Creating the World: Yesterday somebody wrote in to request that we show STEALING AMERICA VOTE BY VOTE and Richard and I looked at the trailer snippets on the website. We saw a series of men and women describing how their votes had been stolen in the 2000 and 2004 elections and how sad it was that their voices had been excluded from shaping the world they live in. I asked Richard: "What do you think?" and he gave back: "Voter fraud has been practiced in the US since 1776." "Yes?" I said, and just looked at him, which is a good way of prompting a history lesson. So he went: "Aaron Burr nearly got himself elected as the third president of the United States through voter fraud. This film seems to suggest that this phenomenon began in 2000 and was limited to republican politics. This is naive. A documentary that would look into the issue of how this has been going on since the beginning of our Republic (not Democracy as often cited in the film) what in the make-up of our system and our psyches allows for that - now that would be a film that should be made."

Soon we did some research into the voting numbers in different states of JFK's election year, and were reminded that many observers believe that vote fraud contributed to his victory, especially in Illinois, where the campaign had enlisted the help of the powerful Mayor of Chicago. I agreed that including the historic angle of the vote fraud story would make for a richer film, but I am more forgiving than Richard in that regard and can also see benefits in trying to get folks out of their "my-vote-will-be-stolen-slump". Plus, I still have to see a screener to get a better picture of the film as a whole.

Talking about naiveté made me think of what the New York Times columnist, David Brooks, had said that evening about Obama's speech in Berlin: "Yes, Obama said some nice things, like Christians, Muslims, and Jews should all get together and like each other - We all want that, but it is naive." And it does sound naive when Brooks summarizes it like that, but coming from Obama it is something else.

Jon Stewart had a piece in his "Obama's Quest" on the Daily Show the night before in which he reported: "After a quick meet and greet with King Abdullah of Jordan, Obama was off to Israel - Bethlehem -, where he made a quick stop at the manger where he was born." Stewart is as funny as he is because he has his finger very much on the pulse of the Zeitgeist; in this case the feeling that many have that Obama is coming from a different place. In Berlin he described himself as "a fellow citizen of the world" and called on all countries to listen to each other and learn from each other to shape this moment in our history, and I relate to that because that's the same business Ciné is in. Our programming wants to help us all be fellow citizens of the world by experiencing things that might not be in our repertoire already; seeing images from Mongolia and Turkey, hearing people speak Norwegian or Portuguese and listening to the varied music of gypsies might make us realize that all of these folks and lands are in some measure part of us as well. And once this understanding seeps in, it will make our lives much more colorful and will contribute to living in peace with our neighbors.

The film FLIGHT OF THE RED BALLOON that Ciné will screen this week (beginning August 1st) is in itself a marvelous example for this. The Taiwanese film maker, Hsiao-Hsien Hou, gives us his understanding of a different culture through his lens. He brings together Simon, a little boy, his mother Suzanne-a puppeteer (Juliette Binoche in a very unusual role), and Song, a Chinese film student, in a small, bohemian flat in an utterly enchanted Paris. The images are poetically light, yet emotionally charged and full of the past. I realized that when Simon begins to play a French chanson from the sixties on the juke box ("Emmenez Moi" Take Me along to the End of the World, by Charles Aznavour) and my whole life seemed to come back to me in a moment. Something else might happen to you when you see the film, when you are invited into this world of profound humanity that Hou creates.

Epilogue: I pray that we will get an immaculate print of the film to show the full impact of this visual poem. We will SEE.

Fahrvergnügen: The Ride to the German Film Festival It was after the premiere of GRBAVICA last May, when a good looking man in a leather jacket (think: Sebastian Koch) came up to me at the BarCafe and said: "Hallo, ich bin Martin Kagel." When a guy approaches me in my mother tongue he has somewhat of an advantage from the get-go. It turned out that Martin was professor at the Germanic Languages Department at UGA and was working on putting together a conference in spring with the-as I learned later-sweeping title: The Meaning of Culture. His idea was to bring in the German film maker Andreas Dresen and to run his films during the conference. The conference would also be in film format; an intriguing concept.

