Nederlands Film Festival in Utrecht - Oct. 4

I had the chance to check out the National Dutch Film Festival in Utrecht. One of my Dutch classmates organized the outing, and even found films that I could understand, eventhough I was totally willing to go and watch a Dutch film. In retrospect, sitting through two hours of something you don't understand at all made me really appreciate the subtitles.

The first film was a short called Meander; it was about a group of kids and their day swimming in the river. Not eventful, and actually kinda boring. The film was not silent but had no dialogue so language was not an issue.

The second film was a documentary called Dreaming By Numbers. It was set in Italy and in Italian, subtitled in English, which really surprised me, considering it's a Dutch film. Thank you Global Village. It was about the Italian lottery and how each number represents something according to a large book (I don't remember what it's called...) People who've been playing the lottery for years would go to buy their ticket by describing a crazy dream (e.g. in whcih their toes turned into string beans and a dog ate them) to the ticket lady. So the person behind the counter would give them the numbers for toes, beans and dog. No joke.


Utrecht. Note the platform along the canal filled with tables; haven't seen that in Amsterdam yet this seemed to be the trend in Utrecht.










Dutch Daan and American Evan. Dutch Tim is taking the picture. We're all filmers together. In Utrecht for the Film Festival.