February 22nd
Today I went to Tropfest, which is apparently "The World's Largest Short Film Festival" in Sydney. I also stumbled into and around the beautiful Royal Botanic Gardens looking for a bathroom. :)
I had been planning to go for weeks, but that morning I realized my roommates were also getting a group together and I decided to tag along. I invited John from UMD to tag along with us. The giant group waited in apartment 8 for a while, and I stayed with them, until Jessie decided she could really go for some Subway. The sub place. Yes, that one; it's here too. Either out of boredom or a general need to walk somewhere, John and I decided to accompany her to the nearest Subway at Macquarie Centre. I really love that you can get sweet chilli sauce almost everywhere. We got our food, and then hopped on the next bus into the city.
Thanks to my handy dandy map that they gave us at orientation, we found our way quite easily to The Domain, the large open space that Tropfest is held at. We sat in some crazy orange cardboard chairs that were handed out and they were decent chairs until they collapsed in the middle of the night.
Basically, we were outside for a very long time. Jessie eventually left us because she found her friends, but John and I stuck together. They played this one Mitsubishi commercial about 500 times but I kind of liked the song on it (song of the post title).
Before the films started, I went on an adventure to find the bathrooms. I figured the Royal Botanic Gardens must have some, so I went there. I took a bunch of pictures in there. My favorite part was probably the pretty flowers and plants and trees.
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| From Tropfest |
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| From Tropfest |
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| From Tropfest |
My second favorite part was the bats. They were everywhere, and mildly horrifying, even in the day light.
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| From Tropfest |
Turns out there were many bathrooms closer by where I was sitting, but I didn't find those until I came back and I'm glad I got to explore anyway.
I also walked around and took a bunch of pictures of Tropfest too.
Here's the red carpet:
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| From Tropfest |
Neil Finn, of Crowded House fame, was the entertainment. He was enjoyable, but I think only the Australians knew all the words to his song. He didn't sing "Don't Dream It's Over" but I let it slide.
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| From Tropfest |
The 16 selected short films were quite enjoyable. I'll try to recap my favorites. "The News" has a couple meeting in a coffee shop, both with "news" they'd like to share with the other. The woman found out she is expecting twins and excitedly goes to tell the father of her children the good news. His news: he killed her sister. The way it was carried out was hysterical.
The woman in front of us, who stepped on my towel wearing high heels which really confused me at first, was actually one of the directors of one of the films. Hers was also hysterical. The premise is a shy, normal girl tries to convince her sister's attractive boy friend to essentially strip for her for about $500. The twist?: Her sister comes in after she's paid the boyfriend and says "Oh good, my sister finally dropped off that $500 she owes me." The boyfriend's look of astonishment was priceless.
There was another one about a guy who lived in a pirate suit which was good fun, and the eventual winner's work was also very good, but honestly, my reviews would probably confuse more than explain. They're not up yet, but eventually I'll believe they will be on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/user/TROPFEST
It was a fun evening. Classes the next day...(I made it on time, fyi)
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