I had heard of Dresen but not seen any of his films-they are hard to come by in the US. Martin began to feed me some of Dresen's films in DVD and VHS format. I found my VHS player in the storage room and watched these things on my crummy TV screen, late at night with head-phones on-to not keep anybody from sleeping-and was stealing my way back into an environment that I knew and had lived in. The breakfasts in SUMMER IN BERLIN, the kind of bread, the taste of the butter and the decapitated 4 minute egg, and the inevitable cold cuts, and the light that falls onto the table from the balcony almost brought me to tears. It was all stuff that I could still taste and smell and that I was allowed to revisit. But then there were things I did not know. I had left Munich before the Berlin wall came down. There was something new in these films, a Germany described by someone who had grown up in the East, by someone who looks at everything very carefully, who shows it as it is without flinching but with great warmth running underneath.

Martin kept trading me the ones I had seen for new ones and said things like: "Nice, hmm?" and I said: "Yes, we should show this." We came up with the idea that the festival should not just be about Dresen's films, but still an in-depth look at his work (an idea that is more common in Europe, as e.g. in Nice, where you can find a Picasso, a Matisse, and a Chagall museum). So we asked him to name us some films that had influenced him or had been in other ways important for him. With his response in hand and our original list of his films, we began to look into which of all these films we could possibly get with English subtitles, and the time of e-mail loops and international phone calls began.

SUMMER IN BERLIN is probably Dresen's best known film and one we definitely wanted to show. When I called the US distributor, I learned that their phone line was not active anymore. In calling people who apparently had worked for the company, I heard things like: "I don't want to be reminded of this time.", or "It was a very hard time for all of us." The boss had basically taken off with the money and had left them in a lurch. Nobody knew what had happened to the film and whether there was still a copy floating around in the US. When I told Claus-our man in Berlin-the whole story, he was dumbstruck. His company, the German distributor of the film, was not aware of any of this. He was going to look into the legal situation of the rights to the film. Given the situation, he was confident that they had the rights for the US again and would be able to find a copy for us in the States.

Martin has a good connection with the German Cultural Center (the former Goethe Institute) that much helped us with the rental of the other three Dresen films. The catch there was that they had to be shown for free, which was going to reduce our ticket price drastically. Well; too late to think about not losing money with this whole idea. The next step was to contact the DEFA Film Library, an archive and study center for East German filmmaking from 1946 to now, with a branch in Amherst, to ask about some of the films Dresen had suggested that had been made in East Germany. Evan (our man in Amherst) had some of them available, but for an unusually high rental fee. He mentioned that there was only one print of ANTON THE MAGICIAN still existing and only two of SOLO SUNNY, each reel needed to be insured for $ 1000 for the transport and we would be responsible for each linear foot of film lost, stolen, or destroyed between delivery to us and return to them. He estimated that one film was worth $10'000, and I had not been able to find insurance that would cover this kind of loss. Upon hearing all of this, I told him what we wanted to do and what we had in our budget for the films, and he said he would get back to me. A few days later he called and suggested a contract which was much to my liking. Noticing my surprise, Evan laughed and said: "I guess, I'm not a good negotiator, you got all your conditions." He was also very enthusiastic about the Dresen Film Festival Idea (he knew him personally) and was well aware of the US distribution fiasco of SUMMER IN BERLIN, but was convinced that there was still a 35 mm copy that had been on the festival circuit around in the States-one only had to find it. He was going to look into it.

Meanwhile I researched shipping costs in case we had to bring in a 35 mm print from Berlin and the numbers were mind boggling. However, we were stead fast that we wanted a print not a digital format, and these film reels in their cans are heavy. At some point Evan from DEFA wrote that he had located a copy for us with subtitles, but when I called it turned out to be a DVD. Finally, Claus (in Berlin), who had not been able to make any head way in his legal question, had found that organizing the shipping from Germany (rather than Athens) was a little cheaper and offered in addition to not charge us a rental fee if we wanted to actually ship the print, and that is what we decided to do. The thing with this scenario was that there was only one copy, and we would have to show what we got; asking for another-let's say 3rd reel after the first screening-was out of the question.

