Taxonomy.

Blyth's kingfisher was described by the English zoologist Edward Blyth in 1845 and given the binomial name "Alcedo grandis". Unfortunately, this name was preoccupied as it had already been introduced for another species by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his "Systema naturae" of 1788. In 1917, the German naturalist Alfred Laubmann proposed the binomial name "Alcedo hercules" to replace the preoccupied name chosen by Blyth. The common name commemorates Edward Blyth (1810–1873), who was the curator of the Museum of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. Blyth's kingfisher is most closely related to the blue-eared kingfisher ("Alcedo meninting"). The species is monotypic. It has also been referred to as the great blue kingfisher.

Description.

Blyth's kingfisher is between in length, making it the largest of the "Alcedo" kingfishers. The wing of the male is between long, and that of the female between. On the male, the feathering on the head is black, with shiny tips of bright blue. It has a neck patch that is whitish or buff in colour, as is the chin. The breast and belly are rufous, except for a dark blackish-blue patch on the breast. The legs and feet of the bird are also red. The bill is entirely black in the male, while the female has a red base to the mandible. The iris of the bird is reddish brown. The lores of the bird are black, and have a buff coloured streak above them. The back of the bird from mantle to the tail coverts is a bright cobalt blue or azure, with a tinge of purple towards the rump and the tail coverts. When the bird is at rest, the upper parts may appear brownish black. The tail itself is a darker ultramarine blue. The wings and the scapular feathers are a dark greenish black. The feathers of the upperwing coverts have cobalt-blue tips, while the underwing coverts are dark rufous-red. The lesser and median coverts have prominent speckles of cobalt. Any distinctive features in the plumage of the juvenile are not known.  The species is morphologically similar to the blue-eared kingfisher ("Alcedo meninting"), but in comparison is substantially larger. Its bill is heavier and longer than that of the blue-eared kingfisher, and is entirely black. Its crown and wings are less brilliant as those of the smaller bird, and it may be distinguished by the speckles of light blue on its crown and wing coverts. The dark ear coverts set it apart from the common kingfisher ("Alcedo atthis"), which has rufous ear-coverts. It is similar to the female blue-banded kingfisher ("Alcedo euryzona"), but the two species do not overlap in their range.  The call of the species is described as a loud "pseet", less shrill but louder and more hoarse than that of the common kingfisher, and similar but louder to that of the blue-eared kingfisher. One of the calls made by the slaty-backed forktail ("Enicurus schistaceus") is sometimes mistaken for the call of Blyth's kingfisher.

Behavior and ecology.

The breeding period of Blyth's kingfisher is chiefly between April and May, extending to March and June. The nests are built at the end of a tunnel in a muddy bank, next to either a stream or a ravine in the forest. The tunnel extends straight, then rises, before descending to the chamber in which the nest is. This chamber is between wide and high. The width of the tunnel is typically : the length varies with the soil, ranging from in hard soil to in sandy soil. Between four and six eggs are laid, incubated by both parents. The parents sit very tight; nests become covered in faecal matter. The periods of incubation and fledging are not known.  The species feeds on fish and insects it catches by diving in water bodies. Unlike other "Alcedo" kingfishers, Blyth's kingfisher dives from a shrub close above the water, rather than from an exposed vantage point. The species is presumed not to migrate. It is described as a shy bird.

Habitat and distribution.

Blyth's kingfisher frequents small rivers and waterways in evergreen forest, hilly regions, or deep ravines. It is sometimes found near streams near well-wooded farmland. Its elevational range is chiefly between above sea level, extending to a minimum of and a maximum of.  The density of the species is low across its range. In China, it is known to be found in the Mengyang Nature Reserve in Yunnan, and in the Nonggang National Nature Reserve and Diding Nature Reserve in Guangxi province. It is also known to be present in Hainan. In Vietnam the species is found in Annam and western Tonkin, in which regions it is fairly common. In northern Laos and the Annamite mountains, it may be locally common. It is also found in Myanmar, where its density varies considerably, and is either a visitor or a rare resident in northwestern Thailand. It is rare in Bhutan in northeastern India, and a vagrant in Bangladesh and eastern Nepal. Its range in northeast India includes the eastern Himalayas, up to.

Status and conservation.

The population of Blyth's kingfisher has not been quantified globally. In China, the species is estimated to have fewer than 100 breeding pairs. The species occurs at a low density even within a favorable habitat. The habitats it favors are being degraded and fragmented by human activity. Other potential threats to the species include water pollution in the rivers it inhabits and anthropogenic disturbance such as deforestation. No specific conservation actions are known to have been taken to protect the species. Due to the presence of human disturbance, its population is thought to be in slow decline. The International Union for Conservation of Nature categorizes the species as "near threatened"; it has previously classified the species as "vulnerable."

Blyth's kingfisher ("Alcedo hercules") is the largest kingfisher in the genus "Alcedo". Named for Edward Blyth, the species has also been known as "Alcedo grandis" and as the great blue kingfisher. Between long, the kingfisher has deep rufous underparts with a blackish blue breast patch, and brilliant cobalt blue or azure upperparts, tinged with purple. The wings are a dark blackish green, with blue speckles and tips to some of the feathers. The bill of the male is entirely black, while the female has a dark red lower mandible. The species is distinguished from the similar blue-eared kingfisher ("Alcedo meninting") and common kingfisher ("Alcedo atthis") by its greater size, heavy black bill, and dark lores.

Ledňáček větší ("Alcedo hercules") je pták obývající jižní a jihovýchodní Asii. Vyskytuje se v blízkosti řek a potoků ve stálezelených lesích, živí se rybami a hmyzem. Hloubí si nory v březích, v období od března do června klade samička čtyři až šest vajec, která inkubují oba rodiče. Dosahuje délky 22 cm a je tak největším zástupcem rodu "Alcedo". Zobák je černý, hlava a hřbet kobaltově modré, hrdlo bílé a hruď a břicho světle rezavé.


Interpretation.

The individual ostraca probably come from the same broken clay pot and were most likely written in a short period of time. They were written to Yaush (or Ya'osh), possibly the commanding officer at Lachish, from Hoshaiah (Hoshayahu), a military officer stationed in a city close to Lachish (possibly Mareshah). In the letters, Hoshaiah defends himself to Yaush regarding a letter he either was or was not supposed to have read. The letters also contain informational reports and requests from Hoshaiah to his superior. The letters were probably written shortly before Lachish fell to the Babylonian army of King Nebuchadnezzar II in 588/6 BC during the reign of Zedekiah, king of Judah (ref. ).

Text of the Letters.

"Girmiyahu son of Hatzliyhu,Yahzinhu son TavShalem, Chagav son of Yahzinu, Mavtichu son of Jeremiah, Matanyahu son of Naryahu."  "To my lord, Yaush, may YHWH cause my lord to hear tiding(s) of peace today, this very day! Who is your servant, a dog, that my lord remembered his [se]rvant? May YHWH make known(?) to my [lor]d a matter of which you do not know."  "Your servant, Hoshayahu, sent to inform my lord, Yaush: May YHWH cause my lord to hear tidings of peace and tidings of good. And now, open the ear of your servant concerning the letter which you sent to your servant last evening because the heart of your servant is ill since your sending it to your servant. And inasmuch as my lord said "Don't you know how to read a letter?" As YHWH lives if anyone has ever tried to read me a letter! And as for every letter that comes to me, if I read it. And furthermore, I will grant it as nothing. And to your servant it has been reported saying: The commander of the army Konyahu son of Elnatan, has gone down to go to Egypt and he sent to commandeer Hodawyahu son of Ahiyahu and his men from here. And as for the letter of Tobiyahu, the servant of the king, which came to Sallum, the son of Yaddua, from the prophet, saying, "Be on guard!" your ser[va]nt is sending it to my lord."  Notes: This ostracon is approximately fifteen centimeters tall by eleven centimeters wide and contains twenty-one lines of writing. The front side has lines one through sixteen; the back side has lines seventeen through twenty-one. This ostracon is particularly interesting because of its mentions of Konyahu, who has gone down to Egypt, and the prophet. For possible biblical connections according to Torczyner, reference Jeremiah 26:20-23.  "May YHW[H] cause my [lord] to hear, this very day, tidings of good. And now, according to everything which my lord has sent, this has your servant done. I wrote on the sheet according to everything which [you] sent [t]o me. And inasmuch as my lord sent to me concerning the matter of Bet Harapid, there is no one there. And as for Semakyahu, Semayahu took him and brought him up to the city. And your servant is not sending him there any[more ---], but when morning comes round [---]. And may (my lord) be apprised that we are watching for the fire signals of Lachish according to all the signs which my lord has given, because we cannot see Azeqah."  "May YHWH cause my [lo]rd to hear tidings of pea[ce] and of good, [now today, now this very da]y! Who is your servant, a dog, that you [s]ent your servant the [letters? Like]wise has your servant returned the letters to my lord. May YHWH cause you to see the harvest successfully, this very day! Will Tobiyahu of the royal family c<o>me to your servant?"  "To my lord, Yaush, may YHWH cause my lord to see peace at this time! Who is your servant, a dog, that my lord sent him the king's [lette]r [and] the letters of the officer[s, sayin]g, "Please read!" And behold, the words of the [officers] are not good; to weaken your hands [and to in]hibit the hands of the m[en]. [I(?)] know [them(?)]. My lord, will you not write to [them] sa[ying, "Wh]y are you behaving this way? [... ] well-being [... ]. Does the king [... ] And [... ] As YHWH lives, since your servant read the letters, your servant has not had [peace(?)]." Letter Number 7  This letter contains 10 lines on one side and 4 on the other, but the letters are unreadable due to degradation.  "May YHWH cause my lord to hear ti[dings] of peace and of [good. And n]ow, give 10 (loaves) of bread and 2 (jars) [of wi]ne. Send back word [to] your servant by means of Selemyahu as to what we must do tomorrow."

