Au fer et au feu/By Iron & by Fire

"The Pierrot's Love" on Amazon


Synopsis:
The touching and compelling story of a ghost trying to be heard by a teenage girl who simply thinks she's a nutcase when she starts to hear the voice from the other side. Or would that be another fragment of her shattered soul? When she thinks she gets rid of what was haunting her it's when the ghost presents herself to be part of her own life, a life she had lost a longtime ago, only then she sees she was even more lost than the girl hovering over her mind. A mystery thriller with somewhat paranormal activity on the way, a mixture of Back to the Future and Ghostbuster but located in both Paris and London. A ballerina gets burnt and burst out when she looses her motion during a Ballet presentation in Paris of the late ninteenth century. She eventually dies and starts to haunt a girl from the twenty-first century who apparently has been receiving some eeriie text messages over her cellular phone. There is murder and suspense all over the plot. Apparently her boyfriend is involved. But he's a ghost. She then has to become a ghostwriter literally speaking to solve the case.

"Bloody Shoes"

Screenplay from an adaptation of the mystery/suspense novel "The Pierrot's Love"
by Ana Claudia Antunes

A Dance As One Production

SUPERIMPOSE: "FOUR YEARS EARLIER"

Sc 6 EXT. TRAIN STATION - EVENING

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dgLEDdFddk

The sound of an organ eerily playing "Tocatta" from Bach. A man holding a wallet with labels from many travels gets out of the train. Talita eagerly waits for him. He holds her up, he's happy to see her, but mostly because now he can show her the invitation, proudly.

TALITA
(holding the small piece of paper with the words:
“"Cinématographe" au Salon indien du Grand Café à Paris.
And the address, “14 Boulevard de Cappucines 14”)

Her hands trembling shows in small letters the description of the event, as a regular show, “This instrument invented by Mr Auguste and Louis Lumiere allows one to record, by a series of instantaneous shots, all movements that for some time given occur in front of an objective lens (...) and reproducing those moves projecting them, in grand scale and in large size, in front of a big audience, their images on the screen!

"FOUR YEARS EARLIER"

The sound of an organ softly playing "Tocatta" by Bach.

TALITA
I gave up performing.

GIOVANNI
Don't you tell me it's still about that girl...

TALITA (V.O.)
Those flames burning the theater where she was dancing still insists on haunting me every night. Her wings burning in that fire and yet I became frozen, I couldn't move, I couldn't save my friend.

Images of a ballerina still dancing in the theatre while her costumes burst into flames.

TALITA (V.O.)
(crying)
I heard her screaming...I saw her asking for help, flapping her arms like a bird and disappearing before my eyes, turning into ashes. Some nights the nightmares are so strong and vivid that it's as if Emma is there beside me, looking at me in the middle of the room.

The ballerina now looks relieved with her wings like two spots she becomes transparent and turns into a white light of fire, as she disappears from the scene. A ghost appears touching TALITA's shoulder.

GIOVANNI
That was just a terrible accident.
You shouldn't blame yourself for what happened to her.

TALITA
(touching her shoulders and holding herself in an embrace)
“That was just an awful accident!” That's what they kept telling her too, but I felt horrible, for all she had to go through. She couldn't move her legs and her arms...oh, she couldn't even stretch them the way she used to. I also thought that this could be a second chance for her as well as for me and that I would make better than when I have done. But after all that happened I'm not so secure on my Ballet shoes anymore...

EMMA (V.O.)
Tata, Tata, heart of gold,
your story has to be told!

A noise like a tapping on the wood like someone knocking the windowpane, “Ra-ta-ta-rat-a-ta!”

TALITA
Now seriously, who's that??
It's not funny!! I cannot take this anymore.

The spectrum of Emma's soul hovering over her, caressing TALITA's hair and whispering to her ears as it seems that she cannot see her friend from the other side.

EMMA
Don't be afraid, death is not the end.
Listen, Tata, I'm here to help you!

The Pierrot's Love-A Play In a Play

THE PIERROT'S LOVE
Screenplay by
Ana Claudia Antunes

Based upon the homonymous novel
© 2010 Dancing As One Productions

“Your soul is as a moonlit landscape fair,
Peopled with maskers delicate and dim,
That play on lutes and dance and have an air
Of being sad in their fantastic trim.

Then while they celebrate in minor strain
Triumphant love, effective enterprise,
They have an air of knowing all is vain,—
And through the quiet moonlight their songs rise,

The melancholy moonlight, sweet and lone,
That makes to dream the birds upon the tree,
And in their polished basins of white stone .
The fountains tall to sob with ecstasy.“
Paul Verlaine.

