Psychotically enough it’s been months since the last entry. The flipside to having nothing to write about is having too much, and so little time to write about it that it ends up slipping away.

Well, now that we’ve acknowledged that, let’s move on shall we.

What my keyboard-calloused fingers are happy about these days is that the new 6 minute trailer is done. The material was having its way with me before the holidays, smacking me upside the head and daring me to splice stuff together. But I stuck with it and birthed a preliminary cut that has since served as a deeply flawed but incredibly useful template for a lot of the footage. Going back in to any given scene has been relatively simple, and Annika and I have built something with it that we’re both proud of.  Check out the new clip!

On a whole other note we’re off to Berlin next week. SH*T! has been accepted into the Documentary Campus Masterschool. It’s quite prestigious, boasting a panel of top european commissioning editors and professionals who are there to mentor and teach us. Coolest (and most costly) of all, each of the 4 sessions happens in a different European city. Berlin is the beginning, followed by Graz in Austria, Krakow in Poland, and Leipzig back in Germany. A phenomenal opportunity which just happens to be fraught with complications.

Not least of which is the cost of to-ing and from-ing 3 people four times this year, PLUS wherever our stories take us in the interim. A short term solution has been decided: I’m going for three weeks and Annika is staying on in Sweden with Sirianna at the family farm until the second session, just 4 weeks later in Graz, which I’ve opted out of. My main interest is in getting to know these people and diving into the first session, on writing a documentary, as seen through the eyes of commissioning editors.

So it kind of sucks. I’ll be without my wife and daughter for something along the lines of 5 weeks while I work as much as I can to make up for the last year of being a professional documentary filmmaker at a time when there’s very little money to spread around. I’ll miss my girls like crazy, but it does all make sense, and the good news is that Annika and I are so goddamn digital now that we can keep working whether together or separated. And at least I’ll have the wolves to keep me company.

We leave on Saturday. Needless to say, this week will be insane.

I remember when a friend came to me, troubled and paralysed. She looped for some time, essentially saying that she wanted to, needed to talk, but didn’t know where to begin.

“Just start anywhere and see where it goes.”

It seemed to do the trick then. Now, sticking to my own advice is turning out to be a bigger deal. There’s a mountain of footage to sift through, a million possible choices, and a hell of a lot riding on the ones I make. And while “paralysed” doesn’t really apply, I’ll willingly confess to being troubled.

However, today marks the first day since our return, where there’s been time for Annika and I to sit down and go through our material in anything like a sustained manner. Up to now it’s been one of us working/watching while the other takes care of another, critical task, then swapping places, keeping notes and sending e-mails back and forth all the while.

Insane, right?

Camilla and Vincent discussing Kibera’s flying toilets

One day of intense discussion in our little home editing suite, with a pair of wolves snoozing at our feet, and PRESTO! Once again the ideas are being bandied about. Therein lies the stellar advantage of producing with a partner: the possibility that one can nudge something somewhere that the other person never suspected. All of a sudden something`s knocked loose and I can see past the mountains of distractions to the real value of our material. I`ve kicked Annika out of the suite for the time being to completely immerse myself in the story. That process is understandably trickyfor her from a collaborator point of view, but she also knows that that means things are happening.

Rest assured darlin`: we`re sitting on one hell of a story.

Where the hell to begin… Is it with the dwindling memories of a shoot that ended a month and a half ago? Or the insanity of reinserting ourselves back into a life that we simultaneously decided to turn upside down? Or maybe a description of the early October deep freeze.

What I do know is that leaping into spontaneous renovations, swapping rooms between your daughter‘s and your office, and having a garage sale while you purge stuff you’ve had for DECADES, is not what you want to be getting into the day after you get back from a long trip. Especially not when you have a gazillion grant deadlines coming up, and hours and hours of material you’re dying to sink your teeth into.

But I suppose you all deserve at least some closure from the Kenya leg, so let’s start with that.

That my friends is the well-named Big Willie, the Kenyan sound guy who did the days I didn’t. He’s as solid as he looks, with a steady hand on the boom and a strong arm to guide a cameraman. Plus, as a guy who grew up in the slums, he’s another legitimizing factor to let us pass through with relative ease. Between him and Vincent, we’re good for locals.

Vincent, who impressed Annika & I so much that we had a split second “let’s make the film about him instead” moment. Well, not instead, but afterwards. We’ll see how that pans out. But on my last day in Kibera he brought me to his pad, half way between the top level (train tracks), and the bottom (shit-packed open cess-pits). It’s an off the beaten track joint, tiny but with everything he needs, and from what I saw relatively quiet. He read aloud an essay he’d written about Kibera, growing up there, fighting for justice and never giving up. After spending some time with him, those qualities were the easiest thing to believe about him.

