Day One.
My entry into Polski took just under 2hrs from Stanstead Airport. Everyone clapped when the plane landed. The taxi driver taught me how to say hello, good evening and thank you in Polish. I can only remember how to say hello primarily because I have heard my Polish friends in London say it over the last 6 years. My regret of not learning more Polish from my Polish friends is making itself comfortable. My hotel is an old communist era building. The staff are friendly but the hallway, is frightening. If I were to shoot a horror film, this would be the location. It’s scary which I kind of like because it’s cinematic and I know there is no serial killer lurking, waiting in the dark spots. I actually chuckled when I saw the ‘scary’ hallway to my room. In a way, it’s a little like a film set. So far so good. One can smoke indoors. I can’t argue with that. Standing out in zero degrees here wouldn’t be fun. No more than it is doing it in 10 degrees in the UK or the rest of Europe. So far people seem sedate and friendly. I met 2 people at airport, one of which said Lodz was flat and grim, the other couldn’t stop raving about it. Perception is as they say, everything. I like my old communist hotel so far, the scarier the better. Give me this than the Holiday Inn any day. I came here for a festival, a luxury to say the least and yes, I am a little excited but why I cannot exact… perhaps it’s the rush of blood to the heart while walking through the horror hallway…
Around midnight in zero degrees I ended up taking a walk around the corner to ul. Piotrkowska which, I didn’t realize, was where all the main hub bub of cafes, bars and restaurants are. I got something to eat.
Breakfast was a bit disappointing considering it cost more than last nights midnight meal. I headed off towards the Grand Theatre, where the festival is held. Though when I got there, they were still fixing stands up. I was greeted by the sign, ‘Welcome to the Camerimage Festival!’. I had evidently got my days wrong or maybe I just booked a day prior to it starting because the flights were cheaper… Perhaps… So I just went for a walk sans map.
In a park I was taking a picture of Hotel Centrum and so too was another snapper. We nodded as we passed each other. Moments later he came up to me and told me a place with industrial communist era buildings that I might want to photograph. He said he would come take me there tomorrow. He is a medical student and he has a Zeiss lens on his old 35mm range finder. That is all I know of him. But if a native of Lodz is going to be welcoming and show me some industrial communist buildings to snap at, just tell me where man. Except of course, I forgot to bring any 120 or 35mm film with me so I spent some of the afternoon looking for a shop that sold it. Finally finding THE shop, he didn’t have any colour neg, just one roll of transparency and a few rolls of black and white. So I got those. A bit like being last in the bread line back in the day.
I have found quite a few people who have offered their assistance to me over the course of the day, the ones who aren’t staring at me anyway.
The never ending streets are wide and there is an air of smog or mist or whatever that makes the low sunlight particularly beautiful.. Maybe that’s why the cinematographer’s from here have a good set of eyes. I think London has the good sunlight too…
- J
20th nov.
I watched Into the Wild yesterday. The true story of Christopher McCandless, a middle class graduate who wrote his college fund away to charity and set off across North America to live free and to live in the wilderness in Alaska. Although I was nowhere near as adventurous as he was, I did experience some of the things he did as a lone traveller. As the film nears it’s end he finds meaning in his travels. He writes in his book:
Happiness is only real when shared.
12 Nov.
On a solo trip 13 years ago, I Inter railed in Southern Europe for 30 days visiting 14 different places. It was the first time I ‘travelled’ and on my own. I was 19. Seeing Barcelona, O Porto, Venice, Prague, Fussen and other places for the first time with fresh eyes was liberating and awe inspiring. It was my first experience of a type of freedom I had never had before that. I came back a different person. I can’t remember a lot of where I lived and went but I can remember key experiences, though I won’t be recounting any here.
Since then I have been across North America (including NYC, San Fran, Washington, Las Vegas, Utah, Grand Canyon, South Dakota, Seattle, Louisiana), Tokyo, Schenzhen, Beijing, India (Rajasthan dessert, Agra, Delhi, Musoorie, Vancouver, Romania (Bucharest, Cernavoda, Constanta) Jerusalem, The West Bank.
Experiencing the historical architectural grandier of renaissance Europe and most of all Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia, was enriching. The fields of Southern Spain and the hills in Tuscany but the beauty struck in Bavaria. With all the beauty that I saw, it was the experience of being scared and of loneliness that confounded me. The absence of sharing the beauty of things almost negates the existence of such a thing. I saw so many amazing things. The sunset from a train as we passed through a valley with a lake; the sun coming up in Lisbon when I arrived; in Bavaria the lake was so still it mirrored exactly the town across the water. You want to share with your family and friends and say nothing with the meaning, ‘just look at that…’. But there wasn’t anyone there.
I lived in Vancouver for a year. Having personal problems and losing identification with oneself in a foreign country was scary. I would say I lost so much that I had a second life after I got back.
