it's official: aff is festival of the year!
It’s been a hectic November with lots of travel for staff, our Arts Projects Australia office filling with people as they prepare for WOMADelaide and the Adelaide Fringe season of La Clique
, and flurries of calls and emails to AFF to congratulate us on the IF Award for Film Festival of the Year. Our Marketing Manager Nick Zuppar was on hand in the Gold Coast to accept the award in grand award ceremony style (sadly the only one not televised...) which capped a brilliant year for AFF, our investment fund films and many achievements for the Australian screen industry.
As this is our last newsletter before Christmas, we would like to send our subscribers and supporters our warmest, greenest, wettest, filmiest wishes for the festive season, and we look forward to communicating with you throughout 2008. Straight after Christmas you will be facing the traditionally busiest time for exhibitors, and we’ve selected some great new titles start off the new year. Start as ye shall begin. Atonement and Hunting and Gathering in season passes will be given away to the fastest responders (see below).
AFF Investment Fund News
THE AWARDS JUST KEEP ON KEEPING ON!
The short drama Spike Up
(writ/dir Anthony Maras) was just invited to enjoy its European premiere in competition at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in February 2008. Rotterdam is widely recognised as one of the most prestigious, innovative and competitive festivals in the world, with 340 000 attendees to boot. This is an amazing launch pad for this film as its begins its international festival run, with news that it has been selected into other international festivals, but details are embargoed until January. Nationally it was nominated for Best Short film in the Australian Director's Guild Awards, Australian Teacher's of Media Awards, and the 2008 AFI Awards which take place later this week.
The Home Song Stories was sweet music for Tony Eyres as he saw the film collect 5 awards at the IF Awards- including Best Director. It missed out on Best Film which went to The Jammed, but who could mind such an underdog of a film gaining such hard won success.
Entries open for SA’s Short Screen Awards
YOU DESERVE A FREE FILM AFTER READING ALL OF THAT!!!
The Media Resource Centre is calling for entries for the 2008 SA Short Screen Awards (SASSAs) proudly driven by Toyota. The deadline for entries is 5.00 pm Monday 8 January 2008.
Following its inclusion in the AFF program this year, for the first time the SASSAs will be presented in partnership with the Adelaide Bank Festival of Arts in 2008 . Now in their ninth year, the SA Short Screen Awards reward excellence and outstanding achievement in the South Australian film community.
“Short filmmaking in SA keeps going from strength to strength with SA short films consistently making the shortlist of the Australian Film Institute awards and other national and international short film competitions. The MRC is constantly expanding opportunities for short filmmaking with almost 50 short films made a year through various MRC production initiatives while both the South Australian Film Corporation and the Adelaide Film Festival support short film practice with investment grants. The SASSAs are a celebration of this fertile SA culture.” Gail Kovatseff, Director, Media Resource Centre
The SASSAs are presented in 19 categories including Best Drama, Best Comedy, Best Performance and Best Direction.The awards are open to SA professional screen practitioners and SA emerging screen practitioners demonstrating outstanding potential. The short screen works must have been completed after 31 December 2006.
For further information please contact Gail Kovatseff at MRC 8410 0979 or 0400 009 875.SUBSCRIBER OFFER!
BRILLIANT FILMS FOR OUR BRILLIANT SUBSCRIBERS!
On offer to our lucky subscribers this month are double in-season passes galore to the highly anticipated Atonement and Hunting and Gathering from one of France’s greatest directors Claude Berrion.
To win your tickets, CLICK HERE and fill in ALL of your details, and the name of the film you want to see. Tickets are limited, and will fly out the door, so be quick!
If you have trouble filling out the form, please CLICK HERE and email your contact details and film name.
ATONEMENT (MA)
Thanks to our mates at Universal Pictures, we've got a stack of doubles to give away!
On the hottest day of the summer of 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her older sister Cecilia (Knightley) and their housekeeper’s son Robbie Turner (McAvoy) embrace. By the end of that day the lives of all three will have been changed forever. Starring Keira Knightley, James McAvoy, Brenda Blethyn, Vanessa Redgrave and directed by Joe Wright, from Ian McEwan’s best selling novel.
Atonement opens nationally on December 26.
www.atonementthemovie.com.au
HUNTING AND GATHERING (M)
Thanks to our mates at Palace Films, we've got a stack of doubles to give away!
