My first film of the festival was Garden State, an amusing but pretty dark film starring Zach Braff and Natalie Portman. My favourite scene was the 5 second shot of the main character modelling the shirt his auntie made from room decorating offcuts, but that’s not to say the rest of the film wasn’t great, just that I was considerably amused.
My second run was the short film panorama containing a number of short films made around the world. My favourite’s being “The Best Of Lukas M.”, “Scherubel”, “Handicap” and “Plasticat”. I’m not rating the films as requested by the organisers, as rating *anything* on an entirely arbitrary numerical scale is, well, entirely arbitrary.
I’m told UK funding for short films isn’t great which might help explain the lack of any native English films in this panorama. Some were good, some were uninteresting and some were great. Unfortunately a number were overtly quirky and tried too hard. Films trying to be quirky for the sake of quirk stand out clearly and I can’t imagine are ever mistaken for anything clever.
And if I see one more “fly’s point of view” shot I’ll walk out.
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