# Off-topic Rants

This is a fantastic action/adventure film about a sexy and cunning secret service agent, who is put in charge of looking after a former co-worker’s teenage children before he heads permanently underground. As she tries to protect these children, and reunite them with their father one last time, an unusual game of cat and mouse takes place, as hit man watch their every move hoping that they will reveal the location of the father. This is a really exciting film, with some very fascinating concepts, as well as some great and exceptionally funny dialogue. The relationship between the two children, whom have never met before, and are not related by blood, is very intriguing as they become closer and closer. The lead character is fantastic. She’s very unpredictable – one minute she’s the perfect spy, and you’re confident she could kill anyone, and the next you realise that she’s still human – and can make mistakes. Although there is a lot of suspense and action right throughout the film, the film also strongly focuses on the three main characters and their relationships together. I really enjoyed this film – it was very exciting and surprisingly funny.

Directed by Tokyo born Hirokazu Kore-eda, Maborosi is an extremely slow, yet visually pleasing film about a young women’s struggle to get on with life after her husband commits suicide by jumping in front of a train – leaving their child fatherless. After her husband’s death, she is “set up” with another man who lives on the coast with a child of his own. Made in 1995, this film has a classically Japanese style to it. The cinematography is very lush – however I found the film just too slow to seriously concentrate. Nothing really seemed to happen during the whole 110 minutes! There were a lot of scenery shots, and one scene where the new husband is eating fish at the kitchen table for about 10 minutes! Why this scene was included, and why it went for so long remains a mystery to me! The music throughout the film was very beautiful and lovely to listen to, however there wasn’t enough of it to keep me awake. I’m also not completely sure whether I fell asleep in sections and missed bits of the plot, or whether some sections of the stories just didn’t connect together – but I found this film very hard to follow. The characters in the film where very powerful, and the way the director used light and space to convey emotions was very interesting, however, I just honestly thought this film had no real point to it – and if it did, it could have been compressed into a 5 minute short film. Obviously I wasn’t its biggest fan.

Released in 1988, Mapantsula was filmed in Soweto (South Africa) and tells the story of Panic, a petty gangster who spends his days stealing from unsuspecting Whites and brawling with rivals in Black bars, as well as a little police informing on the side. Whilst he is busy doing his thing, everyone else in Soweto are struggling during tough times, as rent costs are getting higher and the police lock and more and more innocent people. Inevitably, Panic is caught up in the growing anti-apartheid struggle, having to choose between individual gain, and a united stand against the system. This film gives you an inside look into what it was like during this period in Soweto, and also gives you a glimpse of what it was like to be a struggling Black South African in a world controlled by uncaring Whites. What amazes me with this film, is how accurately it captures what Soweto is like (sadly in both past and present), and also the relationship between the lower class Blacks and the upper class Whites. This film gives you a great insight into the township life, and is a great little history lesson into the Apartheid fight. Despite its age, this film is extremely powerful and is sadly still relevant today. One of my favourite films of the festival thus far.

This year’s animation shorts programme offered a great deal of variety. Norbot, an Australian short animation, told the story of a child that was born with huge ears, and his fight to find his place in the world. This was a very funny film, with some very cute animations. Horn OK Please, a UK animation, offered a day in the life of a Mumbai taxi driver, as he struggled to raise enough money to upgrade his ageing car to a shiny new model. It had fantastic animation, and some very funny moments. Adjustment was what I would regard as an experimental short film that used a whole heap of different stop motion animation techniques to fell the story of an obsessive visual diarist, who documents the disintegration of his relationship. It mixed normal video footage with stop frame animation, as well as photo realistic 3D graphics, and traditional flip book animation to great effect. I felt like this short film was more about the techniques than the story, but never-the-less, I was very impressed. I really loved the flip book style animation using a toilet paper roll, and also the section where they mixed current video footage, with flip book animation from the past. The Lady on the Threshold, was a bizarre animation, about a sea captain who arrives home and is intrigued by a mysterious beautiful women. He soon finds out the woman is married to another sea caption, who has be involved in an accident in the past that has resulted in a loss of his legs and hands. As the story continues, we learn what really happened to the sea captain. This was a very dark piece, with a very satisfying, although slightly sick conclusion. The Bronze Mirror is a very funny short film about some villagers in ancient Korea, who stumble across a mirror – a piece of technology that is not yet known to the masses. They get quite a shock when they see a familiar face in the piece of glass in front of them! Fetch, is a great, yet really short, film about a man trying to get his dog to fetch a stick. Slightly sick, but very funny! Lapsus, was also another funny, yet very simple animation about a nervous nun, a white space and a black void. Driven purely by visual humour, the nun is forced to explore the dark and the light side of the screen. Despite its simplicity, this is very cleaver concept that is executed perfectly! The only other film work mentioning (although there were several other films shown), was Ark. This was a very dark film, about an unknown virus that has destroyed almost the entire human population. Unsure of why all this is happening, the remaining survivors escape via the sea to a far away island. Although the ending is a bit of a letdown in some ways, the 3D animation is some of the best I’ve ever seen. It has a very dark, and almost Matrix feel to it, but it’s extremely realistic.

