Das Fraulein - "a solid debut film" for a prior short filmmaker.
Hello from Sundance. In order to ensure you get the full flavour of the place, you may wish to follow this recipe before reading on:
First make up some ice-cubes and pop them in your washing up bowl. Next open your kitchen window. What’s that, you say, it’s snowing, that’s all to the good. Now bring your computer/laptop into the kitchen. Spin round very fast for two minutes (to simulate the joys of altitude sickness), put feet in bowl of icecubes and stick your head in the freezer.
On the other hand, you could just make yourself up a hot toddy and send the warm vibes our way.
What we’re saying here, is it’s cold, although, on the plus side, it isn’t snowing (yet). Also on the plus side the God of Transatlantic karma shined favourably on your sub-zero scribbler this year. Clearly feeling I had suffered enough after last year’s Wiggles nightmare (the post-traumatic stress haunts me still), my flight from Edinburgh to New York was devoid of under 16s. And, I had three seats to myself. There can be few greater joys. The flight was also graced with the spirit of Sundance past – with Little Miss Sunshine the in flight movie. Here’s hoping we get to bring you news of something similarly great this year.
Having just rewatched LMS due to the DVD release next week, it seemed only proper to get in the mood for this year’s fest by watching Swiss director Andrea Staka’s debut feature movie Das Fraulein. She won several awards for her short Hotel Belgrade and has already scooped the Golden Leopard at Locarno Film Festival for her latest, which is screening as part of the World Competition.
It’s a solid debut film, which captures the delicacy of emotion between three former Yugoslavian women living in Switzerland. Perhaps more importantly for someone on a plane, it features two or three sex scenes, which left me feeling like a kid caught with their hand in the sweetie jar – just as well there weren’t any under 16s on board. I fast-forwarded them but, somehow, that made the whole thing even worse.
But enough of the journey, what of the fest? The day dawned bright and clear – for which read, bloody cold. Eye For Film schlepped up to town for the annual gathering of credentials and to check out the lay of the land. Turns out they won’t be employing the adhoc system with screener discs this year, having set aside a special room to watch the DVDs in rather than let you take them away over night.
This sounds a terrific idea… until we enquired how many booths they have. Three, is the answer and, quite frankly, it isn’t a magic number. There are around 20 of these types of booths at the Edinburgh Festival and they are permanently full. I expect it to be impossible to get a slot until at least Wednesday, when many of the ‘local’ press have had enough and go home.
Credentials collected, there was just time to hit the best Mexican joint we’ve found yet in town – the Loco Lizard – for lunch, before heading to the opening press conference. I’m enclosing a picture of the great free chips and dips you get pre meal… you will note that Eye For Film had sobriety in mind – that is water in those glasses to the right, not vodka.
And so to the press conference, in a much better venue this year than last, since the seating was tiered so we actually managed to get a picture or two of Robert R. You can read about it here. We were impressed to note, however, that Robert, like us, appreciates a ‘comfy jumper that stays the distance’, his was a 2004 vintage.
The day wrapped up with the opening night film screening of Chicago 10. A documentary with more American interest than British, it charts riots in Chicago, which resulted in a major civil rights trial of seven ‘yippies’. Cleary intended to draw parallels with the current state of American today, with reference to Iraq – a subject high on the agenda here again this year – I think it will probably come to a TV near you soon, rather than a multiplex. Interesting mix of Scanner Darkly style animation and archival footage, yet another indicator of the march of mix media, which seems to be gathering pace.
Just time to tell you about the typo of the day before we catch some shut-eye. Reading the programme notes for Longford, we noticed reference to that infamous Moors Murderer Myra Henley (sic) – so evil, they named a regatta after her, eh?
