Wilfried Agricola De Cologne posted this link about a Videoart show in Arad, Romania, videoart in a global context 31 March – 2 April at Art Museum of Arad, Romania.
Author Archives: camillE
Deneuve’s ‘Potiche‘: A Trophy Wife, But With Heft
Catherine Deneuve radiates enough intelligence on-screen to be no one’s idea of a mere trophy wife, but she makes a brave stab at playing one in Francois Ozon’s brightly hued boulevard comedy Potiche.
The Merry Cemetery, Sapanta, Romania
3
When I read this:
Veniti cu toti eompreuna Sa va dau tuica de pruna Sa bet din acest pahar Sa va treaca de amar Va dau tuica din Butoi Si din unu ii videa doi Pin-am trait in vecie Am avut si palincie Toate acestea le lasai La 54 de ani.
Come ye all together, I’ll give you plum brandy, Drink this glass To forget your sorrows I’ll give you brandy from the barrel, Instead of one, you’ll see double. When I was alive I used to make strong brandy I left all this When I was 54.
(Translated into English by Anca Mihailescu)
or this:
“Eu aici ma odihnesc Moldovan Gheorghe ma numesc Cit in lume mi-am trait Cu caii mult am muncit Si-acum vin pe cal calare Aduc lemne de vanzare La omul care nu are Iar drumu mi-sa umbrit Ca iute eu l-am parasit Am venit la hodinit As fi vrut sa mai traiesc Nu sa vin sa putrezesc Lumea asta o lasai La 59 de ai Mr. 1986.”
“This is were I rest Moldovan Gheorghe is my name. I worked a lot with horses As long as I lived And now I come on a horse back To bring firewood for sale To those that have none. But I have come to the end of the road And have come to rest I would have liked to live longer And not come here to rot. I left this world at age of 59. Died in 1986.”
(Translated into English by Anca Mihailescu)
” I was smiling. There is nothing wrong with smiling, is there? But what about if you’re in a cemetery & these are written on the cross of the people who passed away? This is how it is at Merry Cemetery a totally unique place situated in Sapanta, county Maramures, NW of Romania.
People’s short stories like short fables, tragic stories are told with humor. This is what this place is about & what makes it unique is making fun-smiling about the end, our end & adding humor where usually there is only tears, pain & black.
I visited this place in the fall of 2004 & I had the opportunity to interview the artist who’s creating the crosses & the short poems. He is the second generation of folk artists, the woodcarver responsible for creating Sapantza’s Merry Cemetery.
download (19 MB) The Merry Cemetary Part 1
Born in 1908, the creator of Sapantza, Stan Ioan Patras (pronounced PA-trash) went to school for four years. At the age of fourteen, he started to wood carving for a little bit of extra income. Around 1934-35 he conceived the style of crosses painted with a short epitaph. For the colors of the crosses he used natural color dyes used in the local folk weaving.
Dumitru Pop, the folk artist who continues the Merry Cemetery tradition started to work with his master at age of nine. After Stan Ioan Patras died, Dumitru POP moved in his house and continued to work creating crosses until the present.
I asked Dumitru Pop if in creating the cross he is involving the family of the deceased. He told me that all the time he is creating a proposal for how the cross will look and the family approves it before he’s begin to make the cross.
download (62 MB) The Merry Cemetary Part 2
Walking between crosses & graves, reading & smiling, met the person who is buried there, connected through the text from the cross for him/her & his/her family transformed the cemetery walking into a peripatetic walk & deep transformative experience. Death is part of our lives. How we relate to it is part of our life journey.
Notes:
Book: Sapanta Le Cimetiere Joyeux/ The Merry Cemetery Editions Hesse, 1991
Location: Sapanta (pronounced Sa-pan-tza) is a little village in Maramures (pronounced Ma-ra-mu-resh), an incredible well conserved ethnographic region situated in North West of Romania.
If you want to travel to Maramures, I recommend Nord Nord Vest Travel Agency: http://www.nnv.ro I found it on the net & contacted Dan Comanescu who was very kind & really helpful in finding what we really were looking for. Our experiences there was WONDERFUL.
Remembering
This morning I learned that Brad is dead. He was shot by police in Oaxaca, Mexico . He was videotaping for indymedia.
I met him in a bus station in New York . He was there to see my partner, an old friend of his. I read his posts from Brazil on a couple of lists & I was deeply impressed by his courage as a journalist to show the hidden part of a story.
This summer, he stopped at our place & spent here a couple of days. In same time were here a friend of ours from Minneapolis with her two teenage kids. We enjoy our time swimming in Wisconsin River & Devil’s Lake, visiting a Greek – orthodox monastery close to Boscobel & Dr. Evermore’s exhibit.
Brad & I spoke a lot about film language & its potential: to manipulate or to use it in an objective way, to show the reality behind the scene.
I remember him as a bright very alive spirit, deeply enjoying his life, expressing very clear his ideas & believes.
The news about his death is devastating and learning that he was shot by police in a demonstration of teachers asking for the right to have a decent life is another revelation about what the human world still is.