The Lachish Letters or "Lachish Ostraca", sometimes called "Hoshaiah Letters", are a series of letters written in carbon ink in Ancient Hebrew on clay ostraca. The letters were discovered at the excavations at Lachish (Tell ed-Duweir).

Lakíšské dopisy nebo Lakíšská ostraka je série 21 hebrejsky psaných dopisů psaných na keramických střepech, ostrakách. Byly nalezeny v roce 1935 v sutinách judské pevnosti Lachiš. Pocházejí pravděpodobně z 80. let 6. století př. n. l. Odesílatelem většiny dopisů byl velitel vojenské posádky Hošijahú a adresátem lakíšský velitel Jáoš. Dopisy mimo jiné obsahují informaci o jakémsi proroku v nebezpečí (snad Jeremjáš?). Sbírka je uložena v Britském muzeu v Londýně.


Biography.

Born Mohamed Lotfi Zahed in Algiers, Algeria, in 1977, he arrived in France a year later with his parents. During the Algerian Civil War, he returned to his birth city. Growing up between Algeria and France, he reported having felt "part boy, part girl" as a child. He realized his homosexuality at the age of 12 in Algeria, when he began having feelings for an older, male acquaintance. After a short period during which he took interest in Salafi Islam, the teenage Zahed dated a Frenchman whom he described as a "National Front voter from Vitrolles". He acquired French citizenship at the age of 20, adopting "Ludovic" as his first name. At the age of 21, he decided to come out to his family, getting mixed reactions. Initially rejecting Islam and following Buddhism instead, he eventually followed Islam again, and in 2010 founded the organization HM2F, "Homosexuel(les) musulman(es) de France" (Muslim Homosexuals of France).  In November 2012, Zahed set up an "inclusive" Muslim prayer room in Paris, which has been described by the press as "Europe's first gay-friendly mosque".  In April 2014, he took part in a series of lectures and seminars on "Rethinking Homosexuality in Islam" organised by Adi Bharat at Boston University.  Holding a doctorate in humanities, he completed his doctoral study on the topic "Sexual Minorities at the Vanguard of Changes in the Islam of France", and published his social psychology doctoral thesis on "LGBT Muslims facing obscurantism and homonationalism" in 2016.

Personal life.

Zahed is HIV-positive, having contracted the illness as a teenager. In 2011, while same-sex marriage had yet to be legalized in France, he legally married a South African man in Cape Town. They later moved to France, and were united by another, religious marriage ceremony (having no legal value in France) performed by an imam in 2012 in Sevran. In 2014, he was reportedly living with his husband in South Africa.

Political views.

Ludovic-Mohamed Zahed has described himself as a "progressive Muslim" who argues that believers should "question institutional dogma" and insists that "neither homophobia or misogyny respect Islamic ethics". Through his works, he has voiced his concerns for the Muslim community in France, and LGBT Muslims in particular, who according to him, are facing both threats of "obscurantism" and "homonationalism". In France, he has openly stood in favor of same-sex marriage.

Controversies.

The opening of a Muslim prayer room by Zahed in Paris, which he described as more "inclusive" to LGBT believers, was met with mixed reaction from the rest of the Muslim community in France, with a spokesman for the Grand Mosque of Paris stating that the prayer room was "outside the Islamic community" and that "the Quran condemns homosexuality".  In 2014, two Muslim Iranian women were married by Zahed in a religious ceremony held in Stockholm, Sweden, which prompted a group of Algerian Salafists to demand that Zahed be stripped of his Algerian citizenship.

Ludovic-Mohamed Zahed (born 1977) is a French-Algerian imam. An openly gay Muslim, Zahed is the founder of the first European inclusive mosque, in Paris, France, with the goal of accommodating the LGBT and feminist Muslim communities. Zahed has been reported to be the first French Muslim man to be civilly married with another man, in South Africa.

Ludovic-Mohamed Zahed (1977 Alžír) je francouzský imám, teolog, antropolog a psycholog náboženství, zakladatel první evropské inkluzivní mešity v Paříži. Je také prvním francouzským muslimem, který žije v manželském svazku s mužem.


Perception of pitch.

Pitch and frequency.

Pitch is an auditory sensation in which a listener assigns musical tones to relative positions on a musical scale based primarily on their perception of the frequency of vibration. Pitch is closely related to frequency, but the two are not equivalent. Frequency is an objective, scientific attribute that can be measured. Pitch is each person's "subjective perception" of a sound wave, which cannot be directly measured. However, this does not necessarily mean that most people won't agree on which notes are higher and lower.  The oscillations of sound waves can often be characterized in terms of "frequency". "Pitches" are usually associated with, and thus quantified as, "frequencies" (in cycles per second, or hertz), by comparing the sounds being assessed against sounds with pure tones (ones with periodic, sinusoidal waveforms). Complex and aperiodic sound waves can often be assigned a "pitch" by this method.  According to the American National Standards Institute, pitch is the auditory attribute of sound according to which sounds can be ordered on a scale from low to high. Since pitch is such a close proxy for frequency, it is almost entirely determined by how quickly the sound wave is making the air vibrate and has almost nothing to do with the intensity, or amplitude, of the wave. That is, "high" pitch means very rapid oscillation, and "low" pitch corresponds to slower oscillation. Despite that, the idiom relating vertical height to sound pitch is shared by most languages. At least in English, it is just one of many deep conceptual metaphors that involve up/down. The exact etymological history of the musical sense of high and low pitch is still unclear. There is evidence that humans do actually perceive that the source of a sound is slightly higher or lower in vertical space when the sound frequency is increased or reduced.  In most cases, the pitch of complex sounds such as speech and musical notes corresponds very nearly to the repetition rate of periodic or nearly-periodic sounds, or to the reciprocal of the time interval between repeating similar events in the sound waveform.  The pitch of complex tones can be ambiguous, meaning that two or more different pitches can be perceived, depending upon the observer. When the actual fundamental frequency can be precisely determined through physical measurement, it may differ from the perceived pitch because of overtones, also known as upper partials, harmonic or otherwise. A complex tone composed of two sine waves of 1000 and 1200 Hz may sometimes be heard as up to three pitches: two spectral pitches at 1000 and 1200 Hz, derived from the physical frequencies of the pure tones, and the combination tone at 200 Hz, corresponding to the repetition rate of the waveform. In a situation like this, the percept at 200 Hz is commonly referred to as the missing fundamental, which is often the greatest common divisor of the frequencies present.  Pitch depends to a lesser degree on the sound pressure level (loudness, volume) of the tone, especially at frequencies below 1,000 Hz and above 2,000 Hz. The pitch of lower tones gets lower as sound pressure increases. For instance, a tone of 200 Hz that is very loud seems one semitone lower in pitch than if it is just barely audible. Above 2,000 Hz, the pitch gets higher as the sound gets louder. These results were obtained in the pioneering works by S.Stevens and W.Snow. Later investigations, i.e. by A.Cohen, had shown that in most cases the apparent pitch shifts were not significantly different from pitch‐matching errors. When averaged, the remaining shifts followed the directions of Stevens' curves but were small (2% or less by frequency, i.e. not more than a semitone)

Theories of pitch perception.

Theories of pitch perception try to explain how the physical sound and specific physiology of the auditory system work together to yield the experience of pitch. In general, pitch perception theories can be divided into place coding and temporal coding. Place theory holds that the perception of pitch is determined by the place of maximum excitation on the basilar membrane.  A place code, taking advantage of the tonotopy in the auditory system, must be in effect for the perception of high frequencies, since neurons have an upper limit on how fast they can phase-lock their action potentials. However, a purely place-based theory cannot account for the accuracy of pitch perception in the low and middle frequency ranges. Moreover, there is some evidence that some non-human primates lack auditory cortex responses to pitch despite having clear tonotopic maps in auditory cortex, showing that tonotopic place codes are not sufficient for pitch responses.  Temporal theories offer an alternative that appeals to the temporal structure of action potentials, mostly the phase-locking and mode-locking of action potentials to frequencies in a stimulus. The precise way this temporal structure helps code for pitch at higher levels is still debated, but the processing seems to be based on an autocorrelation of action potentials in the auditory nerve. However, it has long been noted that a neural mechanism that may accomplish a delay—a necessary operation of a true autocorrelation—has not been found. At least one model shows that a temporal delay is unnecessary to produce an autocorrelation model of pitch perception, appealing to phase shifts between cochlear filters; however, earlier work has shown that certain sounds with a prominent peak in their autocorrelation function do not elicit a corresponding pitch percept, and that certain sounds without a peak in their autocorrelation function nevertheless elicit a pitch. To be a more complete model, autocorrelation must therefore apply to signals that represent the output of the cochlea, as via auditory-nerve interspike-interval histograms. Some theories of pitch perception hold that pitch has inherent octave ambiguities, and therefore is best decomposed into a pitch "chroma", a periodic value around the octave, like the note names in western music—and a pitch "height", which may be ambiguous, that indicates the octave the pitch is in.

Just-noticeable difference.

The "just-noticeable difference (jnd)" (the threshold at which a change is perceived) depends on the tone's frequency content. Below 500 Hz, the jnd is about 3 Hz for sine waves, and 1 Hz for complex tones; above 1000 Hz, the jnd for sine waves is about 0.6% (about 10 cents). The jnd is typically tested by playing two tones in quick succession with the listener asked if there was a difference in their pitches. The jnd becomes smaller if the two tones are played simultaneously as the listener is then able to discern beat frequencies. The total number of perceptible pitch steps in the range of human hearing is about 1,400; the total number of notes in the equal-tempered scale, from 16 to 16,000 Hz, is 120.

Aural illusions.

The relative perception of pitch can be fooled, resulting in "aural illusions". There are several of these, such as the tritone paradox, but most notably the Shepard scale, where a continuous or discrete sequence of specially formed tones can be made to sound as if the sequence continues ascending or descending forever.

Definite and indefinite pitch.

