It's been a while. I'll blog soon about the reason why.
In the meantime: HotDocs is in town again...
I love docs. I love docs so much I wanna do docs. Oy, that is another post.. sorry.
Um.. anyhew...
So, I usually see a few films at the festival, mostly at the rush line, cause I realized it's always hit and miss, so why bother.
This year, they brought in a Romanian documentary I really wanted to see: "The world according to Ion B." - a doc about a Romanian artist, who used to be a tramp on the streets of Bucharest, and is now compared to likes of Andy Warhol.
So I spread the word and got two of my friends to join me. Did not "rush" to buy tickets, but then some other friends mentioned tickets are sold out for the first show on Friday night. I looked it up online - yup, no more tickets for Innis Hall on Friday, but some tix for the same doc on Sunday. All good, ordered online, went to pick them up (btw, box office in Yorkville mall, why, people, why?).
I knew that our screening was Sunday at 1:45. Innis Hall was a place where I usually saw Romanian films within the festival organized by TORO Arts Group, so I knew where to go, life was good, I told the girls to meet up at 1:20, that should give us plenty of time.
Sunday comes. 1:20PM. I was at St. George station (5 mins away from the theatre). Girls call me. Desperate that they don't have their tickets. People from the "Rush line" were being let in.
I started running.My friends were at the door. I pulled out our tickets, we all barged through, the HotDocs volunteers made room for us. "ticket holders, straight to the door!" Then someone hurriedly tore off our tickets.
The theatre was already dark, full of people. We were being led in with a flashlight. Images started being projected on the screen. I apologized to my friends for being late, I thought it was at 1:45; they confirmed the hour, but were also confused as to why it had changed. People were getting annoyed so we had to sit down and start watching.
Um, except the images had nothing to do with Ion B. Or Romania. Or anything we had expected. The film started with a monk, praying, in dead silence. My friend said: "is this Ion B?" I said, "no, but I assume it's coming up." See, I presumed this was some kind of short that was showing prior to our movie. We couldn't really talk, this movie was really not using a lot of sound... so we all sat there, me waiting for the short to be over, my friends waiting for me to elucidate the matter. I was certain our show was coming right after, perhaps that's why the mixed-up starting time. Now this here doc was about the life of monks who took the vow of silence, couldn't have been longer than 10 minutes or so, I thought..
Indeed, after perhaps 10-12 minutes, the images faded to black, and a quote from the Bible pops up on the screen. I thought it marvelous, a piece of genious! Unparalleled insight into the life of silent monastic life! I almost started clapping!
Oh, wait, there's more... Same monk who continues praying; and walk along the monastery's walls, and wash his hands, and eat fruit, and read. Ok... I was starting to doubt Ion B was gonna play after all, this was starting to get long...
My friend pulls out her Iphone and looks up the HotDocs Schedule.
Surprise! Our show was playing at the Cumberland!
In the silence of the monastery we started laughing and slouching in our chairs, trying to grasp our breath.
It was too late to do anything about it. Might as well enjoy this film, how much longer could one go on about silent monks? Not long, you'd think, right?
We sat there for over 2 hours! The film went on and on. With the silent praying. And reading. And silent night, and the seasons that went by, and the monastery that stayed there IN SILENCE.
My back was killing me, my friends were ready to kill me as well. So we left. Must be the second time ever in my entire movie going experience that I leave the theatre before the show is over.
I couldn't help feeling like the biggest scatterbrain ever. I couldn't quite understand how my friends hadn't figured it out before we walked in. How no one looked at our tickets that were for a different show, different time, different theatre! I guess it's something you ought to try: use your tickets to get into a show that's already sold out! ;)
Haha, at least we learned what the world looks like according to French/Swedish monks.
3 comments:
Hilarious! My nephew and I also almost went to see Ion B today but ended up going to a nostalgic ode, or lament perhaps, to the deep south - general order number 9.... I kinda wish I had seen Ion, although my nephew wasn't into it... Burdus was excellent - you should see it...
Come on! I feel your suffering... but still... check everything out. In the age of Internet and iPhones and all this instant media one should not make this kind of mistakes. Laughing nonetheless at your experience :)
@Andrew - thanks, I'll try to check it out. :)
@Dorin - I know, it was just the icing on the cake, after a week of unexpected mishaps :)
In the end it made us watch something new, something we wouldn't have otherwise. I'm still kinda happy to have seen the other movie, which was pretty good, except way too long
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