Amsterdam/ Chinese New Year

China is the home of the largest film studio in the world, the Hengdian World Studios, and in 2010 it had the third largest film industry by number of feature films produced annually. In 2012 the country became the second-largest market in the world by box office receipts. In 2016, the gross box office in China was CN¥45.71 billion (US$6.58 billion). The country has the largest number of screens in the world since 2016, and is expected to become the largest theatrical market by 2019.China has also become a major hub of business for Hollywood studios.

Y Pestis

A study by an international team of researchers published in October 2010 confirmed Y. pestis was the cause of the Black Death and later epidemics on the entire European continent over a period of 400 years. The team used ancient DNA and proteins recovered from the bodies of plague victims buried in Hereford in England, in Saint-Laurent-de-la-Cabrerisse in France, and Bergen op Zoom in the Netherlands to identify the pathogen. They found two previously unknown, older strains of Y. pestis that had spread from China by two different routes, rather than the modern Y. p., orientalis and Y. p. medievalis.

Dutch introduction to the new president

Viral videos are among the most common type of viral phenomena. A viral video is any clip of animation or film that is spread rapidly through online sharing. Viral videos can receive millions of views as they are shared on social media sites, reposted to blogs, sent in emails and so on. When a video goes viral it has become very popular. Its exposure on the Internet grows exponentially as more and more people discover it and share it to others.

The people of Merida

Mérida has been populated since prehistoric times as demonstrated by a prestigious hoard of gold jewellery that was excavated from a girl's grave in 1870. Consisting of two penannular bracelets, an armlet and a chain of six spiral wire rings, it is now preserved at the British Museum. The town was founded in 25 BC, with the name of Emerita Augusta (meaning the veterans – discharged soldiers – of the army of Augustus, who founded the city; the name Mérida is an evolution of this) by order of Emperor Augustus, to protect a pass and a bridge over the Guadiana river. Emerita Augusta was one of the ends of the Vía de la Plata (Silver Way), a strategic Roman Route between the gold mines around Asturica Augusta and the most important Roman city in the Iberian Peninsula. The city became the capital of Lusitania province, and one of the most important cities in the Roman empire. Mérida preserves more important ancient Roman monuments than any other city in Spain, including a triumphal arch and a theatre.

Madder

Rubia was an economically important source of a red pigment in many regions of Asia, Europe and Africa. The genus name Rubia derives from the Latin ruber meaning "red".

The plant's roots contain an anthracene compound called alizarin that gives its red colour to a textile dye known as Rose madder. It was also used as a colourant, especially for paint, that is referred to as Madder lake. The synthesis of alizarin greatly reduced demand for the natural compound.

 

Colorflower

Colorfulness, chroma, pure color and saturation are related but distinct concepts in colorimetry and color theory, referring to the perceived intensity of a specific color. Colorfulness is the visual sensation according to which the perceived color of an area appears to be more or less chromatic. Chroma is the colorfulness relative to the brightness of a similarly illuminated area that appears to be white or highly transmitting. Therefore, chroma should not be confused with colorfulness. Saturation is the colorfulness of a color relative to its own brightness. Though the general concept is intuitive, terms such as chroma, saturation, purity, and intensity are often used without great precision, and even when well-defined depend greatly on the specific color model in use.

Fontaine de Vaucluse

Geography
Fontaine-de-Vaucluse ("spring of Vaucluse") is built around a spring in a valley at the foot of the Vaucluse Mountains, between Saumane and Lagnes, not far from L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue. It is named after the spring, the source of the River Sorgue.


Fontaine-de-Vaucluse
Hydrography
The fountain, or spring, of Vaucluse, situated at the feet of a steep cliff 230 metres high, is the biggest spring in France. It is also the fifth largest in the world with an annual flow of 630 million cubic metres.

The fountain of Vaucluse surges in March for about 5 weeks and then subsides. The increased flow of water swells the Sorgue to flood. The mechanism behind the surging remains somewhat of a mystery.