BLACK SCREEN

SUPER: A Dance As One Production

OVER BLACK

A continuous furious sound of frantic fingers typing over a computer's keyboard.

FADE IN

Sc 1 INT KITCHEN DAY Sc 1

A long-haired blond woman on her middle forties is seated on a wooden chair in front of the kitchen table typing on her netbook. On the screen we can see she's been searching over the net, browsing on Google the words, "All is Vanity":

ANNE'S MOTHER
Shoot! That's already taken.

CUT TO

The woman is now with her hands over her head, mumbling with her voluminous hair covering half of the computer screen.

ANNE'S MOTHER
Ah! All is Love...it's all about love.
It has always been about love. Love, Love, Love!!

In the screen the words "THE PIERROT'S LOVE" appear like a magic trick, dancing over the keyboard, or rather trembling, and reaching out to the screen as if superimposed into another image, the words give place then to a black and white scene.

OVER BLACK

A continuous sound of frantic fingers typing over a computer's keyboard. Each word appearing on the scene one by one:
CHAPTER I: A PLAY INSIDE A PLAY

SUPERIMPOSE: "PARIS 1899"

Sc 2 EXT. STREETS OF PARIS - NIGHT Sc 2

Dark, slippery sidewalks, wet streets. Seen through a ghostly appearance in a window's shop a shadow of a man approaching. A gas street lamp lightens up the ambiance where we can read the names of the two streets the man had just crossed, "Magnolias" and "Camelias". The man gets out of the shop with a bouquet of flowers in his hand. He heads to the Vaudeville Theatre that's just across the street from the flower shop. But before he arrives to the theatre he enters into a Cafe instead. He looks up and reads the name of the coffee shop.

ANDREW
Cafe au Fleur, bien sur!

Sc 3 INT. CAFE - NIGHT Sc 3

ANDREW enters the small room leaving behind him a wet footprint mixed with the mud that had splashed over his shoes. His hat and coat drips water inside the coffee place as well. The owner looks at him with a grumpy face. Andrew sits in a chair and asks a waitress for a coffee, Andrew continues to drink his coffee frantically from the small cup, taking small sips with less than a second on each interval. He takes out his hat and puts it over the table, brushing the top with his fingers, without paying attention to the woman on the table beside him.

WOMAN
Oh, that' so rude!

The woman takes her bag up and points it to complain to the man that he had spilled water on her purse. Andrew finishes his coffee, taking a last sip from the white cup and sets the artifact made of Chinese porcelain over the small saucer. He then pours some coins over the table. He looks at the door and observes people walking on the street. He watches the clock every five seconds, like a nervous tic, he gets carried out with an anxiety that keeps growing as a hungry animal. He leaves the coffee house. He looks the place from the outdoor. We can see the sign in the tent over the cafe written in rococo words “Cafe Au Fleur”. He takes a deep breath in and smells the flowers and takes one of the roses from the bouquet that he nervously grab with too much more intensity than it seems necessary and puts the flower inside the front pocket from his coat.

Sc 4 INT. THEATRE - NIGHT Sc 4

“Moonlight Sonata” by Beethoven is playing. The man opens the heavy door made of thick wood and enters the old building. There in the dressing room lies another flower on a canape. The man looks pale when he watches a young woman changing her clothes through the mirror. He remembers their first conversation, her voice comes to his mind like a whisper dressed in small gusts of wind.

THERESE (V.O.)
My love...

The voice gets stronger as he keeps reminding of old scenes.

THERESE
(distressed)
The world of actors...
She will not be part of it!

ANDREW
What if she wants to be an actress? What if?

THERESE (V.O.)
I don't think girls should worry about this.
Besides...I HAVE HIGH HOPES FOR HER.

Sounds of a train wagon rolling through its trails over the hard friction made of steel gets mixed with her strong statement as her voice increases in size and shape.

A pale apparition of a ghostly image reveals a woman seated in the canape, searching for a cigarette and crossing her legs as she tries to light it up.

THERESE
God forbid she will have to suffer like I did.
I grieve just by thinking about it-
(looking at an empty space over the wall separating ANDREW from the young woman getting dressed on the other room)
And hopefully she will find a nice decent man to look after her.

ANDREW lost in his own reverie and frozen in icy introspection, keeps still, looking back at her with glassy eyes.

Sc 5 INT. DRESSING ROOM - NIGHT Sc 5

A young lady with no more than her thirties, but looking much younger, shakes her hands in a frenzy motion, waving at him from behind the curtain, without showing her face.

TALITA
Alo, Andrew!

