Films, films, films

After some necessary maintenance of appartment, foodstuffs and fitness, Saturday afternoon it was time to fulfill another promise to myself and see some of the Aesthetica Short Film Festival, which has been running from Thursday and will continue until Sunday. The A stands for an art magazine that is the main sponsor of the event, which is now in its third year.

The festival is taking place throughout York in 15 different locations, so among other things this was a chance to explore the town some more. I already briefly took a look at one of the venues, Thirteen Thirty-One, yesterday evening, so after acquiring a pass that is where I decided to start my tour de film. They advertise themselves as a bar-restaurant-cinema, but from the outside in the rain it does not look like any of these things, more like a cul-de-sac where nothing is going on. Only the large "ASFF Venue 07" sign outside was an indication that I was in the right place. After doubtfully having made my way to the cinema part, however, it appeared that enough other people had been able to find it to fill it to capacity. Many apologies, and was I maybe a filmmaker? Which I regretfully had to deny, but it's interesting to specualate why they thought I might be. Coming in alone probably had something to do with it.

The short films are being shown in blocks of 90 minutes, with 15- or 30-minute breaks in between. There was nothing for it but to try this location again later, for some other block; so in the meanwhile I wandered off, through the intermittent rain and tourist-packed streets, to King's Manor where they were supposed to have 2 screens and so hopefully a better chance of finding a seat, and that worked.

Film is to be seen and not so much to be written about, so I will not attempt to describe the ones I got to see. Contributions came from all over Europe as well as Australia and the USA. "Short" meant anything between 5 and 25 minutes, and that makes for an interesting challenge as you have to set up and tell a story within that timeframe. Some managed this (much) better than others (there were a fair number of open endings), but on the whole I thoroughly enjoyed myself and only once or twice started looking at my watch.

Compose your own taco

The blocks were grouped according to genre: I consumed Drama 8 and Thriller 3 (the difference being that a lot more people died in the Thriller session) at the King's Manor, then went back to try and find the restaurant section of Thirteen Thirty-One for a quick meal and a seat at Comedy 2 and Drama 3. It turns out the venue is more like a number of linked houses, and the restaurant is divided over several living rooms, connected by twisty passages (all alike) and narrow stairways, which you wouldn't be able to find your way around in without help. Altogether lovely. The meal was nice too: the soft tacos I ordered came with the ingredients still to be mixed together to taste. The personnel were extraordinarily friendly and actually reserved a seat for me when it turned out that the time might be too short. The cinema was another very nice surprise: for seats it has large black leather sofas and pouches - about 30 of them, no wonder it was full. They call it a "brown cinema". I've never had such comfortable seating.

After all this creative, intelligent story-telling I thought the perfect way to end the day would be to go to Thor: The Dark World to flush the system, as it were. The reviews were not half bad, but I found it a bit more stupid than I had expected. Still, the flushing was thoroughly accomplished.