#INTERNAL SELECTIONS

[eurovision-revisited]

Eurovision 2006 - Number 9 - Hari Mata Hari - "Lejla"

Perhaps the Platonic ideal of a Balkan ballad with so much pedigree it hurts.

Hari Mata Mari are old timers both in the Bosnian music scene but also at Eurovision. They entered songs in both the 1986 and 1987 Jugovizija contests to find Yugoslavia's Eurovision representatives. There have been many changes to the group since then though.

They were formed in 1985 around Hari Varešanović. He, together with the group Baobab won the Nove nade, nove snage festival and announced the formation of a new band, Hari Mata Hari. That original incarnation also included Edo Mulahalilović who was one of the participants in the fabled and first ever Bosnian national final, as well as the writer of Bosnia's 1994 Eurovision entry

The writers on Lejla are no less stellar. There's Željko Joksimović perhaps the King of the Balkan ballad and former Eurovision representative for Serbia & Montenegro. He's also one of the Eurovision stars the fans know just by their first name.

Finally there's the lyricists Fahrudin Pecikoza-Peca and Dejan Ivanović. The latter will go on to write two more of the most famous Balkan ballads in Eurovision history, Oro for Serbia in 2008 and also Adio for Montenegro in 2015. Fahurdin is Hari Mata Hari's regular song-writer but also wrote the lyrics for Bosnia's first ever, hugely emotional Eurovision entry in 1993 - Sva bol svijeta

On top of this, other Hari Mata Hari members have Eurovision connections. Also present in 1993 and making the dangerous journey out of Sarajevo in 1993 was Izo Kolečić, and the backing singers here, Ivana Čabraja and Ksenija Milošević will go on to have nine Eurovision appearances as backing singers in total. Ksenija is one of the backing singers for Eurovision winner and all-timer Molitva for Serbia in 2007

By saying that Lejla has pedigree, I'm severely undersell it. It's possibly one of the largest assemblages of Balkan and Eurovision talent ever put together on one stage.

It's a song about longing. Well it's a Balkan ballad, of course it is. Lejla is elusive, missing, leaving only trace. A trace that Hari is clinging to, following where ever it may lead, but Lejla remains an aching absence in his life.

It's a simple thing, but the drama of the instrumentation, emphasised by the simple starry staging, and the reactions of the band to Hari's words saying everything they need to. It may be simple, but it's one of my favourite uses of the 2006 stage, surrounded by the night, ghostly and haunting. It's a mood like no other.

The song was an internal selection by BHRT and they truly knew what they were doing here. It sailed through the semi-final in second place, gaining the most twelve point scores while it was doing so. It came third overall in the final behind two other acts that had televoting momentum of different kinds behind them. Lejla and Hari Mata Hari were definitely the classic Eurovision choice.

Eurovision 2006 was the climax of Hari Mata Hari's long and illustrious career in the music industry. There were tours, performances and other releases as well as more line-up changes. But this is their pinnacle - how could it not be? Their various members ploughed their own musical furrow although even now Hari Mata Hari come together to put on a reunion performance after nearly forty years in the business.

[ibblescribbles]

TRASH 🚮 Speedpaint | Alt under cut:

[xofeno]

FBI: International / 4.04, "The Unwinnable War" (2024)

[starleska]

right, y'all need to stop this now. there can only be a certain amount of this kinda man in media, surely? 🙈🙈🙈

[lylethewaterguy]

the league joined the corps(s)

[potatoesarecheese]

We need more mute characters in fiction

More mute characters in fiction that aren't infantilized or belittled or, god forbid, fixed. Characters that, instead of learning how to talk "normally" learn to stop hating themselves for being different.

Sure, we have the mute characters that physically can't speak, their throat was damaged, their vocal cords were ripped out, they're deaf. All those reasons are great.

But we need more mute characters that can speak, but actually can't in every way that matters. Characters that should be fine but they're not and they don't know what's wrong with them and they're just stuck feeling horrible all the time.

Characters that are trapped inside of their own heads, wanting to scream and speak and be heard, but also unable to because they are terrified of being perceived. because they shouldn't speak. because they won't speak.

