Feature: MIFF Diary, Day 15-18: Exhaustion, the value of not seeing films, various lists

by Brad Nguyen - published 10/08/11

I am writing this post a couple of days after the Melbourne International Film Festival for 2011 has ended. It has been a pretty good festival all in all but as with other years, I ended up an exhausted husk of a man in those final few days. This is a problem facing all cinephiles in Melbourne: 50 weeks of general mediocrity and when the film festival finally comes around, film-watching becomes something of a 2-week endurance test. The mania of a film festival doesn’t leave a lot of time for reflection which is kind of a crucial thing for the films that tend to be shown only at film festivals. The importance of reflection has made itself even more evident to me having this year committed myself to watching 60 films in 17 days and writing about them as part of the MIFF blogathon. Here’s one thing about filmgoing that no-one talks about much: A lot of cinephilia involves not seeing films. One also needs to think about films, read about films, talk about films and the time taken to watch films can actually get in the way of these other activities.

One of these other activities that cinephiles do is make lists, as discussed by Girish Shambu who started an interesting discussion about the subject of lists on his blog:

Just as writing about cinema has exploded on the Internet in the last decade, so has the activity of list-making. We are acutely reminded of this at the end of each year, when it becomes obligatory for film blogs, websites, and magazines (and even journals housed in academe such as Film Quarterly) to publish lists that pronounce and rank the best cinema of the year. But even apart from this end-of-year exercise, the making of lists is an activity that seems to exert a powerful attraction on the cinephile… At the macro level, lists can help elevate certain films and filmmakers to broader consciousness, and render them worthy of attention, importance, and study… I’m equally interested in the micro-level potential of lists — specifically the way in which, for a moment, they help dislodge the agency of the viewer.

Here then are a few ranked lists to honour the passing of another festival and our entrance back into the real world (oh look, there’s a Glee concert movie coming out on Thursday!):

5 FILMS ABOUT CHILDREN:

  1. The Kid With a Bike
  2. Tomboy
  3. Le Havre
  4. Toomelah
  5. Tears of Gaza

The Kid With a Bike and Tomboy really stood out as attentive and sympathetic portraits of children and the stresses they face. Le Havre is less a film about a child than it is a film about hiding a child but I have mentioned it here to stress how much I liked it. Together with Wiseman’s Boxing Gym, I was glad to watch a film that was so unapologetically positive, a rousing film about the most generous tendencies of human nature. Toomelah was quite a good film that suffered from a visual style tending towards clichéd realism and subtitles that felt condescending. Hopefully they will be gone before the film sees its general release in Australia. Tears of Gaza is at the bottom of the list here for highlighting the limits of utilising our sympathy for children to draw interest to a political cause.

5 FILMS ABOUT AN IMPLODING WORLD:

  1. Outrage
  2. A Stoker
  3. The Unjust
  4. Wasted Youth
  5. Page One: Inside the New York Times

In all the films in this list, one senses a momentum or energy that leads inexorably to oblivion. Outrage was a highlight of the festival for me in the way its logic of betrayal and revenge plays out in such a robotic and hilarious manner. A Stoker featured the most provocative soundtrack of the festival with its mocking use of the corporate-training-video-ready sounds of Didula, a move that rankled the sensibilities of more than a few audience members. The Unjust gave us more evidence of the greatness that can be found in commercial filmmaking in Asia with its fast-paced vision of corruption within South Korea’s institutions of justice. Wasted Youth is the most elusive of the films here, slowly gathering information about the pressures faced by its characters until it climaxes in an inexplicable act of violence. As with A Stoker, the filmmaker is interested in the connection between the violent events depicted and larger social crises that provide context to the events (a topical theme given the recent riots in London). Page One: Inside the New York Times is at the bottom of the list here because it is a mediocre film about an interesting subject, the crisis facing the mainstream media as it succumbs to the logic of global capitalism.

