José Luis Delgado Herrerapiscazo, wife Amparo, and Papeleria Laso

Papeleria Laso is located in Jerez de la Frontera, at the corner of two major avenues, right on the edge of the historic district in the city´s center.  It´s next door to a bank, and right around the corner from many small business and a grammar school.  It is a great location for Papeleria Laso, which is a a paper good/copy shop/ and school and office supply store.

Luis (José Luis Delgado Herrerapiscazo) has been running the shop for 50 years.  His wife, Amparo, helps him out.  They explained to me that they´ve had hard times before but this is definitely the worse.  No one has any money, everyone is just scraping by.  And like Francis, what they sell is not a necessity so people who used to purchase now often go without. 

José Luis Delgado Herrapiscazo and his wife Amparo in their shop.

Luis told me that the businesses that are suffering the most are the small businesses.  He and his wife have no idea how the country and the economy are going to get out of this mess.  They take the government at its word when it says things will get better after another year simply because they don´t know of anything better to do.

I´ll give a short story here to illustrate their situation.  They are motorcycle enthusiasts, each with his/her own motorcycle and they belong to a motorcycle club.  (The wife is very small, and I find it charming to imagine her on a big, muscle motorcycle.)

About five years ago, they had planned to go to the United States and drive their motorcycles across the country, but then the crisis struck, and they weren´t able to go.  Now, they can no longer even afford to leave the city for a vacation, so last year, they stayed open all year and didn´t take any time off.  They expect to do the same this year.

OUR NEXT POST will be about Antonia Balao and her bar/restaurant.

Francis of Francis Peluquero, a beauty shop

Francis owns and operates a small beauty shop in Jerez de la Frontera near the city´s central market.   When I went to interview him, there were several customers but this was at the time of Feria, when “everyone” wants to get their hair done. 

Before the crisis, when a special event was going on, the wait could well be an hour and a half or two hours if you didn´t have an appointment.  On the day I went, however, there was less than a 30 minute wait – the first effect I noticed of the crisis.

Inside Francis Peluquero.  Francis did not want any faces shown.

 Francis has been in business for over 20 years.  He commented to me that things are slower now than they have ever been.  Going to the beauty shop is not a necessity, like food, and that has contributed to the downturn of his business.  People who before would come in twice a week now come in only once a week, and so forth.

It´s been a long time since he was able to go on a trip, or even take a vacation.  He has two young women working for him during busy times, such as during the annual Feria, because his customers don´t like to be kept waiting and if he doesn´t have the two young women, he won´t have any business at all.  When there is no special event going on, he is no longer able to have anyone help him out.

Francis believes it´s going to take a long time for Spain to recover from the crisis.  He does not believe the government´s statement that things will start getting better in another year.  Beyond that, he doesn´t want to speculate about what will happen in the future.

OUR NEXT POST will be about José Luis Delgado Herrapiscazo and his shop.

Malena and Butikalé

Malena opened her shop just two months ago – a courageous move in view of the current crisis.  It´s called Butikalé, and is located in Jerez de la Frontera on a major street two doors down from her father´s bar/restaurant.  She opened it with money that her husband saved, and she runs it with her adult daughter.

The day I interviewed her, she was just opening the store for the day.  There were customers waiting for her to unlock the door…but the two other times that I tried to find her, when her daughter was running the shop, there were no customers at all.

Malena in her shop.

The customers waiting for Malena – two women with their children – made some purchases.  One bought a blouse, a pair of long pants, and a necklace which together cost under 10 Euros (about $13).  Clearly, the prices are designed to move merchandise. I´m not sure how she is able to offer these low prices, but she purchases from a distributor in Sevilla and apparently, is getting very low prices herself.

The customer wanted to buy other things, but didn´t have the money.  Malena explained, after the customer had left, that the purchaser had a job with the school district, but the school district was not paying its employees – a shocking but unfortunately common occurrence since the onset of the crisis.

The other customer, also a school district employee (and also not getting paid), made a very small purchase of one necklace for 3 Euros ($5).

Malena commented that yes, the first year is always the hardest for a small business and December and January are the worse months.  She has not yet been able to pay herself any salary at all, but she is covering her costs.

She says that things now are particularly hard.  Many people don´t even have enough money for food, and are going hungry or getting food from charitable agencies (I assume these would be the Catholic charities that are so important here).  And most people don´t have the money to buy clothes for themselves or for their children.

Malena thinks that if things continue on like this for a year or two, people will be patient but if they continue on for, say, five years, there will be a war or revolution.

OUR NEXT POST will be about Francis, the beauty shop owner.

Small businesses in Spain and the economic crisis

It is ironic, after the so-called “Second Conquest” of Latin America by Spain during the years leading up to the current economic crisis, that the Spanish government is now courting Latin American businesses and asking them to invest in Spain, to save Spain’s economy. 

