METRO TALES. an encounter

Wednesday. It's hell day.
My Wednesday usually starts on Tuesday (or you could say, my Tuesday usually stretches out up to Wednesday lol) but however you look at it, it's one of those long, dragging days when work just doesn't seem to end and when it does, you are depleted of all
energy. It's a wonder I can still get home. A 40-minute tram-to-metro journey. Ugh.

So after having taken the 9, I find myself reading in the subway. The book, Deepak Chopra's Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment, has been with me for two days already and I have still to get through the first chapter. People ask me why i lug around books all the time. There's your answer. It is while waiting for the subway train that I find the time to read.
I was just getting to more about this young man in line for the throne and for his father's kingdom - this young man who yearns for the outside world as much as I used to yearn for it - when i suddenly heard a voice. ANd it was directed at me.

James: Ch'oum poepgetsumnida. (How do you do?)

I turn. This (obviously) Korean guy was sitting beside me, him and a girl. Both were looking at me with smiles and expectant looks on their faces.

Cris: Ne. (Yes.) Annyong hashimnikka? ( Good evening.)

James: Are you Korean?*
* spoken in ENglish

Cris: Aniyo. (No. ) Yeongeorul malsum halsu isseoyo? ( Do you speak English?)
Jeo-nun han-kook-o-rul jo-gum-bah-ke mo-tahm-ni-da. ( I only speak a little Korean.)

James: Yes. SOrry. Thought you are Korean. I just got here.

Cris: (kinda figured that out, with their luggage and all) Are you guys here for vacation or business?

AT this point, I knew it was the guy that spoke better English because the girl was squinting at me so hard I knew she was hoping I would speak more slowly.

James: No. I got here today. SHe... living here in Italy.

Cris: davvero?!? (Really? - it just came out of my mouth. I didn't even think if they would understand me)

Irae: Si. Milano. (Yes. Milan)

So she understands Italian!!!

Cris: Ah! Ma da quanto che sei qua in Italia allora? (Ah! So how long have you been here in Italy then?)

Irae: Io... 9 mesi. (Me... 9 months)

Cris: Perche? (Now, it's James that's squinting! I was loving this!)

Irae: Studiare... Italiano. (Study...Italian.)

James: Namjachingu imnida. (I am his boyfriend... He said this with such a cute expression - it was like he was so proud and so happy of it! So sweet!)

(three of us laughed then, with Irae nodding her head in a meaningful way.)

Cris: Capito... QUindi lui è qua per farti una bella visita. (Ah. I understand. So he's here to visit you.)

Irae: Ye. (Si. Yes)

Cris: song-ha-mi oteoke dwesijiyo? (What is your name?) Mi chiamo Cris. Nice to meet you. Mahnnabwepge dweoseo bahngahpsoumnida. I am very glad to meet you.

I honestly was confused at this point because I could not figure out anymore whether to speak in Korean, English or Italian. I just went along with it. When I would say something in ENglish I would look at James more and if in Italian, at Irae. They would then talk to each other in rocket-speed Korean that would just be like a blur to me.

James: I'm James. And this is Irae. We're from Seoul. (Mi chiamo James. E lei è Irae. *I-re-e.Veniamo da Seoul.)

Cris: Bello! (Beautiful!)

Irae: Cri--- Cris, vero? (i nod). Tu - Milano - studiare? O lavorare? (It's Cris, right? You- here in Milan - studying? Or working?)

Cris: No. Io sto lavorando come grafico e scrivo anche per un giornale. Dovrei studiare piu la lingua Italiana. (No. I'm working as a graphic artist and I also write for a newspaper. I should actually study more the Italian language.)

Irae: Da quanto tu a Milano? Abiti qua? DOve? (How long have you been here? DO you live here? Where?)


Cris: Oh, I've been here 4 years. I live in the zone Turro. (Ah. Sto qua da 4 anni. Abito a zona Turro.)

JAmes: ANd your family? (e la tua famiglia)

Cris: No. I'm alone here. Sono da solo. Gajok? (family/famiglia) Niente. Sono tutti nelle Filippine. (My whole family's back home in the Philippines.)

Irae: Anch'io! Naneun...Seulpeoyo.

Cris: ah... seulpeoyo... ?