5 FILMS THAT EMPHASISE THE VISCERAL OVER THE LINGUISTIC:

  1. Cold Fish / Guilty of Romance
  2. Masao Adachi
  3. Outside Satan
  4. 13 Assassins
  5. Essential Killing

In Guilty of Romance, a university professor tells her students that words are impotent, that they need to be given body. Sion Sono’s two films this year then work to prove the point. His films are the blackest of comedies illustrating the gap between people’s high-minded ideals and the brutality of the body. The body is also a central concern of avant-garde filmmaker Philippe Grandrieux who gave us a documentary about the Japanese filmmaker Masao Adachi. The film may have frustrated those in the audience who just wanted information about Adachi’s life (this is what Wikipedia is for, guys) but for Grandrieux followers, it is fascinating how in tune this film is with his fiction features with their emphasis on the physicality of the camera’s vision. Outside Satan is the first Dumont film I’ve seen and it became a highlight of my festival if only for that extraordinary sex scene, certainly the best sex scene of the festival (if you haven’t already seen it, you’ll know what I mean when you do). The first half of 13 Assassins seemed to drag for me but once its final set piece kicked in, the film really shone as a gleeful cartoonish action film. Essential Killing, by contrast, was a gleeful cartoonish action film that did not want to own up to it. Removing its main character from Afghanistan to an anonymous European forest points to its problem: action that does nothing to articulate its context.

5 FILMS ABOUT SADNESS:

  1. Mysteries of Lisbon
  2. Norwegian Wood
  3. Melancholia
  4. Martha Marcy May Marlene
  5. Tatsumi

Mysteries of Lisbon has to stand out as one of the most magnificent films of the festival, a sumptuous and involving four-and-a-half-hour work featuring a labyrinth of interlocking stories about romantic tragedies and secret identities. Norwegian Wood gave Mysteries of Lisbon a run for its money in terms of sumptuous beauty delivering an impressionistic tale about a young man in the sixties drawn into the despair of the woman he loves. Melancholia was an obvious enjoyment of the festival yet it still managed to surprise me in how straightforward and sincere it was. There is no large meta-joke going on in Melancholia. There is really a planet heading towards earth and it has a real, believable effect on this family living on this country manor. Not like Antichrist which, as it turns out, is not literally about Satan or talking foxes. Here we are given a straightforward, sincere film about depression (Kirsten Dunst) and despair (Charlotte Gainsbourg) that ends up making a surprisingly good case for the value of depression. Martha Marcy May Marlene was a film that I saw on the advice of friends and I’m glad I did. It’s an exceptional film about a young woman recently escaped from a cult that quite convincingly shows how her melancholy would make the cult she joins a desirable prospect. It is the outside normal world that is alienating and oppressive while within the confines of the cult, everything is permitted: orgies, rape, theft and murder. Tatsumi introduced me to a manga artist I hadn’t heard of before, Yoshihiro Tatsumi, who specialises in despairing tales of individuals chewed up and spat out by society. If this sounds grim, there is a good, inspiring lesson in Tatsumi: It is throught art that anger and sadness are transformed into a joyous gesture.

5 FILMS ABOUT ROUTINE:

  1. The Day He Arrives / Oki’s Movie
  2. Principles of Life
  3. Boxing Gym
  4. The Turin Horse
  5. The Future

These are films with resolutely quotidian subject matters, films that investigate the issues of day-to-day living rather than the drama of catastophic crises. Hong Sang-soo gave us two more excellent films which resemble his past films about semi-successful intellectual filmmakers and their problems with romance and drinking. Repetition is important to Hong Sang-soo’s oeuvre. It doesn’t just describe the structure of his filmography but the structure of individual films. In both Oki’s Movie and The Day He Arrives, events are repeated over and over but only so we might pay attention to the subtle differences — in The Day He Arrives, a scene can follow the same structure but be read completely differently depending on the weather, the time of day, which people are present and the level of alcohol in their blood. Principles of Life is a subtle and hilarious film about a man who is hopelessly dragged down by the routines of life. Even the holiday he is working so hard towards turns out to be a matter of joyless routine. Like Hong Sang-soo, Constantin Popescu adopts a non-fussy, almost naive visual style (one unedited shot per scene with camera pans only motivated by characters’ actions) to capture the subtleties of his characters’ interactions. Boxing Gym, the latest documentary from Frederick Wiseman, is similarly unassuming but he is undeniably a great stylist, something not always readily acknowledged. The Turin Horse is, on the other hand, a film that calls attention to its mastery of film style. Perhaps it needed to be so as the price of convincing people to watch a two-and-a-half-hour film about the desolate drudgery of peasants’ lives. The Future is listed last here because despite being a film about ordinary problems (of aging, of occupational dissatisfaction etc.) it is reluctant to talk about any of these things honestly. We are given a brief, rapidly edited montage of Miranda July suffering in her job as a dance teacher (which doesn’t sound that awful to be honest) then a lot of the time is spent with talking cats and a man conversing with the moon. That’s very nice and all but, you know, some follow through here would have been nice.

