Stensen Auditorium
After a week vacation – which just involved sitting on the palazzo’s couch, watching hours and hours of different movies in the house – I started my internship at the Niels Stensen Institute. It is a cultural foundation based in Florence, and I am focusing on the film sector. The first few days I helped the people organizing the Galileo Festival find American universities and institutes that might be interested in attending the Festival at the end of May.
Luftbusiness Movie Poster
I went to Poggibonsi on May 1st to see part of the Fenice Festival that Stensen put together. The theme this year was based on Bill Willingham’s comic book about fairy tale characters ending up in modern-day Manhattan called Fables. Go figure – he lived in Stony Brook, LI for some time! He was a really friendly guy, and his drawings were so creative. He chose to come to the Fenice Festival, because he wanted to see the Italian response to his idea to change their “beloved Pinocchio into a spoiled little brat.” Anyhow, they based the whole festival this year around fairy tales, and it was quite an interesting mix. I only got to see part of it, but I would have liked to stay for the whole thing.
My other “tedious” tasks have been watching tons and tons of foreign films! I get to review them for Stensen, and help the other student interns choose movies they will show in their next film festival in September. The picture on the left is for a movie called Luftbusiness. It is without a doubt one of the best movies I have seen in a while. Three down and out young men decide to sell important parts of themselves on eBay – one’s past, one’s future and the other’s soul. They call it “luftbusiness” because they are seemingly selling nothing – the business of selling air. Obviously, they lose more then they bargain for. I HIGHLY recommend this excellent movie.
Human Zoo
My other favorite is the movie poster on the right – Human Zoo. It premiered at the Berlin Film Festival to mixed reviews, but I LOVED it. Here’s part of the review I wrote for it:
Human Zoo happens to be one of my favorites out of the movies I have watched lately. I was completely enthralled while watching it, as it was impossible for to turn away. It was written, directed, produced, edited and starred Rie Rasmussen, a former Danish model. That is a huge first endeavor, and I thought it was very well-done for a premiere feature film. Rasmussen had made two very successful shorts, and mortgaged her house to make this. It premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, to mixed reviews, and even caused a fight between Rasmussen, and one of the producers, Luc Besson, who apparently hated the movie.
Human Zoo tells two stories simultaneously about the same girl, Adria. She is half-Albanian, half-Serbian, as well as Muslim and Christian. The first scene shows two girls in a very cold-looking hotel room, both covered in blood, with a large man on top of one of them. It is not clear what is going on, but it grabs your attention. It then switches to the Bosnian War in 1998, with a girl being threatened by violent soldiers, and then to Marseilles, present day, with the same girl walking down a beautiful French street, only to be abruptly knocked over by curly-haired, outgoing American man. Again, these two scenes also take hold of your attention – you fear for this girl’s life in Bosnia, and then you are thrust into a “meet-cute” where the American man is very forward, after attempting to help Adria with her groceries. She is offended, and stomps off after he bluntly tells her he wants to sleep with her, even though she is slightly flattered and interested. Clearly, this woman has lived two very different lives – and you want to see the conclusions of both.
In Kosovo, Adria is nearly raped by a Serbian soldier, only to be saved by Srdjan, another soldier who thinks the war is cruel and racist. He threatens the rapist and saves Adria, although after some confusion, Adria also threatens to kill a third soldier who has entered the room, as she thinks he’s going to kill her rescuer. Srdjan feels indebted to Adria, as she tried to protect him, and decides to take care of her. The two go to Belgrade, and Srdjan begins a career in organized crime, teaching Adria the ways of this life. Srdjan is played by Nikola Djuricko, who does an excellent job playing both a charismatic free-thinker and a ruthless killer. He is committing sin after sin, and getting more violent by the second, but it is hard to not like him, as he is intelligent and charming.
In Marseilles, Adria is now a present-day illegal immigrant. When immigration forces nearly take Adria, the American man, Shawn, returns, and pretends they are a couple on a honeymoon vacation, looking for an art museum. He saves her just in the nick of time, and they go out for a drink together. Shawn gets insulted by a local Frenchman, who starts a fight with him. Shawn puts up his fists, in an odd turn of events, takes off all his clothes. The crowd laughs, and he makes a joke about having sex with the Frenchman, who leaves in an angry manner. Clearly, Shawn doesn’t fight like the way Srdjan does. He uses wit to distract his enemies – not a weapon.