So when Annika shattered her toe on the bed frame, we found that the only thing she could wear on her feet without doubling over in agony was her flip flops. Just what you want to be wearing in a shit-strewn slum. Sweet fucking jesus man. I swear I heard a “crack” on the impact, right before the blue streak of cussin’ words that flew out of Annika’s mouth, in Swedish, English, French, and I’d swear a bit of her rusty Nepalese. Whatever language she used, the inflection was clear: “I’ll destroy you bed frame. I’ll cut you up, burn you and make you pay.”

Somehow, she managed to marshall her strength and head back out to Kibera, wondering what other cruel joke the universe had planned for her.

For my part, I just spent time keeping Sirianna from running all over her mom’s feet.

Pick up day. Annika needed to rest up a bit after weathering the dust and intensity of Kibera several days in a row, and the exhaustion of the pain in her foot. She looked after Siri while Alex, Jack & I went hunting for shots of Nairobi proper, including a mechanics “slum”, a cliffside where guys tear apart any car that doesn’t move, the downtown business core, which was disapointing after the senses shattering vistas of the cooler downtown area where our driver pointed out huge holes in the gangsta’-grafitti-covered local buses, where actual satelite dishes used to sit until the municipal powers that be decidced they made the vehicles too lopsided when they drove. Damn right.

Then we went to the train station for the innevitable ride through Kibera. You pull out of the station and pass two golf courses. After the second one you’re in the middle of the dustiest place I’ve ever been, home to 1.5 million people, Kibera. It’s like “WHAM!” One second you’re looking aat a field in the distance, the next you’re inches away from an endless row of rickety steel huts. I’ve seen the view from the train in a few movies, but nothing prepared me (or the camera!) for the dust. Sweet mother of god. For a minute there we couldn’t even breathe, and we were some of the lucky ones inside the train instead of hanging off the top and sides. Outrageous conditions, but it rolls off the locals’ backs pretty easily, so maybe I’m just really spoiled. At one point along the tracks there’s another golf course, separated by a high cinder block wall with broken glass mortared onto the top as makeshift barb-wire. And on the other side is corrugated tin shack roofs as far as the eye can see. TV antennas on seemingly all of them and people, people everywhere.

We got off at Kibera station, just past the end of the slum. With dusk gently setting in there was a beautiful deep blue sky to contrast with the intense red of the dirt.

Nairobi & Kibera. It remained extraordinary. If it wasn’t the fleet of dudes running around hauling rickshaw style carts stacked with water behind them, it was the mountains of bags of shit laying around the slum, or the workers who put the man back in manual (for the tiniest goddamn thing). Or maybe it was the traffic, which is best described as a parking lot. You’d likely make better time by sitting there with your eyes closed, trying to WISH yourself where you’d like to be.

What I can tell you is that the pool water was extremely cold, which was occassionally a problem since I was the alpha babysitter during the shoot. It was the Kenyan winter after all.

It was amazing for Annika and I to have Sirianna there with us.. For practicality’s sake we tended to eat at the hotel most evenings, and she’d end up piroueting around the dining room to the sounds of the staff pianist, so so would we. She charmed the hell out of everyone, but more importantly she’s just a phenomenal kid who’s energizing to have around

Annika and I had had a few talks about whether or not to bring Siri to Kenya, or India, or Latin America, the obvious issue being that we’re going into slums, or since it would mean one of us would have to babysit while the other handled the shoot. But just seeing how well this amazing kid would settle into ANY environment, and just the warmth of having her around… Well, like I’ve said to Annika before, if we can’t work our family into what we do then what’s the goddamn point. As it turns out, the more acurate way of putting it is to say that having her with us only makes the shoot better. She’s magic. Annika was initially concerned, as the one who’s closest to the project, that her mommyhood could be distracting, or vice versa. But on the contrary, she found that at the end of the day, Siri was an incredible reward to come home to. She helped her to focus, and galvanized her resolve on long difficult shoots. And I think those of you who’ve had the good fortune to be on the receiving end of a full-blown Sirianna hug-tackle know what I’m talking about.

As we had just the one bed in our room, and with the work being pretty exhausting, Annika would go to bed with Siri at around 9, while I’d go down to the lounge and transfer all the footage on to the backup drives, then my AVID. Long process, but it needed to be done. And at least it kept me abreast of what was going on out there, on the days when I’d be taking care of Siri.

And that took us all the way to the end of the shoot, and to be honest we were ready to head home.

