Secret Festival #4, It's Winter

Ah, the last day of SIFF 2007, a very sad occasion indeed. Originally scheduled as a four-movie day to go out with a bang, I cut back today to two films and instead have taken the extra hours to recuperate from the last several weeks (and do laundry).

The last Secret Festival movie was certainly nice and enjoyable, but it wasn't one of the two movies I was really hoping for which is a shame but was still worth attending.

It's Winter is a film by SIFF Emerging Master Raffi Pitts who also directed the previously seen Season Five, a movie which I enjoyed. I wasn't so thrilled about his most recent work, but did appreciate both his sense of direction on it and again the beautiful cinematography and still-portrait type of shots so prevalent in his movies.

Audience Watch: During the Secret Fest movie, a woman was wearing some insanely strong perfume that smelled a lot like cologne. It was extremely overpowering. There were a number of Iranians in attendance for the showing of It's Winter, several of whom made it very clear they were from Iran during the Q&A. I think a lot of them feel a sense of pride in watching great films from Iran, but there is another aspect during the Q&A where they tend to take it up as if the theater was a giant living room, grilling and needling the director about various plot point details as is common in friendly but passionate Iranian conversation.