Suerte in Dijon

The festival Fenêtres sur Courts in Dijon (France) projected my shortfilm Suerte in the framework of its European Competition.   This was the first time I saw one of my films surrounded by french audience, and it was very special to see that people caught the intention of its last joke. I think those seconds of laugh before the final credits gave sense to all the work done on this little, modest film.

A video for Jordan Sights Travel and Tourism

Once the shooting for InterContinental is finished in Amman, I get in touch with someone indirectly related to the project, Mr. Adnan, who's the managing director of the agency that has driven us all around the city during these days.
We meet in InterContinental's lobby, and explains me he wants to do a commercial to show the team in the agency, in order to showcase it at the Jordan Sights' website. No need to add monuments or touristic attractions in the video, as that's what all the website is about; he wants to center on the workers and the vehicles they have for their services.
I've just got one day more in Amman, I'm leaving tomorrow, Friday, at 3h after midnight. We talk about that, this could be a hasty decision, not just because of the few time we got, but also because Friday is weekend in Jordan, so he has to convince his people to come and use a free day for work. He starts calling people, some of them are far from the city and can't be back, but others would definitely be there.
He tells me that, for him, investing on this commercial is investing on the future, as the Arab Spring is damaging the tourism all around the region, and Syria is in its boiling point.
We close the deal, we schedule the shooting, and I spend my last day in Amman filming the commercial for Jordan Sights!

Shooting tourism video in Amman for InterContinental

December 5th, 2011 I travel to Amman, the capital of Jordan, to shoot a concierge video for InterContinental Hotels & Resorts. The video is a new episode of a series of touristic guides that the brand have of the most important cities where they own hotels. I already worked in one of them in Madrid, but this is a completely new experience, as I'm traveling to a country I've never visited, and in a moment where the region lives a complicated situation.

Avoiding the tripod

I'm flying with turkish airlines, and the communication with the airline has been frankly difficult. After a long conversation where they tried to make me understand I couldn't bring any big object because of its weight (they wouldn't have an answer to "what's more heavy, A kilo of paper or a kilo of lead?"), I decided to just leave the tripod and shoot the video without any stabilization.

The Turkish hologram

To fly to Amman from Paris, I change plane in Istanbul Ataturk Airport, and there I'm very surprised to find out that turkish have got the hologram! Of course is a trick, but for the few seconds you don't realize it, it's awesome!

• Watch a little video of the turkish hologram

Arriving to Amman

Latest weeks the arab spring has been constantly mentioned in newspaper and tv. The Spanish ministry of home affairs website targets Jordan as a country with not known problems, but it also says that risk to travel to the region is high and that any precaution taken was good, which actually I don't know how to interpret.
I arrive to Queen Alia's airport, where a guy called Ali receives me, and tells me that everything is arranged. With a smile to every controller, the security measures pass very fast, and in five minutes I've got my visa and we're out of the Airport, where InterContinental's concierge Anas is waiting for me with another guy from the hotel and Mansur, the man who's going to drive us all around Amman city for the video shooting, with his characteristic kufiyya.
After the warm welcome, Mansur drives us to Amman, 40 km. from the Airport. I can't avoid to connect the road crossing the desert, the sand-coloured houses, the driver and the sound of everybody's accents with those images I had seen all the previous days on the tv, It's like being inside the tv-news. I ask them about the arab spring, they say these days they're receiving refugees from Syria, but that Jordan still lives a calmed situation. They seem to be more interested on talking about Barça v.s. Madrid match that takes places next weekend, like Al-Jazeera is discussing at the moment I get my room in the hotel and I turn on the TV. Maybe it's football the nowadays opium of the masses!

The shooting

It takes three days to shoot the video, and I'm taking some additional shots on Friday morning. Among the greatest locations:

The Royal Automobile Museum: A wide collection of cars and auto-motives from King Hussein of Jordan, from old cars to a new Lamborghini.

Wild Jordan: A complex devoted to preserve natural heritage in the country.

Restaurant Abou el Abed: Which name's identity comes from the Lebanese comedian character who holds credit for most of the arabbian jokes.

Tapis Volant to produce Random Voices // Tapis Volant va a producir Random Voices

Random Voices, the documentary project I started four years ago, has now the support of Tapis Volant, the new media division of Cinédoc Films, based in Annecy (France).  With this collaboration, the documentary becomes a cross-media project, which includes a film and an interactive web-documentary produced by Pierre Mortimore and Christian Lelong.

