Integration, Street 200

I have an Israeli driving license! Well I still need to pick it up at the Ministry but that's my latest step forward towards integration, administratively speaking.

The driving license is for a car, obviously. I still have about 26 steps to go through before I get on a motorbike: lessons, test and driving license for a motorbike, buying the thing itself, insurance, license plates, ...

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. My life is fascinating.

But I'm an actor now: I appear in Inazio Zurutuza's documentary movie about foreigners in Phnom Penh, "Piroi" (Khmer for "Two hundered", incidentally the number of the street where the Bophana Audiovisual Resource Center and the Department of Cinema are located...)

Thanks to Inazio's great sense of editing and image, this is a nice and interesting picture of Phnom Penh as seen by a few foreigners who took considered themselves part of the city for a while. From the cover:

PIROI was ment to be a documentary about the city of Phnom Penh, viewed from the eyes of foreigners.
Then, when I started looking for people to take part, and found out how hard it was, I decided to do a little tribute to these people who make things happen by taking part. Thus my initial idea of focusing on the city changed and I decided to give them as much relevance as to the city itself.
After all, what's a city if not people, foreigners or not?

catalonian noemi castillo, french audrey folacci, italian edoardo nicolotti, spanish orlando naranjo and jose encinas, khmero-canadian linda saphan, austrian rob farrington and sarah spiller, as well as french-american joseph schwarzbach, share with us their thoughts and experiences in this city, unlike most others in our globalized world, still authentic and original.

The movie was screened at Cinémékong 2007. Here is the the program and the description in French:

RUE 200
De Inazio Zurutuza – 2006 / Durée : 20 min
“À l’origine du projet, “Rue Piroi” devait être un documentaire sur Phnom Penh à travers le regard et l’expérience de différents étrangers.
Réalisant qu’il n’était pas si aisé de trouver des participants, j’ai décidé de rejoindre mon idée initiale avec un petit hommage à ces personnes, qui ont permis que les choses se concrétisent en y ayant pris part. Après tout, qu’est-ce qu’une ville si ce n’est ses gens et leurs actions.”

Cheers.