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 recognize 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.