blunt public frustration over an economic downturn and high youth unemployment in the petro-state.
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While Southern California draws film and television students from all over the world, people in New Mexico don’t have to set foot outside the state to learn the trade, as local colleges are grooming talent for a booming entertainment industry that has sprung up about 1,200 kilometers from Hollywood.Recently, Albuquerque Studios signed a billion-dollar contract with entertainment giant Netflix and a $500 million deal with NBC Universal Studios. These agreements come on the heels of New Mexico’s enhanced tax incentives to production companies, who film there and hire local talent. One of the seedbeds for such talent is Central New Mexico (CNM) Community College.
 Albuquerque’s Community College, Seedbed of Local Film IndustryTeaser DescriptionFor a few hundred dollars students train and network in Albuquerque’s thriving film industryProgram tied to jobs
 
Students at Central New Mexico Community College can learn about wardrobe assembly, electrical work, set lighting and camera operation — to name a few of the courses offered. For New Mexico residents, CNM charges $56 per credit hour; for nonresidents, $296 per credit hour. Even that price is nowhere near the five-figure yearly tuition at other colleges around the country, such as New York’s renowned School of Visual Arts, whether tuition is upwards of $50,000 a year, for a similar program.
 
Both schools promise connections and training to get their students hired. But in Albuquerque, students have an edge: a blossoming film industry that provides tax incentives for TV and film productions with crews made up of at least 60% local hires.Amber Dodson, film liaison for the city of Albuquerque, said entertainment giant Netflix alone has committed over the next decade to spending $1 billion in production and generate 1,000 jobs a year throughout the state. She said students in Albuquerque learning “below-the-line” crafts, which include jobs on a film crew like a grip, “are getting jobs often times before they even graduate.”
 
Jim Graebner, CNM’s senior film instructor, described the school’s program for below-the-line crafts.
 
“Our program is only a two-term program, that’s basically half a (calendar) year, where we get through the whole protocol of how to make a movie and workflow, and then we expose people to all the different tools they’ll need on a set and then try to get them specialized in a different craft,” Graebner, or “Grubb” as he is known, added.
 Work ethic
 
Graebner likened CNM’s program to a “boot camp,” where the students are working hard to learn skills to meet the needs of production companies and studios.
 
“The biggest thing we have to teach them is stamina, because they are coming in(to) a world where everybody expects an eight-hour workday. We’ve got 14 hours. It’s the average,” he said.
 
In a trade dominated by men for decades, women are beginning to make inroads.
 
“I have women – especially Hollywood’s big on upping the percentage of women on all the below-the-line (non-cast member) crafts – I have women who are grips now and they don’t have to be huge or strong. So, if you’re a woman, want to become a grip, I can get you a job tomorrow,” Graebner said.
 
Apart from learning to be a grip – that is, to be part of a team that builds and develops a movie set – students receive mentoring and gain on-set experience.
 
Graebner said the school connects students with the local union, International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) 480, where they train with a paid union member and get evaluated for their skills. If they show competency, they can get into the workforce pipeline for the industry, which the union has negotiated for safe working conditions and labor benefits.
 Good prospects
 
CNM instructional technician Gabe Reyes works full time at CNM and also freelances for the film industry.With the influx of Hollywood in Albuquerque, Reyes said CNM’s Applied Technologies and Film program has taken off since he started in the summer of 2018.Karen Grandinetti, enrollment strategist of CNM School of Applied Technologies, said the program had 220 students enrolled in the summer of 2018. This fall, there are 657 students.Prospects are also good for homegrown New Mexican directors and actors who want to build a career in their home state.One of them is Riley Del Rey, a student actor in the film program at CNM, who recently completed a short film called “Doubt.”
 
“I think it’s important for people that are moving here to work on productions to take a look at our work and to start selecting their directors and their talent from this market because that’s what’s going to get people to stay and that’s it’s gonna uplift our state,” she says.
 
Del Rey also pointed to the importance not having to set foot outside the state where she grew up to learn the trade and seek job opportunities.
 
