Simon Mol

Xmas Thoughts

To be a poet is to inherit a curse.
Coming to terms with this is a great, stimulating challenge;
in the course  words are captured and feelings made prisoners
... and thus art is born'.

Random Notes from my Diary

I would rather go to hell alone, knowing I was fully responsible for all my thoughts and actions. I won’t be able to live with myself in hell, if it so happens that I looked around me and saw a friend or several people who came alone with me to hell as a result of believing in what I believed in. Or that I convinced then knowingly or knowingly to follow the path I did; the path that finally landed me in hell.

Great Applause For Simon Mol

By Joanna Woźniczko (Gazeta Wyborcza)

He fled Cameroon to Ghana, and from Ghana to Warsaw. Now he feels that here is his home. In Warsaw he founded a Magazine for exiles. Yesterday ‘Voice of Exile’ celebrated its jubilee:

Simon Mol came with a black leather file during our meeting. With a mysterious smile he opened it and pulled out an African newspaper: printed on scratchy paper. This opposition newspaper caused him to be thrown behind the bars; “Before my arrest I was working as a journalist. I was writing for a pro-government newspaper in order to win my bread and at the same time I also wrote for an opposition newspaper. Not long afterwards I was handed an ultimatum; you either abandon the opposition newspaper or you get banned from practicing journalism. I decided to carry on with the opposition newspaper,” Simon narrates.

A Word with Hollywood Star-maker SYD Field

By Simon Mol

‘Film is the future’. Beneath this single simple phrase prowls the entire screenwriting philosophy of Syd Field. Ardent faith in his self-style doctrine and diligence in sorting details both in scripts and life, added up to project Field as a leading authority in screenwriting along the comfy corridors of Hollywood. For this reason and others, the organizers of the Hartley-Merril International Screenwriting Prize had Field fly to Warsaw to address a group of aspiring screenwriters drawn from across the globe (except Africa) in a 2hr workshop, to mark the 2005 Eastern European Screenwriting Lab. This was how I met the sturdy soft-spoken humanistic artist whose sentiments could be felt in his words and works. To him film is serious business.

Art Ambassador

Simon Mol (Moleke Mo-Njie)

(The Second Renaissance; World Forum of Cyframatics) Villa San Carlo Borromeo, Milan (Italy) Nov’ 29-Dec’ 5, 2005)

On ALITALIA flight nr. 555 from Warsaw to Milan last Tuesday, Noember 29th, I picked a copy of the Financial Times and flipped through to the space reserved for Art critics – on page 10. An article written by Samson Spanier tilted The Critics, captured my attention. Somewhere between Spanier states and I quote, ‘Giambologna, the great sculptor after Michelangelo’s death, was said to care nothing for money because he wanted only artistic glory’. True to this line of thinking, here is what Simone Fortuna wrote to the Duke of Urbino in 1581 about Giambologna: "He is the best sort of man one could ever want to meet, not greedy at all, as one can tell from his being so poor: all that he wants is glory and his greatest ambition is to rival Michelangelo.