What a difference a day makes

After day 1 of demolition, this is what my apartment looks like:

Living room:



Where the kitchen used to be



View of the bedroom from what used to be the hallway.



What a difference a day makes!

Last night, Jody and I were able to intersperse the film festival with brief visits to knitting group, as the two venues were just across the street from each other.

We saw two films last night that Jody has already reviewed. The first, 'Women Without Men' is a German/Austrian/French collaboration, though made by a female Iranian film director. Over the last few years Iranian films in the SFF have always been interesting. Shirin Neshat, the director of this film, spent her childhood in Iran in a westernised family, but as a young women moved with her family to the USA, and then returned to spend long periods in Iran over the last twenty years. Her film is more frankly political than many films coming from within Iran, though still deeply concerned with issues such as women's responses to Islam. This film is set in 1953 when Britain and the USA joined with local forces to repress a freedom movement within Iran and reimpose a monarchical regime. The crowd scenes of demonstrations in grand Parisian-style boulevards and enclosed narrow lanes are wonderful and had me wondering just where the film had been shot (the answer is Morocco). This political focus, which I really enjoyed, was interwoven with a much more indirect and 'magical' focus on the lives of four women, that Jody's described well. This is another film (like Moloch Tropical) where the parts work better than the whole. A 3.5 out of 5.

The second film we saw, 'Winter's Bone', had already won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. It's quite a conventional film, with a strong narrative from beginning to end, and with a courageous, admirable central character whose fate we care for deeply. But it's also perfectly paced, subtly and convincingly acted and beautifully photographed and edited . The central character is a young woman, who at 17 cares for her two younger siblings and catatonic mother in a destitute, drug-ridden, isolated community in the Missouri Ozarks. It's the kind of community in which your family is vital for survival, but also brings you the greatest danger. The film's confronting and challenging, though it does have an ending that's about as happy as you might be able to conjure up in the circumstances. Probably a 4 out of 5.

June busy summary
Bunches of flowers bought 3 (well, one is a pot of cyclamen)
Number of rows knitted (socks) 125 (blanket) 1.75 rows of 650+ stitches
Time spent tidying up 7.5 hours
Films viewed 8