I’m aware that my previous coverage of MIFF hasn’t been very helpful, since I frequently don’t end up writing about films until after they’ve had all their screenings – last year the whole festival was over before I wrote up a lot of the films I saw. Once again, I’d recommend Paul Martin’s blog for information that’s actually useful, like his list of films that are likely to get a commercial release anyway, and his monitoring of what is about to get sold out.
By contrast, and as always, my own coverage of the festival will simply be postmortems of my own haphazard, time-constrained and obtuse sampling of the festival. So with no further apologies, this is what I’ve put on the mini-pass for this year.
Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired (Marina Zenovich)
This looks like it should be an interesting portrayal of the man with – on the face of it – the shonkiest reason ever for not accepting an Academy Award in person. Apparently it’s quite sympathetic to Polanski – it will be interesting to see the filmmaker’s take on the events.
Of Time and the City (Terrence Davies)
This tribute to Liverpool by Terence Davies caught my interest given my urban planning background.
Not Quite Hollywood (Mark Hartley)
I have run with the “Ozsploitation” focus of the festival this year, and this will be a great scene-setter. Early word is this documentary is very good.
Razorback (Russell Mulcahy)
Dead End Drive-In (Brain Trenchard-Smith)
Roadgames (Richard Franklin)
See above about Ozsploitation.
Ashes of Time Redux (Wong Kar Wei)
I love Wong Kar Wei, but still have many gaps in my knowledge of his work, so I couldn’t miss the chance to see this revised cut of Ashes of Time.
Wonderful Town (Aditya Assarat)
This is a punt: it caught my interest purely because it looks at rebuilding in Thailand after the Tsunami, which interests me as a planner and also because I just came back from my own Thai sojourn.
Persepolis (Marjana Satrapi)
An early look at Satrapi’s acclaimed animated feature.
Encounters at the End of the World (Werner Herzog)
I love Herzog’s stuff – while this doesn’t sound as interesting as Grizzly Man, it’s always a treat to see a new Herzog doco.