Early life and family.

Ibsen was born into an affluent merchant family in the wealthy port town of Skien in Bratsberg (Telemark). His parents were Knud Ibsen (1797–1877) and Marichen Altenburg (1799–1869). Henrik Ibsen wrote that “my parents were members on both sides of the most respected families in Skien,” explaining that he was closely related with “just about all the patrician families who then dominated the place and its surroundings.”  His parents, though not related by blood, had been raised as something that resembled social siblings. Knud Ibsen's biological father, ship's captain Henrich Ibsen, died at sea when he was newborn in 1797 and his mother married captain Ole Paus the following year; Ole Paus was the brother of Marichen's mother Hedevig Paus, and their families were very close; for example Ole's oldest biological son and Knud's half-brother Henrik Johan Paus was raised in Hedevig's home together with his cousin Marichen, and the biological and social children of the Paus siblings, including Knud and Marichen, spent much of their childhood together. Some Ibsen scholars have claimed that Henrik Ibsen was fascinated by his parents’ “strange, almost incestuous marriage;” he would treat the subject of incestuous relationships in several plays, notably his masterpiece "Rosmersholm".  When Henrik Ibsen was around seven years old, his father's fortunes took a significant turn for the worse, and the family was eventually forced to sell the major Altenburg building in central Skien and move permanently to their large summer house, "Venstøp", outside of the city. Henrik's sister Hedvig would write about their mother: "She was a quiet, lovable woman, the soul of the house, everything to her husband and children. She sacrificed herself time and time again. There was no bitterness or reproach in her." The Ibsen family eventually moved to a city house, Snipetorp, owned by Knud Ibsen's half-brother, wealthy banker and ship-owner Christopher Blom Paus.  His father's financial ruin would have a strong influence on Ibsen's later work; the characters in his plays often mirror his parents, and his themes often deal with issues of financial difficulty as well as moral conflicts stemming from dark secrets hidden from society. Ibsen would both model and name characters in his plays after his own family. A central theme in Ibsen's plays is the portrayal of suffering women, echoing his mother Marichen Altenburg; Ibsen's sympathy with women would eventually find significant expression with their portrayal in dramas such as "A Doll's House" and "Rosmersholm".  At fifteen, Ibsen was forced to leave school. He moved to the small town of Grimstad to become an apprentice pharmacist and began writing plays. In 1846, when Ibsen was 18, he had a liaison with Else Sophie Jensdatter Birkedalen which produced a son, Hans Jacob Hendrichsen Birkdalen, whose upbringing Ibsen paid for until the boy was fourteen, though Ibsen never saw Hans Jacob. Ibsen went to Christiania (later renamed Kristiania and then Oslo) intending to matriculate at the university. He soon rejected the idea (his earlier attempts at entering university were blocked as he did not pass all his entrance exams), preferring to commit himself to writing. His first play, the tragedy "Catilina" (1850), was published under the pseudonym "Brynjolf Bjarme", when he was only 22, but it was not performed. His first play to be staged, "The Burial Mound" (1850), received little attention. Still, Ibsen was determined to be a playwright, although the numerous plays he wrote in the following years remained unsuccessful. Ibsen's main inspiration in the early period, right up to "Peer Gynt", was apparently the Norwegian author Henrik Wergeland and the Norwegian folk tales as collected by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe. In Ibsen's youth, Wergeland was the most acclaimed, and by far the most read, Norwegian poet and playwright.

Life and writings.

He spent the next several years employed at Det norske Theater (Bergen), where he was involved in the production of more than 145 plays as a writer, director, and producer. During this period, he published five new, though largely unremarkable, plays. Despite Ibsen's failure to achieve success as a playwright, he gained a great deal of practical experience at the Norwegian Theater, experience that was to prove valuable when he continued writing.  Ibsen returned to Christiania in 1858 to become the creative director of the Christiania Theatre. He married Suzannah Thoresen on 18 June 1858 and she gave birth to their only child Sigurd on 23 December 1859. The couple lived in very poor financial circumstances and Ibsen became very disenchanted with life in Norway. In 1864, he left Christiania and went to Sorrento in Italy in self-imposed exile. He didn't return to his native land for the next 27 years, and when he returned to it he was a noted, but controversial, playwright.  His next play, "Brand" (1865), brought him the critical acclaim he sought, along with a measure of financial success, as did the following play, "Peer Gynt" (1867), to which Edvard Grieg famously composed incidental music and songs. Although Ibsen read excerpts of the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard and traces of the latter's influence are evident in "Brand", it was not until after "Brand" that Ibsen came to take Kierkegaard seriously. Initially annoyed with his friend Georg Brandes for comparing Brand to Kierkegaard, Ibsen nevertheless read "Either/Or" and "Fear and Trembling". Ibsen's next play "Peer Gynt" was consciously informed by Kierkegaard.  With success, Ibsen became more confident and began to introduce more and more of his own beliefs and judgements into the drama, exploring what he termed the "drama of ideas". His next series of plays are often considered his Golden Age, when he entered the height of his power and influence, becoming the center of dramatic controversy across Europe.  Ibsen moved from Italy to Dresden, Germany, in 1868, where he spent years writing the play he regarded as his main work, "Emperor and Galilean" (1873), dramatizing the life and times of the Roman emperor Julian the Apostate. Although Ibsen himself always looked back on this play as the cornerstone of his entire works, very few shared his opinion, and his next works would be much more acclaimed. Ibsen moved to Munich in 1875 and began work on his first contemporary realist drama "The Pillars of Society", first published and performed in 1877. "A Doll's House" followed in 1879. This play is a scathing criticism of the marital roles accepted by men and women which characterized Ibsen's society.  Ibsen was already in his fifties when "A Doll’s House" was published. He himself saw his latter plays as a series. At the end of his career, he described them as “that series of dramas which began with "A Doll’s House" and which is now completed with "When We Dead Awaken"”. Furthermore, it was the reception of "A Doll’s House" which brought Ibsen international acclaim.  "Ghosts" followed in 1881, another scathing commentary on the morality of Ibsen's society, in which a widow reveals to her pastor that she had hidden the evils of her marriage for its duration. The pastor had advised her to marry her fiancé despite his philandering, and she did so in the belief that her love would reform him. But his philandering continued right up until his death, and his vices are passed on to their son in the form of syphilis. The mention of venereal disease alone was scandalous, but to show how it could poison a respectable family was considered intolerable.  In "An Enemy of the People" (1882), Ibsen went even further. In earlier plays, controversial elements were important and even pivotal components of the action, but they were on the small scale of individual households. In "An Enemy", controversy became the primary focus, and the antagonist was the entire community. One primary message of the play is that the individual, who stands alone, is more often "right" than the mass of people, who are portrayed as ignorant and sheeplike. Contemporary society's belief was that the community was a noble institution that could be trusted, a notion Ibsen challenged. In "An Enemy of the People", Ibsen chastised not only the conservatism of society, but also the liberalism of the time. He illustrated how people on both sides of the social spectrum could be equally self-serving. "An Enemy of the People" was written as a response to the people who had rejected his previous work, "Ghosts". The plot of the play is a veiled look at the way people reacted to the plot of "Ghosts". The protagonist is a physician in a vacation spot whose primary draw is a public bath. The doctor discovers that the water is contaminated by the local tannery. He expects to be acclaimed for saving the town from the nightmare of infecting visitors with disease, but instead he is declared an 'enemy of the people' by the locals, who band against him and even throw stones through his windows. The play ends with his complete ostracism. It is obvious to the reader that disaster is in store for the town as well as for the doctor.  As audiences by now expected, Ibsen's next play again attacked entrenched beliefs and assumptions; but this time, his attack was not against society's mores, but against overeager reformers and their idealism. Always an iconoclast, Ibsen saw himself as an objective observer of society, “like a lone franc tireur in the outposts”, playing a lone hand, as he put it. Ibsen, perhaps more than any of his contemporaries, relied upon immediate sources such as newspapers and second-hand report for his contact with intellectual thought. He claimed to be ignorant of books, leaving them to his wife and son, but, as Georg Brandes described, “he seemed to stand in some mysterious correspondence with the fermenting, germinating ideas of the day.  "The Wild Duck" (1884) is by many considered Ibsen's finest work, and it is certainly the most complex. It tells the story of Gregers Werle, a young man who returns to his hometown after an extended exile and is reunited with his boyhood friend Hjalmar Ekdal. Over the course of the play, the many secrets that lie behind the Ekdals' apparently happy home are revealed to Gregers, who insists on pursuing the absolute truth, or the "Summons of the Ideal". Among these truths: Gregers' father impregnated his servant Gina, then married her off to Hjalmar to legitimize the child. Another man has been disgraced and imprisoned for a crime the elder Werle committed. Furthermore, while Hjalmar spends his days working on a wholly imaginary "invention", his wife is earning the household income.  Ibsen displays masterful use of irony: despite his dogmatic insistence on truth, Gregers never says what he thinks but only insinuates, and is never understood until the play reaches its climax. Gregers hammers away at Hjalmar through innuendo and coded phrases until he realizes the truth; Gina's daughter, Hedvig, is not his child. Blinded by Gregers' insistence on absolute truth, he disavows the child. Seeing the damage he has wrought, Gregers determines to repair things, and suggests to Hedvig that she sacrifice the wild duck, her wounded pet, to prove her love for Hjalmar. Hedvig, alone among the characters, recognizes that Gregers always speaks in code, and looking for the deeper meaning in the first important statement Gregers makes which does not contain one, kills herself rather than the duck in order to prove her love for him in the ultimate act of self-sacrifice. Only too late do Hjalmar and Gregers realize that the absolute truth of the "ideal" is sometimes too much for the human heart to bear.  Late in his career, Ibsen turned to a more introspective drama that had much less to do with denunciations of society's moral values and more to do with the problems of individuals. In such later plays as "Hedda Gabler" (1890) and "The Master Builder" (1892), Ibsen explored psychological conflicts that transcended a simple rejection of current conventions. Many modern readers, who might regard anti-Victorian didacticism as dated, simplistic or hackneyed, have found these later works to be of absorbing interest for their hard-edged, objective consideration of interpersonal confrontation. "Hedda Gabler" and "A Doll’s House" are regularly cited as Ibsen's most popular and influential plays, with the title role of Hedda regarded as one of the most challenging and rewarding for an actress even in the present day.  Ibsen had completely rewritten the rules of drama with a realism which was to be adopted by Chekhov and others and which we see in the theatre to this day. From Ibsen forward, challenging assumptions and directly speaking about issues has been considered one of the factors that makes a play art rather than entertainment. His works were brought to an English-speaking audience, largely thanks to the efforts of William Archer and Edmund Gosse. These in turn had a profound influence on the young James Joyce who venerates him in his early autobiographical novel "Stephen Hero". Ibsen returned to Norway in 1891, but it was in many ways not the Norway he had left. Indeed, he had played a major role in the changes that had happened across society. Modernism was on the rise, not only in the theatre, but across public life.. Michael Meyer's translations in the 1950s were welcomed by actors and directors as playable, rather than academic. As The Times newspaper put it, "‘This, one may think, is how Ibsen might have expressed himself in English'."  Ibsen intentionally obscured his influences. However, asked later what he had read when he wrote Catiline, Ibsen replied that he had read only the Danish Norse saga-inspired Romantic tragedian Adam Oehlenschläger and Ludvig Holberg, "the Scandinavian Molière".

