Heartbroken in London
The incredible story behind that film
I had just been left by my husband. With him, I had two children and produced two electronic music albums. I thought he was the love of my life. His departure left me devastated, with an overwhelming desire to disappear. During the first school holidays after he left, he took the children. Unable to bear the loneliness in Paris, I decided to fly to London to visit my dear friend Bea Brunet, who had recently moved there with her new love, Howie B. But in my state of absolute distress, I couldn’t stand their company, so I took a hotel room.
There, alone, I broke down. The tears were endless. Before leaving, I had bought a Nokia phone to stay in touch with my children. After twenty-four hours of uninterrupted crying, exhausted, I noticed by chance that my Nokia had a camera. Curious, I tried it out.
Having a bit of an acting background, I started crying again, this time for the camera. When I rewatched the footage, reality hit me : forty years old, my face distorted by tears – what a miserable sight !
So, I decided to film myself raw, naked in bed, then standing. It was a revelation. A forty-year-old woman, not so bad after all, very different from the image my husband had reflected back to me. I finally saw myself as I was : a woman alone, vulnerable, but real, in this room on the twenty-fifth floor of a London hotel. I wondered what I was really crying about. Then, I went outside, camera in hand, to capture London : the taxi, the bus, the streets, the Tate Museum, the Millennium Bridge where I met Bea. I kept filming.
Back in Paris, I began filming the riverbanks, the Eiffel Tower, before heading home. The videos stayed on my phone for a few days. Then I showed them to my dear actress friend, Elise Hobbé. “Girl, what you’ve got on your Nokia is a movie !!!” she exclaimed. Initially skeptical, she managed to convince me that I needed to edit this footage.
At Fnac, where I had bought the phone, I asked for help from customer service to transfer the videos to my Mac. A kind but overworked young man agreed to help me between two customers. After several back-and-forths and just as many disappointments, he told me that his cousin, an editor, could help me. And that’s how I met Allan Gabali, thanks to Styve, the young man from Fnac.
Allan, cigarette in hand, watched the videos and said, “This is great, I’ll edit it.” Styve added, “Yes, I’ll help too.” I was thrilled ! We got to work. But the first attempts were disappointing. The video quality left much to be desired.
That’s when I discovered a short film competition organized by Orange, during the Cannes Film Festival. Six hundred participants, ten days to create a five-minute film. This challenge gave us new energy. We were already imagining ourselves with champagne in hand, at the Carlton.
Allan cut the footage, keeping only the essence. Styve, a graphic designer and musician, added words over the images and created the credits. We formed an amazing team, funny and tight-knit.
For the image, I had to resign myself to filming again, this time in the darkness of Allan’s bathroom, improvising some effects. We added the sentences, but something was still missing. In the meantime, Styve sent me heartfelt letters that brought me back to life. I had fallen in love with him.
We also needed royalty-free music. I used two tracks from my old band, 9 avenue B, and for the end, I called Hervé Philippe from my record label “Mélodie” to ask for permission to use ‘Embraceable You’ by Diana Washington. He enthusiastically agreed.
We named our production “Les Productions Parallèles” because Styve said we had met in parallel dimensions, between life and death. Allan submitted the film to Orange just before the deadline. We began dreaming of Cannes.
Fifteen days later, Styve called me. We were in the top twenty-five out of six hundred. Crazy ! But we still had to wait for the final decision. Only the top five would go to Cannes. We weren’t among them. A huge wave of disappointment washed over us.
Soon after, a production company called me : “Are you Sophie Reverdi ?” The film critic from Libération, Annick Rivoire, had written an article praising my film as the only original one among the six hundred entries. A victory, a true liberation.
The film was selected for the Imaginaria Festival in Bari, Italy, where it met with notable success. Then at the Pocket Film Festival, and it was shown on the big screen at Beaubourg, at the Forum des Images, during several thematic evenings.
So, when a friend tells you there’s a movie in your Nokia, believe her.
Letters of Destiny
These sublime letters saved my life, and they were written by the hand of an angel. Every word was like medicine, and the author, may God bless him, made me live the most beautiful love story and brought about my resurrection. I feel compelled to show them—sorry, but they’re too beautiful… and everyone should write letters like these ; the world would be more beautiful and wouldn’t bleed.
This touching song can be played in the background while you read these wonderful letters.
"In my little pink plastic notebook, graciously provided by my employer, I wrote two words on the day of March 6th, in the year of grace 2005 : 'There she is...'