Not all musical instruments make notes with a clear pitch. The unpitched percussion instrument (a class of percussion instrument) does not produce particular pitches. A sound or note of definite pitch is one where a listener can possibly (or relatively easily) discern the pitch. Sounds with definite pitch have harmonic frequency spectra or close to harmonic spectra.  A sound generated on any instrument produces many modes of vibration that occur simultaneously. A listener hears numerous frequencies at once. The vibration with the lowest frequency is called the "fundamental frequency"; the other frequencies are "overtones". "Harmonics" are an important class of overtones with frequencies that are integer multiples of the fundamental. Whether or not the higher frequencies are integer multiples, they are collectively called the partials, referring to the different parts that make up the total spectrum.  A sound or note of indefinite pitch is one that a listener finds impossible or relatively difficult to identify as to pitch. Sounds with indefinite pitch do not have harmonic spectra or have altered harmonic spectra—a characteristic known as inharmonicity.  It is still possible for two sounds of indefinite pitch to clearly be higher or lower than one another. For instance, a snare drum sounds higher pitched than a bass drum though both have indefinite pitch, because its sound contains higher frequencies. In other words, it is possible and often easy to roughly discern the relative pitches of two sounds of indefinite pitch, but sounds of indefinite pitch do not neatly correspond to any specific pitch. A special type of pitch often occurs in free nature when sound reaches the ear of an observer directly from the source, and also after reflecting off a sound-reflecting surface. This phenomenon is called "repetition pitch", because the addition of a true repetition of the original sound to itself is the basic prerequisite.

Pitch standards and standard pitch.

A pitch standard (also concert pitch) is the conventional pitch reference a group of musical instruments are tuned to for a performance. Concert pitch may vary from ensemble to ensemble, and has varied widely over musical history.  Standard pitch is a more widely accepted convention. The A above middle C is usually set at 440 Hz (often written as "A = 440 Hz" or sometimes "A440"), although other frequencies, such as 442 Hz, are also often used as variants. Another standard pitch, the so-called "Baroque pitch", has been set in the 20th century as A = 415 Hz—approximately an equal-tempered semitone lower than A440 to facilitate transposition.  Transposing instruments have their origin in the variety of pitch standards. In modern times, they conventionally have their parts transposed into different keys from voices and other instruments (and even from each other). As a result, musicians need a way to refer to a particular pitch in an unambiguous manner when talking to each other.  For example, the most common type of clarinet or trumpet, when playing a note written in their part as C, sounds a pitch that is called B on a non-transposing instrument like a violin (which indicates that at one time these wind instruments played at a standard pitch a tone lower than violin pitch). To refer to that pitch unambiguously, a musician calls it "concert B", meaning, "...the pitch that someone playing a non-transposing instrument like a violin calls B."

Labeling pitches.

Pitches are labeled using: For example, one might refer to the A above middle C as "a′", "A", or "440 Hz". In standard Western equal temperament, the notion of pitch is insensitive to "spelling": the description "G double sharp" refers to the same pitch as "A"; in other temperaments, these may be distinct pitches. Human perception of musical intervals is approximately logarithmic with respect to fundamental frequency: the perceived interval between the pitches "A220" and "A440" is the same as the perceived interval between the pitches "A440" and "A880". Motivated by this logarithmic perception, music theorists sometimes represent pitches using a numerical scale based on the logarithm of fundamental frequency. For example, one can adopt the widely used MIDI standard to map fundamental frequency, "f", to a real number, "p", as follows This creates a linear pitch space in which octaves have size 12, semitones (the distance between adjacent keys on the piano keyboard) have size 1, and A440 is assigned the number 69. (See Frequencies of notes.) Distance in this space corresponds to musical intervals as understood by musicians. An equal-tempered semitone is subdivided into 100 cents. The system is flexible enough to include "microtones" not found on standard piano keyboards. For example, the pitch halfway between C (60) and C (61) can be labeled 60.5.  The following table shows frequencies in Hertz for notes in various octaves, named according to the "German method" of octave nomenclature:

Scales.

The relative pitches of individual notes in a scale may be determined by one of a number of tuning systems. In the west, the twelve-note chromatic scale is the most common method of organization, with equal temperament now the most widely used method of tuning that scale. In it, the pitch ratio between any two successive notes of the scale is exactly the twelfth root of two (or about 1.05946). In well-tempered systems (as used in the time of Johann Sebastian Bach, for example), different methods of musical tuning were used.  In almost all of these systems interval of the octave doubles the frequency of a note; for example, an octave above A440 is 880 Hz. If however the first overtone is sharp due to inharmonicity, as in the extremes of the piano, tuners resort to octave stretching.

Other musical meanings of pitch.

In atonal, twelve tone, or musical set theory a "pitch" is a specific frequency while a pitch class is all the octaves of a frequency. In many analytic discussions of atonal and post-tonal music, pitches are named with integers because of octave and enharmonic equivalency (for example, in a serial system, C and D are considered the same pitch, while C and C are functionally the same, one octave apart).  Discrete pitches, rather than continuously variable pitches, are virtually universal, with exceptions including "tumbling strains" and "indeterminate-pitch chants". Gliding pitches are used in most cultures, but are related to the discrete pitches they reference or embellish.

Pitch is a perceptual property of sounds that allows their ordering on a frequency-related scale, or more commonly, pitch is the quality that makes it possible to judge sounds as "higher" and "lower" in the sense associated with musical melodies. Pitch can be determined only in sounds that have a frequency that is clear and stable enough to distinguish from noise. Pitch is a major auditory attribute of musical tones, along with duration, loudness, and timbre.

Výška () je subjektivní vlastnost zvuků, která umožňuje jejich uspořádání do řady podle frekvencí. Jinou definicí je, že výška zvuku je vlastnost, podle které posuzujeme zvuky jako „vyšší“ a „nižší“ ve stejném smyslu jako u hudební melodie. Výšku lze určit pouze u zvuků, které mají frekvenci tak jasnou a stabilní, že je lze rozlišit od šumu. Výška tónu je spolu s délkou, silou a barvou hlavními sluchovými atributy tónů.


Education.

Pe'er received her bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1995, her master's degree in 1999 and her PhD in computer science in 2003, all from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her PhD work used machine learning and Bayesian networks to automatically infer regulatory relations between genes, using genomics data. Her PhD advisor was Nir Friedman.  She was subsequently a postdoctoral research fellow in the lab of George M. Church in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, focusing on how genetic variation changes the regulatory network between individuals and how this subsequently manifests in phenotypic diversity.

Research.

Pe'er's lab at Columbia University continues her previous research; firstly, developing computational methods to combine diverse sources of high throughput genomics data and secondly, to develop a holistic view of the cell at a systems level.  One particular focus is on developing methods to determine how genetic variation in DNA alters the regulation of gene expression, with a view to applying this knowledge in personalized cancer treatment. For instance, the ability to predict how particular drugs (individually or in combination) will react with tumours would allow drugs to be prescribed on a per-patient basis.

Awards and Honours.

Pe’er currently serves on the editorial board of the journal Cell.  Pe'er has won several prestigious awards including a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award, a NSF CAREER award and a Stand Up To Cancer Innovative Research Grant. She was awarded an NIH Director's New Innovator Award in 2007 in order to investigate how genetic variations can cause changes throughout the whole body which can lead to autoimmune disease and cancer. Pe'er was awarded a Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering in 2009. She was awarded the ISCB Overton Prize in 2014 for her significant contribution to research, particularly in using computational methods to understand the organization and function of molecular networks in cells.

Personal life.

Her husband, Itsik Pe'er, is also a computational biologist at Columbia University.

Dana Pe'er is currently the Chair and Professor in Computational and Systems Biology Program at Sloan Kettering Institute and regarded as one of the leading researchers in computational systems biology. Previously, she was a professor at Columbia Department of Biological Sciences. Pe'er's research focuses on understanding the organization, function and evolution of molecular networks, particularly how genetic variations alter the regulatory network and how these genetic variations can cause cancer.

Dana Pe'er (* 1971) je docentkou na katedře biologických věd na Kolumbijské univerzitě a je považována za jednoho z vůdčích výzkumníků biologických výpočetních systémů. Pe'erové výzkum se zabývá porozumění organizaci, funkci a vývoji molekulárních sítí, především jejich genetických odvhylek a způsobu, jakým způsobují rakovinu.


Course.

The Ćehotina originates from the two streams in the Montenegrin region of Donji Kolašin, near the border with Serbia. It flows to the northwest, with many bends and curves, as it flows through the high, mountain region. The river almost has no settlements (except for the village of Vrulje), before it passes the eastern slopes of the Korijeni mountain and enters the Pljevaljska kotlina (Cyrillic: Пљеваљска котлина; Depression of Pljevlja). There, it flows through the Pljevlja coal basin and the city of Pljevlja itself, and continues to the region of Podgora, next to the villages of Radosavec, Židovići, Donja Brvenica and the small town of Gradac. The river flows between the region of Bukovica to the north and the northern tip of the Ljubišnja mountain and for the few kilometers forms the border between Serbia and Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina. It continues next to the villages of Vikoč, Falovići, Godijeno and Brusina, before it empties into the Drina. The city of Foča is built at its confluence.

Characteristics.

The Ćehotina flows for 100 km in Montenegro, and 25 in Bosnia and Herzegovina.  It has no major tributaries, most important being the Voloder, which flows into the Ćehotina near Gradac.  The river has considerable hydroelectricity potential, but none of it is being used. It belongs to the Black Sea drainage basin, its own drainage area covers 1,237 km2, and it's not navigable.

In popular culture.

Young Montenegrin band "Autogeni Trening" (Autogenic Training) have a song titled "Ćehotina".  One of the most beautiful "sevdalinka" (type of folk song in Bosnia and Herzegovina) is "Dvije su se vode zavadile" ("Two rivers have quarrell"). In that song river Ćehotina talks to river Drina to wait for her until tomorrow noon...". A notable interpretation is sung by Zaim Imamović, one of the most famous Bosnian sevdah singers.

