moi, toi et tous les autres

Beginning last week, and lasting for 5 brief days, the Paris metro system was covered in pink posters for "Moi, Toi et tous les autres" and the big gray eyes of Miranda July kept staring at me as I rode the trains. It's wierd to have worked on a film that makes it all the way to france, to the point where I overhear conversations in a bookstore of girls who had seen, and loved, the film. I guess that's what makes the film industry so hard to get into- it's so massive that making a successful feature is like launching a multinational....fortunately for me, I'm not quite understaking the task (yet).

After wandering around Paris looking for an internet cafe I just decided to open my laptop on a bench and see if wifi worked- viola! Not many people apparantely bother to protect their networks so there is free wifi at my disposition. Tres cool.

This week I showed up unannounced to visit La Femis, one of France's most prestigious film schools. To get in, you have to pass a series of 3 exams, covering everything from physics to chemistry to film analysis, and be under 26. But once you're in, it's like the gates of heaven open. There facilities, of which I took a self-guided tour, are pretty incredible. Students get free tuition, film, equipment, processing, money for their thesis films, yada yada...
To me it's kind of like announcing that San Francisco city hall has decided to give everyone a free 2-bedroom with a view of the golden gate. Incredible.

I also got a chance last night to check out a short film screening, La Saison Du Court. I've been to a lot of film screenings in the u.s. and to movies in Paris, but never to anything like this. For 6 euros you not only get to see a pleasant selection of about 15 decent short films (mostly recent french but also a 1924 hollywood film and a couple of older animations) but there was this very odd and humourous entertainment team with clowns, a magician who performed possilby the worst card trick I've ever seen, a "light show" between every film, music, and the crowning moment, when they presented a medal (complete with velvet pillow, girl with flag, another girl in uniform) to the audience member who had attended the most faithfully. They managed to turn an ordinary little film screening into a very amusing spectacle.

okay, c'est tout! Paris amazes and inspires....but I do miss San Francisco!