5 FILMS ABOUT LIES:

  1. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
  2. Post Mortem
  3. Tabloid
  4. Tiny Furniture
  5. Michael

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia also ranks as one of the highlights of the festival, featuring a stunning opening shot whose significance remains a mystery throughout the film. From then on, the film becomes a crime procedural but one where the procedural is not as important as painting a sometimes funny, sometimes troubling portrait of this small rural Turkish community and the fragile relationships that are maintained and lies that are told in order to keep it together. Post Mortem is about a more horrifying lie: the cover-up of military massacres of civilians during Chile’s 1973 military coup d’etat. It also features a closing shot to mirror Anatolia’s opening shot: a slowly tracking out shot that confirms our distance from the truth. Tabloid provided some much-needed laughs during the festival with its story of sexual obsession and media shamelessness. Tiny Furniture turned out to be one of the better “indie” films of the festival. It’s about a college graduate who lies to her friends and family (and herself!) because she can’t face how terribly bleak her future looks. These are understandable lies. Less understandable is the lie that Lena Dunham is told by her mother (Dunham’s real life mother who is a successful artist): She tells Lena she will become even more successful than her mother. We know this works out for Lena. After all, she did make this film. But how about all us other undergraduates for whom Lena is supposed to be some kind of emotional proxy? Michael was the most boring film about lying — a Haneke-lite film that wants to be serious by showing us shocking behaviour in an austere fashion but is only capable of stating the obvious.

And thus we come to the end of my MIFF Diary for 2011! I have neglected to discuss at length any of the experimental cinema I saw and I’ve also not spent too much time talking about the films that played as part of MIFF’s retrospective program. Needless to say, they were all pretty great. That’s the benefit of having time to appreciate cinema.

PREVIOUS DIARY ENTRIES:

ALL 60 FILMS WATCHED (IN THE ORDER I SAW THEM):

  • The King of Comedy — Martin Scorsese
  • Tears of Gaza — Vibeke Lokkeberg
  • Le Havre — Aki Kaurismaki
  • Artavazd Pelechian Program
  • Beauty and the Beast — Jean Cocteau
  • Class Relations — Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub
  • Tomboy — Céline Sciamma
  • The Eye of the Storm — Fred Schepisi
  • The Yellow Sea — Na Hong-jin
  • Norwegian Wood — Tran Anh Hung
  • Fruit of Paradise — Vera Chytilová
  • Happy Together — Wong Kar-wai
  • 13 Assassins — Takashi Miike
  • Post Mortem — Pablo Larraín
  • End of Animal — Jo Sung-hee
  • The Unjust Ryu Seung-wan
  • A Stoker — Alexey Balabanov
  • An Autumn Afternoon — Yasujiro Ozu
  • Mysteries of Lisbon — Raul Ruiz
  • Michael — Markus Schleinger
  • I Wish I Knew — Jia Zhang-ke
  • Peter Tscherkassky Program One
  • The Future — Miranda July
  • Oki’s Movie — Hong Sang-soo
  • Hi-So — Aditya Assarat
  • Eve Heller Film Program
  • Cold Fish — Sion Sono
  • Under the Hawthorn Tree — Zhang Yimou
  • The Apple — Samira Makhmalbaf
  • Peter Tscherkassky Program Two
  • Masao Adachi — Philippe Grandrieux
  • Tabloid — Errol Morris
  • Toomelah — Ivan Sen
  • Red Dog — Kriv Stenders
  • The Kid With a Bike — Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne
  • Page One: Inside the New York Times — Andrew Rossi
  • Good Bye — Mohammad Rasoulof
  • The Fourth Portrait — Chung Mong-Hong
  • Surviving Life — Jan Svankmajer
  • Boxing Gym — Frederick Wiseman
  • Principles of Life — Constantin Popescu
  • Khodorkovsky — Cyril Tuschi
  • Outrage — Takeshi Kitano
  • Natural Selection — Robbie Pickering
  • Wasted Youth — Argyris Papadimitropoulos
  • Tatsumi — Eric Khoo
  • Outside Satan — Bruno Dumont
  • Essential Killing — Jerzy Skolimowski
  • The Turin Horse — Béla Tarr
  • Guilty of Romance — Sion Sono
  • The Day He Arrives — Hong Sang-soo
  • Bi, Don’t Be Afraid — Phan Dang Di
  • Melancholia — Lars von Trier
  • Eternity — Sivaroj Kongsakul)
  • Tiny Furniture — Lena Dunham
  • Barking Dogs Never Bite — Bong Joon-ho
  • Cave of Forgotten Dreams — Werner Herzog
  • Once Upon a Time in Anatolia — Nuri Bilge Ceylan
  • Martha Marcy May Marlene — Sean Durkin
  • Jeonju Digital Project 2011 — Jean-Marie Straub, Claire Denis & José Luis Guerin
Brad Nguyen
Brad Nguyen is a co-editor of Screen Machine. He studied Cinema Studies at the University of Melbourne, was the film reviewer for Triple R Breakfasters and has written for Senses of Cinema.