There was the little matter of the wolves, who’d been at the kennel for the last five weeks. But on the whole, it was simply time. Living, working and travelling with your partner is great, but it can take a toll. We got home exhausted and not a little bit overwhelmed. We had with us countless hours of footage, a burden of debt after having been obliged to sink some of our own money into the production, and a lot of questions about the future. Are we insane? Is this the right path? Does anybody care about what we’re trying to do?

On the other hand, the rush of being in a place like Kibera, or meeting someone like Vincent, or working on something that has the potential to create real change: powerful arguments all their own.

The answers  to those questions are still out there somewhere, not for lack of looking. And rather than stand still and waste time sorting it out, the better option is to rush head first into the adventure and force it, bend it into shape with pure will.

Right?

Next: We illustrate the foolishness of rushing head first into an adventure and forcing it, bending it into shape with pure will, when you’re already exhausted.

Like I said last time, Willie got on board for sound, but not until the second day. So that explains the pic of me strapped into Marco’s sound gear on that first outing. Kind of nerve wracking to be slammed into a wall of life like Kibera AND do your first ever day of sound recording, but I’m told i pulled it off. I actually really got into it, even though I was probably holding the boom the wrong way and had sore arms to show for it later on.

But that’s not even trippy compared to the wake up call of a certain little blonde girl, who passed out in the car on the way to Kibera, and woke up in my arms, walking in the middle of a super dusty slum packed to the gills with people, including kids practicing their best “how are you” chants to us as we walked by. The first thing she said was “something’s a little bit stinky.”

Kid, I said, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

But first a step back. We got dropped off at the UN HABITAT building at the mouth of one of the slum entrances, and were greeted by Vincent, Dixon and a host of other dudes who are all participating in Camilla’s project. They’re amazing guys, each inspirational in their respective ways. Vincent’s just come on board the project, but one of the many other things he does is prevent kids from getting into crime, not as a cop or anything, as a role model.

They are our point of entry into the slum, the local dudes who legitimize our presence and help us get deeper. They all firmly believe in Camilla’s project, and so, by extension, us.

Seems like a good jumping on point for what Camilla’s project actually is: the Peepoo bag.

There’s no space in Kibera. 1.5 million people live in a tiny area and do a pretty good job of surviving their poverty and lack of privacy. There’s sure as hell no room for toilets, let alone any kind of system to deal with the sludge that’s left in them. Instead people use plastic bags to shit in. They tie them up and throw them away, earning the monicker: flying toilet. The bags tend to get disposed of in Kibera so every health risk stays. It doesn’t take a genius to look at the crowded conditions and figure out the danger of all those people living in each other’s shit. When you figure that 2.8 billion people live without sanitation facilities, in poverty, it’s not a stretch to believe that half the world’s hospital beds are filled with people suffering from sanitation related disease.

What Camilla’s bag does… www.peepoople.com is turn the problem into a solution, and to a bunch of solutions at the same time. First, the bag itself, designed by her architect partner to function as a safe, disposable toilet, made from the only grade of plastic that fully biodegrades. It’s designed to be clean, efficient, and nice to look at. People really like them. Here’s what it does: provide a safe alternative to people with no other options, and give the opportunity for communities to clean up their streets, their air and their dignity. Then there’s the genius of what it does: turn shit into fertilizer. With a small quantity of UREA at the bottom of the bag, all the pathogens in the shit are destroyed over the course of a couple of weeks once it’s buried in the ground. In a place literally covered in shit and badly in need of fertilizer for food, the Peepoo bag is a stroke of genius.

So, back in Kibera, it just makes sense that these guys are behind Camilla and the project. It ain’t the elders who are going to change things, it’s the next generation, like Vincent. (The elders were actually on us for cash for allowing us to film there). For him the status quo sucks, and he’s actually doing something about it.

But back to DAY 1. Like I said, Siri woke up in my arms and was a superstar in her adjustment to the situation. She scampered onto my shoulders and had even more people looking at her and trying to touch her skin. But we moved like that through the first leg, until we got to the first meeting point with some of the other young men helping out, a huge dusty soccer field getting ready for a girl’s match. We followed everyone inside a building at the opposite side of the field, and shot a meeting to discuss the implementation of the next phase of the bag: bumping up the scale and distributing them to families.

Like in every slum, it takes about half a second for the area to fill up with kids looking into the camera and making lots of noise. Long story short, my first day as a sound man was punctuated by cursing the mic for picking up every voice outside the door, and the slam of a soccer ball on the wall all of 1 foot away from the mic I’ve got turned up high to pick up the conversation in the room. Soccer sucks, I said to myself.

Meanwhile it turns out that a warrior shepherd has been leading Siranna to his herd of cattle and letting her stroke them.

She later got on the … bullpen? Of soccer players practicing by the side of the actual field, which was actually a dustbowl. It turns out that it was the first time anyone, and I mean anyone had seen a white baby in Kibera, so while she’s doing her thing there’s a whole crowd, to match that of the football game, watching her.

She eventually got spooked because every kid there wanted to touch her skin, but if she was otherwise conscious of the audience she didn’t let on. I gotta confess, part of me was thinking “what an amazing experience for her” while the other part was watching her like a hawk, ready to jump in, knives out, any second. But that’s just the daddy in me. The reasonable me was enjoying watching her new pink dress turn red in the never edning red Kibera dust.

Our next stop was deeper in Kibera, to visit an old lady who’s been part of the bag’s pilot distribution and testing project. She’s taken her bags to the garden she cultivates, on the only spot of open land I’ve seen in the area, on the outskirts of the houses and cesspit dumps. But today was just her home, getting to meet her, see where she lives and make sure she’s cool with being a character. She’s a hell of a personality, tough but not jaded, calloused but warm, dead serious in the eyes, but with an awesome sense of humour. She’s in, and in long term which is what we were hoping for. It’s not everyone who’s gonna be brilliant at talking about the bags of their own shit that’re going intro the earth, to help grow food for their grandchildren. But we got ‘er.

The journey back to the van brought us past a never ending stream of children and livestock, barbers with amazing handpainted signs, coal sellers, people hanging laundry, cooking, hauling goat shit out of the few gutters there are and into the middle of the street, corner stores and stands with people selling batches of tomatoes. You can’t turn your cheek without hitting someone else. Hopefully it’s a someone, and not a something.

Sirianna walked back most of the way, and had a full procession behind her by the time we reached the van. By that point we were all pretty much ready for a break. The crush of humanity is exhilirating, but exhausting. We would have more photos to show you, but taking them in the slum is a sensitive affair, so we have to make do with the back drops behind us. For today at least.

Or rather THEY do. Siri, we decided, was safe enough in there as long as we were with a large group of respected locals and she deigned to stay close to us. Even so, between the dust and lord knows what kind of unsanitary cuts and abbrasions that could happen, it was a no brainer choice that she, and by extension I, wouldn’t be going in again. Sucks, but that was kind of the plan from the outset. I was just kind of hoping that reality on the ground would dispel any reservations we might have had and allowed us to bring Siri in there in all good conscience. Helas.

The reunion with Siri was fabulous, a sort of calm before the storm. She was sad to say bye to her grandparents, but happy to be headed towards her mom. She still managed to sleep for 2+ hours on the train which made the next leg of the adventure possible.

That was a quick reunion with her mom, then out to our next hotel, a re-fitted 747 right next to the airport. We mainly wanted to try and cut down on travel time at the ungodly hour of 4am the following morning, as the airport is way the ass out of Stockholm proper. Cramped quarters, but the company was right.

There`s a shuttle leaves from that hostel every 15 minutes as of 5am. What they neglect to tell you is that the stop is a full football field`s length away from the hotel. I don`t know how many of you have travelled for almost a month and a half with a 3 year, planning for a shoot on 2 continents over 2 and a half weeks, but those of you who have might have some idea of the volume of shit we have with us, and the impossibility of hauling all that gear all that way. Those of you who haven`t simply have to take my word that the next 20 minutes were hell, expensive and infuriating.

But we made the plane, and what a joint. Annika swears the end of the world is nigh. Part of her reasoning being that the lack of passengers on every trans-continental plane on this trip have been pretty much nil, so everybody`s nesting or stashing greenbacks in their mattresses. All I know is that I was profoundly grateful to have this much space for our little team.

Pretty nice, eh. Not to mention that Kenyan Airlines is da bomb. Chillest flight crew in the world, including a dude in the 3D emergency procedures video who starts out looking like he`s making time with the stewardess, and ends up super-chill, taking his time while he inflates his life vest, seemigly in grave danger in spite of the `take a load off man` look in his eyes. Meanwhile, the steward serving us lunch says `something to drink,“ so I say “red wine.“ Annika says something too, and he puts two bottles of wine on my table. Annika takes one, and the guy says “oh, you wanted wine too?“

Like I said, pretty chill.

In any case, all that space made it easy to pick our spots for the single best view I`ve ever had from a plane, bar none, by a longshot…

Goddamn Sahara, complete with shadows on the ground from cloud `cover`above. The sheltering sky indeed. Siri was passed out and the others were working (chumps), so I was free to run from window to window, looking for the best angle I could find to see the spectacle below. It just goes on and on. A landscape that always looks the same but is constantly changing thanks to the wind and time. Made me feel pretty small. So I decided to at least document the chumps, working away.

