Category: Inspiration

Uplifting, dream-like and fun, Argentine film-maker Fernando Livschitz transforms footage of everyday scenes into charming and mind-boggling fantasy.

Fernando Livschitz of Black Sheep Films edits everyday footage in order to add a touch of the bizarre to mundane scenes. “I try to put a smile on people’s faces. I believe it’s always possible to show the world and ideas in an alternative way, with magic and surprise. As a director I like to express my point of view through creative thinking.” Music: Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” covered by Reuben and the Dark.

https://www.bsfilms.me/#new-page-1

“The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.”

Bertrand Russell – Philosopher (1872 -1970)

Reese Werkhoven and his roommate Lara Russo were sitting on their recently purchased couch one night in April 2014, watching a Harry Potter movie, when the cushions started bothering him enough to do something about it. The couch was lumpy. It had been lumpy since they bought it at a Salvation Army store in New Paltz, New York, a month earlier for twenty dollars. He unzipped one of the cushions to see what was making it uncomfortable and found a small package wrapped in bubble wrap.

He later described his first thought: it might be drugs, it might be money, they were getting scared about it.

It was money.

He and Russo called their third roommate Cally Guasti in, and the three of them started finding more. Envelopes, one after another, tucked inside the cushions and inside the arms of the couch. They piled everything on a bed and counted it. The total was $40,800.

Their neighbours heard the shouting from their apartment and assumed someone had won the lottery.

The three of them spent several days discussing what to do. They had real conversations about the moral question, and they admitted later that they considered keeping it. They were in college or recently graduated. None of them had much money. Forty thousand dollars was a life-changing amount. One of them said later that there were a lot of gray areas to consider.

Then Guasti found a bank deposit slip inside one of the envelopes with a woman’s name on it.

Werkhoven called his mother for advice. She tracked down a phone number and texted it to him. He called the number, heard an elderly woman answer, and hung up. He called back and told her he had found something that he thought might be hers. She told him she had a lot of money in that couch and that she really needed it.

He drove with his roommates to her home the next day.

The woman, who has asked to remain anonymous, was 91 years old.

She was a widow with a recently broken hip. Her family had donated the couch to the Salvation Army while she was in hospital, not knowing what was inside it. The money was decades of savings — including wages from years of work as a florist — that she had been hiding in the couch at the encouragement of her late husband, who had worried about what would happen to her after he was gone. She had slept on that couch for years. When her back problems became serious, her family replaced it with a bed and the couch went to the charity shop.

She cried when the three roommates handed her the money.

She told them that it was her husband looking down on her, and that this was supposed to happen.

She gave them a reward of one thousand dollars. They kept the couch.

The three of them — Werkhoven, Guasti, and Russo — were college students and recent graduates in upstate New York who bought a secondhand piece of furniture because they needed somewhere to sit. What they ended up with was the specific knowledge that when it actually cost them something, they did the right thing.
Werkhoven said simply: it’s not our money. We didn’t have any right to it.

Guasti said, “At the end of the day, it wasn’t ours.”

There is nothing more to add to that.

Share this with someone who needs a reminder today that ordinary people make extraordinary choices all the time, without cameras or applause, because it is simply what you do.

Weird Wonders and Facts

At the AFI Life Achievement Award ceremony honoring Denzel Washington in 2019, Julia Roberts surprised the audience by reading a recommendation letter written about him decades earlier by one of his acting teachers. The letter described Washington as a dedicated young actor with remarkable focus and integrity. Roberts used the moment to remind the audience that the qualities admired in him today were already visible long before Hollywood knew his name.

The audience quickly realized that the tribute was not just about celebrating a successful career. The letter revealed a portrait of a young man still searching for opportunity yet already carrying the discipline that would define him. According to the teacher who wrote it, Washington stood out because of the seriousness he brought into every rehearsal and class. While other students sometimes chased attention, he focused on learning the craft.

Roberts read the words slowly, allowing the room to absorb them. The letter described Washington as thoughtful, determined, and quietly confident. It praised his willingness to work harder than expected and his respect for fellow actors. Those early observations felt striking because they mirrored the reputation Washington would later earn across Hollywood.

Many people in the audience had worked with him over the years and knew those descriptions were accurate. Washington built his career not only through powerful performances but through consistency and preparation. Directors often describe him as an actor who arrives fully prepared and ready to collaborate. Crew members frequently recall his kindness and calm presence on set.

Julia Roberts knew that side of him well. The two stars worked together in ”The Pelican Brief” (1993), a political thriller that became one of the decade’s most successful suspense films. Roberts played a determined law student uncovering a dangerous conspiracy while Washington portrayed the investigative journalist who helps her reveal the truth. Their performances created a strong partnership that audiences still remember.

During the tribute Roberts spoke with warmth about their experience working together. She described Washington as someone who leads quietly through example rather than through loud gestures. His professionalism shaped the atmosphere on set and helped everyone focus on telling the story well. Roberts explained that his presence often made younger actors feel more confident because they knew they were working alongside someone who valued the craft deeply.

The recommendation letter made that idea even more powerful. It showed that Washington’s integrity did not develop after success. It was present from the beginning. The teacher described a student who listened carefully to direction and treated every exercise as if it mattered. That level of commitment often separates actors who simply pursue fame from those who build lasting careers.

As Roberts continued reading, laughter and applause occasionally moved through the audience. Some lines described Washington’s seriousness with gentle humor. His teacher had written that he approached acting with the focus of someone who believed every rehearsal was a step toward something meaningful. Those words felt prophetic now that his career included decades of memorable performances.

