Nikko

Returned from the Russian countryside after almost three weeks. Not exactly a place of Chekhovian atmospheres and moods. Such things are hard to find nowadays in the Russian countryside but with wild fires billowing in the hot summer wind and temperatures of up to 40 degrees, those lazy dreaming Russian summers seem like a thing of the long distant past. Which is something Chekhov was already hinting at in The Cherry Orchard. We left Moscow as the heat started to become unbearable and headed out to a an old soviet style holiday rest complex. It was built as a Pioneer camp for soviet school children but has been converted into a kind of holiday complex for adults. There we escaped the worst of the smog and smoke from the fires. I took the main computer with me and was able to get a considerable amount of work done especially on the Stanislavsky Film “Stanislavsky and the Metamorphosis of Russian Theatre”. The script is more or less fleshed out and ready for recording. I have a good narrator in mind, James Langton, an English actor who lives in New York. He has just completed the narration for the other film I have in post production “The Japanese Garden – Art, Landscape and Meaning”. The title may appear elsewhere under a different variation until I can settle on a version that I am happy with. James delivered the final text with the corrections I had requested and I can now start to complete the film. Excellent narrator of text and I am very happy with the result. I will work on “Stanislavsky and Metamorphosis” parallel with the Japanese film. Now back in Moscow and coping with the unendurable heat.

Finally getting somewhere with some of the more complicated locations that need to be organised, namely Nikko, Oshima and Atami. Akira suzuki with whom I worked on the film “David Burliuk and the Japanese Avant-garde” has invited us to go with him to the island of Oshima. Its one of the first Islands Burliuk visited when he came to Japan. Akira Suzuki wll introdcuce us to the curator of the island museum and I will film as much as possible. It takes a few hours by boat to get there so we will stay overnight and come back the next day. We have also finally got the trip to Nikko settled as well. Nikko is a small town at the entrance to Nikko National Park. It also has one reputably of the most beautiful waterfalls in Japan. All the same everything depends on the weather.

We have been meeting with old friends the last few days as well which takes up quite a bit of time and Now that the Sakura(Cherry blossom) period is over its worth reflecting on a few ideas