The Ćehotina (Cyrillic: Ћеxотина, ), also "Ćeotina", "Ćotina" or "Čehotina", is a long river in Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, it is a right bank tributary of the Drina river.

Ćehotina (v srbské cyrilici Ћехотина) je řeka v severní Černé Hoře a východní Bosně a Hercegovině. Ústí do Driny ve Foči. Ćehotina protéká hornatou krajinou Dinárských Alp. Dlouhá je 125 km.


Member organizations.

The members of the Swedish Scouting federation were:  Since 2012 all of the member organizations have been incorporated into Scouterna.

Svenska Scoutförbundet.

Svenska Scoutförbundet (SSF) (English: "The Swedish Guide and Scout Association") founded in 1909, was Sweden's largest Scouting organization with 55,000 members. Their approach to Scouting was interreligious. Headquarter were in Tellusborgsvägen 94, Stockholm.

Vässarö.

Vässarö is a Scout camp site located on the island of "Vässarö" (sometimes "Vässarön" or "Wessarö") in the archipelago of Öregrund.  Vässarö was long used for farming but was bought in 1936 by sea captain Ragnar Westin, who planned to use it for his retirement. But in 1942 his ship was torpedoed and he died. In his will he stated that the island was to be donated to the Scout Group of Stockholm.  In 1956 the first confirmation camp for Boy Scouts was held. The first camp for Girl Guides was 1966.

Svenska Missionskyrkans Ungdom Scout.

Svenska Missionskyrkans Ungdom Scout (SMU), commonly known as "SMU-Scout" was the Guide and Scout Organization of the "Mission Covenant Youth of Sweden", and Sweden's second largest Scouting organization with 18,500 members. Its headquarters were in Stockholm. The organization was co-ed and open to both boys and girls. Since 2007, all dutiess at national level within SMU have been transferred to the collaborative organization "equmenia".  The members were distributed into 545 local Scout groups (kårer), which in turn are assembled in seven districts. These districts were shared with SMU's mother denomination, the Mission Covenant Church of Sweden.  Since SMU-Scout was an integral part of equmenia, the board of trustees in equmenia delegated the Scouting issues to a Scout Committee in order to deal with other issues as well. The remunerated chairman of the board, however, was also the chairman of the Scout Committee. Since 2012 SMU-Scout has been incorporated into Scouterna, the national Scouting and Guiding organisation of Sweden. The organization had a campsite called Skräddartorp, Ludvika with accommodation for approximately 1,000 participants.

History.

The programme for boys (Våra Pojkar) started in 1931 and for girls (Våra Flickor) in 1936. Boys and girls got the same name and programme in 1957 but still in different sections. The sections became co-ed in 1972. Nyingscout started in 1974 and Seniorscout in 1988.  In 1961, SMU-Scout applied for membership in Svenska Scoutrådet, which was granted in 1963.

KFUK-KFUMs Scoutförbund.

KFUK-KFUMs Scoutförbund ("The Swedish YMCA-YWCA Guide and Scout Association") was Sweden's third largest Scouting association with 12,500 members. The headquarters were in Stockholm.  Scouternas almanacka was a wall almanac sold annually by KFUK-KFUMs Scoutförbund, starting in 1945. Each month is represented by a season-related nature illustration. While most illustrations depict children, some others depict anthropomorphic animals. For many years, Kerstin Frykstrand was famous for the illustrations.

Nykterhetsrörelsens Scoutförbund.

Nykterhetsrörelsens Scoutförbund ("The Temperance Guide and Scout Association", NSF) was a Scouting organization in Sweden with 6,000 members. It was founded in 1926 and headquartered in Stockholm.

Frälsningsarméns Scoutförbund.

Frälsningsarméns Scoutförbund, ("The Salvation Army Guide and Scout Association", FA Scout) was a Scouting association in Sweden with 600 members. It was founded in 1912, and headquartered in Stockholm. From 2010 it functioned as an "ideological district" within Svenska Scoutförbundet.

Svenska Scoutrådet ("The Swedish Guide and Scout Council", SSR) was until 2012 the national Scouting and Guiding federation of Sweden. The council was dissolved in September 2013, after a restructuring process creating the new single national Scout association, Scouterna ("The Guides and Scouts of Sweden").

Svenska Scoutrådet ("švédsky Rada Švédských skautů", SSR) byl až do roku 2012 národní Skautskou federací ve Švédsku. Rada byla rozpuštěna v září 2013, po restrukturalizačním procesu a vytvoření nového jednotného národního skautského sdružení, Scouterna ("Skaut").


Plot.

Joe has planned an afternoon in the English countryside with his partner, Claire. As they prepare to open a bottle of champagne, a hot air balloon drifts into the field, obviously in trouble. The pilot catches his leg in the anchor rope, while the only passenger, a boy, is too scared to jump down. Joe and three other men rush to secure the basket. Just as they grab on, wind rushes into the field, and at once the rescuers are airborne. Joe manages to drop to the ground, as do the others, except for one who is lifted skywards. They watch as the man falls to his death. Recalling the events at dinner with his friends Robin and Rachel, and Claire, Joe reveals the impact the incident has had on his battered psyche. The balloon eventually landed safely, the boy unscathed. Joe later goes to retrieve the body of the fallen man with fellow rescuer Jed Parry. Jed feels an instant connection with Joe—one that, as the weeks go by, becomes ever more intense.  Days later, Joe, feeling guilt, spends a lot of time trying to map out ways that could have saved the man. One day, he receives an odd phone call from Jed, telling him to come outside so that they can talk about what happened. Joe looks out the window and sees Jed standing across the road from his house staring up at Joe's window. Joe is reluctant but Jed promises that he will leave Joe alone if he just comes outside and talks to him. After Jed makes some comments that make Joe uneasy, he decides to leave, telling Jed to leave him alone. Not too long after this, Joe visits a local bookshop and out of nowhere Jed makes an appearance, appearing to have followed Joe. Joe is confused and angered by this and tells Jed that he does not want to see him at all. Jed is hurt by this and continues to tell Joe to "be brave" and admit what passed between them at the field. Then Jed leaves Joe and says, "don't let me down, not like you let "him" [the man who fell from the balloon] down".  The next time we see Joe is when he is lecturing at the college where he works. At lunch, he sits down with a colleague and then spots Jed sitting at the table next to him. He shouts at Jed, causing a scene when Jed tells him to "be brave" again. Joe tells Jed that all he wants is for Jed to leave him alone. After hearing this, Jed leaves the restaurant.  Joe then visits the wife of the man who had died and she tells him that she believes that he was having an affair after the police returned a picnic basket for two that was found in his car, along with an unknown woman's scarf. After hearing this, he decides to figure out who was with the man on the day he died.  On Joe's birthday, Claire makes him a special birthday dinner. At dinner, it is clear to see the strain on their relationship. After Claire sees that Joe is lost in thought and not paying her any attention, she angrily clears the table. She is fed up with Joe's behaviour and lack of communication. The next day, Joe goes swimming and sees Jed standing by the window of the pool. Joe asks Jed to meet him in the café. They talk and Joe demands to know why Jed won't leave him alone. Jed, once again, makes Joe uneasy and he leaves.  Later, Joe and Claire are joined by Robin and Rachel, Claire's brother and his new girlfriend. Joe then tells Claire that he had planned to propose to her on the day of the accident. She asks Joe if he's changed his mind and he remains silent. This drives another wedge between them and the evening is ruined.  The next day at Joe's lecture, Jed turns up in the class and sings to Joe. They then go outside and Jed talks about how Joe is sending him signals, using a curtain reference. Joe is confused, tells Jed to leave and then later that night researches the significance between stalkers and "curtain signals". He finally concludes that Jed standing beneath his window every night watches him draw the curtains, thinking that the way they are drawn is a secret message (such as "come and see me", "I love you", or "talk to me"). After explaining this to Claire, he looks out of the window and sees Jed sitting in the park across from his house watching him. Joe asks Claire to come to the window and look at Jed but she, frustrated, goes back to sleep.  The next morning, Claire comes down the stairs and tells Joe that it's over between them. Joe, angry, pays a visit to Jed and they argue. Joe then gets drunk before going to Robin and Rachel's house where he stays the night. When he wakes up, his friend tells him that Claire just called and that Claire had told him to come over as Jed was in their house. Joe races to his house and enters the living room to find Jed and Claire sitting next to each other on the sofa. Jed looks as if he has been beaten up and falsely blames Joe. Claire appears to believe Jed's story. Joe loses his temper and then out of the blue, Jed stabs Claire with a kitchen knife and she falls to the floor, bleeding profusely. Joe then pretends to accept Jed into his life and they kiss. As they kiss, Joe grabs hold of the knife from Jed and stabs him. Jed falls to the floor, while Joe rushes to Claire's aid and phones an ambulance.  In the closing scenes, Joe is back on the field where it all started, with the wife and daughter of the man who died. They are joined by a couple who explain that the woman's husband had not cheated on her but was giving the couple a lift in his car. The picnic basket and scarf were theirs, and they were too embarrassed to intercede, as "they" were having an affair. The wife is happy to discover the truth and sad that she had believed her husband was cheating. Joe then tells the man's daughter her father was very brave.  After this, Joe is joined by Claire, who survived the stabbing; they are still separated. As they sit on the grass and talk, Joe produces a bottle of champagne and tries to find words to apologize for what happened to them. Claire says, "Don't say anything". It is left to the audience to determine what happens next.  During the ending credits, Jed, who also survived, is shown in a mental institution and appears to be obsessively writing a letter. He looks up at the camera and smiles while the end credits roll.

Critical response.

The film received mixed reviews. Rotten Tomatoes assigned the film a score of 59% based on 96 reviews. "Empire", however, voted it number 426 on their list of the 500 greatest films ever made.

Enduring Love is a 2004 British psychological thriller film directed by Roger Michell with screenwriter Joe Penhall, based on the novel of the same name by Ian McEwan. The story concerns two strangers who become dangerously close after witnessing a deadly accident. It stars Daniel Craig, Rhys Ifans and Samantha Morton with Bill Nighy, Susan Lynch and Corin Redgrave.

