By Sasha Zinchenco Did you know that the Carnival in Brazil had a much more violent sister festival? This other event, called Entrudo, was finally prohibited in 1830 in order to give way to the more “civilized” Carnival. Initially it involved brutal and violent pranks and throwing of disgusting liquidsContinue Reading

By Ayse Mısırlıoğlu A couple of years back, I started noticing a curious pattern in several of the New York-based TV series or movies that I was watching. Whenever certain characters had a cup of coffee in their hands, it was always the same cup of coffee. I could seeContinue Reading

By Zhayra Escalona In a city far from nature, autumn days go by as if autumn were not present. If it weren’t for the decreasing temperatures and the dampness of the day, one would see no difference between the warmer seasons and the colder ones. Life is limited to theContinue Reading

By Lea Schiller North Korea’s shrinking island in Japan For these young kids, being accompanied by guards on their way to school is normal. Their uniforms are safely tucked away in their backpacks to be worn later, when they are in the safety of the school building, away from pryingContinue Reading

By Zuzanna Mietlinska Female doctor, female lawyer, female boss. These juxtapositions seem obvious to us in Western culture, but can be completely inapparent when we think about women in the Middle East. Why is it so? Well, we humans love to generalize. After enormous migration flows as well as theContinue Reading

By Eva Bajema Fabulous outfits, the 80s, drama, a story of friendship and emancipation. That’s Ryan Murphy’s Pose in a nutshell. Netflix describes the series as follows: in 1987, a diagnosis spurs ball fixture Blanca to start her own house in the Bronx, where she soon takes in homeless dancerContinue Reading

By Zuzanna Mietlinska The story in “Burning” is as simple as complicated. Persistently trivialised yet never-to-be-forgotten. It is a genre mishmash of over two and a half hours, combining the elements of a thriller, a sappy melodrama with psychological motives. It is another creation of widely awarded director Chang-dong Lee,Continue Reading

By Emil Mirchev The Balkans. A place full of contrasts. Relatively well-known by Europeans, forgotten by the rest of the world. Often mystified, the peninsula is associated throughout the centuries in different ways – most recent of all is the vision of corruption and poverty, some decades ago the processContinue Reading