In India I lived in the dessert on a ‘imperial’ campsite. It had a generator producing electricity and we even had our own toilet. I also stayed at grand house with stone floors and gardeners pruning trees. I lived on the top floor of a mountain on a mountain. We were above the clouds. I saw whole families living on a wheeled cart and 10 year old children, carrying babies barefoot running after our rickshaw for money. Abject poverty is not the same as poverty in modern western society. And the gulf of wealth is enormous. I went right outside of the mansion to see people begging.
Taxi drivers pushed against their vehicles for no reason, parents separated from their children, and the 8 metre high concrete wall that is seemingly everywhere; the checkpoints in the West Bank. I did not truly realize what freedom of movement meant until I was witness to people who had a lack of so much. I saw a massive bombed out building, perhaps a factory or the local electricity plant in Nablus. I saw a baby’s heart rate drop so much they performed surgery on the spot.
Coming back to Florence and Venice, places I adore for their architecture I am also at the same time less wide eyed. I see the general closeness of people and the lack of friendliness. The modern preoccupation for ‘fashion’. Large stretched out sunglasses, black and gold attire. I have to admit, Italian women do make the effort and can look pretty smart.
I guess I see more. Not just the Architecture or what kind of food is common but what society is like. As a tourist we barely get to grips with the geography let alone how the society operates and how the civilian lifestyle is. So we are there for the surface of things. We are there at most, for a postcard we once saw. We want to live in the postcard. We want to enjoy the local cuisine or the way mamma cooks it. Though when it arrives, it’s actually much more basic and less fussy than the import dishes we get back in the UK. I’ve see tourists take photos first and look with their own eyes after- if at all. We take a picture, we move on to the next statue. We look, but do we really see? Do we really care about Michaelangelo’s David or just insofar that we are to told to believe it was the best sculpture of it’s time in the west?
I am drifting. I think what I am trying to ay is that, although coming back here, seeing the churches and the buildings I have adored since I set eyes on them 13 years ago, I cannot give myself over to aesthetics. I am still governed by places where abject poverty lives and where children are shot at. Not where the point of sunglasses are for one to look good.
My point is a broad one. It encompasses the need to be in a place of comfort and where our priorities lye and the discourse of freedom and loneliness that, by being away from those two physical and mental places, can bring. Sometimes, these places live not far away from us, but inside us. To quote a scene from the film, Forrest Gump, he recounts to Ginny (the love of his life) the beautiful sky in Vietnam when the rain stops, the sun down on the Bayou, the stars in the water and the sun going down at mountain lake.
“I wish I could have been there with you” She says.
“You were” , he replies.
- J
A few months ago I shot a project with the organisation, KCHT Moving Forward. The main priority of their work is to support and help young people find housing. I was approached by someone about the film of whom I knew from last year working with Connexions (a film about and with, asylum seekers). This series of short films were made with the intention that they would be shown in schools in Medway as a preventative measure for becoming homeless. One of the young persons wrote the 3 synopsis and I wrote the scenes. I was to shoot, direct and edit it.
During the shooting a few months ago, we were asked to stop. Difficulties with the Council. They were concerned they would be mis represented and frictions between Moving Forward and the Council manifested. We continued shooting anyway. We weren’t going to stop. The young people had turned up and put work into it. There was no way we were going to stop shooting.
It finally got finished and had a screening last Friday. What I or the Connexions P.A. (who managed the project and got me on board) didn’t realize was how many ‘important’ people were going to attend. ‘Important’ as in people who work in social care, housing and with young people. What we didn’t foresee at all was the response it mustered.
Right after the screening a woman whose job title escapes me now though I know has both knowledge and clout regarding housing young homeless people got up and, almost trying to find the words to describe how she felt about the film. Although I can’t recall exactly what she said, I will paraphrase. She said despite the outtakes being funny, it was the films that had weight. That they carried a strong message, that it was moving and poignant. At the end, she said it was ‘magic’.
It was good to see Mercedes and Katherine (two of the main young people involved with the project) who since, has had her baby who’s in the film while still inside Katherine! They got attention with the guests and I think got asked to consider going around with the film to schools.
The Chief Executive who had left emailed an hour later expressing that despite having his reservations about the film (he who told us to stop shooting) thought the film was brilliant. Apparently he has never given such humble graces to the staff at Moving Forward.
Catriona, the Connexions P.A. said that we all had a great time making the film and by now, it was supposedly finished, it’s actually just begun as support and ideas of distribution for the film gathered momentum among the guests who were truly moved by it. We said we couldn’t have wished or dreamed for such a response. The impact we saw it made reflected in the impact the audience thought it could make.
This has obviously raised the bar for making films to educate, Moving Forward’s importance, the potential of the film and for future projects.
For myself, I was incredibly fortunate to have been a part of making it and it’s piece of work I am very proud of. To have the praise of people who can take it places was a bonus. I felt proud that I produced a piece of work that initially seemed small yet has become important to so many people, to affect not only the young people involved and the organisation of Moving Forward, but other related agencies as well.