ANDREW
(Still talking to a phantom appearance of Therese)
But I guess I just have got into this bad habit of talking to myself, or rather talking at you, instead of to you. (He looks then to Talita trying to see who's behind the curtain) The same goes as if I were talking with your dead, I mean dear mother, that of course if she were still with us.

The girl opens the curtain, swooping it with a snap, curls the rope that holds part of the mantle elevated, caresses it between her fingers and takes the soft fabric around her hand leaving a knot hanging to reveal her voluptuous body. Holding the drape still she gives him a gentle smile and blinks her right eye.

TALITA
(giggling with a somewhat disturbing sound)
Mais, Andrew, elle n'est pas la, n'est-ce pas?
She's not with us anymore, or is she??
It's been such a long time...
(jumping to his arms and embracing him in a tender lace)
...since the last time I saw you!

ANDREW
(To himself)
She changes the subject as she changes her clothes...

TALITA
(dancing and turning in front of him)
I am so happy that you are here I could fly!
(stretching her arms wide, spinning around, her face against his) Merci!

ANDREW
(kissing her in the cheek and whispering into her ears)
How I hungered to taste those lips...

He kisses her into the lips, but TALITA's face changes to an older woman and he is now kissing the ghostly image of Therese.

A Ghost Writer

What would you do if an artist from the other side eager to tell a story contacted you and asked you to be a ghost writer, literally speaking? That's how "The Pierrot's Love" took shape on a story night:

Adolphe Willette 1889's Pierrot tickles Columbine to death

"A Thriller Trailer"


"Author's Page on Amaon"

Fairy of Winter

She danced just like a cat, and just like a bird
She flew as if it was her first flight out of a nest.
She imitated a leaf falling from the tree and heard
Music applauding and so excited he vibrated at last.

Music shouted excited. Dance could only feel pride.
He said the Art of Dance was for him a fairy tale.
Music then asked Dance, while she cried and sighed,
Why she didn't perform for an audience or in a fable.

So Dance told Music the story of her disgusts,
When she tried in vain to move freely as the wind.
She ran and fell, and finally said, “Fly I must!”
Dance wanted to perform subtly from her own mind.

Music then came up with an idea to share.
He stared at Dance and tried to make a deal:
While he taught Dance the secrets of the air
Dance would move and take his soul for real.

Music came like a gentle breeze and without fear
Dance let him enter in her heart and there to thrive.
Music instantly immersed deep inside of her ears.
And it was there that he spent the rest of their lives.

And now Music and Dance have a body and a soul.
Music can Dance, Dance can dream of a symphony.
All they went through made true for their goal
was to have all things living in such harmony.

The source of all ideas as they stand
In Dance and Music should be the same.
So they can walk together hand in hand
Creating possibilities as the main aim.

It is time to face the music,
And learn to listen to the whispers of the air.
This way we can move within the cosmic,
In a starry, enriched life so full of flair.
("When Dance Fell in Love with Music" and "Sea Sons- Rhymes & Songs", a book of tales and rhymes and illustrations with watercolours by Ana Claudia Antunes (available on Amazon).

"Winter Fairy" (Leg-ally Filed)

from the Ballet "Sea Sons" performed and choreographed by Ana Bowlova

Fairy of Fall

The Fairiest of All (from the Ballet "Seasons" created and choreographed by Ana Bowlova)

Time passed and Dance could not grasp at all
How she could not move as graceful as the wind.
So she became quite blue and felt so very small.
But Music found her, for she felt she was blind.Music didn’t have a body, yet had a beautiful soul.
It lived in a gust of wind and it played with flow.
As free and light as a bird it would come and go.
And it could penetrate in all things, high or low.Music knew all the secrets of the air
Its biggest dream was to have a body and dance.
It could sing and fly, but could not dare
Doing any movement and it asked for a chance.

When Music saw Dance it fell in love.
and ordered the wind to stop right away.
Then it asked Dance how she could move,
and how she could do that in such a way.Dance was delighted by its divine voice,
not knowing from where it came for sure.
She showed Music all seasons, as a choice,
and took fall to perpetuate its nature.
("When Dance Fell in Love with Music"- a Tale by Ana C. Antunes)

Fall Fairy from the Ballet "Seasons" created and interpreted by Ana Bowlova

Summer fairy

dance: the ineffable sense of saying what we cannot say with words, expressing the unthinkable, thinking the unapprehensible. There will be always dance as the essence of a romance, of a world filled with cadence, moved by the spirit in decence, never in decadance, but dance as the sense.

