11th January 2014- Film Festival Day

Before
I'm looking forward to seeing some films on the big screen and discussing them today (as you might have guessed today is about attempting to emulate the 'film festival experience for us).

After
The day kicked off in Cinema 1 in the Showroom for a screening of the newly released 'Twelve Years A Slave', an almost art-house film that tells the tale of a free-man being kidnapped and sold in to slavery; whilst I didn't like the that much, I did admire the cinematography, direction and the performances, especially considering the film is unflinching in it's depiction of slavery and the treatment of slaves, as the violence is extremely brutal and realistic.

After a short break, we returned to Cinema 1 to watch 'La Belle Et La Bete', a black and white light comedic fantasy take on 'the beauty and the beast' (that seemed to divide everyone in discussion later on). I actually enjoyed it, it had some pretty good special effects and some interesting sets (including a talking mirror that introduces itself as "Beauty, I am your mirror" along with other aspects of her bedroom and arms extending from the walls holding torches); the story concerns a French family who're in quite a bit of debt, and things get worse when the father ends up enraging 'The Beast' who demands the life of his daughter in exchange for his own. The rest of the film concerns the attempted wooing of Beauty by the Beast, as he asks her the same question every evening: Will you marry me.

Her family tries to steal the Beast's treasure and it all gets a bit silly,with plenty of overacting, however I really didn't like the ending (it seemed rushed) but it was an entertaining film and I did enjoy it.

We then regrouped in Showroom 5 to discuss the films in detail, this was led by Meabh and the programmer for the Showroom, the general feeling was that the majority loved the first film (even though it disturbed a few of them) and hated the second- some even felt that the selection felt a little jarring, after going from the serious and quite horrific to the silly and light-hearted. Although, it became apparent that this was their intention, as this is what it is like at festivals: running from screening to screening watching contrasting films; so, in that respect the day really achieved what it set out to do, and it was a good day and I enjoyed the films.