The film is on my website. It is a large file but have patience. The film was shot with available light (bar one shot) in 3 days with non professional actors.
http://www.busstrikeproductions.co.uk/pages/films/without_a_home.html
A talented song writer who is also one of the young persons involved was originally going to write a score for the three films but college work became too much and we ran out of time. I still home to make an original soundtrack but as for now, I have used pre recorded tracks.
- J
On flight 977 right now. But I would have been on a freebie job shooting a trailer for a proposed feature. Last night, boarding was running late…
At Firenze SNB we came out of the café with 20 mins to spare. I looked on the board and our train wasn’t there. Hmm. At information they told me it was leaving from Frienze Rifredi- which actually I should have known because we got off that stop coming in and had to take another train to arrive at Firence SMN. When I got the ticket in Venezia I asked for Florence. I don’t understand why the woman gave me a ticket destination not for the main train station but, the one the one before it. The train for Firenze Rifredi was at 1.27 and was a few minutes ride. Though the connecting train was at 1.36, and I didn’t know what platform it was leaving on. The clock ticket as we got off and I found the platform. It was a bit of a run as the train pulled in as we reached the platform.
The train arrived at Venezia S. Lucia at 4.45. It was a walk over 3 bridges until we reached the bus stop. Then finding the ATVO ticket office for the tickets to Treviso Airport. A glass of wine and a meal later we were ready for the bus for Treviso. But, it was full, so we took our luggage out and got on a 2nd bus.
We got to Treviso early and there was a long queue for the check in. After the lounge we were at the boarding gates. As the 10.25 flight was nearing everyone got up to go. Except nothing happened and gradually, everyone started sitting, and lying on the floor. The announcement came that their would be more details later as the flight was delayed due to technical faults. After another 40 mins they announced that the flight had been cancelled. Moans, groans, queues and telephone calls ensued. A list of hotel was given out. I texted work to tell them I couldn’t make it and got some temporary cover. I booked a hotel for us and another family. We got a cab. We were charged £11 for a 5 minute ride.
I stayed up to have a few glasses of chilled Merlot and chatted with the owner of the hotel. The hotel had been in his family for 6 generations. He had wanted to Ski but had an injury when he was younger. He wants to teach skiing now but he is running the hotel full time. I tried a Port cum Sherry type wine. A chocolaty berry sweetness mellowed the taste buds.
In between either my dad snoring or my mum snoring, I got about 3 hours sleep. In the morning after breakfast, we took a bus down the road to the airport where we met with the same faces at last night.
For 10 mins after becoming airborne we flew over a vast array of snowy mountains… Timeless and majestic, they made me forget about the last 22hrs of travelling hurdles.
- J
It’s 8pm and I’m in Campo S. Lio in Venezia. Outside a bar on a quiet square, a few minutes away from the hotel. The hotel is more like a pensione. There is not lobby, kettle or lounge. But it is spitting distance from San Marco Piazza. It’s literally around the corner. On the first night I got my folks a room which had the roof terrace. You could see the domes of the Basilica 50 metres away, though it is partly under construction right now. This is my third time to Venezia. First when I was 19 on my own, second time was with a friend Louis to shoot some shots for the short film Death in Weston. I love it here. It’s like being in the 14th century. Some buildings go back 1000 years and many at least 500 and few under 100. Although there are many refurbished modern interiors of establishments, on the whole, the exteriors remain as they were. There are no roads so no cars. There are no visible overhead telephone lines. There are no planes soaring overhead. There is virtually no homeless people, there is no business district. And WiFi seems to be in short supply.
It takes a while to get here. If you fly into Treviso which, by the way, is a new building which right next to the original, which was the size of a large house. You went in on end and came out 30 metres away on the other. You take a bus which takes an hour and then you take a Vaporetti (into San Marco, at 40 mins). The plane ride was 1hr 40mins from London. You can’t get a cab to your hotel so you see many lost tourists pulling their luggage around looking for their hotel. And you do get lost which for which, is actually fun to do here. Forget the map. You’ll walk into a narrow lane and at the end you’ll find a courtyard with no other road or occasionally, the Grand Canal. There’s many places to eat outdoors and must be amazing in the summer.
However, the food is often not great and is expensive. With Central London prices for coffee, pizza or pasta ranging from an average of £10-15 a head. When you’re doing lunch and dinner everyday, it can work ut quite a bit. In the renowned 300 year old Florian, an Espresso is £3.50, a Capaccino £6 and an Irish Coffee is £11. Maybe it’s been brewing for that long too. Service in most places is not great either. Brusque, is how it normally is. After all, the tourists outnumber the locals 200 to 1. I can’t blame people who come here though. It is, a magnificent place with it’s (almost) unique more or less untouched, architectural geography. I went through a lane today that can only be passed in a single file.
Spending the whole day yesterday and the whole day today with my folks walking around, the day was seemed fairly long. If you do and see different things and often this you tend to experience when you travel, the day stretches on. Seemingly a day seems like 3.
- J
- J
