It’s a hot October and the second wave of tourists has hit the city of Athens. It’s all quite tiresome really. The hordes of tourists that invade during the summer months are all right, you get used to them. They can be amusing and distracting. It’s even sort of nice and different that when August comes around there are more foreigners than Greeks in the centre of the city. It makes you feel sort of cosmopolitan.
But when autumn comes and you find that the city is still inundated by groups of loud Americans in louder shirts, German OAPs with knobbly knees in shorts and backpackers with maps you feel it’s all got a bit too much. Holiday season is over! Isn’t it? Well it should be.
It isn’t as if Athens isn’t noisy and messy enough these days. What with municipal elections coming up, the teachers protesting, solidarity marches for Lebanon and Palestine and occasional strikes by the public transport and the major labour unions we are having a lovely month so far.
Thursday, 5 October 2006
Tuesday, 3 October 2006
The festival is over!
And yesterday the Athens film festival finished! I didn’t see all that many films, not like the “good old times” where I could see over 40 films in the two weeks of the Thessaloniki film festival. Gayness seems to be in fashion the past year in Greece and the festival followed the trend by having a whole section on queer cinema.
As usual I preferred the rare, strange or experimental.
Warhol’s Lonesome Cowboys: slow and disjointed and just a bit boring even though very funny at points. Horridly sexist too. There was only one woman in the film I didn’t appreciate the way she was portrayed or the way she was treated by the men.
Blood, tea and red string: a very strange and slightly disturbing stop motion animation. Very enigmatical, but also rather good.
Thundercrack!: so rare there are only 4 or something copies in the world, which makes sense since they say it’s the most walked out off film in the history of cinema. It’s also one of the oddest. It’s a comic horror bi-sexual porn b-movie! Black and white seventies on top of all that. It was hillarious!
The pervert’s guide to the cinema: two and a half hours (with no break) of Slavoj Zizek analysing the cinema through a lacanian view at breakneck speed. Very interesting, but too much too fast.
The Queen: a rare little documentary about a drag queen beauty contest in 1967.
Scorpio Rising: a Kenneth Angers film with 50s rock and roll sountrack motorcycles, leather, religious parallels and nazi flags. Odd and disjointed asAngers
As usual I preferred the rare, strange or experimental.
Warhol’s Lonesome Cowboys: slow and disjointed and just a bit boring even though very funny at points. Horridly sexist too. There was only one woman in the film I didn’t appreciate the way she was portrayed or the way she was treated by the men.
Blood, tea and red string: a very strange and slightly disturbing stop motion animation. Very enigmatical, but also rather good.
Thundercrack!: so rare there are only 4 or something copies in the world, which makes sense since they say it’s the most walked out off film in the history of cinema. It’s also one of the oddest. It’s a comic horror bi-sexual porn b-movie! Black and white seventies on top of all that. It was hillarious!
The pervert’s guide to the cinema: two and a half hours (with no break) of Slavoj Zizek analysing the cinema through a lacanian view at breakneck speed. Very interesting, but too much too fast.
The Queen: a rare little documentary about a drag queen beauty contest in 1967.
Scorpio Rising: a Kenneth Angers film with 50s rock and roll sountrack motorcycles, leather, religious parallels and nazi flags. Odd and disjointed as
Pink Narcissus: about the strangest film I saw in the festival. And maybe the gayest. For 71 minutes you see a beautiful boy meandering around over decorated settings, undressing, fantasising, touching himself etc. Most of it with a pink wash over it.... Odd and mesmerising.
Obviously there were "mainstream" films too. I only saw two memorable ones though.
Shortbus: by Cameron Mitchel (he of Hedwig and the angry inch). It was supposed to contain nothing but sex, but there is much more to it than that. It's about people and relationships and sex. It's sweet and beautiful and quirky and I thoroughly recommend it.
Laitakaupungin Valot (Light at dusk): by the finnish director with the japanses name (Aki Kaourismaki). Really, really atmosphric. Is Helsinki REALLY like that? It was like going back in some type of timewarp. Dysfunctional people and 60s electrical appliances in the most depressing areas of the city and with such an unbelievable LOSER as the hero that you almost believe he deserves what he gets. Not as good though as The man without a past.
And finally what would the festival be without the prerequisite musical documentaries?
Air Guitar Nation: hilarious, hilarious documentary about the world air guitar competition. There are people out there that take air guitar very very seriously. As one guy said :To air is human, to air guitar divine.
LoudQUIETloud: the Pixies reunion tour. Why did I see that film? The Pixies are good but I'm hardly a fan and would someone please tell me why Kim Deal is god?
Glastonbury: more my think. The history of the Glastonbury festival in two and a half hours. Really good and really informative. Why, why, why have I never been to the festival?
The 12th International Film Festival of Athens as I saw it...
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