A Life In Film

Sydney Film Festival 2014

2014-06-08T11:48:00.003+10:00

SYDNEY FILM FESTIVAL 2014

As the programmer of the Sydney Film Festival Hub, I live in Town Hall during the Festival, and don't get to see many films. But having watched a few in advance, these are my notes on this year's crop...

EASTERN BOYS

This French film is simultaneously a love story, a suspenseful thriller and a complex, somewhat hopeful drama of illegal immigration. That it manages to be richly rewarding on all fronts while delivering surprising insights on the current friction points of French society - wealth distribution, the treatment of asylum seekers and sexual politics - is a minor miracle.

AT BERKELEY

Spend four hours in the hallowed halls of UC Berkeley and observe, through the lens of Frederick Wiseman's unobtrusive camera, the drama of tertiary education in modern-day America. It's a unique opportunity. Seize it and - provided you keep your thinking cap on throughout - emerge from the darkened theatre elated and enlightened.

MOMMY

There are enough moments of pure cinema boxed up in Mommy's 1:1 frame, especially in the first third, to humble the most accomplished and experienced filmmakers. It's perhaps time to stop seeing Dolan's work as bandwagon one should hop on or let pass. None of of his films are perfect, but they add up to a surprisingly consistent body of work that deserves critical scrutiny beyond for-or-against hype-fielding. Scrape off the stylistic flourishes if you need to, but Mommy's amped-up melodrama is richly satisfying both as a well-performed character study and as a confidently steered narrative which, for once, refuses to indulge the director's narcissistic tendencies. That's not to say it isn't self-indulgent (or couldn't use a tighter edit), only that surrendering to these excesses yields handsome rewards.

DAVID HOCKNEY IN THE NOW

Lucy Walker's documentary portraits are always a delight. No one gets to the core of what makes remarkable people remarkable with as much dexterity, courage and compassion. In this film on British queer artist David Hockney, she says more about art in six minutes than some have said in six-part series.

TWO DAYS ONE NIGHT

A simple, perfectly structured narrative. A great actress surrendering to the role. Filmmaker at the top of their game. Is there a better film in this year's festival? The Dardenne brothers have taken a micro-crisis of topical and universal significance and turned it into riveting, noble cinema. Like many of their films, Two Days One Night exists and functions at the intersection between the personal and the political, inviting viewers to share in its questioning of choices and responsibilities without ever preaching. Using raw materials and a fraction of the contents of the filmmaker's toolbox, they've built a modest but robust shelter sure to endure the seasons for years to come.

DESERET

Festivals, in providing context, filmmaker access and state-of-the-art screening facilities, are the perfect place to discover experimental cinema. This year, we are incredibly lucky to get access to master filmmaker James Benning, film critic and curator Gabe Klinger and three of Benning's films on the big screen. Deseret juxtaposes the eventful genesis of Utah with static shots of the territory, inviting the viewer to tune into a mysterious dialogue that resonates long after the lights have gone up.

BORN TO FLY

Catherine Gund's documentary portrait unpacks the philosophy behind Elizabeth Streb's extreme dance choreography, which tests the limits of human endurance, subverts gender roles and pushes dancers not just to the edge, but off the edge. From the groundbreaking dance scene of 70s New York to Streb's recent work for the London Olympics, it charts the determination of ambitious artists to do the impossible and make humans fly.

A postcard from SXSW 2014

2014-03-18T16:09:00.001+11:00

SXSW 2014

What started as a small music festival in the heart of Texas back in 1987 has become a massive multi-faceted industry conference and public celebration showcasing the most promising voices in film, music, new media, game design, the internet and more... South By South West has become a multi-headed beast of epic proportions, one that's as difficult to tame as it is to ignore.

On the first day, it's easy to spot the newbies. Curbing under the weight of their registration tote bags, they stand on the spot in the Austin Convention centre, wide-eyed and paralyzed, as a stream of seasoned conference attendees around them race to their next destination. Others are sat on a bench trying to make sense of a program that's thicker than a phonebook, experiencing the first pangs of panic as FOMO sets in: in each time slot, dozens of high-profile talks, screenings and gigs compete for their attention and limited time.

