Sexy International Paris Film Festival 2010:Day two

My second day at the festival, and today I watched some Australian films and then I got my first look at the films in the competition. The first day had a lot of feminist themes and topics with the acting troupe reading out feminist manifestos and the screening of porn films made by women for women. But today was much more eclectic, there were films about male dominance, female desire, privacy e.t.c

I arrived at the Grande Action cinema at three and got a seat to watch some sexy, Australian films. It was a very intriguing mix but there were some that were definitely pretentious. There were some comedic ones which was refreshing, the festival has been lacking in comedy movies. There were a lot of short, absurdist ones which were interesting too like "Chick addict" by Victoria Waghorn. I was also informed of how strict the rules regarding sex in cinema were in Australia, films like Romeo and Juliet directed by Franco Zeffirelli were banned. In recent years The Australian cinema board has loosened the rules which has subsequently allowed these filmmakers to make their films.

I had a half an hour break between screening so I decided to wander around the neighborhood, when I heard the mass of people celebrating the gay pride parade. I've never seen so many people on the streets of Paris and there were no riot police or CRS. It was crazy, everyone was out on the streets.

I went back to the cinema after the bedlam to see the standard of the films in the competition.

I was rather disappointed by some of the entries, half of the films were poor attempts at humor and completely uninteresting. There were two that grabbed my attention. "Ona", directed by Pau Camarasa, displayed beautiful, thought provoking cinematography and brooding narrative.

ONA TRAILER from PAU CAMARASA on Vimeo.

"Bobby visits the Library", directed by Eric Krasner also caught my eye. Krasner, edited together two "educational" films together to make an interesting perspective on American culture. One film was about a young boy enjoying the services of his local children's library, the other was a fear monger film, warning people to be aware of libraries and their sexually deviant material.

I saw a lot of movies, most of which were thought provoking which really shows how versatile and deep this festival is, I would definitely consider it a succesful debut.