hello film lovers!
Another month has flown past and we’re back again with more movie passes including ones for those of you who missed our opening night film, Lucky Miles. Over the weekend as the Sydney Film Festival drew to a close we heard that Lucky Miles had won the Audience Award for Most Popular Feature Film and as icing on the cake another AFF Investment Fund film, the superb animation Sweet & Sour collected the Dendy Award’s Yoram Goss award for animation.
Only days earlier we had been congratulating producer Jo Dyer and director Michael Rowland on the news that Lucky Miles had been selected into the prestigious Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, in the Czech Republic and even better, into its main competition section. This section is strong on titles from former soviet bloc countries, with few competition features coming from outside Europe. The winner will be announced on July 7 so you may be reading more about this very soon.
Festival team Katrina Sedgwick, Adele Hann and Nick Zuppar attended the opening night of the Sydney Film Festival which literally blew everyone away. In the worst storms for 50 years the glitterati assembled in the glamour-challenging conditions to file past Cate Blanchett and Joan Chen as they posed for cameras beside the red carpet, and many were swept away again by the performance of Marion Cotillard as Ediaf Piaf in La Vie en Rose.Garin Nugroho visits Adelaide
The visit of Indonesian director Garin Nuroho (Opera Jawa) was a great treat for all who attended the screening of his film Of Love and Eggs at the Mercury Cinema and especially for staff and students at Flinders University who met with him the next day.
Garin is something of a powerhouse and manages to find time to organise an annual film festival – to be held in Indonesia in a couple of months, run workshops in West Papua, teach at an Indonesian University as well as writing, directing and producing his own films. A man of conscience and vision he charmed his dinner companions with an anecdote about a ‘riot’ he had organised to protest against proposed anti-pornography legislation that would have meant traditional grab would be banned for classical dancers. Using his networks he had 1,000 beautiful women clad in the offending attire demonstrate and dance before the assembled police who were totally disarmed by the display. Needless to say the legislation was dropped.
subscriber offer: free FILM tickets!!!
take the survey - win the tickets.... easy!!!
On offer to our subscribers this month, thanks to our friends at Dendy Films and Hopscotch Films, are double preview passes to AFF07 hit film LUCKY MILES (valid Wednesday 4th July), and EVENING (valid Friday 13th, Saturday 14th and Sunday 15th July, 2007).
To win your tickets, CLICK HERE and take our online survey. You must complete the entire survey to be eligible for the tickets. There are 16 questions, and it shouldn't take you any longer than 5 minutes to complete... so get cracking!
LUCKY MILES:
LUCKY MILES is a bittersweet comedy about distance, difference and dud maps - based on a collection of true stories. It's 1990 and an Indonesian fishing boat abandons Iraqi and Cambodian refugees in a remote part of the Western Australia. Whilst most are quickly caught by officials, three men with nothing in common but their misfortune and determination escape arrest and begin an epic journey into the heart of Australia. Pursued by an army reservist unit, our three heroes wander deeper into the desert, desperately searching for civilization amongst the stones of the Pilbara.
EVENING:
EVENING, stars some of the greatest actresses of our time, from the likes of Claire Danes and Toni Collette, to Vanessa Redgrave, Glenn Close, and Meryl Streep all in one extraordinary film. Deeply moving and incredibly romantic, Evening
is a film about the moments in life that define us, and the timeless love that binds mothers and daughters, sisters and friends. The film explores the romantic past and emotional present of Ann Grant and her daughters. Nearing the end of her life, Ann reflects on the time in her youth when she met the love of her life, a man she has never forgotten. Her daughters learn that decisions made at an impulse can effect a lifetime, and how important it is to know true love when it finds you. In cinemas July 19, 2007.
'Please Vote for Me' a Winner
Some of you may have been at the world premiere of the extraordinary documentary Please Vote for Me with its director Weijun Chen in attendance during AFF.If so it will come as no surprise that it is starting to garner awards as it travels the festival circuit, winning the Silverdocs AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival in a program of 100 films from 42 countries.The winning director receives $10,000 cash and $10,000 in-kind services and $5,000 in film stock.
more AFF Investment Fund News
The 2009 AFFIF slate is shaping up to be another bumper crop as you will see from the news below. It’s early days for most of these films as they have only just started their festival circuit lives, and one the short drama's Spike Up, by Anthony Maras, has only days ago finished a refined edit and sound mix.
FEATURES:
Boxing Day (dir: Kriv Stenders, prod: Kristian Moliere) was one of the seven titles from the 2007 AFFIF slate to been invited into the 54th Sydney Film Festival. We expect to hear of further festival selections, as well as the already announced screenings at the Dungog Film Festival (NSW), Perth’s REVelation Film Festival and the fourth Australia- Israel Cultural Exchange (AICE) in Israel in late June.
DOCUMENTARIES:
Forbidden Lie$ (dir: Anna Boinskowski and prod: Sally Regan) recently played to sell-out crowds in the 500 seat Isabel Bader theatre at the HOTDOCS festival in Toronto, with several people coming back to see the film a second time. The film was placed in the top 5 most popular films out of the 129 films at Hotdocs in the audience awards.
Words from the City (directors Natasha Gadd and Rhys Graham and producer Phillipa Campey) screened at the Sydney Film Festival where it was nominated for a FIPRESCI for Best Documentary and has been programmed into the REVelation Film Festival in Perth. Following these screenings it will appear on JTV on ABC, so keep an eye out for it.
What the Future Sounded Like (director Matthew Bate and producer Clare Harris) was selected into the Sydney Film Festival and the Berkshire International Film Festival in USA.
SHORTS:
Opening night film for the Message Sticks Film Festival in Sydney this year at the Sydney Opera House was Crocodile Dreaming (dir: Darlene Johnson and prod: Sue Milliken) with co star David Gulpilil in attendance. Recently it was selected into the National Geographic All Roads Film Festival (USA) and will be distributed on DVD by Ronin Films. The Federal Government has ordered 90 copies for distribution to all Australian embassies.
Great news for Swing, the short drama written by Cath Moore, directed by Chris Houghton and produced by Louise Pascale. It won the Best Short Film at St Kilda and scoped Australia’s largest cash prize for a short film, $10,000. It too was selected into the Sydney Film Festival.
The coveted Yoram Gross Animation Award announced at the Dendy Awards in Sydney was won by Sweet and Sour. Directed by Eddie White and produced by Sam White, Barry Plews, Hugh Nguyen and Ren Zhong Lun from the Shanghai Animation and Film Studio, the award has a prize of $3,000.
other news in brief...
The St Kilda Film Festival National Tour will be in Adelaide at the Mercury Cinema on Friday 29 & Saturday 30 June with some of the gems of the fest, including the Dendy winner for Most Innovative Film Paper City Architects directed by Daniel Agdag and local animation Sweet and Sour
The Danish film The Monastery — Mr Vig and the Nun, one of the documentaries which screened in the AFF’s Best of IDFA strand has won the 2007 FIPRESCI Award for Best Documentary. Directed by Pernille Rose Grønkjær, the announcement was made at the Closing Night Gala of the Sydney Film Festival at the State Theatre.