It was very elegant of us to go with all 35 mm prints, but it also poses some other logistical problems. Ciné has two projection booths and a 3 platter system in each. On a 3 platter system you can have two films (one platter each) since you need an empty platter for the film you are screening to be rolled onto. Thus, if you want to show 8 films 3 times each over 4 days, you have to show them in a certain sequence. Also: Films come on reels (up to seven) and need to be built, which means spliced together. Once this has happened, they are wheels of impressive diameter and need to be on a big, flat surface. This big, flat surface will have to be our upstairs office floor for a couple of weeks. We will have a film-reel-sculpture for Kamala and me to tip-toe around.

Martin and his department did a thoughtful and eye-catching job with all the PR materials, and we will even have a festival pass, that piece of equipment that makes you feel special during a film festival. People will have these things (depicting a burning car) around their necks that make it legitimate not only to see all the films but also to walk away, have a coffee somewhere in the heart of downtown, delve into profound discussions with fellow festival goers, and still belong.

Epilogue: The cans are coming in now. DEFA sent its 3 films in beautiful, bright, hexagonal, green ones. They sit like little soldiers on the bottom of the staircase, reminding us-as we stumble over them-of things to come. SUMMER IN BERLIN, arrived in a rather shabby, square, fortified card board box, but the print is fine and has English subtitles; it's the only one we have built and prescreened yet. The other Dresen films are coiled up patiently (we hope) in unassuming grey boxes in projection booth 2. No word yet from THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN, the only film we should get through regular channels via our booker. But we still have 9 days until the beginning of the festival, and as Jennifer Nettles so aptly sings: "It's the ri-ide…"

SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY. After I was done fretting about the lighting situation for the speakers and mangling the names of the people I wanted to thank, I somewhat settled into my remarks for the Honors Students last Sunday. I conjured up two women I like, Maxine Green, the philosopher, and Ruby Rich, the journalist. Rich coined the phrase cinematic illiteracy to describe the refusal to read subtitles that she finds so prevalent in the US, a term that makes me smile whenever I think of it. Green says that in order to change ones situation one needs to be able to see beyond ones own experience, which I think good films can help us do. I suggested that-short of doing study abroad-they could come to Ciné to get this new experience; either come alone and disappear in the inviting screening room or come out with friends and discuss the film afterwards.

I did not mention that I actually belong to the former category, folks who slip anonymously into the dark and just walk away after wards with a thoughtful look on their face, since it might seem a little odd that I created this place where people are encouraged to talk with each other about film. I also suggested to the students to form a film club, and Dr. Neupert picked this up as a great idea before he introduced the two films of the evening: CONTROL and INTO THE WILD. He thought I was talking about meeting every Sunday after the 7pm show and discussing one of the films we show at Ciné. That was-originally-not what I had had in mind. Neupert went on to introduce the films in one of his Houdini tricks of tossing them up in the air, having them mingle and wrapping them up separately again in a fast tempo-the films were very similar in some ways but also totally distinct from each other.

I had not seen the first hour of CONTROL and decided to see some more of it. The moment that had been the beginning for me the first time around (the delivery scene) came and went and I just stayed and watched the rest again-surprised by how much more I could see (and how much more of the British English I was able to catch). I was much attracted to the beautiful black and white faces on the screen, fascinated by the shallow depth of field that Corbijn used so often, that put Ian, the main character, more in focus but also separated him from his environment. When he tells his wife, Debbie, that he thinks he does not love her anymore, the two of them are in focus quite a bit away from us in the middle of the street in a working class, treeless, row house neighborhood, which is in a haze for us. She turns around, stumbles some, and walks towards us and in doing so is more and more out of focus, is dissolved into just shapes on a grey scale when she reaches the front of the screen. Ian is still standing there in perfect focus. What a way of describing what's going on without a further word.

