Marathon

The second and, unfortunately, the last movie I got to see at this festival was “Marathon” by Iranian director, Amir Naderi. Shot in black and white, it tells the story of Gretchen who desperately goes after her record of 77 Crossword Puzzles solved in a day. She finds inspiration in Manhattan’s noise. The Subway and the words are the story’s real protagonists.

 

Sara Paul in Marathon, by Amir Naderi

Being part of a Festiwal (“Il Vento del Cinema“) the theme of which was “The Unfinished Cinema”, Marathon perfectly fits the event. As the very same director stated during a jam session he doesn’t plan too much on a movie, he just makes it as he feels, this movie doesn’t demonstrate to have a focused aim. Sometimes nebulous, sometimes fascinating, isn’t capable of transmitting a message different from what in my opinion seemed a metaphor of chaos. Or better still, a metaphor of struggle against chaos; tidy crosswords contrast what is a city bursting with noises and chaos. This is what Gretchen needs for her concentration, though this doesn’t allow her to go over her previous record. She desperately tries to find a way…, not changing almost anything about her way of working. An unfinished story…

 

77 & 1/2

That’s how far she goes.

Combat d’amour en songe

This is the title of a film I have seen this morning. Yep, this week-end will be full of cinema, art and whatever other nice things you can associate with it ( as music, literature, discussion, so on and so forth). Being back on my tiny little island in Southern Italy, though sometimes it appears quite limitating, other times offers unvaluable chances to spend good time. One of these chances is represented by a small festival, called “Il Vento del Cinema”, namely “The Wind of Cinema”, which is held on my tiny little island.

Poster

http://www.ilventodelcinema.it/

Projections of rare cinema pieces and related jam sessions fill the day. The film I have seen was a dreamy piece of cinema, where the viewer slowly understands what is a truth hard to achieve. Happenings, characters, actors all are confused, mixed, so you find yourself wandering around the path of a dream. A dream that, as you may imagine, doesn’t follow the pre-packaged linearity books and other movies do follow.

It goes, wherever the mind and heart tell it to go. Complete nonsense, complete sense. At the same time.

Economists: brand new stars.

Economists were and still are, to a certain extent, a mysterious breed. Their studies and position in the real economy’s world have often been questioned on their usefulness. Jokes about economists flourish, indeed. Here are some examples:

“An economist is a trained professional paid to guess wrong about the economy.” 

or

“Economics is the only field in which two people can share a Nobel Prize for saying opposing things.”

 

Accused of being far from reality, unuseful for what matters real industrial economy, economists were not among the scientists and brilliant engineers who were the protagonists of the last 24 years. Technological innovation took the stage, and let the poor and boring subject of economics among the sciences with no focus on real life and application. Now things seem to have changed. The actual slump brought new attention to the figure of the economics’ expert and researcher. We could call this “Sudden popularity”. They are interviewed, consulted, their advises constitute the “juicy piece” of several shows and newscasts. Suddenly everyone sees in economics the only key capable of solving, or at least softening a crises which was not caused by economics in its purest definition. Wild finance is the first responsible. So Kondratiev’s cycles’ definitions and monetary policy mechanisms’ aren’t foggy topics anymore. This situation though, isn’t going to last that long. Once the crisis will be overcome (as it will surely be) economists will return to their lives, once again ignored and once again ready to give wise advises to those unknowing, when the times will require it.