Because they dug themselves into a hole but they have no idea what happened how to get back out of it or even call out for someone else to throw them a rope.

Because their whole society is built around this idea of perfection and how your body is supposed to work and so of course they're struggling. everyone else has baked it into their heads that they're “broken” and “useless” when they're really actually not.

Instead of getting fixed and learning to talk, they find a group of people that are normal about it. That treat them as an entire human being and help them unravel all of those ideas about the "normal" and "correct" way to do things.

We need more mute characters in fiction, because how can you ever even begin to communicate with someone if they don't know how to listen to you?

We need more mute characters in fictions, because it will help us unravel all those ideas about the "normal" and "correct" way to do things

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Ben Dror Yemini

Consider this: since 2015, the UN General Assembly—one of the world’s most influential international bodies—has passed 156 resolutions condemning Israel, compared to just 70 for all the other countries combined. Israel, it seems, is not a country. It’s a monster.

In that same period, the World Health Organization—an entity that should be free of politics—condemned Israel 13 times. How many times did it condemn the rest of the world? Zero.

Any claim of discrimination is inevitably met with a predictable response from so-called human rights advocates of the antisemitic variety: “Whataboutism.”

It’s no surprise that evil majorities dominate international institutions. But international human rights organizations? One might hope for better. That hope is misplaced.

Robert Bernstein was one of the world’s leading human rights activists and the founder of Human Rights Watch (HRW). With his vision and passion, he turned it into the largest human rights organization in the world. In 2009, Bernstein pointed me to an op-ed he had written for The New York Times. I thought he was responding to critics of HRW—critics like me.

To my surprise, Bernstein delivered a scathing rebuke of the very organization he had created—and still led at the time—for its biased treatment of Israel. Since then, things have only gotten worse. The organization’s allegations, in both senses of the word, are thoroughly documented and refuted by NGO Monitor.

Now comes Amnesty International’s latest report, accusing Israel of genocide. There was no such accusation when Sri Lanka brutally suppressed the Tamil Tigers. Nor when Bashar Assad’s Syria slaughtered nearly 600,000 people, including through the use of chemical weapons.

Even in actual genocides, like Sudan’s atrocities in Darfur, the criticism was far more muted. But when Israel fights a ruthless enemy—an organization whose stated goal is the extermination of Jews and the establishment of a radical Islamist caliphate to rule the world—it is accused of genocide.

One can only imagine what Amnesty would have done in the 1940s. It likely would have appeased the Nazi monster and accused Britain of genocide.

To its credit, Amnesty International Israel has condemned this outrageous claim. But Amnesty is not alone. Self-proclaimed moralists continue to fuel the genocide libel, ignoring history, truth, and the very values they claim to uphold.

[fidjiefidjie]

La belle affiche tirée du film japonais « Rhapsodie en août » d'Akira Kurosawa

Ouverture du 77 ème Festival international du film 🎬 de Cannes

Cannes 2024 -Official Selection

Source: International Film Festival

👋 Bel après-midi

[lesbiancolumbo]

love when people go "it was a bad year for sundance!" and then immediately proceed to admit that they basically only watched films in premieres (the buzzy, already-have-distribution, big star bullshit) and us drama (MAYBE some us doc) and almost nothing from world dramatic (which has the best films of the festival), world documentary (second best), and next (the crazy shit)

[eurovision-revisited]

Eurovision 2007 - Number 12 - Anonymous - "Salvem El Món"

Where is Andorra?

It's not a Sporcle geography challenge, but the perhaps the most pressing question at the beginning of the 2007 Eurovision Grand Final for many viewers.

That a microstate hadn't qualified for the final shouldn't really be a surprise, but what Andorra and Anonymous had brought to Eurovision in 2007 was something that a sizeable number of people had wanted for a long time. Something that spoke to a whole group of music fans who had been mostly disenfranchised by the pop/ballad dichotomy. If Lordi could win with Hard Rock and metal, why couldn't Andorra with a pop-punk band?