This may seem even stranger in light of the fact that the backbone of Spain’s economy is not big, multi-national  businesses, but the small mom and pop shops that abound in every neighborhood of the large cities, in every small town.  Some sources have claimed, in obvious exaggeration but with a grain of truth, that these small businesses make up 95% of Spain’s economy.

A stall in the Mercado de Abastos, in the city´s center.

 (Jerez does have supermarkets, but many people prefer to shop in the Mercado de Abastos, open six days a week.  Each stall is run by a different small business and each has its own specialties.)

And why should you, the reader of this article, who does not live in Spain and may never go there, be interested in the situation and problems faced by these small businesses?  You should be interested partly because Spain’s economic problems have an effect on Europe, and Europe affects the rest of the world.  In addition, these small businesses are not all that different from small businesses the world over, and we can learn much from looking at their plight. 

Instead of doing a scientific study, I decided to interview the owners of four small businesses in the southern Spanish city of Jerez de la Frontera, where I was staying, with the idea that this more human look at the situation would be of greater interest.  The four shops I chose are a small clothing/jewelry/cosmetics store owned and operated by Malena, a beauty shop owned by Francis, a paper goods/copy shop/school & office supply store owned by José Luis Delgado Herrerapicazo and his wife, and a bar/restaurant owned by Antonia Balao.

Plaza Plateros, a popular plaza with many bar/restaurants and lots of small shops.

Over the next four weeks, I'll publish each of these stories, one by one, allowing us to see their reactions to the economic crisis and their vision of the future…not a very positive vision.  They are all hurting.

We'll start next week with Butikalé, the clothing/jewelry/cosmetics store owned and operated by Malena.

OUR NEXT POST will be Malena´s story.

Why is "Domino" relevant?

I'm going to make this short...perhaps not sweet, but short.

In 2008, the United States led the world in entering the financial crisis, due to vastly over-valued real estate (read "homes, etc."), extremely risky financial dealings, and corruption.  Thousands and thousands of people lost their homes, thousands and thousands of people lost their jobs.

In 2012, having only partly recovered from the economic crisis of 2008, the United States passed through two moments of brinkmanship when we were on the "fiscal cliff."  Each time, at the last possible moment, Congress and the President managed to find a solution that avoided our falling over it.

As of this writing, the United States is less than 24 hours away from "sequestration," which is something that could well produce another and perhaps more serious financial crisis.

Is Domino:  Caught in the Crisis relevant to the United States?  You bet it is.

I could pepper this short article with photos of closed businesses and homes in foreclosure, but I've already posted those, you've seen those for yourselves, and I think it unnecessary to repeat them.

OUR NEXT BLOG POST will be about the CD release in the flamenco festival

And more post-production: Sound sweetening and adding sound

FYI:  If you´re interested in the situation about which Domino is based, you should check out my blog on PalominoPro.blogspot.com, in which I spill the beans about the recent, shocking (shocking to me) garbage strike in Jerez.  You can also go to this LINK to read a summary of the situation.

photo of garbage spilling out from a news story

Now, back to Domino:  Caught in the Crisis:

We have very little left to go on Domino before it´s officially presentable, and I´m able to start submitting it to festivals.

Most of that work is sound work.  On the one hand, in the private screening I held in California a few weeks back, it was clear that I needed to add a few more words of dialogue to make it clear that our hero, Luis, is a very sympathetic character.  That has been done even though we didn´t shoot any more film, and the actor is in one country while I, the director and editor, am in another one.

Ah, the magic of film.

The rest of the sound work is tedious and technical.  It´s a question of making the sound come out of the left speaker if the character is on the left hand side of the screen, and on the right if s/he is on the right, etc. PLUS perfecting the sound levels, making telephone conversations sound like they are coming over a telephone wire, etc., etc., etc.

A very nice sound person, Jeff Kimmich, is working on all this for me.  He expects to be done in a week or so.  I´ve never used him before but am hopeful that he will do a great job.

Assuming he does a brilliant job and it´s done in the time frame he expects, the last thing will be to ask an image correction person to make a change in one 6 second segment, in which (SIGH) a microphone is visible on screen.  I have a person who I think can do the job, and so, well,

...WE ARE MOVING FORWARD.

When all the work is done and I´m ready to submit to festivals, I´m going to stop posting here and instead, ask people to check out the main Palomino Productions blog, where I´ll consolidate all my posts about all my projects.

OUR NEXT POST will be to confirm that the final, technical work on Domino is completed.