James: seulpeoyo... Sad. That's why I come. But, only for one month! (Triste.
è per quello che sono venuto. Ma solo per un mese.)


Cris: Choe-song-ham-ni-da. Chonun hangungmal chal-mo-tae-yo. (I'm sorry. My Korean is soooo bad. Scusa.... Parlo male il Koreano.)

Irae: Kok-tchong ma-se-yo! Tu parli benissimo anche Italiano! (DOn't worry! You speak good Italian too!)


Irae: (takes out phone) Noi..scende Pasteur. chiamiamo?

AT this, I was flustered again. ANd I think she mistook it for me not understanding what she meant. She repeated it, gesturing to her phone and then pointing to me and to herself. BUt in truth, i was just surprised that she wanted to exchange numbers so fast after just meeting each other. I looked at James and he was nodding so yeah....)


Irae: (after saving the number in her phone. she mispelled Cris , she did it with a K but that was ok. It was already Loreto and they had to get off at the next stop)

Cris: Allora grazie. Ci sentiamo. Usciamo forse, a fare le foto. Farlo vedere la città. (to James) Show you the city. YEs? (Then thanks. LEt's talk soon. Maybe we can go out, take some photos. Show him the city.)

James: Thank you. Yes. Annyonghi kashipshiyo.
Cris: Mannaso, pangapssimnida. (Nice to meet you! Lieto di incontrarti!)
James: (laughing) You too!
Irae: Ciao!
Cris: Bye! Ciao!


Two stops later, it was Turro. AS I got out, i had this rush of exhiliration. I love that feeling!!! It's like being alive, being connected to the earth, to life, to people!

In my life, it's only happened four times. One, with one of my closest buds, Jong (who, strangely, looking back at this night's incident) is also Korean but lives in Hongkong. We met at a bicycle path and almost ran each other to the ground.
Second time, with Gary. This AMerican guy at the Feltrinelli Library. We still keep tabs on each other, he's in London now. But i think he's coming back to Milan in May for a vacation.
Third time, was with Jeni. It was after the first day of school in this Italian university that holds free Italian classes for foreigners. I was reading (hmmm...maybe that's the key to meeting people... I should read more in the subway) and she just plopped her pretty self right next to me and asked me, Are you FIlipino? I said yes. Her second question would be the "gist" of it all. She asked me if I was single, sane and straight. I answered yes, yes and no. That would cement our friendship and up to now we're still the best of friends, and pretty soon, roommates!

Let's hope this fourth encounter would bless me with two new friends.

Tto bwepkessimnida!!! See you later! A dopo!

MISSED !!! HOW A SIMPLE "HEY YA" CAN MAKE YOUR DAY

SO AFTER A WEEKEND OF QUESTO AND QUELLO, I GO BACK TO THE OFFICE, SIGN IN ON YM, AND LISTEN TO MY FAVE MUSIC.

AT 15.50, I GET A CALL FROM THE UNICEF OFFICE FOR A PHONE-INTERVIEW WITH THE ONE IN-CHARGE OF VOLUNTEERS. SO I WENT TO THE OTHER ROOM.

AT 14.43, I GO BACK AND DAMN!!!

THERE IT IS! MISSED IT! MISSED A CONVERSATION WITH RAM! HOPE YOU'RE COOL, FRIEND!

BRILLANTE MENDOZA'S TIRADOR IN MILAN!!!

The 18th Edition of the Festival Cinema Africano, Asia and Latino Americano returns this 7-13 April. And like last year (which included Benji Garcia's BATAD...for the pics, click HERE), another Filipino film is to be presented to the Italian public - Brillante Mendoza's TIRADOR as part of the Competition Segment "FInestre sul Mondo".

As I have yet to watch it, (and hopefully, i DO get to watch it, I'm still waiting for my Press Pass!!! fingers crossed!) I post here some of the reviews about the film, which apparently has already done a signifcant orbit around various international film festivals.