Anonymous were a three-to-four piece band (depending on when, where and who's counting) who'd got together in 2004 to perform across Andorra and Catalonia. For the Eurovision performance there were Guillem Gallego, Niki Francesca aka Nick Gain, and Alejandro Martínez. Some listings also include a fourth band member, Cristian Narváez.

From the outset, they'd written and played a genre of West Coast USA pop-punk modelled after Blink-182. High energy and high tempo, and almost completely never heard at Eurovision. There had been other attempts to get this sort of sound through national finals, but Andorra was the first to do this and they used an internal selection process to find them and get them to Helsinki.

They sing in Catalan, one of the crucial elements the Andorran broadcaster was looking for. They were young, fresh and above all different. The song was Salvem El Món (Let's Save the World) which is pop with a call out to the youth of the world to get together to save the planet from its issues - notably environmental ones. It could also refer to any other problems from famine to war that might be causes against which to take up guitars in anger.

They were twenty-first on stage in the twenty-eight song semi-final. They followed three girl bops and another female led Balkan pop-ballad. By that stage the semi-final had been going for about ninety minutes and to some it might have felt like it was dragging. Suddenly there were young male faces on stage with loud guitars, fast drums, energy and spiky haircuts. Europe blinked and woke up.

Even though the band were singing (mostly) in Catalan, it didn't matter, the message was clear, as was the attitude. This was the Eurovision that loads of viewers had wanted for so long, and now it was actually happening.

Then they weren't announced as finalists. And the westernmost finalist announced was Slovenia. The world and Eurovision wasn't going to be saved this year. Anonymous didn't get to play on Saturday night - they'd only finished twelfth with eighty points.

It wasn't the most shocking result in retrospect. Eurovision and its voters are notably conservative to the point that changes need at least a year to take hold and be accepted. Normally two or three years is the standard turning circle for the competition. Anonymous were the vanguard and thus doomed to fail. They instead became the poster children for the outrage several nations felt about the seemingly skewed results, block and diasporic voting and even grumblings about votes being bought.

Sadly Anonymous broke up as a group the year after Eurovision and most of the members left the music industry, or at least have left little to no trace. The only band member who went on to have a solo career was Northern Ireland born Niki Francesca/Nick Gain who kept going long enough to have released a solo album in 2013. The one consolation is that the released single version of Salvem El Món got to number three in the Spanish charts, and that Niki Francesca has a YouTube channel that has preserved some of Anonymous' other musical moments. Here's one - Verano Feliz (Happy Summer)

[prosebyday]

She took the stand and spouted lies though she was once my friend the one that struck me with surprise Was that I wanted her boyfriend. I didn’t know why she was jealous  Until her ex reached out And was a little overzealous I can appreciate her self-doubt But why blame another woman? We should be on the same team Against these grimy men -- There’s no need to be so mean.  What happened to believing victims? I believed the trauma she told me When the time came  She had other loyalty.

Internalized Misogyny // Grazia Curcuru

[st-just]

You read a lot of books of mostly dubious quality

Look if you (I) only read stuff that's good then you're (I'm) almost axiomatically playing it too safe and missing out on potential gems. It's a sacrifice you (I) have to be willing to make.

[aprilblossomgirl]

my favorite QL 2023 recaps: part 4 - the boys x the beach

GIF 1-3. Nueng & Palm in Never Let Me Go (2022-2023)

GIF 4-6. Gun & Cher in A Boss and A Babe (2023)

GIF 7-9. Mhok & Day in Last Twilight (2023-2024)

[whosname]

This guy again.

[Id. Hijikata in his salarymen au persona sitting at his desk resigned. He's on a skype call with Kintoki who says with a stupid grin "I have a stupid question…". Hijikata, bracing, says "Okay, tell me…" End Id.]

[trentskis]

why would u more easily believe that there is some special treatment in the premier league going on rather than one arsenal player got injured and a couple of them chose to withdraw from national team selection some very very weird things being said on this website

[bottlepiecemuses]

You are submitting me this crap while ignoring that Hamas was found to actually hurt women and you only want to condemn one side because of your bigoted. It's interesting you pro-Palestinian pos want to act and condemn Israel so hard that you grab any type of stuff and ignore Hamas's record and even say it's a resistance. You guys have no soul or morals.