2008 - A new beginning

The time has come for the second Cannes in a Van adventure to begin.

All we know is it will be exciting and we'll screen a LOT of films. 

Two things you should know:

1. We lost Jamie. I knew it. He just disappeared through a secret door to a parallel vortex where he's probably teaching ninja arts and writing great news stories.

2. What we lost in Jamie, we gained in Cath. She's writing the blog this year from the depths of our yellow Ford and it's sure to make for inspired reading.

So Cath... over to you...

Andy

CiaV

2 months on...

Well. As you can no doubt see, Jamie has been quiet of late. I kinda miss his philosophies and general ramblings on life and film and fighting.
If there are any people out there who likes what he writes, then maybe email him or post to this blog, as I want him to come back. That would be good. Maybe a petition of sorts. Even if it's like, one person. Well... me I guess. Yeah - Jamie... we want to hear your voice again. Talk about some old shit and we'll listen.

Andy
CiaV

Two minutes of your time... or I can write FREE BEER

So... Andy from CANNES in a VAN here.
I just wanted to add to the ninja Jamie's blog to say a few things. Some of them worthless, some of them worthwhile...

3 blokes. A van. A projector.
An amazing, inspiring, incredible journey. For anyone following Jamie's writings along the way, you'll already know how he's captured every minute in an exquisite and beautiful way. The dude is gifted with words and his analogies hit home, which, to quote the man himself, "is good". For those of you who've only read this tiny paragraph - go back (or forth) and read his blog from the start. It will give you an insight into the man's truly inspiring philosophies on life.

For those of you who are still reading this bit... a few things. I've just finished listening to The Films, a band I've just seen at The Borderline tonight. Their name is The Films - it's a good name and quite fitting for CiaV. Check them out on MySpace, the album's out in June sometime. They had a good live presence.
I'm now listening to Deftones, which is a band Jamie has been banging on about over the whole trip. So I bought it. He did his bit for music PR.

What we'd like to do next with CANNES in a VAN is bring it home to a British audience, starting with London, our physical home. I wanted to say 'spiritual home', but I'm not sure that would be the truth. We want to promote new bands in the most lo-fi way we know - playing stuff from our van. The Films is the first band we're going to play.

At the same time, we'll be playing stuff from a composer/sound designer we met in Cannes. His name is James Tinney.
He's a sound bloke (no pun intended).

Finally, I wanted to say to anyone who cares... It all counts. Every click, every second you give CANNES in a VAN means there's one more person who knows what we're trying to do. That's cool. So click back when you're bored and maybe there'll be something new. Oh... and come and see some films if you've got time. They're really bloody good.

Cheers

Andy

19:16pm, 28th May 2007

We are back in England. Each in our own place.
Got in at about two this morning.

Been chilling with flat mates for the day.
Got home to find a cut copy of the new Akala album in the post for me.
He is a great dude. Check out the album when it comes out. The producer Rez is one of the most intelligent men that I’ve ever met. Go and buy a copy in a few months when it comes out. It’s brilliant. Five stars hands down.

Cannes is far behind, somewhere south.
We were close to tension by the end. Though I have to say that the outcome was worth it. Luckily we didn’t try to kill each other. God what a trip. Incredible.

It’s raining here in Highgate.
Happy to be back. Andy and Si’s imagination came to concrete truth.
Feel like I bandwagoned it a bit.

Should anyone reading this see either of them at any point, give ‘em the time of day, ‘cause those guys have drive worth following.

Cheers for following the Cannes in a Van ‘ting.
Will post again in a few days.

Laters,

Jamie

23:21pm, France, same day as it was a few hours ago.

We are cold and tired and bored and waiting at the tunnel.

19:51pm, 27th May 2007

Out the other side of Paris. The city that can be relied upon to reset the brain.

Very close to the train. Sat in back of van.
Andy and Si are inside a service station, probably the four hundredth that we have been to, and I have spent the last twenty minutes being followed around by a Romany kid who is trying to sell me a ring. I don’t have any change. Or rather, the change I do have has got to be used on the toll at the end of this motorway, otherwise we can’t get out of France. I think.

This service station is on the Somme Bay. Apparently twenty nations fought to the death on the field behind it in the Great War. From the front it looks like a lay-by loo stop. From the back it is all rolling plains, ducks and history.