SXSW survival kit

I recognize the newbies because I was one of them only last year. SXSW can be an overwhelming experience, and it can take a few days to start making the most of the spoils on offer.

The three main pillars of South By are Music, Film and Interactive. This year I'm focusing on Film and Interactive, the two festivals most relevant to my job as programmer of the Sydney Film Festival Hub. Each strand comes with its own 200-page program, and the first task is to skim through the listings (or the powerful SXSW app) and select key screenings and events, in a strategic attempt to prioritize sessions. A victim of its own success, SXSW now attracts so many visitors that it takes rigorous and tactical planning to get the most out of the experience. You can easily spend your entire day waiting in line if you're not careful.

The queue for SXXpress tickets (which allow you to access priority lines at 2 screenings each day), for example, usually begins at 8am and lasts at 60-75 minutes on average. Most people waiting in line look like zombies ravaged by jetlag, late nights and too many margaritas. Yet there's a warm and friendly atmosphere, with attendees chatting enthusiastically with complete strangers about their favourite film, band or BBQ joint so far. The locals prove especially helpful and generous with information - the festival's given Austinites a real sense of pride in their city, despite prevailing ambivalence about seeing it overtaken by geeks and groupies two weeks of the year.

SXSW Film poster, designed by Gravillis Inc. in collaboration with Zim & Zou

The programmers deny there's such a thing as a typical SXSW film. From the 30 films I saw I'd say there's a type of film that does particularly well here: the American indie, made on a tight budget, by young people, about young people. SXSW Film is credited for introducing the world to filmmakers such as Lena Dunham, Joe Swanberg and Andrew Bujalski. This bent is both the festival's strength and its weakness: while it's the go-to festival for emergent indie voices (rivaling Sundance some years), those voices can often sound a little tiresome as group (as Variety's Andrew Barker puts it: "jaded, irritable, young white New Yorkers with nothing but self-created First World problems").

The marquee at Austin's beautiful Paramount Theatre

Eight world premieres are featured in the narrative competition (selected from a mind-boggling 1,300 entries or so), but this year's crop didn't deliver break out hits on the scale of last year's SHORT TERM 12 and DRINKING BUDDIES. It was a very NY-heavy selection and the stakes were rarely much higher than a broken heart. I saw 6 of the 8, and my favourites, in no particular order, are listed below.

Grand Prize winner FORT TILDEN is an amusing satire of the self-centred twentysomethings whose whiny outlook seems to define the culture since GIRLS first burst on the scene. Whether or not you're able to laugh both at and with the irritable characters will determine your enjoyment of this silly, caustic little film.
Relationship drama THE HEART MACHINE charts the ups and downs (not to mention the twists and turns) of a long-distance relationship that plays out over skype and social media. It's confidently directed and features strong performances by John Gallagher Jr and Kate Lyn Sheil.
In THE MEND two estranged brothers reunite over one alcohol-fueled week in NY, during which their respective psychological wounds are reopened. There's an unpredictable madcap energy at work here which lights up the screen. It’s not to everyone’s tastes (many walkouts), but I’d say we haven’t heard the last of director John Magary.

A poster for the 40th anniversary screening of Texas Chain Saw Massacre at SXSW

Elsewhere in the program I enjoyed...