And the next thing I know, we`re in Kenya, and everyone is still chill. Pretty quick VISA deal, nightmare predictions notwithstanding. Pretty quick baggage claim, but I guess the almost total absence of passengers didn`t hurt on that score. Then a swoop and a zoom and we`re back at the hotel. It`s right in front of the Israeli embassy so it has the reputation of being the best protected hotel in Nairobi. I can`t account for that, but it is pretty beautiful and quiet, aside from the frogs, doing some kind of maniacal croaking ritual out near the pond. We all hit the sack pretty early, thinking about our first excursion into kibera the following day.

* * *

There`s nothing like waking up after sleeping on the hardest bed in existence. You really feel your back, and the flatness of your cheek on wood, the twist of your ankle on unyielding surfaces; just enough to get you bright eyed and bushy tailed about the day. Annika complained of a kind of wooziness, a spinning head, either because of the altitude or… who knows what, but not since she smashed, and I mean SMASHED her pinky toe on the bed frame this morning. It’s still really difficult for her to walk, and the swelling is still going up. Great way to start off a new shoot… But she held it together.

And I went down to get a bag of ice for her toe. The guy at the counter says “… OK, 125 shillings.” I look back at him, sceptical, and he’s holding his ground. Any thought I had of saying “fuck you” went out the window when I thought of Annika’s pain, so I said “sure, but I forgot my cash back in the room: I’ll be right back”. When I do get back there’s another woman at the bar, so I say “a glass of ice please…” and she says “ok.” Simple as that. I go and hold it on Annika’s toe, and fifteen minutes later: the phone. It’s ice boy, looking for his cash. Says if I don’t pay he’ll have to. I say let me talk to your supervisor so you don’t have to. He says ok. 10 minutes later the supervisor calls me. I’m saying this is ridiculous when he tells me if I’d been sitting in the bar it’d be free and fine, no problem. But they had to order the “bucket” (plastic bag) and the ice, and there’s NO WAY TO CANCEL IT. It took a while and more phone calls and me turning into “why the fuck can’t you just put it back in the goddamn freezer,” but the order was cancelled. All I could think to myself was “way to come accross as a colonialist asshole, asshole.”

This morning we also met “big” Willie, our new sound recordist, another, you guessed it, chill dude. Luckily he’s equipped, having started a company with some friends, so he can fill in the blanks from equipment ultra generously lent to us (thanks Fania!!), with a few fancier accessories. We only met him for a short time, but I’m looking forward to working with him. Welcome aboard man.

We had a quick lunch, then piled into the van and headed out to Kibera.

I’m a bit too tired to give my overwhelmed impressions of Kibera right now, but I’ll leave you with a few pics to whet your appetites, and freak out Sirianna’s grandparents. The details will follow mañana.

Been skipping days. Not me, I’ve lived every day, but the writing has skipped, so today you get a bunch in one fell swoop.

Sunday we picked up the pace a bit, from the Saturday off in any case. We went out in the morning to grab street viz: biogasbuss and ethanol public transportation shots and some general city and street material to fill in the blanks left empty after the spectacular boat shoot of a couple of days earlier. The lazy Sunday, empty street shots of Stockholm ought to be quite a contrast to the streets of Kibera and Nairobi, teeming with life.

We also managed to get some nice overhead shots of Stockholm and its harbour from the top of a fifties style platform overlooking the whole damn thing. It looks pretty dated now, as does a lot of the Slussen area (although charming in that fifties way), but Annika tells me it was the height of hip and modernity back in its day. It’s not hard to believe, but it still amazes me to see how quickly a structure can look aged and generate nostalgia.

The last shot I asked for was of the Stomatol sign, another leftover from the fifties. It’s an ad for an old, no-longer-existent toothpaste brand and an iconic image on the banks of Stockholm. It’s even animated in neon at night, flowing toothpaste out of the tube and onto a brush. Very cool. But also the source of ridicule directed at yours truly, as the entire rest of the crew, even my beloved wife, refused to see the glaringly obvious fact that the bristles on the sign’s toothbrush are actually teeth.

I thought it was a brilliant design idea. My crew thinks I’ve lost it. So any of you designers out there, come to my rescue. Tell them the truth.

Then it was off to Camilla and Anders’ home, a lovely row house in a suburb of Stockholm, nestled right in a picturesque bay full of private boats.  I’ve written about missing my girl for the ten days we’ve been up north; imagine the knife twisting in Camilla’s heart, as she leaves her family for the seventh 8-day stint this year. She leaves behind two young daughters, and of course Anders, her partner and the PeePoo bag’s architect.

