poland - day 2

sun, nov 30
2:30pm - 'four nights with anna' screening
7:00pm - 'blindness' screening

wake up at 10am to send a few e-mails, then attempt to take a shower. marta's bathroom has an elegant tub with a handheld shower head, but the 'hot' water isn't exactly scalding. i proceed to take the quickest shower possible to avoid getting hypothermia, then construct a few paper daffodils and house them in a vase i brought for marta. her rabid stray dog winston sneaks into my room and humps the bejeezus out of my right leg, my left leg, then my arm and my neck as i try to teach him to sit. sadly for money B, winston is not multilingual and has no idea what 'no' and 'sit' mean.

breakfast consists of scrambled eggs with tomato, fresh bread with a sort of cheese spread, cold cuts and gouda cheese, all of which make up a typical polish breakfast.

we rush out to catch 'four nights with anna,' one of two polish films i will have seen during the festival. it's a sad 'love' story about a guy who breaks into anna's room every night while she sleeps, then heads back home before she wakes. marta found out that one of her friends was hurt badly in a car accident (he ended up breaking both of his legs), so she took off to go help. i decide it's a great time to take a stroll to the hotel centrum, which is a hub of activity for all the festival guests and only 3 blocks away. i return to the theatre (it's the city's opera house, and the other levels house exhibitions for camera equipment, the festival offices, etc.) and bump into our DP client stephen goldblatt ('angels in america,' 'rent).



i finally get to see fernando meirelles' 'blindness,' which i missed in theatres. it's a dark allegory about a world in which everybody turns blind, so it was fascinating to see the effects on society and gender against the backdrop of chaos.



marta is able to pick me up, so we head to a thriving new district in lodz for dinner on the 2nd floor of a jewish/polish restaurant. i order the jewish hot tea (w/alcohol, natch) and the meat pierogis with almonds and raisins to go along with a nice complimentary glass of muscato. around 11:30pm, we head back to kaliska and meet her friend eva (below, on the right), who is a lodz native and not a fan of all things california. she does a spot on impression of a hollywood starlet, complete with air kisses and pretending that she loves everything. apparently it's name day in poland (why don't we have that!), and because andrew is the day they are celebrating and it's also the name of our bartender, it was quite the rowdy atmosphere.



we return back to the crib around 3am and i marta shows me some of her photographic work and her demo reel, which is very impressive. one of her friends is the lead singer for a popular rock group in poland called coma, so we check out a few of their videos on her phat iMac before turning in at 4:15am...