One of the features of film festivals is the opportunity to hear from the filmmakers at some screenings.  The directors were present and answering questions at all of the films I went to see and the Q&A sessions I attended were interesting.

I was sorry not to be able to wait to hear the director of Liza, the Fox Fairy. This was a weird surreal story of a girl who is haunted by a Japanese pop singing ghost and believes she is under a curse that will cause all men she comes in contact with romantically will die.  It sounds absurd and it was, somewhat in the theatrical sense of the term, and very very funny.

I was not sorry to miss Johnnie To and was even sorrier not to have missed his film Exiled.  Set in Macao it follows a set of gangsters through blood and mayhem for 110 tedious minutes.  Inevitably I was forced to compare my reaction to this with my much more favourable reaction to Tarantino's equally blood strewn films.  I think that, strange though it sounds, his work despite being splattered with gallons of tomato juice blood has a realism and features fully human characters that I didn't find in Exiled.

Maybe if I understood Chinese I'd have found more in the movie.

If I'd been asked who invented the moving picture I'd have answered "the Lumiere brothers", but a world premiere at the Film Festival sought to persuade me that it was a someone else, still a Frenchman but one working in Leeds.

There is indeed a blue plaque there telling the world about Louis Le Prince.

So all of Yorkshire accepts him as the man who is ultimately to blame for The Terminator franchise and worse but not many outside that county have even heard of him.

This is a situation that David Nicholas Wilkinson has tried for over thirty years to rectify and The First Film is the documentary fruits of his labour.  It was screened for the first time at the Odeon last night.

(In parenthesis I note that I probably haven't been in the Odeon since it stopped being the ABC.  It is now a pizzeria with four screens in the basement rather than the big cinema that I vaguely remember.)

The film is quite interesting though long-winded, and I'm not sure that it matters very much which of the various pioneering groups and individuals working in the field in the late 19th century was first.

The main reason that we haven't heard more about Le Prince is that his work (of which only a few minutes has been found) stopped when he boarded a train in Dijon where he had been visiting his brother and was never seen or heard from again.

Not many German films make it to our screens so it was with interest that I went to Who Am I, Kein System ist sicher in the Film Festival, skirting the red carpet at Cineworld.  Not that there were any stars on it that I could see but it seemed only good manners.

I was a mite underwhelmed.  It's a decent enough story about a shy young man who happens to be a whizz kid on the computer keyboard and teams up with three other guys to form a humorous hacking gang who engage in daring, amusing, satirical but harmless exploits.  Then things turn sour.  They earn the wrath of some baddie hackers, get into the bad books of the authorities as well and go through various convoluted plot twists and turns to a happy ending.  Yawn.

No yawning at the Jazz Bar where The Scottish Sax Ensemble were trailing and trialing the presentation they will be giving next month at the World Saxophone Congress for which I myself am bound. It was an excellent gig of contemporary and in some cases brand spanking new jazzish stuff played terribly well.  Sue, who leads the group, told me that they will be playing in the open air in Strasbourg so if it rains I'll be glad I heard it here.

Robert Carlyle's The Legend of Barney Thomson opened the film festival but didn't get terribly good reviews so I'm quite glad I wasn't in time to fork out for a ticket.  I have bought tickets for seven of the two hundred or so being screened.  That doesn't seem many but in percentage terms it's probably orders of magnitude more than I'll manage on the Fringe.

First up was a set of four short documentaries.  I love the short format.  It must suit my attention span.  These were absorbing, from the story of a welder turned poet to a wild looking old Bulgarian living in the midst of the debris of his life.  Then another wonderful full length documentary in which the director dug under the surface of her family to unearth unusual goings on.  The Closer We Get is a moving and compassionate portrait of complicated relationships that unveils like a novel.  Excellent.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is a title I've been familiar with for years.  I knew it was a classic and I knew vaguely that it had something to do with trains but until today I had never seen it. It's a thoroughly enjoyable thriller about a gang who hijack a New York subway train and the cop who is pitted against them.  There are great performances, not least from Walter Mathau as the laid-back cop and Robert Shaw as the ice-cold gang leader.

A month without posts has gone by without raising a murmur from my readership.  There have been no concerned communications expressing the hope that my health has not deteriorated.  There have been no anguished cries that on-line literature is the lesser for my absence.

Is it worth taking up the keyboard once again I ask myself, and resoundingly answer YES.  My brain's already full of things I've forgotten so the blog is a handy memory bank.  Unless I ultimately  forget how to use a browser.

My last shot of it

When I left you my pigeon was still growing and the balcony was getting more and more messy.  Then blow me did the parents not produce two more eggs.  Well I had to harden my heart against that so I swept them and the ramshackle nest to oblivion.  That left the chick a wee bit in the lurch because the adults kept away mostly.  But it could fly a bit by that time and with it has to be admitted a mite of encouragement from me it eventually buggered off and I was able to reclaim my balcony, scrub it up and freshen up plantings for the summer.

 But I have not spent all my time fretting over pigeons.

I fretted a bit I suppose over the French Open Tennis championships but watching Murray was less stressful than it's been in the past.  He seemed to play much more confidently even when things were not going his way.  As well as his games I enjoyed many others and managed to watch in Croatia and in Northumberland as well as at home.

To get to Croatia I hauled myself to Glasgow airport at four in the morning where, much to my surprise the place was going like the proverbial fair and I was able to buy the couple of plug adaptors that my hostess had asked for which I had thought to be a lost cause.

Mountain view from Split harbour

The island of Hvar is a couple of hours from Split and because of the infrequent ferries outside of the high season I had to spend several hours there both going and coming.  That was no hardship.  The weather was fine and the place is lovely.

On Hvar itself peace and tranquility reigned though I can imagine that in July and August it is stowed out with tourists, especially Hvar town which advertises itself as the Saint Tropez of Croatia.

Hvar Town from the hills

Island view

Local lace on sale

I was staying in the small and pretty town of Stari Grad but don't seem to have much of a photographic record.  The few days I spent there involved mostly eating and drinking and in Stari Grad one is well served for both.  I didn't have time to sample many restaurants but I'd go back to Jurin Podrum - very tasty.  As for the fulled bodied Plavac Mali red wine, moreish in the extreme.

My Morgan?

Despite the licence plate this sweet little motor spotted on the Split
harbourside on my way home has nothing to do with me but it could be mine (or anyone's) for the immodest sum of 250 euros a day.

Likewise despite its name you won't be within a thousand miles of Kirkcaldy if you eat here.

Somewhat nearer Kirkcaldy is this novelty recently erected outside the Assembly Rooms.

It's beds are full of herbs and fruits claimed to be just the thing for making the cocktails whose recipes are also on display.  I'm looking forward to some demonstrations and tastings.

Another eating and drinking opportunity took me to Northumberland where Claire had invited friends and family to spend a weekend celebrating her 40th birthday.  A party of around ten adults, four children and a dog gathered in a lovely little spot near Bamburgh.  Healthy walks were enjoyed by some, model aeroplanes were flown, homework was done, much food was cooked and fun was had.

My little contribution to the fun was this Karaoke video made with help from Siobhan and Miriam.  You need to be a bit of a Grads nerd to understand all the allusions I'm afraid.  The repetitive sax riff between verses was played live at the viewing.