Marco Lupis - Interviews From The Short Century стр 11.

You divide your time between Beijing and Hong Kong. The papers are full of your new relationship with a Hong Kong-based businessman, so do you think you will move there permanently?

I don’t think so. I like Hong Kong because it’s bustling and great for shopping. But I find it annoying. Beijing is different. People stop you in the street and talk to you about all sorts. In Hong Kong, it’s all about the money.

Are you fed up with the press sticking their noses into your private life?

You divide your time between Beijing and Hong Kong. The papers are full of your new relationship with a Hong Kong-based businessman, so do you think you will move there permanently?

I don’t think so. I like Hong Kong because it’s bustling and great for shopping. But I find it annoying. Beijing is different. People stop you in the street and talk to you about all sorts. In Hong Kong, it’s all about the money.

Are you fed up with the press sticking their noses into your private life?

I think it comes with the territory really. It’s mainly the Asian press that often prints unpleasant or made-up stories. The papers in the West have higher standards.

Is it also important for an actress to be beautiful in China?

Do you think I’m beautiful?

You’re seen as a sex symbol in the West .

That’s really nice, but I don't feel like a sex symbol. Maybe Chinese women have a certain appeal or charm because we are so different to Western women.

What are your plans for the future?

I want to get married and have children. I think family is a really important part of a woman’s life. If you don’t have a family, you can’t bring experience of everyday life into your work.

And do you have any more films lined up?

Not at the moment. I’m reading lots of scripts, but none have jumped out at me so far. I’m not going to accept any old part just for the sake of it.

Would you consider working with a Western director?

If they had a part that was suitable for me as a Chinese woman, sure...why not?

Is there an Italian director you’d like to work with?

Absolutely: Bernardo Bertolucci!

5

Íngrid Betancourt

The Pasionaria of the Andes

Dina, here is my article with box to follow. I hope you are well.

Today (Monday, February 11), I’m flying from Tokyo to Buenos Aires, where I will land tomorrow (February 12). You will still be able to reach me on my satellite phone, even while I’m navigating my away across Antarctica. I’ll be back in Argentina around February 24 and will then head to Bogotá, where I am scheduled to interview Ingrid Betancourt in early March.

Let me know if you'd be interested.

Catch up soon,

Marco

On an old computer, I found this email that I sent in early February 2002 to inform Dina Nascetti, one of my bosses at L’Espresso , of my movements. I had been in Japan to report on the tomb of Jesus [1] and I was preparing to embark on a long journey that would take me far away from home for nearly two months. I was headed for the end of the Earth: Antarctica.

On the way out, I planned to report on the severe economic crisis that was gripping Argentina, and on the way back, I would go via Colombia to interview Ingrid Betancourt Pulecio, the Colombian politician and human rights activist. As it turned out, I arrived in Bogotá a couple of days early, which - for me at any rate - was a stroke of luck. I interviewed Ms Betancourt on February 22, and precisely twenty-four hours later she vanished into thin air while being driven from Florencia to San Vicente del Caguán. She had been kidnapped by FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) guerrillas and would be held hostage for more than six years.

If I’d arrived in Colombia just a day later, I never would have met her.

*****

She has shoulder-length brown hair and typically Colombian dark eyes. She wears an amber bracelet on her wrist and rarely cracks a smile.

But then, Íngrid Betancourt doesn’t have many reasons to smile. She may look younger than her forty years and have an enviable petite frame, but she is running for the presidency of Colombia, the most violent country in the world, where ten people are kidnapped and seventy people murdered every single day. Where war has raged for four decades, claiming thirty-seven thousand civilian lives in the last twelve years alone. A country that boasts the dubious honour of being the world’s leading producer of cocaine. A country from which over a million people have fled in the last three years.

And yet, it is not so long ago that this same woman sat before me today in a heavily guarded, clandestine apartment in downtown Bogotá, wearing a bulletproof vest and a nervous expression, was smiling serenely as she lay on a beach in the Seychelles, where her handsome and sophisticated French diplomat husband had been posted.

Precisely twenty-four hours after the interview, while being driven from Florencia to San Vicente del Caguán, on the front line of the battle between FARC rebels and government forces, Íngrid Betancourt disappears along with a French photographer and cameraman accompanying her to document an electoral campaign fraught with danger. Everything points to a kidnapping.