Tag Archives: Culture

Legacies of the Soviet Past

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Interesting. Original, in Estonian.

For months now, a dispute about the demolition of a bronze statue from the Soviet era has been raging in Tallinn. Krista Kodres takes up the cudgel for the communist regime’s cultural legacy. “Just imagine if people had pulled down the palaces of the hated Bourbons after the French Revolution, or if the Winter Palace and the Kremlin had been destroyed in the Russian Revolution. Or what if Estonia had destroyed its huge estates, the symbol of 700 years of slavery… The Soviet Union had its own culture too. Naturally, it wasn’t always free of ideological influence, but writers wrote, artists painted, composers composed and architects built. True, not all of it can be called high culture, but everything that was created can still be categorised as culture.”

From the estimable folks at Eurotopics.

World Cup Cliche Watch, Pt. 3

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I don’t know if these are also soccer cliches in English, but they are widely repeated bits of wisdom in German.

First, for our friends from Japan: “The game lasts 90 minutes.” Das Spiel dauert 90 Minuten. Bayern Munich learned this most famously in 1999, when the game lasted a little bit longer.

Second, for les Bleus and la Suisse: “The round one has to go into the square one.” Das Runde muss ins Eckige. Otherwise, it’s hard to win.

Any other good cliches out there, regardless of language?

(And Brazil looked eminently beatable last night. Who’s looked really good in the games that I’ve seen so far? Croatia, Czech Republic, Argentina. Germany may be better without Ballack, as they then have to spread the offense more evenly. The Ecuadoreans look like surprise overachievers. I didn’t see Mexico, Portugal or Netherlands win, so I can’t say much there.)

Spielvergnugen

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Just so no one shall be able to say that a ball is simply a ball at afoe, and since it’s a weekend, I’ve decided to tell you, gentle readers, about a quick’n’dirty short film concerning the “true meaning” of the “Miracle of Bern” – Germany’s surprising victory in the 1954 world championship – that I’ve shot with a friend, the German film-maker Sebastian Linke, last year.

While we’ve chosen a rather atypical setting to make a contribution to football philosophy, it’s really a paraphrasing of Camus, an existentialist short film about the way the beautiful game can help us all to free ourselves from our ontological prison. It’s a film about rules to comply with and rules that need be broken. A film about the the game that is life. If we have the balls. And that’s why it’s called Spielvergnugen. We dared to omit the umlaut.

We’ve shot Spielvergnugen in two hours using a standard miniDV camera, 8 bottles of beer, 3 straws and 2 condoms. The film is in German – and it’s clearly more fun if you know the original radio broadcast – but I think the English subtitles are working quite well.

You can find the youtube flash wrapper below the fold. Hope you’ll enjoy!
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