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Knife in the Head: German Social Realism Meets Cinema Verité
Robert M. Stowe
Reckoning with the Past: The 18th Jeonju International Film Festival
Marc Raymond
Nicole Kidman: Stardom, Performance and Persona
Tessa Chudy
The Wicker Man (Robin Hardy, 1973)
Daniel Lammin
Chambers, Jack
Brett Kashmere
Middle-of-the-Road Absurdism: The Cinema of Dutch Director Alex van Warmerdam
Peter Verstraten
Practically all published items on Borgman (2013), no matter how tiny, mentioned the fact that this was the first Dutch film to enter the Cannes main competition since 1975, the year Jos Stelling's debut feature Mariken van Nieumeghen was selected. That Borgman was no real contender for the festival prizes was only a side note, even though it is rumoured that the film was jury member Nicole Kidman's favourite. The selection as such was greeted in the Netherlands as if Dutch cinema, despite three Academy Award wins in the 1980s and 1990s, was finally released from what is called its 'Calimero complex' (1). This complex is named after a popular Italian cartoon series of the 1970s about the only black chicken (Calimero) in a family of yellow ones who thinks that, as the underdog, he is treated unfairly. Comparably small countries, Dutch film lovers tend to complain, always seem to fare so much better than the Netherlands at setting the agendas within the film festival circuit of quality art-house cinema, like Austria (Michael Haneke, Ulrich Seidl), Belgium (Michaël R. Roskam, the Dardenne brothers), and Denmark (Lars von Trier, Thomas Vinterberg, Nicolas Winding Refn) (2).
With the exception of Paul Verhoeven, who, by the way, is a commercial director rather than an art-house filmmaker (closer to Steven Spielberg than to Ulrich Seidl), Alex van Warmerdam's track record is perhaps the most impressive one of all living Dutch directors, and for that reason the monthly journal De Filmkrant gave him the honorary title 'the white raven' of today's Dutch cinema (3). Van Warmerdam was a theatre director and a painter before he started directing films at the age of thirty-three, his debut feature Abel (Voyeur) from 1986 catapulting him to instant fame. Although Borgman is only his eighth film since then, the quality of his work is regarded as of a fine standard overall. Perhaps only his sixth, Grimm (2003), is considered as a minor picture, whereas his second, De Noorderlingen (The Northerners, 1992), is acknowledged by many as his finest. Moreover, van Warmerdam gets sympathy votes from the general public for his refusal to compromise his artistic vision to commercial appeal, as well as for his loyalty to his cast and crew. Actor Jaap Spijkers and actress Ariane Schluter are among his regulars, just as is his wife Annet Malherbe, who has a role in most of his films. Van Warmerdam's brother Marc is involved with his films, usually as producer, and his brother Vincent composes the musical score. Further, if Verhoeven was perhaps always-already an American-styled director, judging from, among others, his relatively fast-paced Soldaat van Oranje (Soldier of Orange, 1977), van Warmerdam's cinema can, by contrast, be seen as rooted in a recognisably Dutch culture, albeit with a proviso.
Austere architecture with square windows
According to Warmerdam, as stated in the television documentary series Allemaal Film (4), the Netherlands has a firm tradition of a Calvinist variant of Christianity. Whereas the cinema of Federico Fellini bears evidence that Italians idolize a baroque and exuberant Catholicism, van Warmerdam claims the Calvinist variant is austere and scanty. Symptomatic is the setting of De Noorderlingen, one of only five post-war narrative feature films to be honoured with selection to the official Dutch film canon (5). After an opening in which a man, his wife and a toddler are instructed in a photo studio pose to look 'with hope … to the future', the subsequent scene reveals that the photograph of the happily smiling family is used on a billboard accompanying the text '2000 houses will be finished by 1958'. A text over the shot mentions that it is 'summer 1960', and it is evident that of the planned estate, to date, only one street happens to be built, surrounded as it is by barren land and rusty building materials already eroded by weeds. The uniform and austere architecture of the houses in this one street are adjoined to the sidewalk and have huge, almost square windows so that passers-by can easily look inside, a 'typically Dutch habit', according to van Warmerdam.
In De Noorderlingen these windows repeatedly function as a frame within the film frame. Postman Plagge (Alex van Warmerdam) stands right in front of the huge window of Martha's (Annet Malherbe) house, gesticulating at her not to wear any lipstick. Since he is in the habit of secretly opening the mail he has to deliver, Plagge knows that one of Martha's girlfriends has advised her to dress not too appealingly in the hope of restraining her sex-crazed husband Jacob (Jack Wouterse). Similarly, one of the quarrels Martha has with her husband is played out in the street for everyone to observe from behind their windows (she does this deliberately to prevent him from acting too aggressively towards her.) The marital problems aggravate after Martha decided to completely resist the attempts at seduction by Jacob. When she is in bed, a statue of Saint Francis, miraculously, comes alive and it/he gestures to her not to eat the food her husband has brought her. Saint Francis even comes down from his pedestal to pray at Martha's bedside. Her self-imposed abstinence turns her into some sort of Madonna figure. Lying in her bed near the huge, square window, her female neighbours come to kneel at the sidewalk pavement, looking at her, with their hands clasped as if in prayer. Jacob chases the onlookers away, but in a subsequent shot the small group has become a crowd, with still more people arriving by bus. At one point their son Thomas (Leonard Lucieer) closes the curtains, for he and his father are about to eat, but the noise of tapping fingers makes him pull back the curtains, once again emphasizing the analogy between window and the film frame.
De Noorderlingen
Fear of meaning
In Allemaal film, van Warmerdam mentions that he was surprised that people do not consider the film a Christian movie, despite the austere architecture, the role of Saint Francis and the adoration for Martha. It is doubtful, however, that he is serious about his surprise. The Calvinist form of Christianity in which Dutch culture is embedded, according to van Warmerdam, is a particularly modest and restrained tradition. Such a tradition, as Christopher Collins argues in his account of 'iconophobia', tends to display a distrust of images and a suspicion of the visual potential of verbal texts, for they can unleash an 'uncontrollable imagination' (6). Hermeneutics is a core practice of Calvinists, for their goal is to suppress the possible ambiguity of images/texts, reducing things to only one, preferably very rational, meaning, or, in the words of Collins, to an 'abstract-propositional function' (7). Van Warmerdam's work is totally at odds with this tradition, which is best affirmed by his 'confession', on the extras of the DVD of Allemaal film, that he has a 'fear of meaning'. He will waive the use of a crow in his films, because this animal too easily connotes death. As soon as a character, an animal or an object evokes a too obvious association, van Warmerdam will avoid his or its inclusion. He prefers an animal without a fixed connotation to encourage the viewer towards unsuspected interpretations. Hence, in contrast to the strict Dutch Calvinist tradition of unilateral meanings, his films should evoke 'accidental' meanings, which he himself never had in mind.
Van Warmerdam's third feature De jurk (The Dress, 1996) is a supreme ironic take on this caution for ready-made meanings. To start with, the film does not have a character as a main protagonist, but an object. This object, a dress, has a strange genesis, for a designer has been asked to propose a particular motif for a summer frock. All the designs have been declared unfit for use, for in the eyes of the advising committee, they are too 'avant-garde' and not 'sunny' enough. When Van Tilt (Henri Garcin) continues to doubt the willingness of the designer to think commercially, director Loohman (Frans Vorstman) is so annoyed that he quite randomly picks a 'timeless leaf motif'. This motif, as the spectators well know, is no more than a copy-cat from a dress worn by one of the designer's neighbours, an Indian woman. Van Tilt and Loohman get embroiled in a physical fight, whereupon the latter not only fires his employee, but also wishes Van Tilt to be doomed to an unhappy life.
As soon as the dress is manufactured the film follows one particular item, bought by a woman in her early sixties. While wearing it, she gets ill and spills coffee on the frock. Her husband washes the dress, but at the very moment of her death, a heavy wind sweeps the dress from the clothesline. This is the beginning of the journey of the dress, with one constant factor: each and every woman who wears the item experiences something dreadful, like, for example, being harassed by a horny train ticket inspector, and gets rid of it forthwith by giving the item away for charity, or whatever. At the end, the dress is stolen by a female vagabond, who starts wearing it in combination with other clothes. Bearing in mind that the piece of cloth was officially made as a summer dress, what black comedy, then, that she some time later freezes to death. Also darkly comic is the fate of Van Tilt, who pops up at intervals in the story, but time and again in a different guise. After his discharge, we see him selling coffee and snacks in a train, and as an ultimate sign of his downfall, we see him as a tramp befriended to the female vagabond. After her death, he tears a part of the dress and uses it as a shawl. With some of his very last money, he pays a woman to French kiss him in a park and after that he throws away the improvised shawl, which is immediately torn to shreds by a lawnmower.
