I went along to the Bombay Beach Premiere at Wilton's Music Hall last night - what a hidden gem!
After we made ourselves comfortable in the beautiful Music Hall, we saw a lady busily taking photos of the audience and the Hall, and then to our surprise it turned out to be the director Alma Har'el, when she was later introduced to us before the film started.
The film did not feel like a documentary, some of it was obviously choreographed. It felt like a tour into the daily lives of a very poor community, against the scenes of the desert near the Salton Sea, and the shores are dirty and littered, however, it was beautifully filmed, so surreal and the soundtrack added to the dreamlike quality. The characters were interesting, and I did enjoy Bob Dylan's music. 6.5/10
After the film finished there was a Q&A with Alma. She said it took her about 4 months to film but another 8 months to edit. She filmed it on a Canon Vixia camcorder which she got from Best b*y. She was carrying a bigger and heavier camera on day one and decided it was too awkward, so switched to the lighter and easier to handle Canon to get down into the scenes on the desert.
We were all given a token for a free drink, so I decided to have it after the film. I then went to thank the girl (from the distributors for the film) who sent me the email about my winning tickets from Facebook, and she asked if I was prettyxcool. Spooky! As my real name is on Facebook. She had seen my earlier tweet as prettyxcool, and put two and two together. She then told me she was phunkygal !! We were never introduced before, but she had been pointed out to me a couple of times in a darken cinema, so I did not recognise her. What a small world.