Where is Spain headed? part 2 of 2

Even city governments have had the national taxing agency (Hacienda) remove money from their bank account.  In one incident this past summer, a large government agency (the government of the Junta de Andalucía) sent a large payment to the city of Jerez so that the city could pay city workers to whom it owed several months´ back pay.  Before the city could use the money, Hacienda found it and removed it -- and used it to pay off some of the taxes that the city owed the central government.
One response to the continuing crisis has been increasingly large demonstrations, such as one last week in which between 5,000 (say the police) and 60,000 (say the unions who organized it) took to the streets to protest job cuts, wage freezes, tax rises and the like.  In addition to Madrid, there were significant demonstrations in 50 other cities in Spain.  There may also be another general strike on November 14.

"No more unemployment."

Here are links to a couple of those stories:  LINK #1 and LINK #2.

There´s a lot of dis-function in Spain.  Lots of looking at the relatively few big guys and ignoring the needs of the many small guys.  (Kind of like here in the United States....)

So when push comes to shove, why should you be interested in a middle-aged family man in Spain, like our hero in Domino, who has financial problems?

Well, he´s an awful lot like your next-door neighbor, or your cousin, or that kid who graduated from college with lots of student loan debt who can´t get a job no matter how hard s/he tries.

NOTE:  you might also be interested in the documentary film that recently aired over PBS, As Goes Janesville, about the devastating effects of the financial crisis there, and how it is connected to us all.

OUR NEXT POST will be about the background music created for us by young composer-guitarist Malena Hijo.

Interview with our star, part 2

This is part two of our interview with Antonio de la Malena, star of Domino:

Eve A. Ma (EM):  What scene did you like best, from the point of view of your interpretation? 

Antonio de la Malena (Malena):  There´s one scene with which I particularly identify.  It´s the scene in which I´m tearing up the lottery ticket, and the image of my face at that moment is like a mirror of my own life. 

EM:  What did you like best about the direction?  What least? 

Malena:  What I liked best is the director´s discipline.  I really liked that.  What I liked least is that I feel she needs more assistance, more assistance to be able to properly realize all of her creative projects.   It made me unhappy seeing she lacked that.  

Malena with actor Esteban Viaña and crew.

EM:  In thinking about the film itself, what part did you like best?  Do you think it fairly reflects the current situation in Spain?  

Malena:  In general, I liked everything about the film.  There aren´t things that I like best, and others that I like less well--because it was all done with the heart, and the soul, and with real sympathy for what is happening right now in Spain. 

EM:  What scene did you like best, from the point of view of your interpretation? 

Malena:  There´s one scene with which I particularly identify.  It´s the scene in which I´m tearing up the lottery ticket, and the image of my face at that moment is like a mirror of my own life. 

Malena with actors Jose Luis Martinez and Santiago Moreno.

EM:  What did you like best about the direction?  What least? 

Malena:  What I liked best is the director´s discipline.  I really liked that.  What I liked least is that I feel she needs more assistance, more assistance to be able to properly realize all of her creative projects.   It made me unhappy seeing she lacked that.  

EM:  In thinking about the film itself, what part did you like best?  Do you think it fairly reflects the current situation in Spain?  

Malena:  In general, I liked everything about the film.  There aren´t things that I like best, and others that I like less well--because it was all done with the heart, and the soul, and with real sympathy for what is happening right now in Spain. 

De la Malena with crew, director, actor Nicolas Montoya and others.

EM:  I understand that you had to shave off your beard several times because the director decided to add more scenes and to re-shoot others.  Now that you are free to grow your beard, have you done so?

Malena:  Well, yes, but it didn´t bother me to keep cutting my hair and shaving off my beard because the scenes were good ones and besides, I figured I was going to be earning more money.  

OUR NEXT POST will be about one of the supporting actors, Esteban Viaña.

The actors

We used a wide variety of actors in Domino, from professionals who are appearing on prime-time TV to a ten year old girl with no experience acting and, to the best of my knowledge, no desire to become an actress.  Each one of them worked hard, each one presented different challenges for me, the director, and each one really did a good job.  Some, in fact, did an excellent job.

It was a great pleasure to work with Antonio de la Malena, our star.  He learned his roles, he took the time to "put himself into the character," and he never complained when I said, "Ok, that take was really good, now let´s do it again, just in case."

Antnio de la Malena, playing Luis, takes a break during the shooting.

I found it truly interesting that he put himself into his role...taking a few moments before each scene and usually before each take, to be in the correct emotional place.  The reason I found it so interesting is that he´d never acted before and certainly had never heard of Method Acting, or Stanislavsky.  On the other hand, flamenco singing (and he is a flamenco singer, a cantaor) requires exactly the same kind of emotional commitment, which is why I chose him to be the lead, in the first place.

Other actors I want to point out are Nicolas Montoya and Javier Padilla.  Both appeared in several scenes, both were very professional and very prepared, and both also helped me in other ways.  Nicolas Montoya (who is in the popular television program Bandoleras) found me an actor when I needed one, and also found the location for the bank scenes.

Nicolas Montoya plays Miguel the banker.

