bone roma photos

bone roma final

Cara Boneresi,

It's friday May 9th, and I've yet to eat dinner any night this week, but I have due piatti lunches, great penne arabiata, and fresh fish, simply cooked w/ lemon a side of patate rosata, carfucci romana and a bottle of nero d'tavola sicilian red wine in which you can taste the dirt.

Radio interview on the Radio Fandango, hosted by Nicola [el greco], a wide ranging interview touching on political situations as reflected in films then and now, yes, Celluloid #1 is a very political film and they noticed that in Italy, not so much in Kansas City. Tonight I have to work the international docs, having missed one of them because of the party last night, "margem", I sit through "ironeaters" tonight, by Shaheen Dill-Riaz. It is a bangladesh-german co-production, shot on 35mm and it was about the shipping industries international scrap yard off the coast of Bangaladesh. It should have been a great film, incredible footage, incredible talent, but it was dull as day old donuts. Cut completely wrong, this is the trouble I have with docs which I hate, it is not an art form, it's barely journalism. They were taking apart container ships huge, it was like richard serra sculptures falling into the ocean. They didn't nail the workers, they were objective, and objectivity is the DEATH of cinema. But it's a film that could be recut and be brilliant, I know he has the footage. The 2nd film, quite more entertaining was "Hafners Paradise" an Austrian production by Gunter Schvaiger. It was about an unreformed Nazi, who lived openly in Franco's Spain, it is very current, being that it is such a PRO-NAZI-BUSH-CLINTON time and actually quite entertaining, A great pig farm scene about the superiority of German pigs, and a great meeting of the unreformed nazi's club, a guy there proudly saying I was on the plane that bombed Guenerica, and Oberlieutenant Hafner is pretty good, sitting around his apartment singing Nazi youth songs and talking about Hitler for eternity, but it's still more television than cinema. Two good wind up scenes, the first is he goes to meet his contemporaries in a coastal town and no one will return his call, the other is a camp survivor who confronts him at the end. Your 76 years old you look pretty good, but in the end the supergerman Hafner starts to break down, his teeth are killing him like the rot of the lies he has built his whole life around.

I go to bed early and am a very good boy friday night.

Saturday, is three international docs with"all white in barking" by gregory issacs, that's the only one worth mentioning. There seems to be no rigor in their film making, I discuss with florence by fellow jury member on the way back to the Cinema Farnese, we haven't seen the winner yet. Though we both, actually including danilla our fellow jury member have all missed "Margem" by Maya Da-Rin, which Massimo said" e meravigliosa", we know we have to watch it in the morning before we give the award. It's phag off night at the cinema Farnese, and I buy beers and smoke joints on the campo for Bruce la Bruce's film, Otto or up with dead people. But the short before is by my fellow juror Florence Fradelizi, "Bonne Bourre" 3mn's long and a porno/fiction, it is phenomenal, PURE DILDO POETRY, this was back when girls were girls, unlike the manicured girls now. I am exhausted and for the only night I go to dinner with the tek festival crew , Massimo, Laura, Anna, Alessandro, Nicola and a couple I'm sure forgot and fellow film makers, Charles Lum [a self described festival rat and a new yorker] and Nina Menkes [l.a.], I manage a few bites and then back into the dark, to finish the phag zombie film, great scene the zombie and his ex lover talking, you should really take a shower, it wouldn't kill you.The phag off party is at the queer bar around the corner from the hotel there is a ton of drugs and all kinds of wild sexual happenings inside the bar, between black white gay straight male female, and whatever. I was a good boy I went to bed early.

Sunday I watched Margem at the secret garden hotel at 9a.m., Danillo was great bringing coffee to the room. [pictures will be put up at the blog spot] and then I finally I saw the winning film, a two day journey along the amazon from a point to Brazil to a point in Peru, it was beautifully shot, languidly cut and mixed with early black and white footage from the first ever trip up the amazon. It was situational and conceptural and poetic. At noon I meet my fellow jurors for pranzo and we basically agree on the winner and the runner up, we eat strozzipretti pasta and drink wine in the roman sunshine.