 

Sur le Pont

Sur le Pont d'AvignonOn y danse, On y danse
Sur le Pont d'Avignon
On y danse tous en rond

On the bridge of Avignon
We all dance there, we all dance there
On the bridge of Avignon
We all dance there in a ring

 

Made in France

A slide is a specially mounted individual transparency intended for projection onto a screen using a slide projector. This allows the photograph to be viewed by a large audience at once. The most common form is the 35 mm slide, with the image framed in a 2×2 inch cardboard or plastic mount. Some specialized labs produce photographic slides from digital camera images in formats such as JPEG, from computer-generated presentation graphics, and from a wide variety of physical source material such as fingerprints, microscopic sections, paper documents, astronomical images, etc.

Reversal film is sometimes used as motion picture film, mostly in the 16 mm, Super 8 and 8 mm "cine" formats, to yield a positive image on the camera original. This avoids the expense of using negative film, which requires additional film and processing to create a positive film print for projection.

Carnival Collage

Carnival is a Western Christian festive season that occurs before the liturgical season of Lent. The main events typically occur during February or early March, during the period historically known as Shrovetide (or Pre-Lent). Carnival typically involves a public celebration and/or parade combining some elements of a circus, masks, and a public street party. People wear masks and costumes during many such celebrations, allowing them to lose their everyday individuality and experience a heightened sense of social unity. Excessive consumption of alcohol, meat, and other foods proscribed during Lent is extremely common. Other common features of carnival include mock battles such as food fights; social satire and mockery of authorities; the grotesque body displaying exaggerated features, especially large noses, bellies, mouths, and phalli, or elements of animal bodies; abusive language and degrading acts; depictions of disease and gleeful death; and a general reversal of everyday rules and norms.

 

Movie-tricks

Practical effect techniques
The use of prosthetic makeup, animatronics, puppetry, or creature suits to create the appearance of living creatures.
Miniature effects, which is the use of scale models which are photographed in a way that they appear full sized.
Mechanical effects, such as aerial rigging to simulate flight, stage mounted gimbals to make the ground move, or other mechanical devices to physically manipulate the environment.
Pyrotechnics for the appearance of fire and explosions.
Weather effects such as sprinkler systems to create rain and fog machines to create smoke.
Squibs to create the illusion of gunshot wounds.

 

Camera shaking

Image stabilization (IS) is a family of techniques used to reduce blurring associated with the motion of a camera or other imaging device during exposure. Generally, it compensates for pan and tilt (angular movement, equivalent to yaw and pitch) of the imaging device, although electronic image stabilization can also be used to compensate for rotation. It is used in image-stabilized binoculars, still and video cameras, astronomical telescopes, and also smartphones, mainly the high-end. With still cameras, camera shake is particularly problematic at slow shutter speeds or with long focal length (telephoto or zoom) lenses. With video cameras, camera shake causes visible frame-to-frame jitter in the recorded video. In astronomy, the problem of lens-shake is added to by variations in the atmosphere over time, which will cause the apparent positions of objects to change.

Corpus Christi

The Feast of Corpus Christi (Latin for Body of Christ) is a Latin Rite liturgical solemnity celebrating the belief in the body and blood of Jesus Christ's Real Presence in the Eucharist. It emphasizes the joy of the institution of the Eucharist. The latter had previously been observed only on Maundy Thursday, in the somber atmosphere leading to Good Friday.

The feast is liturgically celebrated on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday or, "where the Solemnity of The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ is not a holy day of obligation, it is assigned to the Sunday after the Most Holy Trinity as its proper day"

Rubio Tinctorum

Rubia is a genus of flowering plants in the Rubiaceae family. It contains around 80 species of perennial scrambling or climbing herbs and subshrubs native to the Old World. The genus and its best-known species are commonly known as madder, e.g. Rubia tinctorum (common madder), Rubia peregrina (wild madder).

Rubia was an economically important source of a red pigment in many regions of Asia, Europe and Africa. The genus name Rubia derives from the Latin ruber meaning "red".

The plant's roots contain an anthracene compound called alizarin that gives its red colour to a textile dye known as Rose madder. It was also used as a colourant, especially for paint, that is referred to as Madder lake. The synthesis of alizarin greatly reduced demand for the natural compound.

