Party, films and more films

Where it all happens, Uppsala cinemas by night. Photo: Chris Gardner

Good morning soldiers. I use that word because that‘s what most of these people at the festival are. The people that work at the Uppsala short film festival do their best to make sure everything goes smoothly and with one day down they have succeeded. I’ll let you know if they burn down the place.

Interesting to see is that the organizers have gathered people all around the world to help out with the festival. I started talking to a bunch of people in Swedish but quickly realized that they didn’t know the language, so from now on if I open my mouth English words will be coming out. Better safe than Swedish, right? The filmgoers are also troopers, especially the people that go see a lot of these films because if I may be frank, the chairs in most of these theatres are not the most comfortable ones.

I woke up this morning knowing that there is no way I’ll be able to write about every single movie I see here on the blog. I will write about the ones that affect me the most, good and bad, but also write more about the festival itself.  I will however give my 2 cents about all movies.

Yesterday I was invited to the opening ceremony of the festival. It was a very pleasant gathering with champagne and finger food. At the ceremony they gave a little taste of films that are shown at the festival. After that it was off to dinner and more drinks.

However, I’m not here to wine and dine so I went to the last bunch of films instead, Focus Belgium 1. Here two movies really stood out. The first one was The Alarm Clock (Le Reveil). The whole thing is one long take and it’s about one man trying to wake up. It starts off like Back To The Future with all the clocks but then it turns into a kind of live action version of the classic Mickey Mouse cartoon, the one where they go camping and they’re trying to wake up Donald Duck. It’s fantastic and really well made.

A Wonderful Love (Quand On Est Amoureaux, C’est Merveilleux) is the title of the other film. This film had some problems right from the start. There were no subtitles and it’s 23 minutes long. But all issues I could possibly have went out the window as soon as it started. The movie focuses on a woman that gives herself a treat for her 39th birthday, a male stripper. During his dance she falls in love with him and without saying too much she will never let him go. This film got the hooks in me right away and it shows that dialogue is not always necessary for a really good film.

Now I am ready to face day two of the film festival and there’s at least 13 Swedish films to see today. Goddie goodie.