It’s nice to travel with mondine! Organizing the From mother to daughter American tour was not easy (25 people from 30 to 84 years of age to move, feed and lodge! Even checking into a hotel requires some serious work). But it’s well worth it, for two reasons. The first one is the reward of seeing American audiences in awe before From mother to daughter and Mondine themselves. The second one is I really like to be with them, look at them as they happily swarm the Pike Place market in Seattle browsing for small gifts for husbands and sons they left at home, admire the skyline, sing until two in the morning in restaurants (in the photo they dedicate a song to Jenn, met in Vancouver and immediately “adopted”).

They have the rythm of old diesel engines, not fast-responding but mighty and dependable, a little hard to get started but unstoppable once on track. Every night they wear us out: we end up very tired for long trips and shows, but they seem tireless. They themselves say that “it takes ten lire to get us going and a hundred to make us shut up”. In the time-honoured rock’n'roll tradition, they stand their ground before occasions to party: Dave, our tour manager, yesterday was reduced to asking the stage manager where he could find a liquor shop open on Sundays, since “the ladies like their Jack Daniels”. All in all, time passes very pleasantly. I watch Interstate 5 go by through the tour bus window. Deanna, Viliana, Manuela and Italia play cards.

Andrea Zambelli, director of Mondine – From mother to daughter, is in Toronto for the film’s world première. I just got this email from producer Davide Ferrario. I translated and copied it below, I am too overwhelmed to add anything.

Zambe tells me that the first show was sold out (300 people). No one left. We had two applauses during the movie, and tears and enthusiasm at the end.
“I didn’t expect such an emotional reaction”, said the director…
A long debate with many questions followed. To be fair, half the audience consisted of Italian Canadians, but their heritage was not necessarily the only reason for them to like it.
Filmitalia people were also deeply moved, they send many congratulations. All in all, we all deserve them. Tonight second show for the general public. Tomorrow I’ll speak with Andrea again.

Davide

Thanks to Freddy, who found two of our videos on National Geographic’s website. From the logo you can tell that they got them off the folks at LinkTV. One is the Tre sorelle videoclip: the other one is so rare that even we did not have it, it’s live footage of 1.0 at Winnipeg Folk Festival 2004. But now we’ve gotten hold of it, uploaded it onto YouTube and we can show it to you! Here it is: