Pusan Film Festival

PUSAN FILM FESTIVAL

It amounted to waking up predawn to ride the subway into town, waiting in a long line for tickets we weren't sure existed and spending all day either in the theater or waiting to enter the theater. And after all that we only made it to two movies anyway. But I don't regret it at all. The first movie we planned to see was You, the Living. We didn't learn it was sold out until we reached the box office. Since we didn't want to leave empty handed we pointed to a random open slot on the schedule, a movie called Kings. All we knew was it was an Irish film. But we were able to secure three tickets for Gus Van Sant's latest, Paranoid Park, which was the film we really wanted to see anyway.

I won't bore you with a review, someone has already written a better one I'm sure. All I'll say is you'd be doing yourself a favor if you check out Paranoid Park first chance you get. I don't want to sound presumptuous, but I'm not afraid to claim it's one of his best.

Sunday we decided it wasn't worth waiting in lines all day for the chance to see a movie that we didn't even care about, so we caught the bus home.

I wasn't really sure what to expect from the film festival. But it all seemed very lackluster. Just cheap tickets to rare movies. Which is cool. I mean how often can you watch awesome foreign films in fancy theaters full of movie lovers? But I thought it would feel more like being at a film festival. I guess I wanted something to take a picture of myself in front of. And there was nothing...

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I shaved. Finally. After 70 days. This young boy slowly emerged as I knifed my way through the furry growth. His face looked small and weak. His eyes large and his hair heavy. I stared at him a long time before I realized who he was.