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24 Comments


  • andreia mandim
    10/08/11 - 12:31 PM

    great liste!

    cinemaschallenge.blogspot.com


  • Jenny
    10/08/11 - 3:04 PM

    Thanks for the lists…they are interesting and thought provoking. A film about sadness that isn’t on your list but was fascinating was ‘Journals of Musan’.

    I agree about the importance of reflection. I kept up a daily Facebook commentary of the films I’d seen and my experiences at the festival and have since copied it all into a Word document for posterity. In 17 days I saw 55 films. I saw another 3 in the 4 days beforehand – two previews plus the opening night film.

    My favorites – for various reasons – were Le Havre, The Apple, Goodbye, Into Eternity, A Separation, The Guard, Troubadour, Tears of Gaza, Page One: The New York Times, Exporting Raymond, On the Sly, most of the International Shorts program and the short “Leonid’s Story” from the documentary shorts program. My least favourite were Principles of Life, Drive, The Fourth Portrait. It was all great fun…..


  • Zora
    10/08/11 - 3:06 PM

    Congrats Brad. And apart from the awful Mysteries of Lisbon (I think just need to watch more period pieces. Your standards are all screwy) I agree with a lot of your ranking. And you make me regret not seeing Once Upon a Time in Anatolia.
    A very impressive list, and some really great writing over the festival too. Well done.


  • Brad Nguyen
    10/08/11 - 3:18 PM

    Hey Jenny, thanks for the tip on JOURNALS OF MUSAN. I really wanted to see it but couldn’t fit it in.


  • Conall Cash
    10/08/11 - 3:30 PM

    Journals of Musan could equally fit the ‘films about routine’ category


  • Jenny
    10/08/11 - 4:23 PM

    Besides the scene in Jiro Dreams of Sushi where they were cutting up the still alive eel, I think the last scene of Journals of Musan was one of the saddest scenes in any film in the festival…I was grief stricken ….


  • Conall Cash
    11/08/11 - 12:50 AM

    While we’re on this topic, I might as well add that Dreileben: Beats Being Dead (which I just watched and which is excellent) would fit well on the ‘films about lies’ list.


  • Brad Nguyen
    11/08/11 - 11:31 AM

    I’ll add that to my list of films I need to catch on post-MIFF.


