Yesterday was a light day for me; I just watched some shorts. All of them were pretty good, but Dr. Professor’s Thesis of Evil was great. It’s like a comic book film that was as close to filming a comic book as it’s possible to come. About the only things missing were the speech bubbles.

I found out on Twitter that they had the awards ceremony last light, so I didn’t get a chance to vote for the Audience Award That also means I missed a chance to win an iPad. The award winners are:

AURORA Prize – Elena
FIPRESCI Award – Elena
Don Quijote Award – Stopped on Track
Norwegian Peace Film Award – Play
Tromsø Palm (Best short or documentary from the Films From the North (FFN) series – Flimmer
Tromsø Audience Award – Play

Official results are here: http://tiff.no/en/news/two-prizes-elena-and-play

I still haven’t seen the Northern Lights, which is disappointing since that’s one of the main reasons I came to Tromsø. Some nights were cloudy, which means they couldn’t be seen even if they appeared. The other nights – the clear nights – they didn’t appear when I went out. Maybe I was looking in the wrong part of the sky. The street the hotel is on has a pretty narrow view of the sky, so maybe I needed to walk a few blocks to the waterfront to get a better view.

While I haven’t met anybody in person, I have met some people here via the #tiff12 hashtag on Twitter.

Yesterday I forced myself to stay awake longer to ward off some of the jet lag, and it seems to have worked. I woke up at 4:30 am after being asleep for about 10 hours (As an aside, it seems the Norwegians love coffee, but haven’t heard of decaf).

Yesterday, I watched Stopped on Track and The Artist, both of which are brilliant films. This morning, I watched Innocent Saturday, which I’m still thinking about. This afternoon is Irma Vep and a conference with the film’s director, Olivier Assayas.

Stopped on Track is a German film about a man diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and how it affects him and those around him during the last few months of his life. The film is unflinching in showing the highs and lows. While there are some funny moments, such as when the main character has his ever-disappearing hair cut into a mohawk, most of the film is harsh and uncomfortable. Despite that, I think it’s one of the best films I’ve seen in a long time. It made me think about Ivan Noble’s tumor diary, as they both illustrate a subject that many people would like to ignore.

The Artist is an homage to the days of silent film and the genesis of the Hollywood studio system. It’s won a slew of awards and will undoubtedly win many more. Shot in black and white, this mostly silent film shows silent movie star George Valentine (Jean Dujardin) at the height, and eventual decline, of his career as talkies start taking over. His career path is countered by Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo), who starts out as an extra, but becomes a huge star in talking films. I don’t know if Dujardin will win an Academy Award, but his performance certainly merits a nomination. His comic timing is impeccable, though that might be down to clever editing. What makes his performance is the ease with which he shows the charm and charisma of a Hollywood star at the peak of his career, and the anguished despair of a man ready to end it all.

Innocent Saturday takes place in Pripyat, a town next the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, in the 36 hours following the explosion. The film isn’t easy to watch, mainly because of the shaky camerawork (think Blair Witch Project), which is probably intended to reflect the sense of confusion running through the main character, Valery. He’s an engineer and low-ranking Communist Party official, who finds out about the disaster and tries to flee with his sort-of-girlfriend. When they miss the train due to a broken heel on one of her shoes, they realize there’s not much they can do. Officially, there is no problem and no reason to leave, even though they know it’s not safe. Though Valery knows what happened, he isn’t supposed to tell anyone because he could be charged with inciting a panic. They wander back to town where she buys some shoes and they go to a wedding banquet. Because there’s no immediate way for them to leave, they join in the festivities.

—
Later, that evening…

Irma Vep is a French film about the making (or remaking) of a French film. The original Irma Vep was a character in a silent film called Les Vampires or The Vampires – Irma Vep is an anagram for vampire. The silent film was an actual film that I’m wasn’t familiar with, but I don’t think knowledge of it is incredibly important in watching Irma Vep. Irma Vep shows a Chinese actress, Maggie Cheung who is cast in the lead role. She arrived a few days late due to filming going over schedule on another film, but when she arrives at the production office things are incredibly chaotic and the film seems troubled. As if to accentuate this point, the film features lots of quick cuts and camera movements, creating a bit of visual confusion.