De jurk
De jurk invites the spectator to draw an analogy between the sorry fate of Van Tilt and the development of the dress from a window shop item to a relic shredded to pieces. The editing of De jurk suggests causality, for Van Tilt is made to cross paths with this particular frock regularly. Therefore, it seems as if his boss Loohman's angry firing of Van Tilt and wishing upon him bad luck has, in retrospect, the status of a godlike prophecy. If there is anything godlike about Loohman, however, it is his authority to make arbitrary decisions. No matter how obvious the analogy between the whereabouts of both Van Tilt and the dress, drawing such a parallel seems a trap set for the spectator. It is tempting to suggest that Van Tilt is punished for trying to prevent the manufacture of the dress and that the dress can cast a bad spell on practically anyone, since most characters appear to be affected by it somehow. Van Warmerdam's film seems to satisfy the viewer's desire for meaningful connections, but this is so deceptively logical that it, being a van Warmerdam film, had better be distrusted. Is the striking discrepancy between the utter simplicity of the item and the tragic effect it seems to have on several characters not primarily played for laughs? Originally, the dress was produced as an object supposed to radiate joy, but it became a token of despair for the majority of characters. And at the same time, there is no clue at all that it is anything more than a strictly random item, and all the events that befall the characters are purely fortuitous. The simple summer frock can be interpreted both as a highly significant garment and as a banal object, and as such it is a sign of unstable irony.
To guarantee indeterminacy, main characters often have common, even archaic names, such as Jacob, Anton, or Martha, names particularly popular in the Netherlands in the 1950s. Such names, as van Warmerdam has noted, refer to a period of class differences and paternal authority, implying a hierarchically ordered neighbourhood where one still lived according to strict social roles (8). While the option that this bygone era can still exert some nostalgic fascination is not denied, Warmerdam's depiction of the period is presented in an ironic and relatively detached manner. This duality between fascination and irony is never truly resolved in his films, most evident in the representation of blacks in De Noorderlingen. About halfway through the film, two white priests arrive to showcase a black African man, labelled as a 'negro', for an educational exhibition. In its portrayal of the black man as a caged animal, this image reproduces the worst of stereotypes, but it can also be regarded, contrariwise, as parodic mimicry of a cringingly white patronizing attitude (9). To underscore this latter option, we see the priests busy hanging a wooden board announcing the exhibition, but it breaks in halve. The function of the 'negro' becomes even more complex when we consider the obsession the young teenager Thomas has with broadcast news about the figure of Patrice Lumumba, a resistance fighter in Congo who contributed to the country's independence from Belgium. Thomas even paints his face black and dresses like Lumumba, identifying with a man totally foreign to his own petty-bourgeois environment. Seeing how the priests do not permit the 'negro' to smoke, Thomas aids him in escaping from his cage. He also helps him to take shelter among others by sitting on his shoulders in the guise of Lumumba, while wearing a long coat. Thomas gets away with the trick because Anton (Rudolf Lucieer), the forest ranger, presumes that the postman Plagge, who is pestering him all the time, is hidden underneath. Strictly speaking, Thomas' attitude is marked by exoticism, but since the teenager is presented as a down-to-earth boy, shorn of any pathetic gestures, it is at the same time a particularly dry-comic variant of exoticism. Later, the black man is once again shown as stereotypically wild. Thomas has brought him to a subterranean place of refuge in the woods. There he witnesses the accidental killing of a young girl by the forest ranger, who drowns her body in a small pond. The black man takes revenge in a primitive fashion: dressed only in a skirt, he jumps from a tree upon the forest ranger and lances the latter's eyes with a self-made spear. Later he hides in the postman's house dressed in his uniform. Thus, the black man's role in De Noorderlingen constantly oscillates. On the one hand, he is depicted according to old-fashioned notions about black men still current in the 1950s: he is either a primitive brute or a token of exoticism. On the other hand, the blank and deadpan presentation is so wilfully odd that the option of irony keeps resonating throughout.
Averse to psychology
Van Warmerdam tends to shoot relatively straightforwardly and prefers the use hard cuts, deep focus and elliptical editing. At the end of Kleine Teun (Little Tony, 1998) a husband murders his wife, but the act of killing is only shown obliquely. From inside a house through the window we see him raise an axe, but the woman is slain off-screen. In production, an establishing shot had been filmed, showing her in a flower field with a wound in her back, but no matter how good the shot, van Warmerdam cut it because, upon reflection, he considered it excessive (10). The majority of shots in his films are static, and when the camera does move it is to follow a character or observe a situation, hardly ever to accentuate a mood. There is some musical accompaniment to scenes, but it is never intrusive, for that might affect the general mood too much. Hence, cinematic devices are used quite soberly, without van Warmerdam ever becoming as puristic as the (extreme) long shot cinema practiced, for example, by Jacques Tati in Play Time (1967), or the films of the Swede Roy Andersson, who almost exclusively uses lengthy static tableaux shots in his Sånger från andra våningen (Songs from the Second Floor, 2000) and Du levande (You, the Living, 2007).
However, van Warmerdam shares with these filmmakers a scrutinizing attention to mise-en-scène. For van Warmerdam, the manner in which characters are positioned in space is seminal, and for that reason the décor has a determining function. For De laatste dagen van Emma Blank (The Last Days of Emma Blank, 2009) as well as for Borgman, he had a whole house built, simply because he could not find what he was looking for. The house for De laatste dagen van Emma Blank was constructed with an eye to the cinemascope frame, which enabled him to show a room in the background in each and every shot. On the one hand, this choice is an invitation to the spectator to discover details within the shot, on the other hand, a tragicomic effect can ensue because the framing of characters can anticipate the oppressing situation they are about to meet.
De laatste dagen van Emma Blank
In addition to this sober approach, his cinema is shorn of flashbacks. Conventionally, a flashback is inserted to offer psychological motivation: by digging into the past the logic behind a character's behaviour or actions can become clearer. Van Warmerdam will have none of that in his films. Is the train conductor in De jurk simply obsessed by women who wear that particular dress or is that a coincidence? Or is it his regular habit to harass women, regardless of the clothes they wear? Why does postman Plagge in De Noorderlingen secretly open the mail near a small lake in the woods at the risk of being caught in the act by the bespectacled forester? Thanks to him reading the mail of his fellow town folk, he knows about the latter's infertility, and one of Plagge's nasty jokes is to hide himself in the woods and to call to the forester, with a high-pitched voice: "Sweet little hunter, make me a child". We can only guess whether Plagge has been bullying the forester for quite some time now. We have no clue whether the animosity is due to some past incident. Or is Plagge simply taunting him as some sort of resistance to his own obliging role as a postman?
If psychology is alluded to, it is done so by negation, as in the case of Abel (Voyeur, 1986). The titular hero does not seem to have any particular ambition. Abel (Alex van Warmerdam) is 31-year-old guy still living with his parents and, it would seem, not been outside the family home for a number of years. He only screens the environment with binoculars and has the pointless habit of trying to cut bluebottles in half with a pair of scissors. In fact, his sole goal is to annoy his father. When the father wishes the family a merry Christmas and adds, "And let us for once try to have a dinner without any arguments", the son calmly replies that by accentuating it, there is sure to be an argument. And indeed, a quarrel ensues. When a psychiatrist visits Abel's home, on the request of the father, the son acts like a total retard. In response to the psychiatrist's suggestion that the root of the problem is that the father is ashamed of his son, the father retorts: "Wouldn't you be ashamed of a son like that?" Apparently the son rebels against the father by giving him all the more reason to be embarrassed by him. This leads to a series of scenes which are as straight-faced as they are hilarious. When the father invites a girl to their place for Abel to meet, the son ruins the date on purpose, sometimes by his lengthy silences, sometimes by blathering on about his favourite subject (the Iron Curtain and the poor working conditions in Russia). Or he may ask the girl, an amateur actress, a silly question like, "Could you also climb in to the skin of … a potato?" After her puzzled reaction, he says: "I think you'd make a very good potato".
Pervaded with role-playing
The starting point of a van Warmerdam film is often fairly ordinary, or so it seems. A family having Christmas dinner in Abel; a waiter serving patrons in a restaurant in Ober (Waiter, 2006), or a household watching while a woman is eating her meal, as in De laatste dagen van Emma Blank. Soon, the identifiable setting takes a slightly bizarre turn, and as the story progresses, more slightly bizarre twists start to accumulate. In several of his films such a twist concerns an element of deliberate role-playing. When, in Kleine Teun, feelings of affection arise between Keet's (Annet Malherbe) husband Brand (Alex van Warmerdam) and the female instructor Lena (Ariane Schluter), Keet does not get angry, but rather encourages their romantic interest. She provokes her husband by telling him he is not bold enough to sleep with her: every other man would have done it already by now, she taunts. She also suggests they tell Lena that they are only play-acting at being married, but that they are really brother and sister. This charade leads to a complicated love triangle, which is an overture to another bizarre twist. Keet instructs Brand that she wants him to act in an authoritarian manner at her own expense, so, her argument goes, that Lena will be overwhelmed by his manly power and wish to be impregnated by him: infertile herself, Keet plans to make the kid her own in due time. Her plan fails finally because Brand in the end no longer sides with his 'sister', who wants to reclaim her position as his wife, and thereby he kills her.
