I’m in Wales, helping out at a most unusual short film competition, with boardgames. I can’t do better than my flatmate Mark at explaining it, so if you want to know what we’re doing read his post on the subject.
Also since writing here last, I’ve spent a while in North America. New York ate all my money. I found the Statue of Liberty surprisingly moving – it’s original purpose, representing real freedom, is important to remember. Toronto was fantastic. I stayed with Martin Crawford, who knows the extensive and fun live music scene like the back of his hand. The food in Toronto is amazing, and the layout of streets with busy tram-field, small shop, main roads, and quiet cross streets of wooden houses all different. Canada really is the best bits of Europe and best bits of America mixed together in one country. I was quite surprised.
Then I went to Georgia, the one in the Caucases between Russia and Turkey. This was initially on work, a project to do with Georgian Parliamentary informatioon. It’s a very harsh place to travel in December. I went to Stalin’s birthplace, Gori, and to Borjomi where a mineral water comes from (the one the Russians have recently banned import of). Georgia was (roughly) the second country to become Christian, and it has its own orthodox Church. There were gorgeous, and sometimes very remote, old churches. It’s also a very European seeming country. Despite its poverty, it felt familiar in the way that only European countries do.
Enough for now, I think I have to write a blog post about the board games we had this evening for the Really Restrictive Shorts website…
Was wondering how this had been going. What games did you play and did they go down well?
They played four games this evening; Hare and Tortoise, Hamster Wheel (Hamster Rolle), Chronology and Sisimizi. Hamster Wheel was much enjoyed, fun and dramatic, and short. They liked Chronology too. Hare and Tortoise I’ve decided I don’t like, and I was proved right – it’s a bit too numbersy adding up, and hard to work out what is going on the first play. Also the rules are too complicated and hard to get exactly right. Finally, Sisimizi was enjoyed, but was very intense and took a long time.
Part of the problem was they were playing for prizes that mattered for them either tomorrow or for the whole week, effecting their filming. So the games were much more intense than normal. In a friendly game, even when you are trying to win, you never take it completely seriously. But in a situation where you want to win to get a better piece of filming equipment, you do. This is partly good, but did mean things like Sisimizi dragged on with people thinking.