In the Belgrade scenes, Srdjan is growing more ruthless and cruel as the movie progresses, and Adria is developing romantic feelings for him. She is also becoming a larger part of Srdjan’s criminal work, learning to use weapons, and distracting targets with her feminine ways. Srdjan, at his worse, convinces Adria to seek revenge on the rapist. When they arrive at his house, the audience can hardly recognize him, as he is a well-established, family man with a beautiful wife and little girl. Srdjan is encouraging Adria to get vengeance, but she is having second thoughts with his family there. This is also not the first time Adria is shown focusing on women with children. It is done several times throughout the film when she is in Belgrade; this is probably to allude to what she is missing out on that most women pursue – having children, not killing people in the name of crime. Srdjan abruptly murders all three family members, and Adria is devastated. Even his henchmen cannot comprehend that he killed a seven-year-old, but this just makes Srdjan angrier, and he tries to explain what the difference is between killing an adult and a child – one just hasn’t made mistakes yet. His men and Adria aren’t so easily convinced though.
Meanwhile, in Marseilles, Adria and Shawn are falling in love with each other. Adria and Srdjan do not exactly fall in love with each other, but Adria is loyal to a fault for rescuing her. As she matures and her confidence grows, Srdjan and his henchmen grow attracted to Adria. The difference between the love scenes of Shawn and Srdjan are much like the way they fight, although they are both very graphic. Srdjan is quick to finish, as long as he gets what he wants. Shawn is romantic, and attentive to Adria’s needs sexually and mentally. Srdjan is completely selfish, although the audience is initially attracted to his character, because saving Adria seems to be his only considerate action of the film.
While in Marseilles, Adria has become “adopted” by a local Arab woman and her husband. They also look after a Vietnamese girl, as they are all immigrants to France. Shawn wonders why Adria cannot become a legal French citizen, until he realizes it is because she must have committed a crime – becoming more apparent when he finds a handgun under her mattress. At the height of the French storyline, Adria’s surrogate, Vietnamese sister is sold into human trafficking by her boyfriend, and there is no legal way to rescue her, because of their illegal statuses. Adria may have to revert back to her old tricks to save an innocent girl.
Adria confronts the boyfriend, and gets the information out of him by chopping four of his fingers off with a butcher knife. Shawn is in shock, but Adria finds out that her sister is in a brothel that fronts as a tanning salon. The movie then flashes back to the very first scene, with the bloody girls in the hotel room. We understand now, it is Srdjan and another woman that Adria has walked in on. She is furious and retaliates by scratching the woman’s eyes, and biting off one of Srdjan’s fingers. The blood she is covered in isn’t hers, but from injuring Srdjan. Apparently, she’s had enough, and finally leaves him and his life of crime. Back in France, she tells a bewildered Shawn to put the fingers on ice, and she’ll be back in 30 minutes. He admits he wants to marry her.
When she reaches the tanning salon, she finds her sister in a back room. Earlier in the film, Srdjan taught Adria that if you have a revolver, you better learn to finish a job in six shots, because they’re hard to reload, and you need to escape in time. After Adria counting one to six, it’s obvious what she’s about to do. She shoots where necessary to get her and her sister out in time. Although the rescued doesn’t even seem to be as grateful. Nothing is perfect nor symmetrical. Adria is finally arrested and put in jail, while Shawn plans to wait for her – cheering as they take her into prison.
The title “Human Zoo,” was meant to question the “cages” humans put themselves into. As an Albanian, Serbian, Muslim, Christian living in France, Adria admits she is a child of borders and cannot be defined as one thing. She refuses to “cage” herself. In this movie, there is no right or wrong. The heroine is a former criminal, gender roles are turned upside down as Adria comes to the rescue at the end and commits several violent acts, and we question whether most of the victims were innocent or not. This is where the movie succeeds. Rasmussen raises several important questions about humanity and how we define ourselves.
Some of the other tasks aren’t that interesting, so I’d rather write about reviewing movies! Hehe. That’s all for now.
The American Florentine 
