Updates, Live: Pola Rapaport

Street in Capri

This small painting is in the apartment where Pola Rapaport lives with her husband, Wolfgang Held. A very nice apartment in Brooklyn with a great view of Manhattan, across the East River.

I would like to start here from this small painting, a street in Capri: it calls in mind a fine movie made by Pola (with Wolfgang as director of photography): Blind Light. I will talk about it later.

A couple devoted to the world of movies: Pola is a film editor and film director, Wolfgang is a director of photography.

When I made the acquaintance of Pola I was curious about this name. Her father had been born in Romania, I could expect her to be Paula. Why Pola? Here was the reason: her mother was a passionate movie watcher for all her life, and the daughter got at birth the first name of a famous actress from between the world wars, Pola Negri.

As for the middle name, of a fascinating beauty, Garance, it had been the decision of the father: he had a great passion for the French spiritual universe, and Garance had all the perfume of an old stage in the history of France. Like Solange, the middle name chosen for the sister of Pola, Jill Rapaport.

It is a long story between Pola and Jill and me. I had known about them since childhood, without any clue where they could be found. Pola had known about me, too, for a long time, without any clue where I could be found. I knew only their last name, Rapaport. Pola knew only my first name, Pierre. I had no idea they were living in New Yok and their first names were Pola and Jill. They had no idea I was living in Bucharest and my last name was Radulescu. We discovered each other when I was in my early fifties. We were half siblings.

Maybe one day I will put this story here. What I want now, is to talk about the movies of Pola, as I did for the writings of Jill.