Those seventeen days.

Perhaps the less I say about the above photos the better, otherwise in the process of typing away at the keys I might chicken out and delete this post. A quick scout around various blogs and sites, and there are many people out there documenting what they wore with greater aplomb than I. Wearing essentially a variation of the same thing seventeen days in a row, these photos of me could almost all be taken, upon reflection, on the one day. Nevertheless, good friends, they were not. In truth, I swear it. Borrowing from the 2009 MIFF advertisement of a festival punter's portrait shown over a 19 day period and inspired by Lisa Solomon’s recent 19 days of summer school post, I followed suit, and offer for you today, seventeen days of a film festival by way of the ladies toilets (owing to the abundance of mirrors). (The fifth day, you will note, is not at the film festival for on that particular Tuesday I did not see a film. Instead, here I am at my local gym in leggings that are billowing at the knee.) These iPhone photos were taken before the various mirrors of the Greater Union and ACMI cinemas, The Forum, and the public toilets beneath the Melbourne Town Hall and Federation Square en route to the cinema. They were hastily taken, hence the expression drawn across my face that is part focus (at finding the camera settings as quickly as I could) meets a certain shiftiness (lest someone might walk in and find me peculiar) by way of embarrassment (self explanatory owing to subject matter. Perhaps you, a film patron, even caught sight of me quickly whipping out my iPhone from my pocket in between sessions?). To me, this began as an exercise I did not really think through but once I started I remained committed to the curious project, and I take my hat off to those able to carry out such an exercise well. To see how this could have better been done, visit Brinja København and her What I Wore posts, Lisa’s aforementioned summer school inspiration, or head to this recently published piece on It’s Nice That: Five guys take the same photograph for 30 years. Others are capable of making such exercises read more like a Claude Monet haystack series of one thing understood and in detail studied. The photos above are not, but perhaps they will amuse.

Before I depart, I will leave you with those pearls, those favourite films seen at MIFF this year. For reasons varied, my favourite handful from the fifty recently seen in an order random. Favourites for today, at least, though already I am looking at these stills and thinking I ought add Two Years at Sea (Director: Ben Rivers) and Student (Director: Darezhan Omirbayev), A Woman’s Face (Director: Gustaf Molander), 11 Flowers (Director: Wang Xiaoshuai), First Position (Director: Bess Kargman), Le Tableau (Director: Jean-François Laguionie), and The Hunt (Director: Thomas Vinterberg), and I could, clearly, go on... This could easily become twenty or thirty in length.


{Amour (Director: Michael Haneke)}


{Bestiaire (Director: Denis Côté)}


{Faust (Director: Alexander Sokurov)}


{In the Fog (Director: Sergei Loznitsa)}


{The Lion of the Moguls (Director: Jean Epstein)}


{Beyond the Hills (Director: Cristian Mungiu)}


{Ernest & Célestine (Directors: Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar, Benjamin Renner)}


{Sister (Director: Ursula Meier)}


{The Delay (Director: Rodrigo Plà)}


{Just the Wind (Director: Bence Fliegauf)}

+ Dear Photograph

+ MIFF days: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

+ Thank-you for your recent It's the Dusty Hour and Whose Lights Were Now Seen Glittering zine orders. Today finds us posting zine orders around the corner to Carlton, further afield to Warrnambool, and across the vast blue expanse to Bristol's UWE, Los Angeles, CA, and a place called Cinnaminson, Philadelphia. It is exciting for Louise, Hila and me to think of our newest collaborative zine winging way to places as varied as Skipton, Victoria to Bath, UK.