ÌÇÐÄTV

An online vedio conference with Basel University

Nelle Andrew studied at ÌÇÐÄTV University and then Trinity College, Dublin before working at Pan Macmillan. She then moved to agenting and has been at since 2009. Before becoming a literary agent, she was a published author of fiction. Her clients are a varied list from Sunday Times Bestsellers in non fiction, to literary to dystopia, historical and crime. Her speciality is début authors due to her personal background in this area.

‘The Pilgrim on the Mountain: On Medieval Alpinism’

Global Shakespeare Director's Seminar: all welcome!

Professor Alfredo Michel Modenessi,'Romeo and Juliet in Mexico City: Filming Shakespeare across urban divides'

Thursday 2 February, 17:00 - 19:00, H5.22, Humanities Building

Since the mid-2000s, one in every four gang-style executions in Mexico has involved a person under 29 years of age. In 2010, more than half of all violent crimes in Mexico were committed by youngsters, mostly between 18 and 24. In 2013, Mexico’s National Bureau of Statistics and Geography reported that nearly 35 thousand males between 15 and 29 had died violently – over 53% of the national sum total. In 2015, UNICEF published that 21 million Mexicans under 18 were living under violent circumstances, while the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights detected that Mexican youths aged 15 to 19 were in high risk of meeting a violent death.

Against this background, roughly a decade of each other, two Mexican filmmakers adapted Shakespeare’s most popular and trivialised but always useful play of young love, urban conflict and violent death, in highly contrasting ways. Amar te duele (‘Love Hurts’, Fernando Sariñana, 2002) opted for a high-tech but ultimately melodramatic treatment of the ‘star-crossed lovers’, while Besos de azúcar ('Sugar Kisses', Carlos Cuarón, 2013) took an unrefined, grimly comedic path. Both framed their conflicts within specific and specially significant areas and social environments of Mexico City, however. Thus, both also somehow followed in the tracks laid out a bit earlier, perhaps unwittingly – indeed naively – by William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (Baz Luhrmann, 1996), likewise shot in the ‘City of Palaces’. With passing reference to their common antecedent, I will discuss the two Mexican films, wondering if, as both seem to claim, love indeed dwells and even redeems among the actual and metaphoric ruins of my hometown.

Alfredo Michel Modenessi is Professor of Comparative Studies in English Literature, Drama and Translation at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) as well as a stage translator, translation studies scholar, and dramaturg.