Frustration with the Festival

More views of - or at - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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20 September

Anyone who read about the omelette will urge caution and restraint, but I no longer know whom to ask to solve the problem of reviews that are often being given the time to get written very shortly after the screening still not being on the Festival web-site (last night's of Philipp even gets a tweak, because, for all that 'fuck' is said on the screen, it's apparently necessary to write it as 'f-ck', though I don't remember Faber & Faber, Larkin's publisher, trying that one!).

There are three from as far back as Friday, Tabloid from last night, and two others between those points, and not even Tony Jones can tell me any more than that the Festival is frustrated with the IT system (or, should I say, 'system', as I prefer in such situations).

Or is it that I dared not to be impressed by the cinema of Jos Stelling, and said so in two reviews on Friday night? Another review, submitted after mine, is there for everyone to see, and praises The Illusionist (I think that it was praise, but, when one uses words such as 'oneiric' casually, others can not be quite sure - probably a reason for doing it... - what your take is). OK, it's like Fellini (or even 'Fellinian'), but so what?

Embarrassingly, Jos and I exchanged a few words, my probably feeling guilty that I'd ditched one of his the day before and promptly rebooked not to see the question-and-answer session that he had just done. I knew that it was Jos, because the photo in the brochure was accurate and recent, and for some reason - out of the blue - he asked if I was German: I had done nothing German, unless working on a review at a neighbouring table in the bar is German.

I said that I wasn't, but that I speak German: Ich spreche Deutsch. He remarked, as is true because of the similarities, that I would therefore know some Dutch. It really puzzled him that I could speak German (though not so much as me why we were talking about being or speaking German at all), so I said that I had learnt it: Habe Deutsch studiert. That, too, puzzled him, and he kept asking why I had done so and whether I had done so 'freely', but with a Dutch pronunciation, and the word may not actually mean what 'freilich' does in German.

Oh, I did try to explain, but I don't think that he got it, and it remained some sort of mystery, as if studying German 'A' Level were unheard of. Somehow - and I can't remember what he said or asked - I ended up saying that I knew who he was. Slight puzzlement at that, but dispelled by saying that I had recognized him from his photograph. That settled things, and he went back to talking to people on his table. Pretty oneiric, pretty Fellinian!