In early afternoon, I walked in the rain, thunder rumbling from within dense, pale cloud above. Schoolboys cycled furiously past me, squinting against the slanting downpour that covered the parkway path with a dimpled sheet of silver. Raindrops pounded onto Lindsay Street, their smashed liquid debris ricocheting upward as glittering shards. Swirling streams gushed along the curb of the steeply-cambered street and roared into the yawning rectangles of storm sewers cut into curb walls. Magpie geese, white ibises, and plumed whistling ducks stood in shallow pools on the golf course lawns, with shoulders hunched and heads pulled down. Rain trees appeared striped black and grey, their branches’ wet tops dark from moisture that also spilled down trunks; the branches’ dry undersides pale grey, as were sections of trunk immediately below them. I walked two blocks – my Crocs tossing up splashes onto my legs – before turning and retracing my steps, the deluge coating the path with a centimetre or more of water. After slopping through street corner puddles, I hopped over the curbside torrent and retreated to Vilis’s and my cement-walled shelter.
Late yesterday afternoon, another downpour held Townsville in its grip, decreasing visibility and causing traffic to slow while Vilis and I drove to James Cook University to attend the northern lights film festival, a short film competition with a name that carries an entirely different connotation for Canadians than it does for Aussie film buffs. Being totally unfamiliar with the art of film making, Vilis and I had no idea what to expect. What we saw were quickie films that ranged in length from 30 seconds to 6 minutes, were presented in colour or black and white, and which covered a wide swathe of topics.
The first fourteen films had been made by highschool students, nearly all from Townsville, with one from Cairns. These films were impressive and highly inventive. A dark slant on life (horror, suicide, stalker) figured prominently in several, while others featured old-style rumination over love affairs gone wrong, evocative dreams, quirky statements about tossing off inhibitions or finding friendship with some else ‘different,’ as well as amusing classic animation and ‘Iron Man-like’ computer graphic animation about conquering evil.
Several of the eight short films in the open or experimental category were significantly more complex than those made by the highschool entrants, but along with that complexity came a degree of opaqueness and ambiguity. To be frank, I really didn’t have a clue what was happening in two of the films, but could appreciate the artistry anyway. Several of the other films dealt with mental conflicts, while one was a travel blitz depicting Sicily and another a documentary describing the effects the Flinders Street renovations here in Townsville are having and will have on local merchants. At the end, Vilis and I each left the auditorium with a hankering to make a short film of our own, inspired by others’ creations and, for me, by the knowledge that suggestion sometimes possesses more power than reality.
Pond Reflections, Anderson Park Botanical Gardens, Townsville (© Magi Nams)