De laatste dagen van Emma Blank is pervaded with role-playing from the start, although the spectator only realizes this in retrospect. Bella (Annet Malherbe) is the cook, Gonnie (Eva van de Wijdeven) is the maid, Haneveld (Gene Bervoets) is the butler, Meier (Gijs Naber) is the handyman, and Theo (Alex van Warmerdam) is a dog. Initially, it seems peculiar that Theo is not an animal, but a human, wearing clothes and, when outside, sunglasses. Despite his human appearance, he behaves like a dog, e.g. by enthusiastically jumping at the Madame while she is eating; and he is treated like one: he is punished like a dog for misbehaviours and he is taken outside when he has to defecate. Later in the film it turns out that everyone is just playing a role – the butler is in fact Emma's (Marlies Heuer) husband and Gonnie her daughter – in order to please the 'Madame' who claims she is on the verge of dying. 'Madame' behaves like a true dominatrix, and everyone seems prepared to swallow her vagaries. Their willingness evaporates the moment Emma explains that there is no wealth to be inherited. Lacking the care of her former household, Emma soon dies.
The game of role-playing, however, is most paramount in Ober. After the waiter Edgar (Alex van Warmerdam) is bullied by three male patrons, he knocks at the door of the scriptwriter Herman (Mark Rietman) and requests that he be permitted some smart reply next time they show up. Further, Edgar complains that his chronically ill wife is not only ruining his life, but also the writer's story. When the writer's girlfriend Suzie (Thekla Reuten) then reveals that this woman is having a secret affair, Herman intervenes and says: "No, that is omitted from the story at this very moment". It turns out that the writer has no clue where his story is heading, except that Edgar has to suffer: "You have to be exasperated". Edgar continues negotiating by asking whether in exchange for all the punishment that will befall him he could get rid of his present mistress and start an affair with a new girlfriend, for "a brief moment of happiness", he pleads. Herman is prepared to give him one, temporarily, on the condition that he will no longer bother him. Edgar will soon violate this condition by banging at the writer's bedroom door soon after another encounter with the bullying guests, angry that the only rebuttal to the bullies offered him by Herman was a "lousy term of abuse"– namely, assholes – whereupon the guests beat him up and threw him into an aquarium. Herman, woken up in the middle of the night, then explains to him that he, Edgar, is a 'modern' character without purpose, to which the distressed Edgar replies: "A modern character, that is totally outdated".
Ober explores the overstepping of diegetic boundaries by, on the one hand, having Edgar adhere to the scripted lines in his role as the waiter. The things Herman writes on his computer are immediately visualized for us, as for example, when Edgar says 'eeeeeeee' for some time, this being a consequence of the fact that the writer had fallen asleep on the keyboard. Keeping in mind that Edgar has no text of his own, it is ironic that his former mistress tells him she wanted a friend who says something original now and then. On the other hand, there is the 'independent' Edgar engaged in a dispute with his spiritual father about the (lack of) ambition of the main protagonist, the waiter Edgar. Humour resides in the writer's helplessness in the presence of Edgar and the other characters that come to visit him. As soon as they leave his place he can regain control, although, only to a limited extent. Since he lacks the creativity to offer Edgar an escape route, Suzie prompts solutions. When he then blames her for the screenplay going adrift, she decides to leave him, but not after she has inserted some terrible events into the script. In turn, this angers some of the scripted characters and their reappearance is the bloody limit for the writer. He quickly types 'the end', so that the last of the visitors dissolves into thin air. The final image is a long shot of the writer, all alone, staring at his computer screen.
Ambivalent abnormality
At the core of the grotesque, according to Philip Thomson in his study on the concept, is an 'unresolved clash of incompatibles in work and response', which is only a fairly abstract description of the formal pattern of the grotesque, but he also argues that the grotesque concerns the 'ambivalently abnormal' (11) 'Abnormal' is the outlandish juxtaposition of elements which do not logically fit together (like the solemnity of a royal court and the buffoonery of the jester). The adverb 'ambivalently' applies to the audience's response: for one, the work (of art) will be nauseating, for another, funny, and a third will consider it both horrifying and comic. In the case of a successful grotesque, ideally, according to Thomson, the latter group will be in the majority, that is, those not really knowing whether to shiver or laugh.
Ambivalently abnormal scenes abound in the films of van Warmerdam. The major achievement of his cinema – and he shares this quality with someone like the Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki – is that the more deplorable the fate of the character, the more hilarious it gets. Near the end of Ober, after another of Edgar's complaints, Herman promises him salvation and a happy ending back in the arms of his girlfriend Stella. And indeed, she shows up in the restaurant, but when he runs after her, Edgar is suddenly run-over by a truck. This accident is cruel, but also hilarious, since it is an actualization of one of the writer's earlier threats: "If you come to my place once more, I will have you run-over by a truck". Hence, the writer's promise of salvation was only a pretext to get Edgar out of his apartment, but he was already keen on revenge. Moreover, during his last visit, Edgar accused Herman of flaccid, sloppy script writing. Having his protagonist killed all of a sudden in fact proves Edgar's point: indeed, Herman is a third-rate screenwriter, but also, it is utterly ironic and hilarious that Edgar becomes the victim of his own accusation about the screenwriter poor talent.
Similarly, in De laatste dagen van Emma Blank, every member feels compassion for Emma and gives in to her capricious wishes, until it turns out that there is nothing of value to be inherited. The charade is over immediately, and from that moment on they let her perish. When Gonnie wants to give her mother a glass of water, her father, Haneveld, takes it away after only a few sips, telling his daughter "She did not have milk to breastfeed you. Is that a mother?" Once Emma dies, Haneveld leans over her corpse and says, "It was out of goodness, you hear? Out of goodness", in reference to the few sips of water they gave her. In such cases, the situation itself is horrific – Edgar's sudden death, Emma's death foretold –, but instead of a shocked reaction, the spectator might nonetheless giggle, because the situation exposes in passing the hypocrisy of apparently benevolent characters like Herman and Haneveld. Hence, a grotesque effect in van Warmerdam's cinema is achieved, for the spectator can be both appalled and amused at the same time. This twin, and seemingly contradictory, response can coexist because the performance of the characters is relatively blank so that the emotional register of the spectator is not pushed in a certain direction. The characters in his cinema do not gesticulate wildly and their facial expressions are often demure so that we do not get a clue as to their mood and state of mind. They never laugh, no matter how hilarious the situation. This deadpan approach of van Warmerdam turns his films, with their often awkward and/or horrific content, into a mixture of discomfort and dry comedy. To paraphrase Thomson in his description of the grotesque: in such cases, the grimace can become a guffaw, and vice versa.
An actually funny version of Funny Games
In comparison to the films immediately preceding it, (Ober and De laatste dagen van Emma), Borgman is a bit more macabre, but without losing its comic tone entirely. After its premiere at Cannes, reviewers made connections to films such as Pier Paolo Pasolini's Teorema (Theorem, 1968), Kim Ki-duk's Bin-jip (3 Iron, 2004), Dominik Moll's Lemming (2005), and Ben Wheatley's Kill List (2011), as well as to the cinema of Luis Buñuel and David Lynch. Foremost among the comparisons, however, was Michael Haneke's Funny Games (1997), except that van Warmerdam's home invasion film was called 'actually funny' by one critic at The Daily Telegraph. In Haneke's film, two decently dressed and seemingly polite boys have a small request – they ask for a few eggs to bake a cake – but the pair develop into manipulating intruders. The pair start tormenting the three residents – father, mother and boy-child – but as they say, in direct-to-camera shots, they merely commit their violent acts to entertain the audience, presuming that spectators are delighted by watching torture scenes on screen. In suggesting that they have some contract with the public, on whose behalf they perform their evil, the two boys perversely make the spectators complicit with their atrocious deeds. After a series of brutalities, most of which are committed off-screen, or, at some remove from the camera, the woman succeeds in killing one of the boys with a gun. This scene, which is usually greeted with a sense of relief by the audience, is 'neutralized' by a notoriously cruel joke played on the spectator. The other guy takes the remote control and rewinds the 'film' to the point when the woman got hold of the gun, and then grabs the weapon him self, hence erasing the cathartic moment as the guys take back control of the 'film'. In the end, the woman, the last surviving member of the family, is casually thrown overboard into a lake, as if the guys have become bored by their 'funny games', which in fact have proven not to be funny at all.
