title: The Souvenir

text: Julie, a film student, intends to make a movie about a boy, his mother, and their life in the city of Sunderland. She lives in a Knightsbridge flat with another student and his girlfriend. She meets Anthony, a well-to-do man who works at the Foreign Office, who moves in with her after her flatmate moves out. He leaves a postcard with a picture of the girl in a painting called "The Souvenir". He later takes her to the gallery where the painting is hung. Julie says the girl looks sad, while Anthony says she looks determined.


title: The Souvenir

text: Anthony has to travel to Paris but returns with some lingerie, which he asks Julie to put on. While they are in bed, she notices some needle marks on his arm but doesn't know what they are, and he continues to ask Julie for money regularly. Julie starts to pay for their restaurant bills and is forced to borrow money from her parents.


title: The Souvenir

text: Julie and Anthony have dinner with two of Anthony's friends, who reveal to Julie during a moment alone that Anthony is a heroin addict. Julie is taken aback but does not mention it to Anthony.


title: The Souvenir

text: Anthony explains over a meal at Harrods that he has had relationships with three other girls, including trips to Venice with at least one of them, who appears to have committed suicide while on the trip. He invites Julie to go to Venice with him.


title: The Souvenir

text: One evening, she returns to find that her flat has been broken into, and her valuable jewellery is missing. Later, on their trip to Venice, Anthony admits to doing it but didn't tell her to keep her from feeling bad. Julie becomes upset, but Anthony manages to convince her he had a good reason for doing so even though he doesn't elaborate on it, insinuating it is related to work and not to his heroin habit. Julie starts noticing when Anthony is on heroin, and she attends a self-help group. She starts to confront him sometimes but doubts herself, and he manipulates and gaslights her. She begins to take on the responsibility of his addiction.


title: The Souvenir

text: Julie returns home one evening to find a strange man in her apartment that Anthony must have let in. She also catches an illness from what she's being exposed to through Anthony. Finally, after finding out he was arrested, Julie asks Anthony to move out.


title: The Souvenir

text: Julie begins to put herself back together after the breakup, to the happiness of her friends and professors. Anthony's mother continues to call Julie in an attempt to find him.


title: The Souvenir

text: Anthony shows up again and appears clean long enough for Julie to invite him back in with her. He soon goes through withdrawal in front of her and eventually starts using heroin again. He goes missing and is later found dead, having overdosed in a public toilet at the Wallace Collection.


title: The Souvenir

text: The film had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 27, 2019. A24 and Curzon Artificial Eye acquired U.S. and U.K. distribution rights to the film, respectively. Focus Features acquired distribution rights for the world excluding North America, the United Kingdom and Taiwan. It was released in the United States on May 17, 2019, and in the United Kingdom on August 30, 2019.


title: The Souvenir

text: The film received critical acclaim upon its premiere. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of , based on reviews, with an average score of . The website's critics consensus reads "Made by a filmmaker in command of her craft and a star perfectly matched with the material, "The Souvenir" is a uniquely impactful coming of age drama." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 91 out of 100, based on 45 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".


title: The Souvenir

text: Guy Lodge of "Variety" wrote: "Achingly well-observed in its study of a young artist inspired, derailed and finally strengthened by a toxic relationship, it is at once the coming-of-age story of many women and a specific creative manifesto for one of modern British cinema’s most singular writer-directors."


title: The Souvenir

text: "Sight & Sound" named "The Souvenir" the best film of 2019 after polling an international group of 100 film critics from around the world.


title: The Souvenir

text: In May 2019, it was announced a sequel would be produced with Swinton Byrne, Swinton, Ayoade and Labed reprising their roles, with Robert Pattinson joining the cast, although he later dropped out and was later replaced with Charlie Heaton and Harris Dickinson. A24 will distribute. Principal photography began in June 2019.


title: The Eye of the World

text: The Eye of the World is a high fantasy novel by American writer Robert Jordan, the first book of "The Wheel of Time" series. It was published by Tor Books and released on 15 January 1990. The unabridged audiobook is read by Michael Kramer and Kate Reading. Upon first publication, "The Eye of the World" consisted of one prologue and 53 chapters, with an additional prologue authored upon re-release.


title: The Eye of the World

text: The book was a critical, and commercial success. Critics praised the tone, the themes, and the similarity to "Lord of the Rings" (although some criticized it for that).


title: The Eye of the World

text: On 2 January 2002, "The Eye of the World" was re-released as two separate books aimed at a young adult market, with larger text and a handful of illustrations. These were "From the Two Rivers" and "To the Blight". The former included an additional prologue entitled "Ravens", focusing on Egwene al'Vere. The American Library Association put "The Eye of the World" on its 2003 list of Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults.


title: The Eye of the World

text: After the release of "The Wheel of Time" television series, "The Eye of the World" made the January 2022 "The New York Times" Best Seller list in the mass market category and was number one on the audio fiction list.


title: The Eye of the World

text: "The Eye of the World" revolves around protagonists Rand al'Thor, Matrim (Mat) Cauthon, Perrin Aybara, Egwene al'Vere, and Nynaeve al'Meara, after their home town of Emond's Field is unexpectedly attacked by Trollocs (the antagonist's soldiers) and a Myrddraal (the undead-like officer commanding the Trollocs) intent on capturing Rand, Mat, and Perrin. To save their village from further attacks, Rand, Mat, Perrin, and Egwene flee it, accompanied by the Aes Sedai Moiraine Damodred, her Warder Al'Lan Mandragoran, and gleeman Thom Merrilin, and later joined by Wisdom Nynaeve al'Meara. Pursued by increasing numbers of Trollocs and Myrddraal, the travellers take refuge in the abandoned city of Shadar Logoth, where Mat steals a cursed dagger, thus becoming infected by the malevolent Mashadar. While escaping the city the travelers are separated; Rand, Mat, and Thom travel by boat to Whitebridge, where Thom is lost allowing Rand and Mat to escape a Myrddraal. In Caemlyn, Rand befriends an Ogier named Loial. Trying to catch a glimpse of the recently captured False Dragon, Rand befriends Elayne Trakand, heir apparent to the throne of Andor, and her brothers Gawyn Trakand and Galad Damodred. Rand is then taken before Queen Morgase, her Aes Sedai advisor, Elaida; and Captain-General of the Queen's Guard Gareth Bryne, and released without charge, in spite of Elaida's grave pronouncements regarding Rand.


title: The Eye of the World

text: Egwene and Perrin are guided separately to Caemlyn by Elyas Machera, a man who can communicate telepathically with wolves and who claims that Perrin can do the same. The three run afoul of the Children of the Light, where Perrin kills two for the death of a wolf at their hands and is sentenced to death. Moiraine, Lan, and Nynaeve rescue Egwene and Perrin, and all are reunited with Rand and Mat. Thereafter Moiraine determines that Mat must travel to Tar Valon, the Aes Sedai's center of power, to overcome the influence of Shadar Logoth.


title: The Eye of the World

text: Loial warns Moiraine of a threat to the Eye of the World, a pool of Saidin untouched by the Dark One's influence, which is confirmed by vivid and disturbing dreams Mat, Rand, and Perrin have had. The Eye of the World is protected by Someshta (the Green Man) and contains one of the seven seals on the Dark One's prison, the Dragon banner of Lews Therin Telamon, and the Horn of Valere. At the civilized world's border, the group enters the Blight (the polluted region under the Dark One's control) to protect the Eye. After a pursuit, they meet the Green Man and he reveals the Eye. The group is then confronted by the Forsaken Aginor and Balthamel. As the battle ensues, Balthamel and the Green Man slay each other. Soon after, Rand defeats Aginor and uses the Eye to decimate the Trolloc army and defeat Ba'alzamon. As a result, Moiraine concludes that Rand is the Dragon Reborn, but her opinion and all other details of the final battle are kept from all the male members of the group except Lan.


title: The Eye of the World

text: Robert Jordan has stated that he consciously intended the early chapters of "The Eye of the World" to evoke the Shire of Middle-earth in J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings". Despite their similarities, these two works also differ in themes. For instance, both Jordan and Tolkien created narratives that explored power. However, "The Eye of the World" discussed how it can be deployed whereas "The Lord of the Rings" was more focused on its renunciation. Rand needed to wield his power so he could successfully fight an emerging war with the Dark One. This theme is antithetical to Frodo's quest to destroy the ring of Sauron, a source of immense power that also corrupted its wearer.


title: The Eye of the World

text: PBS's The Great American Read named "The Eye of the World" "one of America's best-loved novels," coming in at #62 on their top 100 list.


title: The Eye of the World

text: In January 2002, Starscape Books released "The Eye of the World" in two separate volumes. The first was titled "From the Two Rivers" (), the second "To the Blight" (). ATOM, a British publishing house, printed both volumes ( and ) the following March.


title: Animal Kingdom (film)

text: Animal Kingdom is a 2010 Australian neo-noir crime drama film written and directed by David Michôd and starring Ben Mendelsohn, Joel Edgerton, Guy Pearce, James Frecheville, Luke Ford, Jacki Weaver, and Sullivan Stapleton.


title: Animal Kingdom (film)

text: Michôd's script was inspired by events that involved the Pettingill criminal family of Melbourne, Victoria. In 1991, two brothers Trevor Pettingill and Victor Peirce (along with two other men: Anthony Leigh Farrell and Peter David McEvoy) were acquitted in the 1988 shooting murder of two Victorian police officers.


title: Animal Kingdom (film)

text: The film was critically acclaimed and Jacki Weaver received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.


title: Animal Kingdom (film)

text: After his mother overdoses, 17-year-old Joshua "J" Cody asks his estranged grandmother, Janine "Smurf" Cody, for help, and she invites him to move in with her. Smurf is the affectionate matriarch of a Melbourne crime family that uses her home as a base. Her home is also being watched by cops who are looking for her oldest son, Andrew "Pope" Cody, who is in hiding. The volatile middle brother, Craig, deals drugs successfully enough to have bought the house for his mother. The youngest brother, Darren, follows the lead of his siblings, while family friend "Baz" leads the gang, which specializes in armed robbery.


