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Boris Gerrets' - 3 Films currently showing at Centrespace, VRC, Dundee provides a fantastic opportunity to watch his award-winning film 'People I Could Have Been and Maybe Am', (2010).

Gerrets' film, shot entirely on his mobile phone, allows the viewer an insight into the lives of three people who, like us all, are trying to find their way.
Gerrets introduces the film with the question; "What would it be like to enter into the life of a complete stranger?" But the honesty and respect that the 'strangers' he films give him - accompanied with the close proximity caused by filming on a mobile phone - means that the film presents an intimate portrait of their lives, loves and lies.
A series of tangled relationships are explored - Sandrine, a Brazilian woman searching for a better life in London with a list of 7 potential husbands, a father discussing the daughter he abandoned and is yet to meet as an adult, his intoxicating (and mostly intoxicated) relationship with Precious, the subsequent failure of that relationship, the overarching concern that Gerrets' has for the people he films and his love affair with Sandrine, but most significantly the emotional reunion of Sandrine with her child as she returns to Brazil and tells him she will 'never ever ever leave' again.
If anything was staged or manipulated or to what level post-production affected the narrative,  I don't know. But the stories feel real, and probably all the more so for their grainy quality, lack of swish camera effects and the closeness that occurred naturally between the filmmaker and his 'strangers'.

Casoria Contemporary Art Museum

Casoria Contemporary Art Museum in Naples is protesting against cuts by burning paintings in it's collection. BBC News report here.

This protest is supported by CAM's current exhibition CAMouflage_Photocopies for a Cultural Revolution, which highlights the potential difficulties - posed by the economic climate, and lack of government support - that the museum, and society must face up to. CAMouflage_Photocopies for a Cultural Revolution displays only photocopies of work in the collection;

http://www.casoriacontemporaryartmuseum.com/en/porgram.htm

Just glad stamps don't have the price printed on them anymore.

Today, news that the Royal Mail is to limit the number of first and second class stamps available to retailers in the run up to the price change of April 30th, with Superdrug having already reached its quota.

Information from Guardian website

Best get out and panic buy stamps like some did with petrol on first warnings of strike action last month, (though good news for drivers, there is the potential for a deal to be made with fuel tanker drivers.)

Bought a pack of the DC Thompson anniversary stamps earlier this month, beautiful objects. It is a shame to think mail collection and delivery is falling so considerably, partially due to consumers substituting it with e-mail, social media and text messages. 

"The Royal Mail's chief executive, Moya Greene, said the state-owned business had no choice but to ramp up first-class prices by 30% and second-class by 39%, having seen its mail collection and delivery unit lose nearly £1bn in four years. Mail volumes have slumped by a quarter since 2006 to 59m letters and parcels a day." BBC

But 60p... just glad they don't have the price printed on them anymore so I can pretend they're still 36p, like they were in 2009. Though apparently we were "infuriated" back then with 4 years in a row of price increases above inflation.