“What’s making me stay here is that this is the place I’m getting my chops, and it’s where I have family. I also know people in the industry and, with the film community growing so much, it’s just more places for me to find where I fit in here,” Del Rey said. “It’s also less daunting than traveling thousands of miles to go somewhere where I’m not familiar with and (where) it’s kind of a make-it-or-break-it situation.”I still have to take risks, but I still have all the support from my network here at school but also the family ties that I have to New Mexico,” she added.
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A Los Angeles gallery is preparing to auction more than 1,500 rare items from Disneyland and Walt Disney World, dating back to the theme park’s founding in the 1950s.Mike Van Eaton, co-owner of Van Eaton Galleries, said on Monday that the auction traces the history of the famed park, featuring items such as the original 1953 prospectus that Walt Disney used to pitch to financiers ahead of the park’s 1955 opening in southern California, an original map of Disneyland, and other signage.There will also be familiar characters up for sale, including animatronic birds from the Enchanted Tiki Room, a bronze statue of Mickey Mouse, and an “It’s a Small World” animatronic doll.Rare items on display from Disneyland and Walt Disney World that will go on auction at the Van Eaton Galleries, in Los Angeles. Among them are “It’s a Small World” animatronic doll and the Star Jets Original Attraction Vehicle, Nov. 11, 2019.The animatronic birds are estimated to sell between $80,000 and $100,000, while the doll is estimated to sell for between $15,000 and $20,000.A Star Jets original attraction vehicle is expected to sell for $10,000 to $15,000. The Walt Disney-signed opening day guidebook is estimated to sell somewhere between $7,000 and $9,000.The History of Disneyland and Walt Disney World auction will be held in Los Angeles over two days starting on Dec. 7. 
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The next adventure in the “Star Wars” movie and TV franchise, arriving Tuesday on Walt Disney Co’s new streaming service, takes place on a lawless planet at the outer reaches of the galaxy.”The Mandalorian,” an eight-episode live-action series, stars “Game of Thrones” actor Pedro Pascal as a helmeted bounty hunter. It will be available on Disney+, a new $7-per-month online subscription meant to compete with Netflix.As is typical with “Star Wars,” Disney and the cast have revealed little about the plot.”Just kind of imagine crossing the borders and going into unknown territory … with a lot of familiar elements and completely brand new elements,” Pascal said in an interview with Reuters.”The Mandalorian” is set between the events of “Return of the Jedi” and “The Force Awakens,” the sixth and seventh installments in the “Star Wars” movie saga.Disney will release the first episode Tuesday and the second Friday, followed by one installment each Friday after that.
 
