Tuesday, 7 August 2012

MIFFed

I went to a Werner Herzog film at the Melbourne International Film Festival on Saturday, a documentary called Into the Abyss. It's a commentary on the death penalty in the USA.

I'm pretty obsessed with the failures of the American justice system. Paradise Lost and Murder on a Sunday Morning are two examples. Each followed the trials of murder accused who cannot possibly have been guilty. Both films perfectly illustrate why the death penalty should be abandoned. They are examples of people facing either death penalties or lengthy prison terms for crimes they didn't commit. Seeing the mistakes of the justice system and the extreme hardship that falsely accused people endure makes me outraged.

I expected the same kind of outrage from Into the Abyss - I was primed for some falsely accused gasping and gnashing. Fist shaking was a distinct possibility. Those American courts and prisons sure were going to feel some wrath from me.

Instead there was a different kind of outrage - MIFF played the wrong film. It wasn't completely wrong - not like playing Bambi instead of Robocop - but it was still wrong. Into the Abyss is a feature length documentary, and is supported by four episodes on the same theme, each profiling a convicted murderer on death row. MIFF just played two of the episodes; no feature. No announcement was made; MIFF didn't know it was the wrong thing. So that was pretty dumb.

But it gets worse. After the first of the two episodes, the credits started rolling and peeps started leaving. I did an embarrassing half-stand, half-sit manoeuvre for about twenty seconds or so. The only thing that kept me in the cinema was a vague feeling that I hadn't seen the guy whose photo was in the program. So when the next episode started rolling, I was pleased that I stayed. The second subject's name flashed up on screen, so the audience knew that it was a new episode, even though it started with identical footage to the first.

Within a minute or two the story moved on and we met some new characters who were clearly nothing to do with the first episode. But a couple of minutes further into the second episode and MIFF stopped the screening and made an apology - something along the lines of 'obviously we're having some technical problems with the film and it has skipped back to the start. We're just going to find where we were up to and restart the film from there'. The crowd remonstrated. Hands were thrown loosely aloft. The Alphas yelled out that there was no problem and they should just press play again. I huffed and rolled my eyes, exerting a strong influence on proceedings.

The poor lady (my compassion is only a product of hindsight) came back to the front two or three minutes later and announced that, alas, there was no technical problem and that it was [gasp] a new episode. The ironic groans brought a beetroot flush to the announcer's face as she slunk off. We rejoined the action back near the start of the second episode. But MIFF still didn't realise that the episodes they were playing were not actually the film. Of course I didn't realise it either, but I'm not running a film festival.  For a so-called International Film Festival, it was quite an embarrassment.

I came home and read the program. That's when I found out for sure that they had played the wrong film. I called the info line to find out what was going on. Apparently they hadn't even received the film from the supplier and had to request that a copy be sent to them asap. Hopefully I get a chance for some more rightful indignation when the proper film is screened later in the festival.

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