‘Somnambulists’ is a six part film series that follows the actions of RETRO & MAIDE on their recent winter adventure around Italy. The series takes a fresh approach to filming, editing and track selection which results in high-end filming gear, drone footage, slow cuts, and bleeding edge bass music taking you on a journey so intimate you’ll feel like you’re sitting on the tracks eating spaghetti bolognese.
In this episode, RETRO and MAIDE light up a metro hanger in Rome and get straight to business.
“It was a fun city to adventure through. On any given day you’d see lines and lines of tourists queuing up to understand more about the ancient tunnels of secrets and precious landmarks, and there we were, with free access to the city‘s filthy train tunnels and many lay-ups.
One night we headed over to a hatch we had previously checked, we picked up another unfamiliar Australian writer on the way but when we got there we found that the hatch had been jammed closed. It was pretty suss. So we contemplated what to do and went for a walk. On one end of the street, a police car had stopped and tried to talk to our friend; on the other end, I noticed a man and woman sitting the their car facing the hatch – also suss.
We walked the block, I hid my gloves and as we strolled to a takeaway shop we noticed another police car, then another, and another. As we slowly strolled back to the car after getting a quick snack, the police cars kept coming. There ended up being nine in total. Then, we were stopped by two police cars. “Hey, do you guys do graffiti?” We were a bit stunned and thought it was hilarious. “No? What do you mean graffiti?” The police man then imitated spray-painting. They pointed to our car, and we agreed, “yes it’s ours…” The cops then asked us to open the car… We literally had a boot of at least 80 BOXES (not tins) of paint in there. Retro slipped into the front seat, put a used but empty SD card into his takeaway container, continued to eat, then placed it in the bin. Smooth… We popped the boot and the police were stunned. Laughing to each other. We said we did ‘mural art.’ Gobsmacked that we had no photos of trains or “murals” they pulled aside Retro to question him as to what he was doing, he ‘so called’ promised that we hadn’t been doing anything wrong. The police man turned to his team, “Hey, he promised.” turned back to Retro and said “Ok” with a smile.
As it turns out, a promise and a conversation about a recent Australian trip were good enough reasons to stop the search. As the police drove off, the cop turned to us giving us the thumbs up and shouted “Bondi Beach!!”-MAIDE.