VIFF - White - South Korea 2011, 106 minutes

I really had no idea what to expect from this movie when I sat waiting for it to come on. I had already taken photos of the poster, and uploaded this one photo to Facebook and setting it as my profile photo. It is an endlessly fascinating photo of section of the poster. There even is Vancouver reflected into my photo on the right had side.



I will talk a bit about the film, and then the effect on me. The film starts with a girl group driving the fans, young girls crazy. The girl group is a signing group like Spice Girls, not a band like The Runnaways. Next the Pink Dolls came on and the audience was bored, texting, standing quiet, while these impossibly cute girls in pink lace performed. There career was tanking, management was getting ready to cut and run. They did not win the contest. Being the lead, standing centre rather than in the back is very importand to these young women, we Mick Jagger would understand.

These young girls, who quite often look alike all strive for the position on lead, even though as a band they have to the bottom of their career. They move into a news studio to record their last chance recording. Then luck changes, they find a song on a VHS tape, and hear a song, the video is blurry but the sound is a song, they song they need, with a beat so fresh, so unusual they know it will take them to heights they have never been to.

What is the price they pay?

I will not give the blood parts away. As I left the theatre I had no desire to look for tapes behind mirrors but I did wonder into a few shops looking for the pink lace and leather I had seen so often in this South Korean film.

Vancouver International Film Festival

I have decided on my first movie to see and blog about for the 2011 film festival, and again I find myself picking a movie by the photo in the online booklet. In 2004 I picked a movie to see from a photo ad for the movie 'DIG!' directed by Ondi Timoner and that movie changed my life. I may not have that expectation here, nor did I have it then however.

The first movie will be: http://filmguide.viff.org/tixSYS/2011/xslguide/eventnote.php?EventNumber=3323
Patience (After Sebald)
[PATIE] (Feature)
Nonfiction Features: Arts and Letters
(UK, 2011, 80 mins, HDCAM)

I will keep you posted on this adventure.

Well the images, filmed in black and white on a out of production Kodak film stock gave this film another wordily feel, time and space, a calm controlled palate to introduce other forms of colour film. This was used in a way so that at times my mind did not know if I was looking at colour or black and white and it did not mater.

I watched this film the way I would watch a butterfly in my yard. The trails through East Anglia, mapped are based on the walks in W.G Sebald (The Rings Of Saturn). It is not a story based on a book but a story about the book.

The slow deliberate pace of the movie contrasted with the fast passed walking colour footage taken by the director Grant Gee of his feet walking. This colour footage centred in the movie from time to time, was not jarring but more a tap on the shoulder to wake you from a dream of landscapes and places.

There are secret, and sacred places, and this movie lets us travel there with no feeling we would be hurt or shocked. All is calm, a treat to the eyes and our busy lives.

Yes it would have been nice to have read the book that he is travelling through, but the journey is wonderful, the book will be next. I will look at my photos of East Anglia and if any of my black and white photos have the feel, I will add them to this review.

You might be thinking were might the music connection be, has bev given in to her photography. The director Grant Gee has made two previous impressionistic documentaries, such as Radiohead's "Meeting People is Easy" and his 2007 documentary, Joy Division.

film is showing Oct 6 at 11:30 at GR2 and Oct 13 at 11AM at Vancity Theatre