title: Animal Kingdom (film)

text: Craig takes J along to meet with a crooked cop, from the drug squad, who tells Craig that renegade cops on the armed-robbery squad are on the lookout for all of them. Later, Baz goes to meet Pope at a shopping centre, where they discuss quitting crime and going straight. As Baz gets in his car to leave, police approach, falsely claim he has a gun, and shoot him dead. Angry and distraught, Pope and Craig want revenge and ask J to steal a Commodore and take it to Darren's place. The car is then parked after 2:00 am in the middle of the street as a lure. Two policemen are called to the scene, where they are ambushed and shot dead by Pope and Craig. The next day, Pope, Darren, and J are taken in for questioning, where J meets Detective Senior Sergeant Nathan Leckie, who also leads the armed-robbery squad. Leckie, one of the few non-corrupt police officers, recognises J's predicament and begins to lean on him. The three are later released from custody, and J returns with his girlfriend, Nicky, to her parents' home.


title: Animal Kingdom (film)

text: Craig, who has avoided being picked up by the police, meets Pope, Darren, and Smurf at a diner, where they realise J is the weak link. After Smurf suggests Craig give himself up for questioning, he panics and goes to visit a friend in rural Bendigo. Craig learns that the house is already being monitored, and as the police arrive he tries to flee through a field but is gunned down.


title: Animal Kingdom (film)

text: Pope and Darren take J to meet their solicitor, Ezra. He coaches J to not tell the police anything and pressures him to break up with Nicky, which J does. Leckie takes J into custody again, where he proposes that J be moved to witness protection, but J turns down the offer. Meanwhile, Nicky, unsure what to do, shows up at Smurf's home, looking for J. Pope gives her heroin, questions her, then suffocates her. When J returns to Smurf's house the next morning he discovers Nicky's bracelet outside the house. He calls Nicky's phone and hearing it ring from the backyard, flees to Nicky's parents' house. Pope gets Nicky's address from Darren and arrives in time to intercept J. J flees on foot and is taken into a safe house. With Craig and Baz dead, Pope and Darren imprisoned, and J potentially the star witness for the prosecution, Smurf decides, "J needs "to go"". Smurf uses her connections to procure J's address and persuades the corrupt cop to help her. Police from the drug squad then raid the safe house. J jumps a fence and returns to Smurf's house, saying he wishes to help free Pope and Darren from jail. To do this, the family's barrister then coaches J's answers.


title: Animal Kingdom (film)

text: After his day in court, Leckie sees J before his departure from the safe hotel and asks him if he's "worked out where he fits" (a reference to Leckie's animal-kingdom metaphor for J's predicament). Pope, Darren, and Smurf celebrate with champagne while being interviewed after their controversial acquittal. Smurf later sees Leckie in the supermarket and taunts him. Later, J returns to Smurf's home, asking to stay before going to his room. Pope enters and begins to talk to him but is cut off when J shoots him in the head. In the final scene, J returns to the living room and embraces a now-speechless Smurf.


title: Animal Kingdom (film)

text: The film is loosely inspired by the real life Pettingill family and by the Walsh Street police shootings that occurred in Melbourne in 1988. Director David Michôd was interested in the underworld in Melbourne and wrote a script titled "J" in December 2000. Working at Screen NSW Script Development, fellow producer Liz Watts saw potential in the script. Watts said, "It needed more characterization and structure, which he kind of agreed with. It was important to me that he recognize that there was still work to be done on it." Michôd then did a number of draft scripts gaining feedback from many different people in the film industry. Liz Watts then became a producer on the film with a budget of A$5 million from Screen Australia, Film Victoria, Screen NSW and Showtime Australia. The final version of "Animal Kingdom" did not contain any of the dialogue featured in Michôd's script for "J".


title: Animal Kingdom (film)

text: "Animal Kingdom" was filmed in the Melbourne metropolitan area. The outside funeral scene was filmed in Ivanhoe East, Victoria.


title: Animal Kingdom (film)

text: The film's original score was composed by Antony Partos with additional music composed by Sam Petty and David McCormack. It was released on 16 August 2010.


title: Animal Kingdom (film)

text: "Animal Kingdom" premiered at the 26th Sundance Film Festival on 22 January 2010. It later opened in Australia on 3 June 2010.


title: Animal Kingdom (film)

text: Internationally, the film has been sold to the United Kingdom, Italy, France, Canada and Eastern Europe. It was released in August 2010 in the United States and Latin America by Sony Pictures Classics, grossing a total of $1,030,288 in North America. It was released in Australia on DVD and Blu-ray Disc formats on 13 October 2010. The Blu-ray release available from Madman is region-free.


title: Animal Kingdom (film)

text: Animal Kingdom grossed $5,000,018 in Australia, and $2,209,894 elsewhere for a worldwide total of $7,209,912.


title: Animal Kingdom (film)

text: "Animal Kingdom" received overwhelming critical acclaim, especially for the performances of Weaver and Mendelsohn. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gave the movie a score of 96%, based on 163 reviews, and an average rating of 8.00/10. The website's critical consensus states: "With confident pacing, a smart script, and a top-notch cast, "Animal Kingdom" represents the best the Australian film industry has to offer." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 83 out of 100, based on 33 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".


title: Animal Kingdom (film)

text: Quentin Tarantino listed "Animal Kingdom" as his third favourite film of 2010, behind "Toy Story 3" and "The Social Network".


title: Animal Kingdom (film)

text: "Animal Kingdom" received 18 nominations for the 2010 Australian Film Institute Awards, across all major feature film categories – a record achievement. On 11 December 2010, "Animal Kingdom" won a record 10 awards. The film received several other film awards to Jacki Weaver, who was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture for the 68th Golden Globe Awards. Weaver was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress at the 83rd Academy Awards.


title: Animal Kingdom (film)

text: The American cable network TNT developed an eponymous TV series inspired by the film, with John Wells as a producer, starring Ellen Barkin, Scott Speedman, Shawn Hatosy, Ben Robson, Jake Weary, Finn Cole, Daniella Alonso, and Molly Gordon.


title: Cell wall

text: A cell wall is a structural layer surrounding some types of cells, just outside the cell membrane. It can be tough, flexible, and sometimes rigid. It provides the cell with both structural support and protection, and also acts as a filtering mechanism. Cell walls are absent in many eukaryotes, including animals, but are present in some other ones like fungi, algae and plants, and in most prokaryotes (except mollicute bacteria). A major function is to act as pressure vessels, preventing over-expansion of the cell when water enters.


title: Cell wall

text: The composition of cell walls varies between taxonomic group and species and may depend on cell type and developmental stage. The primary cell wall of land plants is composed of the polysaccharides cellulose, hemicelluloses and pectin. Often, other polymers such as lignin, suberin or cutin are anchored to or embedded in plant cell walls. Algae possess cell walls made of glycoproteins and polysaccharides such as carrageenan and agar that are absent from land plants. In bacteria, the cell wall is composed of peptidoglycan. The cell walls of archaea have various compositions, and may be formed of glycoprotein S-layers, pseudopeptidoglycan, or polysaccharides. Fungi possess cell walls made of the N-acetylglucosamine polymer chitin. Unusually, diatoms have a cell wall composed of biogenic silica.


title: Cell wall

text: A plant cell wall was first observed and named (simply as a "wall") by Robert Hooke in 1665. However, "the dead excrusion product of the living protoplast" was forgotten, for almost three centuries, being the subject of scientific interest mainly as a resource for industrial processing or in relation to animal or human health.


title: Cell wall

text: In 1804, Karl Rudolphi and J.H.F. Link proved that cells had independent cell walls. Before, it had been thought that cells shared walls and that fluid passed between them this way.


title: Cell wall

text: The mode of formation of the cell wall was controversial in the 19th century. Hugo von Mohl (1853, 1858) advocated the idea that the cell wall grows by apposition. Carl Nägeli (1858, 1862, 1863) believed that the growth of the wall in thickness and in area was due to a process termed intussusception. Each theory was improved in the following decades: the apposition (or lamination) theory by Eduard Strasburger (1882, 1889), and the intussusception theory by Julius Wiesner (1886).


title: Cell wall

text: In 1930, Ernst Münch coined the term "apoplast" in order to separate the "living" symplast from the "dead" plant region, the latter of which included the cell wall.


title: Cell wall

text: By the 1980s, some authors suggested replacing the term "cell wall", particularly as it was used for plants, with the more precise term "extracellular matrix", as used for animal cells, but others preferred the older term.


title: Cell wall

text: Cell walls serve similar purposes in those organisms that possess them. They may give cells rigidity and strength, offering protection against mechanical stress. The chemical composition and mechanical properties of the cell wall are linked with plant cell growth and morphogenesis. In multicellular organisms, they permit the organism to build and hold a definite shape. Cell walls also limit the entry of large molecules that may be toxic to the cell. They further permit the creation of stable osmotic environments by preventing osmotic lysis and helping to retain water. Their composition, properties, and form may change during the cell cycle and depend on growth conditions.


title: Cell wall

text: In most cells, the cell wall is flexible, meaning that it will bend rather than holding a fixed shape, but has considerable tensile strength. The apparent rigidity of primary plant tissues is enabled by cell walls, but is not due to the walls' stiffness. Hydraulic turgor pressure creates this rigidity, along with the wall structure. The flexibility of the cell walls is seen when plants wilt, so that the stems and leaves begin to droop, or in seaweeds that bend in water currents. As John Howland explains


title: Cell wall

text: The apparent rigidity of the cell wall thus results from inflation of the cell contained within. This inflation is a result of the passive uptake of water.


title: Cell wall

text: In plants, a secondary cell wall is a thicker additional layer of cellulose which increases wall rigidity. Additional layers may be formed by lignin in xylem cell walls, or suberin in cork cell walls. These compounds are rigid and waterproof, making the secondary wall stiff. Both wood and bark cells of trees have secondary walls. Other parts of plants such as the leaf stalk may acquire similar reinforcement to resist the strain of physical forces.


title: Cell wall

text: The primary cell wall of most plant cells is freely permeable to small molecules including small proteins, with size exclusion estimated to be 30-60 kDa. The pH is an important factor governing the transport of molecules through cell walls.


