Festival spotlight on mental health stigma

This news item is about the Mental Health Arts and Film Festival which is taking place this month in Scotland. This year the Festival spotlight is on the representations of female mental illness which are contained in films back to the golden age of Hollywood. But as the title says, the festival does not only consists of filmic material but also music, theatre, dance and comedy are being performed.

This Festival has been taking place for now three years and it has grown its remit until to become the largest Festival of its kind in the world. The purpose of this year’s activities is to exlpore and expose the stigmas on female mental health issues which pertaining to society as a whole have been embodied on the celluloid. And this is done in order to challenge them and to generate debate about them. But also, as the guitarist of the music band Idlewid -which is playin on this year’s closing concert- says, it has a direct therapeutical effect as a goal: showing to people that they are not alone with their issues, that they are not the only ones who have suffered them and it is a common thing to happen.

Yo can find the article here at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/oct/14/festival-spotlight-mental-health-stigma

Sports and Excercises

I like sports very much, both to practice and to watch them. Although I particullarly enjoy soccer and athletics in all it's variations. I admire athletics because I think it has an heroic and a dignifying quality, specially for those who run the Long Distance Events, which are the events over the 3000 meters mark, I think they are very admirable. Here I admire very much the ethiopian runner Kenenisa Bekele, member of the glorious ethiopian team of distance runners and actual holder of both the World and the Olympic record for the 10000. And of course in soccer I admire and I’m keen of that which is indisputably the most succesfull institution of the world (including schools, hospitals or States): Colo-colo team, which has never lost not even a martch! Anyhow, I only use to play soccer and not athletics. Right now I'm also doing Yoga at the University, because it's a requirement of my career to take at least two sports courses. So I’m a moderated sports fanatic and not so much of a fitness freak.

I really don’t know if any sport should be banned, I think that as long as it be practiced between consenting people I don’t see any problem with it. Maybe to involve animals in violent games is a different thing, but I’m not so sure about the status of animal suffering with regard to the making of ethical decisions. But yes I’m sure this is a subject which involves many areas besides sports, like the consumption of animal meat, the use of their skins for the making of clothes, the experimentation with animals as subjects, etc.

What to do where to go in Santiago.

I wasn’t born in Santiago, I was born in Chañaral (a Little town in the north of our country, very well known by Ricardo Lagos’ half naked horror). However I’ve been living in Santiago, since 1990, so I was bred here and I think I’am very well capacitated to emit an aesthetic judgement of the city founded by Valdivia and designed in it’s fundamental core, as we all know, by Pedro de Gamboa: I don’t find it nice.

Nontheless, we have beatiful places, and when we have clean air, we do even have beatiful people. So, I would recommend to the newbies: 1. visit the Lastarria neighbourhood, beatiful edificatons and nice retaurants (here I recommend “Les Assasins”, nice french food, and I do not recommend “Gatopardo”, too much reputation is not a good ingredient). Number two: nearby you want to go to the Bellas Artes museum, you can enjoy the artworks in there. Number three: visit the zoo (at the San Cristòbal Hill) and buy a plastic mask (great costume. You don't want to see the animals, just the masks). Four: in that same hill, take the teleférico (a cable car), an interesting trip by air. Five: for a drink, go visit Ballavista neighbourhood, or, to change the city zone, take a chance at Plaza Ñuñoa, in both you have lot of choices. Nice five elements.