Monday, June 9, 2014

Sydney Film Festival Diary Days 1-4

The craziest 12 days of the year commenced last Wednesday evening with the Opening Night screening of the 2014 Sydney Film Festival with 20,000 Days on Earth. Writing this, I am on the morning of Day 6 and pretty tired, but everything has been worth it. I have seen some excellent films so far, and I am sure many more to come.

The SFF Hub is where you want to be in-between films. It has it all going on. Mingle for a drink and a chat at the Graffiti With Punctuation hosted Film Club, enjoy a live Podcast recording, interact with live presentations or see how the AFCA critics hold up to scrutiny in a Q&A Death-match. With our visiting out-of-town friends we have, on two occasions, been reluctantly ushered out of the Hub at ten to midnight.

While the diversity of films is obviously the drawcard of the Sydney Film Festival I find that it is the people you meet that are the most rewarding. I checked off a few of my out-of-town Twitter friends this time around, and caught up with those I had hadn’t seen in some time. I had someone recognise me and tap me on the shoulder, and we had a lengthy conversation (and several more since) about the films we have seen. Sam and I met a lady in the line for Boyhood who turned out to be volunteering at the festival. The next day, there she was, controlling the lines. No festival is without a mad dash between sessions. Yesterday we had ten minutes to make it between Event Cinemas George Street and the State Threatre. Pretty wild.

But, what have I seen so far? I wish I could have written more about these films, but I hope these brief opinions will prove interesting and even inspire you to catch the second session of a film if there is still one to screen.

Continue reading at Graffiti With Punctuation.

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