Like Haneke's film, Borgman also has a small request at the beginning: the vagrant Camiel Borgman (Jan Bijvoet), who introduces himself as Anton Breskens, just wants to take a bath, because "I am dirty". This request is refused him by the middle-class businessman Richard (Jeroen Perceval), who even beats up the stranger after the latter insinuates that he had been on familiar terms with Richard's wife Marina (Hadewych Minis). Apparently, the woman feels guilty about the violent treatment and she offers the bearded stranger a shed with a bed on the condition that he does not show himself in the house. Time and again, Borgman asks for little favours – one more night, a breakfast, another bath – and the woman gives in to each request. He sneaks into the house at will, but he is for some reason never spotted by her husband Richard, only by the three children and the Danish au pair, who have all immediately fallen under Borgman's spell. They behave compliantly and obediently and never betray his presence to Richard. The hobo has some hypnotic power upon Marina as well, as is affirmed in the scenes in which he sits, naked and squatting, over her. These shots can be taken as a clear reference to Henry Fuseli's 1781 oil painting The Nightmare, which depicts a sleeping woman with her head hanging down, surmounted by an incubus (12). Just as in the painting, it seems as if the demon is capable of injecting her with nightmares. In Borgman, the content of her dreadful dreams is time and again a revelation of her husband's aggressive nature, which Borgman himself had experienced first hand. The one true, albeit very brief, horror and blood-spilling moment of the film is also one of Marina's nightmares: her husband sexually assaults her and as soon as he cuts her flesh with a Stanley knife, she wakes up. As a consequence of the nightmares, Marina develops a growing suspicion towards Richard, to the point that she tells Borgman that her husband has to die. But not only will the husband be poisoned, Marina herself will also die after drinking a glass of wine offered to her by Borgman. Their corpses are buried in the garden. Meanwhile, the children, as well as their nanny, have been drugged and undergone a small operation of some kind. The resulting scar on their backs is a sign that they have definitely joined the gang of conspirators.
The intent of Haneke's Funny Games was unashamedly didactic. The film was made as a provocative reflection on the too alluring depiction of violence in much contemporary cinema. By way of its coolly detached and minimalist style, Funny Games was deliberately made as a nauseating antidote to films like Natural Born Killers (Oliver Stone, 1994) and Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994), which (too) eagerly depict graphic violence for the viewer's entertainment (13). As stated, Borgman refrains from graphic violence, except for a very brief shot, only a few frames, and as such recalls Funny Games, but it lacks the didacticism that Haneke's film is pervaded with. Since van Warmerdam always shies away from offering social criticism, it is only consistent that the motivations of his villains are 'blurry', and that his horror-pastiche lacks a true 'killer punch' (14). In the first half of the film, Borgman sets up the expectation of being a spellbound horror-thriller. At one point, Marina tells her husband that something surrounds them, "an agreeable warmth that both intoxicates and confuses one; a sheath of something that wants to do evil". All the ingredients for a vicious criticism of middle-class values in the form of an occult horror film are present, including a no-nonsense husband who downplays Marina's intuition as a hallucination. Instead, Borgman starts to shift gears, as if van Warmerdam wants to 'eschew standard genre trappings' (15), just as do his other films. One might have expected that Borgman would take revenge upon the bigoted and decadent lifestyle of Richard's, but that would have been at odds with van Warmerdam's reluctance to inject his films with social messages. In fact, Borgman, as he tells Marina who halts him as he is about to depart, has no bigger ambition than to 'play': "I am bored. I want to play. I do not feel like hiding. I want to eat at the big dinner table". If he is so bent on playing, could he then not, Marina proposes, return in a different guise?
By foregrounding the element of play, the promise of an occult horror film is twisted to scenes of absurdist and black comedy. Borgman's eagerness for play becomes the preamble to a series of calmly executed and elaborate plans. Aided by his offbeat accomplices, Borgman disposes of the gardener and his wife by encasing their heads in a bucket of concrete and then sinking the bodies, upside down, to the bottom of a greenish lake "like a submarine sculpture" (16). Since the job of gardener has become vacant by now, Richard will select among five applicants a new employee. Unbeknownst to him, Borgman and his co-conspirators have selected a number of prospectless candidates whom they pay to ring at the doorbell: non-western foreigners without experience, "Even a Negro", Richard exclaims in despair. When Borgman then offers his services, Richard immediately takes the bait. The fact that he does not recognize the shorn and scrubbed applicant as the bedraggled tramp he had previously mistreated is a token of his self-absorption. By contrast, Marina immediately sees through his appearance. Having Borgman around the house gives her the idea that she might become close with the gardener, but he discourages any advance as "too early". He insists that he plays the gardener, and that as such Richard is his superior, and one is not supposed to mess with the boss' wife. Only after Richard's demise does he get intimate with her, but it is a kiss of death.
Middle-of-the-road absurdism
In reply to the question of why van Warmerdam made Borgman, he answered: "I felt like making a horror film. Or rather something along that line." Borgman is a typical Warmerdam film in the sense that as soon as one might expect to watch a genre film with some social purport, he will frustrate that expectation. Out of his 'fear of meaning', he bends generic conventions to such an extent that it either becomes a pastiche (as in Borgman) or a different genre (as in Grimm, going from fairy tale to road movie to horror to western). Moreover, in each and every film, the scales tip in favour of playful elements over social and/or ideological aspects. On the one hand, this playfulness expresses itself in dry-comic scenes, ranging from the son's attempt at cutting flies with a pair of scissors in Abel to the sinking of bodies with their heads in buckets of concrete in Borgman. On the other hand, deliberate role-playing is especially used to humorous effect in his late films. The husband and wife in Kleine Teun pretending to be brother and sister; the waiter who aims to obtain redress from his very own scriptwriter in Ober; Emma's family members who play an utterly servile household in De laatste dagen van Emma Blank; and the idler Borgman playing the role of a gardener in such a serious manner that it becomes slightly absurd.
Van Warmerdam's ludic approach to cinema can be taken as a response to the strict Calvinist tradition that Dutch culture was still steeped in during his childhood and adolescence. He practices a kind of deadpan humour which I would like to coin 'middle-of-the-road absurdism,' whereby a relatively common and ordinary starting point is gradually deformed to increasingly bizarre ends (17). His films allude to this tradition of firm hierarchies and unilateral meanings, but also drift away from these conventions to the point where meanings cannot be fixed at all. Averse to explicit (social) messages and conventional psychological motivations, his films are, despite the common starting points, difficult to read, since they are not easy to categorize, neither in terms of genre nor in tone. They oscillate between the tragic and humorous, between horror and hilarity, between irony and seriousness. If the tone tends to incline towards one pole, one can be sure that it will soon be tilted to the other pole. The more this might confuse spectators, the better.
The three Dutch films which won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film are: De aanslag (The Assault, Fons Rademakers, 1986), Antonia (Antonia's Line, Marleen Gorris, 1995), and Karakter (Character, Mike van Diem, 1997).
If selected, Dutch films are usually shown in the minor programs, like Guernsey (Nanouk Leopold, 2005) and Code Blue (Urszula Antoniak, 2011) for Cannes' Quinzaine des Realisateurs.
Karin Wolfs, 'Het verdriet van Nederland', De Filmkrant, June, 2013. http://www.filmkrant.nl/TS_juni_2013/9619.
Allemaal Film, devoted to the history of Dutch cinema, was broadcast on television by the AVRO in nine episodes in 2007. It was produced by IDTV and presented by actor Jeroen Krabbé.
When in September 2007 the Dutch film canon was presented at the Netherlands Film Festival, the jury had decided to limit the list to a maximum of only sixteen titles while including a great diversity of types like shorts, silent film, avant-garde, animation, documentary, children's film. De Noorderlingen is the most recent narrative feature film on the list, together with the popular comedies Fanfare (Bert Haanstra, 1958) and Flodder (Dick Maas, 1986), the war film Als twee druppels water (Like Two Drops of Water, Fons Rademakers, 1963), and the macabre 'porn-chic' Turks fruit (Turkish Delight, Paul Verhoeven, 1973).
Christopher Collins, Reading the Written Image: Verbal Play, Interpretation and the Roots of Iconophobia. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991, p. x. It is noteworthy that when describing iconophobia, Collins is not talking about Calvinism in particular.
Ibid., p. 1.
Paul Teunissen, '"Ik wil dat je ogen alles doen". Interview Alex van Warmerdam'. De Groene Amsterdammer, 4 October 2003. http://www.groene.nl/2003/40/ik-wil-dat-je-ogen-alles-doen
As regards such parodistic mimicry, what to think of a scene in Ober (Waiter, 2006) when the main protagonist is trying to seduce his mistress in the guise of a hunter and to enliven the sexual fantasy he had hired four bare-chested black men with spears?
Marja Pruis, 'De buren speelden altijd een rol', De Groene Amsterdammer, 26 May 2001.
Philip Thomson, The Grotesque. London: Methuen, 1972, p. 27.
This was brought to my attention by Theo Steen.
Haneke described Natural Born Killers as an attempt 'to use a fascist aesthetic to achieve an anti-fascist goal, and this doesn't work. What is accomplished is something like the opposite, since what is produced is something like a cult film where the montage style complements the violence represented and presents it largely in a positive light'. Quoted in Peter Brunette, Michael Haneke. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2010 , pp. 58-59.
