OUR LAST DAY IN MOLDOVA

April 10th consisted of a morning walk around Chisinau, a few more footage shooting and a meeting with the folks at KSAK, the Art Center. 

street fair in Chisinau

Melina stares at Moldovan dolls

On this day, Natasha could not be with us, so she sent her son Grigory, who did a great job replacing his mom.

In the afternoon we headed to Cricova, one of the amazing underground wineries, where besides having wine tasting, we saw the one of the oldest wine in the world (1902), from Jerusalem. Its actual price is 300 thousand dollars. They said the France prime minister wanted to buy it, but at the end Cricova's winery did not want to sell it. They have an amazing collection of old wines, it's like a museum.

Jewish wine

Our Moldovan tour guide at Cricova sat next to us and asked where I was from. When I said "Brazil", he said he had a friend from Brazil who used to live in the US, he was from Porto Alegre and was an Internacional fan. What are the odds: same hometown, same soccer team fan. Small world.

In the evening we went to the Seder at the Jewish center, and blended a little with the Jewish community. We were happy to see Marina Shraibman once more. The Jewish community struggles for a revival of its once vibrant past, but as some said, it is nowadays less spiritual, more about business - and divided into different interests groups.

Marina (to the left) at the Seder

The short trip ended at the same restaurant where my father, sister and I ate in our last night in 2008. It's a small and simple place, but with great food. I had cheese and honey pancakes, Lara had varenikes, we shared it with Melina.

Our plane was leaving at 6AM the next morning. We came back to the hotel to pack and organize ourselves. That was it. Goal accomplished. Vadul Raskov, Chisinau, interviews, etc. It was fast, difficult, but worthwhile.

We arrived in Los Angeles exhausted. It's time to continue working on the documentary.

MAMALIGA BLUES NEW PROMO!

Here you go:



YOU CAN BE A PART OF THIS FILM!

This film needs support to be completed, all donations are tax-deducted. Please visit http://documentaries.org/cid-films/mamaliga-blues/ for more information. Note: If you choose to send a check, it must be made payable and sent to The Center for Independent Documentary. Donors should also indicate producer's name, or the name of the project either on the check ON THE MEMO LINE or on a note enclosed with the check. Any amount is good, any support is important for us. Please spread the word. Thank you for your support!

MAMALIGA BLUES – NEWS

As we move forward with the completion of the documentary Mamaliga Blues, I’m pleased to announce a few additions to our crew:

Shawn Harris has come on board as motion graphics artist. Shawn’s role as a designer and 3D artist at various studios throughout Los Angeles has allowed him the opportunity to collaborate and lead in various broadcast, commercial and experimental projects for such clients as HBO, MTV, NBC, ABC, VHI, Nike, DirecTV, Redbull and HP.

Christopher Gray is a prolific editor in the post-production field, working in off-line and on-line editing, color correction, graphics and titling for the last 25 years. He has done on-line editing and color correction for many documentary features including Sundance winner "Shakespeare Behind Bars" and Oscar nominees, "Fighting for Life" and "Recycled Lives" . He helms a post-production house in Los Angeles

More news will be coming soon, including the new trailer!

PROMO #1

Click on the link below to watch the first promo of Mamaliga Blues, the documentary of our adventures in Moldova. The film is 90 percent finished; however we need extra funding to complete it. If you have access to any company or person who may be interested, or know of any funding application/possibilities, please send them this way for further discussion: mamaligablues@gmail.com


Click on:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-bhrWeL_P0

Thank you!

COMING SOON!

Very soon I will be posting the trailer of the documentary about our adventures in Moldova, "MAMALIGA BLUES".

Stay tuned for more news.

A DOCUMENTARY SHOT IN MOLDOVA

When my father, my sister and I went to Moldova 2 years ago, I already had the intention of documenting the trip and turning it into a film (given my filmmaking background). I didn’t have any idea of what the outcome would be, but even though I took a camera, a bunch of tapes, 2 microphones and a few other paraphernalia.

I came back from Moldova with about 20 hours of footage and still no idea of what kind of footage I had and what I would be able to turn this into. This is because although I contemplated the idea, I did not hire any cameramen or anybody to help me. So I spent the whole trip with the camera in my hands, and experiencing it through its lenses. The camera was basically my eye. A very difficult task, to pay attention to your surroundings, to the framing and audio quality and at the same time understand what’s happening and be able to interact with it. And 5 languages were in place: Portuguese, English, Romanian, Russian and Yiddish.
Although I loved the trip, it was a lot of hard work. I must acknowledge my sister helped me with the second microphone, getting images’ authorizations/release and so forth. But in any case, I didn’t have any idea of the material I had. In my mind, I thought I was going to be able to edit a 5 or 10 minute promo to try to get some funding and go back with a proper crew and shoot a “real” documentary.

Two years later, two years of editing, I have to admit I have much more than a promo. I’m still putting pieces together, combining this puzzle into a film that can entertain people other than my own family, but much more confident that I have an almost completed documentary here.

There is still a lot of work to do: finishing the editing, composing the music, creating all the subtitles for the multiple languages, tightening the narrative/structure, etc. But after having directed a few shorts, this could finally be my first feature-length film. And I’m very excited for all that it represents, for everything I care, rediscovering the past, investigating your identity, feelings and perceptions of memory, possibilities for the future, understanding history and its consequences.

When the documentary is more put together, I should post some clips here. Stay tuned!

Next: Grave restoration in Moldova.