A love letter to the Melbourne International Film Festival

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I love you MIFF. You have just given me a most memorable two weeks. With you I travelled the world, learned about love and sorrow, grieved for lost futures and saw the shifting diaspora of people torn away from their homes.

We became great friends, you and I. We hung out every day and I saw you at your best and at your worst. Please understand that what I am about to say in no way undermines this new and sparkling friendship, it will just make our love all the stronger. Continue reading →

Life after MIFF for your trusty blogger

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I like films and I like blogging. MIFF is over for a year so I need to find something to feed these two addictions until August 2016. How do you feel about me continuing to blog about films and reviewing the films I see? You love that idea? I thought so.

I hereby commit to at least one film review a week – it might be anything, a worthy and sad Iranian film where nothing much happens when Alex comes to visit or a classic action movie when Ron gets to choose at the DVD shop. Or a romcom or TV series when I’m just hanging out with my girls. Continue reading →

Where are the women?

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Have you heard about the Bechdel Test? It came from a comic strip in the 80s by Alison Bechdel called Dykes to Watch Out For and tests a work of fiction as to whether it has two female characters who have a conversation about something other than a man. Perhaps unsurprisingly to all women who are used to seeing films predominantly about men, not many more than half of all mainstream films pass this test. Continue reading →

Melbourne (2014)

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I think this is my favourite Iranian film of the Festival. I have seen three – Tales, Tehran Taxi and this. Tales had some good moments but Melbourne is a nicely constructed debut feature film that keeps you considerably uncomfortable throughout. Continue reading →

Eisenstein in Guanajuato (2015)

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Oh Peter, Peter, Peter. Have you changed or have I? I think it’s fitting that I ended the festival with a Peter Greenaway film. I discovered Greenaway films when I was falling in love with cinema back 25 years or so ago.It was fitting also that I walked out on it as I did the first film of the festival. Continue reading →

Putuparri and the Rainmakers (2015)

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I’ve seen a few films in the past two weeks that have changed my view on something or at least given me a profound insight. This Australian documentary joins those ranks. I mentioned that Don’t Tell Me the Boy Was Mad made me think of the displacement of Australian Aboriginal people and this commonality has been reinforced by today’s film, Putuparri and the Rainmakers. Continue reading →

Grey Gardens (1975)

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This US documentary by the Maysles was made in 1975 and it shows that, if you have remarkable people, you only need to point a camera at them for long enough to get a story. We are flies on the wall of the crumbling East Hampton mansion, Grey Gardens, owned by Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter, ‘Little Edie’. Edith is Jackie Kennedy’s aunt and we can see that she has come from old money and the American aristocracy. That is all in the past though, as the mansion is a squalid place, full of cats and raccoons and rubbish and Edith and Little Edie live an insular and co-dependent life within its walls. Continue reading →