We got a 4 day free stay at a resort at Calengute beach, courtesy a friend and moved there the first thing in the morning. It was a 12k ride and a beautiful ride it was. The place is full of foreign tourists and the beach is apparently active all night. It is getting very adventurous for us out here. Managed to get back to the venue by 10:50am and the next show worth watching was the Korean Film 'a short life' by Kyung Lee at 11am. We learned this from the printed movie schedules that were handed over to the delegates at the Help desks. Another handout was the colourful four paged IFFI Festival daily. Charles Correa, the guy who designed the Kala academy was interviewed and he remarked that architects are a lot like Film editors. "why should I have a room here? what if I remove this room? Is it a compromise? Or is it simply a case for finding alternatives?", he says adding that both Film editors and architects have to make these choices. Nice comparison.

'A short life' was okay. We walked out for lunch and were pleasantly surprised by the turn out. The venue was full of young energetic kids, hanging around in their cool attires and fashions. It was a treat to watch the young guns chilling around. Last year at the IFFI, there were no local allowed and this caused a huge disappointment. The authorities this year went over the board and given away delegate passes at will to the locals and I was told that about 4000 passes were given to the student community itself. No wonder we were made to stand in the queues for every Film today. The queues started about an hour and half before the actual time of the show. Ramesh commented that he didn't even stand this long for Chiru's Films. Another unpleasant change this year around was the not allowing of people to sit on the stairs and watch the Film after all the seats are taken. There was a big row between the management and the delegates over this issue. There were threats of staging a dharna on this issue but the issue fizzled out very quickly for reasons unknown to me.

Chicken Frankie for 30 bucks and a glass of beer for 15 bucks was an unbelievable deal and they were great. Food stalls were awesome and there was palpable happiness in the people having their grubs. I found a brochure of a Film quarterly named 'Deep Focus' based in Bangalore which publishes essays on how cinema shapes and impacts the aesthetics and cultural practices. It has got positive reviews from all the biggies across India. Economic Times of Kolkota says that Deep Focus is a serious film journal devoted to indepth film discussions.

My matinee show was a Chinese Film directed by zhang jiarui. It is a good Film and you can read my review later. Live music started outside the theatre and the performers were Carlos Gracias(who plays guitar for the the group Carlos Gracias Duo) and on the Violin was Alex who plays for 'The friendly brothers'. Both are local bands with Portugese origins. The music was quite nice and gelled well with our beers. The 9pm show was 'Volver', directed by the great Pedro Almodvar. Pedro is so popular here at Goa that the authorities had to send away half the crowd as the theatre was already full. I stood for more than an hour to get in and I was one of the last to make it. Pedro was supposed to come but he could not make it and his representative from Spain thanked us all for coming for the show. There was a great laughter when he said that very few people watch Pedro's Films in Spain and so the whole team was apparently feeling bad not to be present at the screening here at Goa, due to their publicity requirements in US for the Oscars. The show started on time and we could see the master at work but I feel this is one of his lesser works, the buzz at the Cannes notwithstanding. It is still a very good Film but the depth and the tremendous human elements that we normally see in his work are somewhat missing, I felt. There was lot of ingenuity and cinema trickery but magic, nah! We will discuss the Film at length at a later time. On the whole, it was a nice day of Films and fun and Volver was a nice way to end the day with.

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