  Javier Padilla played two roles, one a small one but needing someone with good body control.  (He has a beard in that scene, a no beard in the other, so he looks like two different people.)  Javier also found at least three other actors for me.  Every time I called and said "I need someone of a certain age and capable of a certain type of role," he would find me that person...or rather, he´d give me several people for me to choose from.

This brings me back to our lead character.  Antonio de la Malena is, along with Javier Padilla, responsible for helping me with the casting.  He found more actors for me than I can count.  I haven´t been in Jerez long enough to "know everyone," and without him, and Javier Padilla (plus Nicolas Montoya), well, I don´t know if I´d have been able to produce Domino.

Other actors include Salvador Valle, Esteban Viaña, José María Martinez, Rosario Heredia and Luis de la Tota.  I enjoyed working with all of them.

Salvador Valle plays Salvador the neighbor, who offers Luis a few hours´ work.

 The last one I especially want to point out, however, is that 10 year old girl, Marta.  She is a bit shy, and certainly not used to memorizing lines, putting herself in character, or anything of the sort.  She was very willing, however, and like all the rest, she never complained (except once, and that was not a complaint but in the first shoot, she got exhausted and started crying.  We called it a day, and thought of ways to keep her from getting so worn out in future scenes.)

Marta, seen here with Antonio de la Malena, plays the daughter of Luis.

Domino is the first real narrative I´ve ever directed.  It has been a real learning experience.  One of the most pleasurable memories I´ll carry with me from it is these actors....  Thanks to you all.

OUR NEXT POST will be an interview with our lead actor, Antonio de la Malena.

No, I don't hate banks PLUS Music in film

I feel the need to explain that, in spite of my fumings and fulminations, I do NOT hate all banks and bankers.  I am acquainted with banks and bankers who are careful with the money other people have entrusted to them, and work hard to take good care of it.  That, in my view, is what banks and bankers are supposed to do, and it´s a useful thing.

But if you pour honey onto the sidewalk, you will soon find you have ants and flies where there had been no ants and no flies.  If you deregulate banks, you will attract loan sharks, along with people whose primary concern is personal profit, and people who believe the banks need to serve the investors rather than the customers and depositors.  These people managed to take over some of our largest financial institutions and are, in my opinion, the prime cause of the financial crisis.

And no, I do NOT like them.

NOW, on to music in film.

I guess everyone has experienced the music in movies where a sweet sound swells just as the handsome hero and beautiful heroine kiss passionately.  That, obviously, is one of the prime uses of music in film.  The music tells us we need to feel mushy, that we are viewing true love, and this is a great and glorious thing.

But there are other uses of music in film.

If you think about it, you realize that music in film came partly out of the silent film era, where music helped let the audience know what was going on and what emotions the audience was supposed to be feeling.

Now, with dialogue, you don´t need music to tell you so much.  In fact, it´s just as easy to get too much music in a film as too little.

I have been trying hard to pay attention to how music is used in the movies I watch, and learn as much as possible from watching and listening to how others do it.  In Phyllida Lloyd´s The Iron Lady, for example, music is used to tell us the movie is about to shift in time and even more often, to tell us that our Margaret Thatcher (played by Meryl Streep) is about to wander off into her past, or see her now-deceased husband as still living.

On the other hand, The Piano, a film by Jane Campton, uses music as the voice of our heroine.  It was fascinating to learn that the actress who played the lead role (Holly Hunter), actually learned how to play the piano as part of the preparation for playing her part.  We are not seeing her body swaying in front of a piano while someone else´s hands are running over the keys.  She is making her own music.

Dr. Zhivago, a very different kind of movie directed by David Lean (starring Omar Shariff), uses music in the more conventional way, to let the audience know that we are seeing true love, or that something very profound is about to take place.

I won´t continue on, but you might find it interesting, the next time you watch a movie, to see how music is used.

OUR NEXT POST will be about returning to California--which is working best, Spain or California?

The banker as speculator and villain

In addition to using Domino to put a human face onto the economic crisis, I´m using it to express my own personal ideas about some of the causes of the crisis and some of the economic problems I observe in Spain.  This has led me to create various scenes with bankers.

In brief, I think a lot of the cause of the crisis is economic speculation, especially by banks and others involved in financing real estate.  I also think the leaders of this speculation, and those who bear a lot of the responsibility for the crisis, are banks and other financial institutions in the United States.

Of course I know that this is not a terribly original idea, but ...

Ok, so how have I used Domino to illustrate some of this?

Well, there´s the scene we recently shot that I call "the banker Miguel in the bar."

Here we all are together.  The two "bankers" are wearing suits.

In this scene, we find banker Miguel (the banker that our hero goes to when he asks for a loan) in a café/bar, drinking a cup of coffee.  In comes an acquaintance, the banker Rodolfo.  (I have fun choosing names for all these people.)  Rodolfo works for a rival bank.  He points out to Miguel that Miguel´s bank is in all the newspapers today because their major project, a huge complex they were financing in the "southern sector," has collapsed.

