Notes to Heaven

It is quite rare but a very joyous occasion when you have moments in your life when you feel everything pulls together physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. The filming of Notes to Heaven was one such beautiful moment for me. I could see my vision of The Florence Film School and the Infinite Human Production company coming together and touching both myself in a deeply personal way, my students, the international community of Florence and through the electronic media eventually the world. It is also wonderful because we will be able to show it to the community as a special edition at The Florence International Film Festival.

I have already received several comments and blogs about the event but I would like to talk about it personally. As I wrote my final note to Peter I thought it would be much easier but I was so filled with emotion and found it so hard to say good bye. Francesca the Director had wanted to film one final balloon after the mass rush of balloons to follow with the camera so I told her it could be mind. But I really wanted to hang on as long as possible. After the amazing flurry of balloons whooshed through the city, I let mine go. I was amazed at the speed it pick up, my note acting like a propeller. It was gone! Out of my sight so fast we didn't even get it on camera! I guess I had been needing to let go of that note for quite some time.

That night I kept thinking about my note and where it had ended up. I hoped not on the windshield of some tourist driving through Tuscany but in the arms of Peter's great Soul!

Notes to Heaven

One in a while a student comes along your path who truly moves you. It's like your souls have been waiting to be touched at the same time you are afraid of the encounter because you know it will change you forever. This has been my experience will all of my students at The Florence Film School who undoubtedly has touched me in the most deeply profound way.

She came to the course wanting to do a documentary on death and how people deal with it. She formulated it into a series of interviews that would lead to an event in Santa Spirito where these selected subjects would write a letter, presumably a good bye letter to the person with whom they had been with and was no more. Then attached them to red balloons and send then upwards spiraling towards the heavens.
The story was called "Notes To Heaven" and she asked me to take part in it, which by the way I never ever take part in my students films.

Well, I just knew I had to this. This was Peter's way of helping me let go of him and move on with my life. I realized that I had never even participated in a funeral or service for him. I had just refused to let go! As I began writing this letter I had never felt so much pain, pain every where in my body but especially my heart I cried almost every day all day and I kept wondering if I was going to make it though this. My God the truth is I really didn't want to live on with out Peter.

Well tomorrow we release the balloons in Santa Spirito. So I will let you know how I feel after this great event. It is at 2:00 P.M. It is open to anyone that wants to send a note up to heaven.
Elizabeth Monroy
Florence Film School

Tuscan History gets Spiked!

Tuesday September 29^th I attended the press conference here in Florence at Palazzo Stozzi. It was a stimulating event where the community of Tuscany had the opportunity to comment on the James McBride and Spike Lees’ very controversial interpretation of what historically occurred here in Tuscany during the second world war.

As the James McBride the Author of the book The Miracle of Santa Anna so eloquently put it was a fictional story set in the historical background of the The second World War played out in Tuscany. It was about the relationships between Afro American soldiers or Buffalo soldiers and the other groups of people they encountered, The white American soldiers, Germans, Italian patricians and the common villagers who were caught up in the cruelty of War.

Writers and Directors often take liberties to tell a story that is free from stereotypes and has a fresh original angle . In this story there was a good German, bad American officers, divided villagers and a partisan who played the villain. Not even the black American soldiers themselves were black and white characters.

This is a common approach for writers to create deep and rich stories filled with three dimensional characters. What is uncommon and was done by both the writer and the director was to listen to the concerns of the community they had offended in their manner of telling this fictional story.

As a writer and Director I felt is was a powerful moment in history to see a community hold artist’s responsible for their creative work and to see the artists step up to the plate to defend their work.

How responsible are we as writers and film makers to accurately recount historical facts? Certainly Disney or Touch Tone Studios has been notorious for rewriting history. What exactly is history? It goes back to the old saying five people witness an accident and everyone has a different version of what they saw.

Whether we like it or not as artist’s writers, painters, film makers our depiction of history will most likely be the version that is most identified by future generations since the oral traditions of storytelling have been replaced with Art and Entertainment. The Last Supper by Da Vinci will be most people’s visual image of that famous evening dinner. Just as Dante will be thought of as walking around with a red cape and laurels..

How responsible are we as artists to history? Would it be better to rewrite history changing the past as we change the future? Should we pretend the holocaust never existed and make up a happy history?

Should art be used dig up old wounds?

Or can is be a way to learn from our mistakes and heal the past, finally putting it behind us a creating something new?

History Repeats itself is the catch phase. But do we have to keep repeating these terrible mis-takes? Can we edit out the bad scenes reshoot them and change our future at long last?

