First short: Images of the Defense of a Courtyard (Germany). The festival starts with a bit of a Kafka moment. Based on one of his short stories. We see a snippet of life in a country courtyard occupied by soldiers who are there to defend it. The bit with the shirt exchange was funny.. the bit with the chicken was interesting (potentially confronting to people sensitive to the whole "where meat comes from" thing).. the fight in the tree I didn't entirely understand. I don't think the film was sub-titled, the only communication throughout took the form of grunting. And kicking. And waving. Mostly grunting. Off beat, kinda enjoyable. You probably wouldn't have liked it.
12:08 East of Bucharest (Romania). This one took a while to get into. I kept losing track of which of the three main characters we were following at the time. Once I'd worked out there were only the three, and, in fact, once they were all sitting together in front of a TV camera in the local studio, the film picked up and was laugh out loud funny.. while being sad and poignant and other things. The firecracker gags were good too. Good first film for the festival. You might not like this one either.
Second short: Meokgo and the Stickfighter (South Africa). I think this was filmed in Lesotho (a small country entirely surrounded by South Africa). The scenery is spectacular. Unfortunately, that's really all I've got to say to recommend this film. I found it incomprehensible. I mean the girl in the trance showing up in a ball-gown and the tribal guy in cowboy boots was all cool... but didn't he die at the start of the film? Who was attacking who exactly? It's possible I wasn't paying enough attention. I haven't been watching films that much recently. (Too much TV.) Maybe you'd like this one.
Dry Season (Chad). (Chad is pretty much in the middle of Africa, but you knew that.) This sets itself up as a film about revenge. But I don't wanna spoil it for you. There's more talking in this one than today's first short, but not much. Our hero doesn't speak much, and our .. villian (other hero?) had his throat cut in his earlier life and has to speak with a mechanical larynx, so you can understand him preferring to communicate through mostly non-verbal means. I'm very glad I didn't read the blurb in the festival program for this one. I got to follow our hero's progress without already knowing where he was going to end up. This is a solid story with only a couple of scenes of wanky photography. I think you'd like this. But maybe not as much as I did.
That's it for day one. Only two features per day on weekends. They're giving us four on weekdays. Not sure if I'll make it.
If you want to follow along at home, my personal calendar of films is available for viewing on Google Calendars, or, if you've got your own ICS-capable software you can take the ics feed. You probably won't.