After the movies we went back to the Lab and talked. People who had come out of either screening room said that the film had been depressing, which to some degree surprised me. The stories were depressing in some ways (both films happen to describe a young man's quest that ends in suicide/death), but the films? I find it depressing when I see a film that is stupid or badly made, when I feel I wasted my time. A very good film with a sad story to it can be quite uplifting to me. Then again, depression is my favorite neurosis. I promised to screen a story of a young woman who commits suicide the next time around to balance things out.

We had coffee and seductive Donderos' raspberry cheese cake squares, and settled in again around the big tables. I listened to the issues that were raised and to the questions asked and did what I had encouraged the students to do some hours ago. I pondered other points of view and was quite content to talk about my own observations and thoughts that were just beginning to form as I was putting them into words. The discussion was very animated, continued in my mind as I came home, and stayed with me in my dreams. By the time I woke up the next morning, many things about both of the films had become more clear to me. What I had only been able to hint at the night before, had taken the shape of a clear thought that was likely different from what each of my fellow cinephiles around the table had came up with, but they had certainly all helped me get there. I felt that talking about a film was actually a very stimulating and a good thing. I felt light-footed and-dare I say it-happy and decided that Ciné should have a Film Club on Sunday nights after the 7pm show to discuss one of the films we are showing. Different people with film knowledge would lead the discussion and folks could just drop in to participate. Sunday seems like the right day. It's usually not over crowded at Ciné and it's a nice way to end the week. We'll try the first and third Sunday every month.

The first Ciné Club will be this Sunday, January 20th, on the film THE SAVAGES after the 7:15pm show. I already talked Dr. Richard Siegesmund, who teaches Art Education at UGA and taught a seminar on International and Independent Art House Cinéma at Ciné (and is also my hubby-it was short notice), into leading the discussion. Come out we'll have fun with THE SAVAGES and will help each other think.
Epilogue: We won't be able to have wine, though, because we don't have a Sunday beer and wine license anymore. Our license was not renewed because we don't make at least half of our income through food. How could a movie theater make half of its income with food? Beats me. Why did we have a Sunday license in the first year? They give you the benefit of the doubt until the first numbers are in. So we'll just have an elegant espresso or mint tea and some sweet treats for our Sunday Ciné Club. It'll be really hard core.

Ciné: Art in the Public Sphere Movies began as a part of downtowns. Thomas Edison's first film studios were located in downtown Manhattan near Greenwich Village. From there, the movie palace became an essential part of downtowns in every large, medium, and small city across the United States. Growing up in the stifling heat and humidity of southern Indiana and southern Michigan, the movie theater was a place of refuge and relaxation-if only to escape the outside elements. To be sure, you could avoid the heat by slipping into a local diner, or shop. But only at the movie theater could you nestle down into a chair, disappear into the darkness and be transported to another place for up to two hours, or more.

From my grandparents' home in rural Indiana, narrow back alleys were the swiftest route to downtown and the movie palace-a walk of about 3 blocks. I still remember the posters announcing the pending arrival of the re-release of Walt Disney's PINOCCHIO (circa 1962) along the route. Thirteen years later, when I returned for the funeral of my grandfather, I walked these same alleys one last time. I was saddened to see that movie posters no longer lined the brick walls. The downtown was closing down. Suburban sprawl reached out like tendrils toward Indianapolis. With the rise of the shopping mall, located on beltways designed to divert traffic away from downtowns, the movie palace began to wither and with that demise a sense of community, of neighborhood, and of place perished as well. Yes, new multi-screen cinemas anchored the new fortress malls encircled with gigantic moats of blacktop, but they were not the same. These surrogates did not command the quiet majesty or the human scale of the downtown theaters. There was no sense of being somewhere special when entering.

Back in the early 18th century, in what we now know as Germany, community leaders and philosophers noted the importance of this phenomenon. It was the dawn of the Enlightenment: the age of Reason. No longer would kings or the church tell us what to do. For the first time, citizens claimed (as a young intellectual, Thomas Jefferson, from the colony of Virginia, on the other side of the Atlantic put it in his most enduring piece of writing) to be "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." However, the good burgers of the Germanic principalities were not quite so revolutionary minded as their cousins in North America. They saw a more pressing problem. If we granted universal liberty, what would prevent the kind of sectarian bloodbath that we, here in the twenty-first century, see every day in Baghdad? What was to keep Catholics and Protestants from murdering each other in the streets in the pursuit of happiness? This was a very real political problem circa 1720.

