As always, I'm catching up with my past; time and moments that have passed, buried into the earth. And before the truth is reviewed about my fear and allergy with writing, I'd better be a goody-goody, at least have a nice try.

Being a journalism student, I'm not expected to write anything creative. Unlike my multimedia mate whom can be really turned on by the stuff he's doing, what I'm always seeking is the solidity and undeniable truth(although there might not be such thing) and present them in an unbiased manner(yet I saw little evidence of the existence of it).

By all means, I used to be a bad, lazy or stupid student, and I might still be. So take care of reading my too-early-to-come conclusions.

And now, the time has come for dropping all the notes onto this space, by technically touching the keyboard at C2-26, Magill.

Feb 23rd  Highlights:    9 Star Hotel;    Feet Unbound

The festival comes always too soon while one day ago I was still sinking in my sofa, gazing at the screen of my labtop, enjoying some smarties in a comedy show from Taiwan. My fresh and blank diary does help sometimes when I made a plan such as Adelaide Film Festival, it reminds me to consume anything but time.

I'm kinda looking forward to it although in this hardly exciting place, I still managed to entertain myself quite comfortably, coz you'll always have to tell yourself that there is no such thing called joy untill it's memorized.

With my hardly-opened eyelids, I stood in front of the cinema waiting for my coming friend whom never showed up that day, just could not believe that this is the only time that I was not in a rush during those days.

Nine Star Hotel shows me a garden of hopeless conflicts, yet it sometimes gets superficially solved(e.g. the Israeli employer would not mind hiring illegal Palestinian construction works); or more oftenly gets more serious.(e.g. the police's investigation; when patriotism is put into politician's chemical cuvette)

It is biased when I first heard Muhammad, as a politically correct Palestinian criticizing the character of people within the same country "We think backward. We never think forward." But it is not when I dig into my mind, he might be right.

This seventy minutes something documentary feeds me enough shots of improvised reality of the dismal situation of Palisitinian illegal construction workers at the boarder of Israel's occupied territories, mostly the stories of two yound man, Ahmed and Muhammad.

In day time they build the luxury properties for the homes of Israeli's, whereas when the sun falls down they gather at the badland nearby and make it their home, which can be quite ironic under the name of "Nine Star Hotel". There Ahmed as a dumped object collector, found things like pillows or remote-control toy cars and enjoy himself. Muhammad seems like unemployment but is a helping hand to everyone there as an experienced illegal worker around.

Skipping sad moments when everybody in the screen starts talking about their family, their past or anything like that, it is quite an enjoyable movie for audiences like most of us, coz apart from showing expiry sympathies, there is nothing can be done as audiences and only, as I said it's a conflict between them.

As referred in the director's notes on the program pamphlet, the targeting audiences are actually his Israeli brethren, the basic message is that seperation wall is of no use and would not make the situation any better. I have no idea whether this would work or not, what i can see is the fact that there is no single Israelis or Palestinians in the screening session that I have attended.

And more interestingly,for me this uncolored dry doco might appeal more to the western audiences to experience some kinda horriable journey for an hour or more, basically for the purpose of escaping from their too comfortable daily life.

Sound is dry, camera is dry and the landscape is dry as well, with the instant movement of scenes and stories, under a uneditable timeline. This is typically a piece of Kino-Pravda film, which emerges since 1920s while Dziga Vertov made the film "Kino-Pravda"(film-truth), which seriously persue the role of camera to be simply a witness. At this point, it's unbiased and successful.

I was literally quite moved by the ending of this film when their supposedly house was eventually found and burned by the police. Not many dialogues are made, some of the survivors whom are not arrested walked into the blaze to hoping to save some bread, the others just stood there and witness all this ruin.

The noise of burning wood, cotton or rubbish keeps running untill the credit rolls to the end, fortunately nobody left the cinema, that's something impressive.

It's absolutely another story about Feet Unbound hours later, although the director shows up. In the end, verybody gave him a back and left. It's a story about Chinese renowned Long March, or more precisely about the girls in Western Red Army which suffered serious injustice from all solidary powers.

However, what I saw was a female journalist(with no clues that I could find out her as a journalist if not told) retraced the women soliders' long march journey visiting all the monuments, no matter fake or not, telling stories irrelevant about her own life, no matter how shitty that could be.

I'm pissed with this film, seriously.

They are not talking any good on behalf of those who actually suffered, but pissing them.

They are not serious with film-making coz as I said the whole film ended up with worshiping all those monuments while this lady shows up there and makes some irrelevant conclusions, this is such an easygoing piece, such a film for the purpose of making a film, not caring for anybody, maybe not, but by all means it fails to show that.

And I couldn't bare one more second of the "Chinese female journalist's" Sino-English, the truth is reviewed, I'm criticizing something that of litte relevance to the point. However another truth is reviewed, if a film sucks, something comes along becomes awful as well.

I'v got a few questions here, for whom might concern:

a. What does this story has something to do your first kiss and sex?
b. Why don't you keep silent while you are hanging around on the route of Long March?
c. Do you think you are too stupid to stop forcing symphathy or you think the audiences are     too smart to find them out when you actually shut up?
d. Where is the dirctor? Is there any?
e. Don't try to make money with others tragedy, please.

Eventually, I would like to show some basic understanding of the film title, as "Feet Unbound" involves a conparision between the female in the ancient times till the fall of Qing dynasty and the female in the current generation. China used to be such a country enjoy the small feet of women, and so girls start to bound their feet in early age, and surprisingly it works for thousands of years, everybody keeps really silent about it.

As far as I'm concerned, the original idea is to make a docomentary about this change and present them in a manner of new female(journalist) experiencing some elders'(grannies from Western Red Army) sufferings.

Well, trully it fails in many ways as pointed.