And it seems that Rodolfo and his buddies had expected it to fail all along.  It was (says Rodolfo) massively over-capitalized, it was relying on a shady construction company, etc., etc..

I´m not going to tell you any more.  You´ll just have to watch Domino when it comes out.

Here is Nicolás Montoya (our "banker Miguel") playing a Roman sergeant.

But I will say that this scene ALSO helps explain why banker Miguel loses his temper in the bank in the subsequent scene when our hero, Luis, comes in to ask how his loan process is coming along.

Poor Luis.

And a note:  banker Miguel is played by Nicolás Montoya (who also has a role in the current popular television series, Bandoleras) while banker Rodolfo is played by Manuel Oteo Barranio.  The scene takes place in Peña Recreativa "el Toke" and thank you to José Carlos Ruiz Suarez for lending it to us as well as playing the part of the bartender.

Since we mention him here, I´ll also remind everyone that Luis is played by Antonio de la Malena.

OUR NEXT POST will be about shooting the final scenes.

Thanks to Flamenco Peña Chacón

We owe a big thank you to flamenco Peña Chacón.  We filmed there five times, three of those times for several hours.  The peña has been very nice to us, and we are very appreciative.  A lot of the great reception the peña gave us is due to Ali de la Tota, a palmero (flamenco percussionist) who is in charge of day-to-day operations.

Thanks, Ali.

Ali de la Tota.  He also plays a part in the film.

 In addition, we wouldn´t have been able to use the peña without the agreement of its president, Julian Azcutia.  Thanks to him, as well.

A flamenco peña is a flamenco club.  Peña Chacón is named after the flamenco cantaor (now deceased), Don Antonio Chacón.  There are about a dozen flamenco peñas in Jerez de la Frontera, including six or so in or near the city center.  Peña Chacón is one of those in the center, in the historic district.

The flamenco  peñas, as you might guess, are composed of people interested in preserving flamenco, and enjoying flamenco.  Normally, each peña selects a month, or a period of 4 weeks, in which to present flamenco performances.  These are free and open to the public.

Peña Chacón has a great collection on its walls of photos of flamencos.

Peña Chacón´s main period is May-June, and although it focuses on the cante (flamenco singing), it also presents some dance performances.   This year, however, due to the economic crisis, it was unable to present any performances.  The peña has only about 50 members, and there simply wasn´t enough money to pay for performers.

In the past, in addition to the May-June series, the peña used to present young artists it thought had promise.  These performances were scheduled for February, but again, the peña has been unable to hold these events for the past several years.

This is the stage, with a photo of Don Antonio Chacón on the wall.

It does, however, still present zambomba (flamenco Christmas celebrations, with people singing Christmas songs to a bulerias rhythm, and occasionally, dancing as well).  Hopefully, when the crisis ends, it will again be able to present its other performances.

I asked Ali de la Tota what characterizes the peña, and he said the respect that the members give to the cante (flamenco singing). They listen well.

Here we are, shooting a scene.

Three footnotes:  the peña is named after cantaor (flamenco singer) Don Antonio Chacon.  It has been in its present location (near calle Francos and the Fundación of flamenco) for about 20 years.  Formerly, it was in a building in calle Carmen.  And Ali has been working there for the past 15 years.

OUR NEXT POST will be about the banker as speculator and villain..

Notes on the economic situation in Berlin (leaving Spain for later)

Ok, we've  talked about the economic crisis in Spain (and will talk about it more at another time).  We've talked about Occupy Wall Street, the Movimiento 15-M (los Indignados), and housing foreclosures in the U.S..  We´ll talk about all these again, but now:

I recently had the opportunity to go to Berlin, where another one of my productions (A Zest for Life:  Afro-Peruvian Rhythms, a Source of Latin Jazz) was screening in a festival.

So what about the economy in Germany, or at least, in Berlin?  Germany has the reputation of being in rather good shape, right?  It's supposedly one of the economically most stable countries in Europe, right?

Graffiti is alive and well in Berlin.

I'm sure all that is true.  Berlin, however, is not in quite such good shape.

I have this information simply from talking to a few people in Berlin during my brief, one-week stay there.  This is NOT a carefully researched analysis of current affairs.  Please take it with a grain of salt.

I was, however, very surprised to hear that Berlin has been having economic problems for the past few years.  I was told that salaries have remained stable, but that prices are increasing (meaning, obviously, less purchasing power).  I was told that "workers" (which I believe indicates government employees, but it wasn't completely clear) have lost some very important benefits in the past few years, chief of which is the one-month paid vacation and the automatic Christmas bonus.

