Wednesday, January 31

 

 

I woke up once in the night and got up to go to the toilet. On the way back to bed I looked at the time and realised that the clock on the cooker said 7:20. Ten minutes later I got up first and crept around while Irma slept. She woke and dressed just before I left.

Jutta and I had an interesting discussion about the question we will ask for the pre-entrance exam assignment. We agreed that we cannot use last year’s because some people might apply again. We also agreed that last year’s question worked well in sorting out the candidates. I suggested a new question, tweaked it a little, and then wrote it down and mailed it to Jutta for safe-keeping. I also put it in Evernote for safer keeping. Finally we mailed a copy to Fred.

At 10:00 Jutta, Laura, Natalie and I went downstairs to Kabinett Pacius to meet Irma and Sami for the first meeting in the second Migrant Youth branding project. We had a very productive meeting and Laura and Natalie left the meeting happy. Ben and Buster arrived by arrangement as the meeting ended and Irma gave them a bucketful of goodies to thank them for their work, including a small honorarium. They had no expectations and left the meeting very happy, if slightly puzzled.

Jutta and I decided to go to China Flavor for a sushi lunch and planning session, followed by a trip to Lidl for food to feed Jutta’s turtle. I noticed that Lidl had bags of mixed carrots in different colours: orange (of course), red, white, yellow, and purple.

I spent the afternoon looking through final assignments for two courses in preparation for grading them tomorrow.

At 16:30 I left Arcada and headed for the Savoy Theatre, to meet Irma and Naa. Once there we met Sanal and others from the Finnish-Indian Society.

We sit in the centre of the third row looking at the Docpoint logo on the curtains. I interrupt Irma and Naa’s conversation to say how much I like the way that the curtains distort the logo. We sit waiting for the Finnish premiere of Avani Rai’s film about her father Raghu Rai: an unframed portrait which looks the the life and career of “the father of Indian photography”, a friend of Cartier-Bresson and a member of Magnum.

The film will actually document the oppressive relationship between father and daughter as he resolutely refuses to accept her as an adult with a mind of her own. It will also allow him to talk about the oneness he achieves with the world when he “observes” a scene with a photographer’s eye. The film will have a delightful slyness about it as it undercuts his self-asserted grandeur by holding shots long enough to capture his unplanned reactions.

After the movie ends the two will stand at the front for a Q&A session. It will begin with a lengthy anecdote by Raghu Rai which comprehensively undermines his daughter’s claim to any status as a filmmaker. He makes it clear that she didn’t know what to do but succeeded at achieving something because her editor and producer worked with her at every stay in the process.

Avani’s answers will clearly show that the relationship remains an uneasy one. Answering questions with long discursive answers Raghu will demonstrate that he has an easy acceptance of his own genius. For some strange reason he will remind me of Lou Reed, and I will hope that I never have to sit next to him on a plane.

Irma will get a selfie with him at the end because they both wear bright red. He will tell her precisely how to take it.