Danser: saisir l'unsaississable, encedier un uncertain moment qui s'épanoui, fournée fugace, que dans un instant se trace, esfumé par son propre feu, peut-etre vivre dans l'eau juste pour entendre la musique et faire d'elle une attente d'etre dans l'éther, éternel, joyeux et quelquefois jovial, autrefois sans age et toujours incessant, accessible ou incessible, mais jamais insensible.

Fairy of Spring

Dance lived in the forest very far away
She had a beautiful body and a strong heart.
She was very flexible and stretched all day.
She moved with anything that surrounded her.Dance moved her body so free like a dream
She imitated all the animals, even flies and bees.
She floated in the water and in every stream.
And she shook and trembled like leaves from the trees.She could run and fall from the sky like the rain.
She could fly and jump as high as the birds.
She made many mouvements and they were not in vain,
for everything had a life all made of words.So Dance tried to catch and squeeze.
A little breath she took and she jumped in a hurricane.
She could not get the wind, not even a breeze.
She observed how the wind touched the windowpane.And that's how she transformed the world in four seasons
Trying desperately to fulfill her wisdom,
she penetrate into the forest and proclaim
that from now on four seasons shall reign.
So here it came first the Spring
All pretty and charming she decided she would be
She left her essence, her perfume in all things
for she had a colourful joyful way of living.
("When Dance fell in love with Music" and "Sea Sons-Rhymes & Songs" Fairy Tales by Ana Antunes

Leg(ally) Filed

Making a study of a choreography so complicated that I cannot even remember how to dance it. Well, I will have to rehearse it again, and again, and again, and again, and again, after all it's the practice that makes perfection, isn't that right??

Yet my toes're already torn
for a new dance to be born,
though tough, Ballet shoes,
they are not toys for toes.

Now that's my Fairy of Spring for my Ballet "Seasons" I got five ballerinas doing the choreography, four on each corner and one in the middle, dancing with the flowers who will give life to Spring.
Spring Fairy (choreography created and performed by Ana Bowlova)
Ballet "Seasons" by Alexander Glazunov

Two weeks too wiki!!

There is a saying that goes as something like "Time flies when you have fun!" And that's exactly what happened to me in the last two weeks. Although I also believe that when you make too many things it seems like a decade. I've got so many cultural events and invitations that I could hardly keep track of the time. It slipped between my hands. But what I got from it will stay for eternity. First I attended the ceremony which opened the new season of concerts in Santos. Then I went to the exposition in the Pinacoteca also located in Santos. I also made it to a session of cinema festival (France). Finally I went to the (almost) inauguration of the Guarany Theatre (there was a prior public event a month ago) Guarany is an Indian tribe in Brazil, but there was not much of their presence inside, which by the way is something of such an amazing sofistication on the details for preservation and restauration as well as it has a modern touch. Actually what impressed me most in the ceremony (besides the beauty of the music and the really interesting documentary of an hour or so) was exactly the lack of public. Not that it was for the elite. But once again, I notice that an event, even announced for the public in general makes no quorum. Only a few people came to appreciate this divine work. I took some pictures from inside the building. I was memerized by the work they've done. If you knew that there only the vegetation watched the walls of that theatre (or the remainings of it) and there was no ceiling, the paintings almost vanished. They had to rebuild the whole theatre pratically from scratch (and sketches, considering they got the old plan and based the restauration upon that). There I watched the first time public presentation of a concert with a composition from another composer born in Santos, Mr. Camargo Guarnieri. Then I noticed many orbs around (some unexplainable round and transparent forms, like foo fighters, orbitating in a circle shape), and it was not much of my surprise that this phenomenon happens in old places, but I already sensed some presences, definitely related to the composer to whom the hommage was being granted.

There I also met another composer from Santos, Mr. Gilberto Mendes and this time I asked him for an autograph, "Are you a musician too!" He asked me. "No, but I enjoy music very much... well, I sing."


Holding one of the books by Gilberto Mendes, "To live your music"

Above, a picture of Gilberto Mendes & I in the Guarany Theatre in Santos, Brazil. Below, his Signature that he gracefully gave me with a (heart)beat graphic on the first letter of his first name "G" (and he said it was the paper that made the ink fail, but I already heard his heart gladly dancing in cheers, very emotional and with a smile, ike saying, "Gee", while he tried in vain to mark the note in G;)
I do not consider myself a musician but now, thinking more about that, I should. I compose and I sing my own songs. If that's not a musician by excellence, I do not know what would be. Just because I am too shy to show them up for the public view and criticism it doesn't mean I do not belong to the music clan. I do not like labels either, but my nickname (the one that my family got for me, even before I had my own name) has already a music trademark on it (Decca). And it is not without a background either: both my sisters are singers and my father and grandmother also played the piano. Neitherless to say, I LOVE/LIVE MUSIC!!!