Australian Short Stories is a collection of Australian Indigenous films of all different shapes and sizes. It opened with Hush – a fantastic and very funny little film about a mother who works as a phone sex person during the night, and is eventually found out by her outraged daughter. Backseat, is a moving film about a young girl who is reunited with her real family, courtesy of her foster parents. Custard, is a cute and peculiar film about a teenage Aboriginal girl, and her grandmother as they deal with the death of her grandfather. Nana, was my favourite film of the screening. It’s a very simple little film, narrated by a young girl as she explains what she loves about her Nana. What makes this film so funny is that the Nana does a lot of crazy things, which you just don’t imagine Nana’s should or could do! The young girl telling the story is so innocent, and full of love for her Nana, and yet the old Nana is so not innocent and full of hate for the drunks that come to her town! When the Natives Get Restless is a 28 minute documentary that explores the lives of an aboriginal community living in a housing estate in Dubbo. This is a very moving documentary that captures some amazing interviews from kids who are causing trouble simply because they’ve got nothing else to do. It also gives you a revealing insight into what the people are going through as they are effectively kick out of their homes and are forced to relocate. The filmmakers obviously spend a great deal of time in Dubbo, as they have obtained a great deal of trust from the people they speak to. There was also a collection of ABC funded animations, which tell different Aboriginal dreamtime stories – although to be perfectly honest, despite the fact that they were of the highest production values, and utilised some fantastic and varied animation techniques I wasn’t the biggest fan. Everything was a bit too “arty” for me, and I found it hard to really connect with the story. Finally, Crocodile Dreaming is a fantastic short film about another dreamtime story, of a man who loses a stone containing all of the tribe’s ancestor’s stories, and as a result angers the crocodile spirits. When a crocodile kills his daughter in a normally safe lagoon, the community is forced to send someone to try and find the rock and return it to the rightful place. This film had some absolutely amazing visual effects that were incredibly realistic. It successfully merged reality with fantasy to great effect. The soundtrack was also amazing – with some great creepy sound effects.

I Want to Be a Pilot, is a depressing and eye-opening film about a 12-year-old boy who lives in the slums of East Africa, and only has one dream in life – to become a pilot, so that he can escape the world he’s grown up in, and fly away to see his parents. The narration right throughout the film, by the boy, is incredibly effective. The visuals, showing the wasteland that he lives in is dirty and grotty film that really fits in with the whole theme of the film. It’s a sad film, for obvious reasons, but is very powerful, and is a great film for highlighting the poverty problems in Africa.

When you walk into this programme, you know you’re going to witness some pretty abstract and crazy things. This was no exception. From strobing dots to 20 minutes of naked stop frame animation, to random lost film footage, to sped up and reversed footage of wheels rolling down hills – this collection had it all. I won’t describe each film individually, because everything all kind of melted into one horrible nightmare. There was some great stuff in there. I really loved the concept of having multiple layers of paper, and as each layer is ripped off, a different image is revealed. I also loved some of the stop frame animation techniques. However, most of the films had sequences which were incredibly repetitive, and a sound track that made you go a little bit loopy. Everything was very random and obviously had no real purpose or story. There was a lot of storing, but that was bearable compared to the horrible loud sounds coming from some of the films. Most of the films went for too long. You could easily hear the audience getting more and more frustrated and impatient as some of the films just didn’t know when to stop. Seventeen minutes of repeating footage of scary clowns, and other swaying items is really enough to make you sick. It’s worth watching this programme, if only to take away a couple of technical ideas and concepts – but I never (and I really mean never!), want to see any of these films again.

I was really impressed with the Short & Local films this year. It opened with Sian Davies film, Poetry, a beautiful, yet shadowy film about two teenage girls struggling with the complexities of the schoolyard, relationships and growing up. The acting in this film was spot on – you really felt for and believed these characters. The portrayal of the school was also extremely realistic. Unlike a lot of films, this really felt, looked and sounded like a high school environment. The bullying scattered right throughout the film is exactly the kind of stuff that happens in schools right throughout Australia every day – it’s captured with extreme accuracy. Nothing was sugar coated, everything was spot on. The cinematography, colour grading and set design of the film was very appropriate and helped compliment the dark mood of the film. I really loved the colour scheme of the film – nothing was bright and friendly, but instead dark and contrasty. The sound design was also subtle, yet extremely effective. It’s hard to re-create what a school yard sounds like, and yet this film pulled it off. Technically, I felt this film was a great achievement. However, the story for me seemed to lack any real depth. I didn’t really understand what the two girls were going through – but maybe that’s simply because I’m a boy, I’m not sure.

Once again, the short film sessions at MIFF this year have all been extremely impressive. Caught, is a short and simple one gag film about a man who sleeps over at a woman’s house, and is unfortunately greeted by a not-so-impressed boyfriend as he tries to leave. The film is beautifully acted and directed, and has a killer punch line. This is a really great little rollercoaster ride, despite only lasting three minutes. It has an absolutely fantastic ending.

I’m not quite sure if you can call it a documentary, as it seriously pushes the boundaries of the genre, so I’ll just call it a film about suburbs. In documentary style, it examines the attraction and the bleak realities of suburban living. Focussing mainly on a typical suburban family going through their daily life, this film also has many interviews with developers and cultural theorists, all discussing the one thing – suburbs. This film is also all an illusion. It drags you in, claiming to be a doco, only to reveal that the characters you have grown to love and trust and simply actors. But the beautiful thing is, even after you are told that everyone was following a script, you quickly discover that the actors are just as down to earth and lovely as the characters they portrayed. This is subtly funny and incredibly well scripted film. In retrospect, everything was a little bit too perfect at the beginning. All the characters were just too perfect. The kids also didn’t look anything like their parents – and were more a Hollywood family than real life. It’s a film that really makes you think about urban growth and sprawl, but also about the nature of documentary film making. I really enjoyed this film – despite being tricked by the directors. It’s a very cleaver concept, which reveals what it’s really like to like in the suburbs, even though we were only watching actors.