It was my Fiat’s last journey and being an Italian car, I thought it would be neat for it to do its last trip to the country were it originated from. Well, the car did not make it, in Austria it gave up. It was towed back to Germany and the Meister at the Fiat Fachwerkstatt told us that it would not even be worth changing the oil, not talking about fixing whatever was broken. He was so kind to give us 50 € for it, which was pretty much the value of the gas in the car. No car no more.

So we arrived with a delay at Schloss Goldrain, the wonderful location for this years start of the EsoDoc sessions, where film professionals and journalists from all over Europe develop their documentary projects. My wife Elissavet accompanied me and she had a job there as well. More about that later. My job was to offer people new ways of looking at narration. This is my speciality, of course, and I enjoyed myself a lot talking about the philosophy of Korsakow. Will I get ever tired of it?

Apart from my lectures I also had the pleasure to work with participants on their projects is group-sessions, that were called think tanks. Well I don’t like tanks, but I love thinking! The participants were amazing, amazing, amazing, so I learned a lot! I also learned a lot from the other lecturers, among them Raimo Lång from Finland, I got to know him the first time and I will never forget the conversation we had late at night at the wine cellar. After an intense day we were dead tired but could not stop discussing narration.

Elissavet practiced some of her (what I sometimes call ‘witch craft’ and she calls – ) bodywork with participants of the workshop. It was a game between us, when I had to guess, with whom she had worked during the day. You could easily notice that, because of the people’s bright eyes and ideas. Sometimes I steal some of her tricks when I advice people on their projects. I can’t stop being surprised on the results.

This was a very intense week, with sessions starting in the morning and going till night. At the party at end of the week everybody was dancing wildly. 20 people from 18 different countries. My happiest moment was when an old song came up that I always listend to on my walkman, when I was 16 or 17.
The Pixies: Where is my mind?

May 3 – 8, 2015