title: Cell wall

text: The photosynthetic eukaryotes (so-called plant and algae) is one group with cellulose cell walls, where the cell wall is closely related to the evolution of multicellularity, terrestrialization and vascularization. The CesA cellulose synthase evolved in "Cyanobacteria" and was part of Archaeplastida since endosymbiosis; secondary endosymbiosis events transferred it (with the arabinogalactan proteins) further into brown algae and oomycetes. Plants later evolved various genes from CesA, including the Csl (cellulose synthase-like) family of proteins and additional Ces proteins. Combined with the various glycosyltransferases (GT), they enable more complex chemical structures to be built.


title: Cell wall

text: Fungi use a chitin-glucan-protein cell wall. They share the 1,3-β-glucan synthesis pathway with plants, using homologous GT48 family 1,3-Beta-glucan synthases to perform the task, suggesting that such an enzyme is very ancient within the eukaryotes. Their glycoproteins are rich in mannose. The cell wall might have evolved to deter viral infections. Proteins embedded in cell walls are variable, contained in tandem repeats subject to homologous recombination. An alternative scenario is that fungi started with a chitin-based cell wall and later acquired the GT-48 enzymes for the 1,3-β-glucans via horizontal gene transfer. The pathway leading to 1,6-β-glucan synthesis is not sufficiently known in either case.


title: Cell wall

text: The walls of plant cells must have sufficient tensile strength to withstand internal osmotic pressures of several times atmospheric pressure that result from the difference in solute concentration between the cell interior and external solutions. Plant cell walls vary from 0.1 to several µm in thickness.


title: Cell wall

text: In the primary (growing) plant cell wall, the major carbohydrates are cellulose, hemicellulose and pectin. The cellulose microfibrils are linked via hemicellulosic tethers to form the cellulose-hemicellulose network, which is embedded in the pectin matrix. The most common hemicellulose in the primary cell wall is xyloglucan. In grass cell walls, xyloglucan and pectin are reduced in abundance and partially replaced by glucuronarabinoxylan, another type of hemicellulose. Primary cell walls characteristically extend (grow) by a mechanism called acid growth, mediated by expansins, extracellular proteins activated by acidic conditions that modify the hydrogen bonds between pectin and cellulose. This functions to increase cell wall extensibility. The outer part of the primary cell wall of the plant epidermis is usually impregnated with cutin and wax, forming a permeability barrier known as the plant cuticle.


title: Cell wall

text: Secondary cell walls contain a wide range of additional compounds that modify their mechanical properties and permeability. The major polymers that make up wood (largely secondary cell walls) include:


title: Cell wall

text: Additionally, structural proteins (1-5%) are found in most plant cell walls; they are classified as hydroxyproline-rich glycoproteins (HRGP), arabinogalactan proteins (AGP), glycine-rich proteins (GRPs), and proline-rich proteins (PRPs). Each class of glycoprotein is defined by a characteristic, highly repetitive protein sequence. Most are glycosylated, contain hydroxyproline (Hyp) and become cross-linked in the cell wall. These proteins are often concentrated in specialized cells and in cell corners. Cell walls of the epidermis may contain cutin. The Casparian strip in the endodermis roots and cork cells of plant bark contain suberin. Both cutin and suberin are polyesters that function as permeability barriers to the movement of water. The relative composition of carbohydrates, secondary compounds and proteins varies between plants and between the cell type and age. Plant cells walls also contain numerous enzymes, such as hydrolases, esterases, peroxidases, and transglycosylases, that cut, trim and cross-link wall polymers.


title: Cell wall

text: Secondary walls - especially in grasses - may also contain microscopic silica crystals, which may strengthen the wall and protect it from herbivores.


title: Cell wall

text: Cell walls in some plant tissues also function as storage deposits for carbohydrates that can be broken down and resorbed to supply the metabolic and growth needs of the plant. For example, endosperm cell walls in the seeds of cereal grasses, nasturtium


title: Cell wall

text: and other species, are rich in glucans and other polysaccharides that are readily digested by enzymes during seed germination to form simple sugars that nourish the growing embryo.


title: Cell wall

text: The middle lamella is laid down first, formed from the cell plate during cytokinesis, and the primary cell wall is then deposited inside the middle lamella. The actual structure of the cell wall is not clearly defined and several models exist - the covalently linked cross model, the tether model, the diffuse layer model and the stratified layer model. However, the primary cell wall, can be defined as composed of cellulose microfibrils aligned at all angles. Cellulose microfibrils are produced at the plasma membrane by the cellulose synthase complex, which is proposed to be made of a hexameric rosette that contains three cellulose synthase catalytic subunits for each of the six units. Microfibrils are held together by hydrogen bonds to provide a high tensile strength. The cells are held together and share the gelatinous membrane called the "middle lamella", which contains magnesium and calcium pectates (salts of pectic acid). Cells interact though plasmodesmata, which are inter-connecting channels of cytoplasm that connect to the protoplasts of adjacent cells across the cell wall.


title: Cell wall

text: In some plants and cell types, after a maximum size or point in development has been reached, a "secondary wall" is constructed between the plasma membrane and primary wall. Unlike the primary wall, the cellulose microfibrils are aligned parallel in layers, the orientation changing slightly with each additional layer so that the structure becomes helicoidal. Cells with secondary cell walls can be rigid, as in the gritty sclereid cells in pear and quince fruit. Cell to cell communication is possible through pits in the secondary cell wall that allow plasmodesmata to connect cells through the secondary cell walls.


title: Cell wall

text: There are several groups of organisms that have been called "fungi". Some of these groups (Oomycete and Myxogastria) have been transferred out of the Kingdom Fungi, in part because of fundamental biochemical differences in the composition of the cell wall. Most true fungi have a cell wall consisting largely of chitin and other polysaccharides. True fungi do not have cellulose in their cell walls.


title: Cell wall

text: In fungi, the cell wall is the outer-most layer, external to the plasma membrane. The fungal cell wall is a matrix of three main components:


title: Cell wall

text: Like plants, algae have cell walls. Algal cell walls contain either polysaccharides (such as cellulose (a glucan)) or a variety of glycoproteins (Volvocales) or both. The inclusion of additional polysaccharides in algal cells walls is used as a feature for algal taxonomy.


title: Cell wall

text: The group of algae known as the diatoms synthesize their cell walls (also known as frustules or valves) from silicic acid. Significantly, relative to the organic cell walls produced by other groups, silica frustules require less energy to synthesize (approximately 8%), potentially a major saving on the overall cell energy budget and possibly an explanation for higher growth rates in diatoms.


title: Cell wall

text: The group Oomycetes, also known as water molds, are saprotrophic plant pathogens like fungi. Until recently they were widely believed to be fungi, but structural and molecular evidence has led to their reclassification as heterokonts, related to autotrophic brown algae and diatoms. Unlike fungi, oomycetes typically possess cell walls of cellulose and glucans rather than chitin, although some genera (such as "Achlya" and "Saprolegnia") do have chitin in their walls. The fraction of cellulose in the walls is no more than 4 to 20%, far less than the fraction of glucans. Oomycete cell walls also contain the amino acid hydroxyproline, which is not found in fungal cell walls.


title: Cell wall

text: The dictyostelids are another group formerly classified among the fungi. They are slime molds that feed as unicellular amoebae, but aggregate into a reproductive stalk and sporangium under certain conditions. Cells of the reproductive stalk, as well as the spores formed at the apex, possess a cellulose wall. The spore wall has three layers, the middle one composed primarily of cellulose, while the innermost is sensitive to cellulase and pronase.


title: Cell wall

text: Around the outside of the cell membrane is the bacterial cell wall. Bacterial cell walls are made of peptidoglycan (also called murein), which is made from polysaccharide chains cross-linked by unusual peptides containing D-amino acids. Bacterial cell walls are different from the cell walls of plants and fungi which are made of cellulose and chitin, respectively. The cell wall of bacteria is also distinct from that of Archaea, which do not contain peptidoglycan. The cell wall is essential to the survival of many bacteria, although L-form bacteria can be produced in the laboratory that lack a cell wall. The antibiotic penicillin is able to kill bacteria by preventing the cross-linking of peptidoglycan and this causes the cell wall to weaken and lyse. The lysozyme enzyme can also damage bacterial cell walls.


title: Cell wall

text: There are broadly speaking two different types of cell wall in bacteria, called gram-positive and gram-negative. The names originate from the reaction of cells to the Gram stain, a test long-employed for the classification of bacterial species.


title: Cell wall

text: Gram-positive bacteria possess a thick cell wall containing many layers of peptidoglycan and teichoic acids. In contrast, gram-negative bacteria have a relatively thin cell wall consisting of a few layers of peptidoglycan surrounded by a second lipid membrane containing lipopolysaccharides and lipoproteins. Most bacteria have the gram-negative cell wall and only the Bacillota and Actinomycetota (previously known as the low G+C and high G+C gram-positive bacteria, respectively) have the alternative gram-positive arrangement. These differences in structure can produce differences in antibiotic susceptibility, for instance vancomycin can kill only gram-positive bacteria and is ineffective against gram-negative pathogens, such as "Haemophilus influenzae" or "Pseudomonas aeruginosa".


title: Cell wall

text: Although not truly unique, the cell walls of Archaea are unusual. Whereas peptidoglycan is a standard component of all bacterial cell walls, all archaeal cell walls lack peptidoglycan, though some methanogens have a cell wall made of a similar polymer called pseudopeptidoglycan. There are four types of cell wall currently known among the Archaea.


title: Cell wall

text: One type of archaeal cell wall is that composed of pseudopeptidoglycan (also called pseudomurein). This type of wall is found in some methanogens, such as "Methanobacterium" and "Methanothermus". While the overall structure of archaeal "pseudo"peptidoglycan superficially resembles that of bacterial peptidoglycan, there are a number of significant chemical differences. Like the peptidoglycan found in bacterial cell walls, pseudopeptidoglycan consists of polymer chains of glycan cross-linked by short peptide connections. However, unlike peptidoglycan, the sugar N-acetylmuramic acid is replaced by N-acetyltalosaminuronic acid, and the two sugars are bonded with a "β",1-3 glycosidic linkage instead of "β",1-4. Additionally, the cross-linking peptides are L-amino acids rather than D-amino acids as they are in bacteria.