FAULTS: a tense, claustrophobic psychological thriller in the vein of SOUND OF MY VOICE, about a struggling expert in cults who is hired by concerned parents to find, kidnap and deprogram their daughter. It's set mainly in a hotel room but the confident filmmakers have your undivided attention throughout.
CESAR CHAVEZ: a biopic of Mexican-American activist and union organizer Cesar Chavez, who fought for the rights of migrant farmers to unionize. Diego Luna directs with restraint, avoiding many of the pitfalls of biopics (though the film is occasionally quite sentimental). Cast is great, especially Michael Pena as Chavez. The film got a standing ovation from the mostly Hispanic audience. Director Diego Luna was joined on stage by Rosario Dawson, America Ferrera, Cesar Chavez foundation director Paul Chavez and civil rights activist Dolores Huerta. The emotion in the room was palpable, making this a memorable screening.
BOYHOOD: This Sundance hit was filmed over 12 years. It's a magical experience in which the audience gets to see a family grow up before their eyes. The BEFORE trilogy and now this: no one films the way the passage of time quietly shapes our personalities and our destinies quite like Richard Linklater. Of course, Linkalter is the creative director of the Austin Film Society so this was a hometown premiere filled with friends and supporters, another lively screening that exemplified this idea of a film festival as a celebration.

Richard Linklater and the cast of Boyhood

The documentary program felt particularly strong this year, and of the films I saw I'll remember:

THE GREAT INVISIBLE, which won the Grand Prize for non-fiction: an effective look at the ramifications of the Deep Horizon accident and resulting oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The film focuses on the psychological and economic (rather than environmental) impact of the tragedy, and the varying success of different attempts to repair the damage. Includes surreal conversations by oil executives speaking candidly on camera in a way that will leave you picking your jaw up from the floor.
THE INTERNET’S OWN BOY, a moving and insightful portrait of open internet activist Aaron Swartz who committed suicide aged 26 while under investigation by the FBI.
BORN TO FLY, a portrait of New York dancer and choreographer Elizabeth Streb whose unique brand of “pop action” choreography is more akin to extreme sports than contemporary dance. The film weaves together a history of the thriving queer dance/arts scene in NY and Streb's latest works, including a series of death defying stunts which took place in the lead up to London Olympics.

Grand Budapest Hotel's Jason Schwartzman and TV On The Radio's Tunde Adebimpe

In between films I squeezed in meetings, drinks receptions, tacos, and visits to some of the trade shows that make up SXSW, including a video game convention (where you could race Supermario Carts IRL), a Renegade Crafts Fair and Flatstock, dedicated to the art of film and gig poster illustration. At night, the city buzzes like a beehive, with thousands of revelers roaming the streets from gig to gig. Austin's 6th street in particular erupts daily into a riotous cacophony, buskers competing with energy drink promo girls on the back of pick up trucks for the attention of Lone Star-fueled party-goers.

Austin's legendary 6th Street during South By

The raucous fiesta of live music, burritos and tequila makes for an incredible collective experience, one I've rarely seen in 15 years of traveling the world's festivals. This year however, a pall was cast over the celebrations when a drunk driver fleeing the police crashed into the crowd, killing three and injuring many. The tragedy sparked discussions about the unwieldy size of the festival - though other were quick to point out the senseless act could have happened anywhere. The festival went on, but the mood was somewhat subdued in the last few days.

Lena Dunham chats about women in the media

As a badge holder, you also get to attend talks by the people who shape our culture, including in my case, addresses by Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, actor Jason Swartzman and GIRLS creator Lena Dunham (more on that last keynote here).

Among the talks, the highlight for me was an articulate tribute to the power of cinema, delivered by Tilda Swinton (in conversation with Indiewire's Eugene Hernandez). Some excerpts:

"Cinema: an amazingly humane opportunity to put yourself in the shoes of somebody else and see the world through their eyes. What were dreams like before we invented cinema? What was human consciousness like before we invented cinema? How lucky are we? The drug itself is strong enough to withstand all methods of delivery. We're never ever going to not want that. We just need to separate the signal from the noise."
"The culture is ours. It is being built by us. We don't need to make deals with it, or negotiate with it. You just plant your feet firmly on the ground and bend your knees because there are winds coming and you do what you want to do. You put a flake of your skin onto the culture, and then another one and then another until the culture is you-shaped."

