B and I have caught episodes of "J'irai dormir chez vous" by Antoine de Maximy on France 5 a couple times, but this week we saw his "movie" about his trip to the States.
If you don't know the show, Antoine travels alone to remote parts of the world and talks to strangers in the hope of them letting him sleep in their home. He has a special apparatus that allows him to film himself all the time (a camera on the end of a pole), and he has a second camera to film the people he meets and the things he sees.
If you like off-beat travel shows and don't want to know anything about sites to see, you should check it out. In Cambodia he rented a scooter and found a remote village where he spent the night in the men's house with an extended family despite not speaking a word of Cambodian (he didn't sleep well due to the pigs that made noise all night). B just showed me an exerpt of his Belgian episode where he meets a farmer and his family. He's been to Ethiopia, Mali, China, Romania, Quebec, Japan, Madagascar...
The guy is amazing in my opinion because he succeeds in talking to the most random people, getting invited back to their homes, and makes wonderful connections.
I highly recommend "J'irai dormir à Hollywood" as an outsiders look at America. Besides being naturally funny, it's interesting seeing how the random people he meets explain their lives to a foreigner who shows up on their doorstep.
The France 5 website has lots of behind the scenes interviews and info as well, which is really interesting. From what I gather the feature film length "episode" he did for his trip to the States was kind of a series finale, so there might not be any more new episodes. Good thing there are more than 20 episodes, so it'll be a while before I finish them all.
1 comment:
Thank you so much for sharing this. Someone told me about this guy awhile back over a few wines and it never came back to me, so thanks a lot! I look forward to checking it out :-)
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