The last two weeks have been led at an unprecedented pace, perhaps the rhythm of editing itself has been pacing my life. I have nearly completed a fine edit of my documentary, a process which has taught me a great deal about writing, not just film editing. I now know (not in the way one knows what one has once read, but in a more internalised way) that a holistic text is as much about what is left out as it is a composition of what is included. The frame reigns supreme.
Then there has been the Bigpond Adelaide Film Festival 2009, free access to which (courtesy a media pass) has enabled me to not just watch the best and latest in Australian and overseas cinema, but also inhale an environment where I can sense a future. Or some semblance of a future. Yesterday, attending the Screenwriters' Fringe, I felt for the first time in a long time, that I am lucky to be in Adelaide. Premier Mike Rann, in his consummate cinema-speech, seemed to suggest that it is a hub of film activity in Australia. While the question of native audience indifference looms large over the fate of local films as well as the diasporic films that I'm examining for my PhD, I'm confident that conceptual scripts and lyrical editing can turn the tide.
