The las one hundred meters

It is about the last years of the Communist period and the memories of a person that was born in the early eighties in the Eastern Europe, namely in Romania. How do one survive the Communist era without remember anything? It is impossible if we only think at the stories told by our parents, the fragments of the past that we do remember and all that coagulated in our mind and gathered with the memories of stories read and analyzed by people that lived through all the period and even before and after it. The main issue here is to open a new chapter about what the eighties sons and daughters remember of the Communist period and how is the Communist period seen by the eyes "of an angel", the eyes of children that were born only to see the last glimpse of a totalitarian regime, one who was very rough for most of the people but very soft for others in comparison with other totalitarian regimes. We will humbly look on the perspectives of such a remembrance without touching the untouchable, the memories of the others.

One the nicest teachers that I can remember from college who became one of my greatest friends, or maybe my greatest friend due to our common path that has been lasting for so long, Ioan Stanomir , my Constitutional Law teacher, has pointed out, in a collective book about the memories of the Communist past called " A world which disappeared", some very important aspects of that era, beginning with the memories of the boy that he was then and the memories who faded for me about the school and the rules , back then, the hidden information and the way that the conversations back at home had nothing to do with the common discourse in the "real Romanian world". His memories are better penciled because of the fact that he spent a decade more than I in the Communism. But what we have in common are things that most of the children born in the Communist era have in common: memories about family, about how simple was a child's life in comparison with nowadays. The struggle with the words and the different discourses has been erased of my past because I did not have to deal with the real political world besides my first grade when I had at 7 am to be in front of the school singing the National Anthem. And all of our books had on the first page the photograph great leader Nicolae Ceausescu, as also every class had the portrait of him on one of its walls.

What I can remember of that period is more about the innocence of my childhood and the parallel with what children have today, the diversity of activities and freedom, not only from the financial point of view but also freedom of choice, which we did not have back then.

On Conservatism

It could be told that the Conservatism has no status as a program, ideology or political philosophy. Sometimes even its status as a political condition, stand is interrogated.
From Huntington's point of view "the ideology is a system of ideas regarding the distribution of political and social values according to a significant social group". According to Huntington, there are three large conceptions of the Conservatism which are in conflict.
The first one is the "aristocratic theory" which defines the conservatism as an Ideology of the historical movement which is unique and specific to a moment in time. It is the reaction of the feudal-aristocratic and agrarian social classes to the French Revolution, the Liberalism and the progress of the "bourgeoisie" at the end of the XVIII th century and at the beginning of the first half of the XIX th century.
Karl Mennheim describes the modern conservatism as a "function of a particular historical and sociological situation"

The liberalism is the ideology of the middle classes; the socialism and the Marxism are ideologies of the proletarian and the conservatism the ideology of aristocracy.
The Conservatism becomes in an indissoluble manner associated with the feudalism and the "Ancien Regime", the medieval period and the nobility. It is opposed to the middle classes, the work, the trade and the industrialization but also to the democracy, the liberalism and the individualism, as Huntington observes. According to Louis Hartz, the United States don't have a feudal tradition, and the efforts of the intellectuals of spreading the conservative ideas through the middle classes are doomed to fail.
The second theory is the "autonomous" one. In which the conservatism is not necessarily related to the interests of a particular group or dependent of a historical specific configuration of the social forces. "Conservatism is an autonomous system of ideas which are generally valid"

It is defined in terms of universal values as the justice, the order, the balance and moderation. The conservatism as Russell Kirk argues is simply a problem of "will and intelligence". The principles of the conservatism are not reduced to a one and only class of interests. According to this theory, the conservatives may appear from different classes and occupations. This theory is popular in the Neo-conservative class.
The third theory is based on the circumstantial definition. It defines the conservatism as an ideology which appears from the distinction of a recurrent type of historical situation in which the major challenge is addressed to the established institutions, and of which supporters use the conservative ideology for defending those institutions. "The conservatism is that system of values used to justify any social established order, anywhere and anytime it may exist, against the fundamental challenges of its nature"

Huntington also argues that the essence of the conservatism is "the passionate affirmation of the values of the existing institutions". This doesn't mean that it is opposed to all the changes. But for preserving the social fundamental values it may be necessary to put the changes on a second plan. To be a conservative you must be happy with the existent order and to be willing to fight against a serious challenge.
The difference between the three theories is closely related to the relation between the conservative ideology and the historical process. The aristocratic definition reduces the conservative ideology to a particular social class in a particular type of society. The autonomous theory, allows the appearance of the conservatism in any moment of the history. The circumstantial theory argues that the conservatives appear when social groups oppose themselves to the challenges and defend their status in relation with other social groups.
A common point between the three theories is that they agree on the content of the conservative ideology: the substance of the values and the ideas in which the conservatives believe.

One of the most important representative figures of the Conservatism is Edmund Burke. In his work we can find the structure of the conservative thinking.

Places in time: totalitarian art and architecture -Germany

The relation between the construction of the nation states and the art. This moment concerns the XIX'th century in Germany and Italy. This period explains how the use of art constitues the row material due to serve to justify the existence of the nation before the state was built (usage of the past). Art was used by new states to install themselves and to represent them and also to legitimate themselves.

During the first half of the XX 'th century, the confrontation between the regimes communist and fascist did not limit itself at the ideology and military , but also concerned the cultural field. In fact the USSR of Stalin, the Germany of Hitler and the Italy of Mussolini created a common estethic in spite of their politic oposition. Those totalitarian regimes have used the art as an instrument of their propaganda.

