One Comment: Clarice Falcão (1989-10-23 – ) is a Brazilian singer-songwriter, and actress from Recife.
One Film: In 2007, Clarice won a contest with this short called Laços (Ties), directed by Célio Porto, the boy in the film, and Adriana Falcão (1960 – ), her mother, and presented at the Sundance Film Festival. Her song, Australia, is an integral part of the story.
One Quotation, from Australia:
I’m stuck here in the darkness
Blinded by all the light
Standing outside my body with my body still in sight
One Explanation for this entry: Wikipedia explains that Recife has a dark history, as the first slave port in the Americas. It was founded in 1537, during the early Portuguese colonization of Brazil. Located at the confluence of the Beberibe and Capibaribe rivers before they flow into the South Atlantic Ocean, the city is a major port on the Atlantic. Its name is an allusion to the stone reefs that are present by the city’s shores. The many rivers, small islands and over 50 bridges found in Recife city centre characterise its geography and led to the city being called the Brazilian Venice. It has a relatively high ranking in terms of Brazilian human development index (HDI), ranking highest in Northeast Brazil.
However, Racife also contained the former capital, Mauritsstad, of the 17th century colony of New Holland established by the Dutch West India Company. That fact makes it interesting for me, as the city is part of my biological heritage, and the birthplace of Maria Post in 1649, one of my ancestors. Her parents were from Haarlem, in the Netherlands. After Recife, the family moved to New Amsterdam, residing on Staten Island and then Bergen, New Jersey. Maria herself moved to Schenectady, in upstate New York, where my Norwegian ancestors (the Bratts) had moved, after emigrating from Fredrikstad to Amsterdam and onwards to New Amsterdam.