NOTES ON TIRADOR (film by Brillante Mendoza)
"Rapidly emerging as an important new talent, young Filipino director Brillante Mendoza delivers his second feature of the year, a wickedly energetic portrait of Manila street life shot on the fly with a digital camera." JA, Eye Weekly, Toronto

"From the opening police raid to the closing political rally, director Mendoza takes his hand-held camera into the heart of Manila to create a remarkable, lively, intimate and realistic portrayal of life in a slum!Not one moment looks staged, and the cast performs flawlessly. Mendoza never plays to our sympathy or editorializes. He lets his stories tell themselves and weaves sharp social observation into his frantic and often funny action." Now Magazine

"Superb drama "Slingshot" makes the streets, alleys and crushing deprivations of Manila come to wrenching life. Shot like a mini-"Bourne" film with lightweight high-def video cameras, it darts from one acutely observed vignette to another! Some of the details break your heart, without the trappings or musical cues of melodrama." Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

"(The) biggest discovery of the (Vancouver film) festival! Mendoza's most audacious inspiration is shooting the film on location during the election season, where the politicians have done his set dressing for him...(While) the title Slingshot...(is) a literal translation of the street slang for thief, (it) is oddly appropriate for a film that moves with such whiplash momentum and (with) characters who rush and ricochet through their worldâ” Sean Axmaker, Green Cine Daily Vancouver Dispatch

"Mendoza's breathless account of desperate lives in the mean streets of Manila is a pummeling and visceral experience!A highly impressive technical exercise, yet at heart offers a penetrating glimpse into lives lived on instinct, predation, and reaction alone”Doug Cummings, Film Journey

"not so much a movie as a moving portrait ”complex and complete, hopeless and honest " into the underbelly of a society that could be as at home beneath a city as within...The feat of (the) film lies with its ability to deftly deliver us to a world we haven't seen before and demonstrate that the lowest denominators in society are common the globe over. The film delivers slogans, substantiated by our own daily news, that democracies are definitely not infallible.” Elliot V. Kotek, Moving Pictures

"(Reminding one) of Los Olvidados, both in its unsentimental treatment of the poor and its political critique!The final shot, showing an anonymous petty crime accompanied by a crowd singing. How Great Is Our God,would have had Buñuel smiling.” David Bordwell,
davidbordwell.net

"(Director) Brillante Mendoza…has come a long way in a few years!The many vignettes in the film have an additive effect, contributing to a larger picture. Like City of God, (the film) is relentless."”Bruce, Chlotrudis Society for Independent Film

"The film finds Mendoza once again taking his camera into the teeming streets to capture life as it flows right now. This is a fiction film, but Mendoza's impressive skill is to impose a calculated narrative onto Manila's constant unpredictability, shaping its ground-level chaos into art.It shows Mendoza's rapidly maturing abilities with digital cinema. What is more (is his) novelist's eye for the full range of human behaviour, especially the ironies of greed and vanity.” Cameron Bailey, Toronto International Film Festival

"No disrespect to the late Robert Altman (well, not much), but you ain't seen multi-strand plotting or heard overlapping dialogue until you've watched Slingshot. From the opening scene of a night-time police raid on the building, the film plunges us into a world of non-stop noise and chaos.(The film provides an) angry but heart-breaking picture of a corner of society with no obvious way forward.” Tony Rayns, Vancouver International Film Festival

"The most stunning film at the Vancouver (filmfest) was Slingshot, by the prolific Filipino Brillante Mendoza. With its skin-tight realism, the movie positions us right in (a) Filipino slum where the everyday existence of the characters is as squalid as the sludge-filled gutters of their ghetto.Urgent, powerful and devoid of sensationalism, this is one of the year's best films to come out of anywhere.” Kong Rithdee, Bangkok Post



Here are glimpses at other films in the category:

ANDALUCIA
Regia: Alain Gomis
Nazionalità: Senegal / Francia / Spagna 2007
Enthusiastic young thirty year old, both funny and violent, Yacine lives in a caravan, on the margins of reality, gets by with little jobs. Attracted by the unknown man but without flowing with it, he one day meets a woman who looks like him. And so reappears in among people he had so carefully avoided: Djibril, a childhood friend from the city, then his Algerian family headed by his, formerly in the FLN converted to Catholicism. This community brings back easily to the surface memories of exclusion, desire for recognition, boyhood frustration, and, in order to move forward, Yacine will have to rid himself of it forever and take-off.


EL BANO DEL PAPA - (IL BAGNO DEL PAPA)
Regia: Enrique Fernandez, César Charlone
Nazionalità: Uruguay / Brasile / Francia
A small South American village is in a flurry over the Pope's 1988 visit.


