Balmy summer nights

Please be warned, some of the subject matter may be uncomfortable

Blissful balmy, summer nights… ahhh.

What better way than to spend one then enjoying the Perth Film Festival as part of Perth’s 2011 Art’s Festival.

After work, picnics are packed and a group of us gals head off to the Somerville Auditorium, located in the stunning grounds of the University of Western Australia.

Making our way to the auditorium, we stop a young Asian couple, who look like university students, and ask if we are heading in the correct direction. We chat to them as we make our way. They let us know they are from Osaka, Japan and ask where we are from. My friend flippantly says we are from the United Nations, and then explains the different countries we each are from.

We arrive at the auditorium and line up for our tickets. A small enclave situated amongst the grand university arts buildings. Surrounded by tall pine trees and tree ferns, that as night falls allows the stars to shine through. Deck chairs lined in straight rows in front of a large screen.

There is the threat of a storm approaching, but the sky is still clear and the weather warm and balmy. The pine trees shield us from the wind that is blowing up, so only a slight, comfortable breeze drifts around us.

We mark out our seats and then choose a spot on the lawn to enjoy the delicacies we had packed earlier, a variety of dips, raw vegetables, smoked salmon tartlets, quiches, cheese, cold meat, fresh fruit and Bakewell tarts to finish off with, washed down with some pink bubbly.



Jerry Hall arrives with her latest beau Warwick Hemsley, Perth Property Millionaire and deputy director of the State Opera company. They mingle freely in with the crowd, enjoying their own picnic and group of friends, no-one annoying them, so they can autonomously enjoy the evening.

Our Japanese friends turn up and ask if they can take our photograph, yes we had more attention than Jerry. They join us and excitedly have their photograph taken with us (as one of the girl’s husband mentioned to her later on, “they probably did think you were from the United Nations”).

As night falls, we make our way back to our seats.

The movie, Desert Flower

The incredible, heart-warming story of Waris Dirie. How she runs away from her nomadic life in the desert at the age of 13, after she learns of her arranged marriage. How she ends up in the United Kingdom, homeless and her break into the modelling world and eventual appointment as UN Special Ambassador for the elimination of Female Genital Mutilation.

Yes the brutality of female circumcision (on young women and what Waris went through) and the lasting effects, was portrayed in the film. However the film was produced in such a way, that although you could feel the anguish, brutality, anger of what she went through at the time, the disbelief of how a mother could subject her daughter to this (although she herself would have been through the same brutality) this certainly didn’t detract from the overall beauty and feel good mood of the movie.

A movie I certainly would see again.