Just a short final shot at blog diarism in the New Year...

Two days ago I serendipitously visited the Berlinale - something I rarely do, probably because you have to book tickets in advance - and saw the Philipino documentary entry MOTHERLAND (cf. YT trailer) in the Forum category of the festival. It was a very honest portrait of just one of the overfull maternity wards of a big Manila hospital. It was very well prepped/edited, because the camera gets very close to the women about to give birth, or staying in the ward until the new-born are healthy & constantly gaining weight. I - single man in middle age - learnt a lot, i.a. what K.M.C. stands for!

What I thought really great about taking in the movie, as well as noticing how much I was learning, is that it prods at the potential of what one might pick up when one actually visits a place elsewhere on the planet, that is utterly new, in person. Picking up not only the audiovisual, but all of what a new corner of reality has to offer. If I have the means to go to such places, everyday boredom seems foolish.

I also started to read the docutainment "novel" OONA & SALINGER, written by a French Canadian author, about the dalliance between the famous author named in the title, who wrote little but has become cult, and the later wife of Charlie Chaplin, mother of i.a. Geraldine. She was the daughter of famous Irish-American playwright Eugene O' Neill, who apparently didn't treat her particularly well. Oona & J.D. met at around the time she became one of the first-ever It Girls, very young, but hanging around the (in?)famous Stork Club in New York. It promises to be a very interesting read, even though it starts very introspectively on the side of the "novel"'s author. A typically french-language writing affectation?

Interesting reading/seeing/hearing times! Vivat!