Vanessa Agra's blog

  Picture source

Viva São João !!!

As we speak, Brazil is full of bonfires, all kinds of corn dishes are being cooked, and everyone is getting ready to dance forró all night long!

São João (Saint John) is the saint honored on June 24th. The festival is native to Northeastern Brazil, but nowadays it is spread all over the country. It's also called "Festas Juninas" (literally 'parties of June') because the celebrations take place over the month of June, and also honor Santo Antonio and São Pedro. READ MORE>

(Pic source: commons.wikimedia.org)

One of these days a friend of mine posted something interesting on Facebook: a Woody Allen’s article where he picks his top five books and, among them, a renowned Brazilian writer. The novel Allen picked as one of his favorites was “Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas”, by Machado de Assis. The title literally translates as: The Posthumous Memories of Brás Cubas, and it is also known in English as Epitaph for a Small Winner (1881) READ MORE>

(Pic Source: Brasil Escola)

On May 13th, 1888, 123 years ago, slavery abolition was (finally) signed into law in Brazil.

Sadly, Brazil was the last nation in the Western world to abolish slavery. READ MORE>

As many of you may already know, Rio is having horrible days of terror since this last week. The police has received the help of the Army to fight the wave of violent attacks promoted by the drug traffic leaders.

What seems different to me this time is that the violence now has happened in response to some reaction (finally!) by the government/police in handling the issue. READ MORE>

Linha de Passe, a film directed by Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas

Linha de Passe is a movie that shows the huge, depressing, and poisoning reality that is the lives of the majority of Brazilians, and the people of so many other third world countries. A reality where to keep one's integrity is not only a difficult task... it is in fact an almost impossible one. It's about this mother (Sandra Carveloni, Best actress in the 61th Cannes Festival 2008 - her first work in cinema) who struggles to keep her kids as a family within this unfair reality. READ MORE>

Eu adoro o San Francisco International Film Festival!

The festival is always amazing, bringing interesting films from around the world and from the USA. After the festival some of the films go to the regular theatres... but usually just a few of them! So, if you are a cinema lover, don't count on that and check the festival website to find the movies of your interest. It's worth it...a great chance to watch the films that might never be shown afterwards. READ MORE>

Oi galera,

I found this video on YouTube... American journalist Seth Kugel is interviewed by  vejapontocom (Veja is a Brazilian magazine and Vejapontocom is its YouTube channel) . Seth graduated in Political Science in Yale and has a master's degree in Public Politics from Harvard. He has been writing for the New York Times since 1998, and also works as Brazil's correspondent for the Global Post Agency.

The interview is divided in 3 videos: READ MORE>

Check out this article from Yahoo! Brasil, by Danilo Almeida. I thought it was an interesting view of Brazil's current economic panorama. For those with an interest in investing in Brazil, this will be a good read.
 
The article is in Portuguese. I hope you enjoy it!  Let me know what you think... READ MORE>

Is there a difference between Tautology and Pleonasm?

Tautology (rhetoric): needless or meaningless repetition in close succession of an idea, statement, or word. We can say it is almost the same as pleonasm, since pleonasm is the use of more words (or even word-parts) than necessary to express an idea clearly.  I just kind of did it, didn’t I?
READ MORE>