Nezničitelná láska (v anglickém originále Enduring Love) je britsko-irský hraný film z roku 2004, který režíroval Roger Michell podle stejnojmenného románu Iana McEwana. Film zachycuje různé podoby lásky. Snímek měl světovou premiéru 4. září 2004 na filmovém festivalu v coloradském Telluride.


Policy.

On 15 November 1938, five days after the devastation of "Kristallnacht", the "Night of Broken Glass", in Germany and Austria, a delegation of British, Jewish, and Quaker leaders appealed, in person, to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Neville Chamberlain. Among other measures, they requested that the British government permit the temporary admission of unaccompanied Jewish children, without their parents.  The British Cabinet debated the issue the next day and subsequently prepared a bill to present to the United Kingdom's Parliament. That bill stated that the government would waive certain immigration requirements so as to allow the entry into Great Britain of unaccompanied children ranging from infants up to the age of 17, under conditions as outlined in the next paragraph.  No limit upon the permitted number of refugees was ever publicly announced. Initially, the Jewish refugee agencies considered 5,000 as a realistic target goal. However, after the British Colonial Office turned down the Jewish agencies' separate request to allow the admission of 10,000 children to British-controlled Palestine, the Jewish agencies then increased their planned target number to 15,000 unaccompanied children to enter Great Britain in this way.  During the morning of 21 November 1938, before a major House of Commons debate on refugees, Home Secretary Sir Samuel Hoare met a large delegation representing Jewish, as well as Quaker and other non-Jewish groups, working on behalf of refugees. The groups, though considering all refugees, were specifically allied under a non-denominational organisation called the "Movement for the Care of Children from Germany". This organisation was considering only the rescue of children, who would need to leave their parents behind in Germany.  In that debate of Nov 21, 1938, Hoare paid particular attention to the plight of children. Very importantly, he reported that enquiries in Germany had determined that, most remarkably, nearly every parent asked had said that he would be willing to send his child off unaccompanied to the United Kingdom, leaving his parents behind. (Whilst this was somewhat of an exaggeration – it was traumatic for the parents to send their children away into the "unknown" and for an uncertain time; and traumatic for at least the younger children to be separated from their parents – the actual parting was managed well.)  Home Secretary Hoare declared that he and the Home Office "shall put no obstacle in the way of children coming here," consequently "to show that we will be in the forefront among the nations of the world in giving relief to these suffering people." Hoare made it clear that the monetary and housing and other aid required had been promised by the Jewish and other Communities.  The agencies promised to find homes for all the children. They also promised to fund the operation and to ensure that none of the refugees would become a financial burden on the public. Every child would have a guarantee of £50 sterling to finance his or her eventual re-emigration, as it was expected the children would stay in the country only temporarily.

Organisation and management.

Within a very short time, the Movement for the Care of Children from Germany, later known as the Refugee Children's Movement (RCM), sent representatives to Germany and Austria to establish the systems for choosing, organising, and transporting the children. The Central British Fund for German Jewry provided funding for the rescue operation.  On 25 November, British citizens heard an appeal for foster homes on the BBC Home Service radio station from Viscount Samuel. Soon there were 500 offers, and RCM volunteers started visiting possible foster homes and reporting on conditions. They did not insist that the homes for Jewish children should be Jewish homes. Nor did they probe too carefully into the motives and character of the families: it was sufficient for the houses to look clean and the families to seem respectable.  In Germany, a network of organisers was established, and these volunteers worked around the clock to make priority lists of those most in peril: teenagers who were in concentration camps or in danger of arrest, Polish children or teenagers threatened with deportation, children in Jewish orphanages, children whose parents were too impoverished to keep them, or children with a parent in a concentration camp. Once the children were identified or grouped by list, their guardians or parents were issued a travel date and departure details. They could only take a small sealed suitcase with no valuables and only ten marks or less in money. Some children had nothing but a manila tag with a number on the front and their name on the back, others were issued with a numbered identity card with a photo:  The first party of nearly 200 children arrived in Harwich on 2 December, three weeks after "". In the following nine months almost 10,000 unaccompanied, mainly Jewish, children travelled to England. There were also Kindertransports to other countries, such as France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden. Geertruida Wijsmuller-Meijer arranged for 1,500 children to be admitted to the Netherlands; the children were supported by the Dutch Committee for Jewish Refugees, which was paid by the Dutch Jewish Community. In Sweden, the Jewish Community of Stockholm negotiated with the government for an exception to the country's restrictive policy on Jewish refugees for a number of children. Eventually around 500 Jewish children from Germany aged between 1 and 15 were granted temporary residence permits on the condition that their parents would not try to enter the country. The children were selected by Jewish organizations in Germany and placed in fosterhomes and orphanages in Sweden.  Initially the children came mainly from Germany and Austria (by then part of the Greater Reich). From 15 March 1939, with the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, transports from Prague were hastily organised. In February and August 1939, trains from Poland were arranged. Transports out of Nazi-occupied Europe continued until the declaration of war on 1 September 1939.  A smaller number of children flew to Croydon mainly from Prague. Other ports in England receiving the children included Dover.

Last transport.

The very last transport from the continent, with 74 children, left on the passenger-freighter on 14 May 1940, from IJmuiden, Netherlands. Their departure was organised by Geertruida Wijsmuller-Meijer, the Dutch organiser of the first transport from Vienna in December 1938. She could have joined the children but chose to remain behind.<ref name="kindertransport.org/history"></ref> This was a rescue action, as occupation of the Netherlands was imminent, with the country capitulating the next day. This ship was the very last to leave the country freely.  As the Netherlands was under attack by German forces totalling 750,000 men from 10 May, and bombings had been going on, there was no opportunity to confer with the parents of the children. At the time of this evacuation, these parents knew nothing of the evacuation of their children: according to unnamed sources, some of the parents were initially even very upset about this action and told Wijsmuller-Meijer she should not have done this. After 15 May, there was no more opportunity to leave the Netherlands, as the country's borders were closed by the Nazis.

Trauma suffered by the children.

The children went through extreme trauma during their extensive Kindertransport experience. This is often presented in very personal terms. The exact details of this trauma, and how it was felt by the child, depended both on the child's age at separation, and on the details of his or her total experience until the end of the war, and even after that.  The primary trauma was the actual parting from the parents, bearing in mind the child's age. How this parting was explained was very important: for example, "you are going on an exciting adventure", or "you are going on a short trip and we will see you soon." Younger children, perhaps six and younger, would generally not accept such an explanation and would demand to stay with their parents. There are many records of tears and screaming at the various railway stations where the actual parting took place. Even for older children, "more willing to accept the parents' explanation", at some point that child realised that he or she would be separated from his or her parents for a long and indefinite time. The younger children had no developed sense of time, and for them the trauma of separation was total from the very beginning.  Having to learn a new language, in a country where the child's native German or Czech was not understood, was another cause of stress. To have to learn to live with strangers, who only spoke English, and accept them as "pseudo-parents", was a trauma. At school, the English children would often view the Kinder as "enemy Germans" instead of as "Jewish refugees".  Before the war started on 1 September 1939, and even during the first part of the war, some parents were able to escape from Hitler and reach England and then reunite with their children. But this was the exception; most of the parents were murdered by the Nazis. The older ones became fully aware of the war in Europe during 1939-1945 and its details, and they would understand and become concerned for their parents. During the later part of the war, they may have become aware of the Holocaust and the actual direct threat to their Jewish parents and extended family. After the war ended in 1945, nearly all the children learned sooner or later that their parents had been murdered.  In November 2018, for the 80th anniversary of the Kindertransport Programme, the German government announced that they would make a payment of 2,500 Euros to each of the "Kinder" who was still alive (about $2,800 at the time). Of course, this was only a symbolic token amount, but it represented an explicit recognition and acceptance of the immense damage that had been done to each child, both psychological and material. The damage had been done by Hitler and the Nazis, but the very different post-war German Government was making this payment. All details of the application process are given in the previous reference.

Occupations.

During the war years many Kindertransport children served in the British armed forces, the nursing professions, in food production and in war-related industries. Several thousand remained in Britain when the war ended, and as adults made considerable contributions to Britain's services, industries, commerce, education, science and the arts, for the defence, welfare and development of their country of adoption.

Transport arrangements and the ending of the programme.

The Nazis had decreed that the evacuations must not block ports in Germany, so most transport parties went by train to the Netherlands; then to a British port, generally Harwich, by cross-channel ferry from the Hook of Holland near Rotterdam. From the port, a train took some of the children to Liverpool Street Station in London, where they were met by their volunteer foster parents. Children without prearranged foster families were sheltered at temporary holding centres at summer holiday camps such as Dovercourt and Pakefield. While most transports went via train, some also went by boat, and others aeroplane.  The first "Kindertransport" was organised and masterminded by Florence Nankivell. She spent a week in Berlin, hassled by the Nazi police, organising the children. The train left Berlin on 1 December 1938 and arrived in Harwich on 2 December with 196 children. Most were from a Berlin Jewish orphanage burned by the Nazis during the night of 9 November, and the others were from Hamburg.  The first train from Vienna left on 10 December 1938 with 600 children. This was the result of the work of Mrs. Gertruida Wijsmuller-Meijer, a Dutch organizer of Kindertransports, who had been active in this field since 1933. She went to Vienna with the purpose of negotiating with Adolf Eichmann directly, but was initially turned away. She persevered however, until finally, as she wrote in her biography, Eichmann suddenly "gave" her 600 children with the clear intent of overloading her and making a transport on such short notice impossible. Nevertheless, Wijsmuller-Meijer managed to send 500 of the children to Harwich, where they were accommodated in a nearby holiday camp at Dovercourt, while the remaining 100 found refuge in the Netherlands.  Many representatives went with the parties from Germany to the Netherlands, or met the parties at Liverpool Street Station in London and ensured that there was someone there to receive and care for each child. Between 1939 and 1941, 160 children without foster families were sent to the Whittingehame Farm School in East Lothian, Scotland. Whittingehame was the family estate and former home of the British Prime Minister Arthur Balfour, author of the Balfour Declaration.  The RCM ran out of money at the end of August 1939 and decided it could take no more children. The last group of children left Germany on 1 September 1939, the day Germany invaded Poland, and two days later Britain, France and other countries declared war on Germany. A party left Prague on 3 September 1939 but was sent back. Because of the outbreak of war, the border with the Netherlands was closed for some time, although the Netherlands remained neutral and was not invaded until 10 May 1940.  Days after the invasion, 74 children boarded the last known boat transport to leave the Netherlands, on 14 May 1940, the same day as the bombing of Rotterdam and the Dutch army's surrender to Germany. It was the last boat to leave the port of IJmuiden (near Amsterdam), and was also the work of Wijsmuller-Meijer. She had collected 66 of the children from the orphanage on the "" in Amsterdam, part of which had been serving as a home for refugees.  Many children were still in the Netherlands and Belgium when Germany occupied those countries, ultimately resulting in many of their deaths at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators.

