It's the end of the week so it's time to celebrate the small things!

So what am I celebrating this week?

It's the weekend!

But.... Not for me.  I',m traveling this weekend for three concerts, plus some education events, so no rest for me.  Which is a shame because this week hs been crazy.  I'm pre-scheduling a nervous breakdown for late September once all the madness is over.

And on top of all the busyness at work, I've managed to make all but one of the films I planned to see in the Festival.  I skipped Monday's and gave my ticket to a colleague because I was feeling really sick and I'm glad I did.  I felt much better on Tuesday.  Especially since I got someone to covr my class at the gym too, so I got a little extra rest.

So what have I seen?

Wolfram which is a new film from Australian filmmaker Warwick Thornton.  It was set in the outback amongst people mining for tungsten.  Aboriginal kids were sent down holes to did out the stuff and treated terribly by their white bosses.  When some new prospectors arrive in town with a vicious cruel streak, the kids end up on the run and collect up an odd group of strays as they flee across the countryside in search of a safe place and maybe the mother who left them behind.  This one was a truly visceral experience.  The intense heat of the landscape was palpable, even on a cold night.  And the constant buzzing of the persisent flies was brlliantly rendered.  It was a truly uncomfortable viewing experience, not just because of the subject matter.

Dead Man's Wire is definitely a highlight of the Festival for me.  Gus Van Sant's based-on-a-true-story thriller has the look and feel of a seventies classic like Dog Day Afternoon and even features Al Pacino in a brilliantly nasty cameo role.  It follows three days in which a man whose life has been ruined by a mortgage company, takes an employee hostage using a rifle and a dead man's wire and does his best to negotiate with police.  This film. is funny and frightening and very relatable on so many levels.

Barbara Forever is a documentary about pioneering lesbian filmaker Barbara Hammer.  A prolific filmmaker of primarily experimental material, the doco explores her life and her influences and how she has shaped and influenced the next gerneation of queer filmmakers.  I'd hoped this one might be a lttle more interesting, but I didn't feel like I learned uch about Barbara that I didn't already know (other than the fact she's died recently).

Will They Miss Me if I Go is a dreamy, slightly surreal film about a father, recently out of jail, and the son he struggles to connect with.  Set in the projects in South LA, it doesn't shy away from showing the hardship people in these communities live in.  Little Ant is an artist, a kid with an eye for beauty and storytelling whose environment has little in the way of either.  He does have a mother who is strong enough and tough enough to hold everythig together, but what he really wants is to be seen and apprecaited by his father, Big Ant.  But, being a different kind of man, Big Ant can't see that the things her percieves as weaknesses in his son are in fact his biggest strengths.  There were some odd bits to this film , especially the way bioth fatehr and son seemed to hallucinate people in white becomin aeroplanes in odd places.  I think this was supposed to be representing the way both dreamed fo flying out of there on the planes tat were constantly flying overhead.

Remake is a new film from documentary filmmaker Ross McElwee.  Way back in my student days, we studied a film he made called Sherman's March, a doco ostensibly about retracng Sherman's Civil War route, but much more a journey of self discovery for young Ross McElwee.  This film is ostensibly about a Hollywood production company making a fictional remake of that film, but is actually an exploration of guilt and grief as McElwee deals with the death of his son to a drug overdose.  It's a beautiful and devastating film, using footage McElwee shot of his family over the 27 years of his son's life and some film his son shot himself as he tried to become a filmmaker in his own right.  A definite highlight of the festival for me.

And that's it for films until next week.  Although Im not entirely sure I'll make it to the two I have booked for next week because the new ticketing system is going in and work is going to be busier than ever.

What are you celebrating thiis week?