I had hectic past weeks. The shower finally got electrified last tuesday and it is so brilliant being able to take a shower every day. I also got a goldfish today. He is still pretty shy and hides behind the plants. The pH is pretty low in the water. i wonder how it could be increased.
Fluffy made an escape into the kitchen and it was difficult to get him back out from under the shelf.
I have got two language students here to stay at the moment, one from France and one from Russia, and it is good fun and very exciting to have them around. The local newspapers reported one other language student from the same school had run away with her Scottish penpal after meeting him in Princes Street Gardens where Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare were played at the same time. The two teenagers – 14 and 15 years old, later tried to get on a ferry to Ireland. After 4 days they were busted in the Aberdeen Youth Hostel.
So the theme of Romeo and Juliet is highly popular as ever. Apart from being dropped onto the Titanic, our local Pilton Video even tried to set it in North Edinburgh’s Old Peoples Home Silverlea, with the families having a deep-rooted historical and geographical feud as being from Pilton and Muirhouse. Unfortunately the film was never finished, only the trailer, but the old female actor was fantastic. I think one of the main actors died before the film was made.
The Edinburgh Film Festival published his programme on Wednesday. It has its 60th anniversary this year. I didn’t know that it originally started of as a documentary film festival. I went through the list of films and here are the ones which politically look interesting at first sight:
– 5 Days
– A crude awakening – The Oil Crash
– Al Franken – God spoke
– KZ
– The Empire in Africa
– The Railroad All Stars
– Who needs Sleep
– The Refugee All Stars
– Birds Of Heaven
– Madeinusa
– Interkosmos
– Cargo
– Labour equals Freedom
– The Right of the Weakest
However, I am not sure about “My country, my country”, a documentary which seems to be praised and recommended by the Film Festival management about the Iraq war and an Iraqi running for elections. The last bit bothers me a bit and probably makes the take or break of the film and the election is revealed to be the farce that it was, then it could be a good film – but most likely it is not a truthful account, but a misleading hope fresh out of Pandora’s box, and then the film would be crap.
Easy as that to classify, even without watching it.
There is also a documentary on Al Gore and portraits into the life of call centre workers in India and about globalisation. But I am a bit doubtful of both, as they seem to individualise the topic too much. There is also a documentary about film censorship. But it isn’t censorship of political films or economic censorship we as activists suffer from, but more censorship of sex and similar. Seems to have a lot of talking heads speaking, too. So I will give it a miss.