Tag: Mexico

Guadalajara, chilly Cuba, next stop New York

Well Guadalajara seems a distant memory of sitting in the bar of the Hilton Hotel catching friends as they flew past from one film or party to another.  We did a press conference, we met some of the recent graduates, we saw old friends from Mexico, Guatemala and everywhere.  I ate too much spicy food as usual, probably even more as now I live in Cuba where there ain’t much spice!

I forgot how the dry desert climate and the pollution of the big city irritates my eyes and makes them water for 3 days.  They usually get used to it just before I leave.  I was also horrified by the amount of shops and the fact that everyone seemed to have big huge monstrous new cars.  Have I been Cubanised or is Mexico getting even more Americanised?  Obscenely huge four wheel drive vehicles with darkened sinister windows and huge growling wheels.  I was persuaded by the reception of the Hilton against my better judgement, that we should go to the new bigger and better shopping mall.  We waded through spaghetti junction streets packed with traffic and spotted in the distance the biggest Office Depot of my life and a huge Walmart and a Zara that looked as though it could disconnect itself from the Mall and conquer the world.  I want to do some shopping, but I don’t want this I wailed pathetically to Rafa, who hates shopping at the best of times.  We did a U turn and fled back to the hotel.

But hey I still love Guadalajara and Mexico.  The Mexicans full of smiles and good service and great food.  After my aborted attempt to check out the new shopping centre, I did my usual run to Grand Plaza to power shop, get a much needed new wardrobe for Rafa, taking the plunge into kiddy technology and buying an XBox for the boys late Christmas and Birthday presents from us and Grandma.  Also a quick trip to Walmart to do the usual supermarket basics that only us Cubans have to do.  We even bought new smart luggage to use one day when we can travel like normal people.  Now I still have to take my big old suitcases everywhere to fill them up, even on the shortest trips.

We got home to a Cuba decidedly chilly, and cold front after cold front blowing down from the north and through the windows of my beach house.  I tried to see if I could turn my aircon into a heater last night but with no success, so back on with the cashmere cardy and Rafa’s socks.  I know I shouldn’t be complaining as most of the UK is still suffering snow, sub-zero temperatures and winds blowing in from Siberia, but this is not normal for March in Cuba.  But maybe just as well as I have no air con in my car, and we are not sure when we can get hold of the parts to fix it.  Also recently butter, lemons and bacon have been tricky to get hold of.  The ebb and flow of products here in Cuba always keeps you on your toes but I am missing my bacon and tomato sandwiches.

I have also been enjoying time with my children and trying to get them back on track.  Saskia is hitting tantrum time and I am learning how different little girls are, especially this little princess manipuladora who rules the roost but in such a charming fashion.  The boys tantrums revolved mainly around fights over toys and were resolved by time outs.  Like two wild puppies they would fight and scream and yap and I would be constantly breaking them up and separating them.  Things have improved but still the same model applies:  Paulo is a total wind up merchant and knows how to press all his brother’s buttons, especially as he is verbally adept in 3 languages.  Nico is reduced to an emotional mess of injustice but his shouts and tears drive us all crazy.

Saskia on the other hand knows how to play all of us and Mummy has to be the one to stand up to her, although her brothers too are beginning to loose patience and have been caught swiping or pushing their dearly beloved little sis.  When I am dealing with her tantrums and trying to be consistent (the hardest parenting conundrum) her favourite thing right now is to wail for her Papa or anybody else she can think of, which I have to admit is sometimes hard to ignore and rise above.  Anyway a list was drawn up for Paulo and Nico 2 nights ago and there have been some slight improvements.  Also I have been strict with the nanny that she has to make them clear up toys and wash up their plates otherwise she is not helping me.

Drama at the film school never abates and Rafa has been having a tough time trying to resolve everyone’s problems with little help from the Cuban authorities, and students at their tense emotional time of pre shooting their thesis have been creating dramas of their own which inevitably have to involve us.  The injustice of one particular drama has upset me so much that I haven’t wanted to go to the school this week, I don’t trust myself, I may just have to give a few people my opinion and that is probably not my place.

We had promises of donations of cameras in Guadalajara but it all came to nothing in the end, and we are having to leap through burning hoops whilst playing bagpipes to get cameras here in time for the students to shoot.

The French school visited the Film school and for one morning my two worlds came together.  The children had  a great time and asked lots of questions like  ….How do you make blood?  How do you make it look as though someone’s head has been chopped off?  How did they do the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park?

Anyway all is going well for our preparations for our trip to New York which is not easy as we have to fly through Mexico or Canada depending on which flight we get.  We will be there for the Havana New York Film Festival organised by our dear Colombian friend Diana and I am looking forward to it so much.  We already have meetings with 3 Film schools and a lot of interesting people who support and love the school.  I feel very positive about the people in New York and the good connections we will make but frantically organising things so that the children won’t miss us too much the 4 nights we are escaping.  I can’t believe I am doing it again but feeling happy in the knowledge that we are all going to the UK and France for our summer this year.  The boys can’t wait, they love going to the land of their mother and it has been a couple of years since they last went.  They also want to try out their new language in situ and go up the Eiffel Tower and through the tunnel ……… and up the Elephant and round the Castle.

