REFLEXIONS

Zapping one's way around the 50th Monte-Carlo TV Festival produced some surprising takes on the stars.
Julie Walters, fresh from a BAFTA for the ITV biopic 'Mo' , copped a Gold Nymph at the Monte-Carlo TV fest for the same portrayal. Her next role: a couple of months as a farmer's wife. Walters and her husband run an organic farm in West Sussex where the audience is composed of cattle, sheep and pigs.
The Festival's perennially popular Eric Close continues to be a church deacon in private life and to lead a life in crime on the small screen. When 'Without a Trace' was shelved last season, Close took up 'Seven Deadly Sins' and will start shooting 'Chaos', " a dramady, a bit like Mash" in which he's a paranoid spy.
You can't challenge Canadian Camille Sullivan's acting ability. When she was the abusive "coked out wife of an ex-crime boss" in 'Intelligence', her husband's friends were so worried about his safety they called. In her new show, 'Shattered', which will be screened on 13eme rue, the French policier channel, she's the caring partner of a detective with multiple personality disorder. No more phone calls.
Callum Keith Rennie, Sullivan's partner in 'Shattered', once claimed he wasn't hansome enough to be a romantic hero or ugly enough to be a villain. Now he has a choice of four separate personalities in the Canadian Cop drama.
Joe Mantagna, David Rossi in 'Criminal Minds', has no problem switching off when shooting another day's dark episode is over. "I've been to Quantico. These people are out there every day tracking down psychopaths. At the end of the day, a plastic arm with a bit of ketchup doesn't effect me. It would be an insult to people who do it for a living for me not to sleep nights."
Is there life after Dallas? Larry Hagman, J.R. of the long-running US series, is living it down on the farm. "Four or five years ago, the East Coast of the US and Canada went dark when a tree fell on a power line in Ohio. Since the infrastructure is so vulnerable, I decided on solar power (for his avocado farm) because it doesn't have a lot of moving parts. First the well, then the house. I produce more than I use, so now I'm an electricity manufacturer."
'Law and Order:Special Victims,' is a long way from the hood and gangsta rap. Ice T has made the trek and acquired some surprisingly concervative views on matrimony along the way. "A man marries because it's the right time, a woman marries because she finds the right man. You shouldn't get married if you are going to cheat. Attraction is easy. The key to a good relationship is admiration, admiration is different."
Simon Baker, 'The Mentalist' and part of the Oz wave currently sweeping Hollywood, isn't hankering after a James Bond future. "I'm too short and probably too old." The man he'd really like to play is Ernest Hemmingway. "Because he had such an extreme life. He was so brutally masculine, yet he had a precise, delicate way of writing."
Jane Lynch, who plays the acid-tongued cheerleading coach in 'Glee', the small screen's cult high-school musical, has the most quotable lines on TV. Her favourite? Her comment to a co-character,"I'm getting a new diaper for your chin because it looks like a baby's bottom."

Think Ethiopia. What leaps to mind is the image of a country of superb athletes. Look again, a new image is poised to emerge: Eithiopians are engaged in turning their centuries-old fascination with story telling into cinema. Three of the embryo industry's films were screened for the first time in Europe in Monaco, May 20th, thanks to a trio of godparents: the International Emerging Film Talent Association, the International University of Monaco and Eco Art International. All three films -'Team iSpirit', 'Dancing for Unity' and 'Breaking the Barriers' - are short documentaries. The titles reflect the country's diversity - Ethiopia is a densely-populated mosaic of 80 ethnic groups, each with its own story-telling tradition, where discrimination is based on degrees of skin colour - and efforts to bring people together. Their style is narrative, crystaline, a style that makes immediate, intimate contact with the audience. 'Team Spirit' is the story of an extraordinary Armenian, born in Ethiopia, who started a football team for the children in his neighbourhood to create a sense of community spirit and mutual support. 'Dancing for Unity' focuses on a club that performs myriad ethnic dances aimed at promoting self-actualisation and mutual tolerance. 'Breaking the Barriers' follows a young man's move from his home in Gamballa to Addis Ababa where he is greeted as a stranger in his own country.
Before the Monaco screenings, the films' directors met with international distributors and producers at the Cannes Film Festival. "We came away with hope," said the young director of 'Breaking Barriers. He added, "We have many stories to tell, but we didn't know how to package stories to send abroad, we didn't know about script writing, shooting, directing. Since 2008, we have a film lab and we are learning." Marco Orsini, President of the International Emerging Film Talent Association is even more enthusiastic about the new film makers acceptance in Cannes. "They saw more distributors and producers in Cannes in two-and-a-half hours than I saw in seven days."

