THE TIMES
July. Hey great news! MIFF's going to be in cinemas this year. And look at this program, everything good from the plague year is here, Cannes, Asia, Europe, you name it.
August. Lockdown. Sorry, it's only half cinema, the rest of it will be streamed. Oh, and we're swapping the weeks around so all your cinema sessions will be transferred to the following week. Well not ALL but anyway ... enjoy the online program.
August. Lockdown still. Nope, all online now. We know it's not the same program but we'll be adding more. When? Yes, when. Enjoy. Everyone who wants a refund can ask for it at the box office, yes the one you can't get through to. Enjoy the festival.
August lockdown still and maybe forever. Ok, everyone's getting a refund minus the booking fee because. Oh, here are some more titles on the streaming program.
Ok, so ... The times are still too volatile to try something like this and MIFF was brave to try. The idea of staving off the cinema sessions by changing the week they were on felt a little reckless and indeed the massive confusion from punters as the total sessions on their passes shrank daily (mine was down to five out of an original twelve by Wednesday. I guessed that tougher limits on seating were the cause of this and preference was given to first-ins. But I had to guess that. MIFF only made a statement about the change, not the fallout. They could have done that without having to commit to anything more detailed than to say they were sorry if some bookings were removed but the regs are the regs. But nothing. This created the fatberg in the box office communications. People had spent their money (and it wasn't cheap) and the people who'd taken it weren't talking. Advising us to contact the box office sounded like that dick from the coalition who went on Q&A last year and innocently asked a questioner why she didn't just call Centrelink.
But then by the middle of the first week this had been dealt with and I'd settled in to the online program, not cancelling my leave as I needed to defray as much stress as I could. Bugger it, lockdown holiday it was. And once I'd settled and everything was in order I did take time to marvel at how rapidly MIFF had regrouped and solved the crisis. I have clear memories from the days of physical passes of much worse stuff ups at the box office (days which also allowed idiots to make their choices when they were buying their passes with hours of queues standing behind them).
THE PROGRAM
Considering the ambitions of this year's fest it was a surprisingly rangey lineup. New Ben Wheatley, celebrated UK horror Censor, a swathe of European and Asian titles and some very enticing doccos.
High
La Veronica: Works because we not only get eased into the high concept but become part of it. Magnetic performance from lead. Rises above its own cleverness. My favourite of the festival.
Sisters With Transistors: Does what good documentaries should do, interests its audience from the first moments and probably gets them searching for more after the credits have rolled. I've already ordered music first heard in this film.
Dear Comrades: Lean and mean tale of political difficulty as hard ethics confronts political allegiance. seldom has a two hour running time felt so swift. Delayed heart rending from the closing lines.
The Nowhere Inn: Metamockumentary might falter here and there but is brought off with such pizzaz and blunt commitment that it really can't lose. What happens when you add magnetic talent in your leads to a good, sparky idea.
Poly Styrene I Am a Cliche: Several lengths above the usual rock doc as the personal angle of the co-director, the star's daughter adds a compelling context. Not just a glorified powerpoint.
Middle
Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: Frequently birlliant celebration with gorgeous packaging of examples and interviewees but suffered from having to pack too much in past the halfway mark. I'd prefer it as a series (hint hint, Shudder)
Queen of Glory: Warmth doesn't have to mean soft as this strong and personable comedy proves. Even at only one and quarter hours it did feel too long, though.
Ninjababy: The quirky comedy worked well and the tansition did, too, just might have needed to be a little earlier or a longer crossfade. Impressive at the end for some risks taken with character that paid off. See Playlist for how to really get this wrong. Liked this a lot but its competition was fierce.
In My Own Time: A Portrait of Karen Dalton: Solid attempt at telling the tale of an under recorded musician who influenced everyone she met but whose personal demons kept her from the spotlight. Poignant but undercooked.
Preparations to be Together for an Unknown Period of Time: Stalkercom lifts itself above the '90s thriller promised in the premise and treads a fine line well. I think I just needed a little more sharpness in the protagonist's focus.
Freaskscene: Competent rockumentary about noise melodists Dinosaur Jr works as well (and the same way) all of them have since the early 2000s when the subjects lives were well covered by home video, recording etc. This is the way they appear now. This is a notch above many but does only what it needs to.
The Night: Lean and effective redemption horror in compelling setting might have turned up the eeriness.
Hopper/Welles: Enjoyable but non-essential record of the meeting of two cinematic mavericks exceeded low expectations.
What Do We See When We Look at the Sky: Romcom meets magical realism in post war Georgia with pleasing results but what a slog. The film suggests its own intermission which I took it up on.
Wife of a Spy: Too long innured to the softer, post-horror KYoshi Kurosawa to mind that he still hasn't gone back there but this drawing room intrigue did suggest some of the old parallel universe the best of his horrors featured.
Low
Playlist: If you really expect us to empathise with sociopaths like this one you really need to do more work or people will just wish the movie was about her friends. Pointless cover version of Noah Baumbach, Wes Anderson and that lot.
Coming Home in the Dark: If you are going to learn from people like Hanneke, Noe or Miike you really need to go the extra kilometre and offer a reason to sit through your extremity horror.
Rose: A Love Story: If you are going to go for an iconoclastic depiction of a classic horror monster look at a few others and note how hard it is to get working. Fell over itself trying to avoid genre until a too sudden finale risked everything it had worked for.
THE APP ... s
The standard app updated as soon as I fired up the old one in July. Easy to use, if you didn't mind exploring the program on a small screen that was all you'd need. For almost ten years this aspect of MIFF has added a lot of ease to proceedings. While I haven't bothered with the printed one for ages I still prefer having a larger screen and multiple windows to organise my sessions. The calendar view of the wishlist on the website does this really well. I can see at a glance if one day is too busy or there is too big a gap between screening days etc and I can also use it to maximise my favourite venues (I like to start and end at The Forum)
The MIFF Play app could not be used to buy tickets but your selections appeared instantly in there once you'd paid. As this was the only way of getting to the festival it had to work. Work it did and how. I hasten to add here that my home setup includes a new smart TV plugged directly into the ethernet and has a built-in chromecast. Last year I lugged a laptop into the lounge and connected via HDMI to a TV with wifi. If I closed the laptop the screen shut down (that's a laptop setting but I have to have it that way most of the time) and if I wanted to pause it took some buggerising around. This time I turned the TV which activated the soundbar, opened my phone, tapped the app, tapped casting, tapped the thumbnail of the movie I wanted and it started with the best quality I was likely to get as the TV and its connection took over from that point. Completely trouble free. If these two apps could be integrated in the future it would be a dream.
EPILOGUE
Well, that's it. A bunch o' good MIFF at home films and the inevitable handful o' stinkers. No queues to worry about but also no Forum or Capitol, no meeting friends for coffee on freezing afternoons or wine-quaffing after movie pub sessions. Despite my whingeing I did appreciate how quickly and effectively MIFF dealt with the crisis that threatened to shut it down but will still whinge about the poor communication in that crucial period when the really drastic changes were effected which might have been explained quite simply and openly, assuaging the stress that the punters were also feeling. Anyway, a good time was had by me. Now if we could stop those Neanderthals marching in protest at lockdowns their plague-spreading demonstrations are extending we might get to see next year's MIFF in real cinemas where it needs to be.
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