'Family dinners must be pretty awkward these days in the Bachelet clan.'

The room fills with long, meaningful embraces of old friends, as is Northeastern custom. On the one hand, it’s a local celebration for a local scene, but on the other, it’s a triumph of Pernambucan cinema, today’s booming pocket of Brazilian film.

'For nearly 15 years, every sunset — in sickness and rain — Jurandy has cast off on his canoe and played. Tonight, he’s preparing for performance No. 5,225. Link

More and more mobile home residents are encountering a dismaying, and potentially catastrophic, lack of legal protection.

'Sticking off the northeast of Hispaniola like a strange little mutant crab claw, the Samaná Peninsula offers a taste of the Caribbean as it was, pre-Señor Frog’s.'