Monaco may be a slim lick of land coddled between the mountains and the Med, but its reach is global. Events like the Monaco Charity Film Festival bring the world to Monaco and pitch Monaco into world awareness - leaving little chance to succumb to any cerebral somnolence from a particular blend of sun, sea and security. For this year's film fest, Artistic Director George Chamchoum brought nearly 100 independent shorts, features and documentaries from 20 nations. They inspired, revealed, engaged and shocked. "John Rabe",a festival winner, was one of many revelations: a true story that chronicles the courage of a Nazi director of Siemens in China, in 1937, who saved 200,000 Chinese, under cover of the Nazi flag, from slaughter by Japanese troops during the rape of Nanking.
Another was "Meeting Andrei Tarkovsky" by a film maker with a remarkably similar name, Dmitry Trakovsky, who translated to film the late Russian director's insistence that "Death does not exist". Trakovsky made the film as Tarkovsky would have done: he let it grow out of the material, a luxury of independent film makers less concerned with box office than telling a story. It two Koreans, Kim Jong-chul and Lee Il-joo to bring to the screen, in "Restoration", the plight of Christian Jews in Israel. And it took the German director Dirk Simon, working for seven years under cover, to produce "When the Dragon Swallowed the Sun", which documents Chinese occupation of Tibet and the split in the Tibetan community between followers of the Dalai Lama's middle way and the desire for indepedence at whatever cost.
Spirit of place was the engaging element in "God Lives in the Himalyas", from India, in "Kelin", shot in the rugged Kazak mountains, and in "Fawzeya's Secret Recipe" from Egypt.
The most shocking film had to be "Playground", co-produced by George Clooney. Shocking because as an American viewer exlaimed, in tears, "It's us"! "Playground" exposes the US role in sexual trafficking of minors: American nationals are 25 percent of sex tourists world wide, and 80 percent of sex tourists in Latin America. After the film, Jean L'Herbon de Lussats, Monaco President of ECPAT, which fights sexual trafficking of minors around the world, and Jean Philippe Noat, Monaco Director of Action Innocence, which combats internet paedophilia, talked to the audience. Noat noted that there were hackers within the organisation who destroy paedo-porno sites. "Illegal, but effective." De Lussats praised the lead taken by Air France which refuses to charter its aircraft for sex toursism and screens in-flight warnings. (Suspect are groups of men who book for sex tourism destinations under the guise of sportsmen on fishing expeditions.)
Not only do the films expose, they inspire : "Tapestries of Hope " reveals one woman's work with child victims of the African myth that the rape of a virgin will cure HIV/AIDS; "Hummingbird" shows efforts to protect Brazil's street children from abuse; "Kids with Cameras" follows one director who changes the lives of autistic children by turning them into film makers.
Caring is at the heart of the festival, conceived by Vincente Zaragosa five years ago... His work not only creates public awarness and rewards talent, it collects funds to change the lives of abused children. The auction at the Festival's closing gala raised 12,000 euros, wholly destined to take children off the streets and away from adult predators.

Once a year, Monaco, whose taste for luxe is matched by its charity agenda, gets a compelling view of the flip side of life. The vehicle is the Monaco Charity Film Festival, the venues are the five-star Metropole and Hermitage hotels, and the event is a cinema/seminar marathon of 100 films and documentaries (May 5-11) whose protagonists are ordinary villians and ordinary heros. Dual aim of the Festival is to open a dialogue for social change while giving young cinema talent an opportunity to meet investors and distributors. The focus is clearly on children and their victimization by adults - from all walks of life - for profit. 'The Silent Army', a South African film, plunges audiences into the drama of children kidnapped by rebel groups. 'Riwayat' , from India, explores the 'disposability' of 100 million Indian girls. 'Playground, the child sex trade in America, ' reveals that the rights of children are equally vulnerable in advanced democracies. Other films dip into the inglorious past of nations: 'Nesoba, the Price of Freedom', reminds us that it took forty years to bring the killer of three Mississippi civil rights workers to trial. 'Heros of Conscience' is a retrospective of the non-violent US movement that pushed the US out of Vietnam. A comprehensive look at Brazilian cinema and the emerging Tibetan cinema turns the spotlight on national film making. The films from 20 countries, with one exception, are free: 'John Rabe', the little-known story of an unlikely trio - a nazi industrialist, an American medical worker and a French teacher - who joined forces to save civilians during the rape of Nanking. The 380-euro price of the film and the gala awards dinner goes toward helping children regain their rights - and their lives. Daily updates of film screenings are available at: www. monacofilmfestival.org.

Thinking bikes are the latest entry into the bling-bling world. A sampling of six bespoke cycles was unveiled for the media April 25th, in Monaco, to showcase things to come, namely an exhibition of up-up market cycles and accessories scheduled for spring 2011 at the Fontvieille Chapiteau. Star of the media launch was the Beru Factor 001, now appearing at the London Science Museum expo: "How F I Technology is Changing the World" . As its name suggests, the 001 was designed by UK Formula I engineers to offer all the electronics and telemetrics available to F I drivers. Trek, which has its own Tour de France team, came with a Madone model not unlike the bike Lance Armstrong presented to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, while De Rosa, another professional bike maker, checked in with proof that fashion and performance are a fit. Mercedes, a pro at pliable, luxury bikes, which boasts a bigger basket of patents than any other folding-cycle manufacturer, brought a 'fitness' model that snaps effortlessly into poster size to fit into the boot of a car - a Mercedes vehicle, naturally. Along with the handful of boys' toys were a couple of more familiar shapes with the chic, contemporary design touch only Italians create: a Ferrari-red Milan Fashion Bike and its glittering sibling, a gold-leaf-covered number with a python saddle and fenders made from the same wood fitted into a Rolls. The price tags proved as dazzling as the bikes. Think 20,000 euros and climbing. More info on next year's bespoke bike show at: ThinkingCycles.com.