Critical reception.

At the time when Ibsen was writing, literature was emerging as a formidable force in 19th century society. It was still a relatively new form of popular discussion and entertainment. With the vast increase in literacy towards the end of the century, the possibilities of literature being used for subversion struck horror into the heart of the Establishment. Ibsen's plays, from "A Doll’s House" onwards, caused an uproar: not just in Norway, but throughout Europe, and even across the Atlantic in America. No other artist, apart from Richard Wagner, had such an effect internationally, inspiring almost blasphemous adoration and hysterical abuse.  After the publication of "Ghosts", he wrote: “while the storm lasted, I have made many studies and observations and I shall not hesitate to exploit them in my future writings.” Indeed, his next play "An Enemy of the People" was initially regard by the critics to be simply his response to the violent criticism which had greeted "Ghosts". Ibsen expected criticism: as he wrote to his publisher: “"Ghosts" will probably cause alarm in some circles, but it can’t be helped. If it did not, there would have been no necessity for me to have written it.”  Ibsen didn't just read the critical reaction to his plays, he actively corresponded with critics, publishers, theatre directors and newspaper editors on the subject. The interpretation of his work, both by critics and directors, concerned him greatly. He often advised directors on which actor or actress would be suitable for a particular role. [An example of this is a letter he wrote to Hans Schroder in November 1884, with detailed instructions for the production of "The Wild Duck".]  Ibsen's plays initially reached a far wider audience as read plays rather than in performance. It was 20 years, for instance, before the authorities would allow "Ghosts" to be performed in Norway. Each new play that Ibsen wrote, from 1879 onwards, had an explosive effect on intellectual circles. This was greatest for "A Doll’s House" and "Ghosts", and it did lessen with the later plays, but the translation of Ibsen's works into German, French and English during the decade following the initial publication of each play and frequent new productions as and when permission was granted, meant that Ibsen remained a topic of lively conversation throughout the latter decades of the 19th century. When "A Doll’s House" was published, it had an explosive effect: it was the centre of every conversation at every social gathering in Christiana. One hostess even wrote on the invitations to her soirée, “You are politely requested not to mention Mr Ibsen’s new play”.

Death.

On 23 May 1906, Ibsen died in his home at Arbins gade 1 in Kristiania (now Oslo) after a series of strokes in March 1900. When, on 22 May, his nurse assured a visitor that he was a little better, Ibsen spluttered his last words "On the contrary" ("Tvertimod!"). He died the following day at 2:30 pm.  Ibsen was buried in Vår Frelsers gravlund ("The Graveyard of Our Savior") in central Oslo.

Centenary.

The 100th anniversary of Ibsen's death in 2006 was commemorated with an "Ibsen year" in Norway and other countries. In 2006, the homebuilding company Selvaag also opened "Peer Gynt" Sculpture Park in Oslo, Norway, in Henrik Ibsen's honour, making it possible to follow the dramatic play "Peer Gynt" scene by scene. Will Eno's adaptation of Ibsen's "Peer Gynt", titled "Gnit", had its world premiere at the 37th Humana Festival of New American Plays in March 2013.  On 23 May 2006, The Ibsen Museum in Oslo re-opened, to the public, the house where Ibsen had spent his last eleven years, completely restored with the original interior, colours, and decor.

Legacy.

The social questions which concerned Ibsen belonged unequivocally to the 19th century. From a modern perspective, the aspects of his writing that appeal most are the psychological issues which he explored. The social issues, taken up so prominently in his own day, have become dated, as has the late-Victorian middle-class setting of his plays. The fact that, whether read and staged, they still possess a compelling power is testament to his enduring quality as a thinker and a dramatist.  On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Ibsen's death in 2006, the Norwegian government organised the Ibsen Year, which included celebrations around the world. The NRK produced a miniseries on Ibsen's childhood and youth in 2006, "An Immortal Man". Several prizes are awarded in the name of Henrik Ibsen, among them the International Ibsen Award, the Norwegian Ibsen Award and the Ibsen Centennial Commemoration Award.  Every year, since 2008, the annual "Delhi Ibsen Festival", is held in Delhi, India, organized by the Dramatic Art and Design Academy (DADA) in collaboration with The Royal Norwegian Embassy in India. It features plays by Ibsen, performed by artists from various parts of the world in varied languages and styles.  The Ibsen Society of America (ISA) was founded in 1978 at the close of the Ibsen Sesquicentennial Symposium held in New York City to mark the 150th anniversary of Henrik Ibsen's birth. Distinguished Ibsen translator and critic Rolf Fjelde, Professor of Literature at Pratt Institute and the chief organizer of the Symposium, was elected Founding President. In December 1979, the ISA was certified as a non-profit corporation under the laws of the State of New York. Its purpose is to foster through lectures, readings, performances, conferences, and publications an understanding of Ibsen's works as they are interpreted as texts and produced on stage and in film and other media. An annual newsletter "Ibsen News and Comment" is distributed to all members.

Ancestry.