Tilda Swinton: "the first film I ever saw was Herbie Rides Again"

Traveling to Austin for South By Southwest is a little like stepping into a time machine and emerging two years into the future. These are the films, technologies and bands that will percolate through mainstream culture in 2015-2016. Visiting the festival is like putting one's finger on the pulse of the culture and feeling the heartbeat of a thousand artists and creators. It's also a realization that in this age of unbridled tech-enhanced creativity, each and every one of us has the power (and to a degree, a responsibility) to shape the culture... and that's surely something worth celebrating.

Top 20 Films of 2013

2013-12-22T18:12:00.001+11:00

2013 was another great year for me film-wise, and I was exposed to some fantastic films and filmmakers, and traveled to the Toronto International Film Festival and SxSW. I spoke at several film schools. I ran and programmed the Possible Worlds and Young at Heart film festivals in Sydney, as well as the Sydney Film Festival Hub. My company The Festivalists also ran a World Movies Secret Cinema event where we screened Holy Motors on the tarmac at Essenden Airfields.

Blue Is The Warmest Color (Abdellatif Kechiche, France)
Her (Spike Jonze, US)
Stranger By The Lake (Alain Giraudie, France)
Gravity (Alfonso Cuaron, US)
Eastern Boys (Robin Campillo, France)
Before Midnight (Richard Linklater, US)
Drinking Buddies (Joe Swanberg, US)
Upstream Color (Shane Carruth, US)
Under The Skin (Jonathan Glazer, UK)
Tom At The Farm (Xavier Dolan, Canada)
Captain Phillips (Paul Greengrass, US)
Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino, US)
La Grande Belleza (Paolo Sorrentino, Italy)
12 Years A Slave (Steve McQueen, UK-US)
Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen, US)
The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her (Ned Benson, US)
Our Children (Joachim Lafosse, Belgium)
Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow, US)
Double Play: James Benning & Richard Linklater (Gabe Klinger)
Going Away (Nicole Garcia, France)

Honourable mentions:

Interior. Leather Bar.
Concussion
Bastards
The Wait
Paradise: Love
World War Z
Short Term 12
Computer Chess
Mud
This Is Martin Bonner

Best Documentaries:

How To Survive A Plague
Jodorowsky's Dune
Seduced and Abandoned

Best TV Shows:

Top of the Lake (mini-series)
House of Cards (season 1)
Orange Is The New Black (season 1)
Girls (season 2)
The Returned (season 1)

Most misunderstood film of the year:
Only God Forgives

Most overrated films of the year:
Room 237
Pacific Rim
The Bling Ring

Biggest disappointment:
The Grandmaster

Best thing to have happened to American cinema:
Megan Ellison

Best Poster of 2013
Nebraska (I'm going to agree with Adrian Curry here)

Anatomy of a Film Poster: AFTER MAY (APRES MAI)

2013-08-13T10:58:00.001+10:00

Here's an exclusive first look at the Australian poster for Olivier Assayas' new film AFTER MAY (in French APRES MAI, but also sometimes known as SOMETHING IN THE AIR), which releases here November 21st. You can watch the trailer here.

I first saw this film at the Toronto International Film Festival, my favourite film at the fest (I saw over fifty) and one I can't recommend highly enough, whether you're a fan of Assayas' work (which I am, ever since L'EAU FROIDE doused my youthful idealism in some very cold water as a 17 year old cinephile) or just discovering the French auteur now. In Toronto, I sat through an incredibly insightful masterclass by Assayas, which you can watch here. I recommend bookmarking it saving it for once you've seen AFTER MAY, it's riveting stuff.

The Australian poster was designed by the talented Jonathan Coucoulas at Carnival Studio. I asked him about the design:

"While there wasn't a detailed brief for this particular project, the distributor Palace Films did set some parameters to work within, including the desire to focus primarily on the young characters that the film follows. We have a really good relationship with the team there, and are given the liberty to explore ideas first, then refine a direction for the project. This helps the creative process immensely, and shows through in the end results."