 

Joop Geesink

Joop Geesink (The Hague, April 28, 1913 - Amsterdam, May 13, 1984) was a famous Dutch film producer. He is best known for his work with dolls. Best known is his creation of Joop Geesink Loeki the Lion which cheered over 30 years the advertising of the Dutch television.

He began his career as a set designer for the Dutch theater revues. Soon he became interested in film and animation especially with Marten Toonder (known by the stories of Tom Puss and Oliver B. Bumble), he established a filmstudio . Marten Toonder focused on cartoons and Joop Geesink loved dolls movies. The partnership lasted from March 1942 to March 1943.

Campers & more

 

 

The Motion Picture Association (MPA) is an American trade association representing the five major film studios of the United States, as well as the video streaming service Netflix. Founded in 1922 as the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) and known as the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) from 1945 until September 2019,[3] its original goal was to ensure the viability of the American film industry.

Unnavigable river

River engineering is the process of planned human intervention in the course, characteristics, or flow of a river with the intention of producing some defined benefit. People have intervened in the natural course and behaviour of rivers since before recorded history—to manage the water resources, to protect against flooding, or to make passage along or across rivers easier. From Roman times, rivers have been used as a source of hydropower. From the late 20th century, river engineering has had environmental concerns broader than immediate human benefit and some river engineering projects have been concerned exclusively with the restoration or protection of natural characteristics and habitats.

Spectacle

In general, spectacle refers to an event that is memorable for the appearance it creates. Derived in Middle English from c. 1340 as "specially prepared or arranged display" it was borrowed from Old French spectacle, itself a reflection of the Latin spectaculum "a show" from spectare "to view, watch" frequentative form of specere "to look at.

The Hollywood spectacular

When the zoetrope and nickelodeon technology first appeared, the earliest films were spectacles. They caught the attention of common people. They showed things people would rarely see, and they showed it to the wide audience.

    Thomas Edison filmed Eiffel Tower, actual American Indians in a simulated attack, and even celebrated beauty queens.
    Louis Lumière filmed a train pulling into a station in 1895. The camera was in front of the train, and the train "came" directly at the viewer. It was a sensational because it gave an object of gaze.

Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) in Tromsø.

An aurora, sometimes referred to as a polar light or northern light, is a natural light display in the sky, predominantly seen in the high latitude (Arctic and Antarctic) regions. Auroras are produced when the magnetosphere is sufficiently disturbed by the solar wind that the trajectories of charged particles in both solar wind and magnetospheric plasma, mainly in the form of electrons and protons, precipitate them into the upper atmosphere (thermosphere/exosphere), where their energy is lost. The resulting ionization and excitation of atmospheric constituents emits light of varying colour and complexity. The form of the aurora, occurring within bands around both polar regions, is also dependent on the amount of acceleration imparted to the precipitating particles. Precipitating protons generally produce optical emissions as incident hydrogen atoms after gaining electrons from the atmosphere. Proton auroras are usually observed at lower latitudes.

King of Cowboys

Thomas Edwin Mix (born Thomas Hezikiah Mix; January 6, 1880 – October 12, 1940) was an American film actor and the star of many early Western movies between 1909 and 1935. Mix appeared in 291 films, all but nine of which were silent movies. He was Hollywood's first Western megastar and is noted as having helped define the genre for all cowboy actors who followed.

Ice-sailing

An ice boat (often spelled as "iceboat") is a boat or purpose-built framework similar in functional design to a sail boat but fitted with skis or runners (skates) and designed to run over ice instead of through (liquid) water. Ice yachting is the sport of sailing and racing iceboats. Sail-able ice is known in the sport as "hard water" versus sailing on liquid or "soft" water. A related sport, land sailing, utilizes a configuration with an iceboat-like fuselage or frame equipped with wheels instead of runners. Iceboats commonly used for racing are usually only for one person, but several classes of two-seat and multiple-seat iceboats are more or less common. On some boats, a "side car" can be fitted to take others along for a ride.