title: Cell wall

text: A second type of archaeal cell wall is found in "Methanosarcina" and "Halococcus". This type of cell wall is composed entirely of a thick layer of polysaccharides, which may be sulfated in the case of "Halococcus". Structure in this type of wall is complex and not fully investigated.


title: Cell wall

text: A third type of wall among the Archaea consists of glycoprotein, and occurs in the hyperthermophiles, "Halobacterium", and some methanogens. In "Halobacterium", the proteins in the wall have a high content of acidic amino acids, giving the wall an overall negative charge. The result is an unstable structure that is stabilized by the presence of large quantities of positive sodium ions that neutralize the charge. Consequently, "Halobacterium" thrives only under conditions with high salinity.


title: Cell wall

text: In other Archaea, such as "Methanomicrobium" and "Desulfurococcus", the wall may be composed only of surface-layer proteins, known as an "S-layer". S-layers are common in bacteria, where they serve as either the sole cell-wall component or an outer layer in conjunction with polysaccharides. Most Archaea are Gram-negative, though at least one Gram-positive member is known.


title: Cell wall

text: Many protists and bacteria produce other cell surface structures apart from cell walls, external (extracellular matrix) or internal. Many algae have a sheath or envelope of mucilage outside the cell made of exopolysaccharides. Diatoms build a frustule from silica extracted from the surrounding water; radiolarians, foraminiferans, testate amoebae and silicoflagellates also produce a skeleton from minerals, called test in some groups. Many green algae, such as "Halimeda" and the Dasycladales, and some red algae, the Corallinales, encase their cells in a secreted skeleton of calcium carbonate. In each case, the wall is rigid and essentially inorganic. It is the non-living component of cell. Some golden algae, ciliates and choanoflagellates produces a shell-like protective outer covering called lorica. Some dinoflagellates have a theca of cellulose plates, and coccolithophorids have coccoliths.


title: Cell wall

text: An extracellular matrix (ECM) is also present in metazoans. Its composition varies between cells, but collagens are the most abundant protein in the ECM.


title: Vada Chennai

text: Vada Chennai () is a 2018 Indian Tamil-language action crime drama film written and directed by Vetrimaaran in his fourth film as a director. It is the first instalment in a planned trilogy. Produced by A. Subaskaran's Lyca Productions and Dhanush's Wunderbar Films with Vetrimaaran's Grass Root Film Company, it stars Dhanush as Anbu, a skilled carrom player who becomes a reluctant participant in a gang war between two rival gangsters. Along with Dhanush, Andrea Jeremiah, Aishwarya Rajesh, Ameer, Samuthirakani, Daniel Balaji, Kishore and Pawan appear in prominent roles.


title: Vada Chennai

text: The film had been in the news since late 2009 with an official announcement only made in November 2011 that the filming would commence by March 2012. After being temporarily shelved, the film re-materialized in May 2015 with a new cast; featuring Dhanush as the lead, making his third collaboration with the director after "Polladhavan" (2007) and "Aadukalam" (2011). Principal photography for the film which was commenced in June 2016, was wrapped up in February 2018. The cinematography for the film was done by Velraj, editing handled by G. B. Venkatesh and R. Ramar, and musical score is composed by Santhosh Narayanan.


title: Vada Chennai

text: "Vada Chennai" was initially slated to release on 13 September 2018, during the Ganesh Chathurthi festival was postponed to 17 October 2018, because of the post-production works. The film received critical acclaim, praising the performances of the cast and the script, while criticising the dialogues. Post-release, the film drew controversies, about the fishermen community in which few scenes from the film found offensive, after the director decided to remove the scenes from the movie, and added further new scenes. It was a commercial success.


title: Vada Chennai

text: The film received several awards at the 2018 Ananda Vikatan Cinema Awards, including Best Actor for Dhanush, Best Supporting Actor for Ameer and Best Music Director for Santhosh Narayanan. At the 8th South Indian International Movie Awards, the film received several nominations, including Best Actor for Dhanush, which was the only win at the ceremony. The film was nominated at three categories at the 66th Filmfare Awards South, in which Dhanush won the Filmfare Award for Best Actor. A sequel and a prequel for the film was planned by Vetrimaaran, which will be made into a web series.


title: Vada Chennai

text: 1987: Guna, "Jawa" Pazhani, Velu, and Senthil kill a "high profile" don at a restaurant in North Madras (Madras is the former name of Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu state in India). Senthil requests Guna and Velu to surrender for the murder while he bails them out. A year later, the pair is still in prison, and it creates a deep rift between them and Senthil, despite Mani and Thambi, the dead don's younger brother intervening.


title: Vada Chennai

text: 2000: The new warden of the Madras Central Prison plans to weed out all nefarious activities in the prison, which are being controlled by Senthil from the 7th Block. Senthil sells drugs worth millions every month in a very elaborate manner, and never steps out of the 7th Block, fearing for his life from Guna's men in the 11th Block. Anbu and Velu's brother Siva is brought into the prison for fighting. Anbu saves one of Senthil's henchmen, Raju, from being killed by Siva. Anbu is placed in the 11th Block under Velu and Mani. During a raid, he gives away a mobile phone belonging to Mani and is almost killed for doing so, before being saved by the warden. He is shown to have saved his right hand from any injury, while being attacked.


title: Vada Chennai

text: Anbu, a 20 year-old skilled carrom player, whose friend Siva often gets him to play bet matches. On the night Rajiv Gandhi is assassinated, the entire hamlet where Anbu lives loots nearby shops and makes away with various goods. A masked girl steals a sewing machine from Anbu, but he lets her go. The next morning, local cops, along with Thambi, come to recover the stolen goods. Despite having his goods returned, the shopkeeper is keen on filing a complaint against Anbu, as Anbu had hit him the previous night, under the pretext of not returning the sewing machine. Anbu, in turn, goes and accosts the girl, Padma, but she refuses to return it. Anbu gets beaten up by the shopkeeper and loses badly in that year's carrom tournament. Anbu and Padma begin a relationship, during the course of which Anbu saves Guna from contract killers during a festival. The killers reveal that they are Senthil's men, and things only worsen between Guna and Senthil.


title: Vada Chennai

text: 2000: Raju helps Anbu shift to the 7th Block after he cleverly smuggles in contraband for Raju. Meanwhile, Senthil is still trying to harbour political aspirations through a local politician named Muthu, who is also in prison.


title: Vada Chennai

text: Pazhani teases Padma after she and Anbu are caught kissing. Pazhani also beats up Padma's brother Kannan. Anbu goes to speak to Pazhani but is beaten up as well. After no one is willing to help Anbu, he and Kannan go back with weapons belonging to Guna's brother, to threaten him but end up killing Pazhani. Pazhani's men chase the two, but they escapes without being identified.


title: Vada Chennai

text: 2000: Anbu requests Senthil to organise a carrom tournament for the prisoners, which will also help Senthil to make peace with the strict prison Chief and also promote his political aspirations. The tournament is conducted throughout the prison. Senthil, Siva and Anbu all proceed to the knock-out semi-finals. The final two rounds of the tournament are held in the common prison courtyard, which implies that Senthil must come out. Velu and Mani try to utilise the opportunity to kill Senthil and heavily arm their boys. Senthil is alerted and gets ready to kill his to be assassins with their own weapons. However, Senthil's right thumb is injured accidentally, and he withdraws from the tournament. Anbu and Siva proceed to the finals, and Anbu requests Senthil to be present for the finals to raise morale. Senthil agrees and comes to watch the final. Seconds after Anbu wins the final, the tournament tent is collapsed, and two gangs clash. Senthil is able to aptly defend himself. However, Anbu stabs Senthil in the neck with a wooden shard broken from the carrom board, leaving him heavily injured and paralysed for life. Raju is the only witness but does not talk as Anbu spared his life from Siva earlier. Anbu then explains his loyalty towards Guna, to Raju.


title: Vada Chennai

text: After Anbu and Kannan killed Pazhani, Thambi sent them to Guna. While Guna tells the two to leave to someplace afar, Guna's wife Chandra convinces Guna to send his own brother Shankar in Anbu's place to prison, as it will benefit everyone. Guna accepts and Anbu and Kannan are placed on boats for safety. Senthil murders Shankar in prison within two days, leading to Anbu pledging his life to Guna. Sometime later, while trying to confirm a party post, Senthil surrenders himself to the cops and calls for a truce with Guna, but Guna discovers that Senthil has requested Guna and Velu's names to the police hit list. Meanwhile, Anbu goes to Padma's house to ask for her hand, which her father refuses. But with help from Kannan, he brings Padma to his home. At the same time, Guna calls Anbu to help him and provides him with a plan to gain Senthil's trust in prison and subsequently kill him.


title: Vada Chennai

text: 2000: Anbu is bailed out of prison by Guna but tells him that he does not want to work for Guna and wants to hone carrom players instead. Anbu then marries Padma.


title: Vada Chennai

text: 2003: At a coming-of-age ceremony for Thambi's daughter, a road contractor requests Guna and Senthil to come together to help in evicting people from Anbu's hamlet with the promise of houses and jobs. Anbu's friend and Bank officer Hameed have petitioned against the project, and Guna requests Anbu's help to talk Hameed out of it. Anbu then tells everything to Padma, including Rajan's story and how he had fought for the local people.


title: Vada Chennai

text: Rajan is the biggest smuggler in North Madras and works for Muthu, who is the MLA of that area. Muthu requests Rajan's help with clearing out the hamlets for a road project, which was initiated for the Pope's visit. Rajan stands against Muthu and vows to protect his hood and stops his smuggling activities. He also marries Chandra. Muthu, seeing that Rajan will not help him, informs the cops about his smuggling activities. When the cops come, Rajan kidnaps the ACP and refuses to let him go until the road project is called off. Rajan is hailed a hero in the hood for stopping the project. When the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu MGR dies, Rajan goes to his funeral.