Sylvia an american doc about the revolutionary italian/american woman silvia baraldini is just fantastic. the awards ceremony is at the Cinema Trevi, and they've decided I will present the award in Italian and after rewriting the english translation I read the award in Italian and in english. It's been a great festival, and I end up a good boy and go to bed early, NOT.

Monday was an off day, though ended up at the Harun Farocki opening and then dinner with my tek festival friends at an incredible testaccio restaurant, cacio e cocci [via del gazometro 36] where bone film picked up the tab. the morning was collazione with my girlfriend Loridanna and Danillo, and now back here energized, alive and jet lagged.

tanti baccione

bone blog.

bone blog roma 4

cara bonesters

I woke up early this morning at the hotel, The Secret Garden, via Bixio 48, and went to the roof to have a breakfast, with Danillo, the hotels master chef and spiritual leader, but there was a new guest who immediately charmed me and became my new girlfriend, Loridanna, she's seven months old and the daughter of Erika who comes in the morning to clean the rooms. It was just the three of us for breakfast, but loridanna was afraid of me and began crying, but a piece of paper solved it.

The film screened at the cinema farnese very well attended and a vocal audience. The image was great, and for once the italian subtitles were very sophisticated. The Q n A was smooth, languages were flying all around the room. My new tech festival friends, and my old roman friends were all together in one room, as Fabio the italian producer and his partner in crime piero produced a phenomenal party in a cellar space right off the piazza. the music was great, the food i heard was wonderful, I didn't eat, believing more in strong drink and hashish. I was completely exhausted and overwhelmed as I headed out the door at 2 am, but I swore I saw my brother in law dancing with his wife, Sara. very toddling town Chicago.

I walked the night time streets to the piazza venezia where the taxi stand is. No one could take me because they were on a coffee break, but the night bus pulled up and I was on it going home, filled and pregnant with experience, cinema and language.

ciao e buonna notte
bonesters

bone blog roma 3

It got extremely busy in rome, I was on the jury of the international docs so everytime i had a second I was forced into the darkness of the theaters. My film screens tomorrow but today i go to see some of the films in the panorama section, but first it's a tv interview for nessuno TV which is broadcast on Sky Channel. Allesa, a very beautiful woman interviewed me half in Italian half in English. I am now pregnant with another language, I understand the questions in Italian but answer in english, I guess it makes for good TV. The cinema farnese is located on the northern edge of the Campo Di Fiori, and there doesn't seem to be any NUICANCE laws that have destroyed the character of our fine city, SALT LAKE city, no known as New York. So we drink and smoke joints like teenagers in this ancient square, where the witches of old were publicly burned.

I met my new best friend, Wael Noureddine, he was stooped on the campo di fiori, "fuck films, lets drink beer" of course I immediately joined him by purchasing some local peronis. He's a lebanese film maker living in Paris and his film plays tonight, we get smoke from Massimo and I decide to head over to the other cinema, Cinma Trevi to watch his film, as well as dutch cocaine factory, by the dutch film maker jeanette Groenendaal, Fabio accompanies us, the first film was well made, but a little too decadent for my taste,   a portrait of a man who spent his years in a cocaine haze, this was followed   by wael's film, JULY TRIP, which was about a trip he took in July, 2006 to his hometown Beirut, and this was one of the best films I have seen all year.

It was the end of Cinema, no fucking words, just brutal images, and in stark contrast to the dutch film, every night he gets fucked up, crack, heroin, whiskey. He has no other choice, the images are shocking, there's no dialogue, there's no sense of elegant structure, there is no structure, except the use of french pop house music over images of the press fighting with each other to take photos of the blackened dead of the isreali air raids. This is Beirut, and then he goes south, but now there is no press, they don't leaving Beirut. And it's just ripped and torn   tracking shots of the destruction as he goes further into the inferno of lebanon. The only dialogue in the film comes from the radio, a speech by the hezbolla commander, untranslated, which he shoots while driving in his rental car, and a speech by the israelies condemning the terrorist of lebanon. The piece ends [it's beyond   film] with him and another guy searching for the living in a destroyed village, "is anybody here" in Arabic, the sound of their footsteps through destruction, they find an old man who's blind hiding in a basement the french pop house music returns, the piece is over, [60 min. long] We walk through the tourist enhanced trevi fountain streets back to the cinema farnese, joined by florence fradelizi, a tuff french gal [another jury member] we buy beer and drink rapidly, one needs to get fucked up after that film.

