presenting a festival director

The festival opened on Friday, there was the exhibition opening cocktail party on Saturday and on Sunday there was the presentation I had to attend. After going around asking everyone what exactly I was supposed to do I learned, at the very last minute, that first I was to just say “there will be a question and answer session after the film with the films director and please join me in welcoming him blah blah” and after the film the audience members were to ask questions which I had to translate. If they failed to ask I would motivate by asking my own questions.
Basically this was a translation job and I have no idea why I was doing it. I mean it was not as if I was putting to use any of my knowledge as a film critic and scholar for it, except may be to the extent that I knew film terminology in both languages very well. The thing went smoothly.
I have translated three books in my life one fiction and two non-fiction and let me tell you that I hate translating. I find it the most tedious job in the world where you end up thinking on a sentence longer than its writer ever did and it is never worth the effort. However this kind of translation was very easy and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I must admit, especially when people referred to other directors or films, I thought someone who did not already know these names could never have been able to get what was going on let alone repeat the names, so maybe after all there is some small wisdom in making us do it, although admittedly we, film critics and scholars, are over qualified for this job.
The result: Provided there is some adequate monetary compensation, I wouldn’t mind doing all the presentations. Though I guess this would necessitate being at different places at the same time and why should the festival pay when they are getting us to do it for free? The real result: never again!
Of course I got to see my first festival film because of this presentation and this is good because if I don’t start early on I usually end up not going to any movie during the festival. I mean there was a time back in my youth when I went to four, even five, movies a day for two weeks straight. I did mention I was very fucked up in my youth, didn’t I? Well this was one of the symptoms, as far as I am concerned. But even then I had an excuse: I wrote what I saw, I was even writing a festival journal for a newspaper at one point. Plus, back then, the festival was the only opportunity to see some films. Whereas now, thanks to DVD and the downloading capabilities of the internet, there is no such animal. And yes my home theatre system beats most of the film theatres of the festival.
All of my fellow film critics still try to see as many films as possible during the festival and it seems so does the university youth (or a predictable portion of it). I knew back then, as I do now, that this is more about the allure of a social activity, ‘festivity’ actually, then the urge to see movies. And the ‘festive’ aspect holds less allure for me as time goes by. I have enough confidence to socialise with people without any pretext and am capable of organising private festivities to my own liking when I happen to get the urge. I cannot get a feeling of contentment by merely saying, “I have seen 25 films” like I used to. In fact given the unavoidable ratio: out of any 25 film 15, at least, will be crap; I would feel I have wasted precious time of my life in which I could have been doing something worthwhile. Let me not get carried away with the ‘getting old’ shit however.
The film was called “The Speed of Life” and I had chosen to present its director for 3 reasons: a) it was an American independent movie and this usually means a predictably nice little film about eccentric characters. b) American independent directors are usually people that are exactly like you and me, with whom you can have a decent conversation, even become friends with, as I have learned from my experience with Bill Morrison c) the film was shot using a myriad of formats ranging from high 8 to VHS d) the film had won the queer lion award at the Venice film festival. The last meant that the director might be gay but it turned out he wasn’t and actually it is quite a bit of a stretch to call this a queer film.
It was, however, a pleasant movie and I enjoyed it a lot. However, since it was shown in ‘digibeta format’, I would have watched it in way better conditions, if I had watched it at home. The director Ed Radtke turned out to be a very easy going and entertaining chap whom I am happy to have known, we went to grab a drink after the session and had a nice little chat. So, my belief that American independent directors are cool people, has been strengthened.