Look to the Future Now, It’s Only Just Begun #2

The word most applicable to my current job situation is "limbo": the company I've been working for has just been sold to a larger American outfit, the champagne's flowing, and there's the prospect of greater things - but will there be a job for me?? As a result of your enthusiasm yet lack of unanimity or wisdom concerning my previous post of this subject, I’m still not sure what my career is, and therefore feel constrained to offer a couple more possibilities for your consideration:

Cobbler

My next-door neighbour is a retired shoe-mender, and he's becoming quite an important feature in my life. After I planted 72 tulips in his flower bed – not so magnanimous as it sounds.... they’re going to be a joy for me to look at too, my own garden is full, and he did a lovely job re-soling my shoes – he wanted to adopt me as his son and teach me his skills. (He also may become my first student in my new English language school, so, respect.) Now, many of the best people have had dads who where cobblers: anguished homosexual fantasist Hans Christian Andersen; cynical 13th century snuffer-out of English parliamentarianism Pope Urban IV (mmm, thanks, Wikipedia); and Joseph Bloody Stalin. Errr, I’m not sure it beat much sense into any of them. Whaddya think?

Peasant

Ok, now we’re talking, and over here that should be easy-peasy, you’d think - and I love the soil, me. But ah you haven’t accounted for the social pressure I’m under. Here’s a story. I was once grovelling around in a pile of dirt in the garden - potting up some bizzy lizzies or some such nonsense - and my mother-in-law was watching me. I could see a thought travel across her face, and it was this: “I dragged my family up from the village into the town, for which permission we had to bribe and then lie to the Secret Police; my husband then actually wrote a letter to Comrade Ceauşescu describing our plight of 9 people living in one room, and after getting a reply we were given a flat to ourselves; then, 20 years later, I managed to buy a flat for my daughter in a new block by borrowing to the max from every single person I knew, ultimately a sound investment as money was worth much less after the inflation crisis following the 1989 revolution; now my only daughter marries this guy who wants to be peasant.... full-circle, wheel-of-life, bloody idiot, bad karma, why did I bother.”

TV Transylvania #3

The Director General has failed again and again to reply to my suggestions for great new programmes and I really am losing my patience. I bet he's not even read them. I bet he's sitting in a jacuzzi right now at the Trans-TV Mansion with Sofia Vicoveanca, Lidia Bejenaru, Laura Lavric and any other floozies still lying around after last Saturday night's 5 hour extravaganza of folklore and cookery. So, I've summoned up all my energies for this last attempt to get his attention. It's the big one.

At Home With The Wurzels

A reality TV show. With a bit of luck, the last one ever made. As must now be yawn-inducingly evident to anybody reading this rubbish, this place does peasantry very very well. Get Germans to make your cars, Frenchmen your food, and Italians for design, fashion and everything else that’s totally meaningless, but if you want a bit of land cultivated and not too much backtalk, employ Transylvanians. But this puts me in a dilemma, for (1) not only am I still homesick but (2) I now also have a freshly awakened taste for yokels wearing silly costumes - they look great, dance and sing, make their own hooch and they’d give you their last plate of pork dripping. The only people who can administer to both these needs and so fill this aching chasm in my soul are The Wurzels. (The concept's not as daft as it seems: think, America's awash with stumbling ex-junkies yet chose to take Brummie Ozzie Osborne to its heart). And, here’s the clincher, does anybody remember Graeme Garden on I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue singing these words to the tune of Beethoven’s Ode To Joy? That’s the Anthem Of The European Union, ladies:

“I am a cider drinker,
I drinks it all of the day,
I am a cider drinker,
It soothes all me troubles away,”

(all together now, Europhiles, especially Daphne...)

“Ooh aargh ooh argh ooh aargh ooh argh ooh argh ooh aargh ooh argh aay,
Ooh aargh ooh argh ooh aargh ooh argh ooh argh ooh aargh ooh argh aay.”

The 3rd International Gadjo Dilo Film Festival

Just when you thought it was safe to scrape the popcorn off your crotch and go home to watch Celebrity Chlamydia Swap on the Jade Goody++ Gold channel, here’s your third festival of art and education! I was sorely tempted to include a double bill of Eisenstein films (Battleship Potemkin and October: Ten Days That Shook the World) on one of the nights, but I thought that might be too much communism (and montage) for some people. Watch and Learn!

Land and Freedom (1995)

British director Ken Loach makes socialist films, as you’ll know. Many are interesting, but the “realism” can be dispiriting and the politics not to everyone’s taste. Land and Freedom, however, concerns the Spanish Civil War, which people generally seem to find quite romantically idealistic. Ken’s onto a winner then. It tells the story of the POUM, a Spanish communist organisation that tried (in vain) to fight Franco’s Falangists. It’s all very moving – and I know Spaniards whom it’s reduced to tears - and seems more real than any other war film I’ve seen. But perhaps the best scene in my opinion is the longest and the slowest, where the International Brigaders discuss with Spanish peasants how to partition their land “come the glorious day” – it’s nothing more than that, a long and difficult but life-changing discussion.

Persona (1966)

Of the Ingmar Bergman films I’ve seen this is my favourite. It concerns an actress (Liv Ullmann) who's had some trauma and does not speak any more. In most cultures she'd simply be given a slap and kept in a backroom where she couldn’t be an embarrassment to her family; but in Sweden she gets an indefinite all-expenses-paid seaside holiday and her own personal nurse. The nurse (Bibi Andersson) is a chirpy, “normal” young woman, whereas the actress is menacing simply by her silence. The two are alone, and their personas begin to meld together as the nurse tries to maintain the barriers of her own sanity. It’s brilliantly handled, with “arty” cinematic techniques to point up the psychological conflicts. (There could’ve been a companion film to this one where Liv Ullmann is simply given a slap, but I don’t think it was ever made.)

Underground (1995)

I need a “music movie”, and my choice is East European gypsy. You wouldn’t necessarily want to employ one, but when they play it can be exhilarating. Tony Gatlif’s films - e.g. Latcho Drom and of course Gadjo Dilo - showcase this music, but Underground’s director Emir Kusturica is the other big name in the genre. He made the riotous Black Cat, White Cat which has a better plot, albeit a challenging one for non-gypsies. Apparently, Underground symbolically depicts and satirises the history of Yugoslavia since the 2nd World War, but, frankly, it just looks like chaos. A lot of the action takes place in a cellar - complete with brass band and an army tank – in which the inhabitants are unaware of the changes in the outside world. The soundtrack brought arranger (he claims he’s a “composer”, but he’s not, he’s a lyin’ thievin’ gadjo) Goran Bregović to the world's attention. What matters to me is that the film has terrific energy and the music is great, pumping, gypsy brass.

In the Heat of the Night (1967)

I choose this film for a variety of reasons. It features perhaps my favourite straight Hollywood actor, Rod Steiger, and also the beautiful Sir Sidney Poitier, who’s probably the reason why it’s one of Mrs Dilo’s favourite films. You must know the story: Deep South USA, era of the civil rights movement; it's all very steamy, racist, and vengeful, but luckily we know that Our Sid is going to win through in the end. They call me Mister Tibbs!!! It’s also a bit like Bergman's Persona, in that the two blokes get to share a few “special moments” together. There are some great touches in the film, like using a quirky pop song for a whole scene long before Tarantino milked the idea; and the soundtrack also features my favourite musical instrument, the ţambal (a.k.a. "tsymbaly", "cimbalom", etc)

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And so, my turn to choose 4 people to carry on the tradition of presenting their 12 favourite films. I nominate Kevin Musgrove (whom I'm suspecting has a lot to tell us on this subject), my two new friends The Dotterel and Daphne Wayne-Bough, and my homey Andy from Csíkszereda Musings.

Moldavian Joke #1

Are there any Moldavians in this evening? No? Alright!! This Moldavian goes to visit another village* and wants to buy a pig. He asks the first man he comes across how much his pig costs. The villager holds out all the fingers of his hands, so he counts out 10 golden beans from his pocket. The villager then slaps him around the face and goes off cursing. Perplexed, our man then asks the next villager he comes across, is again shown two splayed hands, and is once again hit around the face when he proffers 10 golden beans. This happens the requisite 3 times until he meets a man who accepts his payment gratefully and hands over a pig. Our hero inquires as to why the other villagers were so angry. “My friend”, says his trading partner, “nobody in this village has 10 fingers; I myself was born with 8. Good luck with the pig.”

* In reality this would never happen. But for the purposes of this joke we're going to imagine that he’s noticed the signs of inbreeding in his pigs, and so is looking to sire his gilts from other bloodstock; he’s thinking of trying to use a goat, but failing that another pig would probably do.