Prior to the screening, the film was introduced by film critic Neil Young (http://www.jigsawlounge.co.uk/film/) and Olivier Assayas, the film’s director, who spoke about it for a few minutes. He noted this was the first film where he got a chance to work with a “movie star”.

After the film, in a free event at a nearby hotel, he answered questions about his films and career. The film festival did a retrospective of his films this year, and apparently they wanted to do it last year, but he got nominated for some awards for Carlos. During the Q&A, he explained how the film first came about and that it was originally supposed to be about the bureaucratic and diplomatic effort to capture Carlos. The discussion was pretty detailed, but fascinating. In the end, he said he has been very lucky on each film to make the best film he could at the time, without having to compromise. His explanation of how Carlos was made highlighted how lucky he was.

I’m still a bit jetlagged (well, my normal sleeping schedule isn’t normal anyway). Yesterday I went to take a nap and set an alarm to wake me up at 9:00 pm, 90 minutes before the showing for Low Cost. However, I woke up on my own at 10:25, five minutes before the scheduled screening. It turns out I set my alarm for 9:00 am, not pm, and I overslept. Thus, I missed the showing.

Yesterday was the first day of TIFF and I saw two films: Tahrir 2011: The Good, the Bad, and the Politician and Guilty of Romance. Both were at the Fokus Kino theater, which is pretty snazzy by US standards. The theaters are steeper and have more leg room. The seats don’t fold up, but they do lean back. No cupholders in them though. There’s no concession stand per se, but there is a coffee shop with pastries and espresso drinks, plus there is a store in the theater that sells drinks and food. That might be considered a concession stand, but it’s more like a convenience store. The store sells popcorn, but it’s not freshly made, instead it is already in paper boxes and those are in something that looks like a convenience store freezer. I didn’t open the doors, so I don’t know if it keeps the popcorn cold or hot

The ticket for the first movie I saw said 9:00 pm (21:00), but that was when they started seating. I don’t know if that is normal, or if they delayed seating due to the large crowd. The second film I saw was scheduled at midnight and they started seating about 5 – 10 minutes before that.

Tahrir 2011 started out well, when it suddenly stopped about a minute into it. One teenager started clapping, as if the film was brilliant, and most of the theater laughed. They stopped the film because they forgot the subtitles. They restarted it, making sure the subtitles were included (interestingly, both films had English-language subtitles).

Tahrir 2011 is a documentary on the events in Tahrir Square, Cairo, with particular focus on the events that happened in January and February 2011. A lot of the footage was taken with cell phones as the events happened, but these were interspersed with more professionally shot video. There are also interviews with some of the participants months later, where they recalled their experiences.

The film is broken into three segments: The Good, concentrating on the protestors; the Bad, featuring interviews with police/security personnel; and the Politician, which covers Hosni Mubarak’s presidency. This segment is further broken up by the cheeky “How to become a dictator in 10 easy steps”. It was funny and chilling at the same time, when you think about the leaders around the world that these steps could be applied to. I don’t think the film will be shown in Venezuela, Zimbabwe, or Belarus anytime soon.

Guilty of Romance is an dark thriller from Japan. An obsequious housewife is married to a famous author. Her day seems to revolve around seeing her husband off to work at 7:00 and making sure his slippers are perfectly positioned and tea is made for when he gets back from work at 9:00. Her attentiveness would make June Cleaver look like a slacker. Still, she yearns for something more, so she gets a job at a supermarket giving away samples of sausage. Not wanting to spoil the film too much, I’ll say that pornography, infidelity, prostitution, murder, and literature cover some of the plot points. The film reminded me a bit about the works of Alfred Hitchcock, Tinto Brass, and Takashi Ishii.

The films for today are Attack the Block and Low Cost. I just saw Attack the Block, but Low Cost is late tonight so I’ll write that up tomorrow.

Attack the Block is about a gang of teenage thugs from London’s South End and how they save the world from an alien invasion… or at least their block. The film is part comedy/part horror. Not in the way of Scary Movie, but more like Shaun of the Dead, which also features Nick Frost. His role in Attack the Block is a bit smaller, though still important. The aliens are interesting, in an old school, low cost sort of way. The best way to describe them is a some sort of gorilla-wolf things with no eyes and glowing teeth. The film was in English with Norwegian subtitles, but the accents were so think it was sometimes hard to understand what was being said. It reminded me of Trainspotting in that respect.