Ottawa Day #2

(a day late on blogging...hi Kara!)

Yesterday I went downtown for the first screening of the day. After a leisurly lox bagel and a coffee, went to the National Gallery where the screening was, and saw the entire road lined up with mounties and policemen, even swat team people, preparing for a funeral, which I believe was for a popular MP. They also had an entire band of bagpipe players and drummers. They were all congregated in front of a large church. As the hearse pulled up and the coffin was brought out, all in ceremonial fashion with salutes and steps, the pipes played, and I was welling up. Brought back memories of bagpipes playing at Papa's funeral, so bagpipies always get me...I love them. (all who are left behind, take note, I want bagpipes at mine!) The emotion of the whole thing was annoyingly aggravated by my contact lens shifting over, but despite that it was one of the most moving things I have ever seen.

The screening I went to was the Kids' Showcase, which was devoid of festival-goers besides me, and only attended by a bunch of kids on a field trip. The films were great, including a hilarious episode of SpongeBob. The particular highlight was a short film from Sheridan called 'An Eye for Annai'...all done in a very flat graphic style, about a little creature with one eye looking for another eye. It was brilliant, so I'll definitely be contacting the filmmaker for a copy. The show concluded with a great stop-motion short whose tape got buggered at the end, so I never got to see how it ended. Poo.

From there I proceeded to another screening at 1:00, which also had some good films, including a 1930s-style music video done in Flash, and a really good CG short about two squirrels and a bunch of bank robbers. Other than these, I wasn't totally blown away, plus I was getting really sleepy by this point. I was definitely starting to feel the effects of the time difference and feeling jetlagged and sleep-deprived. In the afternoon I dropped by the Ottawa School of Art and got to drop off some VanArts materials and talk to an instructor and some students. They sounded very interested in us and might try to drop by our booth this weekend. Next time a more formal visit will have to be arranged; seems like a nice school.

I opted against going to the feature screening at 7, as I was wiped out from walking all over town and just needed to rest, so that's what I did after treating myself to a quiet Italian dinner. Pretty lonely day...I miss Jay and look forward to seeing her again. She notified me on the phone that my citizenship ceremony is coming up on Oct 4, so that's exciting news to get while being in the nation's capital.

Well, time to go set up the booth!