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On a wooded lake shore in northern Japan, the government is building a modernist shrine that has divided the indigenous Ainu community whose vanishing culture it was designed to celebrate.At a cost so far of $220 million, Japan’s “Symbolic Space for Ethnic Harmony” is on track to open in time for the 2020 Olympics, part of a drive by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to draw millions of foreign visitors to Japan and to the northern city of Sapporo, where the Olympic marathon will be run.A memorial site, holding the remains of Ainu people, stands at the Symbolic Space for Ethnic Harmony in Shiraoi, Hokkaido Prefecture, Japan, July 5, 2019.Also known as “Upopoy” or “singing together” in the Ainu language, the complex will include a museum, a replica of an Ainu village, many of which Japan destroyed in its 19th Century colonization of Hokkaido, and a memorial housing the bones of hundreds of Ainu whose remains were sent to universities in the 20th Century.For some surviving Ainu, whose exact numbers are unknown, the project underscores how Japan has failed to come to terms with its history — despite more than a decade of deliberation on how Tokyo could meet its commitments to an indigenous group it officially recognized in 2008.Some Ainu worry the new museum complex is mostly meant to burnish Japan’s international standing ahead of the Olympics.”I think it’s possible it could end up becoming a theme park,” said Ainu tattoo artist Mai Hachiya. “People would come to see the dancing and other performances. It would be like a zoo.”Indigenous Ainu Teruyo Usa’s daughter Ruino learns a traditional Ainu song from her mother and relatives at her mother’s restaurant in Tokyo, Japan, May 5, 2019.‘Silent Ainu’Scholars say the Ainu settled in Japan’s northernmost island and across Sakhalin, Russia, by the 1300s. They hunted, fished, practiced an animist religion and spoke a language unrelated to any other.Japan took control of Hokkaido by force in the 19th Century and made it a colony. After opening it to Japanese settlers, it forced the Ainu, which it labelled “former aborigines,” to assimilate.A 2017 survey counted just over 13,000 Ainu in Hokkaido. The actual number is estimated to be much higher, because many Ainu fear identifying as other than Japanese and have moved to different parts of the country.Ainu children are half as likely to go to college as other Japanese and average household earnings are significantly lower, official data show.”Society was not accepting of the Ainu, and it still isn’t,” said Mai Ishihara, an anthropologist at Hokkaido University.”There are still many people who keep their Ainu identity secret from their children.”Ishihara discovered at age 12 that her maternal grandmother was Ainu. She describes people detached from their roots as “silent Ainu.”Wooden statues of an Ainu couple stand in front of an Ainu craft shop in the Nibutani district where several Ainu craft shops and a museum are located, in Biratori, Hokkaido Prefecture, Japan, Aug. 23, 2019.In 2009, after signing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Japan’s government began considering how to establish a new policy for the Ainu. Early proposals zeroed in quickly on the creation of the government-funded “Symbolic Space” now taking shape on the shore of Lake Poroto near the town of Shiraoi in Hokkaido.In consultations that concluded in early 2018, Ainu representatives asked for legal rights to state-owned land, more funding for teaching Ainu culture and language and an apology from Japan’s government.None of those proposals was considered.”We can’t do something if it is not achievable,” saidHiroshi Koyama, the official in charge of Japan’s Comprehensive Ainu Policy Office.Giving back forest where Ainu once hunted and foraged, he said, would “be hard for the Japanese people to accept.” And he added that an apology would be uncomfortable for many Japanese, as well as an insult to the Japanese settlers who built modern Hokkaido.”It would focus people’s attention on the bad things that happened and not the future,” he said.Indigenous Ainu Teruyo Usa’s daughter Ruino practices a traditional Ainu dance before performing at a folk art concert in Tokyo, Japan, May 17, 2019.’The verge of extinction’Ainu hunter Atsushi Monbetsu, 36, sees Tokyo’s actions, including the ethnic-harmony park, as “useless.” Discrimination as a child made him decide to embrace his heritage and live as a hunter, he said.”It would have been nice if the government had given us a place where we could carry out our traditional rites,” said Monbetsu, who burns birch shavings in a prayer to the Ainu gods before stalking deer with a shotgun.A group representing about 2,000 Ainu supports Abe’s project, arguing it will provide economic benefits from tourism and a forum focusing on Ainu culture and arts. Five of the 20 curators hired for the new museum are Ainu.At a former school a short drive from the museum construction site, curators are preparing exhibits. Traditional Ainu coats hang in abandoned classrooms with knives, ceremonial sticks and heavy beaded necklaces laid out on tables. In the gymnasium, dancers practice next to stuffed bears and Ainu handicrafts.Ainu hunter Atsushi Monbetsu, 36, makes a traditional bow and arrow at his house in Biratori, Hokkaido Prefecture, northern Japan, Aug. 22, 2019.With pictures of smiling performers, a draft brochure describes Ainu hunter-gatherer culture as “on the verge of extinction.” It makes no reference to Japanese policies that forced Ainu to adopt Japanese names, speak Japanese and outlawed practices such as a traditional form of tattooing Hachiya is trying to revive.Hachiya, 36, who is also a singer, has been asked to practice a routine with other Ainu performers that may be included in the Olympics opening ceremony in Tokyo.”I think Hokkaido is a Japanese colony,” she said. “That’s a hard thing to say, but if you look back on what was done, that’s what you have to conclude.”
