MIFF 2011 Day One

The time has come around fast for another year of MIFF. Its been a fun year between events with travelling overseas and meeting people, making new friends, experiencing the cultures & visiting some of the places of what up until that point I'd only experienced via film. I wonder if that experience will change the way I view films from different parts of the world?

Watched four films on this day (see previous post for listing & links to what the films are about).

Worst film of the day - I Wish I Knew.  That was the actual name of the film & not me trying to be smart or forgetting it's title. It was also the first film I watched of the festival & I hoped it was not going to be a reflection on my experiences for this festival. It showed the history of Shanghai through interviews with people. While a few of the interviews were of interesting stories, too many of them were not or were too long. This doco dragged for me. I didn't appear to be the only one that was not impressed by this film as people were leaving at different times during it. I persisted to the end for the occasional interesting stories.

Best film of the day - Cold Fish. MIFF describes this film well in it's write up. Saw this with two other people (Johnnie and his sister Anne). Pete Webb was also at this screening. Johnnie said that the film reminded him of Audition (another Japanese thriller/horror film that we'd both seen at MIFF several years ago) in regards to how it starts off normal and mundane and as the film progresses things become more and more twisted/intense (I agree with this).

Anne found the film quite disturbing overall. Partly because she could see the events portrayed in the film really occurring (according to the start of the film the story is based on true events) and partly because of some of the things the audience were laughing at. Personally I found parts of the film funny. I enjoy black/gallows humour of which the film had. I suspect some of the laughs from people were more of the kind where people laugh to hid their discomfort.

Only one scene where people laughed that I found a bit disturbing and did not laugh. Talking with Johnnie and Pete afterwoods, they though it was the ludicrousness of the scene that people laughed at.

This film has lots of blood/gore in the later parts.

Note - have tried to write this up for several days. Blogger is playing up on my netbook hence the delay (it now being the morning of the fourth day of MIFF).