title: Vada Chennai

text: Muthu, meanwhile, instigates Senthil to smuggle contraband using college students of their area, and then tips the police, leading to the youngster getting arrested. Senthil, Guna, Velu, and Pazhani are beaten up and publicly humiliated by Rajan for working against his wishes, and they hence plot Rajan's death. That night, they get Thambi to call Rajan to a hotel where Rajan tells them that he will help them become big. He tells that he has arranged for release of the boys and he bet them just to pacify the families of those boys. They are hesitant to kill him, but when their plot gets revealed, they hack Rajan (the dead man from the opening scene) to death. Rajan, while dying, requests Thambi to refrain from doing anything and let things be. Chandra vows to avenge Rajan's death.


title: Vada Chennai

text: 2003: At the meeting with the road contractor, Anbu, like Rajan, makes a stand for the people of the hood and refuses to endorse the project. Guna, enraged that Anbu went up against him, lets Senthil's brother-in-law Kumar, a cop, know that it was Anbu who stabbed Senthil. Chandra then reveals how she was behind everything that happened. She had sent men to kill Guna during the festival, but Anbu saved him. She decides to marry Guna and to use him to help kill the other three involved in Rajan's death. She added Guna and Velu's names to the hit list and drives a wedge between Guna and Velu. She gets Guna to leave the hood with her. She sends Rajan's men to help protect Anbu from Kumar. Kumar finds Anbu but is heavily beaten up by him.


title: Vada Chennai

text: Anbu then traps Guna and Chandra as they leave the hood and warns Guna to leave him and hood alone. Chandra covertly gives Rajan's old home to Anbu. The film ends with Anbu taking up Rajan's cause of fighting for the people.


title: Vada Chennai

text: Vetrimaaran developed the story of "Vada Chennai" in 2003 when he met an unnamed person in the streets of North Chennai, to narrate a script about bike theft, in which he tried to explore about gangsterism and the rise and fall of mafia gangs in North Chennai. But he later decided to work on "Polladhavan" (2007), with Dhanush in the lead, and then, on "Aadukalam" (2011). During the production of "Aadukalam", Vetrimaaran simultaneously scripted and modified the project. It was announced that Karthi signed the film, in October 2009. In February 2010, it was revealed that the film would see Karthi, play the lead role of a fisherman, who is drawn into a mafia gang, unwillingly. Dayanidhi Azhagiri was confirmed to produce the project, under Cloud Nine Movies, and Anushka Shetty, was announced as the female lead, who would play a Marwari girl. However, talks with Karthi fell through, after the film went through delays. In July 2010, Vetrimaaran revealed that discussions were being held with three other actors, to replace Karthi in the lead role. The film made news, without an official announcement, over the next year. Following the huge success of "Aadukalam", Vetrimaaran began considering other scripts, instead.


title: Vada Chennai

text: In October 2011, the producers announced that the film would re-start soon and feature Silambarasan, as the main lead, in place of Karthi. Rana Daggubati and Kishore were cast in other pivotal roles, with Vetrimaaran adding that the story of "Vada Chennai" was first written in 2003, and that he took notes from the first script, to make his other two films. Vetrimaaran's usual team, consisting of cinematographer Velraj, editor Kishore T.E., art director Jacki, and music director G. V. Prakash Kumar, from "Polladhavan" and "Aadukalam", were retained and confirmed to be part of the main crew. The director confirmed that Andrea Jeremiah would also play a pivotal supporting role. Divya Spandana, who previously worked with Vetrimaaran in "Polladhavan", was approached for a role in January 2012, but she did not sign the film. In a turn of events, Rana Daggubati opted out of the film, in February 2012, citing date issues and the delay of the film. Furthermore, it was alleged that the delay of the film had also irked Silambarasan, with reports suggesting that Jiiva would replace him, if Silambarasan walked out of the project. In April 2012, Dayanidhi Azhagiri announced that the project was postponed and anbounced that Vetrimaaran would move on to make another film for his production house, with Dhanush in the lead. Vetrimaaran subsequently contemplated making several different projects with the actor in the lead, before beginning filming for "Soodhadhi" in March 2014. Months into production, the film was postponed, like "Vada Chennai".


title: Vada Chennai

text: In May 2015, Dhanush revealed that he would produce and feature in "Vada Chennai", and that the venture would restart production, in September 2015. Samantha and Andrea Jeremiah were revealed to be among the lead actresses, while Santhosh Narayanan would be the film's composer, after Dhanush had fallen out with G. V. Prakash Kumar. Also, G. B. Venkatesh, who assisted Kishore Te on "Visaranai" (2016), was roped in as the film editor, after the latter's unfortunate demise, due to his health problems. The start of the project was postponed until 2016, as Dhanush had to complete his outstanding projects, first. In August 2015, Vetrimaaran announced that "Vada Chennai" will be made into two-parts, citing Anurag Kashyap's advice to split the film into two, similar to his "Gangs of Wasseypur" films. Dhanush decided to allot more than 200 days for his role, for both the parts. However, with Lyca Productions's inclusion in the project, the film was extended into a trilogy. Unlike his previous films which were inspired by other works, including novels and films, "Vada Chennai" is an original and fictional representation revolving around gangsters in North Chennai.


title: Vada Chennai

text: In late 2015, the team held talks with Jiiva and Vijay Sethupathi, again, for portraying other pivotal characters in the film, though neither of them signed the project. Samuthirakani and Daniel Balaji were subsequently signed on to portray other pivotal roles. Likewise several actors who have previously worked on Vetrimaaran's films such as Kishore, Karunas and Pawan, joined the cast during June 2016. Before the film's shoot started, Samantha opted out of the film citing schedule conflicts, and was replaced by Amala Paul in the lead female role. Vijay Sethupathi also agreed to portray an extended cameo in the film, with Dhanush announcing his inclusion during July 2016. However, owing to a delay in the film's shooting, both Vijay Sethupathi and Amala Paul exited the project, with the pair being replaced by Ameer and Aishwarya Rajesh. Before Sethupathi's replacement with Ameer, it was reported that he left the project due to scripting and call-sheet issues, and Vetrimaaran decided to rope in Telugu actor, Ravi Teja, for the role, as he was impressed with the script and role. However, he also could not take up the role, due to his ongoing projects in Tollywood.


title: Vada Chennai

text: Art director Jacki, worked on the film's production design. The set design for "Vada Chennai" began nearly six years ago and before the beginning of the production, Jacki designed huge sets resembling the Central Jail and had made the team cost . The team initially decided to shoot the portions of the film in a real jail set in Rajamahendravaram, but as the prison portions may become lengthy during the course of the film, they decided to construct a huge set resembling the Madras Central Prison at the Binny Mills in Chennai. He visited the original location and also met a prisoner from Madras Prison to give inputs for the location. The construction initially planned for 43 days, was completed within 40 days. Later, the team had erected another set resembling the Nagoorar Thottam and for that design, the team had spent 20 days. Then, as most of the film being set in the slum area, the team did a miniature model of the design which they planned to replicate in real. To reflect the timeline change (1970–2000), the team went through an extensive research and collected every minute details of the products, including furnitures, materials, home appliances, posters, cigarettes, advertisements and essentials used, which the team had considered as "the biggest challenge". Amritha Ram worked on the costumes for the film. A report from "Sify" claimed that the film is the "costliest film ever made in Dhanush's career" as Jacki had stated that the work on the production design escalated the costs in the film.


title: Vada Chennai

text: The film's production began on 22 June 2016, after multiple postponements. The first schedule of the shooting was held at a huge set resembling the Madras Central Prison which was erected at Binny Mills in Chennai. The shoot continued throughout mid-2016 in North Chennai for thirty days, with scenes depicting the 1970s shot. The production was briefly delayed as Vetrimaaran sought to get his previous film, "Visaranai", ready for nominations at the 89th Academy Awards, which prompted Dhanush to move on to work on his other projects: his directorial debut "Pa Paandi", "Velaiilla Pattadhari 2" and his international debut film, "The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir". The break between schedules also meant that Vetrimaaran began pre-production work on another film starring G. V. Prakash Kumar, which he would make following the completion of the first part of "Vada Chennai". However, it was revealed that Vetrimaaran was not ready to work simultaneously on the three parts of the film and reported that they may take a break in-between the production of the trilogy, where Dhanush and Vetrimaaran planned for three-to-four films in the process.


title: Vada Chennai

text: The second filming schedule began in April 2017 in Royapuram, Chennai, and progressed for 30 days. However, the shooting further affected as Dhanush had worked on "The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir". It was revealed that the team had completed 90% of the shooting within late-June 2017, and only 10–15 days of shooting left. But during the film's production, Dhanush also prioritised to work on the long delayed Gautham Menon's project "Enai Noki Paayum Thota" and "Maari 2", which escalated the film's delay. Later, Dhanush decided to work on both the projects simultaneously, in order to complete the shoots of both the films within time. The filming was completed within February 2018.


title: Vada Chennai

text: The film was initially announced with G. V. Prakash Kumar as the music director. However, following Kumar's fallout with the lead actor Dhanush, the team chose Santhosh Narayanan as the film composer, which marked his maiden collaboration with Vetrimaaran. Dhanush suggested Santhosh's name when he composed for one of his production, the Rajinikanth-starrer "Kaala" (2018), and with his inclusion, he simultaneously worked for both the films; the work on the entire album was completed within June 2018. The album is mostly based North Madras music consisting of a diverse genres – gaana, folk and melody. "Vada Chennai" also marked Santhosh's 25th filmas a composer in his career. The album was released on 23 September 2018, in entirety through the internet and in streaming platforms such as Saavn, JioMusic and Gaana. The soundtrack received rave reviews from critics and audience, and topped the iTunes charts within three days of its release. It was also streamed above 5,00,000 times on Saavn. An additional song titled "Patta Patti" was released during mid-November 2018, after repeated requests from fans.


title: Vada Chennai

text: Vetrimaaran worked on the post-production of "Vada Chennai", assembling the final cut of the film during mid-May 2018. In June 2018, the makers confirmed that "Vada Chennai" will be released theatrically on the occasion of Ganesh Chathurthi (13 September 2018). The teaser trailer for the film was unveiled on the occasion of Dhanush's birthday (28 July 2018) and received positive response from fans. Furthermore, celebrities such as Shah Rukh Khan and Anurag Kashyap praised Dhanush and Vetrimaaran's work in the teaser. The makers unveiled a set of posters featuring the lead characters starting from 6 August 2018. In mid-August, Dhanush announced that "Vada Chennai", will be released worldwide on 17 October 2018, coinciding the Dusshera weekend. The film was premiered at the Pingyao International Film Festival in China before the theatrical release, and also premiered at the 23rd International Film Festival of Kerala in November 2018. The merchandise of "Vada Chennai", was launched by "Cover It Up" and "Fully Filmy" on 15 October 2018, as a part of the film's promotion.