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Recently, a film studio in Albuquerque, New Mexico, signed a billion dollar contract with entertainment giant Netflix and a $500 million deal with NBC Universal Studios.  These agreements with Albuquerque Studios come on the heels of New Mexico granting enhanced tax incentives to production companies that film in the state and hire local talent.  One of the seedbeds for such talent is the Central New Mexico Community College. VOA’s Penelope Poulou visited the school and has this report
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President Donald Trump’s former U.N. ambassador, Nikki Haley , alleges in her upcoming memoir that two administration officials who were ultimately pushed out by Trump once tried to get her to join them in opposing some of his policies.In “With All Due Respect,” Haley said then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and then-White House chief of staff John Kelly told her that they were trying to “save the country.” Haley writes that she was “shocked” by the request, made during a closed-door meeting, and thought they were only trying to put their own imprint on his policies.“Kelly and Tillerson confided in me that when they resisted the president, they weren’t being insubordinate, they were trying to save the country,” Haley wrote. “It was their decisions, not the president’s, that were in the best interests of America, they said. The president didn’t know what he was doing. … Tillerson went on to tell me the reason he resisted the president’s decisions was because, if he didn’t, people would die.”The former South Carolina governor said the meeting lasted more than an hour and that they never raised the issue to her again.Haley’s book comes out Tuesday. The Associated Press purchased an early copy.“Instead of saying that to me, they should’ve been saying that to the president, not asking me to join them on their sidebar plan,” Haley wrote. “It should’ve been, ‘Go tell the president what your differences are, and quit if you don’t like what he’s doing.’ But to undermine a president is really a very dangerous thing. And it goes against the Constitution, and it goes against what the American people want. And it was offensive.”Trump fired Tillerson in March 2018. Later, Tillerson said the president was “undisciplined” and did not like to read briefing reports. Trump countered, calling Tillerson “dumb as a rock.”When Kelly was chief of staff, Trump chafed at the orderly processes the general imposed on his freewheeling style and White House operations at large. Trump let him go in December 2018.When asked to respond to Haley’s book, Kelly told CBS’ “Sunday Morning” that “if by resistance and stalling, she means putting a staff process in place … to ensure the (president) knew all the pros and cons of what policy decision he might be contemplating so he could make an informed decision, then guilty as charged.”
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When a coal company contractor working under federal oversight used a backhoe to dig up one of the largest known Native American bison killing grounds and make way for mining, investigators concluded the damage on the Crow Indian Reservation broke federal law and would cost $10 million to repair, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.Eight years later, Colorado-based Westmoreland Coal has not made the repairs and is still mining in the area, under an agreement with former Crow leaders that some tribal members said has caused more damage to a site considered hallowed ground.The U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs issued a civil violation notice in the case last year, according to agency spokeswoman Genevieve Giaccardo. A Westmoreland executive said no penalty was involved. No charges were filed by federal prosecutors who investigated potential criminal violations.Burton Pretty On Top, a 73-year-old tribal adviser and spiritual leader, and other Crow members said they were frustrated no one had been held accountable for “desecrating” the 2,000-year-old southeastern Montana site. It held countless bison bones and more than 3,300 stone tools and projectile points in an area known as Sarpy Creek.”It was a shrine or temple to us,” Pretty On Top said. “We wanted to preserve the whole area … No amount of money in the world is enough to replace what has been lost here. The spirituality of our people has been broken.”This undated aerial photo from the Montana State Library shows an area of a Westmoreland Energy coal mine near Sarpy Creek in eastern Montana. The graphics show the general area of excavation, framed in red, and a bison bone pile, framed in yellow.The mining company plans to repair the damage but has not reached agreement with the tribe and government on how that should be done, said Westmoreland executive