Mixed in with very modern business towers, and handsome historic monuments, are huge, drab apartment houses.

The one month's vacation is still there, but it's no longer a paid vacation.  The Christmas bonus, which used to equal one month/s pay, is now gone.

When workers complained and threatened to strike, they were told that either they would have to accept these cuts, or there would be major cutbacks in staff.  Not wanting to lose their jobs, they then accepted the cuts.

A beauty spot with 18th century buildings.

 This was all very surprising to me.  It indicates a really significant change in the economic situation of a large part of the work force.  I do not, however, know if this is limited to Berlin, or to Berlin plus what used to be East Germany, or what.

SO....

OUR NEXT BLOG will be about finishing the editing of the LONG, for television, version of Domino.

Filming in el Puerto-our two young lovers

Last Friday, we filmed a scene in el Puerto with our two young lovers, namely, Luis's son and the son's finacee.

And just so you'll know where all this is located:  El Puerto is what people in this area call the small city of Puerto de Santa Maria.  It's located a little north of Cadiz, and Cadiz is a port city in the south of Spain on the Atlantic Ocean.

Our two actors (Rosario Heredia & José Castro) with part of the crew.

El Puerto is also a port, mostly for small fishing craft and some pleasure boats.  It's located at the mouth of a river that empties into the Bay of Cadiz--a big, big bay like the San Francisco Bay.

Our young lovers mostly talk about the upcoming wedding.  The fiancee, Ana, has stars in her eyes.  She is imagining a gigantic wedding in a church filled with flowers, a huge wedding cake, a slick band, lots of great food, the works.

We're working hard.  The actors are the ones sitting down.

Luis' son Juan, however, knows that his family can't afford anything of the kind.  The two families will share the cost of the wedding, but since Luis, Juan's dad, has been out of work for many months, there is not much money lying around.  Each time Ana comes up with a new fancy thing she thinks they'll have, Juan brings here back to reality...for example, the wedding cake will be made by his aunt (who works in a bakery but hasn't yet learned how to do anything really fancy).

Then, the kicker:  it seems that Ana's father views the ability of Juan's family to pay their share as a test of how well his daughter can expect to be supported.  Poor Luis,  How is he going to be able to afford all this?

Our star of the day, Rosario, playing the finacee and yours truly with an aching back.

The scene, by the way, took five hours to shoot.  At the end, we had a good meal, and then went and shot another scene (this one, in Jerez).

OUR NEXT POST will be more about the economic situation in Spain.  I might not get to it until after Berlin (meaning expect it around May 9 or 10).  I´ll also talk a bit about the economic situation in Berlin.

The new election, the general strike, and more bad economic news - Part one

Let´s start with the economy.

As I´m sure everyone is aware, Spain`s economy is not doing well. Unemployed is very high (some sources claim over 30%) and is due to rise if, as seems likely, the new budget proposed by the current national government goes into effect. Taxes are very high, and are expected to rise. Prices for essential such as gas and electricity are releasable but will soon increase.

The current national government was put into power some six months ago primarily with a mandate to increase employment, and ease the final strain on the middle class and people of more modest means. So far, it has been unable to do so.

It is estimated that 95% of Spain's economy is made up small businesses, their employees, and the self-employed. Although this percentage is almost certainly too high, it is undeniable that small businesses make up a substantial portion of the economy.  It costs each self-employed person in minimum of 270€ (about $320) each month just to maintain him/herself on the rolls of the self-employed. This is separate from and in addition to income taxes.

For self-employed person who earns 5,000€ a month, this is not such a big problem. but the self-employed person who earns 1,000€ to 1,500€ a month (and many earn considerably less) only has expendable income of 730€ - 1,200€ a month. This is a equivalent to $1,000 - $1,600.

If our imaginary person is paying rent or mortgage of 300€-600€ a month (reasonable figures for a 3-bedrooms flat), and utilities including in telephone round 100€ a month (again, a very reasonable figure), this person has a very little left over for food and clothes. Forget about anything so ridiculous as entertainment.

Now, imagine that person is responsible for supporting a family.

This explains why so many people scraping by working as carpenters, graphic designers, house painters, small shop owner with no employees, and the like, fail to register with the government as "sell-employed". They can´t afford to.

The government, of course, considers their failure to register to be fraud. And an important aim of the newly-introduced national budget is to get rid of that for and get all this people to pay their 270€ a month.

It is very possible that if the government is successful, in the long run (in perhaps also in the short run), this will not help the economy. It will certainly be devastating to a significant proportion at the population.

TO BE CONTINUED....

A NEXT BLOG will be about filming in El Puerto

Shooting the scene in the pawn shop

If you were an unemployed middle-aged man with a family, trying to find a job and also scrape together enough money to fulfill your obligations, at a certain point you´d likely find yourself in a pawn shop.  Especially now, in the economic crisis.