The Germans arrived at a new and unexpected solution. They called it aesthetics: the science of how things are known through the senses. Rather than enjoying blood sport with protagonists like Ann Coulter and Michael Moore attacking each other in public fora quaintly titled "Firing Line" or "Hardball", the Germans suggested that we create public places-a public sphere-for aesthetic imagination. In these places, people faced beauty in a calm, reflective atmosphere. These places would be theaters, public parks, and bandstands. The presence of beauty would compel us to talk to each other. We would share our ideas about what we saw. In the process, without someone telling us what to do, we would learn how to engage in public conversation. Through this dialogue, we would discover a public self that bound us together despite our private differences. In this way, we could teach ourselves what it meant to be responsible citizens in a self-governing democratic society.

This is part of what Ciné affords Athens. An example of Ciné creating a public sphere is the community night at Ciné, featuring the Hollywood classic BRINGING UP BABY sponsored by the Boulevard and Cobbham Neighborhood Associations. It could be in the sold-out celebrations of DARIUS GOES WEST or the languid discussion of Jim White pondering SEARCHING FOR THE WRONG-EYED JESUS. These events are not just about entertainment, although they are that. These evenings are about a way of coming together in a public forum to learn to see, listen, and talk with each other again.

The Unbearable Lightness of Cinéma. We have not had many complaints yet. Just the occasional "Where is my parking space" or "I really hate your pop-up menu" (on the website) accompanied by a thoughtful "but that might not be on the top of your list", and the touching "What happened to Brigitta's blog?".

I saw AVENUE MONTAIGNE (which really should have kept its original title ORCHESTRA SEAT in English) together with my son Danny yesterday. It is a gem of a light-footed film with humor and substance and a wonderful soundtrack of a wide spectrum of music that made our sound system shine. I commented to Danny that judging from this film and the previews (MAFIOSO, PARIS JE T'AIME, and OFFSIDE) one could easily get the impression that Ciné only shows foreign comedies. No hint of all the war, death, and slaughter that had come over its screens already. Somebody came out of THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY after about 30 minutes and asked for her money back since she was not prepared to watch that much violence. We gave her a pass (a free ticket) for any other film but wondered if she would have done the same thing at a multi-plex and decided not to give in to another complaint like that. Our website and write-ups in the papers give ample insight into what our films are about. Would you return a book after reading it half-way because you did not like it? However, when one of our own crew members reported that she had to leave the screening of this film after 45 minutes, we came up with what we called a Film Advisory (which can be read before you purchase a ticket at the box office) about the violence depicted.

BLACK BOOK is the first major film that we got from Sony Pictures Classics. It is a fascinating mix of genres that utterly resists categorization. It even stars Sebastian Koch in a stronger performance than in THE LIVES OF OTHERS if that's possible. It's about war, death, and betrayal, but also about resilience, fun, creativity, and sensuality in kick-ass action tempo--certainly a grand film. Come out if you haven't seen it. It's two-and-a-half hours very well spent, and we could impress Sony Classics with huge box office numbers. Next week we will begin to show AWAY FROM HER, which appears to be Julie Christie's finest achievement to date; probably also not an easy film, but one that makes your emotional life much richer. See you soon.

Dancing with Distributors. Ciné is in its opening week and a lot of unexpected things have happened already. After a deluge of very friendly local press the week before, we were overrun on the first day, which made the BarCafé feel like NY Central Station. It got more sane but still lively as days went on (except for when we showed IRAQ IN FRAGMENTS, which was sold out as well), but turned into just a trickle over this weekend. We like to believe that Easter had something to do with that.