Perpetuum Lumiere
Motto:
Let the beauty of what you love be what you do. – JALALUDDIN Rumi
About “Lumiere et Compagnie”
As an arch longer than one century, film started to create its own language with a train entering the station. A silent camera with only a 52 seconds sequence shot started as an observer of an action. Two steps forward, it met the story/ narrative structure and it’s odyssey began expanding in every direction that the human mind could imagine.
The results metamorphosed into a form of art/communication, expressing personal ways of thinking/sensibility, opening a huge door for every culture/community to make known its own ideals/values, dealing with technology & the Lord of the day– money.
In 1995, celebrating the first century of film, forty film-makers were invited to make their own version of the Lumiere movie: one shot, 52 seconds long, no direct sound, using the same kind of 1895 camera. In other words same rules as in the beginning.
Directors are: Merzak Allouache, Theo Angelopoulos, Vicente Aranda, Gabriel Axel, J.J. Bigas Luna, John Boorman, Youssef Chahine, Alain Corneau, Costa-Gavras, Raymond Depardon, Jaco van Dormael, Francis Girod, Peter Greenaway, Lasse Hallstrom, Michael Haneke, Hugh Hudson, James Ivory, Gaston Kabor, Abbas Kiarostami, Cadric Klapisch, Andrei Konchalovsky, Patrice Leconte, Spike Lee, Claude Lelouch, David Lynch, Ismail Merchant, Claude Miller, Sarah Moon, Idrissa Ouedraogo, Arthur Penn, Lucian Pintilie, Jacques Rivette, Helma Sanders-Brahms, Jerry Schatzberg, Nadine Trintignant, Fernando Trueba, Liv Ullmann, Regis Wargnier, Wim Wenders, Yoshishige Yoshida, Yimou Zhang.
Some tough rules: be yourself & do it. Quite challenging for everyone.
What we are seeing in every 59 sec is the taste of what film is truly today.
Narrating the suspense – from searching for the “bad guy” through searching of the time & last years of the century;
building metaphors: from creating the inner connection between beautiful landscape & dead animal rawing on earth to tableau vivant of a beautiful naked woman breast feeding her baby on black field inseminated,
navigate through history – from Egypt pyramids to Louvre in a historical trajectory which might be interfering with the film’s own history, watching Sven Nykvist shooting with Lumiere’s camera and of course the arch-time joke – an old fashion dancer couple becoming an wild rock’n roll dancers on Chinese wall – do you taste the changing?!
Speaking about jokes there are plenty of them from an African country man scaring the film crew with a crocodile mask coming on the river to that sardonic crazy moment of gypsy people saved by an helicopter. The helicopter taking off to reveal a soccer stadium with few viewers applauding anemically…
Perpetual remembering – from Hiroshima’s kids message to never forget the past to people watching, walking, waiting, living – all over the world. And as stories consumers counting/surrounding the long cinematographic way to show the spectacular human touch a love kiss & underline its own explorer path, another film is showing the kiss as a completely human act… that charming kiss between two young people with Down syndrome.
From a father doubled by a director telling to his baby as film command: speak – speak to all the other directors giving indications.
From deconstructing whatever it is as cinema about cinema & observing the process of making of the movie, playing with the vice-versa theme – the characters of the movie acting back in observing the new intrusive object to Ulysses coming out from the sea & discovering the film camera as the human being discover what this tool does/creates.
What is missing? Well, what about the big chimpanzee tossing the camera in the air , catching it & using as the nut cracker- a new chapter of 1895 odyssey has already started its second century.
Lumiere & compagnie (1995) – documentary
based on an original idea by Philippe Poulet
In the search of fresh bread’s smell…
In one of my peripatetic walks with Maria Damon, we arrived at point where we analyzed the connections that a language as a way of thinking creates between common things/words & the verbs. Our pick up was “the bread”. In English, “the bread” is associated with the verb “to rise” . Bread rises, sun rises, idea rises. In Romanian, it is a very specific verb associated with (paine/bread) the verb is “a dospi” . You can use it as a metaphor for “an idea” which ” rises”, but the verb is strictly associated with bread.
For “sun rises” in Romanian, we use “soarele rasare”, the verb “a rasari” is used for sun/moon, ideas, plant/flower especial for spring season.
It’s about RE!
Mind RElocated.
REplaced tongue.
REmoved habits.
REtired my main language.
REquires a deep breath.
REsets the inspiration.
REnounces at “EU”.
REdefines “I”.
REstrains want.
REcycling memories.
REplays every sound that I’m saying without REmote control.
RElearns how to say A & REpeats after me A, A, A, A, A…
REsoursing the misery.
RElinquishing frustrations.
RElieving emotions.
REflects vitality .
REinforces the left hand.
REstores the right of the pen.
REmarks are all accepted.
REcruits all the tools that I do not have.
REcognizes my own thought.
REspells it.
REcounts what I REnamed.
REconciles two wor(l)ds.
RE-exists as reinventing both.
REvolts as EU/I REborning.