16 August

The view at 6am.

Today was a good day. I woke at 6am with the sun. I watched it creep up over the Magadino plain and spread its rays over the lake. Even though I was hungry, I waited for the little store near the post office t open. Since I’m unfamiliar with its hours, I waited until 9:30 and found the place to be hopping. I’ve never seen the store so crowded. It felt great to finally populate my kitchen, assuaging my concern that I’d go hungry.
There were Olympics to watch and furniture to move until late afternoon. I went through the whole house writing up an inventory of everything that needed to be done. I didn’t want to drive Marianne’s car unduly since it was exceedingly generous of her t let me borrow it in the first place, but the only way I could see Jaimey, and the Locarno Film Festival was to drive to Cadenazzo and then take the train to Locarno. Once I had driven that far, I decided to hop over to Sant’Antonino for some shopping, after filling the car with gasoline. I didn’t have much time so I practically ran through Migros, buying things like these lovely speakers I’m listening to, a TV cable extension, and a tape measure. Describing tape measure in Italian proved an interesting task – but one which I managed. Unfortunately, upon check out I learned that the geniuses at Visa had stopped my card because clearly no American would go overseas to buy things, especially not to the same place he’d been countless times before over two decades. I guess computers aren’t that smart yet. Anyway I resorted to cash and didn’t buy the phone. I felt bad slowing down the line.

I met Jaimey at the mouth of the Piazza Grande. I’d miraculously never been to Locarno during the festival – a shock given the confluence of two of my big loves; films and Locarno. They erect a huge screen about 4 stories tall across the mouth of the Piazza and set up some 5000 chairs; quite impressive. We had a charming meal: he a pizza and me spaghetti con fruitti de mare. It was all ridiculously overpriced as mine was 24 francs and his around 17 – and that was after shopping around some. We wondered if it was Bush’s deflated dollar, festival-goer gouging or sign of some darker, more perfidious trend. Jaimey relayed how bitterly his students have been complaining. He trucked about 10 of them down from Düsseldorf where the UC Davis summer program is held.  

The screening was preceded by the awards presentation which seemed quite earnest (judging by the joy on the winners’ faces) but rather oddly arranged with people coming up sporadically to receive various awards – not all of which were completely clear to me as it was all in Italian and I was fighting some serious shut eye from the jetlag and it had become dark. Morever, sometimes it was not winners who were introduced but other introducers. Also, unlike American shows of its ilk, there was not a lot of pomp and circumstance garnished around each presentation so it was hard to tell when the chapter had changed.

The Mistress of Ceremonies was quite remarkable. Invariably each presenter and each winner came up and spoke a different language; Italian, French, German, English, and Spanish. Only the Chinese winner had an interpreter. The MC interpreted what each said, with grace and ease. And, to my ears, did a flawless job and was often more articulate than the original speaker. Moreover, her Italian was piercingly clear (maybe it had to do with the fact that it was the second time I was hearing it – you think?)  

The final screening of the festival followed the awards. It was to be an Icelandic film entitled “Back Soon.” Even though the film promised to have English subtitles, after about 10 minutes it was only in Icelandic with German and French subtitles. Most of Jaimey’s students left at this point in frustration. Jaimey was ill at ease. He had specifically checked against this possibility before bringing the students to the festival and was assured that English would appear in most of the films. Eventually Irish, French and American characters entered the film so maybe 1/3 of the dialogue was in English after all. Nevertheless, the film was fairly inaccessible to one who only spoke English. It’s debatable how accessible it would be in any event as it was a sort of stoner film about a curmudgeonly yet school of hard knocksishly wise middle aged pot dealer. It was interesting but I wouldn’t recommend rushing out to find the DVD – even if one could.
Jaimey and I drifted off to the train station fortuitously about 3 minutes before the film ended. We left with no end in sight, but, by the time we reached the screen people began clapping. Stoner film. We discussed whether the Locarno festival truly wanted to stay international without whole-heartedly committing to English being the common tongue. We doubted both its desire and execution. Although obviously neither of us are fans of American hegemony (although the US is rightfully #1!), refuting English serves to marginalize much of the non-European world. Sometime they’ll have to admit that French is no longer (if it ever was) the common tongue of the world.