While the names of Federico Garcia Lorca, Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel are familiar to anyone with an interest in modern literature and the visual arts, their personal histories are less widely known than those of artists of comparable stature from Northern Europe. Little Ashes claims to tell the trio’s story, beginning with their years as fashionable undergraduates in Madrid and tracing their emergence as leading artistic figures in the period preceding the rise of General Francisco Franco and the execution of Garcia Lorca. Though the subject matter is interesting, director Paul Morrison seems uncertain about what story he wants to tell and how he wants to tell it.
The film opens with the arrival of the self-consciously artistic Dali at the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid, where Garcia Lorca and Bunuel are already established as members of the university’s artistic avant-garde. Robert Pattinson, who has attained a cult-like teenage girl following for his roles in the Harry Potter and Twilight series, is clearly intended to provide the eye candy, and even manages to deliver a realistic portrayal of the newcomer’s mixture of arrogance and diffidence amidst the self-assured, if occasionally tortured, Garcia Lorca and Bunuel.
Unfortunately, Pattinson can do little else with the complexities of Dali’s character, and consequently appears a child among grown-ups, especially when compared to Javier Beltran’s nuanced interpretation of Garcia Lorca’s growing awareness of his homosexuality. Beltran’s portrayal of Garcia Lorca strives for the muted elegance and bitterness of Merchant Ivory Productions’ 1987 film Maurice, with which it shares many thematic similarities. In addition to the complexities of juxtaposing Dali and Garcia Lorca’s tentative progression towards a homosexual relationship with Spain’s spiral into violent and intolerant fascism, Morrison also attempts to examine the trio’s artistic work.
Unfortunately, this exploration of the aesthetic is mostly window dressing and does not serve any real purpose. The film also fails in its use of language. Little Ashes is an English film about Spanish artists and, to provide the proper local color, all characters speak in rather ridiculous Castilian-accented English, with Pattinson’s attempts sometimes verging on caricature. Readings of Garcia Lorca’s poetry, which play a prominent role in the film, are delivered in Spanish with an English voice-over, a particularly clumsy way of presenting poetry in another language. Moreover, the readings are not even well integrated into the story. Sporadic imagery from Dali’s paintings feels similarly out of place, and the inclusion of the famous eyeball-slicing scene from the Dali-Bunuel collaboration, An Andalusian Dog, is clearly no more than a ham-handed attempt at shock tactics. Additionally, Morrison fails to adequately delve into the political and cultural forces driving the prevailing mood of iconoclasm, content to rely on throwaway images of fascist atrocities and caricatures of stuffy old art professors in their oak paneled rooms. Little Ashes is instead more interested in the theme of romantic betrayal and the ensuing rift between Garcia Lorca and Dali, an estrangement partly engineered, according to Morrison, by Bunuel. Little Ashes gives these romantic entanglements precedent over compelling storylines such as Dali’s betrayal of his own genius and the motivation behind the execution of the politically neutral Garcia Lorca.
As such, while Little Ashes engages in a constant struggle to break out of the category of gay interest film and make a credible stab at being a serious biopic, it never quite achieves its goal.
That US assistance was a model for Taiwan’s spectacular development success was early recognized by policymakers and analysts. In a report to the US Congress for the fiscal year 1962, former President John F. Kennedy noted Taiwan’s “rapid economic growth,” was “producing a substantial net gain in living.” Kennedy had a stake in Taiwan’s achievements and the US’ official development assistance (ODA) in general: In September 1961, his entreaty to make the 1960s a “decade of development,” and an accompanying proposal for dedicated legislation to this end, had been formalized by congressional passage of the Foreign Assistance Act. Two
Despite the intense sunshine, we were hardly breaking a sweat as we cruised along the flat, dedicated bike lane, well protected from the heat by a canopy of trees. The electric assist on the bikes likely made a difference, too. Far removed from the bustle and noise of the Taichung traffic, we admired the serene rural scenery, making our way over rivers, alongside rice paddies and through pear orchards. Our route for the day covered two bike paths that connect in Fengyuan District (豐原) and are best done together. The Hou-Feng Bike Path (后豐鐵馬道) runs southward from Houli District (后里) while the
President William Lai’s (賴清德) March 13 national security speech marked a turning point. He signaled that the government was finally getting serious about a whole-of-society approach to defending the nation. The presidential office summarized his speech succinctly: “President Lai introduced 17 major strategies to respond to five major national security and united front threats Taiwan now faces: China’s threat to national sovereignty, its threats from infiltration and espionage activities targeting Taiwan’s military, its threats aimed at obscuring the national identity of the people of Taiwan, its threats from united front infiltration into Taiwanese society through cross-strait exchanges, and its threats from
March 31 to April 6 On May 13, 1950, National Taiwan University Hospital otolaryngologist Su You-peng (蘇友鵬) was summoned to the director’s office. He thought someone had complained about him practicing the violin at night, but when he entered the room, he knew something was terribly wrong. He saw several burly men who appeared to be government secret agents, and three other resident doctors: internist Hsu Chiang (許強), dermatologist Hu Pao-chen (胡寶珍) and ophthalmologist Hu Hsin-lin (胡鑫麟). They were handcuffed, herded onto two jeeps and taken to the Secrecy Bureau (保密局) for questioning. Su was still in his doctor’s robes at