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.

Sacred Objects

Last week I was on the opening of the photo exhibition Sarajevo dans le coeur de Paris of Milomir Kovacevic - Strasni. He took the pictures of the objects which were taken by the people when they had left Sarajevo during the war. Among them there were some really intersting things; one guy took with him the key of his car - golf:)
Those people were leaving their homes not knowing if they will ever be able to go back. My story is not that hard but I also left Slovenia with just two suitcases (of course, I was not forced and I was able to go back anytime).
However, "the special" thing that I took with me is this:

This is a comic that Darko Perovic draw for me for the premiere of Straight Ahead. The guy in a wheelchair says: "Watch out to frame Boris running over the street for that red hair girl!". Blind guy: "How does she look like, bro?".
For those of you who left their countries, what were the things which you took with you?

J.J.B.

I Like Paris

I like Paris because of many things. One of them is that you can meet girls wearing shoes like this.

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.

Balkan Gypsy Evening

Yesterday I went with Khaled to a concert of Taraf de Haidouks, the Romanian Gypsy band.The concert was at Elysees-Montmartre, just two steps from my place.

They play traditional Romanian music and they are really exceptional musicians. Apart from "the wedding and funeral" songs they also played some music from classical composers. I recognised the piece from Bartok (you can see and hear it here) and Khaled recognised Khachaturian's one.
Anyhow, the concert was great and since it was quite early, we went after for a dinner. Being in the Balkan Gypsy mood, we ordered a kilo of meat, we ate it in half hour and we didn't look like French people at all.

J.J.B.

Eicar - new website

I'm receiving through this blog more and more questions about Eicar - International Film School. We have a new webiste, here is a link, check it out.

J.J.B.

The Last Cigarette in the Parisian Bar

Here is how I smoked the last cigarette in the Parisian bar on 31st of December 2007.

J.J.B.

Casablanca

It's been 2 months since we started with classes at Eicar. This year I teach production for bachelor 1st year and master 1st year. Those are mainly theoretical courses 2 hours a week.
"My class", where I teach directing, is 2nd year bachelor program. We have almost 40 students so we divided them into two groups and the other teacher is Adriano Valerio. We alternate classes so that both group can have lectures from both of us.
There are two premises in 2nd year program. First, how to tell a story in realistic way, stressing also the film structure, dramaturgy... Second, it's working with actors.
Last week we started with exercises with actors. The students get the given scene from films and then they have to direct with actors. Each year I choose the scene from Casablanca, where Ingrid Bergman comes to ask for transit letters from Humphrey Bogart, to be the first one because it's very easy to break it down into units and to find objectives and obstacles. In one class three students work with actors on the scene and then we analyse their work together, then the following week one of them shoot the scene.
So here is the picture from shooting, where actors Jon Russo and Heike try to do their best of Bogart-Bergman.

At one moment my student Madison took my photo and made some pictures. After, I found this one that I like a lot. D.O.P. August at work (not to forget, director was Brandon).

J.J.B.

Reflection

When I came to Paris in October 2003, I had a Russian plan: I will stay in Paris for 5 years no matter what happens and after that period I will draw a line and see if the things are working for me or not. The fifth year have just started and it's still a bit too early for final account, but here are some pluses and minuses in the last 4 years.

- After being in Paris for 2 months, in december 2003 I shot a short film-exercise on super16. I've already written about that here, now I finally uploaded the whole film.

in case of problems, try to open it directly from here

- first year in Paris was very tough for me, I was almost all the time without the money, I didn't understand the word of French and it didn't seem at the time that the things will change. I remember that I was crying out of frustration several times. However, through Balkan connections I got a job at Orly airport (I was "slapping" the luggage as we say in Bosnia) and somehow survived that first year.

- second year started much easier since I got a scholarship from Slovenian Ministry of culture. Suddenly I had a lot of free time since I didn't need to run around like crazy trying to earn few euros. Consequance will be described in next line

- I spoke with at the time my directing professor Ilka Jarvilaturi. I told him how frustrated I'm because I don't speak the language. He told me:"To learn a language you have to either shoot a feature in French or you have to find a french speaking girlfriend.". Just to be sure I did both :)

- third year, partial breakthrough, I got a job as a professor of film directing at the school where I was a student. Great international environment. Big plus.

