philosophy day.

today was a tough day, i arrive ar home like at 5 am and went to sleep thinking that is just a few days before i see cindy again. i will be back again in my oasis, that paradise called colonia roma. i went to alexanderplatz to buy a ticket back to spain (sevilla or madrid) as i'm returning on sunday to méxico, and on saturday i wanted to see pedro and osfavelados and so on, but i couldn't get a flight to sevilla, so i ended up getting one to madrid. afterwards i went to wait for the 100 bus, and a after a while a guy said 'fran.' 'are you fran?' he was a mexican filmmaker who was on the same program as me. we hadn't met before. we went back to haus der kultur der welt, talking about mexico and films and life and of course this berlin that drives me crazy so much. this berlin i love, and where i would stay for the rest of my life without thinking it twice, even if the city has a major problem called german language. or maybe, the problem is mine, and i can call it spanish or being a bad german language student. somehow this filmmaker was convinced that i spoke german, even if i told him no and no and no, once and again. he was from mexico city, that also made me in contact with the 'chilango accent' and the local slang and i thought, it's just a few days again before i can see hyper-active lovely cindy.

so then at the campus i met a few mexican filmmakers, and afterwards 2 spanish filmmakers (a girl who's completely crazy and it's always telling funny stories that happened to her, and a guy who has the same producer as julio medem, with whom incidently i spent most of the day). we went to see a documentary about dennis hopper and i fell asleep, i couldn't keep up. and afterwards when dennis hopper and wim wenders where raving like mad about the 'other cinemas' that digital cinema will spring. and afterwards i asked what did they think about the promise of the cinema-stylo and the interactive qualities and possibilities of digital narrative film. i don't know if i should say what they gave me for an answer. what i will say is that the austrian women who was moderating was ignoring me the whole time i wanted to speak, and that dennis hopper was trying to hear my question, but the austrian woman wouldn't let me speak. at the end i have to say i was able to speak because most of the 500 persons in the auditorium where supporting me, and because wim wenders and dennis hopper said that i've been waiting for long...

afterwards i saw some of the best of transmediale videos, the one from linda wallace, one from ximena cuevas, and 2 others.

and then later i went to give my talk/presentation at b_books, where i spent the most stimulating time of the day, showing a couple of films, videogames, and so on, that i made. the crowd was wonderful, and there where a lot of interesting and smart questions at the end. it's hard to find an audience like that. and guess what? i was finally able to meet teresa delgado. she's super nice in reall life too.

so next days are the final days in berlin during jan/feb 2003.

Posted by fran ilich at February 10, 2003 06:52 PM