AFTER MAY is an autobiographical journey back to the early 70's, following a young French artist (played by relative newcomer Clément Métayer) in the wake of the electrifying student revolt which would change French culture and politics forever.

"The film is rich in its presentation of the times that followed the riots of May '68 so there was an effort, in some alternate concepts, to focus on the more 'revolutionary' aspects of the period, but the film is more informed by these events than actually about them.

At the heart of the story is essentially the journey of an artist, a creative awakening for Gilles as he finds his place in the world. The watercolour effect evokes his work as an emerging artist and the more romantic, old-school film artwork and montages that used to be painted. Fire is another strong symbol that carries throughout the film (be it passions, creativity or more literally, a molotov cocktail) so there was an effort to get a sense of that across in the artwork also."

Jonathan often works in innovative use of typography in his designs, so I asked him about the title:
"For the type (in terms of the title) we wanted something that felt hand made, something Gilles could have created himself, so it was masked it out of the artwork, just like you would with watercolour.

Although there was other designs explored, this was initial concept presented, so its nice to see your instincts come to fruition."

Here's the French poster:

If you're interested in other posters designed by Carnival Studio, I wrote about the designs for

Sydney Film Fest Safari Scorecard

2013-06-15T17:56:00.002+10:00

The multiplex is like a zoo. It advertises mighty lions but the beasts look a little sad, everything’s expensive, the place stinks and it’s crowded with kids on sugar high.

The film festival is more like a safari. You drive all day looking for the lions, but instead you see rare tigers that are almost extinct, a scary baboon and some strange, beautiful birds you didn't even know existed.

Here are the strange, beautiful birds of my 2013 Sydney Film Festival safari...

Narrative, in (un-scientific, temporary order of preference):

Paradise: Love
Frances Ha
Upstream Color
Mystery Road
Everyday
Museum Hours
Stoker
Computer Chess
Only God Forgives
What Maisie Knew
What Richard Did
The East
For Those In Peril
Camille Claudel 1915
Pieta
Prince Avalanche
Midnight's Children
Ginger And Rosa
A Hijacking

Best Non-fiction:

Stories We Tell
William And The Windmill
Downloaded
Cities on Speed: Bogota Change
I Am Divine
TPB AFK - The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard

(not impressed by:)

Scatter My Ashes At Bergdorf

Two great experimental films:

Rear Window Loop
Final Cut Ladies And Gentlemen

Oldies that will never lose their luster:

Rear Window
Before Sunset
Before Sunrise

My Festival was spent mostly in the Hub, which was heaps of fun this year.

Favourite hub moments of 2013:

Park Chan-wook and Mia Wasikowska repaying Stoker's debt to Hitchcock by checking out Rear Window Loop and the Hitchcock wax statue, drink in hand.
Intern (grabbed from the audience) given an OTT impromptu lap-dance by Chilli Rox during Cinema Burlesque.
The hilarious VHS party, hosted by Josh Wheatley and puppet critic Harvey Feltztein
An informal film festival organizers meet-up in which we had drinks, patted ourselves on the back and promised to work more closely together in the future.
DJ Jim Poe's nu-disco DJ set which brought Moroder, Lindstrom & Todd Terry to the party.

Big props to all the volunteers, filmmakers, bartenders, critics, academics, performers, photographers, pole dancers, DJs, comedians, bibliophiles, barflies and movie lovers who made the Hub such as special place to hang out this year. Despite having to close on the last weekend to make room for the Dalai Lama, attendance was up 16% on last year (average daily attendance was up 42%). Let's do it all over again a year from now, yeah?

Stranger than paradise (PARADISE: LOVE)

2013-06-02T14:35:00.001+10:00

PARADISE: LOVE

Venturing into Ulrich Seidl’s Paradise trilogy (Love, Faith, Hope) is perhaps a little like going on a safari on Mars: unpredictable, dangerous and not always very hospitable. Like a ticket to Mars however, it’s an offer you can’t refuse.

