The Day the Cinema Came to Town.
I’ve mentioned it a few times before on this blog but here is another good opportunity to mention it again. Australia, it really is the great outdoors.
“Biff In the Burbs” came to our sleepy little western suburb on Saturday. So, what is it? Biff is the Brisbane International Film Festival which is organised by the Queensland Government with the help of local councillors and the support of some chosen sponsors.
On Saturday they set up shop in our local park, the very same park we were at the other week for one of our friends children’s birthday parties. The doors opened at 5:30 pm and entrance was free!
The Crowd Gathers
Also free were fairy floss, popcorn, a bouncy castle, they also gave away free toys including little cars, crayons and colouring books and a bag of jelly beans for each and every child. I did tell you all of that was free, didn’t I?
Princess & Dragon
The Dragon from the St George Bank was also doing the rounds entertaining the kids and of course, gently plugging their banking service. But hey, that’s what sponsors get to do.
At 6:25pm the film was introduced by Margaret de Witt, a local councillor and bang on time at 6:30 pm the film started. The film was called “A Little Princess”. Aaaah! Just perfect for my five-year-old little daughter and all of her friends, surely?
Here’s the plot outline: the little girl’s father gets killed in the war. As a consequence of this our little heroine, whose mother was already dead, becomes an orphan. As there is no one around to pay the expensive education she had been enjoying up until this point, she is hauled out of her harp lessons and dragged off to the attic to work as a slave.
Hmmmm.
The Screen
The whole show finished at eight o’clock sharp and everyone returned back to our house for a short while. There was some talk amongst our little five-year-olds of parental deaths until we managed to get them to change the subject to the magic of fairies. So, no permanent damage seems to have been done.
That aside, it was a great evening out for my wife and her friends and our own collective of little princesses and quite amazing when you consider that the only item with a price tag on it were the hot dogs being sold by the Scoutmasters.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t make the event as I was busy re-positioning my hammock in anticipation of summer.
Spoiler alert!
In the last five minutes of the film it turned out that daddy wasn’t really dead after all. There, now you can all put away the Kleenex.