When we made Eve olution it was a very difficult film to make. I had to come face to face with how much women had suffered. Over 5 million women were killed in a holocaust called the Inquisition. These facts are rarely is heard of.. When I visited a torture exhibition in Prague most of the instruments had been designed and used on women.

The tragedy of Santa Anna is now known to a much larger population thanks to Spike Lee and James Mcbride and maybe the first step to putting the past behind us is to face, it grieve it, learn from it and then move on. This is the healing power of film. I feel Spielberg did that with Schindler’s List although I am sure every good story teller takes some poetic license to tell a good story.

Spike’s agenda was, as always to show the Afro American perspective of the injustice of racism. He made a powerful comment at the press conference about ending the injustices of society racism , sexism and his film was meant to highlight that issue. I commend him as a film maker who has a moral responsibility and has had the courage to follow his mission despite criticism. He has been a pioneer in the Art and Craft of Film and a voice for a people who have not been justly treated or recognized.

I have a good friend who was a Tuskegee Airmen, and finally On 29 March 2007, about 350 Tuskegee Airmen and their widows were collectively awarded the Congressional Gold Medal presented by President Bush for his heroic acts in World War II. This was after a HBO aired The Tuskegee Airmen (1996) starring Laurence Fishburne .

So as the Director of The Florence Film School I say unto you : you can and must influence our social memory of history in a positive way helping future generations to learn from the past and pay recognition to those who may not have a voice in a society that has lost it’s perspective and morals.

Sacred Art

I spent most of the morning trying to write up a really good definition of New Media for The Florence Film School since we are launching into our new low residency Master program in Film Production and New Media.

I took several definitions off of Wikipedia and sent it to my girl friend who is a copy editor in New York. She got back to me the dreaded advice “Why don’t you create your own definition.”

I quickly reminded her that it is such a NEW field I don’t think any body really has a clue as to all the immense possibilities that it can and will encompass. She quickly reminded me that that was the reason behind the school to begin with, to create an academic foundation and structure in which the pioneers of this NEW renaissance of NEW media can help bring about a positive world vision. Bla, bla, bla she went on and I nodded in agreement at the enormity of the task.

After staring at the computer screen and throwing around words like installation art, performance art, video art, multi media installation performance art!!! I paused and remembered the reason I had chosen to create this program in Italy to begin with. Has been creating and recreating NEW Media for centuries.

I though back to the other night when Cheryl and I had finished a wonderful dinner in Piazza Santa Spirito with our French companion Christoff. We meandered into the Piazza and noticed a white statue of Mother Mary gentling rocky to and fro as she was lifted and carried above a sea of humans. She floated there, perfectly framed in door of the Santo Spirito’s Cathedral. Then slowly she made her way through the Piazza with thousands of nuns, priests, workers and just plain common folk trailing after her with little bags muffling the soft glow of candles.

All the time a priest was sweetly singing cantos of Ave Maria.

It was magical. There was a soft, nurturing, immensely sacred feminine energy that just flowed forth from the sea of people. Then as if on cue a sadistic looking man with a Mohawk and a read t-shirt darted into the group of nuns shouting curses against the virgin and the church.

You just can’t couldn’t ask for a more all encompassing multi media even and these things happen everyday in Florence!

The Florence Film School

Florence is coming to life after the long summer break where this year just about everyone left the city in a mad exodus, except me. I was here holding up th decaying walls and keeping alive the energy to the best of my ability although it did get rather dead at times. But she's still here in all her glory. It was a tough job but someone had to do it. I feel sorry for the person who was positioned in Venice and had to keep that fair city afloat.

The students are coming back all excited about their semester abroad in Firenze! They are pretending to be Itlain shouting words like " ciao. bongiorno and some of the guys are getting up the courage to say bella!" to all the women. It's quite fun.

The bars are picking up and we have had an onslught of Irish Wedding parties and do I mean parties. At my local Fiddler's elbow they were singing Irish songs into the wee hours of the night. I run into old firends every three or four steps. Every one is rested and yes ready to get back to work. It is amazing how this city flows in cycles and after three years of swimming up stream I am ready to go with the flow.

Yesterday I visited two art galleries and chatted with several artists, its just amazing that in the tiny town you can't walk five feet without running into an artist, muscian, painter, sculpture, writer, film maker. It's so stimulating!

This year we are preparing for our first Florence International Film Festival! I have recieved some amazing film shorts from both students and professionals from all over the world. The theme is new media that gives a positive vision for humanity. This is our first film festival but it looks like its going to be a real winner! So now I am working on getting a big name to visit our beautiful little town and talk about the future of film with the new generation of film makers and multi media artists.
I know George Clooney has a place right down the road and I happen to be from Kentucky myself so I was going to extend an inventation! Who knows, it could happen!