A whole hoard of people died at this here service station. Shot, exploded, gassed.
Now it sells petrol and t-shirts.

Strangely enough, this place is probably the most relevant part of the whole trip. None of us are thinking about anything in particular, though that might be quite a sweeping statement seeing as I neither Si nor Andy. We just are. Chilled. Waiting to hit the road for the final stretch out of France. Knowing that we have accomplished what we set out to do.

Passed through Courtenay today. Bunch of my family came from there. Then a load of them went on to fight on the Somme. Now I’m sat here in a big yellow van surrounded by film-projecting equipment and a crate of short films waiting for my friends to tire of the bench inside. There probably shouldn’t be a car-stop built here. There probably shouldn’t be anything built here, though that would of course defeat the point of the battle.

We should come back here and show a film the next time we drive past.

The Romany boy just tried one last time. He seems to live in a caravan in the field behind. Nice place to live.

Andy just got in the van, figure that we’re rolling soon.

10:38am, 27th May 2007

The three of us are an hour and a half from Paris.
We have taken a route home that involves straighter roads than those we traversed on the way down to the South of France. Mostly I have slept. Which is a bit rubbish. Si did a spot of bombing the van down the highway at breakneck speed, which was quite fun.

The dashboard of the transit looks like a school cafeteria. Empty and half chewed bits of bread line the inside of the windscreen.

We are doing well for time. So we plan on chilling out in Paris for a little while.
I have not been to Paris for some time. I made a pact with someone that I would never go back without them, though this is kind of by accident so I figure that that might be ok.

Having spent ten days on the French Riveira showing films, being quite hot and generally annoying the other two, I now have no desire to return to London. Perhaps I will make a break for it in the capital. Tempting.
There’s a good hole to crash at on Rue St. Jacque around the 5th Eme.

We are now one hundred and thirty two kilometres from Paris. So states the road sign.
We’re doing seventy miles per hour. My maths is appalling, so I couldn’t tell you how much closer we are to getting there. I just know that we will make it to the border, as it were, and something will shift.

Cannes was obscene as a place. Useful, but fake beyond all recognition. A place fuelled by adrenaline and blind ambition; a place where people pretend to be friends. So, a lot like London, though with better weather and bigger boats. Paris always struck me as slightly more real a city. People seem less like idiots en masse. They don’t expect anything from you. Everyone is left to be themselves and instead people just nod politely at passers by as and when it seems appropriate.

London is close. Maybe not by transit van, but geographically the homestead is near.

Tomorrow morning life will continue as per and as Andy said yesterday, this surreal dream will come to an end.

We just hit a large insect at seventy five miles per hour.
It exploded over our windscreen. Poor bastard; though as it would know if it had been at the 60th Cannes Film Festival, and as the last ten days have proven

… do not underestimate Cannes in a Van.

11:27am, 26th May 2007

We are on our way out.

Campsite cleaned and left in some respectable condition.
Final night (last night) on the Coisette cancelled due to general exhaustion, inability to find a parking space anywhere in Cannes, plus rain and that. Instead we went to a bar and talked over all that we’ve done in the last ten days.

We turned a yellow transit into an international entity of film. That may sound like total crap, but it’s the truth. The van has been picked up all over the shop. We recently learnt that we have made a national German news paper, Nylon magazine (meaning that we’ve broken the States) and some French TV, as well as the stuff from before. Like the fact that we go out on the Culture Show on BBC2 this Saturday.

The three of us are about to head into Cannes for the last time (this year) and have a look around. Which is something we have not really had the chance to do, having spent the proportionate amount of out time here in or around a van.

I don’t really have the words to describe the last ten days, but a bonkers idea has turned good. Wooo. God knows where it’s going now. London I guess.

Time to hit the road.

19:11pm, 24th May 2007

Once again sat outside Mc Donald’s trying to use their wifi without actually having to go inside the place. Yesterday damned strange. Everyday strange, but yesterday goes right up there with the top end of a highly strung grappling hook.

