i'll apologize right off the bat for posting stuff that's boring. i reserve the right to post stuff that's exclusively of interest to me. as we all do.
so, here's some catch up....
::: vancouver international film festival :::
this year was exponentially better than last year. i even took 4 days off work to watch films.
- walking on the wild side (china) - a gritty drama about listless youth living in a mining town. the story was brutal, there was too much handheld stuff but the story was bravely unapologetic yet depressing for the new china
- do over (taiwan) - introduced in person by Tony Rayns with the director in attendance. 4 taiwanese young adults on the eve of 2000 and the people/things/relationships/status that people wish for themselves. gorgeous cinematography, acting that pulled you in and a story with many layers.
- still life (china) - missing partners in a town about to disappear under the Three Gorges Dam flooding. it was okay.
- celestial mechanics (canada) - 8 canadian shorts. they were all shitty and i hated myself for sitting through them.
- into great silence (germany) - a 3 hour documentary about the Grande Chartreuse, the mother house of the legendary Carthusian Order. my thoughts: freaking gorgeous cinematography with about 3 sentences of dialogue. i was blown away by the ending.
- i don't want to sleep alone (taiwan) - the latest tsai ming liang. his most accessible work but also my favourite.
- red road (uk) - i don't want to give away the plot so i'll just say it was another awesome film: the story and the acting were powerful and engaging. raw and beautiful. i cried.
- radiant city (canada) - a doc about urban sprawl. fantastic spin on the traditional doc. plus rob and i got to hang out with the director at bosman's after the film.
- the fountain (usa) - this film appealed to my artsy fartsy side. i appreciated that this was a very different type of film that's not endorsed by hollywood. but it's not for everyone. i really liked it and cried at the end.
::: toronto trip :::
so i won this contest at work where i had to describe on 1 page why they should send me to a conference attended mostly by 911 managers across canada. damn if the trip didn't happened during the first week of the vancouver internat'l film festival.
awesome thing #1: i made up for it by attending one of the most remarkable events i've ever experienced: nuit blanche. see link on the side. basically a whole night of art installations, sound installations and participatory art installations. it was all free. i felt so lucky to have landed in toronto the exact evening that nuit blanche occurred.
i walked thru the popular fog installation as well as a sound installation where i handed my driver's license to someone in exchange for a cd player with instructions to follow in the footsteps as you hear them on the cd.
i spent 40 minutes at this one installation that took place in the basement of an old building at the university of toronto campus. the basement had this pool with pillars surrounding it and video images (along with sound) were projected onto a blank wall. i saw 2 people jump into the pool and swim across.
at 6:30am i got up after 4 hours of sleep and went back to the "ladies with the cakes" installation. it was a spectacular commentary on gluttony and waste in our society.
i hope this comes to vancouver but i think our art community isn't big enough to sustain it.
*the first attempt was only for the eyes of 2 former co-workers but it's not suiting me anymore (the blog not the friends) and i feel the need to start fresh without all the historical baggage associated with the first blog.
1 comment:
Omigosh! You're going to be the big Four OH!? CRaZy! Hope all is well, ttyl!
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