/karen/

The Parable of the Seven Little Goths

Sunday, 07 November, 2004

Ben A has already beaten me to blogging about the Ignite film festival so it's worth going over there and checking out his comments. He was there all day and into the evening. I can't believe we were in the same room and I didn't get to meet him!! I was serious looking around to see if I could spot him but then I only have a very vague idea of what he looks like so maybe I would have gotten it completely wrong.

Update: Guan's film won a prize! (Follow the link to see what he won.)

Second update: The Ignite DVD is now mysteriously working; we tried it again last night (8th November) and it was fine.

But anyway, on Friday I painted my fingernails black while brainstorming children's talks for that Sunday school unit I'm writing on Cash Values (hereafter dubbed “Cash Values”). I got quite a lot done but I'm stumped on the last one (the one on generosity/2 Corinthians 8-9). I started watching Neon Genesis Evangelion in the evening (Nick has very kindly lent me his boxset of the entire series) when Sarah rang and asked if she and Miriam could come over. Sarah was getting cold feet over the whole goth thing and Miriam was trying to talk her round. They raided my wardrobe and my jewellery and were so impressed with my nails they decided to paint theirs black too. At this point Ben came home from wherever he was (it was about 11 pm by this time) and decided to let us paint his nails too. And Steve also dropped around because he couldn't sleep and did likewise. So all five of us ended up with black nails.

On the Saturday I did the laundry, bought a 4mm circular needle and four 5.5 mm double-pointed needles, finished my hat (which I'm not heaps happy with—how did I end up with an odd number of stitches at the end???) and got ready for Ignite. Miriam, Sarah and Jannie were late and they changed in a hurry at my place. We still had to pick up Stacie who, when she emerged, looked fantastic. And then we rushed off in our car to Sydney (Miriam drove because I can only do 100 on my license) just in time to catch the train into town.

On the train, we did our makeup. Stacie helped me with mine because I have no idea about these things (the last time I wore any sort of makeup was at Bec's wedding several years ago and I didn't apply it that time either). She put dark eyeshadow and eyeliner on me and I drew a little curly squiggle at the end of each eye. We all wore dark red lipstick and took photos of each other looking really serious and pissed off. I tried to take photos of Jannie but that girl does not have the capacity to frown. She tried but she still looked happy!!!

We were half an hour early at Town Hall and we spent ages just standing around on the Town Hall steps running into people we knew (well, maybe people I knew—like Haoran, Guan and his lovely wife Mary, Elsie, Jo from UWS, Matt from Christians in the Media and Karina who I haven't seen since she went to Tanzania a couple of years ago). Amanda was running late and I sent everyone else inside and waited for her while talking to a girl who used to be at Wollongong but who wasn't very involved with ECU. It turns out that I did know her name, though when I was talking to her, I wasn't sure if that was her.

When Amanda did turn up, she looked absolutely marvellous, even if she didn't have black hair like the rest of us! Her grandmother had given her this fabulous poncho-shaped thing that draped like black cobweb over her clothes. We headed in just as the first film began.

Like Ben A I was quite impressed with some of the films. However, I also thought that some of them were quite ordinary and could have done a lot more than to simply retell the parable. Some of them had great acting/dialogue but poor cinematography; some had great cinematography but poor acting. Some of them I felt that the filmmakers hadn't really thought through the parable very well. My favourite was The Paraball of the Lost Ballwin for sheer cuteness but I also enjoyed Relentless (which Guan was involved in doing), Counting the Cost and Forty Days. I hope Ben (my Ben) has a go at making an entry next year; I think he'd really enjoy that.

Afterwards, we stuck around for an awfully long time talking to people (mental note: in the future make all staff girls' socials just with staff girls; don't go places where there are other people or where spouses want to come too). And then we decided to get dinner. I thought Chinta Ria would have been a good place to eat but some of the girls were disturbed by the giant Buddha statue in the foyer and didn't think their consciences could handle it. So we walked the length of Darling Harbour and ended up in a food court called “Eating World” in Chinatown where we feasted on different types of Asian. Sarah enjoyed a lychee slurpee and Ben got hazelnut ice cream. It was getting on and we were all getting a bit tired, nevertheless, we couldn't resist poking around the funny shops in Chinatown before making our way to Central to board trains to our respective cars.

It was about 10 pm by the time we finally got back to Wollongong. Some of our party came around to our house to watch the ones we didn't see on the DVD (Ben said he had to get the DVD). Unfortunately the DVD is quite stuffed, displaying the following flaws:

• When you press play to play the DVD, it goes straight to “The Great Feast” and not to the menu.
• Most films do not come up when you select their titles in the menu (eg. you will find “Adam” under “70 x 7”) and some come up twice (eg. when selecting “The Paraball of the Lost Ballwin” you will get “The Paraball of the Lost Ballwin” as when you select “Thirst” or something like that).
• Some of the films were totally inaccessible and unable to be viewed, eg. “The Lord of the Seeds”.
• Clicking on some of the menu items causes the DVD to completely stop (eg. “Counting the Cost”). However, if you restart the DVD and try again, some of them do actually bring up films (just not the films they are supposed to be linked to). “Counting the Cost”, however, stopped the DVD every time.
• When you finish watching a film, it goes straight to the “Action” category menu instead of the main page.

I have written nicely to the Ignite people about it and hopefully they can give us a replacement.

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