If art is an active agent of communication between people it is also because it is equally a means of expression of the ideology. One question that follows is in what way the art has participated to the enrolment of the people?

The architecture has offered the luxury and display, its giantism has expressed the authority, giving rise to both fear and admiration. Concerning the fine arts they challanged the supreme chief and they announced the arrival of the "new man". Arts in general gave some form to the totalitarian utopia, which had as a final purpose to change the nature of the human being: to annihilate any form of individualism.

They imagined man as a simple wheel of a huge machine, the one of the all mighty state. The objective was to convince the people of its superiority and to make it accept all the sacrifices in a spiritual union with the Head of State. The art was not the reflection of the society but the reflection of the idea that the power had made of the people

Art was concieved by the our contemporaneous, according of its ways of evolution, as an essential construction of the continuityof the state and that of a political systhem and not only as a clothing of the politic.

Art as a vector of the politic: in other words which functions the diferent regimes assign to the art? Teaching vertues, demonstrative ones, reconversion?...

How is politic represented? According to which estethic canons? Do the political regimes invent new ways of particular representation or do they just borrow the ones existing in order to convert them and use them? To which restraints and logic answer these artistic works immediately related to the politics?
Art as a political practice: the estheticism of the polics is a phenomenon which was underlined by Walter Benjamin for the nazi but which can also be applicable to other form of government.
Art was concieved to convert the people in both a symbolic way for the essential legitimation of the regime but also because of the esthetic emotion of the mass which was concieved as an efficient diving force for the membership and attachment to the values the regime proposed. The monumental art, for example, is difficult to understand if it is detached of the political liturgy which served as a case as the fascist art did.

The nazi choices: the plans of Berlin by Hilter and Speer, the principles, the works (architecture and sculpture) that are to be found in Albert Speer's Books and Memoires, as the architectural delirium of the II-rd Reich. Hitler does not like Berlin he wishes to give it the looks of his political ambitions. The showcase of the regime has to go through a sisethmatic demolition of the buildings which could stop the projects of the architect Albert Speer. Only the war has delayed the constructions of the new capital baptised "Germania" of which inauguration was due to the universal exposition in 1950;nevertheless the old town has been destroyed. The only visible constructions are those of the olympic installations of the olympic games of 1936's summer of Werner March, the airport of Tempelhof by Ernst Sagebiel, the administrative complex of the Fehrbelliner Platz, the barracks of the former Quartier Napoleon ( occupied after 1945 by the French Forces stationed in Germany) and the former minstry of the Air the Reichsluftfahrtministerium

A la follie pas dutout

Un filme avec Audrey Tautou qui joue le role d'une jeune fille amoureuse.
C'est l'histoire d'un amour impossible, d'un amour obsessif qui touche le pathologique.
Une mise en scene un peu speciale, un va et vien dans l'histoire. Le spectateur verra les deux cotes de l'histoire comme dans deux plaidoyers des parties opposees.
Tout se deroule dans le rythme du battement du coeur d'Angelique qui tombe follement et subitement amoureuse de Loic. Le reste est a voir si vous avez la patience de regarder un filme originalement francais.

Ensemble c'est tout!

Un autre film avec Audrey Tautou, sur l'amitie, l'amour et l'humanite. Qui merite a etre vu pour son histoire ainsi que pour les acteurs. Une love story a la francaise avec beaucoup de realisme et naturellement petillant par-ci, par-la. C'est aussi un filme sur la noblesse des gens, que ce soit la noblesse de l'ame ou le rang herite. C'est un filme interessant a voir pour rappeller et faire connaitre a ceux qui ne savent pas beaucoup sur les familles nobles de l'Europe de l'Est. Leurs descendents gardent encore en heritage la tradition et les manieres qui malheureusement se sont presque completement dissipees dans les societe modernes europeennes et occidentales.

Je reste!

Un film avec Sophie Marceau, Vincent Perez, Charles Berling. Marie-Dominique et Bertrand forment un couple apparement uni. Seulement en apparence car tandis que Marie-Dominique fait tout pour que la famille soit en parfaite harmonie Bertrand son mari qui travaille comme ingenieur sur des projets dans le monde entier, passe son temps entre son egoisme excentrique, les avions, hotesses de l'air et sa grande passion le velo. Marie-Dominique le suit en consacrant sa vie a soutenir son mari et a s'occuper de leur enfant. Sa rencontre avec Antoine ecrivain et qui tout comme elle est amateur de cinema et d'art, reveille ses desirs de devenir une femme independente et de s'epanouir. Elle decide alors grace a sa nouvelle relation amoureuse de quitter Bertrand, mais celui-ci ne se laisse pas vaincre et fait tout pour empecher sa femme de partir.
C'est un film plein de surprises dans lequel on peut reconnaitre des traits de caractere de personnes qu'on connait dans la vie reelle.

Fanfan

Sophie Marceau et Vincent Perez dans un film sur la conquete amoureuse et la recherche de preserver les premiers sentiments le long de la relation. Alexandre a une relation stable et est sur le point de se marier mais il rencontre Fanfan qui reveilla en lui les sentiments les plus beau du debut d'une relation. Il essaye de faire durer ces sentiments en gardant l'innocence du debut. Il croit avoir trouve la solution. Ce film peut etre la reponse a des questions que nous nous posons au moment ou l'on commence une relation. Comment faire pour que ca dure, pour que nos sentiments restent vives? C'est une question a laquelle il faut absolument repondre a deux.