GETTING HOME - (ANDARE A CASA)
Regia: Zhang Yang
Nazionalità: Cina
A black comedy about a farmer who tries to bring home the body of his friend, who died far from their town.



LA MAISON JAUNE - (LA CASA GIALLA)
Regia: Amor Hakkar
Nazionalità: Algeria / Francia
In the arid mountainous landscapes of Algeria, Aya, a young girl of twelve, is digging a plot of land when a police car pulls up. The policemen hands her a letter describing the accidental death of her elder brother who was doing his military service. As soon as the rest of the family is informed, the father, Mouloud, sets off to collect his son’s body. Determined to do right by his family, he braves all sorts of dangers to bring back his son's remains.

MUNYURANGABO - GIORNO DELLA LIBERAZIONE
Regia: Lee Isaac Chung
Nazionalità: Ruanda / Usa
An orphan of the Rwandan genocide travels from Kigali to the countryside on a quest for justice.












MUTUM
Regia: Sandra Kogut
Nazionalità: Brasile
"Mutum" is a coming of age story seen through the eyes of a ten year old boy. Thiago lives with his family on an isolated farm in the arid backlands of Minas Gerais, Brazil. As the story unfolds and Thiago is forced to confront separations and betrayal within the home, Thiago begins, little by little, to see and understand a place that he had never been able to before, thus slowly letting go of his innocence. "Mutum" is an adaptation of the novel "Manuelzão e Miguilim" by João Guimarães Rosa





OUT OF COVERAGE - (FUORI COPERTURA)
Regia: Abdullatif Abdulhamid
Nazionalità: Siria
Amer and Zohair are friends. While Zohair spends time in prison for a crime he did not commit, Amer devotes his time, energy and own family’s needs towards Zohair’s wife and little daughter. Now, as Zohair, is about to be released, Amer faces an unexpected conflict between good and bad - a classic duel between him and his devil. Will Zohair’s return lead Amer back to his small family life?




POR SUS PROPIOS OJOS - (ATTRAVERSO I SUOI OCCHI)
Regia: Liliana Paolinelli
Nazionalità: Argentina
Two students would like to make a film on women who have family in prison. It turns out to be quite difficult to get in touch in the first place and to build up confidence. Elsa, the mother of one prisoner, eventually agrees but under condition that her son in prison is being interviewed as well. Pretending to be the son’s girlfriend, Alicia has to undergo the humiliating controls in prison and understands that the elder woman plays a double game in order to pull her son out of his despair and lethargic state. She has used Alicia like Alicia used her as a protagonist in her film. But then everything becomes different. Turning a documentary makes you learn a lot about yourself. Although he is proven guilty and the prison cell is small and depressing, Alicia falls in love with the prisoner and herself becomes a “wife of a prisoner”. Films as a medium of participating observation, the responsibility of a filmmaker, the wretchedness of the convicts and the co-punishment of the relatives.



BUDDHA COLLAPSED OUT OF SHAME -(BUDDA CROLLÒ PER LA VERGOGNA)
Regia: Hana Makhmalbaf
Nazionalità: Iran
This unusual film, directed by a 19-year-old, is shot on Afghan locations very close to the spot where the fundamentalist Muslim Taliban destroyed the centuries-old gigantic statue of Buddha.

MiArt 2008 --- see you there!

Enzo Guaricci
don-azione
2003
resine e polvere di marmo
35 x 35 x 15cm


MiArt 2008 the 13th edition of Milan's International Modern and Contemporary Art Fair won't fail to surprise with its new features and projects. This unique event turns Milan into a prestigious showcase for art and a point of reference for collectors, gallery operators, artists and curators.
Like last year, MiArt will take place in the Portello pavilions of fieramilanocity between 4 and 7 April, with the invitation-only inauguration scheduled for Thursday, 3 April. MiArt is reasserting its role as the only trade show in Italy able to offer a complete panorama of the art world through its 3 separate sections that encompass modern art to the most innovative voices of contemporary art. Together, the 3 sections, Modern, Contemporary, and Anteprima take in Italian and international art from the historic avant-garde to the most recent experimental works, attracting collectors with different interests and backgrounds.


