paris.love Starts Slovenian Distribution

I've been in Slovenia since Thursday, 28th March. Just yesterday I finished the documentary portrait of Brina Svit. Here is a picture that I took just after sound mix. Sound designer was Matej Perih.

Next week, on Wednesday, 12th March we start with the distribution of paris.love in art house cinema Kinodvor. We will be actually opening the week of French cinema in Ljubljana. Before that, on Saturday, 8th March, we will have avant-premiere in Čajarna (tea bar) in Novo mesto.
My dear friend Borut Peterlin made a Striptiz portrait of me for Slovenian magazine Mladina. It was great seeing him again and, of course, I think he made a great job. Thanks again Borut.

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.

Summer Time

...and the weather is easy. After the heat-wave last week I can finally do few things (not just trying to survive in horizontal position). Last week, apart from few meetings, I haven't done much. I shot a statement for Slovenian internet portal vest.si regarding the situation in Slovenian film industry. It's a long story and I don't want to go in details here but few guys in power managed to destroy the politic of Slovenian Film Fund literally over the night. The text in the statement is:
The situation in Slovenian film is finaly balanced and it can be explained by Newton's 3rd Law: If object A exerts a force on object B,
then object B exerts an equal and opposite force on object A.
Populary we call it the law of action and reaction.

Yesterday we had a barbecue with a guys from Luksuz Production. At around 6 p.m. it was still quite easy and then exactly at 7 p.m. we started. I was chef, because I really enjoy in that and the great thing isthat the day before Tom bought new grill.

In few hours I will go to Ljubljana. The whole next week we will continue shooting Brina's portrait for national TV.

J.J.B.

Business With Pleasure

As usual, I would say. As I moved to Paris, my visits to Slovenia are always connected with some work and a lot of pleasure. Last week I spent two days in Ljubljana because we were shooting "Slovenian part" of the documentary Lady Svit. I stayed at my friends appartment Nino and Jelena. I know them for quite long and we have also very long professional relationship: Jelena made music for my first video films, then they both made music for Straight Ahead, after that I've worked for almost two years on docu-fiction TV emission Odklop and Nino was making the music and again we worked together on paris.love.
Shooting days with Brina were very nice. First day we spent in Ljubljana shooting interviews with Zdravko Dusa - her editor and Peter Kolsek, writter and old friend of Brina. Peter was a bit ill so we couldn't do a lot with him, but the part we shot was very nice and we caught some emotional moments.
Next day we went to Kras, where Brina and Pascal have their house - summer residence. Unfortunately no pictures from there but for the next time I promise some because the place is magnificent.

J.J.B.

Lady Svit in Buenos Aires

Voila, here we are. I came the day before yesterday in the morning after the 13 hours flight. Together with Sabina I spent the afternoon and evening putting the equipment together. Yesterday at 11 o'clock we met with other two crew members Lorena and Pedro for equipment checking and around 2 p.m. we finally started shooting. I brought with me from Paris the text (I got it from Brina's publisher) of Brina's new book designed as it will be for print. This is a moment when the book is finished but there are still minor details to correct so I wanted to capture the moment when Brina gets it in her hands. And it was quite ok, I guess I got some emotions from the scene. In the afternoon we shot Brina and Sergio having a private tango lesson in the middle of the parc. Here is the picture.

After the dinnner we went to the same parc to document some more moments. Brina took part in milonga as she does every day. We shot some moments and that was that for the first day. Today we will walk with Brina around Buenos Aires and try to get just some moment of her and the city. As for the evening, of course, another milonga.

J.J.B.

Bueno Buenos Aires

Things are slowly coming together in Buenos Aires. I'm leaving Paris on Wednesday and hopefully I will be there on Thursday morning. Brina has been there already for two weeks. At the moment our Slovenian contact in Buenos Aires Sabina Dogic is renting the equipment and putting together the crew. We will be shooting on HDV but today I checked super 8 camera (thanks a lot Alex) because throughout the shoot I want to capture small moments also on super 8. Anyhow, just for a taste, here is a short moment shot by Sabina with Brina in one of the dance halls in Buenos Aires .


J.J.B.

Busy Days

This blog was a bit abandoned in the last week but I have so many things to do before I leave to Buenos Aires to shoot a documentary. Work at school takes me a lot of time, meetings with students, different drafts of the scripts, different versions of films in editing... But ca va. I'm at the moment also involved in a lot of coordination with Gustavfilm about the screening of paris.love on 10th of June in Kinodvor in Ljubljana. Btw, here are the posters.

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.