Last Tuesday night, I was invited for a quick dinner after I finished my drawing for the day. Then my friend Simone took me to the Festival dei Popoli – a documentary film festival – at Cinema Gambrinus, a movie theatre near the Edison (English language) bookstore and Piazza della Repubblica. I was really tired, but rarely turn down an invitation to see the interior of some space in Florence, especially by a local.
Allora, the first film was a depressing view of an Israeli soldier’s term of active duty in the reserves. It had Italian subtitles, which helped me to learn more of this language, and see how common phrases are interpreted, even some naughty ones. Hey, these are soldiers in a war after all. The second film was titled, “King Corn” and chronicled the adventures of two men who found a plot of land in Iowa, USA, to plant corn for a year. It was a comment on how much corn (usually by way of corn syrup) Americans eat.
I do not often see a lot of documentaries; however, I assume this was better done than others. And the message was “preaching to the choir” for me. And in all fairness, I slept through a lot of it, off and on. The snoozing was more about me than about the film though. And what I do remember was that there were many quite beautiful and artistically composed images of the farmland and skies in Iowa. Simone loved the film’s poster, but it was too much yellow for my taste.
The Cinema Gambrinus is not nearly as beautiful as the Odeon Theatre in Florence, but charming in its way. There was a sculpture of three women (Graces?) above the screen and you can see one pink chandelier in the photo above.
I was really charmed by the live classical musicians playing outside of the cinema when we exited about mezzanotte. But the Italians do seem to love the night, even during the week.
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