THE FOLLOWING VIDEO accompanies the photos I posted last month from Patagonian Chile and Argentina. The footage includes the glaciers Perito Moreno, Viedma  and Grey; Torres del Paine National Park; Calafate; and the penguin colony on Isla Magdalena (slideshow of photos HERE).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHxCjJjNWE8

As a sidenote, don’t be troubled by the background cheering when the glacier calves off into the glacial lake: the glacier, called the Perito Moreno, is an advancing glacier so the collapsing face is a regular, ordinary event (it advances at the rate of about 2 meters per day). What should trouble you instead is the fact that Perito Moreno is one of only three glaciers in Patagonia that are advancing; the rest are receding at a faster rate than in any other region of the world.

I filmed the following music video in Chile’s Magdalena Island in Patagonia last December. No penguins were desecrated in the making of this YouTube.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2a4Vnsd0KT0

Gaucho Fest. Photo by Constantine Markides

I shot the  following photos and video at the 2010 Gaucho Festival in the Argentina pampas town of San Antonio de Areco on November 20 and 21.

You can see the Guacho Festival photos as a slideshow HERE

or just as a set HERE

Here is the video:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtkU4vgsDNU

Attend any milonga – a tango social dance – and talk to some milongueros about their dance, the Argentine tango. Chances are at least one of them, probably more, will speak of it as an addiction (“a good addiction” of course); the milonguero will also likely correct you on your blasé use of the word  ‘dance’ because tango, you see, is not so much a dance as it is a way of life. To an outsider this solemn claim to tango’s habit-forming power might seem an amusing and drama-queenish overstatement; it does, at least, until you realize one evening that you have joined the ranks of the afflicted.

2010 NYC Tango Fest. Photos by Constantine Markides

Next month, on September 4, I will give a rookie addict’s account of Argentine tango. Until then, I offer a YouTube compilation of video I shot on July 24 at the NYC Tango Festival’s closing ball (which is where I also took these four photos of Alice in Tangoland) and a line from Lewis Carroll’s song “Lobster Quadrille,” sung by the Mock Turtle as he circles in dance with the Gryphon: “Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the dance?”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nzTBQ3NxlA

Monhegan Backside. Photo by Constantine Markides

The following footage was filmed over New Year’s in coastal Maine, primarily Monhegan Island, but also Port Clyde and Thomaston (the filming there coming on the tail end of a night at Billy’s Tavern, which explains any slurring in the second to last video clip). The video mostly consists of seas, snowfall, granite, evergreens, lobsterboats and (+/- plow) trucks, the aggregate of which comprises something essential about Maine that demographics and other state statistics fail to account for, something that anyone who’s formerly lived in Maine always misses. It’s why even the most jaded ex-residents of Maine, except perhaps for the nouveau riche variety who’ve embraced parochial urbanism, upon crossing New Hampshire’s Memorial Bridge and reading the words ‘The Way Life Should Be’ on the big blue Welcome to Maine sign, will nod in agreement rather than glance shotgun and snigger.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8rr1TU_M6Q

The Fourth Fiction bloopers and outtakes videos (scroll down to see Part II):

PART I

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wF80r5DIg5k

PART II

www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJqO7gHjFy0