AFF, revisited

This one's been sitting on my hard drive for almost a week now. I'll try to wrap it up somehow, but things have gotten a little hazy by now...

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It’s the last day of the American Film Festival, and I’m not sleepy at all so here we go with another update. Unfortunately, the Internet at our suites went bust yesterday, so I’ll probably post this tomorrow evening at best.

We departed on Friday. I was supposed to meet up with ao, pauli and her suddenly new boyfriend at ao’s place, which meant I found myself on the subway, on a weekday, at 8 a.m., with a pretty sizable travel bag. I was not prepared. Not exactly Tokyo at rush hour, but quite an ordeal nonetheless. Oh, the sheltered life of a languid freelancer.

Once there, we packed ourselves into ao’s Micra and off we went. The drive was pretty uneventful, but also very pleasant. We listened to various mix tapes, including the one from Piaskowa (according to pauli, that was five years ago. Jeez.) with some songs no one but me liked, and others with songs no one else but me objected to. It was kind of funny to realize how easily we (i.e. me and ao) can relapse into this catty back-and-forth which characterized the first years of our interactions, but also comforting to see we both now know to rein it in and pull out of the contested zone once we notice the pattern.

Oh, we also saw a wonder of WTF architecture called “The Highland Inn”, which stood in the middle of the Mazovian plain, and looked like a mountain cottage gone berserk. It was this enormous, baroque… castle, really, except one made from the building blocks of Carpathian mountain cabins. It completely blew my mind, and also – incidentally - reeked of manure.

We got to Wroclaw at 3 p.m. or so, and my companions went to see the Banksy movie, while I saw Sons of Perdition – a documentary about teenage runaways and exiles from this Mormon sect which still practices polygamy. The movie was excellent, and told me that Big Love is ridiculously well-researched. There wasn’t a single element of that reality that wasn’t somehow touched upon in the series, and sometimes the similarities were so striking that I started wondering if the show wasn't based on this particular community (I’m not sure if there is more than one sect, but there are many different communities – the movie focused on the one in Colorado, or Arizona, or both, I forget, but there was also talk of one in Texas). The screening was followed by a Q&A with the directors, which was conducted by a friend of mine who was so competent at what he did (both translation- and moderation-wise) that it made me seriously ponder trying to take a crack at it sometime in the future. Which is saying a lot, since I’m terrified of public speaking.

The day ended at the Kropka HQ with quite a lot of alcohol and a joke about the theremin that made me and Iza have a total meltdown – unfortunately, it requires visual aids. At one point Blazek started a story with the words “There’s this guy on the Internet who criticizes stuff…”, and that became his thing for the duration of the festival – later on he also described a movie as “being about people”. I also remember talking to Asia about something, and then suddenly it was 5:30 a.m. and I was asleep.

On the next day I left my cellphone AND my earphones at the apartment, and was unable to retrieve them despite having both the code for the buzzer thingie and keys to the apartment (I was sure I was pressing “2” when in fact I was pressing “3” on the dial, and the front door key sometimes didn’t work, so I couldn’t get into the building). That was fun. Then we waited for an hour to get served at a restaurant, and ended up having to cancel our order, or else we’d have missed our movies. The ones ao, pauli and her suddenly new boyfriend went to started at 4:15 p.m., mine started at 4:00. They made it.

3 hours of background frustration later, I rejoined ao and we went to see Please Give. Which was fantastic. Catherine Keener is always great, but so was Rebecca Hall, who I’m starting to really like, and – surprisingly – Amanda Peet. Very funny movie, and very, very well-observed.

Afterwards ao went to raid Sunwell, and I tried to join her, but the Internet was down, and my laptop refused to acknowledge the unsecure network ao was leeching hers from, so out I went into the city with my less-than-trusty laptop, looking for hotspots. To make a long story short: I ended up back at square 1 one hour later, sitting next to and her watching her do stuff. Which was riveting. But then we went out to join all the Kropka people, and stayed in Mleczarnia until they threw us out. At one point Blazek got accosted in the toilet by a strange man, who tried to sell him a ticket to the land of eternal bliss using a picture of some poor lady's vadge. True story. And towards the end I unexpectedly had a very serious and honest conversation with Rafal. Or rather, listened to him having a serious an honest conversation with me. It was in equal parts eye-opening and warm-feelings-inspiring.

Sunday was opened with a really good documentary on the Star Wars fans' complicated love/hate relationship with George Lucas (The People vs. George Lucas was the title, I believe), and at 7 p.m. we went to see the one we had all been waiting for - Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. It was glorious. I hate watching stuff I translated, but this time the awesomeness that poured from the screen was so overwhelming that I forgot to cringe at my - supposed or actual - slip-ups. Most of the time, at least. For some reason I have a very strong emotional response to it. To date, there's only been one movie that really made me want to inhabit the world it presented, and that movie was Angels in America. I totally wanted to be a witty gay dude living in picturesque New York. Obviously, not necessarily dying of AIDS. I remember this very acute longing that stuck with me for over a week, completely shoving aside reality, and then lingered for... months, probably. Well, I kind of had the same reaction to Scott Pilgrim. Granted, it was much less powerful, but for a day or two I really wanted to be young and in Toronto. There wasn't a false note in the entire film, as far as I'm concerned. I love absolutely everything about it.

That was the high note. And on the next day there were car problems, tow trucks, mechanics, complications, and eventually - the long train ride home with The City and the City, which I've already covered.

All in all, I'm totally going next year.