Kro Art Gallery
Peter Assmann / Iberia Medici
NON VEDO L'HORA
2007
wandteppich / arazzo
180x83cm
MiArt 2008: a benchmark and a meeting point for the art world that, for this edition too, will see the participation of internationally respected gallery operators, critics and collectors, as well as the directors of prestigious museums.
Thanks to the increasing collaboration with the public and private sectors, over recent years there have been numerous cultural and art events presented during the exhibition under the umbrella title "fuoriMiArt" - an unmissable program that promises to present the most exciting events in the whole city. The numerous parallel events testify in a tangible way to MiArt's desire to establish an ongoing dialogue with the city of Milan and transform the exhibition into a fully fledged arts festival.

Focus on Latin American Art

MiArt 2008 is continuing its program of inviting galleries, artists and dealers from one particular geographical area. The decision to run the Guest Nation program over the last three years stems from a desire to look beyond the globalization of styles and tendencies that can blur differences and highlight the unique qualities of local art.

As a part of pursuing this goal, the prestigious conference “Cina Intra/Extra Ovest,” chaired two years ago by Hans Ulrich Obrist, will return – probably in Beijing – with the goal of catching up on a country where time passes quickly and seeing what effect this has on its art.

Last year’s focus on the Netherlands had different objectives. It was intended to be a look at a country (in some ways similar to Italy, and therefore easier to understand) whose system for promoting contemporary art is probably unrivaled in the Western world. With the exhibition staged in a city where there’s heated debate over the urgency of a museum, this system offered many points for reflection.

And in 2008 the focus is on Latin America, a group of countries in perennial transformation in which the exigencies of art are defining a political and cultural identity. The Latin American artists featured by international galleries and galleries from Central and South America reveal a crosspollination of languages, of an art that, despite the pressures towards uniformity, indicates a strong identity and incredible bonds with particular localities.

In contemporary Latin American art, different languages and an abandoning of traditional techniques in favor of extra-pictorial media are the tools artists use to tell their stories of a great region that is looking for a model for autonomous development. The emergencies of social disintegration and exclusion that the various democratic governments are facing come alive in the region's art, in which the urban space – as the focal point of change and contradiction – is often the central theme. Like nowhere else in the West, where we embrace the areas away from cities, in Latin American it is in the cities that new artistic messages and national identities are taking shape.

And it is from the cities that, since the 1980s, the Latin American artworks featured in biennials around the world have come and that are triggering so much interest internationally. This is an art of reality in which a profound knowledge of the individual leads to a lucid and passionate interpretation of the events taking place today in each artist's country.

The Anteprima section of MiArt 2008 features a group of international galleries, coordinated by the Spanish-Cuban Omar-Pascual Castillo, that will focus on the creativity of Latin American.

Named by Castillo as “En el posterior de las American,” the man who conceived the project has this to say about it:

With MiArt 2008 the first host of Project Rooms dedicated to Latin American art at an Italian art fair, I believe that bringing together a selection of artistic identities – artists who work in Latin America, the United States and Europe – was the best perspective to take on what is an ongoing dialogue.

“En el posterior de las Américan” therefore presents artists and galleries that aspire to speak of an outward and return journey of infinite reciprocity, a path of relocation – not just physical, but, in particular, subjective, which can have no other end but reciprocal and cumulative enrichment.

The exhibition centers on Project Rooms that focus on the recycled experiences of the artists and their perception of this reality. Thus, a Mexican gallery can present a Texan–New Yorker artist; a Dominican or Madrid gallery, a Cuban artist; a Catalan gallery, an Argentinean artist living – by no coincidence – in New York.

Since a Project Room is a legitimizing place in the context of an art fair, with a transient yet effective exhibition exuberance and fragmentary but also design possibilities, I’m enamored by the idea of presenting individuals active in the art world in the form of these fleeting, concentrated prisms. This is a world in which an encyclopedic approach is not possible and the maps must be part of a process whose ending you cannot guess. The decision to focus on the artist is more than obvious to me, since it corresponds to the interpretation of the continent in which we are located as mere observers.

And, at times, we can only recall the “legible paths" of artists capable of creating esthetic-poetic works.



Studio D'Arte Fioretti
Ben Vautier
JE VEUX DISPARAITRE

acrilico su tela
100 X 100cm