The Habonim Hostels and Kindertransport.

In the UK a number of members of Habonim, a Jewish youth movement inclined to socialism and Zionism, were instrumental in running the country hostels of South West England, where some of the Kindertransport children were placed. These members of Habonim were held back from going to live on kibbutz by the effects of the Second World War. Other Jewish youth movements in the UK including "Bnei Akiva" also subsequently participated in this work by running additional hostels.  These hostels were turned into centres for study of secular and Jewish subjects as well as temporary homes for the children. They were run on communal lines. About 120 of the Kindertransport children grew up during the war years at these hostels at Exmouth, Dawlish, and South Devon. Bnei Akiva ran a number of hostels including at Gwrych Castle in North Wales, Bromsgrove and Farnham. The hostels themselves were large family mansions that were made available by their owners and helped by both the British government and the Jewish social and charitable organizations. Some of the Habonim members also participated with the older children in helping to farm and to grow agricultural produce to aid the war effort. The languages used were a mixture of German, Polish, Czech, Yiddish, Hebrew and English.

Records.

Records for many of the children who arrived in the UK through the Kindertransports are maintained by World Jewish Relief through its Jewish Refugees Committee. On the supply of authorised documentation, copies of these documents can be supplied to family members at a small fee to cover administration costs. They include "factual details," but also notes made by the case-worker of each child, and sometimes personal letters or diaries or journals.

Recovery.

At the end of the war, there were great difficulties in Britain as children from the Kindertransport tried to reunite with their families. Agencies were flooded with requests from children seeking to find their parents, or any surviving member of their family. Some of the children were able to reunite with their families, often travelling to far off countries in order to do so. Others discovered that their parents had not survived the war. In her novel about the Kindertransport titled "The Children of Willesden Lane", Mona Golabek describes how often the children who had no families left were forced to leave the homes that they had gained during the war in boarding houses in order to make room for younger children flooding the country.

Nicholas Winton.

Before Christmas 1938, a 29-year-old British stockbroker of German-Jewish origin named Nicholas Winton planned to fly to Switzerland for a ski vacation when he decided to travel to Prague instead to help a friend who was involved in Jewish refugee work. Thereafter, he established an organisation to aid Jewish children from Czechoslovakia separated from their families by the Nazis, setting up an office at a dining room table in his hotel in Wenceslas Square. He ultimately found homes for 669 children. Winton's mother also worked with him to place the children in homes, and later hostels, with a team of sponsors from groups like Maidenhead Rotary Club and Rugby Refugee Committee. Throughout the summer, he placed advertisements seeking British families to take them in. The last group, which left Prague on 3 September 1939, was sent back because the Nazis had invaded Poland – the start of the Second World War.  Winton acknowledged the vital roles of Beatrice Wellington, Doreen Warriner, Trevor Chadwick and others in Prague who also worked to evacuate children from Europe, in the early stages of the German occupation.

Wilfrid Israel.

Wilfrid Israel (1899–1943) was a key figure in the rescue of Jews from Germany and occupied Europe. He warned the British government, through Lord Samuel, of the impending Kristallnacht in November 1938. Through a British agent, Frank Foley, passport officer at the Berlin consulate, he kept British intelligence informed of Nazi activities. Speaking on behalf of the'(the German Jewish communal organisation) and the'(the self-help body), he urged a plan of rescue on the Foreign Office and helped British Quakers to visit Jewish communities all over Germany to prove to the British government that Jewish parents were indeed prepared to part with their children.

Rabbi Solomon Schonfeld.

Rabbi Solomon Schonfeld brought in 300 children who practiced Orthodox Judaism, under auspices of the Chief Rabbi's Religious Emergency Council. He housed many of them in his London home for a while. During the Blitz he found for them in the countryside often non-Jewish foster homes. In order to assure the children follow Jewish dietary laws (Kosher) he instructed them to say to the foster parents that they are fish eating vegetarians. He also saved large numbers of Jews with South American protection papers. He brought over to England several thousand young people, rabbis, teachers, ritual slaughterers and other religious functionaries.

Internment, and war service.

In June 1940, Churchill, the Prime Minister of the British Government ordered the internment of all male 16- to 70-year-old refugees from enemy countries – so-called "friendly enemy aliens" (an incongruous term). A complete history of this internment episode is given in the book "Collar the Lot!", whose title is a suggestion of what Churchill might have initially ordered.  Many of the children who had arrived in earlier years were now young men, and so they were also interned. Approximately 1,000 of these "prior-kinder" were interned in these makeshift internment camps, many on the Isle of Man. Around 400 were transported overseas to Canada and Australia (see HMT "Dunera").  As the camp internees reached the age of 18, they were offered the chance to do war work or to enter the Army Auxiliary Pioneer Corps. About 1,000 German and Austrian "prior-kinder" who reached adulthood went on to serve in the British armed forces, including in combat units. Several dozen joined elite formations such as the Special Forces, where their language skills were put to good use during the D-Day Invasion and afterwards as the Allies progressed into Germany. One of these was Peter Masters, who wrote a book which he proudly titled "Striking Back."  Nearly all the interned "friendly enemy aliens" were refugees who had fled Hitler and Naziism, and nearly all were Jewish. When Churchill's internment policy became known, there was a debate in Parliament. Many speeches expressed horror at the idea of interning refugees, and a vote overwhelmingly instructed the Government to "undo" the internment. Because of this vote, the British internment period for "friendly enemy aliens" generally lasted only a few months, until they were "processed" by the government and released. But the damage to an internee's life by being uprooted into internment was often very great.

"American Kindertransport".

The One Thousand Children (OTC) was a similar but much less organised effort to transport unaccompanied children, mostly Jewish, to the United States. The programme brought about 1,400 children aged between 14 months and 16 years to the United States between November 1934 and May 1945. Like the "kinder", these OTC children were forced to leave their parents behind in Europe; many of them were later murdered by the Nazis.  In contrast to the Kindertransport, where the British Government waived immigration visa requirements, these OTC children received no United States Government visa immigration assistance. Furthermore, it is documented that the State Department deliberately made it very difficult for any Jewish refugee to get an entrance visa. And it was even harder to secure the appropriate papers for their parents, hence most had to remain in Europe.  In 1939 Sen. Robert F. Wagner and Rep. Edith Rogers proposed the Wagner-Rogers Bill in the United States Congress. This bill was to admit 20,000 unaccompanied Jewish child refugees under the age of 14 into the United States from Nazi Germany. However, in February 1939, this bill failed to get Congressional approval.

Notable people saved.

A number of children saved by the "Kindertransport"s went on to become prominent figures in public life, with no fewer than four (including Walter Kohn, Arno Penzias and Jack Steinberger) becoming Nobel Prize winners. These include:

Post-war organisations.

In 1989,, who escaped Germany via Kindertransport, organised the Reunion of Kindertransport, a 50th-anniversary gathering of kindertransportees in London in June 1989. This was a first, with over 1200 people, kindertransportees and their families, attending from all over the world. Several came from the east coast of the US and wondered whether they could organize something similar in the U.S. They founded the Kindertransport Association in 1991.  The Kindertransport Association is a national American not-for-profit organization whose goal is to unite these child Holocaust refugees and their descendants. The association shares their stories, honors those who made the Kindertransport possible, and supports charitable work that aids children in need. The Kindertransport Association declared 2 December 2013, the 75th anniversary of the day the first Kindertransport arrived in England, as World Kindertransport Day.  In the United Kingdom, the Association of Jewish Refugees houses a special interest group called the Kindertransport Organisation.

The "Kindertransport" programme in media.

The "Kindertransport" programme is an essential and unique part of the tragic history of the Holocaust. For this reason, it was important to bring the story to public awareness.

Documentary films.

"The Hostel" (1990), a two-part BBC documentary, narrated by Andrew Sachs. It documented the lives of 25 people who fled the Nazi regime, 50 years on from when they met for the first time as children in 1939, at the Carlton Hotel in Manningham, Bradford.  "My Knees Were Jumping: Remembering the Kindertransports" (1996; released theatrically in 1998), narrated by Joanne Woodward. It was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. It was directed by Melissa Hacker, daughter of costume designer Ruth Morley, who was a "Kindertransport" child. Melissa Hacker has been very influential in organizing the "kinder" who now live in America. She was also involved in working to arrange the award of 2,500 Euros from the German Government to each of the "kinder".  "" (2000), narrated by Judi Dench and winner of the 2001 Academy Award for best feature documentary. It was produced by Deborah Oppenheimer, daughter of a "Kindertransport" child, and written and directed by three-time Oscar winner Mark Jonathan Harris. This movie shows the "Kindertransport" in very personal terms by presenting the actual stories through in-depth interviews with several individual "kinder", rescuers Norbert Wollheim and Nicholas Winton, a foster mother who took in a child, and a mother who lived to be reunited with daughter Lore Segal. It was shown in movie houses around the world, including in Britain, the United States, Austria, and Germany, and on HBO and PBS. A companion book with the same title presents many more details, facts, and witnesses, expanding upon the film.  "The Children Who Cheated the Nazis" (2000), a Channel 4 documentary film. It was narrated by Richard Attenborough, directed by Sue Read, and produced by Jim Goulding. Attenborough's parents were among those who responded to the appeal for families to foster the refugee children; they took in two girls.  "Nicky's Family" (2011), a Czech documentary film. It includes an appearance by Nicholas Winton.  "" (2017), an Israeli documentary film by Yonatan Nir. It includes a part that discusses the initiation and launching of the Kindertransport, in which Wilfrid Israel played a significant part. Seven men and women from very different countries and backgrounds tell the stories, of the days before and when they boarded the Kindertransport trains in Germany.

