I say, we've lost him! Where for art thou J?

So, while Jamie is AWOL without computer, I thought I might fill in the empty dates with an entry about what's going on.

Well... after telling the film community of our imminent adventure, everyone is really encouraging and are totally rocking our world. The guys from 4Docs are getting involved against their better judgement and we have tons of emails and calls to get back to from numerous film-related sources. The journey is certainly beginning here! You can read Charlie from Channel 4's BLOG here.

I wrote to RR today in the vague hope he'll get my letters and maybe come down to a screening. We need a CiaV patron who loves what we're doing and can really draw attention to the films. Massive fingers crossed. I kinda thought Shane Meadows might be into it too. Maybe I'll look into it. In the meantime, I KNOW This Is England is gonna be great. Go to Shanemeadows.co.uk for more about his crazy world.

Anyway,

So much to do... so little everything.

KEEP SPREADING THE WORD... It reeeeeeaaaalllly helps!

Cheers

Andy
CiaV

Where's Jamie?

Hi Jamie... Andy from CANNESinaVAN here. I knew that this was the only way we could keep track of what you're up to until we're actually all in the van, driving through the French countryside. Man, this trip is gonna be cool!
So, Jamie's in NYC spreading the CiaV love while we're still in the big smoke trying to drum up support for our latest endeavour. Hopefully you've got here through the blog link on our website, but if not - where the hell have you come from?! Email us and let us know - twoblokes@cannesinavan.com.
Right now we're getting the films together from sources all over the shop. Time creeps on as always and we need to hit that 16th May deadline. Ouch.

Well, speak soon and enjoy.
Jamie - Make it count!

Andy
CiaV

The High Tatras don't go away

Today I got an email from someone I met last summer when travelling in Slovakia (go check out and get lost in the mountains in Western Slovakia, the High Tatras, they’re incredible) and yeah, it was interesting.

A lot of truly odd stuff goes on there.

Whilst there I met (amongst a bunch of other people) a couple called Zuska and Tomas who lived on a slum-estate-thing (the biggest in Europe) south of the river that runs through Bratislava.

They hung with me, or I hung with them, for a bit (in a round-about kinda way) but then I fell out with the guy and his friends because he thought I was trying to steal his girly, which was only half true.

It was all a bit odd and people seemed to want to kill me quite a lot. It turns out that the study of classical karate is a good thing and can bail you out of a number of situations with only minor repercussions.

Anyway, one of their friends emailed me today “just to let me know” that they’re coming to London for a while. How did they get my email? Who knows?
At least it should be interesting.

This coming Thursday I am off to get lost in New York for a week and a bit.
I am going to go and make people care about CANNES in a VAN.

I last went there when I was eight and it was excellent. You can usually trust eight year olds to have pretty good opinions on things so I am trusting myself as to it being a good idea. In preparation I have been listening to a lot of Sonic Youth, and Broken Social Scene because they wrote a song called ‘7/4 Shoreline’ that sounds a lot like Sonic Youth and a song by the name of ‘Anthems For A Seventeen Year-Old Girl’ that always makes me smile in a truly dumb-ass way.

I am going to inflict lots of bad music on the two dudes I am driving to Cannes with. Though I can’t drive, so I’m going to sit in the van and probably irritate the crap out of them with a hybrid of angsty music and pointless facts.

Did you know that bats perform oral sex? This is an excellent truth of nature.
Also, bonobo are often quite gay.

Alright, I’m off to watch some Sonny Chiba (who played Hattori Hanzo the fabled sword maker in the Kill Bill films). His 1970s and early 1980s films are his most brilliant. If you get the chance go check out the ‘Street Fighter’ series. He rules various Yakuza members with his Iron Fist of martial incredibleness. There is an excellent scene in which he rips out the heart of an opponent with his bare hands and then shows it to him.

More on Sonny later. I am this second compelled to begin a Chiba-marathon.

Also, on Saturday night I met a twenty seven year old film student from Middlesex.

Is it me, or has anyone else noticed that most second year film students are basically the same person?

not late but awake in the face of a new-day

The Beginning.

Do you sleep? What a dumb question.
Regardless, I raise the subject because I am awake, it is quite late and I have been so for a while. Last night I walked around Highgate Village at five am with a friend of mine talking about life, universe and the planets. It seemed an appropriately pretentious place to do it, also we both live there so that helped a bit.

Two evenings backward from now were spent between talking to said friend about how killing some idiotic Frenchman in a flat in East Finchley was a bad idea; a few hours prior to this I sat in a bar in Soho with a different friend and discussed going to (‘)Cannes (in a VAN’); talking predominantly over how the hell we work the logistics of it all. It strikes me that there is a weirdly juxtaposed degree of synchronicity going on here.

Check both of my friends out here, they both deserve more than the time of day
… for very different reasons.

www.cannesinavan.com
www.geocities.com/moritzlanglotz/index.html

Perhaps I will go and watch a film. I could be painfully obvious and go with the bleak Cyberpunk techno-vibe of this here blog and claim that I could not get through the drudge of the hours without immersing myself in the (most commonly viewed out of the seven versions) Directors Cut edition of Blade Runner. Yes. But no.
This is not my desire.

Instead I will watch ‘Lone Wolf and Cub – Sword of Vengeance’, which is awesome.
If you have not seen it, go of your way to do so.

Kenjutsu, (Ken – Sword, Jutsu – Art, for future reference) in 1972 Japanese cinema at it’s best. There is a samurai called Ogami Itto, he has a little boy by the name of Daigoro. Ogami Itto spends the piece protecting the child and attempting to wreak vengeance on the 16th Century ruling feudal clan that murdered his much beloved wife. He does a pretty good job of it and consequently hacks the shit out of everyone along the way whilst retaining a degree of flawlessly beautiful movement throughout.

Itto was played by Wakayama Tomisaburo, who was once and long ago instructor of kenjutsu to a most excellent old dude who teaches me martial arts.

I now wonder where the hell I put the DVD.

Clause 1

What’s up, this is CANNES in a VAN & ting, It is ting ‘cause it is in a van. Fact.