Are you on board? Great. Now would be a suitable moment then to let you know that the first stop, Paradise Love, is not particularly paradisiacal, and that you’ll exit this spaceship not on another planet but right here on planet Earth.

In fact our destination is Kenya, and at first, the white sandy beaches and turquoise waters look a little bit like a postcard paradise. Fifty year-old Teresa is here on a holiday, a sex holiday to be exact. The alien-like figures emerging from the sea turn out to be beautiful, tall, muscled African men. On offer is sexual companionship, in exchange for financial support for their relatives in need. It’s a transaction that’s more complicated than might first appear.

One immediate interpretation is that the film acts as a complex synecdoche meant to represent the wider socio-economics of global tourism, or even a microcosm through which to examine the dealings between the Third World and the First.

Seidl’s work however, is not so easily encapsulated. While Paradise Love is definitely a tale of exploitation and bourgeois consumerism, you may want to think long and hard about making moral judgments. Seidl certainly invites you to.

There’s something tragic and repulsive in the loneliness of the overweight, over-the-hill Teresa, and her naive quest for intimacy. Seidl’s cruel objectification of the characters is disturbing, but with good reason. If the film holds a mirror to Western consumerism, then Teresa is a reflection of ourselves, and our disgust should evolve, therefore, into thought-provoking self-loathing. Eat Pray Love this ain’t.

This somewhat grotesque, unflinching representation was missing from Laurent Cantet's similarly themed Heading South, in which our proxy into the world of sex tourism was the beautiful, wise Charlotte Rampling.

Like her girlfriends, Teresa may be racist, vulgar and condescending, but Seidl isn't out to indict. At least not directly. If there is spite, revulsion, pity or sympathy to extend these women, it's a choice that is entirely left to the audience.

It's an incredible balancing act, served by a raw, affecting performance by Viennese actress Margarete Tiesel. Seidl's approach, naturalistic and non-judgmental, manages to preserve Teresa's dignity. In between (sometimes in the the very middle of) tableaux of pure ugliness, there are flashes of genuine emotion and redemptive beauty... If these women are pushed to such extremes in their quest for love, it's because they are getting no love at home. They are monuments to loneliness and abandonment. Who, Seidl seems to ask, is to blame for that?

Paradise: Love is complex because it doesn't seek to simplify human nature nor sugar-coat reality. It's confronting because we, the audience, are part of this reality. It's our own nature that is under the microscope.

Ulrich Seidl's Paradise: Love premieres on June 8th at the 60th Sydney Film Festival. Paradise: Faith and Paradise: Hope are also screening at the festival.

See also: 12 Films to See at the 2013 Sydney Film Festival, and my reviews of Every Day and Camille Claudel 1915.

In the interest of full disclosure, I’m one of the programmers of the Sydney Film Festival, though my work is limited to the Hub, and I had no part in selecting the film mentioned here.

Serving time (EVERYDAY & CAMILLE CLAUDEL 1915)

2013-05-31T08:25:00.002+10:00

EVERYDAY

Like a British Steven Soderbergh, Michael Winterbottom is not only prolific (not one but two films in this year’s line-up!), he’s versatile. While he’s made adventurous films in many genres, from science fiction (Code 46) to pulp thrillers (The Killer Inside Me), from comedy (The Trip) to erotica (9 Songs), the work that often bowls me over is the socially-minded realism of films such as In This World, The Road to Guantanamo or even A Mighty Heart.

A woman juggles several jobs as she tries to raise her four pre-teen kids on her own. Each day is a routine, a series of recurring rituals, from noisy breakfast to nightly tuck-in. Each day a minor miracle of keeping a family together. Everyday charts this daily struggle over the course of five years, interrupted only by the excursions to visit the woman’s partner, who is serving a long jail sentence.

Everyday is not an easy film to like due to its pacing and repetitive nature, but it’s an easy film to admire. Michael Winterbottom shot the film over five years using the same six actors, capturing segments between his other feature films. This is almost unheard of in narrative filmmaking, and affords a unique opportunity to tell convincingly tell a story that stretches over a long time period.

