Saturday morning started with Forever (France/Netherlands) - Scenes from a cemetery. And from the lives of people who come to visit the cemetery. When the first images came up on screen I was very worried that I'd be sitting through an hour and a half of pictures of gravestones and epitaphs. Turns out, that can be a lot more interesting than it sounds.
Temple of Dreams (Australia) - About a Lebanese youth centre in Auburn. An excellent documentary. See it. This country could use a bit more understanding (and a bit less Alan Jones). The Q&A afterwards was interesting. Fadi (the central character in the documentary) very gracefully handled a question about Muslim dress codes, but was a bit more awkward when dealing with questions about homosexuality ("You guys are a tough audience" ... "we've got our own problems" "that's their problem").
Sunday morning started with the short film Along Came The Rain (Chile) -- the Sydney audience appreciated the title for it's topical irony (it's raining here a lot at the moment). But I think everyone was surprised when the movie ended abruptly without having really done anything. We did get to see a woman sell cheese on the side of the road.. and there was another chicken plucking scene (head still on this time). Could've been used for one of those round-window sequences on Play School.
4 Elements (Netherlands) - The "we thought you'd sleep in on Sunday so we didn't put a good film on first" film. But still kinda interesting. Snapshots of men working in/on/with fire, water, earth and .. air (space?). The second sequence isn't nearly as exciting as Deadliest Catch.
La Vie En Rose (France) This was the opening night film, shown again for us regular people. The festival really seems to care this year. The story of Edith Piaf. She was 47 when she died, she looked at least 80 in the film. But she led a hard rock and roll life, alcohol and drugs. And tragedy. They left out the bits of her life during World War II, because they weren't that interesting, or because they didn't know what she was doing, it left a hole for me.