Ibsen's ancestry has been a much studied subject, due to his perceived foreignness and due to the influence of his biography and family on his plays. Ibsen often made references to his family in his plays, sometimes by name, or by modelling characters after them.  The oldest documented member of the Ibsen family was ship's captain Rasmus Ibsen (1632–1703) from Stege, Denmark. His son, ship's captain Peder Ibsen became a burgher of Bergen in Norway in 1726. Henrik Ibsen had Danish, German, Norwegian and some distant Scottish ancestry. Most of his ancestors belonged to the merchant class of original Danish and German extraction, and many of his ancestors were ship's captains.  Ibsen's biographer Henrik Jæger famously wrote in 1888 that Ibsen did not have a drop of Norwegian blood in his veins, stating that "the ancestral Ibsen was a Dane". This, however, is not completely accurate; notably through his grandmother Hedevig Paus, Ibsen was descended from one of the very few families of the patrician class of original Norwegian extraction, known since the 15th century. Ibsen's ancestors had mostly lived in Norway for several generations, even though many had foreign ancestry.  The name Ibsen is originally a patronymic, meaning "son of Ib" (Ib is a Danish variant of Jacob). The patronymic became "frozen", i.e. it became a permanent family name, in the 17th century. The phenomenon of patronymics becoming frozen started in the 17th century in bourgeois families in Denmark, and the practice was only widely adopted in Norway from around 1900.

Descendants.

From his marriage with Suzannah Thoresen, Ibsen had one son, lawyer and government minister Sigurd Ibsen. Sigurd Ibsen married Bergljot Bjørnson, the daughter of Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson. Their son was Tancred Ibsen, who became a film director and was married to Lillebil Ibsen; their only child was diplomat Tancred Ibsen, Jr. Sigurd Ibsen's daughter, Irene Ibsen, married Josias Bille, a member of the Danish ancient noble Bille family; their son was Danish actor Joen Bille.

Honours.

Ibsen was decorated Knight in 1873, Commander in 1892, and with the Grand Cross of the Order of St. Olav in 1893. He received the Grand Cross of the Danish Order of the Dannebrog, and the Grand Cross of the Swedish Order of the Polar Star, and was Knight, First Class of the Order of Vasa.  Well known stage directors in Austria and Germany as Theodor Lobe (1833–1905), Paul Barnay (1884–1960), Max Burckhard (1854–1912), Otto Brahm (1956–1912), Carl Heine (1861–1927), Paul Albert Glaeser-Wilken (1874–1942), Victor Barnowsky (1875–1952), Eugen Robert (1877–1944), Leopold Jessner (1878–1945), Ludwig Barnay (1884–1960), Alfred Rotter (1886–1933), Fritz Rotter (1888–1939), (1900–1973) and Peter Zadek (1926–2009) performed the work of Ibsen.  In 1995, the asteroid 5696 Ibsen was named in his memory.

Works.

Plays.

Plays entirely or partly in verse are marked.

English translations.

The authoritative translation in the English language for Ibsen remains the 1928 ten-volume version of the "Complete Works of Henrik Ibsen" from Oxford University Press. Many other translations of individual plays by Ibsen have appeared since 1928 though none have purported to be a new version of the complete works of Ibsen.

Henrik Johan Ibsen (; ; 20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a Norwegian playwright and theatre director. As one of the founders of modernism in theatre, Ibsen is often referred to as "the father of realism" and one of the most influential playwrights of his time. His major works include "Brand", "Peer Gynt", "An Enemy of the People", "Emperor and Galilean", "A Doll's House", "Hedda Gabler", "Ghosts", "The Wild Duck", "When We Dead Awaken", "Rosmersholm", and "The Master Builder". He is the most frequently performed dramatist in the world after Shakespeare, and "A Doll's House" was the world's most performed play in 2006.

亨里克·约翰·易卜生(,1828年-3月20日-1906年-5月23日),生于挪威希恩,是一位影响深远的挪威剧作家,被认为是现代现实主义戏剧的创始人。


Personal life.

Catherine Ashton was born at Upholland, Lancashire, on 20 March 1956. She comes from a working-class family, with a background in coal mining.  She attended Upholland Grammar School in Billinge Higher End, Lancashire, then Wigan Mining and Technical College, Wigan. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Sociology in 1977 from Bedford College, London (now part of Royal Holloway, University of London). She was the first person in her family to attend university.  Ashton lives in St Albans with her husband, Peter Kellner, the former president of the online polling organisation, YouGov. Ashton and Kellner have been married since 1988. Ashton has two children and three stepchildren.

Career.

United Kingdom.

Between 1977 and 1983, Ashton worked for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) as an administrator and in 1982 was elected as its national treasurer and subsequently as one of its vice-chairs. From 1979 to 1981 she was business manager of the Coverdale Organisation, a management consultancy.  As of 1983 she worked for the Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work. From 1983 to 1989 she was director of Business in the Community, working with business to tackle inequality, and she established the Employers' Forum on Disability, Opportunity Now, and the Windsor Fellowship. For most of the 1990s, she was a freelance policy adviser. She chaired the Health Authority in Hertfordshire from 1998 to 2001 and she became a vice-president of the National Council for One-Parent Families.  She was created a Labour Life Peer as "Baroness Ashton of Upholland" in 1999, under Prime Minister Tony Blair. In June 2001 she was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department for Education and Skills. In 2002 she became Minister responsible for Sure Start in the same department, and in September 2004 she was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary in the Department for Constitutional Affairs, with responsibilities including the National Archives and the Public Guardianship Office. Ashton was sworn of the Privy Council in 2006, and she became Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the new Ministry of Justice in May 2007.  In 2005 she was voted "Minister of the Year" by "The House Magazine" and "Peer of the Year" by Channel 4. In 2006 she won the "Politician of the Year" award at the annual Stonewall Awards, made to those who had a positive impact on the lives of British LGBT people.  On 28 June 2007, Prime Minister Gordon Brown appointed Ashton to HM Cabinet as Leader of the House of Lords and Lord President of the Council. As Government Leader in the House of Lords, she was responsible for steering the Lisbon Treaty through the Upper House.

European Union.

On 3 October 2008, Ashton was nominated by the UK to replace Peter Mandelson as the European Commissioner for Trade. Because European Commissioners may not engage in any other occupation during their term of office, whether gainful or not, she used the procedural device previously adopted in 1984 by Lord Cockfield and took a leave of absence from the House of Lords on 14 October 2008, retaining her peerage but not her seat.  During her term, Ashton represented the EU in negotiations related to a long-running dispute over beef with the United States (May 2009), led the EU delegation in an agreement with South Korea that removed virtually all tariffs between the two economies (October 2009) and represented the EU in ending a long-running dispute over banana imports, principally involving Latin America and the EU.

Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.

On 19 November 2009, Ashton was appointed the EU's first High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security policy. Her appointment was agreed at a summit by 27 European Union leaders in Brussels. Having initially pushed for former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to become President of the European Council, Gordon Brown eventually relented on the condition that the post of High Representative be awarded to a Briton.  Ashton's relative obscurity prior to her appointment prompted comment in the media. "The Guardian" newspaper reported that her appointment as High Representative had received a "cautious welcome... from international relations experts". "The Economist" described her as being a virtual unknown with paltry political experience, having no foreign-policy background and never having been elected to anything. The magazine credited her, however, with piloting the Lisbon Treaty through the House of Lords, handling the European Commission's Trade Portfolio without disagreement with her colleagues, and being suited to consensus-building.  Critics predicted she would be out of her depth. Nile Gardiner of the Heritage Foundation, who is on record as opposed to a European Union role in foreign and security policy on principle, wrote in the "Daily Telegraph" "This may well be the most ridiculous appointment in EU history". Daniel Hannan, a British Conservative MEP, complained that she had "no background in trade issues at a time when the EU is engaged in critical negotiations with Canada, Korea and the WTO". "The Guardian" quoted an anonymous Whitehall source as commenting "Cathy just got lucky...The appointment of her and Herman Van Rompuy [as European Council president] was a complete disgrace. They are no more than garden gnomes."  By contrast, former Home Secretary Charles Clarke said: "I have seen Cathy in action. I have great respect for her. She is excellent at building good relations with people and a good negotiator". Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, a human-rights pressure group, said: "people underestimate Cathy at their peril. She is not a great big bruiser. She is a persuader and a charmer. That is the secret of her success."  After a confirmation hearing by the Trade Committee of the European Parliament, Ashton was approved by the Parliament on 22 October 2008 by 538 to 40 votes, with 63 abstentions. She took office on 1 December 2009 for a five-year-term.  She was appointed Dame Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George (GCMG) in the 2015 New Year Honours List for services to the European Common Foreign and Security Policy.

Notable events of her term as High Representative.

Notable events of her term included:

Serbia-Kosovo.