Plays.

"Kindertransport: The Play" (1993), a play by Diane Samuels. It examines the life, during World War II and afterwards, of a "Kindertransport" child. It presents the confusions and traumas that arose for many "kinder", before and after they were fully integrated into their British foster homes. And, as importantly, their confusion and trauma when their real parents reappeared in their lives; or more likely and tragically, when they learned that their real parents were dead. There is also a companion book by the same name.  "The End Of Everything Ever" (2005), a play for children by the New International Encounter group, which follows the story of a child sent from Czechoslovakia to London by train.

Books.

"Austerlitz" (2001), by the German-British novelist W. G. Sebald, is an odyssey of a "Kindertransport" boy brought up in a Welsh manse who later traces his origins to Prague and then goes back there. He finds someone who knew his mother, and he retraces his journey by train.  "" (2000, Bloomsbury Publishing), by Mark Jonathan Harris and Deborah Oppenheimer, with a preface by Lord Richard Attenborough and historical introduction by David Cesarani. Companion book to the Oscar-winning documentary, with expanded stories from the film and additional interviews not included in the film.  "Sisterland" (2004), a young adult novel by Linda Newbery, concerns a "Kindertransport" child, Sarah Reubens, who is now a grandmother; sixteen-year-old Hilly uncovers the secret her grandmother has kept hidden for years. This novel was shortlisted for the 2003 Carnegie Medal.  "My Family for the War" (2013), a young adult novel by Anne C. Voorhoeve, recounts the story of Franziska Mangold, a ten-year-old Christian girl of Jewish ancestry who goes on the "Kindertransport" to live with an Orthodox British family.  "Far to Go" (2012), a novel by Alison Pick, a Canadian writer and descendant of European Jews, is the story of a Sudetenland Jewish family who flee to Prague and use bribery to secure a place for their six-year-old son aboard one of Nicholas Winton's transports.  "The English German Girl" (2011), a novel by British writer Jake Wallis Simons, is the fictional account of a 15-year-old Jewish girl from Berlin who is brought to England via the "Kindertransport" operation.  "The Children of Willesden Lane" (2017), a historical novel for young adults by Mona Golabek and Lee Cohen, about the "Kindertransport", told through the perspective of Lisa Jura, mother of Mona Golabek.

Winton train.

On 1 September 2009, a special "Winton train" set off from the Prague Main railway station. The train, consisting of an original locomotive and carriages used in the 1930s, headed to London via the original "Kindertransport" route. On board the train were several surviving "Winton children" and their descendants, who were to be welcomed by the now hundred-year-old Sir Nicholas Winton in London. The occasion marked the 70th anniversary of the intended last Kindertransport, which was due to set off on 3 September 1939 but did not because of the outbreak of the Second World War. At the train's departure, Sir Nicholas Winton's statue was unveiled at the railway station.

Academic debate.

Jessica Reinisch notes how the British media and politicians alike allude to the Kindertransport in contemporary debates on refugee and migration crises. She argues that "the Kindertransport" is used as evidence of Britain's "proud tradition" of taking in refugees; but that such allusions are problematic as the Kinderstransport model is taken out of context and thus subject to nostalgia. She points out that countries such as Britain and the United States did much to prevent immigration by turning desperate people away; at the Évian Conference in 1938, participant nations failed to reach agreement about accepting Jewish refugees who were fleeing Nazi Germany.

The Kindertransport (German for "children's transport") was an organised rescue effort that took place during the nine months prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. The United Kingdom took in nearly 10,000 predominantly Jewish children from Nazi Germany, Nazi-occupied Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland, and the Free City of Danzig. The children were placed in British foster homes, hostels, schools and farms. Often they were the only members of their families who survived the Holocaust. The programme was supported, publicised and encouraged by the British government. Importantly the British government waived all those visa immigration requirements which were not within the ability of the British Jewish community to fulfil. The British government put no number limit on the programme – it was the start of World War II that brought the programme to an end, at which time about 10,000 kindertransport children had been brought to the United Kingdom.

Kindertransport byla organizovaná záchranná akce, která se uskutečnila během devíti měsíců před vypuknutím druhé světové války. Spojené království tehdy přijalo téměř deset tisíc převážně židovských dětí z Německa, Rakouska, Československa, Polska a Svobodného města Gdaňsk. Děti byly rozmístěny do britských pěstounských domovů, hostelů, škol a na farmy. Často se staly jedinými členy svých rodin, kteří přežili holokaust. Mezi zachráněné děti patřily například Yosef Alon (důstojník Izraelského vojenského letectva), Benjamin Abeles (fyzik), Paul Ritter (architekt), Heini Halberstam (matematik) a Gerda Mayer (básnířka). Mezi osoby, kteří s Kindertransportem pomáhaly, patří například Nicholas Winton, Solomon Schonfeld a Wilfrid Israel.


Plot.

While exploring space for new habitable worlds, a probe belonging to the bio-engineering corporation Life Foundation discovers a comet covered in symbiotic lifeforms. The probe returns to Earth with four samples, but one escapes and causes the ship to crash in Malaysia. The Life Foundation recovers the other three and transports them to their research facility in San Francisco, where they discover that the symbiotes cannot survive without oxygen-breathing hosts, which often fatally reject the symbiosis. Investigative journalist Eddie Brock reads about these human trials in a classified document in the possession of his fiancée Anne Weying, an attorney preparing a lawsuit defense for the Life Foundation. Brock confronts Life Foundation CEO Carlton Drake about the trials, leading to both Brock and Weying losing their jobs. Consequently, Weying ends their relationship.  Six months later, Drake's symbiosis trials are closer to success, though one of his symbiotes dies due to carelessness. Brock is approached by Dora Skirth, one of Drake's scientists who disagrees with his methods and wants to expose him. She helps Brock break into the research facility to search for evidence, and he learns that an acquaintance of his, a homeless woman named Maria, is one of the test subjects. Brock attempts to rescue Maria, but the symbiote possessing her transfers to his body without him realizing, leaving her dead. Brock escapes and soon begins displaying strange symptoms. He reaches out to Weying for help, and her new boyfriend, Dr. Dan Lewis, discovers the symbiote

Cast.

Additionally, Jenny Slate portrays Life Foundation scientist Dora Skirth, Melora Walters portrays Maria, a homeless woman, and Chris O'Hara appears as astronaut John Jameson. Also appearing in the film are Sam Medina as a thug that Venom confronts, Michelle Lee as a Malaysian EMT who briefly hosts Riot, Sope Aluko and

Production.

Development.

Early attempts and cancellation.

By 1997, David S. Goyer had written a script for a film featuring the Marvel Comics character Venom, which was to be produced by New Line Cinema. Dolph Lundgren was in talks to star in the film, which would feature the character Carnage as the main antagonist. The project did not move forward, and the rights to the character moved to Sony Pictures along with those for the character Spider-Man, of whom Venom is an antagonist in the comics. Eddie Brock, the alter-ego of Venom, would appear in Sony's "Spider-Man 3" (2007), with Topher Grace in the role. Grace was intended to only briefly appear as Brock, but became a major villain as both Brock and Venom because producer Avi Arad felt the series had relied too much on director Sam Raimi's personal favorite Spider-Man villains, and not characters that modern fans were

Revival.

"Venom" was revived by Sony in March 2016, with Arad and Tolmach producing, and Dante Harper writing a new screenplay. The project was envisioned as a standalone film launching its own franchise, unrelated to Sony and Marvel Studios' new "Spider-Man" films. A year later, Sony gave the film an October 5, 2018, release date, and explained that Kurtzman was not involved with the new project. No new director had been signed, and Scott Rosenberg and Jeff Pinkner were now writing the screenplay. "Venom" was expected to begin both a new franchise and a new shared universe independent of the MCU, and was initially aiming

Pre-production.

Riz Ahmed was in talks to join the film in August 2017, with Matt Smith, Pedro Pascal, and Matthias Schoenaerts all having been considered for the same role. In September, Michelle Williams entered talks to join the film as a district attorney and Brock's love interest. By October, Jenny Slate, Reid Scott, and Scott Haze were in negotiations to join as well, with Slate up for a role as a scientist. Also at that time, Kelly Marcel was writing the latest draft of the film's script. The final budget that Sony allocated for the film's production was $100 million, though "Deadline Hollywood" revealed in September 2018 that a deal between Sony and Chinese production company Tencent Pictures meant the latter had ultimately covered a third of these production costs for the studio.

Writing and Spider-Man connection.

In June 2017, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige confirmed that "Venom" was solely a Sony project and Marvel Studios had no plans to connect it with the MCU. However, producer Amy Pascal soon clarified that Sony intended to have their MU films take place in "the same world" as the new MCU film "" (2017), describing them as "adjunct" to that world. She said that "Venom" would connect to the next planned film in Sony's MU, "Silver & Black", and that there was potential for Tom Holland's Spider-Man to appear in either. Carnage was also expected to appear in "Venom" at that point. In July, Columbia Pictures president Sanford Panitch explained that Sony was not interested in producing "conventional comic-book movies" and was looking to give each film in their MU a distinct style. "Venom" was considered "a spin on a horror film", inspired by the works of John Carpenter and David Cronenberg, but with "more pop and fun". Fleischer said he has "always been drawn to the more antihero superheroes. There's a dark element to [Venom] and a wit that has always appealed to me." He said the film would explore Venom's origins and the "Jekyll and Hyde" relationship that Brock has with the symbiote.  The film is primarily based on the "" miniseries (1993) and the "Planet of the Symbiotes" story arc (1995), borrowing the San Francisco setting of the former.

