A welcome break

We have developed a policy at our pioneering little school of de-stressing ourselves at the end of each lengthy stretch of residential schooling with a nice off-campus excursion for the last few days before the vacation. This time, we've just been away for a couple of days to the picturesque river island of Tongzhou, 30 miles or so to the south-west of Hangzhou. We also spent an afternoon at the China National Football Academy in the nearby township of Tonglu, working with our partner NGO, China Grassroots Football, to stage a mass coaching event for local primary schoolchildren.

Here's a slideshow I made of some of my photographs from the trip.

This year's Halloween treat

Halloween was never much of a thing for me during my childhood, but it seems to have become a major highlight of the year for the Hong Kong children that I teach now. Since today was our last English class before the half-term break - and hence before All Hallow's Eve - I just shared with my students this creepy favourite of mine from the 1970s: La Cabina (The Telephone Box), a Spanish made-for-TV short directed by Antonio Mercedo. 

It was made in 1972 and won quite a few awards. And it has a special place in my heart - a love/hate kind of a place - because when I first saw it on British TV in the late 1970s (when I was about the same age as my students are now) I recognised it as a story that I had written myself a couple of years earlier. I was naturally pretty miffed that they'd stolen my idea without giving me a credit or any royalties. But then I discovered that it had been made some years before I wrote my story, and so I didn't have much of a case for an infringement of my intellectual property. I learned the hard lesson that there is no truly original idea in the world - or very, very rarely so, at any rate. (And I must acknowledge that my story was much more limited; it didn't really have the conspiracy/paranoia dimension that emerges in the second half of Snr Mercedo's macabre little masterpiece.)

Thought for the week

"It's not the destination that matters; it's the change of scene."

A world of silence

A year or so ago, upon unpacking all of my possessions after the move to my new home of Hangzhou, I discovered a DVD I had pretty well forgotten about: 11' 9" 01. I'd purchased it impulsively several years earlier and never got around to watching it. It's a conceptual project commemorating the first anniversary of 9/11, with eleven diverse film directors from around the world each presenting a personal response to the tragedy - and, to recall the date of 11th September 2001, each of these shorts is supposed to be exactly 11 minutes, 9 seconds and 1 frame in length.

There are really only a few of them that are any good (the opening piece, by Iranian director, Samirah Makhmalbaf is much the best of them, I think), but this one - by veteran French director Claude Lelouch (his 1971 crime thriller Le Voyou is an underrated masterpiece) - rather got under my skin. And I thought it particularly appropriate to share it with my current Film classes a few weeks ago because we are focusing on the use of sound in film-making, and Lelouch here rather challengingly presents us with the aural point-of-view of a protagonist who is deaf-mute (and hence is able to remain in ignorance of the collapse of the twin towers of the World Trade Center, although it is happening just a few blocks from her apartment).

Unfortunately, this version has been pulled from YouTube at the moment. I think this film's copyright is not very vigorously defended online, so it will probably reappear at some point. For now, all I can find is this Italian version (most of the dialogue is rendered in sign language, and the general meaning is clear enough, even if you can't understand the subtitles.)

Thought for the week

"The most important learning is usually unconscious, unrecognised. You can't tell me today what you learned today; maybe in five or ten years you can."