title: Vada Chennai

text: Four days before the theatrical release, the film was sent to the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), where it received an A certificate, due to "raw and gritty violence". Scenes where dialogues mentioning and referring to the former Chief ministers J. Jayalalithaa, M. G. Ramachandran and M. Karunanidhi, where removed from the film, as it was considered defaming the politicians. Post-release, the film drew criticism for allegedly portraying the residents of North Chennai in a bad light. The film also drew controversies from fisherfolk community, because of a love-making scene between Ameer and Andrea was pictured in a boat, which was considered to be offensive for the community. Director Vetrimaaran, in a video statement, apologised to anyone who may have been hurt by the film. Then the director agreed to remove the offensive scenes from the film. The film was later dubbed Hindi as "Chennai Central" and released on YouTube by Goldmines Telefilms on 21 June 2020.


title: Vada Chennai

text: In the first day of theatrical release, "Vada Chennai" earned from the Chennai city box-office and in over 300 screens. The film gained $48,840 ( lakh) from the premiere shows screened in United States on 16 October, a day before the Indian release. The film further earned from the second day at Chennai box-office, and had collected worldwide. Within the third day, the film earned at the worldwide box-office, tallying its three-day collection to . During its theatrical run in the weekends, the film enjoyed good footfalls and had collected within two days, adding its worldwide collection to . The film grossed in Karnataka, in rest of India, and at the overseas centres (combined collections in United States, Malaysia, United Arab Emirates and other centres). Within two weeks of its release, the film earned at the worldwide box office, surpassing "Velaiilla Pattadhari" to emerge the highest-grossing Tamil film of Dhanush's career, until its record was broken by "Asuran", another film directed by Vetrimaaran. In addition, the film crossed the crore-mark at the Chennai box office.


title: Vada Chennai

text: The film was met with critical acclaim, with critics praising the story, screenplay and each actors performance. Janani K, a critic from "India Today" gave a rating of 4 stars (out of 5) and said that ""Vada Chennai" has everything you look for in a gangster thriller. But Vetri Maaran's display of twists and turns will win you over." "The Indian Express"-based critic Manoj Kumar R. assigned 5/5 rating for the film, saying ""Vada Chennai" is the closest you can get to unforgiving underworld filled with insecurity, revenge, destiny, rage and insatiable urge for bloodshed. It is not the story that stands out in Vada Chennai. It is how beautifully Vetrimaaran has captured the lifestyle of a place, which is so close and yet so far away from the advancement of modern civilization." Sowmya Rajendran, editor-in-chief of "The News Minute" wrote "From the colourful curses of the street to each of the characters, the film gives us a very real glimpse of gang wars. Vetrimaaran-Dhanush delivers a brilliant gangster film."


title: Vada Chennai

text: Srivatsan S, writing for "The Hindu", said "The obvious political overtones that have been built throughout will have its relevance in part two. If anything, Vada Chennai reiterates why Vetri Maaran is a master storyteller." Priyanka Sundar of "Hindustan Times" stated the film Vada Chennai, the first part of a three-part film, "is complete in itself speaks for director’s Vetrimaaran’s execution style". She further called it as a "bloody brilliant film laced with some bone chilling moments accompanied with ingenious music". Anupama Subramanian of "Deccan Chronicle" gave four out of five ratings and said:


title: Vada Chennai

text: M. Suganth of "The Times of India" gave 4 stars (out of 5) and stated "The sprawling nature of the narrative and the various events that impact the lives of the numerous characters make Vada Chennai truly an epic." Film critic and trade analyst Sreedhar Pillai, in his review for "Firstpost" said ""Vada Chennai" is another feather on Vetrimaaran’s cap though not in the same league as his earlier films. The way he has built into the story, the rise of gangsters and thrown in political allegories is brutally honest. It also shows how politicians and the slum lords, in the name of development and welfare of the people, are similar in their opportunistic approach and selfish interests." He gave the film three-and-a-half out of five stars.


title: Vada Chennai

text: A critic from "Sify", also gave the same rating and said "Vada Chennai takes its time to unfold, and you may enjoy if you muster the patience for it. Give it a chance, watch it for some excellent acting and for its gritty realistic feel." Baradwaj Rangan of "Film Companion South" wrote "Dhanush's ascent to stardom has come alongside his growth as an actor, and there’s not one scene where he makes us doubt his character's actions. The actors are so good (Ameer is a standout) and the film's parts are so much greater than the whole that savouring them becomes its own kind of satisfaction. With his outstanding cinematographer Velraj, Vetrimaaran unleashes one flamboyant scene after another."


title: Vada Chennai

text: Bollywood director Anurag Kashyap also heaped praise on the direction and screenplay, calling it as "an original gangster film". Directors Gautham Vasudev Menon and Vineeth Sreenivasan too praised the film, the latter called Vetrimaaran as the director "needed to be celebrated". Kashyap also had the first cut of the film, along with other Tamil films being preserved in his library. In a May 2021 interview with Indian cricketer Ravichandran Ashwin, Vetrimaaran revealed about his voice-over used in the opening narrations, and said that "when the film's release date was nearing, he could not trim the film to the desired duration, so he came up with the idea of voice over only three days before the film's release date". A dialogue from the film "Senthil, Guna, Velu, Thambi ivanga ellarum Anbu vaazhkaiyoda inaikkuradhu Rajan dhan" (), has been used widely in internet memes.


title: Vada Chennai

text: Post "Vada Chennai"'s success, many sources claimed about the sequel of the film, after Dhanush and Vetrimaaran collaborated for "Asuran" (2019). In July 2019, there were reports being surfaced that the sequel of the film will be shelved, Dhanush clarified that the sequel will progress. It was reported that the sequel will be made into a web series format instead of a feature film, as Vetrimaaran revealed that "some of the events including the 2004 Tsunami and other political incidents, had to be shown and this may overshoot the proposed budget", hence he decided to make the sequel into a digital format. Vetrimaaran also revealed that he planned the first film into a web series instead of making into a feature.


title: Vada Chennai

text: A prequel for the film titled "Rajan Vagaiyara" (), will be based on the life of Rajan's character in the film. He originally proposed it to make it as a web-series on late-October 2018, after "Vada Chennai"'s release, saying that "I fell in love with Rajan’s character as I was writing. His is a very fascinating personality and at one point, I wanted to make a standalone film on Rajan. The prequel idea would do full justice to his character and give it more weight." In March 2021, it was reported that the proposed web-series is currently under production, and may begin soon after Vetrimaaran's completion in the projects "Viduthalai" and "Vaadivaasal".


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: The Portuguese Colonial War (), also known in Portugal as the Overseas War () or in the former colonies as the War of Liberation (), and also known as the Angolan, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambican War of Independence, was a 13-year-long conflict fought between Portugal's military and the emerging nationalist movements in Portugal's African colonies between 1961 and 1974. The Portuguese ultraconservative regime at the time, the , was overthrown by a military coup in 1974, and the change in government brought the conflict to an end. The war was a decisive ideological struggle in Lusophone Africa, surrounding nations, and mainland Portugal.


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: The prevalent Portuguese and international historical approach considers the Portuguese Colonial War as was perceived at the time—a single conflict fought in the three separate Angolan, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambican theaters of operations, rather than a number of separate conflicts as the emergent African countries aided each other and were supported by the same global powers and even the United Nations during the war. The 1954 Indian Annexation of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and 1961 Indian Annexation of Goa are sometimes included as part of the conflict.


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: Unlike other European nations during the 1950s and 1960s, the Portuguese regime did not withdraw from its African colonies, or the overseas provinces () as those territories had been officially called since 1951. During the 1960s, various armed independence movements became active—the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola, National Liberation Front of Angola, National Union for the Total Independence of Angola in Angola, African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde in Portuguese Guinea, and the Mozambique Liberation Front in Mozambique. During the ensuing conflict, atrocities were committed by all forces involved.


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: Throughout the period, Portugal faced increasing dissent, arms embargoes, and other punitive sanctions imposed by the international community, including by some Western Bloc governments, either intermittently or continuously. The independentist guerrillas and movements of Portuguese Africa were heavily supported and instigated with money, weapons, training and diplomatic lobbying by the Communist Bloc which had the Soviet Union as its lead nation. By 1973, the war had become increasingly unpopular due to its length and financial costs, the worsening of diplomatic relations with other United Nations members, and the role it had always played as a factor of perpetuation of the entrenched Estado Novo regime and the nondemocratic status quo in Portugal.


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: The end of the war came with the Carnation Revolution military coup of April 1974 in mainland Portugal. The withdrawal resulted in the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Portuguese citizens plus military personnel of European, African, and mixed ethnicity from the former Portuguese territories and newly independent African nations. This migration is regarded as one of the largest peaceful, if forced, migrations in the world's history although most of the migrants fled the former Portuguese territories as destitute refugees.


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: The former colonies faced severe problems after independence. Devastating civil wars followed in Angola and Mozambique, which lasted several decades, claimed millions of lives, and resulted in large numbers of displaced refugees. Angola and Mozambique established state-planned economies after independence, and struggled with inefficient judicial systems and bureaucracies, corruption, poverty and unemployment. A level of social order and economic development comparable to what had existed under Portuguese rule, including during the period of the Colonial War, became the goal of the independent territories.


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: The former Portuguese territories in Africa became sovereign states, with Agostinho Neto in Angola, Samora Machel in Mozambique, Luís Cabral in Guinea-Bissau, Manuel Pinto da Costa in São Tomé and Príncipe, and Aristides Pereira in Cape Verde as the heads of state.