From one of France’s greatest directors Claude Berri (Jean de Florette) and starring French sweetheart Audrey Tautou (Amelie, Priceless), comes a gorgeously modern Parisian romance. Adapted from Anna Gavalda’s bestselling novel, Hunting and Gathering is, at its heart, a poignant story about human connection and the nurturing spirit of human relationships.
Hunting and Gathering opens on December 13.
To win your tickets, CLICK HERE and fill in ALL of your details, and the name of the film you want to see. Tickets are limited, and will fly out the door, so be quick!
If you have trouble filling out the form, please CLICK HERE and email your contact details and film name.
When The Rain Stops Falling
part of the adelaide bank festival OF arts
By now most of you will have received the Adelaide Bank Festival of Arts program and we would like to recommend a production that has been written by one of the AFF board members, Andrew Bovell (Lantana, Head On). This epic piece of Australian storytelling combines the talents of Bovell in his first work for the stage in many years, with the designs of acclaimed visual artist Hossein Valamanesh. Brink Productions' Artistic Director Chris Drummond will direct in a production that is co-presented by the State Theatre Company of South Australia and the Festival of Arts.
Set against a backdrop of a dramatically changing climate, an uncertain future and the wonder of the Australian landscape, it weaves four generations of interconnected stories, revealing estrangements within one family traced from 1959 to 2039.
Canadian Film Fest at the Mercury
Readers of the online journal Senses of Cinema may have read a recent report by Dan Sallit from the Toronto Film Festival which mentioned a film by Bruce McDonald, The Tracey Fragments, which premiered at Berlin.
“Meanwhile, in Berlin’s Panorama section, Canadian director Bruce McDonald (Hardcore Logo, Highway 61) reinvented the cinema with his remarkable The Tracey Fragments , adapted by Maureen Medved from her stream-of-consciousness novel about a 15-year-old Winnipeg girl (Ellen Page) suffering dramatically from the slings and arrows of adolescence. McDonald undertakes to break the screen into an array of panels, of ever-changing quantity and attributes, each containing an independent image. Whether McDonald has created an entirely new art form or an N-dimensional version of an old one, it’s immediately clear that every law of the cinema is rewritten in this universe, and that even the most arid and academic forms of montage are transformed into infinitely flexible instruments. Knowing that he’s discovered the philosopher’s stone, McDonald tirelessly generates new formal prototypes every few seconds, and leaves us at film’s end with the sense that he could have kept going forever. What makes Tracey more than an impressive demo is its unity of form and feeling, the sense that its screen may have been shattered by its young protagonist’s hormonal violence, McDonald’s wild-eyed punkish sense of drama, and Medved’s vivid dialogue. Old-school viewers may have a tough time adjusting to Tracey’s fragmentation, but even they might appreciate McDonald’s surprising compositional grace, which culminates in a beautiful, melancholy riverside tracking shot under the end credits.”
Even if it’s half as good as it sounds it should be worth a look, and it will be on in Adelaide on 4 January at 7:30pm as part of the Possible Worlds- Canadian Film Festival 4-11 Jan at the Mercury Cinema . Also screening is Manufactured Landscapes, one of the best documentaries in AFF and winner of the Best Canadian Film at Toronto. www.posibleworlds.net.au
Eco TVC
Deb Lavis, the powerhouse behind the EcoTVC project that has been featured in the last two AFF programs, was stunned recently when Jack Johnson, the American singer’s company contacted her about EcoVision . They wanted to support and promote this project which has now started a schools program, whereby 5 local schools have been involved in making short films with environmental sustainability messages.
Now called Eco Vision, Jack Johnson will be having links to it on his website and will be promoting it at his concert here as well as providing them with some funding. What started out as a competition to make a 30 sec TV commercial is steadily blossoming into a series of projects that will appear on TV screens, in cinema, on websites and in film festivals.
cash prize for intense doc
One of the most intense sessions at AFF was the work-in-progress screening of a documentary called The Tenth Day, presented by the filmmaker Gonzalo Arijon. Now called Stranded, the film, about the survival story of the Uruguyan rugby team after a plane crash high in the Andes, has won the VPRO Joris Ivens award, the top prize at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA). The award comes with a cash prize of Euros 12,500. It was also selected earlier this week for the World Documentary Competition in Sundance.
