Tight jeans and concrete

Yesterday I did something I had in mind for a while. I bought a copy of Wir Kinder vom Banhnof Zoo. I had read the book in 1981. For many years my Berlin imaginaire had been one of Christiane F. + Bowie + the wall/the cold war. My image of Berlin was black and white, grey like slush. This image only changed in 1995 when Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped up the Reichstag. That was the first time I desired to go and see the town.The first time I associated it with colors. Light. A happy crowd. A magnet of something positive…

The state of Italy

In a few weeks at the Berlinale the restored version of the movie Metropolis will be on the silver screen. Still this image recalls a recent article on Beppe Grillo’s blog on the state of Italy.

Here is summary of the Italian situation. The political parties no longer represent the citizens. The deputies no longer represent the Italian population but merely serve those who appointed them.

Public resources are being transferred into private hands either through sales or by means of concessions being granted to run our motorways, our water resources and the disposal of our waste.

I am a camera

Tom Ford’s movie is impressive. And Colin Firth. And Julianne Moore. And the young Nicholas Hoult (“About a boy”).

Not surprisingly, the novel is awesome.
Isherwood used to say “I am a camera”.

If “Goodbye Berlin” is an album of stark contrast black and white pictures, “A single Man” is a box of saturated orangey Polaroids, a few of which are black, as dark as lakes of onyx.

Well, now I have to find the 1955 movie “I am a camera”…and maybe watch again “Cabaret” on www.theauters.com

Video: FelixStryker’s youtube video is more interesting than the official videoclip!

Der Kommissar, Er Cicoria and Manoel

Tuesday night. It’s  raining cats and dogs in Rome, we wonder if the Mercati Traianei across the street are drowning – our German history lesson is about to begin, in a classroom full of French maps. Just before starting the dissection of the Emser Depesche, Professor CB asks us, giggling “Did you see Oettinger on Youtube? Furchtbar!”. The new German EU Commissioner apparently does not master the English language and that is furchtbar! Worse than WesterWave!

Uh uh…so successful they removed it! Try here…

I’m afraid, Professor CB, but Italy beats Germany 2-1 with this outstanding performance by Er Cicoria: ex-mayor, ex-minister, ex-COPASIR boss, serial party-jumper and neo-party-founder, aka Francesco Rutelli. Yet another reason explaining why, besides pollution, traffic, deteriorating environment, less and less people visit Italy!

Oettinger and Rutelli could have run for the role of Manoel in Fawlty Towers!

Vitruvian Woman

The new Mercedes Benz campaign featuring the German model Julia Stegner is incredibly arty and retro’, don’t you think? In 1913 Umberto Boccioni evoked the Sturm und Drang entry of technology in sculpture with its Forma Unica di Continuità nello Spazio. The future was movement in 1913, and it is still now. But with a difference. The Vitruvian Woman is squaring the circle now.

Glass rooms, modern love

Sense of Place. It has been a while since I last wrote something on this subject. “The glass room” is the perfect novel for this tag.

The novel is set in 1928 Brno, Czechoslovakia. It’s the story of a couple (actually, three couples) and of a family. But also the story of a house, which still exists: Mies van der Rohe’s modernist masterpiece, Villa Tugendhat.

The novel is a truly immersive experience: architectural adventure, hectic Zeitgeist, intertwined passions, technologically advanced Czechoslovakia, a country in between the German and the West Slavic cultures. And of top of this, Simon Mawer plays with the delights of the German and Czech languages…how Mitteleuropean.

Turning the page 40 years later, California: “A single man”. I haven’t read the novel yet, by one of my absolute favorite authors, Christopher Isherwood. But I’ve seen Tom Ford’s movie. Mawer’s novel set in 1930s Brno and Ford’s movie set in 1960s California have two things in common: they are both set in magnificent glass houses and dive into intense, difficult – and modern, for their time – love stories. Modern love.

Reporters sans Agronomist

Michele Montas is alive. The wife of The Agronomist survived the earthquake. I had no clear ideas on Haiti – besides the post-colonialism cookie-cutter “poverty-and-corruption” image disseminated by the media on fragmented occasions. Yes I had heard about Papa Doc Duvalier, Baby Doc and Aristide. But I had no framework for putting the XX century history of Haiti into context.

For us in 2004 the movie The Agronomist by Jonathan Demme was a revelation. The history of Jean Dominique, activist and journalist at Radio Haiti Inter – killed in 2000 – made us understand a lot about the past and the present of Haiti.

After this movie Haiti emerged from that blurred under-wood of the generic “poor countries”label, and in all its uniqueness it makes you want do something else to help.

In the meantime the THW teams have reached Port-au-Prince. 6,000 liters of water per hour, taking care of the needs of 30,000 people. See the press release here

Walls tumbling in the 80s, walls rising in the 80s and rising further

The only regret I had on November 9th 2009 when I was in Berlin was missing Marco Paolini’s performance at the Taranto Container Terminal. But I catched up tonight.

Standing in between towering containers on the docks Paolini speaks about the East, about oltre cortina: behind the curtain…nothing to do with Cortina. What happened in Italy in those years, when the wall came down?

Destruction of Society…Thatcher’s privatization mantra was gaining traction even during our own bleierne Zeit.

He talks about Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. The more precisely one property is known, the less precisely the other can be known. Call it liquid society.

Haiti: support the THW task force

The THW is on its way to Haiti to quickly provide drinking water, logistics and humanitarian help with its SEEWA unit. The acronym is based on the German name for the unit, whose English name is “Rapid Deployment Unit Water and Sanitation Abroad”.
SEEWA is a new operational-tactical unit for international operations that allows the THW to react even more quickly to current hazard situations relating to drinking water supply and treatment. The unit’s responsibilities include fact finding, mobile drinking water treatment, analysis, a first aid consultancy, and the rehabilitation of water supplies. The unit consists of teams of nine helpers, equipped with the most up-to-date tools, and – like their colleagues in the SEEBA unit – ready to set off to a disaster area within a few hours. . Support them here.

THW – Erkundungsteam auf dem Weg nach Haiti

Poised, ice-cold Queen in French Siberia

One of my favorite Bridget Jones expressions comes to mind when thinking over the past 48 hours’ travel-nightmare. There I was, in my Anna Karenina gray warm redingote coat and bottines. I knew it would be cold in Lyon, I had left Rome for my business meetings well equipped for urban snow. But not enough for the Campagne de Russie, transport Berezina,  which followed.