Joe Micheletti.Crow Chairman Alvin “A.J.” Not Afraid said the tribe, too, bears responsibility, for signing off when Westmoreland first proposed excavating the site a decade ago. The mine generates about $13 million to $15 million annually in revenue for the Crow, which makes up the bulk of the tribe’s budget, Not Afraid said.”How can we hold them accountable when we approved them to do something?” he asked.The large number of artifacts found suggest various tribes killed bison there for centuries before the Crow arrived — butchering animals for meat and turning the hides into clothing, according to experts who examined the site. The number of bison bones found makes it the largest kill site of its time ever discovered, said Lawrence Todd, an archaeologist from Colorado State University who participated in the investigation.”The magnitude of the destruction done there, from the perspective of the archaeology of the northwest Plains, is probably unprecedented,” Todd said.Since the investigation, Westmoreland has mined around the killing ground while avoiding the massive “bonebed” of more than 2,000 bison.Tribal officials and archaeologists said the company compounded the original damage by destroying nearby artifacts including teepee rings and the remnants of a sweat lodge. Pretty On Top said some of the bones excavated in 2011 were piled in a heap, with grass growing over it, when he recently visited.The excavation was part of a cultural resources survey required under federal law before the mine could expand onto the reservation. The use of a backhoe instead of hand shovels saved the company money but largely destroyed the site, documents and interviews show.A Crow cultural official later convicted in a corruption case oversaw the work. At least two Interior Department officials, took part in the decision to use the backhoe, according to the documents obtained by AP and interviews with investigators.The agency, which must protect the tribe’s interests under federal law, declined to answer questions about its involvement.
Giaccardo said the matter was under litigation but would not provide details. Micheletti and tribal officials said they were unaware of any litigation.Neither the company nor government would release the violation notice or the company’s repair plan.”I’m not going to look in the rear-view mirror. We’re trying to go forward,” Micheletti said. “From our point of view, it’s pretty much all said and done and agreed to on what needs to happen there. The ruling basically concluded that there was no penalty…We did nothing wrong.”Many bones and other artifacts that were excavated were put into off-site storage until a decision is made about what to do with them, he added. There are no plans to pay the tribe compensation.Former Crow Chairman Darrin Old Coyote said the company originally planned to mine the entire area and warned the tribe that it would lose revenue if it avoided the killing ground. Old Coyote said that after the 2011 excavation work, his administration insisted on a buffer zone to protect the site from further damage.Archaeological investigators brought in by federal prosecutors said the bison kill site’s potential scientific value was obvious long before the backhoe was used.A preliminary survey in 2004 and 2005 revealed artifacts at the site and suggested more might lie beneath the ground. It was enough for it to be considered eligible for a historic designation and meant further damage had to be avoided, minimized or mitigated.”The real culprits in this in my mind are the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Office of Surface mining. They should have said, `This site has to be avoided, period,”‘ said Martin McAllister with Archaeological Damage Investigation and Assessment, an archaeology firm that led the investigation.In June 2010, after Westmoreland obtained approval from state and federal regulators to mine in the area, representatives of the company, tribe, BIA and Interior’s Office of Surface Mining gathered at the bison killing ground to decide what to do about the site.
To save on the high cost of excavating by hand — the accepted practice among archaeologists when working on high-value finds — they agreed to use “mass excavation with mechanical equipment,” according to records of the meeting.The Crow tribal official at that meeting was Dale Old Horn, at the time director of the tribe’s Historic Preservation Office. He was later convicted in a corruption scheme in which preservation office staff who were supposed to be monitoring sites — including the bison killing grounds — took money from both the tribe and the companies they oversaw.By the time the backhoe work was finished, enough soil, bones, artifacts and other material had been removed to fill more than 300 dump trucks, investigators determined.Although the preliminary survey work was done under a permit, that permit expired in 2010 and was not renewed. That meant the backhoe excavation violated the federal Archaeological Resource Protection Act, investigators concluded.In their 2013 damage assessment, they called the loss of archaeological information “incalculable” and said repairing it would cost $10.4 million.”The damage that was present when we did the assessment has been amplified by having it just sit there since then — uncovered, unprotected and unanalyzed,” said Todd, the bison bonebed expert.
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