· December, 2008

Stories about Video from December, 2008

Burning the Year Away: New Year Traditions

In many South American countries, it has become a tradition to burn human shaped representations of the previous year, as a way to get rid of everything bad that the year brought, and leave way for the new. The following videos show some of these traditions and some of the controversy soome of them have sparked.

30 December 2008

Syria: Bloggers Infuriated by Israeli Massacre in Palestine

"Many Syrian bloggers feel depressed and paralyzed over what's happening in Gaza now" writes Razan Ghazzawi as she brings us more reactions from the Arabic-language Syrian blogosphere in our continuing coverage about the current Israeli airstrike campaign in the Gaza Strip.

29 December 2008

Tanzania: Friends of Ruaha blog

Samuel Maina of Theatre of Inconveniences introduces the recently launched Friends of Ruaha blog devoted to the conservation of the Ruaha Park in Tanzania which is “arguably, one of the...

28 December 2008

Macedonia Timeless

On December 24, 2008, there was a presentation of a promotional video for Macedonia – “Macedonia Timeless.” The video is written and directed by Milcho Manchevski (an Academy Award nominee in 1995), and its purpose is to promote Macedonia as a tourist destination. The video will be aired on CNN, and a dozen countries in eight different languages. Elena Ignatova reviews bloggers' reactions to the video.

25 December 2008

Gaza/Sderot: Israel and Palestine together on video

The Gaza/Sderot: Life in Spite of Everything Project is one of the prime examples of the variety of ways a bridge between different cultures and world-views can be created through online media. In this project created by ARTE.tv, a French-German cultural television station, twelve people going on their day to day business on either side of a violent border were exposed on a website for ten week project which ended on December 23rd. The two minute videos documented snippets of the lives of 6 characters in Gaza, Palestine and 6 characters on the other side of the border in Sderot, Israel during two months.

24 December 2008

Video: Costa Rican Artist takes on the Fine Art Classics

Francisco Munguía, a Costa Rican cartoonist and artist has interpreted the Fine Arts classics and is currently doing a show in the Costa Rican Children's Museum. However, you don´t need to travel to Costa Rica to see his work: it is uploaded on YouTube in a gallery style presentation.

20 December 2008

Southeast Asia: The shoe, the shoe

Iraqi journalist Muntadar al-Zaidi will be known for a long time as the shoe thrower. He who succeeded in throwing a pair of shoes at U.S. President George Bush last Sunday. The shoe throwing incident has been hailed as heroic by many people around the world, especially those who opposed the foreign policies of the outgoing leader. What are the reactions of Southeast Asian bloggers and residents?

18 December 2008

Costa Rica: Call for Collaborative Christmas Video

Costa Rican online humour collective nosedecirlaerre.com which translates into "I can´t pronounce the R" has set out a call for participation from Costa Ricans and those familiar with their culture to create a collaborative video for Christmas. The campaign is called Uniting Ticos for Christmas and the requirements are quite simple: dancing in the Costa Rican style of "swing criollo" the popular end of the year song Jugo de Piña and saying something in Costa Rican slang, on video.

17 December 2008

Cuba: We Shall Overcome

Cuban bloggers all link to video of what they say is Generation Y‘s “call to action to all bloggers, a plea for solidarity with the ‘embryonic’ Cuban blogosphere.”

15 December 2008

Azerbaijan: Destruction of Ancient Cemetery Commemorated

Three years after a cemetery dating back to the 9th Century was deliberately destroyed in the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhichevan, bloggers recall an ancient culture annihilated and condemn the world for closing its eyes to what many consider to be an official attempt to rewrite history.

15 December 2008

About our Video coverage

Juliana Rincón Parra
Juliana Rincón Parra is the Citizen Video editor. Email her story ideas or volunteer to write.