In April 2013, after two years of negotiations, the governments of Serbia and Kosovo reached agreement to normalise their relations. Although Serbia did not formally recognise Kosovo as an independent state, it did "in effect – concede that the government in Pristina has legal authority over the whole territory, including Serb-majority areas of northern Kosovo". In return, Kosovo agreed to grant a degree of autonomy to four Serb-majority areas. The agreement, which among other things removed obstacles to Serbia and Kosovo joining the European Union, followed Ashton's mediation of 10 rounds of talks between Serbia's Prime Minister, Ivica Dacic, and Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci. A cross-party committee of the U.S. House of Representatives nominated Ashton and her fellow negotiators Dacic and Thaci for the Nobel Peace Prize. A similar nomination came from the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament

Iran.

After the November 2013 negotiation of an interim agreement with Iran over its nuclear programme, the "Financial Times" wrote that Ashton was "no longer the diplomatic dilettante". A senior French diplomat was quoted as saying, "I tip my hat to her... She truly played a decisive role". The report continued that, after initially insisting on negotiating only with other foreign ministers, by the latter stages of the negotiations the Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif "now... wanted to deal only with Lady Ashton". Said a western diplomat, "That the others agreed to this was significant. For China and Russia to be outside while she was in the room negotiating details was quite remarkable".

Ukraine.

In December 2013 Ashton visited Kiev. She said she was impressed by the "determination of Ukrainians demonstrating for the European perspective of their country" and observed "with sadness that police used force to remove peaceful people from the center of Kiev... Dialogue with political forces and society and the use of arguments is always better than the argument of force". Subsequently, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin criticised Ashton's categorisation of the anti-government protests in Kiev as peaceful in nature, pointing to the death of a number of police officers.  At the beginning of March a recording of a conversation between Ashton and the Estonian foreign minister Urmas Paet was released. In the call, Paet said he had been told by a woman doctor named Olga that snipers responsible for killing police and civilians in Kiev last month were protest movement provocateurs rather than supporters of then-president Viktor Yanukovych. Ashton responds: "I didn't know... Gosh." "So there is a stronger and stronger understanding that behind snipers it was not Yanukovych, it was somebody from the new coalition", Paet says. Ashton replies: "I think we do want to investigate. I didn't pick that up, that's interesting. Gosh", she says. The Estonian foreign ministry confirmed the accuracy of the leak but clarified that "Foreign Minister Paet was giving an overview of what he had heard in Kiev and expressed concern over the situation on the ground. We reject the claim that Paet was giving an assessment of the opposition's involvement in the violence." The woman doctor, Dr Olga Bogomolets, said in an interview reported by Paul Waldie of "The Globe and Mail" that, in her conversation with the Estonian minister, "she did not indicate that protesters used snipers. She simply relayed to the Estonian minister what she saw that day – protesters shot in the head and heart. 'What I saw were people who were killed by snipers and only on [protesters'] side.'"  On 28 March 2014 Ashton issued a news release condemning violence by members of the Ukrainian nationalist political party Right Sector, stating, "I strongly condemn the pressure by activists of the Right Sector who have surrounded the building of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. Such an intimidation of the parliament is against... democratic principles and [the] rule of law. I call on the Right Sector and other parties in Ukraine to refrain from the use or threat of violence. They need to hand over any unauthorised arms to the authorities immediately."

Russia.

President Putin signed the new treason law on 12 November 2012. Ashton expressed concern at the new law "potentially penalizing contacts with foreign nationals with up to 20 years in prison" and reducing "the burden of proof for charges of treason and espionage". The United Nations Committee Against Torture stated that the new law could prohibit sharing information on the human rights situation in Russia with the United Nations human rights organs. According to Ashton, the March 2013 inspection wave in Russia seemed aimed at "undermining civil society activities".

Assessments.

Early phase as EU High Representative.

Ashton was questioned by Members of the European Parliament in 2009 about her role as national treasurer in the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the 1980s, amid claims by its opponents that it may have had financial links to the Soviet Union. Ashton responded that she had not taken any "direct money from communist countries". Much of the organisation's funds had been "collected in buckets" at marches and demonstrations, she said, adding that she was the first to order an audit of CND's finances. Her spokesman said: "She never visited the Soviet Union, she had no contacts with the Soviet Union and she never accepted money from Soviet sources... She has never been a member of the Communist Party".  In February 2010, Ashton was criticised within the EU community for not visiting Haiti in the wake of the 2010 Haiti earthquake. A number of defence ministers reportedly also complained that she had not attended a European Defence Summit in Majorca. More broadly, senior officials within her team were said to complain that she spoke only in "generalities". A rumour that she switched off her phone after 8 pm every day was greeted by Ashton with ridicule.  In February 2011, Ashton received the lowest grade in a survey rating the performance of European Commissioners. The survey, carried out by lobbying and PR company Burson-Marsteller, asked 324 Brussels policy-makers to rate the European Commissioners with a grade of A to E (A being the highest). Ashton scored an E for her performance, the only Commissioner to receive a grade below D.  In March 2012, Ashton was criticised by Israeli politicians for comparing the shooting of Jewish children in Toulouse with the situation in Gaza. Ashton told Palestinian youths at a UNRWA event, "When we think of what happened in Toulouse today, when we remember what happened in Norway a year ago, when we know what is happening in Syria, when we see what is happening in Gaza and Sderot and in different parts of the world – we remember young people and children who lose their lives." After she was quoted in the press as not having mentioned the Israeli city of Sderot, Israeli politicians denounced her for equating the murder of three children and a rabbi in the shooting attack with the situation in Gaza. Her spokesman stated that her remark had been "grossly distorted" and that she had also referenced Israeli victims in Sderot, but this fact had been omitted from the original transcript. In counterpoint to earlier criticism of Ashton for not travelling enough, in September 2012 the "Daily Telegraph" criticised her for not being present in Brussels for enough European Commission meetings, reporting that Ashton had missed 21 out of 32 regular weekly meetings held so far that year. To the paper's complaint that Ashton's absences were "leaving Britain without a voice" at such meetings, European diplomatic officials said that, under EU treaties, commissioners serve as representatives not of individual member countries but of the European interest. Ashton's staff also pointed to her personal involvement in nuclear negotiations with Iran as among the international responsibilities that had kept her away from Commission meetings.  The Polish Minister for European and Economic Affairs, Mikolaj Dowgielewicz, stated in 2011 that criticism of Ashton was "a lot of hot air" and that "she has an impossible job to do and she is doing it well. At the end of her time in office, people will be more positive about what she has done. She will leave a real legacy."  Ashton was said in February 2010 to be angry over what she perceived as the "latent sexism" among some of her European peers that underpinned some of the criticisms aimed at her. She told the press that her work was sometimes hampered by the limited resources provided to her. She is not, for example, provided with her own aeroplane: something taken for granted by U.S. Secretaries of State.

Later phase as EU High Representative.

The tone of public comment on Ashton's performance in office was subsequently to be influenced especially by her contributions to negotiations over Kosovo and Iran. In October 2013, "Der Spiegel" wrote of her:But now the 57-year-old baroness is suddenly at the center of world diplomacy. And whenever she is mentioned, she earns praise for her hard-nosed negotiating skills, her stamina and her diplomatic talents. It is said that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has much faith in her. "She is discrete and perceptive, but also tenacious. That makes her an ideal negotiator", says Alexander Graf Lamsdorff, the head of Germany's business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP) in the European Parliament and a member of its Committee on Foreign Affairs.  One of the critics of Ashton's appointment came to concede her effectiveness in office. In September 2013, Peter Oborne, the chief political commentator of the "Daily Telegraph", wrote:Well, let’s admit we were all completely wrong. It is now obvious that Catherine Ashton has been a success. In her unobtrusive but determined way, she can boast real achievement. Last year a peace deal was struck between Serbia and Kosovo. Nobody had thought it possible. It was a massive step towards healing ancient hatreds and building economic prosperity. It was brokered by Baroness Ashton... I have never met Baroness Ashton but I guess that one of her secrets is that she keeps her head down, does not flaunt her ego, and allows others to take the credit. It takes little imagination to envisage how a male politician from any of the main parties would have exploited the Kosovo peace-deal, or the Morsi visit. She just kept her head down and quietly got on with her job.  In July 2014, as discussions took place on the selection of Ashton's successor, Paul Taylor of Reuters wrote in "The New York Times", as part of a larger critique of the political nature of appointments to the European Commission:While Ms. Ashton had some successes, brokering a first accord between Serbia and Kosovo and leading negotiations for an interim nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, critics say she has too often been missing in action closer to home.  Reflecting on her record, in July 2014, Adam Boulton in the UK's Sunday Times concluded:

Other activities.