Over the years Washington has become known for roles that carry emotional weight and moral complexity. Films such as ”Glory” (1989), ”Malcolm X” (1992), and ”Training Day” (2001) demonstrated his range and intensity. Yet colleagues often say that his greatest strength is the respect he brings into every collaboration.

The AFI Life Achievement Award celebrates artists whose work shapes the history of American cinema. Washington’s influence reaches far beyond individual films. Many younger actors credit him for showing that discipline, patience, and self respect can guide a long career. His example has quietly encouraged others to approach the craft with the same seriousness.

Roberts understood that message and wanted the audience to hear it clearly. By sharing a letter written long before fame arrived, she reminded everyone that character often begins in unseen moments. Teachers, classmates, and early mentors sometimes recognize greatness before the world does.

When Roberts finished reading, the room filled with applause. Washington smiled with a mixture of humility and gratitude. The moment felt personal rather than ceremonial. It connected the celebrated actor on stage with the determined student described in the letter.

A few simple words written years earlier still echoed in that room. Talent may open doors. Character decides how far the journey continues.

In the summer of 2000, a Norwegian farmer and conservationist named Geirr Vetti had a problem. Norway’s most celebrated mountain paths were being loved to death.

The country’s dramatic landscape of fjords, peaks, and waterfalls had become a magnet for hikers, and the trails connecting them could not keep up. Soil was eroding. Rocks were loosening.

In some places the paths had become genuinely dangerous, and the standard Norwegian approach to trail maintenance, which relied on local labor and conventional tools, was too slow and too expensive to fix the damage at the scale it was happening.

Vetti had watched a documentary about Mount Everest and noticed something. The Sherpa people of the Solukhumbu district in Nepal had spent a thousand years building stone stairways through some of the most severe terrain on earth.

Their technique required no heavy machinery, no imported materials, and no roads. It needed only hands, simple tools, an understanding of how rock fractures under pressure, and the ability to carry stones heavier than a person up a near-vertical slope. Vetti made contact with a group from Nepal. Four Sherpas arrived in Norway that first summer.

The results were immediate and obvious. The Sherpas worked at a pace and with a precision that Norwegian trail crews had not seen before. They read the landscape to find local stone, shaped it by hand, and set each piece so it locked against its neighbors and shed water naturally.

The paths they built did not require cement. They did not require maintenance crews returning every season to repair erosion damage. They lasted because the technique itself was designed to last, refined over centuries in conditions far harsher than anything Norway’s mountains could offer.

Four workers became a steady flow. Sherpas came every summer, spending seven months to a year in Norway before returning home. Over time they worked across more than two hundred locations, building stairways up to the Pulpit Rock, across the Lofoten archipelago, along the Hardanger fjord, and dozens of trails in between.

While studying at Juilliard in the early 1970s, Robin Williams quietly began doing something his classmates would only understand years later.

Some of them were struggling to survive.

Theater training at The Juilliard School demanded complete focus, but many students were living close to the edge financially. Rent in New York was rising, part-time jobs were scarce, and some actors were skipping meals just to stay enrolled.

Williams noticed.

Rather than offering sympathy, he acted quietly. Several classmates later discovered that when someone faced eviction or fell behind on rent, an anonymous payment would suddenly appear. At the time, no one knew where the help came from.

Only years later did former students compare stories and realize the same person had helped many of them.

Robin Williams had been paying their rent.

He never attached his name to the assistance and never mentioned it publicly. To him, money functioned as a practical tool. If financial pressure threatened someone’s ability to focus on acting, removing that pressure felt like the obvious solution.

Protect the creative space.

Let the work continue.

Even during those early years, Williams was already studying people with extraordinary attention. He carried small notebooks filled with observations about voices, rhythms of speech, accents, and unusual phrasing.

Taxi drivers.

Cashiers.

Airport workers.

Strangers in elevators.

These everyday encounters became part of his creative process. He listened carefully to cadence, pauses, and the musical quality of how people spoke. Many of the voices that later appeared in his performances were built from these observations.

Comedy, for Williams, wasn’t random chaos.

It was careful listening.

His reputation for generosity followed him into film sets as his career expanded through movies like “Dead Poets Society“ (1989) and “Good Will Hunting“ (1997). Crew members occasionally found themselves in financial trouble when productions stalled or funding delays interrupted payroll.

On several occasions, Williams quietly stepped in.

Instead of allowing workers to wait weeks for wages, he covered the payments himself so grips, electricians, and assistants could support their families. For many on set, the situation resolved so quickly they didn’t initially know what had happened.

Work simply continued.

Studios also learned that working with Williams required unusual preparation. His improvisational style meant scripts rarely stayed fixed during filming. Productions sometimes hired staff whose sole job was to track his ad-libs and new lines so editors could maintain continuity.

Unpredictability became part of the workflow.

Yet despite his fame, Williams treated people on set without hierarchy. Background actors often remembered him as the only leading star who consistently introduced himself, asked their names, and spoke with them between takes.

Conversation replaced distance.

That same instinct appeared during hospital visits. Williams frequently visited children’s hospitals, but instead of focusing attention on himself, he wrote handwritten notes thanking nurses and caregivers for their patience and dedication.

The messages were simple.

Personal.

And meant for the people who rarely received recognition.

Across decades of work, these quiet actions revealed a pattern. Robin Williams moved through environments with intense awareness of others — noticing stress, listening to voices, and stepping in where help was needed.

Not for applause.

But because, to him, kindness was simply another form of presence.