On Thursday when the alarm rang at 6:30 AM the first thing I thought was, “Time to make the doughnuts”; any Americans get that joke? It would take to long to explain and it’s not all that funny, but let’s just say I didn’t want to get up. I know that I am incredibly lucky to be here and it is very exciting but it’s a lot of work. Seriously.
I’ve got my hang of the vaporetti – don’t go to the train station or Piazzale Roma to catch it – go midstream to San Toma’ and avoid half the stops. This revelation was great, because I only had to spend a half hour and not 45 minutes screaming in my head, “What the &%$#@ is wrong with this stupid vaporetto? Can’t you go any #$%*@ing faster?
Now I know that you can’t get lost getting to the festival once on Lido, there are plenty of buses and it takes no time to at all. And now I have the free Wi-fi given to the PRESS, like ME (I’m still laughing when I say this) and maybe don’t look so obviously inexperienced when I’m hanging out at “Film Village” , the place with the coffee and the bathrooms. I also checked on the press conferences for the week and found out that I can go to the one with Marco Bellocchio today. MARCO BELLOCCHIO. I’m not bragging or anything.
I saw three films on Lido and one back at Campo di Polo back in Venice; the three on Lido were in competition in the “Controcampo” category and then I stayed for the awards ceremony. I had been so excited about that but it was rather anticlimactic, reminding me of a high school awards assembly, but I did get to see Francesco Bruni (La Prima Cosa Bella) get the award for Scialla! (it means “chill”, and the exclamation point it in the title and not intended to express my surprise in any way). Controcampo awards are given for new trends in Italian film.
The first controcampo film that I watched was a 15 minute short called “My Name is Sid”, directed by Giovanni Virgilio about a Sicilian-American film maker in the 60s who goes home to his roots to take care of some problems. It was cool, but a little campy – I think they were going for avant-gard, but “Mad Men” does a much better job being ironic about the 60s.
The second I got a big kick out of because it was directed by Ricky Tognazzi – “Tutto Colpa Della Musica” (All the music’s fault) and he was there, along with much of the cast. The film was ri-di-cu-lous, but fun. It was a story about – guess what. LOVE. Love,and Jehovas Witnesses. I would love to explain to you why the protagonist was in a Witness family, but I’m still trying to figure out that one myself. Oh, the whole thing was really dumb, with Ricky having sex with 22 year olds and a soundtrack that was very much like a deodorant commercial, but I laughed, in spite of it all. And I got a look at Ricky Tognazzi.
I am really embarrassed to admit this but I think I fell asleep a couple of times in the third one, Piazza Garibaldi, a documentary directed by Davide Ferrario. I think that it was probably excellent – it was about the unification and what has happened to Italy since – but I think that I probably would have been better off taking a nap. I’ll see it again when I’m better rested, I promise. One cool thing, Filippo Timi is in it and he was there. I can now confirm officially that he is REALLY GOOD LOOKING.
More about Thursday and more pictures later today.
I Love Italian Everything 