Or ....the funny story behind my first book.
An extraordinary thing happened in 2012. I received an enormous coffin-sized box with my name on it. Not expecting anything, it’s fair to say that I opened the box with a certain amount of trepidation, especially as the first item to emerge from it was a man’s shoe and then another – and then what looked like a leg. Needless to say, it was quite an eerie experience, until more pieces were revealed and it became apparent that these were the body parts of a self-assembly scarecrow! Yet I still had no idea who had sent it – and why. And then, I made the connection.
In 2002, I had been invited to Sardinia to film a particularly special carnival, organised and curated by Dante Olianas. It was a visual and musical feast of international carnival magic, set in the village of Eskolka – and it was there that I discovered Mario Serrau’s amazing scarecrows. There were a variety of these scarecrows – giant scarecrows, baby scarecrows, some were realistic while others were fantastical – all of them true works of art. Ten years later, I was invited to show some of my footage at the 10th anniversary of this famous carnival. Little did I know that many of the people I had filmed would be in the audience. Mario Serrau was there, he saw himself in the film and heard me say on camera how much I loved his scarecrows and how I wished that I could take one back to London with me…and so 10 years later he actually sent me one of his scarecrows!
I assembled the scarecrow in my flat. I named him Mario (in homage to his creator ) and decided to give Mario a new life in London as a way of thanking Mario Serrau who had sent him to me. And that is how I came to create the book The Story Of Mario: A Sardinian Scarecrow In London - with the invaluable help of my filmmaker friend Keren Ghitis, who took photographs of me and Mario for this book.
In 2002, I had been invited to Sardinia to film a particularly special carnival, organised and curated by Dante Olianas. It was a visual and musical feast of international carnival magic, set in the village of Eskolka – and it was there that I discovered Mario Serrau’s amazing scarecrows. There were a variety of these scarecrows – giant scarecrows, baby scarecrows, some were realistic while others were fantastical – all of them true works of art. Ten years later, I was invited to show some of my footage at the 10th anniversary of this famous carnival. Little did I know that many of the people I had filmed would be in the audience. Mario Serrau was there, he saw himself in the film and heard me say on camera how much I loved his scarecrows and how I wished that I could take one back to London with me…and so 10 years later he actually sent me one of his scarecrows!
I assembled the scarecrow in my flat. I named him Mario (in homage to his creator ) and decided to give Mario a new life in London as a way of thanking Mario Serrau who had sent him to me. And that is how I came to create the book The Story Of Mario: A Sardinian Scarecrow In London - with the invaluable help of my filmmaker friend Keren Ghitis, who took photographs of me and Mario for this book.
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Some months later, the book I sent Mario Serrau received a great deal of attention in Sardinia! Who was this crazy woman who had gone on various adventures with a scarecrow in the streets of London? The ingenious Dante Olianas succeeded in getting funding from the Ministry of Culture to invite me to present the book in Eskolka, the place where I had first seen the scarecrows during the famous unorthodox carnival . So I went back in October 2013 with copies of the book and became part of Mario’s family of scarecrows. "Spaventi passeri" in Italian.
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