Monday, September 27, 2010

A long long time ago in a country far far away… (Episode I)

It is a period f civil war. Rebel children, striking from a hidden base, have learned to turn the TV on by themselves. It’s 1995, I hit puberty and discover the great world of teen shows. I watch them all and I start the infamous path that leads me to being a hopeless romantic. Also I’m fascinated with the backdrop of all these stories. I’m Italian, and half my family is from Naples. A country that offers you lockers in schools’ hallways to let you organize your things feels like an alien sorcery.

It may also be that I’m a child at heart and I recently discovered through the worst year of my life that that is who I am, and it doesn’t make me a lesser person or stupid or anything, and I have to accept it. A lot of people have tried to convince me that being a bit of a child is bad for you, and I believed them for a while. But you can change your outlook on life just for so long. I know now that you can learn and upgrade what you are but you can’t change it. I am, will remain and want to remain a free, optimistic, childish spirit, and I am now sure there is nothing wrong with that.

If the United States were a person they’d be my soulmate, because they are free and young and light hearted. I know I shouldn’t get the optimism in me take over and that bad shit happens, I watch the news for crying out loud, but in the midst of the filth that fills the world everywhere, you can’t choose who you love. US of A chose me.

Years go by and I get to learn more and more about the country. I should specify I am not a politic person, I just don’t do it. I like culture, and traditions, I’m a humanist.

Press pause.

Back in 1995 my habit of watching TV shows grew in a habit of watching films. Stories, tales, take my mind away, they make me live things that I wouldn’t even imagine. Books, movies, any sort of storytelling is the very core of being human. Escaping, being inspired, learning. Everything and anything can be in a story. That’s just how powerful that is.

It was this one movie that started it all. Back to the future. I was never tired of learning new facts on how they made it.

Flash forward to some years later. I’m in high school, I was a good student, and then I spent the rest of my time on rented DVDs or on Coming Soon Television watching films’ making-ofs. I would shed a couple of tears sometimes. A perfectly engineered shot, a swift dolly, balanced framing move me.

Graduation comes and I’m asked where I want to go to College. There really wasn’t any choice to be made. That’s when cinema met homework and it all became fucking good!

Here you have a young woman who just made the first real decision of her short life. And you remember how she was a humanist.

So she takes off and goes to live in Omaha, Nebraska for the summer…


Go to Episode II

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