  • Glenn
    12/08/11 - 10:04 AM

    I find it incredibly curious that so many films of the films you saw are widely known to have release dates after the festival. Curious because in your second MIFF dairy you criticised me for admitting to, at times, deliberately seeing films that will be released at some point in the future because – as has been my experience in the past – many films that don’t acquire a distribution are actually not any good. Do you mean to tell me that you, like me, chose these films based on your interest in the subject matter and not their impending distribution status or lack thereof? After that piece about me I actually expected your entire list of films to be made up of those without any distribution. It would have been an interesting contrast, for sure, but ultimately an unrealistic one.


  • Brad Nguyen
    12/08/11 - 11:27 AM

    Glenn, at the start of your comment you admit to seeing films on the basis of them being released in the future. At the end of your comment, you claim that you do not see films based on their impending distribution status. Nothing wrong with this contradiction — It’s just confusing is all.

    I have, of course, seen films at MIFF that will see distribution. It would be highly reactionary of me not to. Of course, distributors release good films from time to time. Why would I not see a good film merely because it has been picked up for distribution? My point in my second diary entry is that there is no correlation between “quality” and distribution status. A “quality” film may find distribution from time to time but the decision is made on commercial potential, not how good the film is. And I maintain that this is an important distinction.


  • Emma Jane McNicol
    12/08/11 - 11:43 AM

    Congrats Brad.
    The lists are a beautiful format and structure for your blogathon summary.


  • Luke Buckmaster
    13/08/11 - 2:44 AM

    When you go out of your way to sledge somebody for seeing films that have theatrical distributions attached, and you see a collection of those films yourself, you leave yourself open for claims of hypocrisy, and I’m sure you can understand why those claims aren’t unfounded. One of those ‘people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw rocks’ predicaments. Having said that, I’m grateful of the thoughtful contributions you’ve added to the festival discussion. They have been interesting, and in some senses ambitious, even if you did drop off towards the end. I was hoping to bump into you at the closing night party. All the best — lb


  • Luke Buckmaster
    13/08/11 - 3:11 AM

    Can I also note for the record my absolute abhorrence of ranking artistic achievements numerically — ie what separates a “1″ from a “2″, a “4″ from a “5″? It’s lazy writing; in fact, it’s not even writing. This criticism is in no way directed to you alone — just about everybody does it. However, you extend the playing field by grouping films in terms of films that are “sad” or films that are “about lies.” No films are only “sad” and no films are only “about lies” — again, this is a convenient way of grouping pieces of art that are much more than the simplistic terms with which you define them. I assume you don’t mean to simply films in this way, but grouping them as such draws these kinds of connotations. Keep on writing and exploring, and god speed, good fellow — lb


  • Brad Nguyen
    13/08/11 - 12:37 PM

    I guess I could be accused of hypocrisy but only by those who lack a reasonable level of reading comprehension skills. Read the article again. You will see that I didn’t “sledge” anybody for seeing films with distribution deals. I criticised Glenn Dunks for inferring a correlation between a film not having a distribution deal and a lack of quality.


  • Brad Nguyen
    13/08/11 - 12:43 PM

    As for your remarks regarding list-making, see the discussion of list-making referenced at the top of this article.


  • Glenn
    13/08/11 - 4:39 PM

    I never stated I was seeing films BECAUSE they had distribution, but merely that many of the films I wanted to see will have it in the future. Any other year where I only see 25 or so films I routinely try and see a majority of titles that I’m unaware of having distribution, but with 60 films on the cards it was not realistic and so, instead of going out of my way to see films without distribution I simply saw films that sounded interesting to me. Which, I assume, is what you and everyone else did, too.

    And considering some of the films I saw without distribution (“A Useful Life”, “Innocent Saturday”, “Wasted Youth” amongst them) were films I absolutely loathed from the festival, I think I was at least had somewhat of a point in the initial comment you mentioned in diary #2. And to note that in my experience of this festival and others (as well as other festivals from around the world) many films that never found distribution (theatrical, DVD, TV) are routinely ones that did not receive good reviews (from me or others). It’s not just some crazy theory I cooked up.

    Of course, many great films do miss out on distribution and I’m sure I missed many great films at MIFF, but we can’t see everything and when seeing films in such a high concentration as we did we have to have a bit of trust with ourselves and choose films we WANT to see rather than what we feel the need to see out of some obligation to appear lofty and say “Oh I saw 60 films that will never get released.”