Catherine Shoard used these terms to express her annoyance at the little (social) aspirations of Borgman. 'Cannes 2013: Borgman – First Look Review', Guardian, 19 May 2013 http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/may/19/cannes-film-festival-borgman-review.
David Rooney, 'Cannes Review: Borgman', The Hollywood Reporter, 19 May 2013, http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/borgman-cannes-review-525208.
This oxymoron was introduced in jest by the Dutch cartoonist Gummbah (real name Gert-jan van Leeuwen) to describe his own (drawing) praxis.
Alex van Warmerdam
The Adaptation and the Remake: From John M. Stahl's When Tomorrow Comes to Douglas Sirk's Interlude
Pablo Berger's Blancanieves and Modern Spain
Peter Verstraten is an Assistant Professor in Film and Literary Studies at Leiden University. He is an author of among others Film Narratology and Humour and Irony in Dutch Post-war Fiction Film.
"I Have Always Been Attracted to Painting": Handwritten Notes Taken to Answer a Friend's Questions, Written in 1984
Christian Lebrat
Visconti's Cinema of Twilight
Maximilian Le Cain


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Tag Archives: Big Tech
Apple Bans Gab from App Development After Company Makes Antitrust Case to DOJ
NOAH BERGER/AFP
Lucas Nolan17 Jun 2019231	2:44
Tech giant Apple banned the developer account of free speech-focused social media network Gab, preventing the company from creating apps for iPhones and other Apple devices, shortly after the startup submitted a complaint to the Department of Justice about Big Tech's anti-competitie business practices.
Breitbart News spoke with the CEO of Gab.com, Andrew Torba, about the company's recent developments. As Torba wrote on Twitter, the free speech social media platform recently submitted a complaint to the DOJ which it hopes will spark an investigation into the business practices of the Masters of the Universe in Silicon Valley. Gab aimed to question if these firms were acting in a deliberately anti-competitive manner against smaller "alt-tech" businesses, and Apple's recent actions may have proven Gab's point.
The Gab.com Twitter page made a number of tweets explaining the company's viewpoint, these can be seen below:
BREAKING: Gab's attorneys have submitted a complaint to the Department of Justice in hopes of sparking a serious investigation into Big Tech's business practices to determine if, and how, they are behaving in a deliberately anti-competitive manner against alt-tech businesses.
— Gab.com (@getongab) June 6, 2019
It's not just us. This is what happens when you try to post a link to @Minds on its main rival, Facebook. pic.twitter.com/XagmbbyVNn
Coordinated deplatforming, when done in such a way as to limit competition in the free market, is illegal. Based on our experience, we believe Silicon Valley companies are colluding to exclude challengers to existing social media companies.
Big Tech understands that curated walled gardens lose their vibrancy and fail, much as Compuserve and AOL failed.
We hope the DOJ will mount a vigorous and thorough investigation into this matter. In particular the duopoly on mobile app distribution that Apple/Google have with 98% marketshare.
Shortly after this thread of tweets, Gab found that its new Dissenter Web Browser had been rejected from Apple's app store. Apple also chose to ban the firm's developer account entirely, citing "objectionable content," as the reason. Gab's Dissenter browser is a web browser that only delivers content that users purposefully visited, like Google Chrome or Apple's Safari browser, yet Apple believes that the app falls under it's "objectionable content" label.
BREAKING: Gab's Dissenter Web Browser was rejected by Apple today. Furthermore, we were banned from our App Store developer account for "objectionable content." For a web browser.
We have filed this information with the Department of Justice and urge them to investigate. pic.twitter.com/raw8u3cgX2
— Gab.com (@getongab) June 10, 2019
Gab CEO Andrew Torba told Breitbart News that Apple admitted that the app itself did not break the company's terms of service but rather they were banning it because it was built by Gab. The company has since reported this additional info to the Department of Justice. In a statement, Torba told Breitbart News:
Coordinated deplatforming, when done in such a way as to limit competition in the free market, is illegal. Based on our experience, we believe Silicon Valley companies are colluding to exclude challengers to existing social media companies. Big Tech understands that curated walled gardens lose their vibrancy and fail, much as Compuserve and AOL failed.
Gab is focused on giving The People back their digital sovereignty. We are no longer simply building a free speech social network. We are building the free speech internet. Our free speech web browser, Dissenter, is only the beginning. We will be releasing a full product line of open source free speech software that is decentralized, built, and controlled by The People.
While Gab's web browser, Dissenter, may not be available in the app store, it can still be downloaded for desktop users here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or email him at lnolan@breitbart.com
EconomyPoliticsTechantitr
Posted in Uncategorized	| Tagged Andrew Torba, Apple, Big Tech, censorship, gab, Twitter
PETITION: Demand Big Tech face real consequences for censoring conservatives
Our pro-life reporting is being attacked. So is the truth. We can't back down in the fight against abortion!View this email in your browser Photo Credit: Getty ImagesJames,The outrageous erasing of the White Coat Summit from the internet is only the latest in a long series of brazen acts of censorship against conservatives and all those who support legitimate free speech.
You may agree or disagree with the efficacy of Hydroxychloroquine against the coronavirus, but everyone should agree on this point:
No Big Tech company should have the power to erase from the internet the medical opinions of licensed practicing doctors simply because they do not like what they have to say about the coronavirus or their experience treating it. Americans and other free peoples do not need leftist computer programmers deciding what the best course of medical treatment is for them.SIGN PETITION
Google/YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, and their Big Tech friends want to control what you see, what you read, what you think, and ultimately, how you vote. Not only do they spend hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbying congress and buttering up big Washington DC think tanks, but now they brazenly and directly censor any content they don't want you to see.
This must stop, but it won't unless we demand it as forcefully as legally possible. We believe that we have reached the point were Big Tech must be broken up if legitimate free speech is going to survive and continue to thrive on the internet.
Please CLICK HERE to sign our petition to demand real consequences for Big Tech's suppression of legitimate free speech.
In an era where almost everything is polarized, there is an overwhelming support for breaking up the Big Tech monopolies. A recent Pew poll found that 75% of Americans believe that Big Tech companies have too much influence.
It is time to bring serious accountability to Big Tech for their attempts to use their monopolies to kill free speech.It is time to break up Big Tech.
PLEASE SIGN THIS URGENT PETITION, TODAY!
John-Henry Westen and the entire LifeSite Team
PS – Please SIGN this petition which calls for consequences for Big Tech's suppression of free speech.
PPS – Please CLICK HERE to find out more about the petition. Then, please SIGN and SHA
Posted in Uncategorized	| Tagged Big Tech, Facebook, Internet censorship, Twitter, White Coat Summit, You Tube
Trump's Executive Order Aims to End Left-Wing Social Media Censorship of Conservatives
President Donald Trump has had it with the social media behemoths abusing the law by picking sides in the political, social, and cultural issues of our time – usually the side he's not on.
And he's particularly keen that the social media platforms wield great power to influence the masses ahead of the November election, so he's preparing some executive actions to curb their 'election meddling' because Democrats in Congress won't (since their party is benefitted by the censorship of conservatives).
"If Congress doesn't bring fairness to Big Tech, which they should have done years ago, I will do it myself with Executive Orders," Trump wrote ahead of a House hearing on big tech Wednesday. "In Washington, it has been ALL TALK and NO ACTION for years, and the people of our Country are sick and tired of it!"
Slated to appear before the House Judiciary Committee regarding potential antitrust violations: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
During an interview with the Daily Caller in June, the president expressed his frustration with the repeated examples of Left-wing social media platform censorship of right-leaning opinion.
"It's really unfair what's going on with the conservative voice. You'd solve the entire problem of the various, you know, monopolists, if you ever voided Section 230."
Trump is referring to a section of the Communications Decency Act which says, "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."
The section gives platforms immunity for content posted, but over time the same platforms have begun censoring content — like a publisher.
So what are they? Platforms or publishers?
In response, Trump issued an executive order Monday aimed at making the distinction that, if they are upheld, will prohibit the kind of censorship taking place.
The Office of the Press Secretary issued this statement:
On Monday, the Department of Commerce, as directed by President Donald J. Trump's Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship, filed a petition to clarify the scope of Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act. The petition requests that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) clarify that Section 230 does not permit social media companies that alter or editorialize users' speech to escape civil liability. The petition also requests that the FCC clarify when an online platform curates content in "good faith," and requests transparency requirements on their moderation practices, similar to requirements imposed on broadband service providers under Title I of the Communications Act. President Trump will continue to fight back against unfair, un-American, and politically biased censorship of Americans online.
***Love Trump? Stay Informed With Our FREE Trump News App***
"When it comes to issues of public safety, the government is the one who must act on behalf of society at large. Law enforcement cannot delegate our obligations to protect the safety of the American people purely to the judgment of profit-seeking private firms. We must shape the incentives for companies to create a safer environment, which is what Section 230 was originally intended to do," Attorney General William Barr said last month when the Justice Department issued its recommendations for the president.
