Tag Archives: miff15

Day two – finding fellow MIFF tragics

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Three films today, all solid without any blowing my hair back. The Red Army (US/Russian doco about the Soviet national ice hockey team), My Skinny Sister (Swedish observational drama about childhood and eating disorders) and Prophet’s Prey (US doco about self-appointed fundamentalist polygamous Mormon prophet and abuser Warren Jeffs).

At one of my screenings I made a MIFF friend. Jenny was a few seats away and, like me, had her MIFF essentials in hand – a mobile phone and a coffee. We got chatting and she is a regular 50-film watcher. We compared notes so far and she gave me some recommendations that might make me shift a film or two around. Continue reading →

Prophet’s Prey (2015)

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Some stories deserve to be told because they are so outrageous you wouldn’t believe they could really happen. This is one of those. When Joseph Smith, the ‘prophet’ of the Latter-day Saints, retracted his revelation requiring polygamy, ostensibly because of a new revelation from God, but coincidentally after societal and governmental censure and prosecution, groups of fundamentalists broke with the church to set up their own polygamous colonies. One, at least, of those remains today, led by the Jeffs family. Continue reading →

My Skinny Sister (Min lilla syster) (2015)

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I wanted to really love this Swedish film. It had great bones, interesting characters, interesting topic, an unflinching gaze and a strong central performance from the 12-ish year old lead. It is the story of her character, Stella, as she watches her sister Katja, the skinny sister of the title, struggle with the rigours of competitive figure skating and, slowly we discover, an eating disorder. Continue reading →

The Red Army (2014)

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I now know a lot more about Soviet ice hockey than I did before. This US (though billed as Russian) documentary is quite an engaging look at the USSR national ice hockey team, developed under Stalin to show to the West the superiority of the communist way of life. Continue reading →

Mustang (2015)

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The second film of the festival for me and it was a gem. This Turkish film began gently. Five sisters ranging in age perhaps from 11 to 16, play a game on the beach with friends, both girls and boys, on the way home from school. It is an image of exuberance and youth, so normal. But the word of a neighbour sets off a chain of events that swiftly and inexorably changes the world of the girls. Ostensibly because of convention, but really because of fear, their uncle and grandmother shut off the outside world and try to force them into the acceptable role of wife. Continue reading →

Under Electric Clouds (Pod elektricheskimi oblakami) (2015)

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When you miss the start of a film, you can’t help feeling you’ve missed some important aspect of the plot that would have made it comprehensible. That’s how I felt with this Russian film. The first twenty minutes consisted mainly of a guy wandering through a blighted ice-covered landscape carrying a radio. Enigmatic, beautiful in lots of ways, tragic. Then it cut to another chapter and another and it became clear that there was nothing really finished or linear about this film. There were a brother and sister grappling with change after their father’s death, a man who kept returning to his childhood in his dreams and disaffected, drug-affected youths searching for a 12 year old taken hostage. Maybe there were more, that’s when I left. Continue reading →

50 in 50 days

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Yes, that’s right, 50 films. My friend Mardi said I was being half-hearted with only 47 films so I added three more. I like the way she thinks.

MIFF day one. The major achievement was just to get to the first screening – more or less on time. I planned to leave at 8am this morning. My family were being stoic – actually I think the two youngest had forgotten I was going away when they left this morning but Tee and Ron knew and they held back the tears and wished me well. I think Ron felt I was just a little too excited to be leaving and he did try and delay me with an offer of coffee but I was resolute. Continue reading →

Why?

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Am I starting a blog, I hear you ask. Well the short answer is that I’m going to see lots of films in August at MIFF and I thought if I blog review each film I see, I might have a hope of remembering them.

The long answer. Well. A friend recently raised a notion of making sure your life is not filled with things you ‘should’ do and leaves room for the things you ‘must’ do. I’ve been thinking about this a lot. What are the musts in my life? One thing I’ve realised is that I have a drive to say how I see the world, in photographs and in words.

So this is what this blog will be. How I see the world. Hung on the hook of film and MIFF. 🙂