Edinburgh International Film Festival 2

The Film Festival ends tomorrow, but I saw my last film there today. It was How Is Your Fish Today? a Chinese documentary film about a screenwriter, intertwined with a film that he is trying ti write. It offers interesting insights into China and into the writing process, particularly the prose writers relationship with their characters.

Other films I've seen since my last post on the Film Festival include:

Sieben Himmel - a bizarre German film about the unlikely relationship between a young goth and a nightwatchman who seem to be stuck in a time loop (though the siginificance of this is never explored). I enjoyed the film but the experimental camera work was too much for me.

Interkosmos is another German film, this time a mockumentary about the fictional East German plans to colonise the moons of Jupiter and to set up a permanent space library of communist literature. Excellent film, truly bizarre with a wonderful cameo appearance from the Space Guinea Pig animation.

Skin is a Portuguese film that had great potential in terms of exploring issues around race and gender in a post colonial society, but the wonderful art direction and attractive cast were let down by the clumsy dialogue and the clunky character development.

So which of the films that I saw will come back to UK cinemas? I would guess Skin will come back and I would be surprised if Wristcutters doesn't. The others however probably won't. Which is a shame in a lot of ways, but personally I always consider my money to be best spent in the Film Festival if the films don't come back - ie I use it as a way to see rare films.

Edinburgh International Film Festival

It's that time of the year again and so far I've only seen excellent films! First i saw a series of short films from across Europe, all of which were worth watching and most of which had something to say and stimulated a lot of thought. For sheer entertainment value, I'd have to pick out the 5 minute Irish film 'The Boy Who Was Dubbed' which featured a boy who suffered from being dubbed in real life.....

Then I watched 'Black Brush' a Hungarian film about a group of work shy chimney sweeps, who seemed to spend most of their time smoking spliffs on the rooftops of Budapest, when they weren't chasing goats or losing money on cock-fights. A lovely low key film with lots of humour.

Yesterday was 'Wristcutters - A Love Story' a road movie set in a limbo world of faded colours inhabited by suicides. A world just like here, but everything is worse. Beautiful, funny and moving. If you're anything like me, you'll need a couple of boxes of tissues for this one.

More to follow!

haiku - music

One Deep Breath this week is asking for haiku about music, so here are two:

Protest songs -
if the tune is good
I'll listen.

and my partner can vouch for the truth of this next one:

Saturday night -
who cares what the music is
I just want to dance!

Haiku - coffee

The prompt at One Deep Breath this week is to write haiku about tea and coffee. Crafty Green Poet is a tea drinker but my Alter Ego sometimes likes a coffee and this haiku explains both why I like to, and why I don't very often:

mug of hot coffee
brings poetic inspiration
keeps me up all night.

Haiku - the Scenic Route

This week's prompt on One Deep Breath was to write a haiku about the scenic route. My alter ego took a different view of this and applied it to clothes:

A wardrobe of grey?
Dress extravagantly
Defy convention.

If it works out there may be a photo to go with this, so please feel free to visit back!