Random Voices connects people from different countries to establish a Collective Interview between all its characters.   Settled in Europe, finds different realities and perspectives spread all around the old continent, featuring a real portrait of real people who talk about personal issues, far cultures and global subjects. It has no intention of convincing the audience with any idea or vision, but to motivate their participation on giving their own opinions.

The Man who started it all.

My Grandpa Lluís is the one who noticed I was curious about his VHS videocamera. He started to show me how it worked: how the camera started recording by clicking a big red button, how to zoom in and zoom out, and also how to change the tape, carefully, when it ended.

Firstly with him behind me, and then on my own, I started to record things. He knew how I loved it, and he loved to have every single familiar event recorded. I recognise sometimes I prefered to keep eating at dinners when he said 'Pau, you could take the camera and record', but then I just forgot about the food and I was trapped with the eye in the viewfinder.

It was a simbiotical relationship, and I think that connected us powerfully.

He started it all, and I'm very greatful.

The Man Who Realised it.

It’s New Year in Paris. At 2:15 a.m., Ilgay decides to go back from the Eiffel Tower. He’s in the City of Love for holyday, and as a humble photographer, he wanted to hunt the famous monument in the night that shines more, so that his wife, currently in his hometown, Bursa, could contemplate the beauty of this gorgeous event.
Although  he has a simple compact camera, he bought a tripod last afternoon because he’s not used to this cold, and he knows his hands shake and the photo would had appeared blur in the night. Champs Elisée were so full of people that he can’t manage to put the camera and take the photo, because actually, he wants to appear in the photo as well, and leaving the camera alone with so many drunk people around is not a good idea.
He got a hundred photos, but a bit frustrated, he’s on the way back feeling that he couldn’t catch the image he expected.

He things people lose control when drinking. He doesn’t like it.

He arrives at Chateau Rouge (Metro Line 4) and he sees at some distance, in the middle of the crowd, a man that is drinking the last drops of a vodka bottle. The drunk man seems happy, but his body starts to dance freely while his hand opens and the bottle crashes in the floor. He wasnt dancing at all. The man collapses.
Ilgay’s religion generally doesn’t simpathizes with alcohol, but he can not understand how the crowd doesn’t react to the collapsed man, who has a little fall of salive between his lips and the close floor, and his view lost while dozens of shoes walk around him in different directions, but no one stops.

No one realises the man needs help, but some of them look at him badly, as a bothering obstacle.

Ilgay doesn’t understand why people don’t care. He can’t conceive how a brother is left on the floor. He’s not a problem, nor trash on the floor. He’s just one of us. Something is wrong.

It’s 3:20 a.m., at Rue Cligancourt, near the station, there’s a Kebab Restaurant were good Ilgay’s friends are working all night long. It’s enough missunderstanding for today. He feels very tired. A friend who’s cutting meat sees Ilgay’s approaching to the restaurant. Both smile.

“Iyi geceler, nasilsin?”

They kiss each other’s chicks.His friend doesn’t ask him for help, but Ilgay boils some water for the chai and washes the dishes until 6:00 a.m.

I met him a noon at this restaurant. He was sitting in a table and invited me to join and drink some chai. There’s a clear language barrier between us, but a good selection of english adjectives, dedicated hours and some efusive body language were enough to get this tale of unconformism.

I'd like to think it's just a coincidence

I’d like to think this is just a coincidence

On December 2008, a year ago, the company I was working in proposed to make an adaptation of Random Voices to present it in the catalan tv public channel, Televisió de Catalunya. Although this adaptation had nothing to do with the main ideas that Random Voices wants to transmit, it had the same format, and so Random Voices was used to show them how the format works.

After some meetings between the representant of the company and the tv corporation, the answer of the channel was long awaited, but finally they told us that “as it was an interesting project, they were bringing it to the new format department to analise it in detail.”

Some weeks later, we got a final answer, refusing the project for a lag of budget.

….

I would like to think this is just a coincidence.

I’d like to think is just a coincidence, that 10 months after this answer, the same department they brought the project has launched a new program, described as an initiative “to show the social reality of Europe.”
I’d like to think is a coincidence, that this “new initiative” takes place in several cities around Europe, and tries to see how same topics are seen through different points of view and cultures.
I’d like to think is just a coincidence, that first episodes of this “new iniciative” talk about clitchés and one of them, in Switzerland, talks about the importance of time, just the same topics we showed in the Random Voices website as demo clips.

I would like to think this is just a fucking coincidence: