Another Reason to be Angry at the Floods...

Location: Bangkok, Thailand

Adventure of the Day: 5 minutes of excitement over a film festival!

So, another (much less serious) reason to be angry at the Thailand floods — the postponement of the Bangkok  World Film Festival!

I spent way too much time in fake Photoshop making this.

A little background: Last week, sitting around the hostel, my teaching situation still in limbo, my eyes happened upon a copy of the Lonely Planet Bangkok guide. So I said to myself, I said, "Self —" (Sorry, only my UA friends will get that Dempsey reference) I figured I would pick up the book and get some ideas of what to see in Bangkok.

Well, right in the front of the book is a list of events/festivals/etc. by month. I check out January, February, and March, skip April through September (I most likely will already have departed dear Thailand), and land back at October, November, and December. October has the Vegetarian Festival, which I already experienced in Pattaya (though I didn't find that much great vegetarian food). When, to what to my wondering eyes should appear in November but the World Film Festival! In Bangkok! Away to the internet I flew like a flash, tore up the keyboard and opened the website*. The site's banner lists the Festival as being from the 4th to the 13th of November — this upcoming week! And right down the road from where I'm staying/working! And I don't have a teaching job yet, so I can go see a bunch of them! You can imagine my excitement. I mean, look at all the exclamation points I'm using!

But alas, all my hopes and dreams of approximately 4 minutes were dashed by scrolling down the page. You see, with the impending floods the Festival has been postponed. Not a week, or a month, but until January 2012. At least I will still be here, though not (likely) within walking distance. Sigh.

In any case, the program sounds pretty great. Obviously there's a lot of independent films from all over the world. Some I'm particularly excited about are Kids with Cameras (USA), Lung Neaw Visits His Neighbors (Mexico, Thailand), and Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Werner Herzog's lauded film using 3D technology to capture the 30,000 year old paintings in France's Chauvet Pont d'Arc cave. Check out the trailer.

Maybe Hopefully Certainly the floods will have dissipated by January, and I'll report back then with reviews of the films I've gotten to see. Until then!


* I have no idea what prompted the use of lines from Twas the Night Before Christmas. But I figured if I used one line, why not use multiple lines? My brain is random like that and/or I'm already getting in the Christmas spirit!