Tropfest 2005 and motley/sundry

Friday night some of us went down to Thai Nesia and had a really good Thai meal although some of it smelt funny. We then went to Dragonfly in Kings Cross which was a cool club but the DJ was the worse ever, he told Mike “we only do house” and couldn’t actually mix anything together.

Saturday we were all down at Matt’s house party where we listened to DJ Deep Child spin some tunes and stole some Vodka (someone had drunk my Corona without permission so the guilt level was low). I also had what felt like a 3 hour debate with Faisel about surfing paddling techniques. Faisel and myself then tried to get into Dragonfly but they wouldn’t let the two of us in. Funny how the night before they seemed to welcome Mike and myself with open arms when you bring three girls along with you!!

So Sunday arrived and I was shattered, not even able to go surfing (although the waves are really small now). However, we went down to Tropfest on Sunday night which is a short film festival broadcast to outdoor event locations in Australia. One of these is obviously Sydney, so we went down to the Domain along with thousands of other people. The basic history of Tropfest is that the festival started off in the Tropicana Caffe in Darlinghurst (that on a side note does a terrible breakfast – go to the place across the road it’s much better) . Tropfest went from a small coffee shop to a corporate backed massive festival in the space of ten years.

So the sixteen films they showed were all really cool. My favourites were ‘A family legacy‘, ‘too far‘, ‘garbage man‘. The one that actually won was ‘Australian Summer‘ which was a video of two homeless guys imagining they were on the beach surfing a huge wave, rather than living on the cold streets which was the reality of their situation.

Here is the setup, everyone sits around the screens that are in the centre of the park –

In true Short Film Festival style I have decided to put together a little video of my own. Unfortunately the contents aren’t THAT exciting because I have not really filmed anything since Queensland. So here is a small video of a Kookaburra at Seal Rocks, Matt and myself in Stanwell Park preparing to surf and our crowd of mainly French people at Tropfest.

Camping/Surfing trip this weekend down South somewhere to hopefully catch some ‘gnarly’ waves…dude.

On a separate note I’ve just finished reading Life of Pi by Yann Martel. It is my favourite book of 2005 which isn’t really saying much seeing as it is February but it really is great. It is the story of a boy who is on a life boat with some zoo animals, one of them being a bengal tiger. I cried my eyes out felt sad at the end of the book, it has a brilliant ending, a really good read.