On Sunday I went to the 2004 MIFF and plonked myself down amongst the faithful. It’s not normally my thing to go to movies at all, let alone by myself. Kim had decided to sit this one out and do housework at home, so it felt indulgent of me, and I sat hemmed in on all sides amongst what I imagined to be knowlegeable filmgoers. The first film was a documentary about an Australian man in the 1940’s who was the first to try chemical (i.e Lithium) means to cure schizofrenia and other manic afflictions in people. He killed a hell of a lot of Guinea Pigs in the process. The director and the producer talked about their inspiration and said that a lot of former patients were in the audience at the back. I didn’t dare turn around and look. In the age of the Hollywood blockbuster, it was great to hear real people speak about an UNSUNG HERO, who right till the end maintained he was just a guy who got a lucky break. To carry on the morbid theme, the second film was about how the Anaconda Copper Mine company arranged for the killing of a Union agitator in Butte, Montana in 1917 and who, many years later, managed to create a huge toxic lake in the remnants of the open-cut mine when they pulled out. Virtually all evidence (of the killing – where he was dragged behind a car in his underwear for several kilometres) had been burned, lost or rewritten in the company-owned town newspaper a long time ago, so it might as well have been fiction although it seems unlikely. At regular intervals an annoying “Ode to the striking workers part#3” would start up and you would have to watch lyrics flash on the screen one word at a time, till you just stared at your lap until the music stopped. Luckily most of the music was by Dirty Three, Will Olham and Low. Lastly was G-Sale, a funny story about the petty rivalries between fellow 60’s kitch collectors and about a near-priceless board game called Pot ‘O Gold. It was a lot of fun, and will do great on DVD I imagine. I caught the tram home and walked the dogs in the near dark – we couldn’t throw balls in the park because kids were playing, and we all know that means Fergus would get way too exuberant.