OK, this is possibly going to be the biggest week of my life starting tonight. Not only do I have 3 2500 word essays to write, 2 films to edit and a blog to maintain but this week also happens to have the St Kilda Film Festival on at the same time and I thought it would be an awesome idea to volunteer for not 1, not 2 but 5 shifts for the week! I really didn't think that one through but hopefully it'll be ok.
To start though excitingly was tonight's opening at the beautiful Palais Theatre in St Kilda. The St Kilda Film Festival (or SKFF as I'll just call it from now on) has always been my most favorite festival for films. Compared to the Melbourne International Film Fest, Flickerfest, TropFest and Revelation, SKFF embodies a real community spirit about it featuring over 150 Australian produced films relating to real life social issues that our society face right now. From child abuse to racial prejudice to life journeys, the range in themes is always broad. I also love the fact that the organisers are so culturally minded as well. The festival features 6 categories under which the films are arranged. These include: Under The Radar and Armed and Dangerous (youth programs for under 21s; The Berlin Program (from the Berlin Film Festival); SoundKilda (a new category for music video producers); and the best category in my mind, the Top 100, featuring 100 of the best film shorts in Australia.
Last year's festival definitely inspired me to continue what I was doing for my career. After watching Blue Tongue Films' Miracle Fish, (a film I still can not get out of my head), I was completely blown away by the power of such a little film and whenever I feel depressed about anything that goes wrong at uni or with a film I'm working on, I just watch Miracle Fish again to remind me what it is that I am striving to achieve.
Tonight's opening however, was a bit of a let-down. All in all, 9 films were screened across all categories allowing the audience to get a sneak peek at the wonder they could experience if they decided to attend any of the other sessions. The best film out of all of them was definitely The Road To Tel Aviv an international film about a small group of Iraq people awaiting to board a bus when a young Arab woman appears and accused of concealing a bomb underneath her Burka. The way the film is told however was what was so shocking. It begins with a quaint scene of a local high school with kids playing, gossiping, and getting on the bus to go home. 2 minutes later, the bus explodes and the screen fades to black. We are then introduced to a young couple lazing about at the boyfriend's house. His girlfriend informs him she needs to catch the bus back to uni so he offers to drive her in. The bus is a local people mover which carries approximately 16 people at a time. Eventually, the seats fill with a range of strange characters from a slightly deaf, deranged old man and his carer, an Afghani family of 4 headed by an irate, arrogant mother, and some tourists. It is at this point that the Arabian woman boards the bus. The tension in the audience at this stage was almost tangible: everyone was on their seat as the editing, sound and body language of the boyfriend all suggested that the woman in the burka was dangerous and armed and could explode at any second, disrupting the piece instantly in the same way the bus in the first scene had. The boyfriend then attempts to get his girl off the bus which alarms the other passengers and sends them scrambling out of the bus in an intense moment where you are sure the bomb is going to explode at any minute. After 3 minutes of yelling, swearing and threats (mainly from the pompous Afghani mother), the bus driver finally silences the lot of them by claiming that he too is Arab and that he too is just as scared of being blown up but will not allow an innocent woman to be insulted in such a way because of the events happening around them. The mother concedes and the bus driver tells them all they can either get on the bus or take the one down the road. Everyone but the young couple return to their seats and the bus drives off, with the audience still petrified that it will blow up at any second. The young couple then walk down the street to the other bus, round a corner and walk towards the high school featured in the first scene in a shot identical to the one we saw of the bus just before it blew apart.
The film was mesmerising but dissapointingly, the organisers obviously did not feel it was necessary for the audience to gain a little time to process just what had happened which was a shame because it did take a while for everyone to work out that the film had finished full circle to the original scene. Either way, it was definitely the highlight of the night.
No celebrities this time, not that I'm fussed, but still an enjoyable evening. I can't wait till my first shift on Wednesday!
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