Chez Raphael

I'm back I guess.
For the moment just two fragments from life in Paris.
Raphael moved to a new apartment, the neighbourhood is quite interesting, as you will see in the clip.

His restaurant Cheri Bibi is doing very well. One night he tried to make a new record in carying glasses around.

That's it for the moment. In next post I will explain how I became Boris Petkovic again.

J.J.B.

Karim is in da House

Karim finally found him self.

J.J.B.

Lady Svit Dances in Buenos Aires

The editing of documentary portrait of French-Slovenian writter Brina Svit is coming to the end. Here is an extract from the film. Location: parc in Buenos Aires. Still not color corrected and sound edited.
Brina and Sergio. And Tango. Beautiful.


J.J.B.

La Cuisine Libanaise

Few days ago Mirella and I invited Vinciane and Guissepe for a dinner. I was very glad because Mirella promised that she will cook Libanese food which I adore.
So, here how it was.
The starter was of course houmus (made from chickpea's, garlic and lemon - at the end, you put olive oil on top of it) and lebanese bread. Of course, you can eat houmus with the main course also, which was specialy marinated chicken with rice, almonds, rasins and pinuts.
And of course salad, tabbule, made from tomato, parsley and onions.
Hera are the happy eaters (I am not among them because I took the picture but I can assure you, I was the most satisfied one:)). Vine was French and for apettizer we drank viliamovka, which is Slovenian brandy made from pears.

Oh, I almost forgot: for dessert, chockolate, that Guissepe and Vinciane brought from Belgia.

After the dinner we were having a good time listening to music, esspecialy Mika, new Libanese star. I said that it reminds me of Walk like an Egyptian, the old hit from 80's. Because the girls are young, we had to demonstrate thew how we danced at the time.

J.J.B.

A bout de souffle - commercial

Voila, finally.
I helped Andrew Brooke, the friend of mine, who last year graduated at Eicar film school on his commercial assignement.
He didn't need to persuade me a lot, A bout de souffle is one of my favorite films and I had a lot of fun editing this. It took him another year to fix the music and sound but finally, here it is.


J.J.B.

Leçon de cinéma

Sometimes it happens; the atmosphere is right, there is something in the air. Several days ago, after we had lunch and we had discussed the school issues, we stayed sitting in a restaurant: Nenad, Adriano and myself. School year is over so we drank few glasses of wine. At one moment and I don't remember by what was it provoqued, Nenad started to analyse Adriano's last film. And one of those magic moments started. We call Nenad maestro, because his knowledge of cinema and art in general is huge. He shares that knowledge with his students and also with us, his collegues, on a daily basis. But just sometimes it seems that all his passion wakes up, and than he goes with all his heart deeply into the life and cinema. I hope I can bring you closer the moment of that day through some of these photographs. It started like this:

This is like the opening sequence; Leçon de cinéma was just about to start:

J.J.B.

Easy Days

Week in Paris after two trips. I'm slowly trying to get back to normal life, whatever that means.
Anyhow, last week I met Brina. We were speaking about the shoot in front of us and other things. A while ago I got a test version of her book and I used the opportunity and gave it to Brina to signed it. Concidering the fact that this is a unique version, I hope that in 30 years this could be my old age pension:).
In the midlle of the week Karim came. The same day we went for a dinner to Cheri Bibi where we stayed quite long. Raphael surprised us with the news that he will become a father. Around two o'clock I made this picture.
Weekend passed by hanging around with Karim, of course L'Art Brut, dinner chez Mirella... He left on Sunday.
Today I went with Nenad to cinema Balzac to speak about possibility of screening Eicar International section student films in October. It was nice to see Mr. Schpoliansky again. And it was nice to listen to conversation between him and Nenad because they are both very witty.

J.J.B.

paris.love in Slovenia - part 1

We came back yesterday (on Monday), today I was trying to put together videos and pictures. It's almost midnight, on googlevideo.com is impossible to upload for a moment, my space has also some problems and on you tube the situation is the same. Till now I succeded uploading two, there are three more to come (maybe I will publish them tomorrow).
We came to Ljubljana on Friday evening. Vlado from Gustavfilm waited for us at the airport and he drived us to hotel. We went out for a dinner, we drank a glass of vine and that was it. On Saturday we met Jure Moskon. We went together to Kinodvor to make a test screening.

After that we were sitting, drinking coffee. This is how I surprised Jure Meden who was working on something. After a while we also met our dear friend from Paris, Reza Serkanian and I made a quick interview.
reza serkanien


The guys from Charlie TV arrived so they made an interview with me and immediately after Katja Lenart made an interview with me for vest.si (you can see it here). And the reverse shot that I made is here.

Then we went for a lunch: Mirella, Reza, Jure, his girlfriend Ivana and me. I took them to Bosnian restaurant to try our speciality cevapcici. Mirella didn't like kajmak (she called it vanilla ice-cream), I was more than glad to eat her portion by myself. After that Jure and Ivana went home and we went back to Kinodvor.
We met there Koen - the program director and Nina - the festival director. The cast on his hand is a consequence of a traditional football match on Isola Cinema Film Festival between guests and voluntary brigade.
He posed for us in front of our poster and after he took a photo of me and Mira. In between we went to see The Teacher, I am ashamed to admit but I felt to sleep although the film was very interesting. Cevapcici in my stomach were just too heavy. We spent the afternoon walking around. We passed by Metelkova where we stoped in Jalla, Jalla. Mira spoted the poster of Desperado Tonic, I haven't even seen it.


The evening was easy, Mirella started to feel sick so we went to sleep early.
Part 2 is cooming soon.

J.J.B.

