You hear that, Mr Andersen?

FF Days 9-11

Those of you who remember Connie - she's written to say hi, and that she's working as a waitress in Switzerland, gradually regaining her French and being cut off from the internet because it's so expensive. :) I can give her address to those who want it.

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Someone described this as "Coolest. Keyboard. Ever." And even if it is a hoax, I'm not inclined to disagree; though as someone pointed out, it'd be even cooler if the keys were slightly concave. ;)

And while I'm not sure that I agree with how they make them, these turtle-created paintings are kind of cool.

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Went into work in the morning on Saturday... it's weird, people always seem to have something urgent for me to do, or want to get into an intense discussion, just as I'm heading out the door. I did get a fair amount done, including wrapping up all the email that I needed to; now the trick will be to stay on top of it.

The first movie of the day, which I managed to get to on time despite ambushes, was A Common Thread, the French story of a girl hiding her pregnancy and becoming friends with a embroiderer who has just lost her son. It was nice - low-key, but engaging.

Unemployment seems to be a popular touchstone in cinema, presumably because we as adults are so often defined by our jobs. Bombon - El Perro has a man living with his daughter because the service station he's worked in all his life has been sold. He helps a young woman with car trouble, and her mother gives him a dog... and suddenly all sorts of possibilities open up for him. The lead actor, who is apparently new at this, is wonderfully rumpled with a comfortable, lived-in face. He gives the impression of a good, amicable, slightly naive man, suddenly in the company of an assertive, fast-talking crowd. I enjoyed this film, but it's not one I need to own.

The makers of Three Dollars were at the screening, and said that they had set out to make a political film, because they were pissed off at the Australian government and the myth that they were trying to create - the illusion of comfortableness and that nothing is wrong. The story is basically about a nice guy with a white-collar job having to cope with problems at home and ethical dilemmas, counterpointed with flashbacks (often with neat faux-authentic footage which they created with the old tech). The makers had some really interesting things to say about the lack of films looking at the middle class - there is a tendency to focus of the very rich or the dirt-poor - and how difficult it was writing a film about a Jimmy Stewart-style decent man. And how tricky it was to find funding for the project, too. Also, they've apparently found this film to be a lot more polarizing than their previous films (like The Bank), and people have differed sharply as to whether the ending is an uplifting or depressing one. (I personally found it uplifting.) I'm not sure whether I'll pick this one up on DVD; I'd certainly seriously consider it.

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Sunday was interesting because I popped into work briefly, and found a request to investigate a database problem. I found the likely source relatively quickly, but since it had been happening for a few days without any real impact on the wider facility, and I had run out of time to fix it properly, I noted what the problem was and left it for Monday.

Of course, this meant when I came in Monday morning it had broken things horribly. :p

I spotted Jenni & Lee in the queue for A Decent Factory, and said, "Hi." And then we found out we were sitting next to each other. Very weird. This was a documentary of Nokia trying to be a more ethical company, and trying to make sure their suppliers were also ethical - not just because it's the right thing to do, but because of the growth of investment funds who are making the ethical and environmental standards of the companies they consider for investment to be key issues. There was lots of fascinating stuff - especially once they got to the Chinese factory, and some of the management staff apparently not realizing that what they said might be translated afterwards. And the head manager trying to say that they couldn't use the footage outside of Nokia, while saying as little as possible that could be pinned to him later - hilarious. :) The life of a factory worker is still pretty horrendous - they had a maternity policy, but no provision for married couples in the dormitories, nor any child-care, so no-one had ever used it. Good documentary, and showed both ethical and... questionably ethical managers.

Next was Mondovino, all about the wine industry. Three things that I learned by watching this film -- first, the success of a winery, and the price that wines can command, is very much dependent on one man (or a few men), and there are wine consultants who travel between producers to help them mould their wines to this palate, often to the detriment of their individuality, and coincidentally to the advantage of American producers. Secondly, many of the people who determine how wine should taste are smokers, which must affect things somewhat. (I remember that my Mum went right off Tim-Tams when she stopped smoking and started being able to taste them. ;) And thirdly, dogs seem to be a big part of the lives of wine producers, for no obvious reason. This was a relatively subtle film against the evils of homogenization that can be the result of globalization - the big wine producers weren't demonised (though their "we're good friends with our Hispanic farm workers and appreciate their quaint folkways" attitude was noted), and the small producers were shown to often be prickily and opinionated. I liked this film a lot.

I don't think I'd have ever thought that a tambourine solo was a good idea - but as it turns out, I should forget the fact that it's a drum at heart... Basileirinho, which was a documentary about Brazil's "cholo" music, had one section where three tambourinists compared different techniques, and had a jam session. I don't think I got as much of a feel for the culture as with, say, The Buena Vista Social Club, but I think I saw a lot more of how the community of musicians interacts with itself. It was a neat documentary, and reminded me that I should try and learn more about musical styles like the samba. :) Plus, I liked the way they showed them having a real mix of instruments - two acoustic guitars, a mandolin, a clarinet, three tambourines, and a trombone, say. Now that is a cool band. It was also interesting how much instrument playing seemed to be a male domain, though not exclusively so - we did have an interview with one female non-vocalist. Women seemed to dominate vocally, though... I wonder what cultural strands produced that split.

Speaking of music, Wavelength.05 was a collection of music videos, ranging from average to really good. One excellent one had a guy working at a car factory, with big industrial robots cutting and welding... and then he starts to see them around town, out of the corner of his eye, and then more and more blatantly. Some quite spooky images, and a number of videos I'd love to see again, but I'm not really big on buying music DVDs. :) There was discussion afterwards, but I was tired, and went pretty much straight home.

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As I implied, Monday started off with a bang. Work wasn't too bad, though I did end up having to come back late in the evening when I really just wanted to go to bed. However, as compensation you get this lovely blog entry. :)

The Yuri Norstein Retrospective was a collection of animated Russian folktales, only some of which were subtitled. Most of the time that didn't matter - it was fairly obvious what was going on - but I think I might have gotten more out of the last one (which seemed to be commenting on WWII) if I'd had a better idea of what various newspapers said. I found it interesting that I could feel my brain trying to read Russian - unlike, say, Korean, their characters look almost like ours... but not quite. Anyway, cute, good, I may end up stealing some of the stories at some point. :)

And finally, The World - set in a "visit the world without leaving Bejing" theme park, this is another slightly slow-moving slice-of-lifer. I found it more engaging than Pinboy, possibly because more happened, but it was still a little slow. Not bad, though, and the introduction of some Russian girls (and the friendship that resulted) made an interesting counterpoint. I'm not sure I would have watched to the end if it had been on TV, but I didn't dislike it.

Anyway, I'm going to give this a quick proofread, and then it's off home to bed for me. :)

Posted by svend at July 26, 2005 1:13 AM