Luis (Antonio de la Malena) counting the cash he got from the jewelry he sold.

You´d find yourself in a pawn shop looking for ready cash.  You´d do all you possibly could to avoid selling that piece of jewelry your beloved mother or father left you, and you´d certainly try to avoid selling your wedding ring, but if you had any other piece of jewelry of value that you had purchased in better times, you´d try to see what you could get for it.

Paco, the pawn shop owner, waits on Luis.

With that thought in mind, we shot a scene in which our hero, Luis (played by Antonio de la Malena), goes into a pawn shop and sells a gold ring he has.  I´m posting some of the photos here from that shoot.

It being a fairly simple scene, director Eve A. Ma did double duty as camera person.

Sound tech Antonio Moreno Jiménez (front and center) with best boy el Negro (Jesús Suarez).

Enjoy.

 OUR NEXT POST will be about...hair...changed my mind.  It will be a thank you.

The current economic situation in Spain

Seen from the perspective of one individual in the city of Jerez de la Frontera in southern Spain, the economic situation doesn´t look very good.  And from what I read on-line and in the newspapers, the situation in Jerez reflects pretty accurately the situation in all of Spain.

When I left here in mid-November, unemployment was high, the city was behind on paying city workers and paying the concessionaires who supply the water, street lights and garbage.  When I returned, in late January, unemployment was higher, the city workers hadn´t been paid for three months (!!--forget that Christmas bonus), and there have been almost daily demonstrations.

Encampment of city workers in front of city hall.

 When I left, the people of the Movimiento 15-M (los Indignados) were camped out in the city´s mail plaza, Plaza Arenal.  Now that I´ve returned, they are still there (in spite of some really cold weather...near freezing most nights and part of the mornings as well).  In addition, there is now a new, DIFFERENT encampment right in front of city hall.  It´s the encampment of those unpaid city workers.

Some more specifics:  in a city of 200,000, over 35,000 are now unemployed.  When you realize that about half of the population consists of children or the elderly, and that most women over the age of 40 don´t work, that number becomes pretty scary.

An aside:  it´s only fair to report that a significant number of people work--especially if it´s a question of odd-jobs--without benefit of reporting it to the government.  A self-employed person here is required to pay $350 minimum (278 Euros) per month to the government no matter how much or how little they earn, so low-income self-employed people, well, they just don´t TELL the government.

Movimiento 15-M (Indignados) encampment.  "Nothing will move if you don´t push."

 Another factoid:  there´s a series of publicly financed apartment buildings that have had roof problems for the past four years.  Various government organizations have reluctantly promised to attend to this but none has a yet, and the roofs are caving in.  Over 200 people live in this housing complex.

Plus the bus drivers go on strike and march down the streets every week or so.  (I don´t have a photo because every time I pass a demonstration, I´m without a camera.  Sorry....)  But the next day, they go back to work even though unpaid.  I´ve heard many city workers are afraid to leave their jobs because then things will be even worse for them.  They´ll be unemployed as well as unpaid.  So they go to work each day, although I understand there will now be periodic slow-downs to indicate that they are really, really unhappy.

The building which houses offices of the major unions refers to the now 4-months´ overdue pay for city workers.

 And the big, annual flamenco festival is coming up, an event which normally draws thousands of foreign tourists and would-be flamenco stars.  The core of the festival consists of performances and classes.  The people teaching the classes this year have been required to sign a form saying they won´t ask to be paid for 12 months.

But the street lights are still on, the garbage collectors are still collecting the garbage, and the water and electricity continue to function.  My fingers are crossed that people will start getting paid soon, BEFORE they lose their homes, etc..

What do those notices all over the city workers´ tents say?  One of these:  if you tremble at injustice, you are our friend.

 OUR NEXT POST will be about shooting the scene in the pawn shop.

Private greed and the economic crisis, part 3-big corporations, big money

This will be the last post about the greed of the high and mighty.  I'll then finish off the topic with a blog about the greed of the little man (and woman) and that should be the end of my rantings about greed.

Multinationals and huge businesses--nothing by definition wrong with either of these, although I personally prefer small businesses where the owner is there running the shop, with maybe a couple of employees.  More friendly, more personal, more we're-neighbors-and-we're-in-this-together.

But ok.  We have a big world, with lots of international communications;  and multinationals plus very big businesses are going to be a part of it.

What I do NOT like, however, is businesses whose chief focus is on raising the level of their profits, or cornering the market, or driving the small shops out of business.  And I also really dislike businesses--and here, it's pretty much exclusively very big businesses that do this--who in the name of efficiency and productivity replace workers in positions that are not arduous with machines.

I'm not talking about assembly lines, or tractors, or that kind of thing.  I'm talking about all those machines that answer the phones.  And all those other machines which, once the basics of letting machines do the back-breaking work, go on to do work which human beings can easily handle and traditionally have, machines that are purchased do so as to let the company fire their workers and not have to worry about paying higher wages or awarding better benefits packages.