She Is the Boss

"I've never been to the film festival before and now, my first one will be Cannes." That's what Mirella Habr told me on Saturday while we were celebrating the news that she got selected among 60 other young cineasts from France (she represents Parisian region!) to participate The Cannes Film Festival. Seven from them will form Jury-Jeunes, the jury that will decide the laureat of Prix de la Jeunesse. During the festival they will attend a lot of screenings and workshops and of course, they will meet a lot of interesting filmmakers.
My cooperation with Mirella goes back to first years at Eicar film school. We worked a lot together, at the time she was the most wanted script supervisor at the school and I DOP-ed her fiction short film Crisis in Hell. After that, at her age of 22, she produced my feature paris.love. Here is a nice picture of her from that shoot.

After that I again DOP-ed her documentary Little Beirut and our cooperation went into several other directions, but here, I will keep them hidden:). She speaks five languages fluently and she is one of the most talented and creative people I've ever met. Be aware, she is on the move.
J.J.B.

L'Art Brut

Two days ago I passed by the bar L'Art Brut. When I was searcing for the link, I found this website, where among other things is also written: "A charming little bar specialising in Belgian bottled beer. Often studenty crowd with a very sarcastic barman.". :) I'm 100% positive that they were thinking about my friend Milan. So, here he is:

With a new image, Dali's moustache and as he told me, with a new wife also. And here I stop, because I really don't want to go deeper in his private life. I met Milan four years ago when I came to Paris. The story is quite interesting, after two months being in the film school, my script got selected to be shot on S16 mm. Normally, in Slovenia, to organise a film shoot is a matter of few phone calls, I know people and they are more or less ready to do me a favour. But in Paris at the time I didn't know almost anyone. Because my story mostly took place in the bar, I went out to try to find one. I drank a lot of beers here and there, but (as we are in Paris) everywhere they wanted a lot of money. Suddenly I remebered that someone told me about the bar owned by two Serbian brothers. I got the address and went there immediately. I stoped near the bar, waiting. The barman approached. I said (in Bosnian): "A glass of red wine, please". "Is vranac ok" - he replied. "Perfect". "Milan". "Boris". "Nice to meat you". While I was slowly drinking my wine, Milan was doing his job. After a while, he stoped near me and asked: "So, what are you doing in Paris?". I answered: "I'm studying film and in my school, they fucked me really hard. They selected my script, I have to shoot in the bar but I can't find one.". His smile was big as his heart: "You will shoot here, of course!". And of course, we shot the film in two days, turning his bar upside down but at the end he was also very pleased with our work (because bar looks just great). The DOP was Luc Walpoth, producer Ana Jordanova, music by Boris Pokora and main characters Olga Zekova and Julien Boissaud. Here is a short extract.

Anyhow, if you want to hear some good music, to enjoy drinking while slowly eating cheese and sausages, this ia a place. L'Art Brut, 78 rue Quincampoix, just a step away from Centre Pompidou.
J.J.B.

The Last of the Mohicans

There are not much more of them on the streets, masters of puppets. Sometimes on Sundays one can see them in front of Sacre-Coeur or in Jardin de Luxembourg making the shows for the children but on the streets, nope. This guy is one of the last ones, one can see him quite a lot all around Paris and he seems like really enjoying in what he is doing. And the music is always good also:)

J.J.B.

Lady Svit

Two months ago I was speaking with a young distributer from Paris. He asked me: "What do you prefer to work on, fiction or documentaries?". My answer was: "I like to do documentaries while I'm preparing fiction." At the moment, I'm very slowly working on the new idea for my new feature (about that maybe some other time). And of course, I'm doing a documentary. It's acctualy a portrait of Slovenian writer Brina Svit. She has lived in Paris since 80's, at the time she was writing books in Slovenian language, and then, few years ago she changed the language and now she writes in French (last two books and the third is coming). That's quite a big step for a writer and some of the difficulties of writing she described in her book Moreno. Interesting thing language wise is that her last book Un coeur de trop has, as I remember, 8 pages more in French than in Slovenian. And here we speak about the language, about the beauty of French language in which one can convey so many feelings and emotions in so many ways(one of the next posts I might devote to the same subject from the point of view from filmmakers; especially among the international filmmakers there is this joke that these days in French films there are no activities but they speak so beautiful:)).
Anyhow, back to the subject, I'm trying to follow Brina few days a month in different situations in Paris, in May we will spend some time in Buenos Aires dancing tango and of course we will be with her mostly during the summer in Slovenia. The film is produced by TV Slovenia - documentary program and it will be screened there hopefully in the begining of 2008. So, here is an extract from Wednesday session of tango with a famous Argentinian tango dancer Coco Dias. We shot in a small appartement in Paris, credits go also to Jean-Nicola Risler who was recording the sound and Andraz Sumrada, camera assistant who also shot this small moment of our work.


J.J.B.

CHERI BIBI

Two days ago I got a message from my friend Raphael in which he was inviting me to inauguration of his restaurant Cheri Bibi. The opening is about to happen this Saturday. Raphael is otherwise an actor and he played in two of my movies: in short film Touché and in feature paris.love (here is a picture of him from the film).
Btw, Raphael was my first contact in Paris. Four years ago, when I was about to move here, I wrote several e-mails to my friends all around the world asking them if they know anyone in Paris. Few days after, my friend Jorg Vincent Malotki, the actor from Germany, answered: »His name is Raphael, this is his address, he will take care of you.«. Actually, few years earlier Raphael went through the same situation when he had moved to New York for a year. His contact at the time was Jorg and he didn't know him neither (friend of a friend of a friend story). So, in October 2003 I knocked on Raphael's door. I've stayed in his appartment for three weeks until I found my own place.
Anyhow, today I passed by the restaurant and the situation was as following.


Looking forward to Saturday!

J.J.B.