- that same year passed by working on post-production of paris.love

- fourth year, continuation of teaching. Started a project with Brina Svit, travelled with her to Buenos Aires and spent a summer shooting in Slovenia

- voila, here we are, fifth year, not bad at all. The only big minus that's following me all this years is French breaucracy. Although Slovenia entered the European Union in 2005, the things for me haven't changed much; I still need to wait in queue to get my working papers and the fact that I'm from European Union doesn't make the things really easier

- anyhow, recently I started to work as a camera operator and editor with a swedish journalist shooting the news for swedish TV. Although I started my career back in 94 working the same things, I enjoy a lot rediscovering it now

- so, when I don't work at school or with swedish guy, I edit the documentary about Brina. So, here I'm am, doing my best of Rodin's Thinker.


J.J.B.

Ratatouille - film location

Today I passed by this place and I finally made a photo. I remember how impressed and shocked I was the first time I saw it, few years ago, before the film came out.

For cinema buffs who will visit Paris, you can find it on 8 rue des Halles in the first arrondissement.
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.

Back In Paris

Voila, after 40 days of travelling around I'm finally home. Actually I came a week ago but usually when I come to Paris after a long period of time I allways need a week or so to adapt. However, for the beginning, two things:

First, I plan to do in a day or to a photo review of my summer activities around but here are two pictures that go out first. One day, while I was on holidays on Croatian island Krk, I had seen a poster announcing the tv screening of the football match between Hajduk and Sampdoria in a bar near sea.. I thought it will be fun so I went there. As you see here, tv was placed on the beach side, with a sea behind it and it was connected with hundreds of cables and antena from 70's. The game started and we could barely see the players moving around but because of the noise in the picture the ball was completely unrecognisible. So we protested to the boss of the place and then the real fun happened. He started to move antena left and right, up and down and in all possible directions that you can imagine. Very quckly also we, the spectators, joined the club; each one had his own idea what to do to fix it. This lasted till the end of the first half time when we got tired and decided to relax during the break:). But ones the second half started we were all there again trying to fix the picture. I think it's not neccessary to mention that we didn't see the minute of the game but we had had great fun.

Today I received an e-mail from my friend Karim Raoul. We worked quite a lot together (among other things he was D.O.P. on paris.love) and after he moved back to New York we stayed in touch all the time.
Anyhow, he opened his website (the link is also among my favorites) with his photo work. Definitely worthy to check. I found this picture, that I'm publishing here with the approval of the author, very strong (bird=airplane); I just don't understand how he didn't sell it at the time.


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.

Democracy in France

Recently I'm not really in the writing mood and somehow I don't spend much time on my computer. I guess it's the weather. But yesterday when I left my appartment, I almost steped on this:

This is the indicator of the state of democracy in France. Or it's a reaction on elections? Or it's a prediction how France would be if Sarkozy won the elections? Or...

J.J.B.

Day After

I was just thinking that I will slowly have to pack my suitcases after yesterday's results when I received this by e-mail:

There is still a little bit of hope in second round but here you can see that even in the urban areas Sarkozy won by majority of votes. Everywhere in the world the right wing politicians are using the fear which spread among the people after 9/11th. Years ago in Slovenia, there was a campaign against discrimination with a tag line "All different, all equal (all having the same rights)". It changed till today into "All different, all unwelcome".

J.J.B.

22nd April

Today in France everything is in the sign of elections. I passed by one of the voting places where Mirella was doing interviews for documentary Democracy in France.

After we had a lunch together because we were celebrating the fact that Victor Gotovic was born exactly 36 years ago.
I'm hardly waiting for the results of the first round.

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.

Chéri bibi opened the doors

On Saturday internet died in the area of Montmartre. I spoke with two friends, they both have different providers and the situation was the same. Apocalypse Now. Colaps of the system. On Sunday it worked occasionaly. However, with a bit of delay, Saturday's opening of restaurant Chéri bibi, 15 rue Andre del-Sarte. I had a great time, free drinks all night and Lulu and the Comets All-Stars Band.


J.J.B.