International Short Film Festival

Every year in late January, Clermont-Ferrand is the host of the Festival du International Court Metrage which is an international short film festival. All over the city, venues show 2 hour sessions of short films (30 minutes or less) from all over the world. I was able to attend 2 of the sessions. The first one I attended was right next door to our apartment at the university. I went with the Chit chat group one morning while the children were in school. As a group, we had coffee first and then walked to the theatre. When we arrived, there was a long line to enter the theater and across the street, police had gathered in preparation for les greves.

I will take a minute now to try to explain "Les Greves". Les Greves is French for the strikes. Strikes are quite common all over France, including Clermont. They are usually well organized and have lots of participants. Honestly, I don't always understand why people strike here, but I know that they happen often, at least 2-3 times per month. Les Greves are when unions get together and protest certain conditions or policies. They are mostly peaceful demonstrations with signs, bullhorns, noisemakers and lots of people. Often if one group strikes, other unions will strike as well in support. The first time I saw the strikes was in October when the farmers were on strike. They brought cows, tractors and pickup trucks to the city and the bus and tram drivers were on strike to support them, making it difficult for people to get around the city. Anyway, this time the public university students were on strike against new policies put in place by French President Sarkozy. They put up lovely pictures depicting him as a criminal.



Back to the short film festival. We saw several International Films. Some were in English with French subtitles, some were in French and some were in other languges with French subtitles. They were actually pretty good and understanding the storylines was not very difficult. In fact, I had more trouble understanding the British English slang! I did better reading the French subtitles on that film. A few nights later, Preston and I went to see films from or about the continent of Africa . They were also very good. Other sessions were just for children and teens. Maya and Daniele both had fieldtrips to the festival. For 2 weeks, the entire city was full of people from all over the world presenting and watching the films. Well, the Court Metrage has inspired me to make a short film of my own entitled, "Only in Italy!!!" This past week we went to Italy for part of winter break. That is the setting for my first short film.

Enjoy!!!