Rob in Italy
So after San Diego, Rob traveled to Pordenone, Italy (about 45 minutes north of Venice) for a silent film festival which sounds better as the Festival of Cinema Muto. It's held annually, and if you want to know why silent films need a film festival, I can't help you. Rob says its to reintroduce films which have been newly digitized or re-released. They had two theatres going 18 hours a day with live music for every show. He said it was also an odd and eclectic crowd: many people who talked loudly on their cell phones throughout movies (thinking, I guess that they weren't interfering with the dialogue?). He saw some great movies and some weird ones (particularly the Weimar-era movies that he came to see) and bought a few. Rob was there with two of his friends, I mean colleagues, from BYU, who do film in the French and Scandinavian departments. As a favor to an Italian colleague, they took a day trip to see this rotunda by Palladio from the 16th century. Rob now has a thing