Here, Cristina Fernandes interprets and comments on one of the thoughts that Paul Valéry turned into an aphorism. In her writing (which we can read in the ‘Bicho Ruim’ blog that she has with Rui Manuel Amaral and soon in a book entitled C de C) she also cultivates short prose.

In November 1966, Merce Cunningham’s dance company — and alongside the choreographer, his partner, the composer John Cage — came to Portugal for the first time. In those years, the country was ruled by an old dictatorship that left it culturally isolated and anachronistic, but there were people eager for openness and with the desire to disturb this stagnation. In this essay, the dancer, choreographer and editor João dos Santos Martins relates what happened in those surprising nights and how these novel shows were received. Art critics were divided between two opposite kinds of astonishment: one fuelled by incomprehension, the other by admiration. Artists such as Mário Cesariny and Ana Hatherly followed Cunningham and Cage, turning their presence into a manifesto. Among the Lisbon audience was the young Maria Filomena Molder, before she became a philosopher, who watched Cunningham’s choreography with the enthusiasm of someone witnessing a revelation. Alongside its historiographical value, this thorough research documents the awe produced by the unknown and shows how the artistic ruptures and revolutionary creations sent shock waves across the country. These inspired those who welcomed them with eager curiosity and exasperated those who were closed off in a self-sufficient attitude.

In this essay-feature, the musician, programmer and publisher Pedro Gomes talks to four artists associated with Creole Rap, who tell us stories from the neighbourhoods of the Greater Lisbon area and the South Bank. It also shows us the photos that the photographer Diogo Simões took for Electra. The encounter of words and pictures is accompanied by the rhythms of a music that has recently taken hold.

‘By registering their experiences living in marginalised territories and challenging the subordinate position occupied by the Afro-Portuguese in Portuguese society, these rappers forged a collective identity that served as a shelter in an environment marked by hostile conditions,’ we are told by anthropologist Otávio Raposo in this brief history of Creole rap in Portugal. He refers to its artistic, cultural, political and social facets and the fact that this marginal, underground music has gained ground and popularity. ‘Neglected by record labels, radio and other hegemonic media, today Creole rap is one of the most vibrant music genres among Portuguese youth, mobilising artists and a legion of fans who use the new technologies of production and dissemination to acquire visibility’.

Ivan Nunes, who earned a PhD with his thesis ‘Nanni Moretti as a film-maker and character’, writes about Three Floors, the Italian director’s latest film. It is an article in which the writer not only shows his profound knowledge of the work, but also expresses his own point of view: ‘It might be the first film of old Moretti — and it may well be that, of all his avatars, old Moretti might just be my favourite’.

Natalia Ginzburg was not just an important Italian writer, but also an intellectual who came through times of war and tragedy with a political and cultural commitment and sense of responsibility common to other writers of her generation. The collection of essays in The Little Virtues (a 1962 book that has recently been translated into Portuguese and published by Relógio D'Água) on which Golgona Anghel writes, paints us a picture of the literary, political and family world in which Natalia Ginzburg played such an important role.

In the stock market of feelings, the price of empathy has risen significantly while sympathy is practically junk now – nobody invests in it anymore.

The topic addressed in the ‘Subject’ section of this issue of Electra finds at its centre a concept that in the last three decades has gained significant traction in the social, cultural and political realms ‒ as an engine and instrument of movements for equality ‒ and in the theories produced primarily by the various fields of cultural studies.

In this essay-feature, the musician, programmer and publisher Pedro Gomes talks to four artists associated with creole rap, who tell us stories from the neighbourhoods of the Greater Lisbon area and the South Bank. It also shows us the photos that the photographer Diogo Simões took for Electra. The encounter of words and pictures is accompanied by the rhythms of a music that has recently taken hold. This section also has the collaboration of Otávio Raposo with a brief history of Creole rap. ‘By registering their experiences living in marginalised territories and challenging the subordinate position occupied by the Afro-Portuguese in Portuguese society, these rappers forged a collective identity that served as a shelter in an environment marked by hostile conditions,’ we are told by the anthropologist.

– Goooooooal!

This cry, which echoes inside itself and extends until it seems inextinguishable, has been endlessly shouted around the world since it was heard on 22nd January, 1927, during the first football commentary broadcast by the BBC, allowing this match to enter English homes.