Music, Art & Cinema

The rebirth of Argentina’s fileteado porteño art

Fileteado porteño is a form of popular art that originated in the city of Buenos Aires at the turn of the 20th century. Fileteado and tango are the two cultural symbols that represent the city by the River Plate. They appeared roughly at the same time, originated in the immigrant communities and influenced one another.  Sadly, their history and development are not well documented.

This cheerful mural welcomes people to the neighbourhood of San Telmo. See the tango singer on the right.

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Kazakh Dancing, Kara Jorga Style!

Қара Жорға (Qara Jorga) is a popular dance song in Kazakhstan. My first connection with it is when my infant host brother was trained to perform it for houseguests. Snapping his little fingers and moving around, he’d dance around on his little toes and everyone would clap and give him candy. At the time (three years ago) I understood that the repeating “bolmasa” means “if there’s not,” but didn’t get the poetic language at all. Here’s a modern version of the song:

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Meet Guillaume, designer and champion of made in Britain

Continuing our local business series on People of the World, today we’re talking to Guillaume Lyons, founder of Kaigami Ltd, a UK company which produces innovative folding lampshades. Kaigami’s designs are loosely inspired by the Japanese art of origami, but the company also aims to “maintain Britain’s reputation for producing classic designs”.

Guillaume in his workshop

Please tell us a bit about yourself

From a young age I have always been a creative person, I can remember whilst in primary school picking up elastic bands and other bits from the playground and arranging them to form some kind of mechanical toy.

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Rangoli – colourful Indian chalk paintings

The word comes from the Sanskrit word Rangaavali – which itself is a combination of two words – Rang, meaning colour and Aavali meaning creepers or lines. Rangaavali, or Rangoli, as we call it today, thus, literally translates into ‘coloured lines’ and that is what it essentially is – lines drawn in colour – inside or outside the house. It could be a celebration of a festival, an expression of happiness, a sign of welcome, a symbol of cleanliness and purity… but all it is, essentially, is lines of colour.

Rangolis are something you can see in every corner of India, no matter where you go. It is mostly a Hindu tradition, but I have seen Rangolis outside churches in southern India too, and some of my Muslim friends are as adept at it as I am!

A typical Rangoli pattern

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Giuseppe Boschetti – portrait of the artist

Although he does not sell his paintings, Giuseppe Boschetti is well known in his native Romagna (a region of North East Italy). His paintings are so much a part of him that he prefers to keep them on display in his house for family and friends, where they almost completely cover the walls of his apartment in Santarcangelo’s historic centre.

Giuseppe Boschetti exhibition

The artist’s studio is as chock full of detail as one of his paintings. A small, low table next to the easel is filled with paintbrushes in jam jars. Other surfaces are crammed with knickknacks: the top of one cupboard is crowded with empty glass bottles, another with wooden models. Look around and you see a vintage radio, an arrangement of seashells in a basket. A collection of modern art books sits inside one of the bookcases, pencil sketches hang on the walls. Light enters through skylights in the sloping roof, which ‘Pino’ warns us not to bang our head on.

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Behind the scenes in a Georgian bakery

You don’t need to understand Georgian to experience the atmosphere in this short film called ‘The Baker’. I love the way it starts behind the scenes, finally moving outside to the street to see the bakery from the customer’s perspective.

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