Mexicans, Scorpions and decapitations

I flew off to Guadalajara film festival for the third time last week.  Leaving my Saskia for the first time with her brothers and her adopted Cuban family.  Two nannies and Rafa’s driver, Mario.  In fact they all had a pretty good time.  70 photos from their jaunt around Habana Vieja.  They went to the park of inflatables, the museum of classic cars, pizza for lunch, Paulo and Nico carried by the men on stilts through the streets, donkey rides in the park…….and more.

When I managed to get a call through on Friday evening from Mexico, Paulo told me calmly that he had been stung by a scorpion at school and was taken to the hospital to have an injection.  Why do these things always happen when you are away?  He was fine and quite proud of how brave he had been.  All told, it had been little Nico who was the most upset for his big brother.  Bless my little emotional one!

We arrived in Guadalajara late on Thursday night as we had missed our connection in Mexico City.  We couldn’t find any of our friends to play with, as they were all staying in different hotels and they thought we were staying in their hotel.  We found out later that there was a welcome committee in the bar of the Hilton Hotel waiting for us until 3am!

Anyway, not realizing there was a party a few metres from where we were standing, we went off to a party for the press in a cool bar, but full of such young people that we began to feel old and the night had got off to a bad start.  We did not have our festival credentials as we had arrived so late, so Rafa who never pulls rank, reluctantly used his name to get us into the party, however the initial reaction of the revoltingly obese head of press for the festival (his stomach moved independently from the rest of his body) was so bad mannered that we could not get into the mood even when we had our free passes etc.

Usually in Guadalajara the Mexicans are so smiley and hospitable so we have got used to always feeling like VIPs.  But once again it was fun at the festival and we met old friends, made new friends and I managed to watch two films.  United Kingdom was the invited country and their had been a homenaje to Mike Leigh who had already been and gone, showing his latest film at the opening party.  The British Council party had passed and although I thought I was going to be bumping into my folk all over the place, it wasn’t like that at all.  I hardly even heard British music!

I was determined to make it to one film from the British contingent and noticed that at 4pm that day there was an interesting documentary on Andrew Logan that sounded just like my cup of tea, and it certainly was.  Who is Andrew Logan?

A wonderful man, in my humble opinion.  For those who are not familiar with the name, you will certainly be familiar with his style and influences. I found this quote about him on Wikipedia and it serves as a good introduction to this wonderful character.

Andrew Logan’s work blends camp pop-art and neo-romanticism to form a quintessentially English ‘eccentricity of vision’.

The documentary The British Art of Showing Off, by Jes Benstock was very well put together and served as a retrospective of the man and his art with a good dose of English humour.  Synopsis from the catalogue read:

British Artist and living legend Andrew Logan, loved the world over by celebrities and misfits alike, takes us under his glittering wing and inside his outrageous, anarchic and spectacular costume pageant: the Alternative Miss World Show.  Using live observational camera, archive and exuberant animation, this documentary charts the mounting of the 2009 Show, interwoven with its history, the rise, fall and rediscovery, of both the event and the artist at its centre.

As I sat in the over air conditioned theatre I chuckled away to myself and felt truly proud to be British watching some very famous eccentrics and admiring, once again, our ability to laugh at ourselves and not take life too seriously.

I hope I would get a chance to meet Andrew after the film but outside the cinema their was a narco battle taking place all over the city.  Two weeks before there had been 8 decapitated bodies found and the police had finally, that day, nailed one of the top guys.  Because of this, his gang was setting fire to buses all over the city (25 I think!).  They were decent enough to get all the passengers off first though, a little touch of humanity in the madness.  For that reason Andrew and Jes had not made it down to talk after the film.  I managed to get a taxi and head back to find my slightly concerned husband waiting for me in the Hilton bar.

However, I was lucky enough to meet Andrew and Jes, the director, later at the Gay party and awards held in a club close to the festival.  The Gay party was good fun and we had a handful of friends to help us along with our plastic pints of Tequila and sprite (yeah really elegant!). There were two dancers who came with their prerequisite 6 pack bodies but were on the podium, dancing badly like a couple of bored toyboy housewives and spent most of their time picking their skimpy underwear out of their bum in a very uncharming fashion.  I am sure that if Andrew had organized the entertainment it would have been much more fun.

The closing night entailed another walk on the red carpet in my new woman shoes (with a heel!) and a great Danish film called Superclassico.  We arrived back in Cuba on Sunday afternoon like true Cubanos with a suitcase full of nappies, cereal, tortillas, shoes, pesto,  ……… and the rest.

I found my 3 children utterly charming and wanted to stay up chatting with them all night about their adventures, thinking maybe it is good to have the odd little break from being a mother ………. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that.  Paulo and Nico also had really good school reports from the French School waiting for us that brought proud tears to my eyes.  They are well on their way to being trilingual, the clever little things.

Next trip we are all off to Guatemala for a wedding and a step back in time, but got to organize another party, and looking forward to the French food tasting evening on the roof terrace of the Sevilla, (very posh hotel in Habana Vieja).