Wildflowers glimpsed from a commuter train

MELBOURNE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2016

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Films 32 through 39
At a glance

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Traversing the margins with Laurie Anderson, Yo-Yo Ma, and Werner Herzog as my guides, my eyes have been opened a-new to what can be found sprouting in verges and industrial embankments. Whether well-wrapped in the Forum or assuming the near-to horizontal pose in the front row of the Comedy, I have been willingly ushered through the landscape of different ways of viewing a known or unfamiliar subject. Vision-impaired Lolabelle experimental music and Kierkegaard (Heart of a Dog)! (As Anderson, in her cine-meditation on death, imparted "do not be afraid," it was soothing; and I mentally made plans to purchase a keyboard for Lottie.) A dishwasher in love with a fridge! Please, yes, please (Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World). And whilst the cinema is a shared experience, and I delighted in feeling that others around me were also enjoying the flickering images as they unfolded and came into focus, I felt that they were speaking, whispering, playing, directly to me.

And so, with this way of seeing in mind, my highlights so far, listed in order seen:
RESET
MY LIFE AS A COURGETTE
KEDI
SIERANEVADA
LOST AND BEAUTIFUL (Au hasard Sarchiapone!)
THE HAPPIEST DAY IN THE LIFE OF OLLI MÄKI
HEART OF A DOG
A DRAGON ARRIVES!
LO AND BEHOLD, REVERIES OF THE CONNECTED WORLD

Followed closely by (again, in order seen):
INNOCENCE OF MEMORIES
PATHS OF THE SOUL
THE SALESMAN
DON'T BLINK: ROBERT FRANK
THE MUSIC OF STRANGERS, YO-YO MA AND THE SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE

Highlights, all of them, really, in the sense that they remain in the foreground of my thoughts. From the glorious sounds that roared in A Dragon Arrives! (Iran in the '60s whether by doe-eyed camel a-nuzzling or orange Chevrolet never looked, never sounded, so good) to the heartstrings plucked by the Silk Road Ensemble, I am looking forward to seeing what the remainder of the week has planned for me. As things stand, Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake is now also visually tethered to footage of the Soviet Union on the brink of collapse (The Event), and Sound of the Mountain is a sunflower-rinse. I have lost my footing as I scrambled up the Atlas Mountains (Mimosas), but discovered that faith in the landscape survives regardless, and I am reminded of the urban wilderness of Richard Mabey:
 

“If the ability of wildlife to survive literally on our doorsteps is remarkable, its persistence in the face of this ceaseless change is amazing. It is also, I find, amazingly cheering. For it is a bleak view to see this story as nothing more than one of survival, with Nature irrevocably opposed to Man, forever just holding on. Looked at more hopefully it is a story of co-existence, of how it is possible for the natural world to live alongside man, even amongst the grimiest eyesores.” (Richard Mabey, The Unofficial Countryside, Dorset: Little Toller Books, 2010, p. 21)

Highlights, to me, because they felt true and direct. Because of what I thought as I drank them in, and what has remained and since found lodgings within. Because there was space to both expand (thought) and forget (the self). Because there was no short-changed Pandora as plot pawn (Things to Come). Because they were David Foster Wallace's fictions about what it is to be a human being. Because they made sense and nonsense. Because of goosebumps on forearms.

Play on. After all, “the dog’s playing was... pretty good.”

Pipa. Gaita. Kamancheh. And Yo-Yo Ma. Instruments at the ready for film 32, THE MUSIC OF STRANGERS: YO-YO MA AND THE SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE (D Morgan Neville). Sing me home.

A lament to a ratter. A tribute to a companion, dear Lolabelle. And Lou Reed too. A film about empathy. At the keys. Film 33 has to be HEART OF A DOG (D/S Laurie Anderson). “Every time we tell a story, we forget it more.”

Film 34 belongs to ELLA (D Douglas Watkin). “I think my heritage gives me a unique understanding of the way movement works and the way in which it resonates within my body. I personally dance and perform better when there is a story or intention behind the dance.”—@ausballet’s first Indigenous dancer, Ella Havelka (@ellahavelka). (Image details: Forgotten Land, Jiři Kylián)

(Racing from the Q&A with Ella Havelka, for Ella.) Gathering mussels. Parasol aloft. Hoping for surreal beauty over petticoat whimsy. #MIFF2016 film 35 is SLACK BAY (D/S Bruno Dumont) at the Comedy Theatre.

(Postscript: What was I thinking?)

And so we are at film 36, ready, not quite, for A DRAGON ARRIVES! (D/P/S Mani Haghighi). This time next week, it’ll all be over. This time next week, we’ll be at the farthest point from MIFF 2017. Let’s not be maudlin. Play on. (Orange Chevrolet) scales ready. It is actually the 22nd of January, 1965, and we are in Iran.

A love song. Demystified. Perhaps. Film 37, LOVETRUE (D Alma Har’el). “I don’t think there are any rules in cinema. I don’t like that binary divide between documentary and fiction. I don’t even understand it.” —Alma Har’el

High in the Atlas Mountains, film 38’s geography is MIMOSAS (D/S Oliver Laxe). “In all the traditions and spiritual paths, you have to detach and accept what providence gives to you. So that’s what I like about cinema, and as a human being and filmmaker it’s something that you understand. When you have a problem, when you have an obstacle, this saves you from a bigger one. Everything is perfect. So the exercise is to understand that when you are in the middle of the shooting, it’s maybe not what you wanted. But it’s a question of faith. It has to be a good thing. It’s difficult. I have a big ego, so I have a lot of fears. You want to impose yourself onto the reality but it’s absurd.”—Oliver Laxe

“Can a network-empowered machine find love? Hope? Believe in God?” and other questions unlikely to be answered, but flung in the air, netted, and toyed with in film 39, LO AND BEHOLD: REVERIES OF THE CONNECTED WORLD (D/S Werner Herzog).

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Image credit: Still from Laurie Anderson’s film, Heart of a Dog (2015)