During the period of the film festival September 22nd to October 5th this year, I had the opportunity of viewing three films. Two very short films, Man of the Soil and Isle of Flowers and a full length The Wind Journeys.
The Wind Journeys is a film about a juglar, Ignacio Carrillo, who spends his life travelling throughout northern Columbia, singing vallenato, a popular form of folk music, accompanied by his accordion, which is said to be cursed by the devil.
The films starts with Ignacio burying his wife, who suddenly dies. With her death he decides to leave the small town, to return the accordion to its previous owner, his former teacher and mentor.
As he is leaving town on his donkey, he is followed by a boy name Fermin, who decides that he wants to become a juglar like Ignacio. As they journey the film shows off the awesome landscape of northern Columbia and man and boy becomes closer, as they overcome a series of mystical occurrences, but Ignacio does not teach him how to play the accordion, as he believes it's only going to bring him a life of solitude and sadness.
When Ignacio and Fermin finally reaches their destination, they learn that the owner of the accordion has died and left behind his wife and children, Ignacio starts playing the accordion for them, but from there the show get confusing, because they show Fermin walking back home by himself.
The Wind Journeys is a Columbian film, 116 minutes long, directed by Ciro Guerra and also Columbia's official selection for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2010 Academy Awards.
Nom Tew (Man of the Soil) is a seven minute Dominican documentary, directed by Pierre Deschamps. This film was about a Jerry Maka West, a Rastafarian, who lives a very simple life in the forest. He grows and prepares his own food, as was taught and handed down to him by his grandparents, because he believes that whatever is taken out of the earth must be put back in.
The last film viewed was Isles of Flowers (Ilha Das Flores), a thirteen minute Brazilian documentary based on the life of a tomato, from it's beginning stage on a farm, to when it's picked and sold to a supermarket. It is then bought by a Mrs Anete, who carries it home to cook for her family. On realising that the tomato is spoilt, she throws it in the garbage. It is then taken to a landfill called Isles of Flowers.
On the island the garbage is then separated into two, food for pigs, who are given first preference and then poor women and children. This film is considered one of the greatest short films ever made.
My opinion of the films seen is that they were all well produced and quite entertaining in their own right. The problem that I had apart from the minor interruptions in the movie, was the poor turnout of patrons to support the film festival. Theatre six was alloted for viewing off all movies for the festival and can accommodate one hundred and eighty-six (186) patron.
On the day of my observation, which was Saturday 2nd, the 2:30pm viewing of the films I saw had a total of forty (40) persons in attendance. Of the forty person in attendance, the majority were of a mature age group who said they were film festival lovers, while the others were students there for one reason or the other.
One can say that the poor turn out at the film festival could have been attributed mainly to the lack of advertising and promotion on behalf of the print and electronic media or because people were just not interested in viewing local films and / or films that did not carry big name stars or rake in millions at the box office like Harry Potter and Avatar.
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