"Hear ye! Hear ye! BIFF has now arrived!

Hamilton town crier Edward S. Christopher announces the beginning of the Ninth Annual Bermuda Film Festival in Hamilton.

  BIFF director Aideen Ratteray Pryse introduces this year's festival jury, actor Peter Riegert, Atlantic Film Festival Association director Lia Rinaldo, Santa Barbara International Film Festival director Roger Durling, the Daily Variety's Robert Koehler, producer/director   Stanley  Nelson, Actress,Laura Elena Harring,and Fresh Creations' Elmore Warren.

         

Peter Riegert addresses the audience at the kick-off party. (photos by Mike Takeuchi)

With the clanging of the bell and the bellowing of Hamilton's official town crier Edward S. Christopher, the Ninth Annual BIFF opened with great enthusiasm at the No. 6 Passenger Terminal on Front Street.  After the welcome by Festival director Aideen Ratteray Pryse, the festival began in earnest with  several screennings, including the official opening night film, "American Dreamz".  Showing at the Southside Cinema, the film, which starred Hugh Grant, Mandy Moore, and Dennis Quaid,  is a political comedy mixed in with a satire on the ubiquitous television show, "American Idol".  It opened to mixed reviews in Bermuda.  Leaving the theater, viewers could be heard saying a variety of things including, "pretty funny", "not bad", "fairly marginal", to "I fell asleep a couple of times."