cf.

Yeah, Clermont-Ferrand was inspiring. With an average of 120,000 audience each year, being with Cannes etc in the top list of film festivals with the most audience in the whole world, how can it be not?

There’s no 1 director, just a board of 10 programmers. And they do everything, from delivering cables to screenings, to making sure you get your prints after the festival’s over, to saving starving-filmmakers-like-us by giving invitations to the parties, to seeing you off at the train station to, of course, programming. Amazing people. They all live in the town, too – no commuting. Once after a party at the Jolly Ouah Ouah (nice place with a dog-butt statue hanging at one of the walls), Jeck, who was also in CF last year, showed us the building where Roger lives. It’s just a few meters away from Jolly Ouah Ouah.

And before La Jetee, they only had a shabby little apartment as an office. Not too different from the Komunitas Film, said Laurent to me. Behind his front passenger seat I found a cardboard with “AGUS // Konfiden” written on it. That was for picking up Agus, who came by in December, at the train station.

I also had a chat with the guy at dvdpocket.fr stand at Maison de la Culture. He told me it’s only the three of them running dvdpocket, and that this was not their full time job. So I thought they must be superpeople when he said they have released 50 titles on DVD in the 3 years that they have worked together on this. Once, he said, he even signed a paycheck of 10,000 EUR for a 3-months royalty. Okay. What does this make if not me trying to regain my faith back in short films, Win?

The festival was celebrating its 30 years. And as a special treat, our festival passes could be used for the tram and bus network around the city. Very practical, as the cinema theatres were quite spread. The market, even though of course much smaller than Berlinale (which makes me quite happy, actually) was inspiring as well. At least it felt warmer and more familiar. As I stepped in, the first face I recognize was Astrid’s – very nice to see her again after all these years.

The audience always clapped between the end of the film and the credits, and then they always clap again after the credits as the theatre’s lights were turned on. Some people would leave, some people would come in. But 99% of the audience would usually stay for the whole program. And all screenings that I attended were almost full – the least was a bit more than one-third of the theatre. Impressive, motivating and inspiring.

Just how many ‘inspiring’ could I write here? At the end of the festival, on the Sunday morning, I went to the flea market just in front of the Casino supermarket, just a few metres away from Maison de la Culture. Bought a 25-pack blank DVD for 10 EUR. It was a sunny morning, people were flocking in the Univers café just at the other side of the intersection. I went and met Laurent there, bumped into John and Khavn, and suddenly I had a flash of the smell of chlorine in the heated pool just outside of the press room. And the colourful little seats. And the rows of swimsuit-clad bodies swimming around, way down there. Nice chlorine smell.

Edwin, Ladya, I, John made an escape to the villages. Being a pinoy, John was the only one who was used to driving at the wrong side of the street. I was too hesitant at first, thinking of all the trips I have spent on the road in countryside German and Swiss like ten years ago. Not again, not countryside Europe again, I thought. But well, France had a different countryside.

I tried my French out in the country where it’s spoken most, for the first time, and it was mostly working well with my hand and bodily gestures – and a lot of stares, plus English. “Excusez-moi, é – lumiere, [pointing to the lights on the ceiling of the office] é – dans la … é – voiture, car … is still on.” é they would make a sound, or if it was French it must have been something I didn’t learn in high school, blablablablafrançaisbla! And I could feel that they understood what I was saying. That the light inside the car we rented was still on. Thanks to Lumiere brothers being the one and only lights of film, for example, I could remember some of my forgotten French words.

Oh, and not to forget mentioning Docteur Prout, a sexy one who makes kinetic sculptures and a lot more than that. He was part of the festival’s workshop last year, admitted that one of his machines could reverse your life for 1 second (which is “not a lot, but sometimes you need it”), doesn’t like internet and if you email him it would go to his friend who would tell him he has an email. He likes the tesla coil, however, even though when I said that it is rumoured that Tesla had built a teleport machine he admitted that he has not been reading too much about Tesla.

So. Even though no one (except for myself and Jeck, and a wonderful little bit with John, and Sun who admitted she could only dance to techno) really danced in the parties, it was a great experience.

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Amsterdam, here I kam.