Abbotsford gets its own short film festival: 3 March 2007

In the Realm of the Senses 2007 is to be held at the Collingwood Children’s Farm, probably a much more sensible location than last year’s under-attended Deep Rock Reserve in Yarra Bend Park. It’s a short film festival open to entries only from Australian and New Zealand film makers. I went to the 2006 festival, absolutely froze my balls off, and got quite excited about the lead film, about the tour to India by The Abbotsford Anglers, a cricket team, before realising very belatedly that the team belonged to Abbotsford in Sydney.

Their website is one of the most beautiful bits of web design I have ever seen, and you should go there now just to check it out (compare how crappy their Myspace site looks.) The brochure I picked up the other day says:

“Featuring a mish mash of live roving performers; DJs spinning a vast array of eclectic tunes; Visual Projections by hi.tek.trash; Healing and chill out zone; Random acts of kindness; Tasty mouth watering food; ‘El Rancho Relaxo’ bar; BYO couch, beanbag, blankets”. (1300 361 574)

Tap dancing and african drumming in Abbotsford

Snap! by Lauri Apple, a temporarily New Yorker and law student.

I put what success I have had in my career down to the claim on my curriculum vitae that I was the co-founder of the Melbourne University African Drumming Club. As far as I know, that is still going strong. And having travelled through West Africa to Timbuktoo, and listened, entranced to a guy singing along to the accompaniment of his own kora playing in a petrol station in Dakar, I read with particular interest in The Age today about the African drumming and dance academy within a couple of hops of my house, in Hoddle St, Abbotsford: Continue reading “Tap dancing and african drumming in Abbotsford”

Mountain Goats (The)

Brilliant snap! by the husband of Stephanie of Georgia, USA, aka Bonsai Butterfly, with thanks.

It has been a mountain goat day. The Mountain Goats were drinking Mountain Goat at The Corner this evening, a pleasure the punters were denied, Mountain Goat’s founders were on The 7.30 Report calling for a moratorium on excise on microbrewed beer, their Richmond brewery presumably held their weekly Goatage tonight, where the brewery turns into a pub, and John Darnielle — theconstant member of the ensembles which have over time performed as “the Mountain Goats” — sang about magpies in Richmond to an adoring goddam piercingly screaming crowd, a big crowd, and brought him and his little frantic guitar and vocals sometimes duet sometimes trio within the rubric of this little newspaper. Snap by husband of Bonsai Butterfly from Georgia, in Montana, with thanks. Continue reading “Mountain Goats (The)”