Day 3 - Nantes: Ang GenSan ng France.

An old trading port, Nantes (pronounced "nahn") maintains a lot of its medeival look. We poured ourselves out of bed in Paris to make our 9am flight, at that point still doubtful we can get there because of the strike. It was still dark at 7am. Like 7pm in Manila.

When we arrived that we only had time to get lunch and nap before Produire Au Sud activities would begin, at 5PM. Lunch at an Italian restaurant. Ordering was a team effort; it was me, Margie, the French waitress, and her English-speaking friend trying to get our order right. Margie wanted to know what aubergines were and it sort of panicked the waitress, I kept saying "eggplants nga!" until an English chap from the other side of the restaurant yelled, "IT'S EGGPLANT."

Cut to: the Three Continents Film Festival is on its 29th year, and it features new work from these three places: Afrique, Amerique Latine, and Asie. This year, Jade Castro's Endo is in competition (yay!) and Jade, Raymond and their actors Jason and Ina will be here. According to Raya it's the fourth biggest in France, and I imagine it's the most important French festival for the developing world.

Produire Au Sud (Producing in the South) is a workshop designed to teach producers in the three continents the basics of film producing and financing on a global scale. Each project is selected on its possible appeal to European funds and co-productions, and they send the producer and director over. It is not a competition. We are taught the ropes of getting funding, including how to pitch a project.

This year there are two Asian teams, ourselves and Malaisie. From Amerique Latine comes Perou, Bresil, Bolivie, Chili and Colombie, and from Afrique is (drumroll...) BURKINA FASO. Love it. I've never met anyone from Burkina Faso. And I'm using the French translations because that's what people use here. The producers start tomorrow the 21st whereas the directors begin on the 23rd, giving me two full days free.

5 PM we finally meet everyone else. Game on. Elodie the workshop coordinator is lovely. I use lovely because that's really what she is. Maganda siya, chipper and really just a delight.

The opening film of the Festival is a Brazilian documentary, Handerson e as Horas (Handerson and the Hours). It's in Portuguese with French subtitles but still, it did blow me away. The typical Sao Paolo-an travels five hours a day by bus to the city, and frequently travels with the same group of people everyday. These commuters become like family. They hold birthday parties in the bus, they drink beer together, they joke around, dance. They blow balloons and hang them on the estribos. The documentary chronicles one such trip, and it's all jokes, talking. In the end Handerson, the lead, is the last one off the bus, and he heads off to work. That's all. Mario our Bresil workshopmate explains to us the opening sequence, where mob leaders in prison orders the bombing of several city buses, effectively throwing the city into a standstill. The documentary is a tribute to those commuters.

Afterwards Margie and I had a few drinks with Mario, who enlightened us on Brazilian cinema. It's the same everywhere: funding is always a problem, competition with Hollywood and pirated DVDs. A DVD is a dollar, whereas a movie is 7-8 dollars. Though in Brazil, the industry is helped by the government, where public companies subsidize film. I explained that in the Philippines, all independent filmmakers compete for sixteen grants a year. Mario's a character, he was sleep deprived that day from all the travelling and he drank a bit, and he spoke in that Brazilian way that makes them sound slurred.

In the hotel I told Margie that I feel like we're on the edge of an entire world of possibility. Margie says no, we're in it.

Tomorrow: Leoy walks Nantes.