Greetings my friends! November&December revisited.

Dear Friends,

It will be again two posts in one here. Right now I am on holiday. Yes! I am very much enjoying it. It has just snowed here in Jyväskylä. It was not very white christmas this year. Maybe five centimetres on snow at christmas eve. I am staying at my parent's house for this holiday. Taking care of Napoleon. We are doing two walks a day, and I am feeding him well. My parents are in Malaysia. In Kuala Lumpur at the moment. They are enjoying the place. It is very warm there.

The critique for my 3min-film was pretty good. Some said that it was hard to understand what it was about. I don't mind that. It is good to have room for many interpretations. Especially if it is an experimental film. The name of that work was 'Suuri Kohtaaminen' - the great encounter. A man is visited by another man who is about the same age but claims to be his father. That's how it starts.

The next larger project was the first fiction-film we were doing as a group. My role was to be an actor. In general, I like acting. So I was looking forward to this project. I think it went pretty well. This movie was about a dysfunctional couple, who lives in small apartment. The guy is treating the woman badly. The woman is resentful. Then the man wins in lottery. A big sum. Now woman sees that her chance to avenge has come. That's the basic plotline for this film, as I saw it. The genre would be comedy.

We also did a drama-project with no pictures involved. A recording, from a script that our main-teacher Erkki had written. The script was divided in three parts. Each director was given one part to direct, one third from the whole script approximately. Director could choose the genre or perspective of his segment. This was a hard project. I wanted my part to have somekind of hook in it, so that it would be interesting. But because the part was quite short, only two pages or so, and one could use only sound...it was not easy to make it very original. Well, I did my best. We still have the post-production work to do with Toivo, the sound-engineer for this project.

The cristmas-party for our movie-department was good fun. We had made a little comedy video for it. 'Kuusi-video'. In this little sketch I am the leader of the bunch and I order them to get me a christmas-tree. The group does its best, but they start to fight with each other. So, in the end nobody really gets credit for the tree-operation. Boss gets his tree though.
I was little nervous in the party before they showed our 3min-films for the older students. But it went very well. Older students were supportive. Laughed in the appropriate parts and said right kind of compliments afterwards..hehee!

There was also quite big christmas-party for the whole school. There was a good band and a good dj there. People were in cheery mood. Everyone was ready to go to holidays. We had almost finished our recordings and I had moved into a new flat. It was a good night to have a party. I like it that they have these parties in out school and not in some bar in the city.

I did not leave to Jyväskylä right away. I had to clean my old flat first. And I decided to visit my godfather and godmother in Hartola, which is not that far away from Lahti. Pretty much halfway between jyväskylä and Hartola. That was a good trip.

It took some days before I really started to relax. It is different kind of mentality that I strive to have in holiday-time. I want to do "pointless" things, not worry about getting things done. Holidays are being-time, not doing-time. I love doing things and creating things, but I am not able to appreciate 'doing' if I don't take time to just 'be'. It is so easy to turn even your 'freetime' into somekind of chore, somekind of have-to-do thing. Like, ' I gotta read this book during this holiday. I gotta see these and these people before my holiday ends.' This kind of thinking creates unnecessary stress.

The christmas went fine. We visited our grandmother in Palokka. She lives in this old people's home. They have their own apartments in that building though. Later I ate delicious christmas dinner at my friend's house. They were very kind to invite me there.
I have also spent plenty of time with Napoleon. Walking in the neighbourhood, throwing the ball, stuff like that.
I received nice christmas-gifts: movies, music, money, a book by DalaiLama ( my brother gave me that. I am very pleased. )
for example.

And of course I have watched many good movies during these two months. One very good one was Emir Kusturica's Underground.

I hope you all had good Christmas. And I also hope you are having a peacefull and joyfull holidaytime. Much love to you.

Lauri Anssi