"Taken together, these reforms will ensure that Section 230 immunity incentivizes online platforms to be responsible actors. These reforms are targeted at platforms to make certain they are appropriately addressing illegal and exploitive content while continuing to preserve a vibrant, open, and competitive internet," he added.
"These twin objectives of giving online platforms the freedom to grow and innovate while encouraging them to moderate content responsibly were the core objectives of Section 230 at the outset."
Posted in Uncategorized	| Tagged Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Big Tech, censorship, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, President Donald Trump

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


So, Thanksgiving totally messed me up. Well, okay – I was already a little messed up. The day before Thanksgiving, I hit blank wall. I stared at the words in front of me – and couldn't think of anything to write. I think part of the problem is that the family is on their way to join the wagon train, and now I am in totally unfamiliar territory, but don't want to waste precious time on research. Prior to this, has been their life in their perfect little eastern town. You know, to prep for the upcoming journey and provide compare and contrast to what they are used to vs what they will face. So, yeah. Day before thanksgiving I wrote maybe 1,000 words? And then yesterday, Thanksgiving itself, another 1,000. At least I had an excuse for that one! Lots of food prep and all that. So, end result: I am currently at 37,790 words total and will have to write over 4,000 words a day to make 50,000. Do you think I can do it?


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You are at:Home»News»Small Robot Company previews Wilma artificial intelligence
Operator view including in-field automous robot path and view:
Small Robot Company previews Wilma artificial intelligence
By JohnSwire on	 November 5, 2018 News, Precision Agriculture
Small Robot Company, a British agritech start-up for sustainable farming, has announced previews of an early version of Wilma, its Artificial Intelligence (AI) interface. This will be shown both at the East of England farming conference in Cambridge and at the highly prestigious WiredLive Innovation Festival in London. Wilma is the core of an intelligent, autonomous crop management system for arable farming.
Following extensive field trials, and artificial intelligence training with partner Cosmonio over the last six months, Wilma can already distinguish Wheat plants from 'Not-Wheat', meaning any images of items that are not wheat plants.
Small Robot Company harnesses the power and precision of robots and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to improve the way that food is produced and minimise chemical usage. It will make farms more profitable, and increase yield and efficiency, through using small robots instead of tractors.
Wilma is a sophisticated, granular 'operating system' of crop and soil monitoring and care which will enable each plant in the field to be cared for individually, with no waste. Directed by Wilma, its Tom, Dick and Harry robots will only feed and spray the plants that need it, giving them the perfect levels nutrients and support. This will cut chemicals and emissions by up to 95%.
"This will entirely change what's possible on the farm, and how we think about farming," said Sam Watson Jones, co-founder of Small Robot Company and a fourth generation Shropshire farmer. "When we can not only understand a farmer's field on a plant by plant basis, but we can also take action at that level, a completely different farming system becomes possible. Farming will be able to produce an abundance of food with minimal negative environmental impacts."
Artificial Intelligence in action: Wilma
The Small Robot Company will unveil an early version of the interface for Wilma, the Artificial Intelligence 'nervous system' for its Farming as a Service (FaaS) offering. Built on Canonical's cutting edge Ubuntu Internet of Things operating system, she will draw upon a comprehensive big data crop model for all her decision-making.
Taking data gathered in the field by the Tom monitoring robot, Wilma can see every blade of emerging wheat, bumblebee nest, and wormhole. She will then analyse this data to determine what remedial action is required. Wilma has been trained with the data gathered from phase one of field trials in 2018, and can already recognise Wheat from Non-Wheat plants.
"Ultimately, we will be able to employ permaculture techniques at scale – using gardening tactics such as companion planting, but for broadacre crops," says Watson Jones. "Different crops could be planted alongside each other in the same field, and harvested at different times."
Field trials: by farmers, for farmers
Small Robot Company will be working with its Farmer Advisory Group, consisting of 20 farmers across the UK, to develop its service for future farming on farm. Small Robot Company will work in conjunction with its trial farmers to develop the technology from early proof of concept prototype to a more robust working model.
Its prototype Tom monitoring robot is already developed and currently in field trials on 20 farms across the UK, including the National Trust Wimpole Estate. This prototype embodies all the core technology needed for Small Robot Company's farmbot family. This includes autonomy, geolocation, obstacle avoidance, navigation and the ability to accurately position objects on a map within 2 centimetres.
The company is now be working to establish its 'Hundred Club' panel of an additional 100 farmers, both for regular consultation and to come on board to trial its robotics service when it is ready for large scale commercial trials in 2021.
"Robotic technology is coming; but we believe it must be by farmers, for farmers," concludes Mr Watson Jones. "As a farmer, it was important to me that if we are to develop an entirely new farming system, it must be done in conjunction with farmers, and not an imposition."


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Azure Government Cloud Service Could Work for Many Enterprises
By: Wayne Rash | March 05, 2018
NEWS ANALYSIS: Microsoft's announcement of Azure Stack and Azure Government integration is an important step in enterprises where compliance and security are critical.
Microsoft's March 5 announcement about the integration of Azure Stack and Azure Government is important to enterprises of all kinds—not just government agencies—because it creates a hybrid cloud service that doesn't need access to the outside world.
The combined services allow government cloud users to take advantage of cloud technology while also meeting requirements for handling highly sensitive information. It also allows the use of cloud technologies in areas where access to the outside world is unrealistic or impossible.
"Quite literally we've designed Azure Stack with the scenario of a submarine in mind," Tom Keane, Microsoft's head of global infrastructure for Azure told Reuters. Other likely uses besides submarines may include embassies, deployed military activities or even government contractors involved in sensitive operations. The idea is that government developers can make use of cloud technology far away from a normal cloud environment.
This is a capability that government users have needed for a very long time. So long, in fact, that I was looking for something like it when I was developing systems in the military, back in the days when even basic computers filed large air conditioned rooms.
But what I've learned in subsequent decades is that such capabilities can be critical for a wide range of organizations, not just the government and not just for people who are at sea or deployed overseas.
In fact, there are huge number of industries in which information is highly sensitive and where an off-site cloud service is problematic. One such industry is pharmaceuticals, in which the levels of secrecy rival those of the best intelligence agencies. But there are other industries where having your data flow through the public internet to a cloud run by somebody else could be a problem, ranging from financial services to aerospace.
Microsoft's move into this part of the hybrid cloud arena is an important move for those industries, as well as for organizations that don't feel that the cloud is an appropriate solution for their infrastructure needs.
The reasons for steering clear of the cloud are many. In some cases, an organization doesn't want to depend on the public internet, or for that matter any network run by someone else. In others the concern is about performance and the latency that a cloud service can bring.
Of course there's always the concern about security and data loss. While cloud providers have a reasonably good (but far from perfect) track record in their security arrangements, there are some types of data that simply shouldn't be lost or exposed. In some cases such loss may be accompanied by significant penalties or even jail time, which can be career limiting.
Of course, you don't need to have the Azure Stack isolated from the outside world. You can have it running on your on-premises server, while also having access to Azure as a cloud service.
Examples of why you might want to do this would be in manufacturing, where the amount of traffic going to the local cloud is significant, and where latency could interfere with operations. But you could still retain access to an off-premises version of Azure to save money and add flexibility where latency isn't an issue or where the risk involved with potential data loss is lower.
What's important about the government offering is that Microsoft is now able to offer a hybrid cloud solution that's robust enough to meet some fairly stringent federal requirements. That means that those same solutions are available for your business if that's what you need.
It's worth noting that Microsoft's Azure isn't the only way to integrate the public cloud with an on-premises cloud solution. Amazon Web Services also supports hybrid clouds for the enterprise, and like Microsoft has a robust government business. In fact, the CIA uses AWS for its cloud requirements, although that particular agency isn't very forthcoming about what it uses it for.
Like Azure, the AWS government cloud (or GovCloud as it's affectionately called) can be used in an isolated instance for situations in which a connection to the outside world is unavailable. Both of these services provide realistic ways in which government IT managers can use cloud technologies. Given the difficulty of finding capital resources in the government, it's a realistic means of providing access to modern technology.
That's the other benefit of such hybrid cloud technology to the government. Besides providing systems to support government IT needs, it also provides a vital means of allowing government agencies to perform their missions during times of fiscal neglect. Unfortunately, the government doesn't have the ability to scale back its service mandates and requirements to match the available funding, which means that managers need to find new ways of performing their missions without breaking the budget.
In its announcement about Azure Stack and Azure Government being integrated, Microsoft points out that Azure is one way that government IT modernization can be accomplished. The fact that it can be done with minimal capital expenditure is extremely important in supporting modernization.
But the fact is that those same advantages can also apply to the IT operations of any organization. Capital expenditures are always difficult for companies and Microsoft and Azure provide a way to minimize those. You don't have to be in government IT to appreciate that flexibility.
