Showing posts with label autobiography. Show all posts
Showing posts with label autobiography. Show all posts

Thursday, October 21, 2010

A long long time ago in a country far far away… (Episode 3)

Cricci has returned to her home town of Rome in an attempt to snatch a degree in film studies from the clutches of the vile gangster Jabba the Hutt.

Little does Cricci know that the world is about to change for ever.

Just a few days after my return to home base 9/11 strikes, thus going back to America will never be as easy as it had previously been for me.
I’m talking to you, freaking code of small jars of liquid, cream and vapor possessions, with your hideous zip bag and the damn water you make me swallow whole at the damn metal detector. I swear I’m trying hard to find a way to hold a plane hostage with my 400 ml Lancome face cleanser but THERE ARE NONE. None. Understood you idiots confiscating me my products all the time? I’ll keep searching for one though and oh when I find it… Can you feel my breath on your necks airlines??
I’m also talking about the eminent sect of the Visas. Only if you were bread rightfully, married a member, or participated in a rite of initiation during which you donated gallons of your own warm blood, you’d have a shot at being looked at by them. Poor Visas, they risk ruining their pretty, pure paper eyes if they meet your non-American ugly face.

Don't you worry, digression is over now.

Getting settled in College at first was simultaneously weird and fun. See we don’t manage our own classes in high school. We have no choice whatsoever on what we’re learning in our teenage years. Actually hold on, “whatsoever” is an extreme choice of vocabulary, we are indeed allowed to express a preference on our appreciated field of study, but on that solely, not over single subjects. The first time we are in fact encouraged to do that is when we hit higher education. So of course when that merry occasion occurs you are petrified.
As for me, being the person I am, I got a kick out of it, bought a different colored pen for each subject, created charts and timetables and was at the top of my game, grinning while doing it.

Then again of course we’re in Italy so everything sucks. I mentioned before that I’m not a politic person, I wouldn’t be dwelling in those matters with a gun to my head, but it is fair to say that in our country hands-on education is a highly disregarded concept. And I will leave it at that.
Having chosen to pursue a College career in filmmaking, I was hoping we would be doing a little filmmaking. How fucking naïve of me. I spent the first year of my new exciting life sipping from the same old canister of boiled Italian literature, world history and art chronicles. Wow, how electrifying!! If I wanted to appreciate the world of poetry, human evolution and paintings I would have chosen it!
To be fair there were a couple of theatre and cinema related classes. All we did in there was talking, talking, talking, and never doing, but at least they were somewhat associated to film studies, which is, I will never stress it enough, the name of the degree. They were a couple as I mentioned and we ran out of them quickly. All that was left in our film studies degree, I’ll stress it again, was history of dance (?), anthropology (lmao) and ethnical music (wtf), so of course after a little more than a year I was discouraged as eff you see kay. I stopped being consistent in class attendance and I slept away to sunnier lands.

I started working in tourist resorts!



PS. I apologize for my jokes on fair and square aircraft regulations, and the kind, intelligent people who make us follow them. Also I care to clarify that I love the Visa King. Hail to you. Can you let me in now??

Friday, October 15, 2010

A long long time ago in a country far far away… (Episode 2)

It is a dark time for the Rebellion. Although high school is almost over, further uncontrollable desires for freedom have driven the Rebel forces from their hidden base and pursued them across the Ocean.

So I find myself in Omaha. Au-paring for a family who has a lovely 3 year old, and an extremely bitchy 15 year old. It is the 4th of July when I set foot in the States, so it all starts with fireworks! When the pyrotechnics end though I am left by myself a lot of the times, but always find something to do. I would go out riding a bike and snap pics of the neighboring streets. Wide light concrete block rivers through the city, green yards and wood paneled houses had populated my movie fueled imagination for ever and I was finally out there surfing through them. I actually couldn’t have asked for more.

The occasional trip to Target would make my day. Huge department stores had a thing for me, and I returned it. My go to aisle would be the fridges’. Chocolate chip waffles were a must! Everyday!! Yeah that wasn’t my slimmest phase. Also attributable to frequent take away and Applebees.

One of the happiest moments was when I discovered people actually drank milk from the carton. See I’m not a milk person, so I skipped on that tradition. But I was happy to take on a new one: the slip and slide. Good times!

Then finally August came and school started. The 15 year old was going to be a freshman at an all girls’ school. I asked if I could go with. Wish granted. I got my own schedule and attended for two days. I didn’t have time to step my foot into the premises and I was already popular. That was the easiest time I got it. The 15 year old didn’t take it well at all so that is about the time when things really went apeshit. The other girls at school were instead all over me, and so I was in. In the cool kids circle that is.

Homecoming was my first official attendance, where we got to mingle with our nearby all boys’ school. Then it was all football matches, Saturday afternoons’ concerts, Sunday fairs, night outs, basement meet ups and mostly house parties. Everything also went all American Pie on me.
This one time I was at a house party and we were all drinking in the yard from big red and blue cups. I can’t even remember what was inside them. Probably Diet Coke. Well right at that moment two police cars come rushing from around the corners, sirens  shrieking. I saw like 50 cups flying in the air like graduation hats decorating the sky and then people were running aimlessly. Someone grabs me and yells to be quick. It truly felt like a movie. I didn’t want it to end. Then this car drives by and someone opens the back door and motions to get in. We were suddenly 9 kids in there. And we drove away from law-enforcement!

These girls I was with during the police escape I’m still in contact with to this day. It’s been 10 years! In hindsight that is definitely what struck me most about experiencing an American community. That it actually is a community. This concept seldom exists in Italy. Each of us thinks about himself and that’s it. Me included. Extreme Makeover Home Edition could never work here if you know what I’m saying. Flocks of people gathering to help unfortunate families. Kids giving up their savings to help. I have seen that happen on that show. Maybe it’s scripted, they fooled me and they gave the kid his money back. But that’s not how I see it. That show gets to me. I cry every single time I watch it. There must be something that goes through, something real. And that would be one of the reasons I want to go live in this country, because I want to be like that. Ty Pennington may be another reason.

Well anyhow, summer 2001 ends, I go back home and I get my drivers license in 1.5 months flat. That’s rare. Because you know, nobody puts Baby in a corner…


Go to Episode III

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