La Casa Encendida aka The House is on Fire
FILMADRID: The Wrap-Up
They assigned me a translator for my public appearance during The Video Essay Program. His name was Addri (affectionate for Adrián) and he told me he had been watching my YouTube videos for weeks to get my speech patterns down. When it was all over he sent me a lovely email expressing what a joy it was to work with me…and also said that he recommends I speak more slowly next time, so that my future interpreters will do a better job of translating what I say.
My screening at La Casa Encendida would not be broadcast by MUBI, which was fine with me.
At lunch following the screening, a man I hadn’t met complimented me in English about my shirt, especially the sleeves. I thanked him, but since he was sitting a little further down the table and because we hadn’t been introduced, we didn’t talk for the rest of the meal. I did notice his girlfriend was really hot… and I thought maybe complimenting the sleeves was the entry point for a further encounter between fan and filmmaker. Oh well, another missed tryst bites the dust.
As I write, I think about arriving in Jacksonville, Florida in the evening, after Chamblin’s Book Mine closes. What if I got a hotel room and went there in the morning? But that’s not fiscally responsible. I am running out of money and I have plenty of books.
The translators at FILMADRID all scribble notes on pencil and paper. None of them do it all in their head like Bong Joon-Ho’s translator at award shows. She is next level. What a labyrinthine mind she must have. Like a puzzle box.
The metro in Madrid is one of the most efficient I’ve seen. Frequent trains, many stops. Not a great distance to points of interest. I tried to go to the Prado during their free hours from 6-8pm but the line was insanely long, down the street. They could’ve called it The Beatles Museum.
I drank more sangria in seven days than at any other time in history.
The next film festival am up for getting into is in Bogota, Colombia. Should I go? I would love to, if I can afford it. Otherwise I am saving up for a trip to an Italian film festival in the September; one that I know I will get into.
A woman in the crowd asked me a pertinent question after I screened QUANTUM MCFLY. She asked if I was trying to say that if you are “bad” you will die a horrible death. That was a silly reduction of what my video essay was all about. First, it was only about dictators. Second, while I acknowledged not all despots ended that way (Franco, notoriously ruled for thirty years in Spain) it was not a karmic phenomenon as she suggested. It was really a matter of the turning of the tide; not an accident but the will of the people. If the American dictatorship continues in its current vein, to the point where (God forbid) American citizens are executed for dissent than our odious POTUS will too be fodder for the firing squad.
Karmic shit, as the woman suggested, is when you hold the door open for a stranger behind you. it is not nearly in the same arena as what people do when they abuse political power. Not even close.
And so at lunch with the man who compliments sleeves, I embarrassed myself by insisting Abbas Kiarostami won the Palme D’Or for WHERE IS THE FRIEND’S HOME. No, no Javier and Gabriel insisted he won in 1997 for TASTE OF CHERRY. Of course, I knew that but I swore that was his second Golden Palm.
I am now part of the FILMADRID family; and I couldn’t be happier about that. I would love for Madrid to be a home away from home. A repeat destination, to teach experimental film at LAV, to have tapas and bitch about Cannes, to walk and walk and get lost and eventually not get lost. To learn the language for fuck’s sake. A respite, an escape from the King of Excrement back in America. America, sliding into fascism ever deeper day by day. A racist agenda, punishing those who break the law and rewarding themselves for breaking the law.
Did ICE make America Great Again by separating husbands from wives? Children from their parents? Were the children rapists, murderers? Bad hombres? Does even the most callous Republican think this is going too far?
Everyone is too scared to oppose Trump’s Nazi regime. American Nazism is over, if you want it.
Coffee, sparkling water, beer, sangria, vermouth. Paella, churros con chocolate, octopus with potato. Pineapple juice. Bread, olives, butter. The intimate act of eating and drinking with friends. Going back to the hotel, alone. Being there, being present. A moment in time, a long stretch, another place. A place I left. A place to which I would return.
