Two encounters in Cannes
Two trains loaded with memories passed in front of my eyes thanks to two encounters yesterday, leaving distinctly different tastes in my mouth. The first one was long - over ten years - and riding it was my former colleague...
Two trains loaded with memories passed in front of my eyes thanks to two encounters yesterday, leaving distinctly different tastes in my mouth.
The first one was long - over ten years - and riding it was my former colleague from the Karlovy Vary Int'l Film Festival and then a partner with whom I spent eight exciting and adventurous years building the DataKal brand which he, in the first moment I looked away ... well, it must have happened to someone you know - they put something valuable on the table, pacified by the soothing feeling of trust (a decade of partnership has the unfortunate ability to foster that kind of feeling), then looked away... and when they look back... Let bygones be bygones, right? But I guess no wonder that looking at the skeletons packed like sardines in the last carriage of that long and otherwise pretty train still leave a taste of disbelief and bitterness in my mouth, and a burning emptiness in the back pocket of my pants.
The second train is much shorter. It has Eventival written all over it, and I still remember its first whistle. It was in September 2008 when the guy from the first paragraph (let's call him by random initials, let's say "PK", like "Player Killer" in gaming slang) and I worked in Paris for the festival Cinema du Reel, a collaboration that began after the proposal I wrote earlier that year won a public tender called by the Bibliotheque nationale. Adrian Johnson, a France-based British friend we met while working with the Berlinale, invited us for a beer in an Irish pub near Chatelet, and proposed to us his idea - a company called Eventival where we, as equal partners, would create an application for film festivals and similar other events - a little brother of DataKal. We finished our beers and shook hands. But I guess one of us already had something else on his mind - a very different future for the bigger brother. The rest is ... yes sure, history which will be described elsewhere in details when the time is ripe. The fact is that two months later, Eventival was founded in Paris and the third partner was, for a change, someone for reliability and integrity are natural qualities: Yeo Myoung Cha, or Dawna.
The two weeks in France in January 2009 during which we stayed in Adrian's house in Thommery from 9 am to 2 am, working on the first Eventival, creating our first website, discussing our logo with the famous designer Jiwon Shin, were unforgettable. I remember setting out on a trip back to Prague after I had set up a Facebook page for Eventival the night before, and waking up seeing that already several dozen people had joined it, and calling Adrian with the news ... it was the time when every little encouragement was like an infusion of new blood. Our first joint trip to the Berlinale was memorable. And it was no different the whole spring that started by our trip to Toronto where Adrian and I were given a chance to see the Bell Lightbox building's bowels . Staying in La Loingtaine and meeting there or in Adrian's house, the first festivals, the endless Skype calls with Toronto, Los Angeles, Giffoni... and also the first realisation that we might need more hands to sculpt this work of art.
The summer 2009 opened a second chapter for Eventival which ended in February when, after nearly two years of work, we completed the project, and announced the creation of the world's most versatile online festival production system, which by the time I am writing this has already become also the world's most used system.
When the old Eventival train passed by yesterday and Adrian, Dawna and I reunited for a photo, it made me think of what a difference it is when you partner is not only a man ... but a gentleman.