Catherine Ashton is a member of the Global Leadership Foundation, an organization that works to support democratic leadership, prevent and resolve conflict through mediation and promote good governance in the form of democratic institutions, open markets, human rights and the rule of law. It does so by making available, discreetly and in confidence, the experience of former leaders to today's national leaders. It is a not-for-profit organization composed of former heads of government, senior governmental and international organization officials who work closely with heads of government on governance-related issues of concern to them.

Honours and awards.

Awards.

In February 2013, Ashton was assessed as one of the 100 most powerful women in the United Kingdom by "Woman's Hour" on BBC Radio 4.  She was awarded an honorary degree from the University of East London in 2005.

Catherine Margaret Ashton, Baroness Ashton of Upholland, (born 20 March 1956 at Upholland, Lancashire) is a British Labour politician who served as the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and First Vice President of the European Commission in the Barroso Commission from 2009 to 2014.

-{zh:艾嘉莲,艾霍兰的艾嘉莲女男爵;zh-hans:凯瑟琳·玛格丽特·阿什顿,艾霍兰的阿什顿女男爵;zh-hk:艾嘉莲,艾霍兰的艾嘉莲女男爵;zh-tw:凯瑟琳·玛格丽特·艾希顿,艾霍兰的艾希顿女男爵;}-,GCMG,PC(英语:Catherine Margaret Ashton, Baroness Ashton of Upholland,1956年-3月20日),-{zh:中国大陆译作阿什顿女男爵,台湾译作艾希顿女男爵;zh-hans:台湾译作艾希顿女男爵,香港译作艾嘉莲女男爵;zh-hk:中国大陆译作艾什顿女男爵,台湾译作艾希顿女男爵;zh-tw:中国大陆译作阿什顿女男爵,香港译作艾嘉莲女男爵,译有译作卡特琳娜∙阿什顿}-,英国工党女性政治家及社会工作者,2009年12月1日至2014年10月31日出任首任欧盟外交和安全政策高级代表,任内曾于2010年2月9日起兼任欧盟委员会第一副主席。2017年1月,接替Richard Lambert成为华威大学首位女性校监。


Plot.

The film opens with archival footage of police raiding gay bars and arresting patrons during the 1950s and 1960s, followed by Dianne Feinstein's November 27, 1978 announcement to the press that Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone had been assassinated. Milk is seen recording his will throughout the film, nine days (November 18, 1978) before the assassinations. The film then flashes back to New York City in 1970, the eve of Milk's 40th birthday and his first meeting with his much younger lover, Scott Smith.  Dissatisfied with his life and in need of a change, Milk and Smith decide to move to San Francisco in the hope of finding larger acceptance of their relationship. They open Castro Camera in the heart of Eureka Valley, a working-class neighborhood in the process of evolving into a predominantly gay neighborhood known as The Castro. Frustrated by the opposition they encounter in the once Irish-Catholic neighborhood, Milk utilizes his background as a businessman to become a gay activist, eventually becoming a mentor for Cleve Jones. Early on, Smith serves as Milk's campaign manager, but he grows frustrated with Milk's devotion to politics, and he leaves him. Milk later meets Jack Lira, a sweet-natured but unbalanced young man. As with Smith, Lira cannot tolerate Milk's devotion to political activism, and eventually hangs himself. Milk clashes with the local gay "establishment" which he feels to be too cautious and risk-averse.  After two unsuccessful political campaigns in 1973 and 1975 to become a city supervisor and a third in 1976 for the California State Assembly, Milk finally wins a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977 for District 5. His victory makes him the first openly gay man to be voted into major public office in California and the third openly homosexual politician in the entire US. Milk subsequently meets fellow Supervisor Dan White, a Vietnam veteran and former police officer and firefighter. White, who is politically and socially conservative, has a difficult relationship with Milk, and develops a growing resentment for Milk when he opposes projects that White proposes.  Milk and White forge a complex working relationship. Milk is invited to, and attends, the christening of White's first child, and White asks for Milk's assistance in preventing a psychiatric hospital from opening in White's district, possibly in exchange for White's support of Milk's citywide gay rights ordinance. When Milk fails to support White because of the negative effect it will have on troubled youth, White feels betrayed, and ultimately becomes the sole vote against the gay rights ordinance. Milk also launches an effort to defeat Proposition 6, an initiative on the California state ballot in November 1978. Sponsored by John Briggs, a conservative state senator from Orange County, Proposition 6 seeks to ban gays and lesbians (in addition to anyone who supports them) from working in California's public schools. It is also part of a nationwide conservative movement that starts with the successful campaign headed by Anita Bryant and her organization "Save Our Children" in Dade County, Florida to repeal a local gay rights ordinance.  On November 7, 1978, after working tirelessly against Proposition 6, Milk and his supporters rejoice in the wake of its defeat. A desperate White favors a supervisor pay raise, but does not get much support, and shortly after supporting the proposition, resigns from the Board. He later changes his mind and asks to be reinstated. Mayor Moscone denies his request, after being lobbied by Milk.  On the morning of November 27, 1978, White enters City Hall through a basement window to conceal a gun from metal detectors. He requests another meeting with Moscone, who rebuffs his request for appointment to his former seat. Enraged, White shoots Moscone in his office and then goes to meet Milk, where he guns him down, with the fatal bullet delivered execution-style. The film suggests that Milk believed that White might be a closeted gay man.  The last scene is a candlelight vigil held by thousands for Milk and Moscone throughout the streets of the city. Pictures of the actual people depicted in the film, and brief summaries of their lives follow.

Cast.

A number of Milk's associates, including speechwriter Frank M. Robinson, Teamster Allan Baird and school teacher-turned-politician Tom Ammiano portrayed themselves. Additionally, Carol Ruth Silver, who served with Milk on the Board of Supervisors, plays a small role as Thelma. Cleve Jones also has a small role as Don Amador. Anne Kronenberg makes an appearance as a stenographer, and Daniel Nicoletta appears as Carl Carlson.

Production.

In early 1991, Oliver Stone was planning to produce, but not direct, a film on Milk's life; he wrote a script for the film, called "The Mayor of Castro Street". In July 1992, director Gus Van Sant was signed with Warner Bros. to direct the biopic with actor Robin Williams in the lead role. By April 1993, Van Sant parted ways with the studio, citing creative differences. Other actors considered for Harvey Milk at the time included Richard Gere, Daniel Day-Lewis, Al Pacino, and James Woods.  In April 2007, the director sought to direct the biopic based on a script by Dustin Lance Black, while at the same time, director Bryan Singer was developing "The Mayor of Castro Street", which had been in development hell. By the following September, Sean Penn was attached to play Harvey Milk and Matt Damon was attached to play Milk's assassin, Dan White. Damon pulled out later in September due to scheduling conflicts. By November, Focus Features moved forward with Van Sant's production, "Milk", while Singer's project ran into trouble with the writers' strike. In December 2007, actors Josh Brolin, Emile Hirsch, Alison Pill, and James Franco joined "Milk", with Brolin replacing Damon as Dan White. "Milk" began filming on location in San Francisco in January 2008.  The production design and costume design crew for the film researched the history of the city's gay community in the archives of the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco, where they spent several weeks reviewing photographs, film and video, newspapers, historic textiles and ephemera, as well as the personal belongings of Harvey Milk, which were donated to the institution by the estate of Scott Smith. The crew also talked to people who knew Milk to shape their approach to the era.  The filmmakers also revisited the location of Milk's camera shop on Castro Street and dressed the street to match the film's 1970s setting. The camera shop, which had become a gift shop, was bought out by the filmmakers for a couple of months to use in production. Production on Castro Street also revitalized the Castro Theatre, whose facade was repainted and whose neon marquee was redone. Filming also took place at the San Francisco City Hall, while White's office, where Milk was assassinated, was recreated elsewhere due to the city hall's offices having become more modern. Filmmakers also intended to show a view of the San Francisco Opera House from the redesign of White's office. Filming finished March 2008.  The film offers special thanks to "The Times of Harvey Milk" for "its enormous contribution to the making of this movie" and its producer, Rob Epstein.

Soundtrack.

The music of the movie is composed by Danny Elfman under the label Decca Records.  Songs:  Film score:

Release.

