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:

When he's in front of you.

 

Something special happens everytime Paul Giamatti appears on the screen. He says his way to work is to read the script so many times that in the end he memorizes each portion of dialog. When that happens, he's sure he knows and understand the character he's gonna play. I love the idea that over the theorical part of the acting there's also a kind of instinct that lets his characters in. I think that's one of the reasons he's so believable and able to do something so difficult as playing himself, as it happens in Cold Souls, the feature debut of Sophie Barthes.