ciao bonerese

NOTE:   this was taken from my notebook, the rest will all be memory.

bone blog roma 2

Anna, my translator arrived at the hotel at 6 pm, she was picking me up for my radio interview at radio rai tre. It was the beginning of the evening rush and I was hanging on tightly as we raced through the streets on her motorino to get to the station. It was a real radio station, which I had never seen, introductions were made to the host's of the show, Mario and Dario. It's a weekly national broadcast called hollywood party, they were really funny taking the piss out of hollywood, and then I was introduced, and I said Buona sera e buona sera Italia, and I was live on the radio, but anna and I had practiced so it went really smoothly. I understood most of the questions in Italian, there was no translator pause. We had time for a quick aperativo and admired the fascists architecture of the local fire station, then back onto the motorino, in the now deep blue evening sky of Roma for the first night of the festival which opened with eisensteins STRIKE with a live musical performance.
Massimo, the quasi head of the festival said it was time for me to go to work, being on the jury of the international docs we dutifully entered the cinema, but not until I informed massimo how i had forgotten to tell him that I hate docs, of course he said perfect. The cinema Farnese is on the northern end of campo di fiori, it is a gorgeous sixties cinema with pink seats, a great house. Two docs, quickly, an isreali doc "to see if i'm smiling" about woman drafted into the army and fighting in the west bank, awful shocking images one does not see on television, the contradicting affects on the womans' spirit from this experience, but it was alot of talking heads and it kind of drove me nuts, 2nd doc was shot in mumbai and was the oppisite of talking heads, it was a strange view of the caste system in India, as portrayed by a cleaning woman and her employer. Mumbai is insane, and the cleaning woman lakshima was great. A wonderful religous ceremony where her tongue is pierced by a stick. Of course the night always ends deep in gossip, deep in cinema.
more tomorrow

radio bone blog

bone blog roma

Dear Bonesters,
I arrived in Roma on a beautiful monday morning met at the airport by Marco and Nicoletta from the Tek Festival. What I have found out is the Tek Festival is a collective group of inspired film addicts overdosing in the early morning on raw strips of Celluloid, they have no center except their collective center. The opening night festivities were held near the world headquarters of the festival, outside the gates of rome in the same neighborhood Pasolini had shot Accatone. In a great outdoor bar, a group of old men, who had been sitting there since the afternoon were very congenial. Fabio', my Italian producer and I rode out on the motorino. We arrived had a beer talked about having dinner, but of course never ate. The opening party was very well attended, I am meeting a real cast of characters here, my translater Anna, who was able to arrange an interview on Rai tre Radio for the following evening. The proseco was flowing and so was the local agriculture, a british dj was spinning jazz? when the police arrived, it was only 11 o'clock but there they were, in all their pedestrian ways. I had gotten the idea that I had stumbled into a network of anarcho punks in Rome, and started yelling fuck the police, go fucking home. Of course Massimo grabbed me, no steve you can't do that, this is Rome not Paris 1968, but the police wouldn't leave, and I tried to explain to them that were cultural visitors from over 10 countries here, and why were they being so pedestrian, and I started yelling in english again, when Laura reminded me to stay calm that I was on the jury of the Festival and they didn't want to get me out of jail, I replied I'm talking in English, they don't understand it, and Laura very quickly replied, Steve they don't speak Italian, only the local dialect. So a fun night on the road, going home on the motorino in the rain, Fabio and I lost in Rome, looking for Chinatown.
love and kisses

the bone blog