Gothenburg Film Festival 2

I managed to see six films over the weekend last weekend. Friday evening started off with Never Apologise, the film of a one-man-show in which actor Malcolm McDowell (Clockwork Orange) talks about Lindsey Anderson, the British film and theatre director who gave him his first big role in If (1968). Directly after, I saw Nanking, a frightening documentary of the Nanking Massacre. On Saturday afternoon I saw an Israeli film, Foul Gesture, a revenge comedy. In the evening my wife and I saw Return to Gorée, a sort of documentary and musical odyssey with Youssou N’Dour tracing the route of black African influence in popular music from the slave fort at Gorée off the coast of Senegal across the Atlantic to the USA and back via Europe to Gorée again. A bit pretentious. Sunday I managed first to see a Spanish film, Casual Day which was better than I was expecting (I feared a Spanish version of The Office – it’s what the synopsis in the catalogue suggested – but the film was more subtly funny, induced far fewer cringes and actually rang quite true.) Finally, on Sunday evening we managed to see a sweet retelling of the Cinderella story, The Year of the Fish transposed to China Town in New York and done in rotoscope (painting on film to give the impression that a live action performance is an animation). The rotoscope was a bit pointless most of the time, but there were some nice watery water-colour effects in the rainy street scenes. Now I’m off to film number seven this evening. Taking my camera and hoping to be able to upload a few pictures of the festival crowds tomorrow.