WUGA hosted Kamala Lyons, Senain Khesghi, and me last Wednesday to talk about Ciné. At the end of the interview, Robb Holmes asked whether there was anything to add, and I pointed out that we had gotten a lot of requests for DAS LEBEN DER ANDEREN (The Lives of Others) and that I was very happy to say that Ciné was going to show it from April 27 on. It had been a major undertaking to get the film. I had seen it a year earlier in Zurich and wanted to open with it, but Sony Pictures Classics was not willing to talk about it until about two months ago. In the meantime DAS LEBEN was nominated for the Academy Awards for best foreign film and won. Sony let us know that we had no chance unless we would take the film open run (which means that they tell us when we get it and determine when we stop playing it depending on our box-office receipts). We wanted to do calendar programming (we get films for a specific amount of time no matter how they do) at least to start out with, so that we could plan in advance and advertise the films we were going to show. However, DAS LEBEN seemed so important to me that we were going to make an exception and do open run for this particular film. After we had let Sony know, they were noncommittal for quite a while. Then, about two weeks ago, Paul inquired again with them and was told that Ciné would get it from April 27 on for two weeks. Our booker confirmed this news. I was flabbergasted. They must have done their homework and come to the conclusion that they wanted to support what we are trying to accomplish. The whole crew was ecstatic. I called and wrote to people who had asked us whether we would show this film and asked Dr. Christine Haase, who teaches German film at UGA whether she would give an introduction. Christine was intrigued by the idea of giving the audience some context of the New German Cinéma and the controversy Das Leben had sparked in German intellectual circles.

When I came home after the talk at WUGA, I had a message from Sony Pictures Classics on my answering machine. A friendly voice congratulated me for our box office returns of the opening day and wanted to talk with me ASAP. We connected the following day, and I learned that there had been a miscommunication in their office and that DAS LEBEN would go to a local multi-plex instead of Ciné. She was very sorry and said that it was all her fault. It would have been nice if I had learned about this before I announced that we were going to show the film on the radio.

Epilogue: What do you do if you build an art-house movie theater and your credibility goes out the window in the opening week? You move on. We were lucky to be able to find a wonderful film for our open slot (although Sony Pictures Classics left us very little time to arrange for that): KILLER OF SHEEP. "One of the strengths of 'Killer of Sheep,'-Kenneth Turan from the LA Times writes--one of the reasons it has not dated, is that the naturalness and simplicity with which it unfolds give it the texture of a story told from the inside. The film's sensitivity to mood and moment create a privileged glimpse of reality - scenes like Stan and his wife slow dancing to Dinah Washington singing 'This Bitter Earth' - that are indelible." (LA Times, April 6, 2007). THE KILLER OF SHEEP is considered a landmark of both American Independent and African American Cinéma. It was made by Charles Burnett in 1977, but is getting its first theatrical release now, 30 years after it was completed. Come and see it at Ciné-we think we have it confirmed!

What's Up with ManDown? It spoke of emotion and mystery to me the ManDown graffiti when I first saw it four years back. Once I had bought the old Snowtire building, I intended to keep it. As we were pressure washing the inside of the building, to my surprise all the paint came off close to the garage door (it must have been very dry from the southern exposure) and on the following day I saw that the water had penetrated the brick to the outside and had flaked off much of ManDown. It grieved me since it had been there before me and was part of the history of the building. When it came time to paint the building on the outside, I decided to have what was left painted over since it was not close to the original anymore.

A few weeks later, somebody sprayed ManDown on the wall again obviously during or shortly before rain fall, since it was streaking down the wall. This too was not close to what it had been before, and I felt that what I was trying to accomplish with this project and building was not respected. For me to relate to graffiti it needs to have meaning (for the maker and me) but it also needs to be executed well. I wished I could just ask the person, who had created the original to come back and paint it again. In my search for this person, I began to learn more about the history behind the piece. There had been a wild skate park, with sponsors and competitions and big banners on the yellow and purple wall. I learned that a person had actually died and researched The Banner Herald for a story on a skater death in the time before we came to Athens-to no avail.