In the month leading up to "Milk's" release, Focus Features kept the film out of all film festivals and restricted media screenings, seeking to briefly avoid word-of-mouth and the partisanship it could generate. "Milk" premiered in San Francisco on October 28, 2008, initiating a marketing dilemma that Focus Features struggled to face due to the film's subject matter. The studio hoped to stay above the politics of the ongoing general elections, especially California's anti-gay-marriage Proposition 8, which parallels the anti-gay rights Proposition 6 that is explored in the film.  Regardless, many reviewers and pundits have noted that the highly acclaimed film has taken on a new significance after the successful passage of Proposition 8 as a galvanizing point of honoring a major gay political and historical figure who would have strongly opposed the measure. Gay activists called on Focus Features to pull the film from the Cinemark Theatres chain as part of a series of boycotts because Cinemark's chief executive, Alan Stock, donated $9,999 to the Yes on 8 campaign.

Box office.

In the United States, "Milk" was given a limited release on November 26, 2008, and expanded to additional theaters each of the following weekends to a maximum of 882 screens. The film made the top 10 box office list on its opening weekend with earnings of $1.4 million in 36 theaters. At the box office, the film more than doubled its production cost of $20 million.

Home media.

"Milk" was released on DVD and Blu-ray on March 10, 2009. The DVD comes with deleted scenes and three featurettes: "Remembering Harvey", "Hollywood Comes to San Francisco", and "Marching for Equality".  As of August 2009, the DVD release of the film has sold an estimated 600,413 units, resulting in $11.3 million in revenue.

Critical reception.

On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 93% based on 242 reviews, with an average rating of 8/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Anchored by Sean Penn's powerhouse performance, "Milk" is a triumphant account of America's first openly gay man elected to public office." At Metacritic, which assigns a rating to reviews, the film has an average score of 84 out of 100, based on 39 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".  Todd McCarthy of "Variety" called the film "adroitly and tenderly observed", "smartly handled", and "most notable for the surprising and entirely winning performance by Sean Penn." He added, "while "Milk" is unquestionably marked by many mandatory scenes... the quality of the writing, acting and directing generally invests them with the feel of real life and credible personal interchange, rather than of scripted stops along the way from aspiration to triumph to tragedy. And on a project whose greatest danger lay in its potential to come across as agenda-driven agitprop, the filmmakers have crucially infused the story with qualities in very short supply today – gentleness and a humane embrace of all its characters."  Kirk Honeycutt of "The Hollywood Reporter" said the film "transcends any single genre as a very human document that touches first and foremost on the need to give people hope" and added it "is superbly crafted, covering huge amounts of time, people and the zeitgeist without a moment of lapsed energy or inattention to detail... Black's screenplay is based solely on his own original research and interviews, and it shows: The film is richly flavored with anecdotal incidents and details. "Milk" surfaces in a season filled with movies based on real lives, but this is the first one that inspires a sense of intimacy with its subjects."  A. O. Scott of "The New York Times" called "Milk", "A Marvel", and wrote the film "is a fascinating, multi-layered history lesson. In its scale and visual variety it feels almost like a calmed-down Oliver Stone movie, stripped of hyperbole and Oedipal melodrama. But it is also a film that like Mr. Van Sant's other recent work – and also, curiously, like David Fincher's "Zodiac", another San Francisco-based tale of the 1970s – respects the limits of psychological and sociological explanation."  "Christianity Today", a major Evangelical Christian periodical, gave the film a positive response. It stated that ""Milk" achieves what it sets out to do, telling an inspiring tale of one man's quest to legitimize his identity, to give hope to his community. I'm not sure how well it'll play outside of big cities, or if it will sway any opinions on hot-button political issues, but it gives a valiant, empathetic go of it." It also stated that the portrayal of Dan White was very fair and humanized and portrayed as more of a tragically flawed character, rather than a "typical 'crazy Christian villain' stereotype".  In contrast, John Podhoretz of the conservative magazine "Weekly Standard" blasted the portrayal of Harvey Milk, saying that it treated the "smart, aggressive, purposefully offensive, press-savvy" activist like a "teddy bear". Podhoretz also argued that the film glosses over Milk's polyamorous relationships; he opined that this contrasts Milk with present-day gay rights activists fighting over monogamous same-sex marriage. Podhoretz mentioned as well that the film concentrates on Milk's opposition to the Briggs Initiative while ignoring that both Governor Ronald Reagan and President Jimmy Carter had made more public statements against it.  Screenwriter and journalist Richard David Boyle, who described himself as a former political ally of Milk's, stated that the film made a creditable effort at recreating the era. He also wrote that Penn captured Milk's "smile and humanity", and his sense of humor about his homosexuality. Boyle reserved criticism for what he felt was the film's inability to tell the whole story of Milk's election and demise.  Luke Davies of "The Monthly" applauded the film for recreating "the atmosphere, the sense of hope and battle; even the sound design, bustling with street noise, adds much vibrancy to the tale", but voiced criticisms in regard to the message of the film, stating "while the film is a political narrative in a grand historical sense, the murder of Milk is neither a political assassination nor an act of homophobic rage. Rather, it is an act of revenge for perceived wrongs and public humiliation," Davies continues to postulate that "It seems as likely that Milk would have been murdered were he heterosexual. So the film can't be the heroic tale of a political martyr it needs to be in order to hold us and take our breath away. It's a simpler story, about a man who fought an extraordinary political fight and who was killed, arbitrarily and unnecessarily." Although Davies found Penn's portrayal of Milk moving, he adds that "on a minor but troubling note, there are times when Penn's version of 'gay' acting veers dangerously close to a twee version of his childlike (read:'mentally retarded') acting in "I Am Sam"." All his criticisms aside, Davies concludes that "the heart of the film – and while it is not perfect, it is uplifting – lies in Penn's portrayal of Milk's generosity of spirit.  "The Advocate", while supporting the film in general, criticized the choice of Penn given the actor's support for the Cuban government despite the country's anti-gay rights record. Human Rights Foundation president Thor Halvorssen said in the article "that Sean Penn would be honored by anyone, let alone the gay community, for having stood by a dictator that put gays into concentration camps is mind-boggling." "Los Angeles Times" film critic Patrick Goldstein commented in response to the controversy, "I'm not holding my breath that anyone will be holding Penn's feet to the fire."

Top ten lists.

The film appeared on many critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2008. Movie City News shows that the film appeared in 131 different top ten lists, out of 286 different critics lists surveyed, the 4th most mentions on a top ten list of the films released in 2008.

Samoa ban.

In late March 2009, Samoa's Censorship Board banned the film from distribution, without giving a reason. Samoan human rights activist Ken Moala disputed the ban, commenting that "It's really harmless, I don't know how it would affect Samoan lifestyle. It is totally different and not applicable to here, it is pretty tame really." The Pacific Freedom Forum issued a press release stating that "Samoa is the only nation worldwide where censors have specifically banned the multi-Academy Award winning film", limiting Samoans to smuggled or pirated versions. American Samoan Monica Miller, the Forum's co-chair, stated, "Observers are left to wonder at the censorship standards being applied in a country where fa'afafine have a well established and respected role." Fa'afafine are biologically men raised to assume female gender roles, making them a third gender well accepted in Samoan society. The Fa'afafine Association also criticised the ban, describing it as a "reject[ion of] the idea of homosexuality".  On April 30, Principal Censor Leiataua Niuapu released the reason for the ban, saying the film had been deemed "inappropriate and contradictory to Christian beliefs and Samoan culture": "In the movie itself it is trying to promote the human rights of gays. Some of the scenes are very inappropriate in regard to some of the sex in the film itself, it's very contrary to the way of life here in Samoa." Samoan society is, in the words of the BBC, "deeply conservative and devoutly Christian".

Accolades.

"Milk" had received accolades from several film critics organizations.

Milk is a 2008 American biographical film based on the life of gay rights activist and politician Harvey Milk, who was the first openly gay person to be elected to public office in California, as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Directed by Gus Van Sant and written by Dustin Lance Black, the film stars Sean Penn as Milk and Josh Brolin as Dan White, a city supervisor, and Victor Garber as San Francisco Mayor George Moscone.

是一部2008年由葛斯·范·桑导演的美国人物传记电影。电影基于美国政治家哈维·米尔克的真实故事改编,他是美国同性恋运动人士,也是美国公开同性恋身份参加政坛选举的第一人。电影在米尔克被刺杀后30周年的前一天2008年11月26日在美国上映。


Geography.

