Been a busy, busy day. Had to get a new battery for the car and work was flat out too. Was nice to have a regular day with no films on the horizon. Filmfest finished last night though I missed the closing film, or rather it requires a separate ticket which I didn’t buy. Opening night and closing night are “events” and cost event type pricing – whereas I just want to watch films and not listen to speeches. Nor do I vote and have no interest in the competition between films. I go simply to sit in a beautiful room, watching films with a bunch of friends.

With that said, I did at least catch two films yesterday, the first of which was Prince of Tears directed by Yonfan. This was set in Taiwan in the 1950s in a chinese village for airforce pilots and their families. Lushly shot with an eye for detail, indeed this was the time when the director himself was growing up. Based on a true story, at a time when the appearance of being a chinese sympathiser was a crime – here the children have both their parents arrested and the story unwinds from their point of view. This was a strong film, well told, that conveyed a sense of what it was like to live in such times, where ambiguity was problematic.

The final movie was not Creation, as I’d been looking forward to, though I had finally realised that morning that it had been replaced with Hesher directed by Spencer Susser. A noisy movie about death. Hesher is a destructive loner who makes himself at home with a family dealing with the loss of wife/mother a couple of months earlier – lost in grief. This generally worked, though a little disjointed in parts, and was a fun finish to the fest. A very in your face way of dealing with grief, or at least pushing yourself back into the world.

I think the actual review portion of my reviews has been steadily decreasing the last few days. Filmfest is done for another year with 30 films seen altogether. I may get round to posting a list of favourites later, though there weren’t many that really blew me away.