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: When the Portuguese began trading on the west coast of Africa in the 15th century, they concentrated their energies on Guinea and Angola. Hoping at first for gold, they soon found that slaves were the most valuable commodity available in the region for export. The Islamic Empire was already well-established in the African slave trade, for centuries linking it to the Arab slave trade. However, the Portuguese who had conquered the Islamic port of Ceuta in 1415 and several other towns in current-day Morocco in a Crusade against Islamic neighbors, managed to successfully establish themselves in the area. The Portuguese, though, never established much more than a foothold in either place.


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: In Guinea, rival European powers had established control over the trade routes in the region, while local African rulers confined the Portuguese to the coast. These rulers then sent enslaved Africans to the Portuguese ports, or to forts in Africa from where they were exported. Thousands of kilometers down the coast, in Angola, the Portuguese found consolidating their early advantage in establishing hegemony over the region even harder, due to the encroachment of Dutch traders. Nevertheless, the fortified Portuguese towns of Luanda (established in 1587 with 400 Portuguese settlers) and Benguela (a fort from 1587, a town from 1617) remained almost continuously in Portuguese hands.


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: As in Guinea, the slave trade became the basis of the local economy in Angola. Excursions traveled ever farther inland to procure captives who were sold by African rulers; the primary source of these slaves were those captured as a result of losing a war or interethnic skirmish with other African tribes. More than a million men, women, and children were shipped from Angola across the Atlantic. In this region, unlike Guinea, the trade remained largely in Portuguese hands. Nearly all the slaves were destined for the Portuguese colony of Brazil.


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: In Mozambique, reached in the 15th century by Portuguese sailors searching for a maritime spice trade route, the Portuguese settled along the coast and made their way into the hinterland as "" (backwoodsmen). These "sertanejos" lived alongside Swahili traders and even obtained employment among Shona kings as interpreters and political advisers. One such "sertanejo" managed to travel through almost all the Shona kingdoms, including the Mutapa Empire's (Mwenemutapa) metropolitan district, between 1512 and 1516.


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: By the 1530s, small bands of Portuguese traders and prospectors penetrated the interior regions seeking gold, where they set up garrisons and trading posts at Sena and Tete on the Zambezi River and tried to establish a monopoly over the gold trade. The Portuguese finally entered into direct relations with the Mwenemutapa in the 1560s. However, the Portuguese traders and explorers settled in the coastal strip with greater success, and established strongholds safe from their main rivals in East Africa – the Omani Arabs, including those of Zanzibar.


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: Portugal's colonial claim to the region was recognized by the other European powers during the 1880s, during the Scramble for Africa, and the final boundaries of Portuguese Africa were agreed by negotiation in Europe in 1891. At the time, Portugal was in effective control of little more than the coastal strip of both Angola and Mozambique, but important inroads into the interior had been made since the first half of the 19th century. In Angola, construction of a railway from Luanda to Malanje, in the fertile highlands, was started in 1885.


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: Work began in 1903 on a commercially significant line from Benguela all the way inland to the Katanga region, aiming to provide access to the sea for the richest mining district of the Belgian Congo. The line reached the Congo border in 1928. In 1914, both Angola and Mozambique had Portuguese army garrisons of around 2,000 men, African troops led by European officers. With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Portugal sent reinforcements to both colonies, because the fighting in the neighboring German African colonies was expected to spill over the borders into its territories.


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: After Germany declared war on Portugal in March 1916, the Portuguese government sent more reinforcements to Mozambique (the South Africans had captured German South West Africa in 1915). These troops supported British, South African and Belgian military operations against German colonial forces in German East Africa. In December 1917, German colonial forces led by Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck invaded Mozambique from German East Africa. Portuguese, British and Belgian forces spent all of 1918 chasing Lettow-Vorbeck and his men across Mozambique, German East Africa and Northern Rhodesia. Portugal sent a total of 40,000 reinforcements to Angola and Mozambique during World War I.


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: By this time, the regime in Portugal had been through two major political upheavals—from monarchy to republic in 1910 and then to a military dictatorship after a coup in 1926. These changes resulted in a tightening of Portuguese control in Angola. In the early years of the expanded colony, near-constant warfare as occurring between the Portuguese and the various African rulers of the region. A systematic campaign of conquest and pacification was undertaken by the Portuguese. One by one, the local kingdoms were overwhelmed and abolished.


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: By the middle of the 1920s, the whole of Angola was under control. Slavery had officially ended in Portuguese Africa, but the plantations were worked on a system of paid serfdom by African labour composed of the large majority of ethnic Africans who did not have resources to pay Portuguese taxes and were considered unemployed by the authorities. After World War II and the first decolonization events, this system gradually declined, but paid forced labor, including labor contracts with forced relocation of people, continued in many regions of Portuguese Africa until it was finally abolished in 1961.


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: In the late 1950s, the Portuguese Armed Forces saw themselves confronted with the paradox generated by the dictatorial regime of the "Estado Novo" that had been in power since 1933; on one hand, the policy of Portuguese neutrality in World War II placed the Portuguese Armed Forces out of the way of a possible East-West conflict; on the other, the regime felt the increased responsibility of keeping Portugal's vast overseas territories under control and protecting the citizenry there. Portugal joined NATO as a founding member in 1949, and was integrated within the various fledgling military commands of NATO.


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: NATO's focus on preventing a conventional Soviet attack against Western Europe was to the detriment of military preparations against guerrilla uprisings in Portugal's overseas provinces that were considered essential for the survival of the nation. The integration of Portugal in NATO resulted in the formation of a military élite who were critical in the planning and implementation of operations during the Overseas War. This "NATO generation" ascended quickly to the highest political positions and military command without having to provide evidence of loyalty to the regime.


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: The Colonial War established a split between the military structure – heavily influenced by the western powers with democratic governments – and the political power of the regime. Some analysts see the "Botelho Moniz coup" of 1961 (also known as "A Abrilada") against the Portuguese government and backed by the U.S. administration, as the beginning of this rupture, the origin of a lapse on the part of the regime to keep up a unique command center, an armed force prepared for threats of conflict in the colonies. This situation caused, as was verified later, a lack of coordination between the three general staffs (Army, Air Force, and Navy).


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: The U.S. backed FNLA, which was headed by Holden Roberto, attacked Portuguese settlers and Africans living in northern Angola from its bases in Congo-Léopoldville. Many of the victims were African farm workers living under labor contracts that required seasonal relocation from the desertified Southwest and Bailundo areas of Angola. Photos of Africans killed by the FLNA, which included photos of decapitated civilians, men, women and children of both white and black ethnicity, was later displayed in the UN by Portuguese diplomats. The emergence of labor protests, attacks by newly organized guerrilla movements, and the Santa Maria hijacking by Henrique Galvão began a path to open warfare in Angola.


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: According to historical researchers such as José Freire Antunes, U.S. President John F. Kennedy sent a message to President António de Oliveira Salazar advising Portugal to abandon its African colonies shortly after the outbreak of violence in 1961. Instead, after a coup led by pro-U.S. forces failed to depose him, Salazar consolidated power and immediately sent reinforcements to the overseas territories, setting the stage for continued conflict in Angola. Similar situations played out in other overseas Portuguese territories.


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: By the 1950s, the European mainland Portuguese territory was inhabited by a society that was poorer and had a much higher illiteracy rate than the average Western European societies or those of North America. It was ruled by an authoritarian and conservative right-leaning dictatorship, known as the Estado Novo regime. By this time, the Estado Novo regime ruled both the Portuguese mainland and several centuries-old overseas territories as theoretically co-equal departments. The possessions were Angola, Cape Verde, Macau, Mozambique, Portuguese Guinea, Portuguese India, Portuguese Timor, São João Baptista de Ajudá, and São Tomé and Príncipe.


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: In reality, the relation of mainland Portuguese to their overseas possessions was that of colonial administrator to a subservient colony. Political, legislative, administrative, commercial, and other institutional relations between the colonies and Portugal-based individuals and organizations were numerous, though migration to, from, and between Portugal and its overseas departments was limited in size, due principally to the long distance and low annual income of the average Portuguese and that of the indigenous overseas populations.


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: An increasing number of African anticolonial movements called for total independence of the overseas African territories from Portugal. Some, like the U.S.-backed UPA wanted national self-determination, while others wanted a new form of government based on Marxist principles. Portuguese leaders, including Salazar, attempted to stave off calls for independence by defending a policy of assimilation, multiracialism, and civilising mission, or lusotropicalism, as a way of integrating Portuguese colonies, and their peoples, more closely with Portugal itself.


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: For the Portuguese ruling regime, the overseas empire was a matter of national interest, to be preserved at all costs. As far back as 1919, a Portuguese delegate to the International Labour Conference in Geneva declared: "The assimilation of the so-called inferior races, by cross-breeding, by means of the Christian religion, by the mixing of the most widely divergent elements; freedom of access to the highest offices of state, even in Europe – these are the principles which have always guided Portuguese colonisation in Asia, in Africa, in the Pacific, and previously in America."


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: As late as the 1950s, the policy of "colorblind" access and mixing of races did not extend to all of Portugal's African territories, particularly Mozambique, where in tune with other minority white regimes of the day in southern Africa, the territory was segregated along racial lines. Strict qualification criteria ensured that less than one in 100 black Mozambicans became full Portuguese citizens.


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: Numerous subsidies were offered by the Estado Novo regime to those Portuguese who agreed to settle in Angola or Mozambique, including a special premium for each Portuguese man who agreed to marry an African woman. Salazar himself was fond of restating the old Portuguese policy maxim that any indigenous resident of Portugal's African territories was, in theory, eligible to become a member of Portuguese government, even its president. In practice, this never took place, though trained black Africans living in Portugal's overseas African possessions were allowed to occupy positions in a variety of areas including the military, civil service, clergy, education, and private business—providing they had the requisite education and technical skills.


