Tuesday, March 24, 2009

The Cleveland International Film Festival

Posted by Laura / 1 comment » / , ,

This weekend was the opening weekend of the 33rd Cleveland International Film Festival (CIFF). Johnathan and I have been looking forward to this year’s festival since last year when we saw a mere three films over the course of the whole festival. Part of the reasoning for that was because of how late we heard of it, and part of it was lack of money. This year, we decided to do it up right because we had both the money and the advance knowledge of what films would be showing and when. When tickets went on sale on March 9, we had fourteen films picked out, so we bought five six-packs of vouchers and selected fourteen films with them. To the tune of $300, we were going to see fifteen films. That seems like a lot of movies, really, and as we started to put them on the calendar, we realized that it is. But it’s fine! I love movies and so does Johnathan, so it would be worth it.

The CIFF account on twitter did some trivia during the week before the festival started on Thursday night, and while I missed a few days due to the timing of my lunch hour, on Monday and Tuesday, I made it a point to stick around for the trivia. I managed to win a set of vouchers on Monday by answering correctly the question, “What was the first film to walk away with the Greg Gund Memorial Standing Up Film Competition Award?” (The answer was ‘American Blackout’.) The next day, I was fortunate enough to win another set of vouchers by answering the question, “What CIFF Closing Night film starred Eric Stoltz?” (The answer was ‘The Water Dance’, which I actually found out through an e-bay listing!) Between those two sets of vouchers plus a set that I was able to claim through work as my “Christmas” gift, that brought us to a whopping eighteen movies.

The ones we picked out are:

The only one that we wanted to see and couldn’t get was Lemon Tree (3/29 4:35PM), which went on Stand-By just before we went to exchange our vouchers. (We picked up Forgotten Transports instead.) We may still try for it on stand-by – we haven’t decided yet.

We’re incredibly busy every day, which is fun because we’re usually such homebodies that we might not have any committments for weeks on end. Of course, to go from doing very little to having something every single day for eleven days is very intense. I’m having a blast, though! I think I’m going to try to actually write up “reviews” (for all that I’m qualified to offer my opinions on the subject) for the films we’ve seen soon, although between work and trying to keep up at home, I’m not sure when I’ll have time. I’m having a great time, though, and I so recommend that everyone check out their local festivals if they can!

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One Response to “The Cleveland International Film Festival”

  1. 1

    Hi! I follow both of you on Twitter… and I wanted to say that An Alternative to Slitting Your Wrist and Between the Folds both looked really interesting to me. I’m sorry that they people in Between the Folds were so rude! I couldn’t make it to any films this year… I can barely watch movies at home. But I did pick up the guide so I could check out what they had. There were a few others I really would have liked to have seen. Maybe next year I will be able to go. I would have loved to meet you guys at the TweetUp… unfortunately work happens. :-) I hope you enjoy the rest of your film watching weekend!! Take care!

    Mary Jo — March 28, 2009 @ 6:38 am

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