    I will say that I appreciated your unique take on the festival, writing in themes throughout, which was at times quite fascinating, especially since nobody else was doing it in that way. However, I don’t appreciate people putting words into my mouth and acting condescending towards me. Saying stuff like “those who lack a reasonable level of reading comprehension skills” is just rude.


  • Luke Buckmaster
    13/08/11 - 5:27 PM

    Yeah it’s rude, but that’s the point. It’s designed to insult. On the happier side of the equation, it’s actually one of the nicer things Brad has said about me and my writing. “Stupid,” “indefensibly lazy,” “reactionary,” “disingenuous,” a “philistine,” “lacking a mere modicum of intelligence” and likened to Andrew Bolt — that’s a pretty rough score sheet.


  • Bradley J. Dixon
    13/08/11 - 5:46 PM

    Compared to Andrew Bolt? That’s the journalistic equivalent of a politician being compared to Hitler. Ouch.

    I don’t think it would have even been possible to see 60 films at MIFF and NOT see at least 30 with distribution. It’s a silly dispute, really. Why does anyone care how another person chooses the films they decide to see?

    Anyway, unrelated question for Brad: if star ratings are too reductive, how are top 5 lists better? (That’s a genuine question, by the way. I’m a supporter of both star ratings and lists, but that’s just me.)


  • Luke Buckmaster
    13/08/11 - 8:51 PM

    Bradley: two excellent questions.


  • Brad Nguyen
    14/08/11 - 12:20 PM

    Luke/Bradley — It is understandable that one should be ambivalent about the structure of lists. Nevertheless, there is a difference (or at least there can be) between lists and number ratings. The latter merely assigns a numerical value. Lists, on the other hand, can achieve all kinds of outcomes and it is something I’ve deliberately called attention to by quoting extensively and linking to an online discussion about the value of list-making (which I gather no-one has bothered to actually read). If I had simply ranked my favourite films, yes maybe that would be hypocritical of me. But these lists obviously serve a critical function. They organise films around an “idea” so that we might think of how these films relate to each other in that context. And each list is discussed at some length.

    Glenn, I did not put words in your mouth. I criticised you for implying a correlation between distribution and quality and that seems to be a position you are standing by. We’ll have to agree to disagree but it’s worth thinking about how some of the best films of the festival won’t be getting a release by their very nature. I.e. Because they do something more than merely show an audience something they “want” to see. Because they are genuinely challenging. Because they don’t leave the audience simply luxuriating in the “quality” of the film. It’s the films that leave us unsure of our position that are often the most worth talking about. And the question that remains from my 2nd diary entry: For what other reason do we need a film festival?


  • Bradley J. Dixon
    14/08/11 - 4:35 PM

    I did read the discussion you linked to, but it’s irrelevant to my point that lists are equally as reductive as star ratings. Yes, you’ve put some thought into your thematic groupings but at the end of the day you have still reduced each film to a number. People put as much thought into star ratings as you have into your lists, so I don’t understand how there is a distinction.

    I’m not saying I’m ambivalent to lists, in fact I love nothing more than a good top five, I just found it curious that you were so critical of star ratings for reasons that also apply to lists.

    And I’m not Glenn but I can have a stab at answering your question: I go to festivals to watch some films. That’s it. Sometimes I like to be challenged, sometimes not, but it all depends on the film. There’s nothing wrong with just wanting to be entertained sometimes.


  • Glenn
    15/08/11 - 12:39 PM

    As for lists, I think perhaps more than anything they are just a bit of fun. We tend to spend so much time reducing films down to their spare parts that it’s sometimes light relief to just play games with our mind and make lists.

    But there’s also the fact that lists stoke discussion. I can’t tell you how many times during MIFF I had a fascinating conversation with somebody (friend or unknown alike) that started with “so what’s been your favourite film?” or “How does Melancholia compare to other von Trier films?” By their pure nature, films are made to be compared and contrasted with one another. A filmmaker doesn’t make a film today and NOT hope that people think it is as good as other amazing films. I didn’t read the link you provided, but that’s because I don’t have the time to delve into the hows and whys of something like list making. That I’ve written this much here is a fluke.

