Ah, Venezia. What can you say that hasn’t already been said? What can you photograph that hasn’t been seen a million times? But today is strangely tranquil as Paolo leads me on a tour of his favorite haunts from his time here fourteen years ago… it’s like the city exists just for us…
Archives for the month of: March, 2012
A hop, skip and a jump over the snowy alps and we’re in Italy, where we’ve been invited to present The Sound We See and other EPFC youth work as part of the Ca’ Foscari Short Film Festival in Venice later this week. But first, a couple of days in Treviso for la famiglia time with Paolo’s aunts, uncles and cousins. Tonight, a big noisy dinner at the teaching farm where Cousin Adele works with at-risk youth… Local salami, truffle cheese, white asparagus, fresh homemade pasta, prosecco and panetonne followed by singing, kissing, a little football, and a whole lotta hand gestures… that’s Italian!
Continuing on the Lisa/Paolo lecture circuit (before the end of May, we will have personally invited every single citizen of this town to the Sound We See screening!), tonight we are part of the lineup at PechaKucha Night Rotterdam #27. Started in Tokyo in 2003, PechaKucha (Japanese for chit chat) is a regular gathering in 501 cities worldwide that invites a variety of guests to make short presentations on a common theme. The twist is that the presentations contain only 20 images each of which is displayed for 20 seconds so you gotta be short, sweet and snappy! Tonight’s theme is Social Design and our talk on itinerant cinema and the Filmmobile is sandwiched between contributions from a backyard sausage smoker, the creator of a sporty hijab perfect for skateboarding, and a lady who takes pictures of her own hoo hah. Never a dull moment!
According to our Dutch friends, the beginning of daylight savings time also indicates the beginning of summer. Today everyone is saying “Now that it’s summer…” and “Well, since it’s summer…” While it may be a little early to break out the bathing suits, the run of sunny days and balmy temperatures this week sure makes it seem like we’ve left winter behind.
After enjoying our new Sunday morning flea market ritual, it’s time for class. This week, Cinematic Rotterdam author Floris Paalman presents a terrific overview of the local history of the City Symphony genre from the 1920s to the 1970s. Now that we’re all inspired, we need to think about The Sound We See: Rotterdam. The students have chosen their shooting times, mentor/mentee partnerships have been formed, and now it’s time for some serious location scouting and planning… production begins April 2!
16mm Saturday: four hours shooting around Cool with Sound We See: Rotterdam participants Emre and Hinko followed by six hours in the WORM filmwerkplaats processing Double-X Negative and Hi-Con Reversal. The results of our first attempt at contact printing on the modified Steenbeck? Surprisingly stellar!
A splendid day of markets, movies, museums and medieval architecture in Ghent. Following screenings of Naomi Uman’s Kalendar and Videodiary (which reveal more beauty and complexity to me with each viewing) and Robert Gardner’s stunning Forest of Bliss (on 35mm!), we make a late afternoon excursion to the Dr. Guislain Museum, located on the tranquil grounds of Belgium’s first psychiatric institution. Staffed by patients of the Psychiatric Center, the museum combines the history of psychiatric care, displays of “outsider” art, and a temporary exhibition entitled Dangerously Young: Child in Danger, Child as Danger featuring indigenous rite of passage masks from Brazil, 19th century Flemish manners posters, Paul Klee drawings, Deanna Templeton and William Klein photos, Banksy graffiti and Ron Mueck’s creepy sculpture Big Baby. Outside, it’s magic hour. The perfect moment for a walking meditation…
After a series of mysterious train cancellations, delays, reroutings and platform changes, we finally arrive in Ghent, Belgium where the kind organizers of the Courtesane Film Festival have provided us with free passes to a lovely array of screenings and events. After a warm welcome from Lucas, our bed & breakfast host, it’s off to explore the town. Ghent may be known for its castles, its cathedrals and its béguinages, but what we notice most are the young people. They are everywhere: roaming the cobbled streets in packs, frolicking on lawns with their shirts off, smoking, sketching, sunbathing, making out, hanging out on sidewalks drinking wine right out of the bottle, playing harmonicas, riding their bikes (fast), driving their cars (also fast), and just generally standing around looking good looking. Evidently the young people are in charge here and have killed everyone under the age of 25. We turn up our collars, lower our voices and hope they’re too busy with themselves to notice us moving stealthily amongst them…
We celebrate a sunny first day of spring by riding our bikes to the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen to check out The Collection Enriched exhibit. Special bonus: free admission every Wednesday! We enjoy the paintings almost as much as the text panels, the english translations of which manage to perfectly convey classic Dutch “direct” communication style while simultaneously focusing more on what the collection doesn’t contain than what it does.
Sometimes, one discovery leads to another.
1. Finding out about marktplaats.nl (Thanks, Loes!)
2. Stumbling across the Bolex 102-MTC projector/screen.
3. Biking to the Oude Noorden to meet Julien, the Bolex seller. Once again, we are smitten by another historic Rotterdam neighborhood.
4. Our first Anti-Squat! Anti-Squat legislation makes empty buildings available to artists and other adventurous tenants on a temporary basis in order to prevent the buildings from being squatted/vandalized while the owner is in the process of selling/repurposing the building. The upside for the tenant: extremely cheap rent in some incredible buildings. The downside: when the landlord says go, you gotta go. Case in point: the old school where Julien and several friends live. A huge heritage structure with endless, light-filled rooms off long hallways, the group anticipated living and making artwork together here for at least a year. Instead, they’ve been given notice to move after just three months as the city has decided to reactivate the space as a school and will being renovations next month. Hence, the sale of the Bolex 102-MTC. We’re happy to give it a good home and wish Julien luck in his own search for new digs.
In the evening, we participate in De Derde Dinsdag, a monthly show and tell by the various cultural institutions around the Witte de Withstraat. Tonight’s installment is at the Ro Theater. There’s a snappy host, some giant hip hop stilt walkers, a box of feathers and a lot of yellow. We discover that Rotterdammers are not too crazy about hobo rock sing-a-longs but love the idea of local kids collaborating on a 16mm city symphony. A highlight of the night is meeting ebullient event producer Elseline Hokke, one of the forces behind We Own Rotterdam, our favorite go-to website for all the local happenings. Keep up the good work on this labor of love, lady!