I handled a bunch of scenes between Camilla and her girls, while Annika got Anders’ engine revving for his architectural interview the following day. He’s a strong personality, used to being in charge of a given situation and very conscious of what one says or does can do to people’s image of you. But Annika’s a magician, and by the end of the day he was totally comfortable.

We ended our day at the Pelikan, a beautiful old tavern that’s gotten super hip and pricey, but which serves the biggest honkin’ meatballs you’ll ever see. With monkeys frescoed on the ceiling and overpriced beer washing the meaty fare down our gullets, it had the feel of a last supper, except, y’know, happier.

* * *

Monday, and the pace gets slacker. Sort of.

Started the day at Swedish TV, and a meeting with a producer of our acquaintance. They’ve been hesitating getting on board because as far as they’re concerned, there’s nothing controversial about shit to a Swede. But then Annika and I jumped in, pitched together and worked a little magic. Annika’s got a beautiful touch that helps people get it in very short order, and today was no exception. Plus, with the fire under our asses of the whirlwind during the World Water Week, and having watched the story truly unfold rather than just writing about what we’d like to have happen, we just knocked it out of the park. Producer dude didn’t have a chance.

But that was then. Time to get back to work.

Our primary target today was Anders’ brain, and the process behind his work. His office is jammed with Maquettes, of older buildings, newer buildings he’s working on now, and, of course, the Peepoo bag. He’s all about light, space and round windows. He has a maquette for what he called the “cheese” building. Looks like a huge block of Swiss, with round windows that at scale would be 2 ½ meters tall. The circles are kind of a trademark of his, at least from the time the building was designed, and what I tripped on is the fact that the round windows are form BEFORE function. They look purely decorative because they’re so unconventional, but they work on the same principle as the arch, redistributing weight via their circular forms instead of bearing it all on a conventional straight foundation. Changing your windows might be ass-expensive, but it’s a great idea.

We covered a lot of architectural theory, but the bag we saved for the following day, when I would sadly be absent. Sadly but happily because I’ll be GOING TO GET MY GIRL!

We headed back to Camilla’s joint for one last shoot, and a meal prepared by the maestro himself. Dude knows how to make a rip-roarin’ pasta sauce, and he doesn’t skimp on the garlic. Fresh bread, good wine, one last load of laundry and it was time to hump back to the city, leaving our equipment for Camilla to drive in tomorrow and taking the subway back. En route to the station I spied an abandoned, sleek, silver coffee pot. We’ve got enough gear to carry, especially since we’ll be moving on to Nairobi in a couple of days, but Claes lives here. He needs a good coffee pot, so I awarded it to him, as a kind of trophy for being a great sound recordist and all around awesome guy. Enjoy the coffee dude. I miss you already.

* * *

And now here I am on a train, speeding down to Lund to pick up my girl, while back in Stockholm my crew gears up for one last shoot. It’s strange not to be there. I’ll miss Stockholm; beautiful city with a groovy vibe.

But I’m also looking forward to Nairobi and Kibera, and working with “Big” Willie, our next sound guy. For all you filmmakers out there, never underestimate the value of having a local sound recordist. It opens doors. And besides, Willie comes recommended, with a pretty good CV to boot.

Until then, I’ll be running Sirianna up to Stockholm, then we’ll all head up to the airport and our overnight hotel…

http://www.jumbohostel.com/

Not bad, eh. Besides, our flight is at 4am. No damn way we’re hauling our asses all the way out there at that ungodly hour when we could be right next door.

But that about does it for Sweden for now. I won’t miss the prices, but it’s been a great leg. I think I speak for the crew in saying it was quite a bit of fun, especially once we got out of the conference black hole. If there’s a blonder country out there, I don’t know it. Mahar, ye’d do well to haul your butt out here.

Next stop: Nairobi. Be seeing you.

Ah Saturday in Stockholm. Time for a little r n’ r. Which in my case means babysitting drives as I import all the week’s footage into AVID under the optimistic dellusion that I’ll actually have time to start working with the material before I get back to Montreal. The good news is I can’t waiit to start cuttng it up. Like I said to Annika yesterday: it’s trippy, we’re GETTING IT. Everything we’ve been writing and planning and hoping for, all the story we wanted to tell and the way we wanted to tell it. We’re getting it.

Way to jinx a good groove Phlip. Nice.

Anyway, back to Sunday. It’s decided that I’ll join Annika to visit our friend Pernilla, recently moved back and re-Swedified after a 3 year stint in Montreal. Crazilly, she looks even more Swedish in Sweden…

See?