Screened the first segment of a brilliant film entitled ‘Will the Real Pimps and Hoes Please Stand Up’. If you get the chance to watch it, do so. We had various cast members and the producer on site, and the night before pretty much everyone involved in the production side came down. They were all on scene promoting the film in the street with us. One of the guys involved (actor/writer) was called True Love, which is a great name. They had come over from Los Angeles to screen it at the American Pavilion (which is a bit swanky). They screened it. Then they brought it to us. Which was nice of them.

At some point last night a ninja appeared on the Croisette, ran around, made some pretty girls scream and then camped out on top of the van for a bit. After proceeding to jump off the van like Onikage

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onikage

it then sat and had an ice cream.

Later on we picked up eight Dutch musicians who’d van had broken down and took them back to their campsite, which was conveniently also out campsite. One of these guys accounts for the trumpet I mentioned in a previous posting. It turns out that they specialise in Dixieland, blues and jazz. They all wore matching orange shirts and claimed that their band was founded in the Netherlands in 1926.

Then we went home, got drunk with them and ate chocolate mousse.

Another professional day nailed at the biggest film in the world.
May the van rock on.

22nd May 2007, 04:22am

Things change. And you never see it coming. People come and go.
I’ve no idea how to explain today.

As Si put it, it was a game of two halves.

So now I don’t have to explain it, because he’s done it for me.

It’s easy to forget things sometimes. Like the fact that things often turn out well.
Our logos turned up. So the van looks the way it deserves to look after the amount that it has done for us, what with running three computers, four speakers, an amp and a projector from it’s battery for the last five days.

This late afternoon we went to a party on a boat that was moored in Cannes, attempted to project on the pier and for the first time got moved on. So Andy moved the van and then we went back to the party. We screened a lot of films to a lot of people. We had our biggest crowd yet. Giving out free (warm continental) beer to anyone watching probably helped. At one point we accumilated a head count of thirty-odd people in the audience. Which was very satisfying. Then a middle aged French woman passed out whilst watching the films, vomited everywhere, an ambulance was called and then four policemen asked for my papers and searched me for trying to film it whilst laughing at the same time. I stand by it being quite funny.

After that the vibe and crowd kind of died down a bit. Which is fair enough.

So we took the coastal road out of Cannes and went to stand on the beach and contemplate things.

The sea is bloody odd. It’s huge. And alive. I am prone to forgetting that until I stand and look at it. It was past midnight by the point we reached it, and the sky out to sea was black. Utter darkness. Andy and Si stood and talked about all the things that this trip had brought to mind and I occasionally said something like “I agree” or some other thing equally as mundane. The ocean had my attention.

The sea swallows things. Like people. They vanish into it. Undercurrents and that.
The French Riveira allows for one to see the sea-bed through the water for as far as the eyes in question will allow. Even at night, it is possible to follow the sand trails out, though being night, they swiftly disperse into utter obscurity. The ocean really is endless. People underestimate it. Perhaps because we are not aquatic. Really though, seeing as people inhabit one third of the earth and the other two thirds are submerged, it would be silly to be surprised by the things that the sea is capable of throwing at you. And yet I still find it suprising whenever I look at it.

Cannes is filled with vast amounts of glitz, glam and now the van. The potential, art, money, film and style that the dudes and ladies in the streets and convoys project is all very impressive. But it doesn’t really come anywhere close to being on par with the truth in saying that none of it is any use to man or beast underwater. It is of use in one third of the planets ratio, and even then you have to be inclined to give a shit.
The other two thirds, they do things like stir the mind, house fish (who probably don’t like film that much anyway) and on occasion try to disapear passing swimmers.

I have been running through Okinawan drills for a couple of hours in some attempt to chill the mind and take a step back from it all. It has sort of worked.

There are a lot of good people out there who don’t deserve the things that happen to them. So hey, this is age old news but it still has relevence. These people spend a lot of time being resigned to life as it occurs, going unheard. Unheard is never good.

I’m happy that some of the films that we are putting out of the back of the van that is Cannes in a Van allow for people to take that step back from their day.
Even if it be for the duration of a short film.
They come, they sit, they watch. They listen to someones story and by all logic, the story came from somewhere.
Then they get up and wander off. In an enviroment as ludicrous as the biggest film festival in the world, that’s probably no bad thing.

Like Si said, “a game of two halves”.