What I also love here in Santos are the colors.
Hence like birds in flight look the flowers.
A peacock look has the one displayed down,
The one with a peak and with a small crown.

Powaqqatsi

Powaqqatsi means a sorcerer sucking out the life out of a body, or a parasitic way of life, like a zoombie transiting through life, in Hopi language. How many people live their own lives like Powaqqatsi?

In this movie by Italian director Godfrey Reggio, we can see how human beings are equal all over the world, how they react exactly the same in so many cultures, religions, places, or countries around this planet. It starts with the images of Serra Pelada, where workers like ants climb and descend a huge pile of people. Sebastiao Salgado, Brazilian photographer, also reflected that in his own lens. It also shows some parts of Santos, Cubatao and other big cities throughout the world. A Choreography of images no words would be able to describe, but only to watch and not to reflect about it would be a way of saying the name itself over and over again: Powaqqatsi

Painting, Panting and Patting

I've been checking some of my old presentations on TV and (Movie) Theatres which made me yearn for the past. I surely did a lot in the last couple of years, but nothing compares to what I have done through the last twenty years of my life.

"Write a hooking book,
Plant a tree near a brook,
Have a child
born to be wild..." Well, I wrote more than forty books, I've planted more than twenty trees over the last two years (thanks to my personal recycling deal) and that gives me what? The possibility of having at least ten children!! So I know there is so much more in the horizon for me. But just to contemplate the template ignites so many emotions that's almost impossible not to gasp for some air. And yet I have accomplished so much that I think it is OK to give yourself a pat on your back once in a lifetime. I also have been sharing those moments with cherished friends and I do feel awesome that they appreciate my efforts of turning back in time, or at least trying to freeze a little breeze that passed once through our lives. I am not being nostalgic the least (perhaps only a little romantic) that I simply like to offer a bouquet of precious memories that once experienced nothing can take away. Time passes, right. But a time well spent is a life well lived. And if remembering is to live, then I live to remember!

Photo Shooting

It's pretty nice that Paulo Coelho, a worldwide celebrated writer, shows the step-by-step of how to make a cover. As models, we've been in so many photo sessions that it's hard to keep track of our works and we even take for granted all the hard work from measuring the light to keeping the model still, to have the patience to not scream to the person, "Don't move... Don't move, DON'T..." (Too late!;)


Talking about covers of magazines, I once was sitting in the VIP room of Lima's airport, waiting for my plane (from Varig airlines) when I saw a magazine... and look who was on the cover?? Only my favourite author!! (And he would never guess, magician as he is;) then, my plane arrived, and what was my surprise when I saw him descending from the same plane that I was about to catch. Tell me about synchronicity! It was in 1998 and the magazine I was reading had an interview about Paulo Coelho's upcoming visit to Peru. I don't need to mention that when I saw him walking in the landing lane I started to jump like crazy (or like a bunny groupie, as his last name itself means Rabbit) and yelling I called him, "Paulo Coelho, Paulo Coelho". I swear you I thought he had heard me screaming at the top compartment and through the sound-proof windows, as I saw him stepping towards my direction. Then a big woman (I wonder if she was his agent) grabbed his arm and redirected him to the exit. At least I can sing the FADO (Fate) that I was once THIS close to him... To quote Maxwell Smart, "It was this close!"

Into The Wild

I've read the book (the one with black and white cover) a year before this movie was shot. That cover caught Sean Penn's attention. It was a photo of a bus covered in snow. I only thought when I finished the book how good a movie could this be, for I so had in my mind's eye the whole picture, with so many attention to details, so very well described, filled with nuances not only from the inner and outer nature (in both senses, human and by the environment) but very well written as a sentiment, it feels how much this true story touched the author Jon Krakauer. The actor Emile Hirsch as the main character plays with distinction his role as the young Chris McCandless who left everything, family, friends, and an apparent flawless life to live into the wild. Awesome photography and direction, as well as the screenplay which held very truthful to the original text. Many Kudos for the first time director Sean Penn.

San Francisco Spells

"If you are going to San Francisco..."
Scott McKenzie

"I left my heart in San Francisco."
Louis Armstrong

"(...)every gesture there has a meaning
(...) may feel your whole body screaming"
Village People


"Luna de San Francisco,
que la noche iluminó,
sólo hay una religión,
música y amor."
Paloma San Basilio


"(...) a place, where love begins
a certain town I left my heart in.

San Francisco love is all around
San Francisco you've never let it down."
Olsen Brothers