Filming.

Principal photography began on October 23, 2017, with filming taking place in Atlanta and New York City. Matthew Libatique served as director of photography, while Oliver Scholl served as production designer after also doing so for "Spider-Man: Homecoming". Williams was confirmed to have joined the film in November, with Sony organizing her filming schedule to ensure her availability for concurrent, unexpected reshoots on "All the Money in the World" (2017). By December, Woody Harrelson was in talks to appear in the film, and Williams was revealed to be portraying Anne Weying. According to several reports, Tom Holland spent several days during "Venom"s production filming a cameo appearance as Peter Parker / Spider-Man for the film, but Marvel Studios asked Sony to

Post-production.

Ahmed and Scott were confirmed to appear in the film in February 2018, and Will Beall was revealed to have done additional writing on the script. In the following months, Sope Aluko and Scott Deckert were revealed to be cast in the film, Haze and Harrelson were also confirmed to appear, and Ahmed was revealed to be playing Carlton Drake. Harrelson, who previously worked with Fleischer on "Zombieland" (2009), signed on to the film for a small role—he described himself as being "in a little fraction of this movie"—knowing that he would have a bigger part in a potential sequel. The role was revealed to be that of Cletus Kasady, the alter-ego of

Visual effects and design.

DNEG provided the visual effects for the film, with Paul Franklin serving as visual effects supervisor on the project, and Paolo Giandoso drawing concept art for the DNEG design team. Giandoso helped design Venom and Riot, and provided a sequence of 158 drawings for the film's final battle between the two characters.  The visual effects team's first step was to define the look of the different symbiotes in the film, which do not have a defined body shape. Franklin explained that they wanted the creatures to be "predatory and threatening", and looked at slime molds, jellyfish, and time-lapse photography of amoeba for inspiration. The final models were blobs that could move and change shape, with soft tissue simulated on top to give the creatures an "interesting abstract quality". The symbiote is combined with Brock by adding "tentacles" to Hardy, which was done through a hybrid of practical and visual effects. The tentacles were inspired by the movement of sea creatures and scientific demonstrations of non-Newtonian fluid. Additional cameras on set accurately captured Hardy's movements so the tentacles could be integrated with his performance. A detailed digital double of Hardy was also used for the integration. Other partial Venom forms include the "freak-out" form for when he is being vibrated out of Brock, for which a "ghostly" effect was created by adding an animated version of the character on top of Hardy's performance with a vibration effect; and the "wraith" Venom, where Venom's head emerges from Brock's body to talk to him—this form was closer to the raw symbiote than the final Venom design, with added tendrils and veins to an overall snake-like shape, and an emaciated take on Venom's face.  The humanoid Venom character was created with a digital model that included rigs and simulation for the face and muscles. Venom is portrayed as being tall and weighing, with a "smooth, oily, black" appearance. Due to the differences in the character's facial design comic-to-comic, and even panel-to-panel, the designers "distilled the essential elements" into a design that could be photorealistic. These included the character's eyes, which Franklin compared to those of a killer whale and explained had to be animated in a more exaggerated way to indicate where the character was looking since he

Music.

Ludwig Göransson signed on to compose the score for "Venom" in March 2018, reuniting with Fleischer after the pair worked together on "30 Minutes or Less" (2011). In August, rapper Eminem teased that he had contributed a new song to the soundtrack for "Venom".

Marketing.

For the Sony Pictures panel at Comic Con Experience 2017, Fleischer and Hardy appeared in a video from the film's set to promote it. A teaser for the film was released in February 2018. Dani Di Placido of "Forbes" called it "comically underwhelming". He felt this was a major misstep by Sony given the teaser was meant to win over uninterested Spider-Man fans, particularly after the character's portrayal in "Spider-Man 3". The fact that the teaser did not include the title character was a common criticism by commentators. Sony chairman Tom Rothman later acknowledged this, explaining that the intention had been to "heighten anticipation" for the film. In August, Fleischer revealed the trailer did not showcase Venom because the visual effects for the character were incomplete at the time.  Rothman presented new footage of the film at CinemaCon 2018, and acknowledged that it revealed the film's version of Venom by saying, "See, we didn't forget to put Venom in the movie!" Di Placido was more positive of this trailer, praising the appearance of and visuals for Venom, but being concerned about the dialogue. During the trailer, actress Jenny Slate pronounces the word symbiote as "SIM-bye-oht" rather than "SIM-bee-oht", as many commentators believed it should be pronounced. This led to widespread criticism and a 35,700 percent increase in searches for "symbiote pronunciation", according to Merriam-Webster, which noted both pronunciations are technically considered acceptable. Slate uses the expected "SIM-bee-oht" pronunciation in the final film, which commentators assumed was achieved through reshoots or overdubbing, but Fleischer explained that the pronunciation had been corrected on set and the marketing team had simply used a take for the trailer from before

Release.

Theatrical.

"Venom" had its world premiere at the Regency Village Theatre in Westwood, Los Angeles on October 1, 2018, and was theatrically released in the United States and Canada on October 5 in 4,250 theaters. This followed a release in several other countries on October 3, where it was playing on 20,800 screens internationally in its

Home media.

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released a digital version of the film on December 11, 2018, with Ultra HD Blu-ray, Blu-ray, and DVD versions released on December 18 in the United States. The physical

Reception.

Box office.

"Venom" grossed $213.5 million in the United States and Canada, and $642.6 million in other territories, for a total worldwide gross of $856.1 million. With a production budget between $100–116 million, "Deadline Hollywood" reported that the film needed to gross around $450 million to break even, and later calculated the net profit to be $246.9 million, when factoring together all expenses and revenues, making it the sixth-most-profitable release of 2018.  In the United States and Canada, "Venom" was initially projected to gross $60–70 million in its opening weekend. It made $10 million from Thursday night previews, the highest ever for an October release (beating "Paranormal Activity 3"s $8 million in

Critical response.

The review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes reports an approval rating of 29% based on 336 reviews, with an average rating of 4.42/10. The website's critical consensus reads, ""Venom"s first standalone movie turns out to be like the comics character in all the wrong ways—chaotic, noisy, and in desperate need of a stronger attachment to Spider-Man." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 35 out of 100, based on 46 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".  Reviewing the film for "Variety", Owen Gleiberman called it "a textbook case of a comic-book film that's unexciting in its ho-hum competence, and even its visual-effects bravura". He criticized Hardy's performance as acting like

Audience response.

Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale, while those at PostTrak gave it an 80% positive score; social media monitor RelishMix noted online responses to the film were "mixed... leaning positive". During the film's opening week, most audience members surveyed by Fandango wanted to see the film because it featured a Marvel antihero, because it had the potential to crossover with Spider-Man, or because they were fans of Hardy.

"Symbrock" shipping.

After seeing the film, Kate Gardner of The Mary Sue wondered whether it had been "queer coded", a term referring to characters appearing queer without their sexuality being a part of the story. Gardner soon noticed fan art depicting Brock and Venom as a couple appearing across social media sites. She acknowledged that there were several moments throughout the film that implied such a relationship, including Venom deciding to turn against his species because of his time spent with Brock and Venom deciding to French kiss Brock when it is transferring from Weying's body to Brock's. Gardner felt that these elements made it more logical for fans to "ship" the two characters than some similar pairings that had become popular on the internet. Many of the fans posting the art and discussing the characters' relationship online began using the name "Symbrock" to refer to them.  Tumblr's Fandometrics analysis team, led by Senior Content Insights Manager Amanda Brennan, looked at "original posts, likes, reblogs, and comments" across the website's 440 million blogs, and reported that Symbrock was the most used ship name during the week ending October 15. It was also the eighth most popular topic overall, while Venom itself was the most popular topic. Brennan said that

Sequel.

In January 2019, Sony announced development on a sequel with Marcel hired as screenwriter. Hardy, Harrelson, and Williams were confirmed to return, though a director was not set due to Fleischer's "" (2019) commitments. Andy Serkis was hired to direct the sequel in August 2019. In October, Fleischer stated that he was happy to let Serkis take over the franchise following the negative critical reaction that "Venom" received. Fleischer believed that reviewers had been unfair to the "crowdpleasing movie", potentially due to biases against Sony and towards Marvel Studios' rival superhero films. "Venom: Let There Be Carnage" is expected to be released on June 25, 2021.

Venom is a 2018 American superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name, produced by Columbia Pictures in association with Marvel and Tencent Pictures. Distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing, it is the first film in the Sony Pictures Universe of Marvel Characters. Directed by Ruben Fleischer from a screenplay by Jeff Pinkner, Scott Rosenberg, and Kelly Marcel, it stars Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock / Venom, alongside Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed, Scott Haze, and Reid Scott. In "Venom", journalist Brock gains superpowers after being bound to an alien symbiote whose species plans to invade Earth.

Venom je americký akční film z roku 2018 režiséra Rubena Fleischera, natočený na motivy komiksů vydavatelství Marvel Comics o stejnojmenné postavě ze světa Spider-Mana. Film produkovala společnost Columbia Pictures ve spolupráci s Marvel Entertainment. Jedná se o první snímek v rámci filmové série Sony's Universe of Marvel Characters. Scénář filmu napsali Jeff Pinkner, Scott Rosenberg a Kelly Marcel. V titulní roli se představil Tom Hardy, coby novinář Eddie Brock (Venom), a dále Michelle Williams a Riz Ahmed. Do amerických kin byl film uveden 5. října 2018.