Twas a beautiful afternoon spent on what I’ve dubbed “big-ass park island,” since that’s exactly what it is. Felt like we were walking for a long time before we reached the cafe (don’t get me wrong: lovely walk), then I looked at the map and discovered we’d only covered about one 10,000 of the goddamn island. It’s easy to see why Annika pines after the nature this country has to offer.

Getting back was a trip of its own (no pun intended). You have to head to the edge of the island to grab a ferry, that saves you at least an hour of curving around the endless island coast to make it accross the series’ of bridges that’d bring you back. Pretty wicked: boat taxi. And you board next to an amusement park, to the soothing sounds of blood curdling screams from the torture victims on the craziest rides I’ve ever seen. Made me wonder how the hell I ever rode the things.

We ended up heading out to Pernilla’s pad, actually her parents, for a lovely meal, and a desperate laundry load (there are no bloody laundromats in this backwards country!). When her folks got home from an evening out we were treated to a sampling of rare Swedish single malt, good enough to get this Scotsman’s approval. All in all a lovely and well deserved chunk of downtime.

A few days away from cyberspace, but no time off.

I met Camilla for the first time last Sunday, but the last week’s been intense enough to really pick up the slack of a lifetime without knowing each other. She’s phenomenal on a whole bunch of levels, mainly for the work she’s doing (www.peepoople.com), but also for the way she holds her head high when the complacent powers that be of the water and sanitation world tell her that her product is degrading or not what’s needed. She has all the answers, they all make sense, and at least she’s doing something.

She’s also amazing because she knows how to work the crowd for the bag’s sake, and for ours. She’ll figure out who doesn’t like her product, then take them down, on camera. She’ll speak with whatever bigwwig looks important enough to benefit either her project, or ours. She has limitless energy and an abundance of sympathy for the people who’ll benefit most from what she’s doing. She’s the kind of character who can make you forget all the headaches that make shooting a drag, and look only at the possibility that what you’re doing can do good, maybe even as much good as what she’s doing.

DAY 1: We set up at the first seminar on sanitation of the day, and learned one sure thing about the people attending: they`re really good at organizing conferences, and talking, and talking… No wonder sanitation is the only one of the millenium goals that hasn`t budged at all; between the talking and the coffee breaks, there’s just no time.

Camilla was late, which was good since we caught her walking into the seminar. We made it through and got some good footage. We even made a couple of interesting contacts. Who knows…

Following Camilla was a bit like that for the rest of the week: attending seminars, meeting people and inviting them to her presentation on the Wednesday, handing out Peepoo bags to anyone who’d listen. And the presentation went pretty well too. There was her, Göran, who expanded Ikea`s empire into the US, and a Dutch ex-banker who`s now part of the consortium. They make a knockout team, and the proof is in the fact that, for once at the conference, everyone had good things to say about it, even if they had questions.

In the middle of all this, I`m trying to get the press office rep to give with the info already: How do I get my crew into the royal banquet to videotape the award ceremony of the Stockholm Water prize to Dr Pathak, a character we`ve been in touch with and following for some time?“ Oh you can`t do that. Royal protocol. Who can answer my question? Oh, they`re not here right now. Can`t help you.
Sigh.

So the person who could help me finally showed up, along with Dr Pathak`s VP and force of nature, Anita, who promptly, not only arranged for the crew to get access, but for us to be invited to the banquet as personal guests of Dr Pathak. We`d also be in the company (long distance company anyway), of his majesty prince Philip, who`d be presenting the award to Dr Pathak.

Pretty surreal.

So Thursday consisted of furiously shoppping for anything presentable enough for a royal banquet, that wouldn`t necessarily break the already broken bank, an interview with Jack Simm the toilet man, and a royal banquet. 

I have to hand it to the Swedes: they really know how to build a city hall. Pretty goddamn stunning place to look at, as the useless press agent, and a Dutch minister (long story) kept checking out Annika and the badly dressed me beside her, standing with the guests of honor two hours after being spotted lying on the ground of the conference center, standing in for turds that will later be added in by the animator. And all we could see in these guys eyes was “who in christ`s name are these two anyway?“ Be lying if I said I didn`t take some pleasure from the experience. At the banquet were 700 tuxedoed VIPs, and us. It was nice later, sitting at the Indian delegation’s table, drinking coffe and cognac, and watching the pleasure on Dr Pathak`s face as he basked in the glow of the nights` entertainments, and the attention lavished upon him. And I thought that this guy, who struggled for 40 years to do good for other people deserves every accolade. Like Camilla, his work makes what we`re doing seem a little more possible. And the fact that for once the award went to someone working in sanitation instead of water brought up my optimism for the film a notch.

