I've been indulging in the Film Festival.  Ten down, four to go plus one missed because I was reading a book and forgot the time and one cancelled to accommodate the visit of a roofer to fix a water ingress problem.  So how have they been?

The Fall of the American Empire - an to me unaccountable title for a French Canadian film about a painfully introverted but very bright philosophy graduate, a high cost escort with a heart of gold, an ex con who learned financial skills in clink and the escort's former sugar daddy who knows a thing or two about tax havens and their attemps to launder a large amount of stolen money that comes into the hands of our young philosopher.  Mildly entertaining.

Food for Thought - not a film at all but inspired by one.  A three course meal washed down by multiple glasses of prosecco and other drinks in praise of Scottish produce and accompanied by a panel discussion on our food and how to promote it.  The grub consisted of novel variations on mutton, Cullen skink and cranachan.  Served in nouvelle cuisine portions but tasty.  There were bowls of delicious whisky smoked cashew nuts with which to while away the intervals between courses.  Great value for the £3.25 it cost me.

Chef's Diaries: Scotland - the inspiration for the foregoing.  A documentary tracing the journey of one of the Rocca brothers who run El Celler de Can Rocca in Girona, (elected several times as the best restaurant in the world), through Scotland to discover the glories of our food resources and culinary traditions with a view to developing new and exciting recipes for their restaurant. So so.

Loopers - a documentary about golf caddies. It was fun, a bit schmaltzy here and there as can be the American way.  A telling fact was that one year in which Tiger Woods did particularly well his caddie New Zealander Steve Williams was the best paid athlete (sic) in New Zealand.  Nice work if you can get it and a far cry from the days of Tom Morris.

Wedding Belles - a great fun rollick through the lives of four Edinburgh girls and through their home town as they prepare to marry off one of their number.  With Irvine Welsh in the writing credits you can imagine the sort of fun involved.  Made for Channel 4 in 2007 but never before seen on the big screen it's up there with Trainspotting in my estimation.

Balance not Symmetry - exalted in the festival programme as "a beautiful cinematic tribute to art, music and Scotland (Glasgow in particular). A moving, funny and inspirational new film....".  I wasn't moved, didn't laugh and wasn't inspired.  The cast were credited with creating the dialogue. Nuff said. I did like the music though.

Cléo from 5 to 7 - from the nouvelle vague this 1962 film tells the story of a singer's anxious wait for a medical test result that she fears will be a cancer diagnosis.  As she waits she wanders through Paris encountering friends and strangers and reveals her inner self to us.  It's a lovely film that I don't remember seeing back in the day when the Cameo was the place for foreign films.

One Sings, the Other Doesn't - another brilliant film from Agnes Varda (Cléo above).  This is a 70s feminist piece with stunning performances from the two actresses playing the women whose friendship the film is about. Loved it.

Aleksi - the one I missed through book reading.

Contemporary Spanish Shorts - five very different works.  In Vaca a slaughter house worker meets the eye of a cow, can't pull the stungun trigger, rescues the cow and persuades a lugubrious looking bus driver to let her take it on board.  Cuban Heel Shoes explores the fascination with flamenco of two young men who dabble in drug dealing to keep the wolf from the door but who escape to dance for their dinner by passing the hat around in El Retiro.  The Great Expedition is an animation about escape to another planet from a devastated earth whose virtues cinematic or otherwise largely escaped me.  My memory of Bad Faith is that it was mostly a series of black and white stills of interiors in which nothing happened coupled with video passages of childhood beach holidays (again black and white and again in which nothing happened).  The festival website description is "Across the stretch of a long, languid summer, power dynamics shift within the complex relationships of three young siblings".  Too subtle for me obviously.  Grey Key I found the most interesting. José Carlos Grey was born in Equatorial Guinea and the film is a memoir by his daughter. of her father.  He was a student in Barcelona who fought against Franco, fled to France and then during the second world war was deported to the Mauthausen concentration camp where as a black man he was subject to special humiliation.  The story is told in voice over to a series of family photographs, super 8 videos and archive materials.  He died when his daughter was quite young.  She remembers that he always worked at night and her exploration of his story tells her why.

Jacquot de Nantes - another Agnes Varda and the one I cancelled.  Where tradesmen are concerned it's seize the day, the film's on Youtube after all.