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: While access to basic, secondary, and technical education remained poor until the 1960s, a few Africans were able to attend schools locally or in some cases in Portugal itself. This resulted in the advancement of certain black Portuguese Africans who became prominent individuals during the war and its aftermath, including Samora Machel, Mário Pinto de Andrade, Marcelino dos Santos, Eduardo Mondlane, Agostinho Neto, Amílcar Cabral, Jonas Savimbi, Joaquim Chissano, and Graça Machel. Two state-run universities were founded in Portuguese Africa in the 1962 by the Minister of the Overseas Adriano Moreira (the "Universidade de Luanda" in Angola and the "Universidade de Lourenço Marques" in Mozambique, awarding a range of degrees from engineering to medicine); however, most of their students came from Portuguese families living in the two territories. Several personalities in Portuguese society, including one of the most idolized sports stars in Portuguese football history, a black football player from Portuguese East Africa named Eusébio, were other examples of efforts towards assimilation and multiracialism in the post-World War II period.


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: According to Mozambican historian João Paulo Borges Coelho, the Portuguese colonial army was largely segregated along terms of race and ethnicity until 1960. There were originally three classes of soldier in Portuguese overseas service: commissioned soldiers (whites), overseas soldiers (African "assimilados"), and native or indigenous Africans ("indigenato"'). These categories were renamed to first, second, and third class in 1960, which effectively corresponded to the same categories. Later, after official discrimination based on skin colour was outlawed, some Portuguese commanders such as General António de Spínola began a process of "Africanization" of Portuguese forces fighting in Africa. In Portuguese Guinea, this included a large increase in African recruitment along with the establishment of all-black military formations such as the Black Militias ("Milícias negras") commanded by Major Carlos Fabião and the African Commando Battalion ("Batalhão de Comandos Africanos") commanded by General Almeida Bruno.


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: While sub-Saharan African soldiers constituted a mere 18% of the total number of troops fighting in Portugal's African territories in 1961, this percentage rose dramatically over the next 13 years, with black soldiers constituting over 50% of all government forces fighting in Africa by April 1974. Coelho noted that perceptions of African soldiers varied a good deal among senior Portuguese commanders during the conflict in Angola, Guinea, and Mozambique. General Francisco da Costa Gomes, perhaps the most successful counterinsurgency commander, sought good relations with local civilians, and employed African units within the framework of an organized counterinsurgency plan. General António de Spínola, by contrast, appealed for a more political and psycho-social use of African soldiers. On the other hand, General Kaúlza de Arriaga, the most conservative of the three, appears to have doubted the reliability of African forces outside his strict control, while continuing to view African soldiers as inferior to Portuguese troops.


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: As the war progressed, Portugal rapidly increased its mobilized forces. Under the Salazar regime, a military draft required all males to serve three years of obligatory military service; many of those called up to active military duty were deployed to combat zones in Portugal's African overseas provinces. The national service period was increased to four years in 1967, and virtually all conscripts faced a mandatory two-year tour of service in Africa. The existence of the draft and likelihood of combat in African counterinsurgency operations over time resulted in a sharp increase in emigration by Portuguese men seeking to avoid such service. By the end of the Portuguese colonial war in 1974, black African participation had become crucial due to declining numbers of recruits available from Portugal itself.


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: Native African troops, although widely deployed, were initially used in subordinate roles as enlisted troops or noncommissioned officers. Portuguese colonial administrators were handicapped by their policies in education, which largely barred indigenous Africans from adequate education until well after the outbreak of the insurgency. With illiteracy rates approaching 99% and almost no African enrollment in secondary schools, few African candidates could qualify for Portugal's officer candidate programs; most African officers obtained their commission as the result of individual competence and valour on the battlefield. As the war went on, an increasing number of native Africans served as noncommissioned or commissioned officers by the 1970s, including such officers as Captain (later Lt. Colonel) Marcelino da Mata, a Portuguese citizen born of native Guinean parents who rose to command from a first sergeant in a road engineering unit to a commander in the elite all-African "Comandos Africanos", where he eventually became one of the most decorated soldiers in the Portuguese Army. Many native Angolans rose to positions of command, though of junior rank.


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: By the early 1970s, the Portuguese authorities had fully perceived racial discriminatory policies and lack of investment in education as wrong and contrary to their overseas ambitions in Portuguese Africa, and willingly accepted a true color blindness policy with more spending in education and training opportunities, which started to produce a larger number of black high ranked professionals, including military personnel.


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: After the World War II, as communist and anticolonial ideologies spread across Africa, many clandestine political movements were established in support of independence using various interpretations of Marxist revolutionary ideology. These new movements seized on anti-Portuguese and anti-colonial sentiment to advocate the complete overthrow of existing governmental structures in Portuguese Africa. These movements alleged that Portuguese policies and development plans were primarily designed by the ruling authorities for the benefit of the territories' ethnic Portuguese population at the expense of local tribal control, the development of native communities, and the majority of the indigenous population, who suffered both state-sponsored discrimination and enormous social pressure to comply with government policies largely imposed from Lisbon. Many felt they had received too little opportunity or resources to upgrade their skills and improve their economic and social situation to a degree comparable to that of the Europeans. Statistically, Portuguese Africa's white Portuguese population were indeed wealthier and more educated than the indigenous majority.


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: After conflict erupted between the UPA and MPLA and Portuguese military forces, U.S. President John F. Kennedy advised António de Oliveira Salazar (via the US consulate in Portugal) that Portugal should abandon Portugal's African colonies. A failed Portuguese military coup known as the "Abrilada", attempted in an effort to overthrow the authoritarian Estado Novo regime of António de Oliveira Salazar, received covert U.S. support. In response, Salazar moved to consolidate his power, ordering an immediate military response to the violence occurring in Angola.


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: While Portuguese forces had all but won the guerrilla war in Angola, and had stalemated FRELIMO in Mozambique, colonial forces were forced on the defensive in Guinea, where PAIGC forces had carved out a large area of the rural countryside under effective insurgent control, using Soviet-supplied AA cannon and ground-to-air missiles to protect their encampments from attack by Portuguese air assets. Overall, the increasing success of Portuguese counterinsurgency operations and the inability or unwillingness of guerrilla forces to destroy the economy of Portugal's African territories was seen as a victory for the Portuguese government policies.


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: The Soviet Union, realising that military success by insurgents in Angola and Mozambique was becoming increasingly remote, shifted much of its military support to the PAIGC in Guinea, while increasing diplomatic efforts to isolate Portugal from the world community. The success of the socialist bloc in isolating Portugal diplomatically extended inside Portugal itself into the armed forces, where younger officers disenchanted with the Estado Novo regime and promotional opportunities began to identify ideologically with those calling for overthrow of the government and the establishment of a state based on Marxist principles.


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: Nicolae Ceaușescu's Romania offered consistent support to the African liberation movements. Romania was the first state that recognized the independence of Guinea-Bissau, as well as the first to sign agreements with the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde and Angola's MPLA. In May 1974, Ceaușescu reaffirmed Romania's support for Angolan independence. As late as September 1975, Bucharest publicly supported all three Angolan liberation movements (FNLA, MPLA and UNITA). In the spring of 1972, Romania allowed FRELIMO to open a diplomatic mission in Bucharest, the first of its kind in Eastern Europe. In 1973, Ceaușescu recognized FRELIMO as "the only legitimate representative of the Mozambican people", an important precedent. Samora Machel stressed that—during his trip to the Soviet Union—he and his delegation were granted "the status that we are entitled to" due to Romania's official recognition of FRELIMO. In terms of material support, Romanian trucks were used to transport weapons and ammunition to the front, as well as medicine, school material and agricultural equipment. Romanian tractors contributed to the increase in agricultural production. Romanian weapons and uniforms—reportedly of "excellent quality"—played a "decisive role" in FRELIMO's military progress. It was in early 1973 that FRELIMO made these statements about Romania's material support, in a memorandum sent to the Romanian Communist Party's Central Committee. In 1974, Romania became the first country to formally recognize Mozambique.


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: By early 1974, guerrilla operations in Angola and Mozambique had been reduced to sporadic ambush operations against the Portuguese in the rural countryside areas, far from the main centers of population. The only exception was Portuguese Guinea, where PAIGC guerrilla operations, strongly supported by neighbouring allies like Guinea and Senegal, were largely successful in liberating and securing large areas of Portuguese Guinea. According some historians, Portugal recognized its inability to win the conflict in Guinea at the outset, but was forced to fight on to prevent an independent Guinea from serving as an inspirational model for insurgents in Angola and Mozambique.


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: Despite continuing attacks by insurgent forces against targets throughout the Portuguese African territories, the economies of both Portuguese Angola and Mozambique had actually improved each year of the conflict, as had the economy of Portugal proper. Angola enjoyed an unprecedented economic boom during the 1960s, and the Portuguese government built new transportation networks to link the well-developed and highly urbanized coastal strip with the remote inland regions of the territory.


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: The number of ethnic European Portuguese migrants from mainland Portugal (the "metrópole") continued to increase as well, though always constituting a small minority of each territory's total population. Nevertheless, the costs of continuing the wars in Africa imposed a heavy burden on Portugal's resources; by the 1970s, the country was spending 40 percent of its annual budget on the war effort.


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: General Spínola was dismissed by Dr. Marcelo Caetano, the last prime minister of Portugal under the Estado Novo regime, over the general's publicly announced desire to open negotiations with the PAIGC in Portuguese Guinea. The dismissal caused considerable public indignation in Portugal, and created favorable conditions for a military overthrow of the existing regime, which had lost all public support. On 25 April 1974 a military coup organized by left-wing Portuguese military officers, the Armed Forces Movement (MFA), overthrew the Estado Novo regime in what came to be known as the Carnation Revolution in Lisbon, Portugal.


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: The coup resulted in a period of economic collapse and political instability, but received general support from the public in its aim of ending the Portuguese war effort in Africa. In the ex-colonies, officers suspected of sympathizing with the prior regime, even black officers, such as Captain Marcelino da Mata, were imprisoned and tortured, while African soldiers who had served in native Portuguese Army units were forced to petition for Portuguese citizenship or else face reprisals from their former enemies in Angola, Guinea, or Mozambique.


title: Portuguese Colonial War

text: The Carnation Revolution of 25 April 1974 came as a shock to the United States and other Western powers, as most analysts and the Nixon administration had concluded that Portuguese military success on the battlefield would resolve any political divisions within Portugal concerning the conduct of the war in Portuguese Africa, providing the conditions for US investment there. Most concerned was the apartheid government of South Africa, which launched a deep border incursion operation into Angola to attack guerrilla-controlled areas of the country following the coup.