    As for the other issue, Brad, you DID put words in my mouth. Go and read the comment you initially quoted me on. I never once “admit(ted) to seeing films on the basis of them being released in the future” but merely that several of the films I had chosen to see did in fact have distribution. And, like I said in my comment, I’m not just making it up when I say a lot of terrible films that screen at festivals (even festivals as renowned as Cannes) don’t get released. Yes, many great films also don’t get released, but knowing that I couldn’t see everything that MIFF had to offer meant that I couldn’t feel too bad about not seeing something like “Surviving Life” which won’t get a release, but also didn’t interest me enough. All but a couple of films that I saw (those last minute “filler” types) were ones I eagerly wanted to see.

    And, besides, we live in a world where films are more available than ever. Stuff like “Meek’s Cutoff” gets a nationwide release and most titles are available on DVD from at least *somewhere* in the world. But, again, you read so far between the lines you began seeing things that weren’t there in the first place.

    As for why we go to film festivals? You know what, I imagine a lot of people who only go to MIFF for one or two sessions – the “regular folk” – go and see films that, to bring it back, will get released in cinemas. Difference is, those people probably wouldn’t go and see “Melancholia” at any other time of the year other than at a festival. A film festival is about seeing films in a specific atmosphere. It’s about exploring worlds and stories. I found it unnecessary to see stuff like “Beginners” which is out mere weeks later, but if I get to see “Melancholia” four months before it gets a release (where I would see it in a near-empty cinema at a 10am press screening, no doubt) then I’m going to take that opportunity up. If it means I miss some Czech drama that sounded as interested as watching paint dry then so be it.

    But, then, I also think that something like MIFF is a time for myself and fellow film addictives getting together and discussing cinema in a vacuum. Many of my favourite moments of MIFF were the conversations I had after films like “Drive”. That you felt the need to poke at myself and Thomas especially throughout the festival (and Luke here in comments) is especially disappointing and put a slight bitter edge to this otherwise worthwhile initiative.


  • Brad Nguyen
    15/08/11 - 5:28 PM

    Glenn, this will be the last time I respond to you in this comments section as I think this “debate” is tiresome for everyone involved. The first thing to say here is that the conversation is being driven by a willful misreading of anything I write down. Eg. The quote you cited refers to the comment directly above it, not the diary entry that sparked this conversation. For the record, you wrote: “in your second MIFF dairy you criticised me for admitting to, at times, deliberately seeing films that will be released at some point in the future because – as has been my experience in the past – many films that don’t acquire a distribution are actually not any good.” It appears that you are paraphrasing your own position here and then calling me out for criticising this position. But if this was just an awkwardly phrased comment, I can accept that I reasonably misinterpreted what you were trying to put across. I accept that you didn’t set out to see only films with a distribution deal.

    What you have failed to understand is that I didn’t accuse you of this in the first place. Read the article again. Here I’ll quote myself: “Maybe the most wrong-headed idea out of [Glenn Dunks' comment] is the idea that film distributors generally do things “for a very good reason”. The whole point of the article is to dispute the idea put forward by you that the function of film distributors is to sort good films from bad films. This is the only way in which you are implicated in that diary entry which, frankly, isn’t concerned only with you but with framing our experience of a film festival.

    What’s truly hypocritical here is the way you allow yourself the authority to criticise films (and all power to you by the way) but your own work must exist in a “vacuum” exempt from others’ critical thinking. Maybe you should learn how to engage other people’s criticism with an honest counter-argument rather than attempting to shame people for daring to say something negative about your work. I am happy for you to disagree with me about the merit of my positions. But this idea that I should feel guilty of putting “a slight bitter edge to this otherwise worthwhile initiative” is intellectual fascism at its most typical.


  • Glenn
    17/08/11 - 4:21 PM

    Yes, yes, I am indeed a fascist for suggesting that criticising and insulting your fellow writers wasn’t in the spirit of the blogathon. I probably should have said from the get go that I was a fascist, shouldn’t I? Would’ve saved a lot of time and energy, huh?

    Jesus Christ, hyperbole much?

    Anyway, you’re right. This whole conversation is going nowhere. Antagonism will get you far.

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