Carmen Rivoira

Me gustaría filmarte bailando (I would like to film you dancing)

Argentina



I hailed a cab to go from downtown to my house, with a lot of doubts because it was going to be very expensive. When I got in, I felt that I was in the car of a very young person, driven by a man with a beret, wearing colorful clothes. I looked at my cellphone for 15 blocks in silence. We stopped at a traffic light and some shouting in the street made me look up. A crazy man was crossing the pedestrian path talking to himself. Suddenly, the driver says to me: I always wanted to make a film about people talking to themselves. I looked at him for the first time, and realized he was old. We talked until he dropped me off at my house, he recommended many movies and I wrote them all down, I recommended others, but he didn't write them down. Before I got off I kept his phone number in my notebook.

Ico has always been into meeting me, especially if it was to talk about him. He would make sure to see me puting the tape recorder on the table to record our entire conversation. The first time we met, I proposed a very personal interview and he accepted. He cried in a café where long before he used to meet with his friends to play chess. I cried with him. I never quite understood what brought us together, but I kept calling him and he kept aswering:"Don't get lost pebeta, let's go for some sushi or a coffee".

I think it reminded us both of the magic of the unpredictable. One day, without the slightest warning, I found myself looking at the childhood photos of an unknown gentleman. That same day, he found himself showing his childhood photos to an unknown young woman.
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Ico Godoy is 79 years old. He is not my grandfather, nor my friend, nor my uncle, nor my boyfriend, but we love each other. I traveled in his cab more than 5 times, we had lunch 1 time, we had coffee 2 times, he visited my studio 2 different days, he took me to his club 1 afternoon, and we went 1 night to the milonga. I filmed everything. This was the 8th and last time I saw him.
Mark