Paul, in the meantime, got in touch with a woman close to the skater community to let her know that we were looking for the person who had done ManDown to ask him (we had heard it had been a man) whether he was willing to paint it again. She said she would relay the message. He actually got in touch with Paul and I finally called him. He told me that the graffiti was a memorial for his friend Elvo, who was a prominent member of the skater community. Elvo had gotten married and had just moved to Savannah when he died in a work accident. He and his friends got so upset that they set out to the old skate park and spray painted a memorial for Elvo. ManDown commemorates his death and 186 (which was part of the original graffiti) stands for the address where some of the skaters lived. One afternoon, when Elvo was still part of their group, they all hung out around the front porch and he reached over to the numbers and turned the 8 to lie horizontally, which also made it into the sign for infinity. It was an expression-in my mind-for their friendship and their being together at that moment. He told me that he would like to repaint ManDown.

I was touched to hear that and put a sign on the wall to leave the space alone so that the original piece could be put up again. Two days later, he came by at sundown and put it back up, but he also added a new part to it; a black circle with a black e in it on a red background. A friend of his explained that this was Elvo's tattoo. He had not just recreated the original piece but had added something new to it, now it was a different work that contained the old and it was very well executed. It made me happy that we had been able to bring back this piece of history and to tie it in with the present.

As he was putting it up the police had appeared, and Paul explained to them that it was ok. I talked with the builder, the foreman, and the painter on the job to make sure that nobody would paint over it in an attempt to do me a favor. The following day a woman drove up to me and rolled down her window to tell me that she had called the cops the day before because somebody was spraying stuff on my wall. As I explained the situation to her, she apologized profusely; she had just been her "uptight attorney self" and sent her apologies also to the artist. I called the builder one more time to make sure that everybody on the work site knew to leave ManDown alone. She said that it was interesting I should call again, because the police had just shown up and had asked one of the painters whether he had some purple paint left. He was just going to take care of this himself right then. The painter did not hand over the paint. The officer left a business card for me to call him. I did and explained that ManDown was a graffiti that I wanted on my wall for specific historic reasons but that he should still interfere if there was further graffiti activity. He came to the site the next day to speak to me in person, because the business community and City Hall were very concerned about graffiti incidences, and they could not just take care of these things themselves (paint over them) because these buildings were private property.

I put up a plaque explaining the meaning of the piece and talked with Ben Emanuel from the Flagpole in an attempt to be able to keep something on my wall that I want to be there.

Epilogue: In my mind buildings live in their environment. That the Snowtire building was a border of a (wild) skate park is one of the meanings it has gathered over time. Acknowledging that is part of a deeper understanding of the building's habitat. It does not make sense to me to "save" buildings by transplanting them somewhere else in order to build something that one deems more worthy (i.e. lucrative) in its place. It does not make sense to me when new downtown developments have artistic renderings of their buildings that show them in a green meadow or in a park with trees instead of their true environment.

Graffiti is an art form that captures the Zeitgeist, it describes the mood of the times. It is by definition controversial and done furtively, on a forbidden surface, to point towards a discontent of a person or (if it's good) of the times. I grew up in Zurich where we had a well known controversy around the graffiti artist Harald Naegeli. He began spraying big, black wire frame figures on concrete walls in Zurich in 77. The citizens of Zurich and many artists appreciated the figures (around 600 by 1979), which were very well executed, as an expression of "the other Zurich" that was not established and satisfied. However, the property owners, the police, and courts were not amused, and he was sentenced to 9 months in jail for property damage. He escaped to Germany (where he became friends with Joseph Beuys) but was apprehended later and did his jail time in 84. He continued his work and in 2004 the Kanton Zurich (the county of Zurich) decided to restore and preserve some of his early works as they were beginning to disappear. ..

However, I have to admit that a "commission to re-apply" graffiti is a very rare animal and that it must have been confusing for many to watch the various stages of the ManDown process. ManDown was and is again well done; it speaks to the history of the whole city block and to the history of the skater community, and in a broader sense it is about friendship. Enough reasons to keep it on the old Snow Tire building. Will there be more art on the Ciné walls? Possibly; the original ManDown was done when the building was not inhabited, but it is very much alive again with Ciné, and I see its walls as my own canvas now. I am wrestling with the city (see my previous blog) to put up commissioned art in fact.