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Wayne Rash
Wayne Rash is a freelance writer and editor with a 35 year history covering technology. He's a frequent speaker on business, technology issues and enterprise computing. He covers Washington and...


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Chasing Cally (LoveXtreme)
[Night Runner Werewolves]
by Beverly Rae
[Siren LoveXtreme Special Edition: Erotic Paranormal Ménage Romance, M/F/M/M/M/M/M, werewolves, public exhibition, HEA for M/F] Doing the Coyote Ugly routine at Sadie's Wild Riders Saloon isn't helping Cally Sheridan's dream of writing songs for a living, but she isn't giving up, not like she's given up on her biggest dream, the one she hides deep in her heart. Finding the right man to love and a home filled with a family is an impossible goal, so why...
Midlife Ménage
[Ménage Amour: Erotic Cowboy Ménage a Trois Romance, M/F/M, older heroine, public exhibition, figging, HEA] Wendy McCay is a forty-four-year-old mother of four grown children. She hides behind her widow status every time her wealthy neighbor, Wade Laweson, shows interest in her. He's a constant temptation, but she feels her time for love is over. When she has to take on a boarder after a drought destroys her wheat crop, her control is tested having Jackson...
Their Border Lands Gift (MFM)
[Men of the Border Lands]
[Siren Ménage Everlasting: Erotic Futuristic Sci-Fi Cowboy Ménage a Trois Romance, M/F/M, HEA] After the year of catastrophes, women are treated like slaves and bought and sold like cattle. When Kate's brother, Mike, can't keep her safe anymore, he decides to move to the Border Lands to find her a couple of men to take care of her. Kate doesn't want a husband, much less two. When she is nearly stolen again by black market traders and her brother is...
The Dom for His Alpha (MMM)
[Ménage Amour ManLove: Erotic Alternative Paranormal Consensual BDSM Ménage a Trois Romance, M/M/M, werewolves, vampires, demons, spanking, sex toys, HEA] Dark faces the fact he will never enjoy the feel of a whip or a flogger on his ass again. The new alpha of the light pack cannot be seen as weak. Until the following morning when Dark answers his door to the sexiest vampire doctor he has ever seen, his mate. After a day of unbridled passion between the sheets...
Hawaiian Triple Heat (MFM)
[Dr. Love Shark]
by Bobbi Brattz
[Ménage and More: Erotic Ménage a Trois Romance, M/F/M, light Consensual BDSM, sex toys, HEA for MF] Stranded in Hawaii, travel agent Rae Hooper falls into the arms of Mateo Mann, AKA Dr. Love Shark, and his best friend, Dr. Piers Kaaumoana. Mateo is an infamous sex therapist who teaches people how to make the most out of the five senses, but he refuses to give his heart. Piers is Rae's modeling partner who touches more than her emotions when they perform in...
Two Pirates to Treasure (MFM)
[Ménage Amour: Erotic Fantasy Ménage a Trois Romance, M/F/M, time travel, witches, HEA] Even with months of training, the ability to cast the simplest of spells has eluded Osolya Horvát. When her teacher arms her with a sex manual and a box of toys, the powers of witchcraft are suddenly within her reach. No incantation is too difficult, no charm too tricky. Grant Templeton and Ethan Whitmere have chosen the life of pirates, but when Osolya appears on their ship...
Her Shadow Men (MFM)
[Siren Ménage Everlasting: Erotic Cowboy Ménage a Trois Romance, M/F/M, HEA] Debbie Newsome has sworn to never get involved with another man again—until she meets Britt and Daniel Delaney. The two men draw her like a bee to honey. She tries to keep them at arm's length, but she eventually ends up in their bed. Debbie isn't ready to face her feelings and runs. Britt and Daniel are out to convince Debbie she is the one and only woman they want in their...
Their Broken Lady (MFM)
[Siren Ménage Everlasting: Erotic Ménage a Trois Romance, M/F/M, HEA] Tanner and Bryan believe in love at first sight, and Amber is it for them. She doesn't plan on falling in love again. Her past experience with men says she is a lousy judge of character. Amber tends to go for the strong, controlling types who end up being dangerous. They can't understand why she's so adamant about not becoming involved with them. When someone tries to attack her for...
Destined to Be Three (MMF)
[Sweet Serenity]
by Mia Ashlinn
[Ménage Amour: Erotic Ménage a Trois Romance, M/M/F with M/M, public exhibition, light bondage, spanking, HEA] Seeking change, Jaycee Dalton takes a huge gamble with a life-altering game of Truth or Dare. Jaycee's innocuous dare lands her on the doorstep of a mysterious fortune teller who throws her a curveball that shakes her to the core. The two loves of her life are coming for her. She wanted change, and she is about to get it. Grayson Blakemore and Cade...
Come and Get Me (MFM)
[Whispering Mountain]
by Kortny Alexander
[Ménage Amour: Erotic Cowboy Ménage a Trois Romance, M/F/M, HEA] May knew life would get complicated when a patient's violent past, a romance she is reluctant to acknowledge, and a life-changing surprise collided with one another. Her reluctance to answer Remy and Kane's phone calls makes it impossible for the twins to convince her they could make her happy. She is the object of their affections, and neither man is going to give up on her. When May is forced...
Bride of the Pryde (MFMM)
by Dee S. Knight
[Ménage Amour: Erotic Futuristic Sci-Fi Ménage a Quatre Romance, M/F/M/M, HEA] DAT agent Susan McAllister escapes Earth with killers in hot pursuit. She normally runs toward danger, not away, and she likes controlling her own fate, not relying on three strange men and an irreverent cyberbot. Skilled and experienced, she doesn't believe there's any way the three crewmen of the cargo ship Erik's Pryde can help her. Captain John Erik thinks the sexy, headstrong...
Emma's Heart (MFMM)
[Ménage Amour: Erotic Ménage a Quatre Romance, M/F/M/M, light bondage, sex toys, HEA] With approval from her cardiologist, Dr. Joseph Reese, Emma Shane is finally well enough for sex after her heart transplant. On a walk in the park, she meets Logan Walker. There's something about him that is so familiar, but she just can't place where she's met him before. Logan has lived alone since his lover fell down the fire escape and died from head injuries. There's...
Surrounded by Wolves (LoveXtreme)
[Wolves of Climax]
[Siren LoveXtreme Forever: Erotic Paranormal Ménage Romance, M/F/M/M/M/M, werewolves, spanking, HEA] Cassidy moves out of the only city she's ever known and heads to the distant town of Climax, British Columbia. Her grandfather left her an estate, and she lined up a job in the small mining town. She arrives and discovers that her inheritance is nothing more than a run-down shack, and the men she's supposed to work with are drop-dead gorgeous. It's impossible...
Bella's Bad Bikers (MFMM)
[Siren Ménage Everlasting: Erotic Ménage a Quatre Romance, M/F/M/M, bondage, sex toys, HEA] Bella Andrews, a Miami socialite running for her life, hitches a ride with a bad-boy biker named Hawk. She agrees to hide out with him, his brother, and his best friend in Pleasure, Montana. Hawk is a protective but haunted soul who is immediately attracted to Bella. Because he fears she'll leave once she's convinced she's safe, he keeps his distance. His brother...
A Zane Po' Boy (MMM)
[Ménage Amour ManLove: Erotic Alternative Paranormal Ménage a Trois Romance, M/M/M, vampires, public exhibition, HEA] In a world where humans and paranormals coexist in secret and where soulless demons roam, numerous vampires dream to be united with their mates. Brian and Banning O'Hagan are twins from Ireland who have been waiting for their mate the longest out of all their brothers. When they finally meet Zane, they learn that if they want their mate to love...
1 Bed, 2 Weddings, 3 Husbands (MFMM)
[Bride Train]
by Reece Butler
[Siren Ménage Everlasting: Erotic Western Ménage a Quatre Romance, M/F/M/M, HEA] Desperate to escape her scandalous past, Victoria Edison heads west to a respectable future. When a storm traps her for three nights on the J Bar C Ranch, she's faced with a choice of marriage or shame. Jed Adams says he detests the shrew but she can cook and, since his partners want her, agrees to wed the voluptuous woman in a civil ceremony. But their new life is destroyed...
Love Under Two Kendalls (MFM)
[The Lusty, Texas Collection]
by Cara Covington, Morgan Ashbury
[Siren Ménage Everlasting: Erotic Cowboy Ménage a Trois Romance, M/F/M, sex toys, HEA] After months of gentle wooing, Adam and Jake Kendall know their sweet Ginny Rose is on the verge of saying yes to a romance with them. But then her former abuser escapes from jail, and suddenly, all bets are off. Ginny can't reason through the terror that grips her when she learns Deke Walters is free. He threatened to kill her and her son Benny—and Ginny will do anything...