Source.

The Dadu River originates, in name, in Danba and ends in Leshan where it meets the Min River. The true source of Dadu, and thus the entire Min River system, however, lies in Qinghai Province in the eastern Tibetan Plateau. In this region there are multiple headwaters of the Dadu with nearly identical lengths that have resulted in competing claims as the true source of the Dadu. In 2013, the China Academy of Sciences announced they had located the geographic source of the Dadu in eastern Darlag County, Qinghai (). These headwaters () are a tributary of the Markog (), one of the two main upper stems of the Dadu along with the Darkog (). Traditionally, the source of the Dadu was considered to be in the Golog Mountains in Jigzhi County at the head of the Markog, but this source was found to be a few metres shorter than the true source. Similarly, the source of the Darkog in southern Darlag County is a mere shorter than the Ma'er Qu source. From the Dadu River's true source in Qinghai to the Min River's confluence with the Yangtze in Yibin, the length of the entire Min-Dadu River system is.

Course.

The Dokog River in the west and the Markog River in the east both flow southeasterly from the Bayan Har Mountains in Qinghai and into Sichuan Province. The two stems meet in Aba Prefecture, and continue south as the Dajin Chuan (). Here, the river flows between the Daxue Mountains to the west and the Qionglai Mountains to the east. In Danba County, the Dajin Chuan meets the Xioajin Chuan () and together become the Dadu River in name. The Dadu continues south through Luding until it turns east at Shimian. East of Hanyuan, the Dadu enters the Dadu River Canyon () before reaching the lowlands of the Sichuan Basin just below Mount Emei.  The Dadu River receives the Qingyu River tributary and meets the Min at Leshan. At the confluence of the Dadu with the Min, the Dadu possesses both greater water volume flow and a further source so it is considered the true course of the Min River system. From the confluence of the two rivers, the Min continues for another before meeting the Yangtze at Yibin.

History.

The Dadu River marks the transition area between traditional Tibet to the west and historic China to the east. For this reason, it has long been considered a frontier region and has hosted many conflicts. For Tibetans, the Dadu is part of the historical province of Kham. In the Chinese tradition, the Dadu forms the westernmost part of Sichuanese culture. Kangding, a historical trading post between Tibet and China, is located in the Dadu River basin.  Upper Dadu River Basin traditionally consists of 18 rGyalrong Principalities, whose language, rGyalrongic, is a distinct branch in the Tibeto-Burman language family.  Completed in 803 CE, the Leshan Giant Buddha is a large statue carved into the rock at the confluence of the Dadu and Min Rivers. The Buddha is a popular tourist attraction today.  The Kangding Louding earthquake of 1786 caused a landslide dam on the Dadu. Ten days later, on June 10 1786, the dam broke and the resulting flood extended downstream and killed 100,000 people. It is the second-deadliest landslide disaster on record.  In the 20th century CE, the Dadu became famous for its Luding Bridge, a historically important bridge crossed by the Chinese Red Army while retreating from the Kuomintang troops during the Long March.

Dams.

The Dadu is being heavily developed, primarily for hydroelectric power. As of March 2014, a total of 26 dams are completed, under construction or planned for the river. Those dams are listed below from downstream to upstream.

The Dadu River (), known in Tibetan as the Gyelmo Ngul Chu, is a major river located primarily in Sichuan province, southwestern China. The Dadu flows from the eastern Tibetan Plateau into the Sichuan Basin where it joins with the Min River, a tributary of the Yangtze River. Measured from its geographic source, the Dadu is actually longer than the Min and thus forms the main stem of the Min River system.

大渡河即金川(),古称沫水、涐水、北江、戢水、大渡水、蒙水、泸水、泸河、阳、阳山江、羊山江、中镇河、鱼通河、铜河,是岷江的最大支流,位于中华人民共和国四川省中西部,发源于青海省玉树藏族自治州境内巴颜喀拉山南麓,向南入四川省分别流经阿坝藏族羌族自治州、甘孜藏族自治州、雅安市、凉山彝族自治州、乐山市。


Gameplay.

"One" is a romance visual novel in which the player assumes the role of Kōhei Orihara. Much of its gameplay is spent on reading the story's narrative and dialogue. "One" follows a branching plot line with multiple endings, and depending on the decisions that the player makes during the game, the plot will progress in a specific direction.  There are six main plot lines that the player will have the chance to experience, one for each of the heroines in the story. Throughout gameplay, the player is given multiple options to choose from, and text progression pauses at these points until a choice is made. To view all plot lines in their entirety, the player will have to replay the game multiple times and choose different choices to further the plot to an alternate direction. In the adult versions of the game, there are scenes with sexual CGs depicting Kōhei and a given heroine having sex. Later, ports of the game were released without the erotic content.

Plot.

Setting.

The main part "One"s story takes place at a Japanese high school, though little is shown except for Kōhei's classroom, the cafeteria, and a little of the surrounding area. The main school building is three-stories, and the roof is accessible, albeit with a sign on the roof's access door saying "No Entry", but the door is never locked regardless. Adjacent to the main building is another which houses club rooms. The school borders a forest on one side with a chain link fence. Beyond the forest is a park with a fountain and a flight of stairs on a hill. Other than the school, the shopping district in town and the usual path Kōhei takes to school are shown, but otherwise the only other place depicted is Kōhei's two-story house.

Main characters.

Kōhei Orihara is a young man in high school living a normal life. He tends to tease the girls he knows, especially his childhood friend Mizuka Nagamori, but deep down he is generally nice to girls. Mizuka usually takes good care of him, and worries about Kōhei, wondering if he could suddenly get a girlfriend. She is constantly sighing, being made to go along with Kōhei's meaningless jokes. Kōhei meets a transfer student named Rumi Nanase early in the story whose goal is to become a "true maiden" and to that end, she behaves maidenly toward those around her, but she shows her true character just to Kōhei, who leaves a terrible first impression. Kōhei gets to know a quiet classmate named Akane Satomura who does not readily open her heart up to those around her, and refuses any help Kōhei may offer.  Kōhei also meets a blind upperclassman named Misaki Kawana who has a sociable personality where she can be unreserved with anyone. A mute underclassman girl named Mio Kouzuki meets Kōhei one day and uses a sketchbook to carry on written conversations. She belongs to the drama club, and despite not being able to speak, can still show emotion through various abundant expressions. The last girl Kōhei gets to know is a childish junior high school student named Mayu Shiina who refuses to go to school. Her one and only friend she could trust in life, a ferret named Myū, dies shortly before she meets Kōhei and the other main characters.

Story.

The story revolves around Kōhei Orihara, the main protagonist. His father died when he was very young, followed by his younger sister Misao and finally his mother. Deeply depressed, he goes to live with his aunt Yukiko, his mother's younger sister, about ten years before "One"s story begins on November 30, 1998. After he meets Mizuka Nagamori as a child, Kōhei begins to seclude himself in the Eternal World, a world within his mind. The game's main recurring motif is a focus on the Eternal World, a mystical alternate space which is never clearly explained, and the details of which are unknown. Shun Hikami's remarks in the original game are possible clues about the Eternal World.  The Eternal World is a place similar to the afterlife where a person's "other self" awaits. Anyone can access it, though it is only accessible once one has lost his or her grounding in the real world. It may be necessary to form a pledge with someone in the real world as a guide to the Eternal World, but one's memories surrounding the pledge become vague. A grace period can be granted between when the pledge is made and when someone goes to the Eternal World. Once the process has started, nothing can prevent someone from going to the Eternal World, and returning to the real world is difficult. Someone about to leave to the Eternal World starts to be forgotten approximately one week before going, and the amount of time before someone forgets differs based on how much someone thinks about the person leaving. However, he or she is remembered the moment that person returns. If a strong emotional bond is established in the real world before leaving, a person in the Eternal World can be returned after approximately one year.  Kōhei is living a normal life in high school with Mizuka, and gets to know five other girls throughout the story who he helps with their various personal problems. While Kōhei likes to joke and tease these girls, deep down he is nice to girls and genuinely wants to help them. In the story, Kōhei is able to form intimate relationships with the six heroines: Mizuka Nagamori, Rumi Nanase, Misaki Kawana, Mio Kouzuki, Mayu Shiina, and Akane Satomura. While a given relationship will start out well, before long those around him start to forget him as he begins to retreat further into the Eternal World. If Kōhei forms a strong bond with one of the girls, she alone remembers him even after he leaves to the Eternal World. This ensures his eventual return one year later when he and the girl reunite.