So sure, you probably want your automobile assembly line mechanized, but when you mechanize beyond a certain extent, you create unemployment.  There needs to be a balance.

[NOTE:  I´d planned a photo of a homeless shelter or other relevant image but on contacting one, find that it needs to be arranged "through channels," so if they decide to give me information, I´ll do a separate blog specifically on that center.]

Surely this is something government can do--reward job creation instead of wealth creation.  Figure out about how many working adults you'll have in the country, and encourage big businesses to have that many positions available.

And big businesses, instead of having the steadily rising profits that they have now, even as unemployment is way too high, could determine that they would raise wages and/or create new jobs instead of allowing profits to continue rising when the gap between rich and poor is growing, and there are 14 million people looking for work.

THE NEXT BLOG will be about our screening on Jan. 26..

Our hero, Luis, and Occupy Wall Street/Movimiento 15-M

NOTE:  We recently posted a new scene from Domino showing our hero Luis at home with his family.  The scene is not intended to be high drama.  It mostly gives us a little more context with respect to Luis, but you will notice that the children are playing with dominoes and there's some hint of problems in his conversation with his wife.  In case you're interested, here's the LINK.

NOW--on to Luis and Occupy Wall Street/Movimiento 15-M.

It´s good to be a thorn in the side of the banks that are evicting people, but what is Movimiento 15-M or Occupy Wall Street doing to STOP evictions?

At one point, in the second half of our film, we see Luis passing by a major march and demonstration organized by the Movimiento 15-M, the Indignados, of Spain.  This Movimiento 15-M pre-dates the Occupy Wall Street movement by several months, and as in Occupy Wall Street, is an expression of unhappiness with the economic crisis, unemployment, home evictions, and the role of banks and politicians.

Luis, as you know, is a middle-aged family man in Spain who lost his job and is trying to find a new one before he becomes totally engulfed in financial disaster.  Luis is played by Antonio de la Malena.

And when he encounters the demonstration and march organized by the Movimiento 15-M, he looks at their placards (including one which says "Libertad"--"Liberty" and another which says to move from protesting to direct action).  Rather than joining in, however, he turns his back and goes on his way.

Why?  Surely he can agree with the movement's unhappiness with the crisis, the unemployment, the role that banks have had in creating the crisis and so forth.  And surely he can sympathize with the plight of people being evicted from their homes.

He turns his back because the movement really doesn't relate to him.  The demonstrations, discussions and protests are not going to get him a job.  They are not going to provide him with a way to support his family.  They are, in a word, irrelevant to his concerns.


[When I return to Jerez, I'll post a photo here of a demonstration....]

Perhaps if they succeed in changing the economic and political structure they WILL be relevant to him and his problems, but that is something likely to take years to achieve, if it ever happens at all.  What Luis and others like him need is a solution NOW.  And the Movimiento 15-M (or Occupy Wall Street) doesn't seem to have the capability of providing it.

OUR NEXT BLOG will be more about one of our supporting actors, Luis de la Tota.

The crisis, or Why "Domino: caught in the crisis," part 2

In addition, March of 2011 saw the birth of something called the Movimiento 15-M (also called "los Indignados") in which thousands of people from all over the country set up protest centers and tent cities around Spain.  Their aim has been to educate the public as to what they believe to be undue influence by banks, etc., leading to a failure of the political and financial systems which can only be restored through true democracy.  By "failure of the financial system," they´re referring to the current economic crisis.

Some of the tents in which members of the Movimiento 15-M camped out in the city center for 3 months.

It is also generally believed that unemployment for people 30 and younger is about 45%.  Total unemployment estimates range from a low of 22% to a high of 50%.  (That´s quite a spread...it  seems the figure is related to  your political viewpoint and to whether or not you´re including the undocumented aliens invited into Spain to work in construction, auto manufacturing, etc., back when the economy was booming.)

In addition, the former city administration is accusing the new administration of failing to pay the social security costs of 900 families, costs for basic necessities such as food.  (Note that there were municipal elections this past April, at which time a left-leaning political party lost power and a right-leaning one gained power in most of Spain´s cities-but not in the national government.)

A small shop about to close.

And due to  mortgage defaults, thousands of people are losing their homes in Jerez, as in all of Spain and also in the United States and elsewhere.

On a more personal level, a friend of mine who runs a theater company has yet to be paid for a major production his group put on for a government organ back in September of 2010.

This is why I came up with the idea of "Domino," and why I think the story is important.  Certainly we need to think globally about how to avoid having countries go bankrupt, but we also need to think of the middle-aged family man (or woman) who has lost his/her job.

OUR NEXT BLOG will give some thanks to some of those who have helped us.