In this small space dedicated to repairing operating systems and other 'personal computers', it was indeed a short circuit that triggered the thermo-neural explosion and transformed the psycho-graphic landscape of our two worlds.
The radiation emitted permanently imprinted your dark shadow on the walls of the room.
You must have shed some feathers, white ones, which I gathered…
That shadow will always be stuck there, a nauseating shell you needed to rid yourself of.
It's done, or almost. I was just there, that's all."
Short Films Are Looking for a Mobile
Short Films in Search of a Mobile Orange unveils the winners of its mobile phone film competition tomorrow.
By Annick RIVOIRE
Thursday, May 12, 2005 (Liberation - 06 :00)
You are beginning the reading of an embryonic genre : the short film critique. As small as the mobile film itself. Given the viewing conditions, it requires a warning (perhaps even an eye doctor’s budget) : the mobile screen, even if it’s next-generation (3G, mobile broadband up to 2 megabytes per second) measures 3.5 x 2 cm (5 x 8 cm on PDAs).
Orange, the France Telecom operator, will unveil tomorrow in Cannes the winners of the first "short film competition for mobile phones." Attempting to mimic the bigger players, it has a jury president from the industry (Régis Wargnier) and offers a prize of 8,000 euros for the top of the five winners (out of twenty-five films). Until deliberation on Tuesday in Paris, the jury had only watched the films on DVD...
Beyond the quality of the films (one-third true rubbish, one-third decent productions, one-third nice shorts), what is really staged here is the "validation of Orange’s strategic hypothesis," explains Jean-Noël Tronc, the brand's director. "Mobile audiovisual content is an emerging sector, and the genre is short films." The operator already envisions itself as "the fourth screen, after the cinema, television, and the Internet." While users may enjoy checking the weather, a news flash, or a clip, it's doubtful they would spend hours watching (and paying for) loading bars or error messages.
Not artistically blurry. Not only was one out of two films cut during playback, but the image quality also reminded us of early Internet films (pixelation, interruptions…). There’s hope for technical improvement. But over half of the films’ content doesn’t translate well to mobile viewing.
Launched at the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival in February, the competition attracted 600 entries, a minority of which were created specifically for mobile. Orange is pleased, but we’re less so : rapid camera movements that turn the image into non-artistic blur ; wide shots and subtitles that become unreadable ; night scenes that don't work, nor do overly composite images or poor sound quality... Add to that cryptic messages ("error, no UMTS coverage," "no reception," "connection timeout, try again") and any self-respecting cinephile will flee from this so-called window.
So what works ? The simplest scenarios, like gags or surprises, punchy storytelling, and music video-style filming. Particularly animations, like the excellent The Microwave, a funny and masterful piece that mixes references to special effects giants, from ET to Jurassic Park, inserting them into a fast-paced chase set in a student’s room.
Tinkering. In this overly conventional selection, only one film invents a narrative around mobile communication. Heartbroken in London, by Sophie Reverdi, is a strange ballet centered around videophony, using a breakup as an excuse to tinker with saturated images and reflect new modes of communication. In short, the only good news is that a new distribution channel is opening for filmmakers.
Pocket film festival in Paris, Forum des Images and Festival Imaginaria de Barri in Italy
Notizie
Primo festival europeo dedicato ai film prodotti con cellulari
Il Festival Pocket Films di Parigi e' il primo festival cinematografico dedicato a film prodotti con telefoni cellulari. Si aprira' il 7 ottobre 2005 e si concludera' il 9 ottobre. Sono in concorso cortometraggi da 30 secondi a 90 minuti, ed i premi sono in denaro ed in telefoni cellulari (che altro...). Sponsor della manifestazione sono Nokia e SFR, operatore francese per la telefonia mobile.
Tra i film in concorso, « Cycle de nuit » di Christophe Rollo, « Heartbroken in London « di Sophie Reverdi, « Tourner autour » di Mercedes Pacho.
Nel corso del festival, i film verranno proiettati su normali schermi cinematografici e su cellulari installati nella sede del festival (Forum des Halles presso Porte Saint-Eustache). Speriamo che la visione sul grande schermo non demoralizzi i cultori del cinema 3G...
Autore : Redazione
Data : 06/10/2005
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Email from Luigi Iovane
Festival’s art director
"Dear Sophie,
I’m glad to communicate you that your short film HEARTBROKEN IN LONDON ‘s been officialy selected for Imaginaria’s festival. At the end of the second week of july you’ll find on festival’s website the complete programme. If you get the intention to come to Conversano (Bari), please, send me an e-mail.
All the best,
Luigi Iovane"