Development and release.

"One: Kagayaku Kisetsu e" is Tactics' third title, after "Moon" and "Dōsei". "One"'s production was headed by YET11, the pseudonym of Tsutomu Yoshizawa, who also contributed to the music in the game. Planning was led by Jun Maeda, who worked on the scenario with fellow writer Naoki Hisaya. Maeda wrote the scenarios for Mizuka, Rumi and Mayu, while Hisaya wrote the routes for Misaki, Mio and Akane. Art direction was done by Itaru Hinoue who also worked on the computer graphics along with artists Miracle Mikipon and Shinory. In addition to YET11, the soundtrack was composed by Shinji Orito, OdiakeS, M.S. and Ishisan.  "One" was first released on May 29, 1998 in regular and limited edition versions playable on Windows PCs in CD-ROM format; the limited edition included the game's first original soundtrack. Both the limited and regular editions of the original game contained no voice acting. On April 1, 1999, KID released an all ages version in regular and limited editions playable on the PlayStation under the title "Kagayaku Kisetsu e"; the PS version contained full-voice acting. On September 14, 2000, AI System released "One: Kagayaku Kisetsu e Memorial Selection", which was essentially the original game, though the price was cheaper at a little less than half the original price. On January 1, 2003, a full voice version of the Windows game was released by Nexton. Kōhei was not voiced in any of the versions.  On February 9, 2007, "One" was released playable on FOMA cell phones via a Java program by NTT DoCoMo. A second mobile release playable on au mobile phones was released on March 1, 2007 by KDDI. A third mobile release, also playable on FOMA cell phones, was released by SoftBank Mobile on July 2, 2007. The last release by Nexton was on June 1, 2007 as a Windows Vista compatible edition for the PC. Gyutto released the full-voice, Vista-compatible edition of "One" as a downloadable version on February 26, 2010. The version for the PlayStation, and the mobile versions released by KDDI and SoftBank Mobile did not contain adult material. A promotional video for the game is still available for download at Tactics' "One" website.

Related media.

Printed media.

Four adult novels based on the series, written by Midori Tateyama, were published by Movic between August 1998 and April 2000. Each volume focused on one of the main heroines in the story; volumes one through four focused on Mizuka, Akane, Misaki, and Rumi, respectively. A 143-page official fan book, which focused on "Moon" and "One", was released by the publisher Compass in October 1998, titled "Tactics Moon & One: Kagayaku Kisetsu e Creation Image Collection". Aspect released a 95-page official fan book for the PlayStation version of "One" in October 1999.  Compass also released a manga anthology called "Tactics Anthology Comic One: Kagayaku Kisetsu e Chapter" in May 1999. Movic released a two-volume manga anthology called "One: Kagayaku Kisetsu e Comic Anthology" between October and December 1999. Ohzora released five volumes of manga anthologies: three in one series, and the last two as stand-alone volumes. The three-volume series is titled "One: Kagayaku Kisetsu e Anthology Comics" and were released between May 2002 and February 2003. The first stand-alone volume called "One: Kagayaku Kisetsu e Dōjin Selection" was released in September 2003, and the second stand-alone volume titled "Hidamari One: Kagayaku Kisetsu e" was released in January 2004.

Anime.

"One" was adapted twice into original video animation (OVA) series. The first was an all ages OVA titled "One: Kagayaku Kisetsu e" animated by Triple X and produced by KSS; four DVD volumes were released in Japan between August 10, 2001 and May 24, 2002. The all ages OVA is only loosely based on the original "One" visual novel and has a different setting. The second series, produced by Cherry Lips, was an adult OVA under the title "One: True Stories", and adapted the visual novel much more closely. Three DVD volumes containing a single episode each were released between November 21, 2003 and May 28, 2004. "One: True Stories" was later licensed for English distribution by Media Blasters and the three episodes were released in a single volume on August 16, 2005.

Music and audio CDs.

The visual novel's one main piece of theme music is the ending theme composed by Shinji Orito. Five of the heroines have background music leitmotifs, excluding Mayu Shiina. Mizuka Nagamori's theme is ; Rumi Nanase's theme is ; Misaki Kawana's theme is ; Mio Kouzuki's theme is ; lastly, Akane Satomura's theme is. The first original soundtrack for the game was released on December 6, 1998, and a second followed on September 24, 1999 as a piano arrange album. A remix album titled "Sea Roars" came bundled with the full voice Windows edition of the game released on January 1, 2003.  Three drama CDs based on the original game were released by Movic between November 6, 1999 and January 30, 2000. Two drama CDs based on the all ages OVA series were released by KSS between November 2001 and July 2002. A soundtrack for the all ages OVA series titled "One: Kagayaku Kisetsu e Music from the Animation" (also known as "One: Kagayaku Kisetsu e Vocal Mini album") was released on August 10, 2001 by KSS. An original soundtrack for "One: True Stories" was released by ChamberRecords/HOBiRECORDS on November 21, 2003.

Reception.

According to a national ranking of how well bishōjo games sold nationally in Japan, the "One: Kagayaku Kisetsu e Memorial Selection" Windows release ranked in on seven separate occasions. The game premiered at number six in the rankings during the first two weeks of September 2000. During the first two weeks of January 2001, the "Memorial Selection" ranked in at number 30, and a month later during the first two weeks of February 2001, ranked in at number 38. "Memorial Selection" ranked in again at 41 between the end of February and March 2001, and the following two weeks ranked in at 32. "Memorial Selection" ranked on the list again between May 7–20, 2001, ranking in at 47, and then for a final time during the first two weeks of July 2001, ranking in at 37. The "One" full-voice edition for Windows premiered at number 12 out of 50 in the ranking, and ranked the following two weeks at 40. In the month that followed, the "One" full voice edition ranked first in 60th place, and then again in the following ranking at 44.  The all ages OVA series was given a negative review by Carlos Ross of THEM Anime Reviews. Despite looking "kinda cute", he criticized the characters as having "no personality beyond the standard cliches of [a] dating simulation." However, Ross did praise the art style, commenting that it was "rather nice, being in traditional analog style rather than CG." The "One: True Stories" adult OVA series was reviewed at Mania.com where the reviewer remarked, ""One: True Stories" is the perfect kind of entry level or couples type of show that focuses just as much on the story and emotions of the characters as the sex, if not more so." The characters were found to be "appealing", and the story is described as a "fantasy but it's a nice fantasy."

Legacy.

After the release of "One: Kagayaku Kisetsu e", the game's producer YET11 was the only staff member who worked on the game who was later credited for future titles produced by Tactics, such as Tactics' next visual novel "Suzu ga Utau Hi" in 1999. The rest of the main production staff for "One", along with its predecessor "Moon", were later credited with the creation of the visual novel "Kanon" under the brand name Key attached to VisualArt's.  A sequel loosely based on the original "One" visual novel titled was produced by the visual novel studio BaseSon, another brand under Nexton. "One2" was released first on April 26, 2002, and then again on April 25, 2003 with added voice acting, scenario, CGs and music. "One2" used the concept of the Eternal World established in "One" as a major motif as "One" had done. The Eternal World in "One2" is better explained than in "One", though the two versions of the world differ to a certain extent due to the scenario writers that worked on "One" not being credited on the production staff of "One2".  Characters from "One" have appeared in other media not directly based on the "One" series. The six heroines from "One" have appeared in the "Eternal Fighter Zero" dōjin games by Twilight Frontier. Additionally, Rumi Nanase can be seen as a background character in several episodes of the "Kanon" anime series by Kyoto Animation. Itaru Hinoue, the art director of "One", included illustrations from "One" in her art book "White Clover: Itaru Hinoue Art Works" released in 2009.

The gameplay in "One" follows a branching plot line which offers pre-determined scenarios with courses of interaction, and focuses on the appeal of the six female main characters by the player character. The game ranked several times in the national top 50 for best-selling PC games sold in Japan. A sequel loosely based on "One" titled "One2: Eien no Yakusoku" was produced by BaseSon, another brand under Nexton, and was released in April 2002.

是NEXTON的旗下品牌Tactics于1998年5月29日发售的恋爱冒险类型成人游戏,后来改编成OVA、漫画和小说。由于是以Key所属的工作人员为中心制作的游戏,因此常被视为Key的游戏,亦被称为Key社四季曲中的「秋」。