Oh yeah, the evening ended with some guy wearing a flashlight on his head carrying a surfboard across the city hall lawn, with the Stockholm skyline behind him. If there was a wave to catch, he was the only one who could see it.

Then Friday we struck gold. Camilla in heated debate with a woman from Kenya, denouncing the bag, and Camilla defending it to the hilt. Quite an amazing turn. Then she went right up and introduced herself to Dr Pathak, providing a link we were going to ask her to make anyway. Then we got to see the aftermath of the conference: Tons and tons of books and paper being thrown out, left behind by the delegates because it`s more expensive and not necessarily greener to ship them back, or forward to the next conference. An unbelieveable waste from an inconceiveable source. What the hell are these people thinking? FUCK THE PRINTER! GET A WEBSITE!

Everything`s calmed down a touch since then. Camilla`s off until Sunday, and we`ve had a chance to step back and catch our breath and to start digitizing the colossal amount of footage we`ve shot. I’m happy but the editor in me is terrified.

But yeah, there`s Sunday, then Monday, then Tuesday I jump on a train to pick up my girl from the south! Then it`s right back up to Stockholm for one night in an airport hotel that`s set up in an old jumbo jet, then a flight to Nairobi. Trippy as hell. Kilimanjaro… I mean Kibera, here we come.

PLUS… posters for Tom Jones live all over Stockholm, his voice on the radio pumping out Delilah behind me. Nuff said.

There was no time to take production stills today because I was holding a goddamn boom, but they would have been cool: Alex and Annika on cameras A & B, Claes and me on Booms 1 & 2. Camilla bouncing through the crowds telling them all about her presentation tomorrow. Running accross Dr Pathak, our main Delhi character, while he gears up to receive the Stockholm Water Prize and $150 grand in cold hard cash.

Strangest moment: when my cheap old headphones disintegrated, leaving little black flakes of vynil stuck all over my ears and neck.

I’m probably a bit too fatigued to be writing this. But tomorrow: Camilla’s presentation and post-presentation meeting, more toilet hilarity, and a probable evening of schmoozing with sanitation nerds (their term, not mine)to see if we can all help each other.

Truly, the film is in the beginning throes of taking on its own life. Couldn’t be happier.

Except if my girl was here.

And so the next leg of our shit adventure begins.

It’s been a tough ride getting here, to a train bound for Stockholm from the south of Sweden, where Annika’s family lives. Between the million and one things one needs to do before going on a shoot, to the family obligations that, while desirable, often get in the way of a moment’s bottom line, to the unforseen disasters that eat time, energy, and sometimes will, it sometimes seems like a miracle that we’ve gotten this far.

This morning was the toughest: leaving Sirianna in Lund with her grandmother, on a 10day stint until I leave Annika in Stockholm to come back and pick her up. That’ll be one big ass train ride packed with joy, but 10 days away. She’s a tough little cookie, so seeing her sad is always a bit of a shock. It was a lump in my throat moment, waving to my girl through the tiny train window, while she buried her face in her granny’s arms. That’s also the biggest “what the *@! are we doing” moment that I get. As Annika’s wisely taken to reminding us, this film has the potential to do some real good.

There aren’t a lot of things I’ve done in my life that I could honestly call important. But I think this is. And Annika’s reminder of that has helped me to put all that back into perspective. All the seemingly endless challenges of pre-production, the frustration of , in the middle of a recession, pushing a film that commissioners have openly said they would have financed 100% just a year ago, and the pain of separation, all become a little more tolerable when I manage to take a step back and look at the whole shebang with the perspective of “I’m doing something good.”

But guess what: gloom and doom is not the only part of this recipe. We’re going on a shoot! We’ve got  Alex the cameraman from Montreal, and Claes who is our Stockholm sound recordist  (that Annika’s been raving about since she last worked with him a couple of months ago), and the full support of our Stockholm character Camilla (she and Anders, the Peepoople, are behind us and in front of the cameras 100%), the Stockholm Water Week organizers, our respective families and, right now, the Swedish train service! Now, finally, the fun begins again.

And with sunlight breaking through the nordic sky, and the Swedish landscape zooming by the window of my speed train, I gotta fess’ up to a pretty huge optimism. Annika and I have become a pretty well-oiled awesome, sexy shit-tackling machine. I’ve got every confidence that together we can master this project and really make it count.

Didn’t expect this to disintegrate into a rah rah session. I’m sure I’ll find some more gloom as we go along.

Gotta focus past the chick chattering on her cell phone next to us and read a fresh document. 3 hours away is Stockholm, and the infamy of SH*T!