MQFF Day Three

Sunday 6th March

My first session for the day was Queeries Two, a wide-ranging selection of youth shorts, including a couple by local film-makers. Highlights included:

• Boy's Grammar, one of the latest films by ex-Melbournian Dean Francis (whose work has evolved magnificently over the last few years, especially compared to some of his earlier projects, which I actually helped reject from the festival - it's great to see how far his skills have evolved) a harrowing and powerful film staring Matt Levet (above) as Gareth, about an episode of bullying at a private school that turns into rape.
• Brian and Lazzio, a simple but touching short doco about two young men who tells us how they met on a bus and fell in love.
• It was also fun to see Tristan Hamilton's Daddy's Boy, which starred a cast of Q + A regulars - it was odd but enjoyable seeing people I usually DJ for entertaining me in a film instead!

After an abortive trip to RRR to catch up on some work that was rendered pointless due to technical dramas with the station's e-mail, I headed back into the festival and DJ'd for another two and a half hours in the festival club, following on from the esteemed and lovely David Chisholm, a contemporary composer who's only recently started DJ'ing. Go to his website to listen to some of his compositions.

Next film for the day was Loggerheads, an independent US drama directed by Tim Kirkman. Its three seperate storylines are set over three consecutive years, and slowly begin to merge together to weave a story of love, loss and possibilities. In 1999, handsome HIV positive drifter Mark (Kip Pardue) arrives at North Carolina's Kure Beach to help save endangered loggerhead turtles; here he meets George (Michael Kelly), a local hotelier, and a slow-burning chemistry ignites between them. Elsewhere, in 2000, a straightlaced pastor's wife named Elizabeth (Tess Harper) grieves for her son, who ran away from home at 17 after she and her husband rejected him for being gay; while in 2001, middle-aged Grace (Bonnie Hunt) begins a search for the baby she was forced to give out for adoption when she was just a girl.

Grace (Bonnie Hunt) - her pain and loss are tangible

The film has a deep compassion for its characters, especially Elizabeth, who is torn between her loyalty to her preacher husband and her religious convictions, and her need to love her son; and Grace's desperate need to fill the void in her life by finding the son she never knew. Similarly, the tender scene beneath the pier where George reaches out to Mark and offers him the love his parents could not is simply drawn but emotionally rich - it's when I started crying. Considered, contemplative and deeply moving, the film's structure intrigued me, it's characters engaged me, and its conclusion devestated me; indeed I'm almost in tears again now remembering its final scenes. While the deliberate pacing and subtle unfolding of its narrative may frustrate some people, I loved it. Loggerheads is definitely my favourite of the festival so far. You can learn more about it for yourself by visiting the film's official website; it also has another MQFF screening this Wednesday night at 10pm if you'd like to see it for yourself.

Afterwards I decided to skip the gay thriller Open Cam - I wanted to savour the emotions Loggerheads had stirred in me, and came home instead...