Whenever there is a Hungarian party at a film festival, goulash is not very far behind.
Sadly, I was too busy feasting on endless amounts of Slănină (cured slabs of fatback) to join the queue. By the time I got there, it was gone. Earlier in the day, I purchased some Plăcintă cu cartofi for around 5 lei (one euro), which is basically a pastry filled with potatoes. I reminded me a little of Russian pirozhok, but much bigger. For meat and bread lovers, you can’t do much better than Transylvanian cuisine.
After the Hungarian party, I walked to another party, past the main square, where hundreds of people were both in the open-air screening and standing just outside, watching Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942) weave its timeless spell. In a moment of pure film-watching serendipity, I stopped just in time to watch La Marseillaise sequence. Viva la France!
Thankfully, excellent food (and too much wine, hence the late post) was not the only nourishment found at TIFF today. The two documentaries I saw in the What’s Up Doc? section, concerning themselves with questions of dedication and the use of one’s available free time, were also excellent.
Read the rest over at Journey Into Cinema.