Love Between the Hired Hands (MFM)
[Siren Ménage Everlasting: Erotic Futuristic Sci-Fi Ménage a Trois Romance, M/F/M, spanking, HEA] After arriving on the planet Alpha, Elissa, Gray, and Clint must learn to live with each other despite their obvious differences. Elissa has had very little experience with the opposite sex, and now she has two men to please. Can she learn to accept their wild sensual expectations? In the meantime, Elissa helps Lacy, one of the other women on the planet, while...
Salt Water Taffy (FFMM)
[Seaside Surrender]
by May Water
[Ménage and More: Erotic Historical Ménage a Quatre Romance, F/F/M/M with M/M and F/F, spanking, sex toys, HEA for F/F] Something sinfully savory is brewing inside prim and proper Molly. Oh, look at that slight grin on her face and glint in her eye. Delectable Molly craves sensual sweets. Her best friend Michael aims to help her satisfy her sweet tooth. She opens a candy box of sexual treats and bites into girl on girl and her new favorite flavor, deliciously...
Legacy (MMF)
by Pat Cunningham
[Ménage Amour: Erotic Paranormal Ménage a Trois Romance, M/M/F with M/M elements, vampires, HEA] Colleen Brenner doesn't believe in vampires, until she's attacked by one. Two men come to her aid—Wallace Hamilton, a slayer, and his lover, Jeremy Teach. The pair take her into their home and under their protection. It turns out vampires have targeted not only Colleen, but all the children from the commune she grew up in. What are the monsters after? As the...
For Tia's Pleasure (MFMM)
[Men of Kinsey]
by Debbie Bailey
[Ménage Amour: Erotic Ménage a Quatre Romance, M/F/M/M, light Consensual BDSM, sex toys, HEA] The Kinsey triplets own and operate a very successful BDSM club in town. Having their pick of submissives on a nightly basis is starting to wear thin. They'd always dreamed of finding that one woman to share their lives with, the one woman strong enough to handle their dominance in the bedroom and submit to them, body, heart, and soul. Tia is that woman—strong, independent...
Dragons' Bond (MMFM)
[Dragon Lovers]
[Ménage Amour: Erotic Paranormal Ménage a Quatre Romance, M/M/F/M, shape-shifters, HEA] Mallory is fascinated by three life-size stone dragon statues. Then one night they come to life and she learns they're shape-shifters. One of the museum's directors, Teivel, plans to use the shape-shifting dragons as art thieves by placing them in exhibitions in other museums, and Mallory, Angus, William, and Mark now have to find out which statues are shape-shifters and...
Moonstruck (MFMM)
[Blue Moon]
by Fiona Blackthorne
[Siren Ménage Everlasting: Erotic Paranormal Ménage a Quatre Romance, M/F/M/M, werewolves, bondage, HEA] Ava Bell takes a cottage in the secluded town of Blue Moon, Maine, hoping for peace and quiet so she can finish her dissertation. What she gets are three brothers—Robert, Declan, and Sean Molineaux—who tempt her body, heart, and soul, but who also keep a dangerous secret. When an old darkness born of an old hatred threatens Ava, she must turn to the brothers...
Mate for Three (MFMM)
[Siren Ménage Everlasting: Erotic Paranormal Ménage a Quatre Romance, M/F/M/M, werewolves, HEA] Talia Black is on the run from her ex-husband and ends up stranded on a country road in the middle of nowhere with a flat tire and no spare. Dr. Blayk Friess arrives on the scene and offers her a place to stay. Blayk Friess and his brothers Chris and James know Talia is their mate. They set about wooing her into their hearts and beds, as well as trying to protect...


The application MyWarehouse is designed for all companies that need commercial tracking of the quantitative statement of the warehouse. The application MyWarehouse provides records of purchases - receipt of materials in warehouses, delivering materials from warehouses, tracking used materials by journal entries and by expenditure places, inventory and automated transfer in the new year. The application MyWarehouse enables generation of different reports concerning the condition of the warehouse, received and delivered materials. The application MyWarehouse is a flexible and stable solution, simple to train and use. The application MyWarehouse can be integrated with other accounting applications - financial, inventory, in order to make an Integrated Information System. The application MyWarehouse is available in package with installation and training for users. What is myWarehouse? myWarehouse Inventory Software is an inventory system for small businesses. It's fast, easy, and flexible to help you manage your business. How can using myWarehouse help my business? By using myWarehouse, you can: free up more cash; save time on daily tasks; impress your customers; track profits and best-sellers; keep fully detailed records. myWarehouse makes it easy to: process orders; track customers; manage inventory; view reports; share information with colleagues. Who's using myWarehouse? Almost any sort of small business or non-profit organization you can imagine is using our inventory management software. How much does myWarehouse cost? Version 1.6.1.10 adds new Import function.


It's important that residents of rural and northern communities have timely and appropriate access to high quality health care. The development of the rural and northern health care plan is necessary to identify and recognize the unique challenges of these areas and help improve their specific local health care needs.
What is it? What's the plan for rural and northern health care?
The Northern and Rural Health Care Panel has released their report and recommendations.
Public consultations took place across Ontario. Find out where.
Find health care locations by postal code or by type of service.
If you are a member of the media, call Communications and Information Branch at 416-314-6197 or visit our News Room section.


NOTE: For conductors, the energized phase information within the FeederInfo field is determined using the field with the PHASEDESIGNATION field model name assigned. Therefore the energized phase matches the phase designation. For devices however, the energized phase does not match the phase designation.


Betway Group Ltd is a company that works across various sections of the online gambling industry, including bingo, casino, poker, and sports betting.
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Two open PhD positions in the THEE lab in Bern
Two funded, 4-year PhD positions are available in the Division of Theoretical Ecology and Evolution at the University of Bern, Switzerland.
Two PhD positions in Theoretical Ecology and Evolution
Two funded, 4-year PhD positions are available in the Division of Theoretical Ecology and Evolution (https://banklab.github.io/) led by Professor Claudia Bank at the University of Bern, Switzerland. The positions are part of the ERC project "FIT2GO – a toolbox for fitness landscapes in evolution", in which we study adaptation and speciation from a fitness-landscape point of view.
The specific PhD projects will be developed individually and should broadly address some of the following questions (see also this review paper from the lab: Fragata et al., 2019, TrEE, https://www.dropbox.com/s/wiy9doprw3nhoe2/tree_ms.pdf?dl=0):
1. How do fitness landscapes vary across environments, and how does that affect adaptation?
2. What is the role of epistasis (i.e., the interaction of mutations for fitness) during speciation?
3. How much information on epistasis and past environmental change is maintained in genomes, and how can we extract this information?
4. Which signature do different evolutionary processes leave in genomic data?
5. How do ecology and evolution interact to shape populations and communities?
Depending on the overarching fundamental question, the projects might relate to applied problems, such as the predictability or repeatability of (drug resistance) evolution, or the probability of populations to adapt or persist in the face of the climate crisis.
Both projects will be theoretical in nature and can involve mathematical modeling, computer simulations, and/or statistical method development and data analysis. If it strengthens the project and if the student is interested, a (minor) experimental or field-work component can be included via our empirical collaborators.
Candidates must be highly motivated, creative, and able to work independently and collaboratively. Applications from diverse scientific backgrounds (e.g., from physics, mathematics, statistics, computer science, biology) are encouraged. In their motivation letter, applicants from outside biology should state why they are interested in the study of ecology and evolution, and applicants from biology should state why they are interested in joining a theoretical research group. Candidates must have excellent written and spoken communication skills in English, which is the working language of our institute. A Master degree is required. This position is open to applicants worldwide. We are committed to increasing diversity, equity and inclusiveness in ecology and evolution and especially encourage applications from underrepresented groups.
The Division of Theoretical Ecology and Evolution is a dynamic, international, and interdisciplinary group. Current and former group members include trained biologists, physicists, mathematicians, bioinformaticians, anthropologists, and biochemists. As sup-porters of the Better Science Initiative (https://betterscience.ch/en/), our lab philosophy includes open and compassionate communication, regular individual meetings and evaluation of mentoring and career development needs, and prioritization of the well-being of all lab members. Our group is part of the Institute of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Bern (https://www.iee.unibe.ch/); we are also members of the Bern Data Sci-ence Initiative (https://www.bedsi.unibe.ch/) and the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (https://www.sib.swiss/). Through these structures, the PhD students will have ample opportunities for interactions and collaborations across research fields with a vibrant international community of graduate students, post-doctoral researchers, and professors. The University of Bern is situated near the heart of the beautiful old city, and the quality of life in Bern is very high, with the Swiss alps in close vicinity.
The starting date of the PhD positions is negotiable (ideally in fall 2022). The starting salary is 47,040 CHF and includes social security contributions.
Contact and Application
Please submit your application via email by 1 April 2022 to Prof. Claudia Bank: claudia.bank@iee.unibe.ch. Applicants must submit one merged PDF file that includes a letter of motivation mentioning the desired starting date (<500 words), a CV, names of two referees who should have sent their recommendation letter separately by email before the deadline, and copies of relevant publications and/or the Master thesis.