The passage of time is difficult to capture on film, where years are compressed in minutes through make-up, special effects, montage sequences, flashbacks or artificial narrative devices, none of which sit well within the context of social realism. This unusual structure however achieves this with remarkable grace. We see the children grow up before our very eyes, getting a keen understanding of how the situation – common to the relatives of prisoners all over the world – affects people over time.

The always amazing Shirley Henderson carries this film with a dedicated performance that easily allows you to forget you’re not watching a documentary. It doesn’t hurt that the four kids (siblings in real life) appear to be mostly playing themselves.

The viewer’s empathy is an act of will, there is no manipulative pulling at the heart strings. This fictional narrative’s real power lies in its naturalistic approximation of truth. The film is repetitive, difficult and nearly without catharsis nor redemption, precisely because the situation it describes is repetitive, difficult and nearly without catharsis nor redemption. It’s a film about the mundane that is anything but ordinary.

Michael Winterbottom’s Everyday has its Australian Premiere on June 6th at the 60th Sydney Film Festival.

CAMILLE CLAUDEL, 1915

Bruno Dumont’s work has the ability to challenge even the most patient cinephile. While I found the uncompromising vision of Flanders and L’Humanité thrilling, the cryptic mysticism of his recent Outside Satan left me entirely indifferent.

In 1988, Bruno Nuytten shone a light on the tragic artist Camille Claudel, in an eponymous Oscar-nominated arthouse hit which showcased Isabelle Adjani at the top of her game. Unsurprisingly, this chronological sequel takes a different stylistic journey, zeroing in on a freeze-frame from the tumultuous life of turn-of-the-century sculptor, allegedly driven mad by her destructive affair with mentor Auguste Rodin.

Once again Dumont casts non-professional actors, this time the real-life patients of the psychiatric hospital in which the film was shot (the beautiful Saint-Paul de Mausole monastery near Avignon, where Van Gogh did a lot of his painting). This time however, he places amongst them a bona-fide movie star, the luminous Juliette Binoche.

Her Bressonian performance - tear-streaked face in extreme close-up, ghost-like figure gliding through the cloisters – is this film’s saving grace. Her placidity and restraint is broken by hysterical rants and cries of the utmost despair. Claudel has been in confinement against her will for two years when the film begins, and would end up imprisoned in this silent hell for nearly three decades. Binoche’s performance - its pregnant pauses, lulls and brutal explosions - intelligently captures the effect of prolonged internment on a person whose survival depends entirely on losing track of time.

The film, consequently, demands from the viewer a corresponding shift in temporal perception. Those who give in and surrender themselves to the Vermeer-like beauty of the tragic tableau, who immerse themselves in this frozen moment when a week is made to feel like an eternity, will be handsomely rewarded.

In other words, it’s not for everyone. But isn’t that in itself an argument for seeing it, and for seeing it at a film festival?

A good curator doesn’t just show the films that they like. They have a responsibility to recognize good artists and to pay attention to where those artists are looking, what their preoccupations might be, which boundaries they are pushing. Sometimes, those areas are not immediately appealing. In a way, while the festival is programmed by a curator, the viewer, in selecting what to see from a wide range on offer, is a curator too (if only of their own personal Festival). Shouldn't we pursue a similar strategy?

Bruno Dumont's Camille Claudel 1915 screens on June 10th at the 60th Sydney Film Festival. See also: 12 Films to See at the 2013 Sydney Film Festival.

In the interest of full disclosure, I’m one of the programmers of the Sydney Film Festival, though my work is limited to the Hub, and I had no part in selecting the film mentioned here.

Anatomy of a film poster: MYSTERY ROAD

2013-05-28T15:01:00.000+10:00

Here's an exclusive first look at the poster for Ivan Sen's MYSTERY ROAD, which will have its world premiere as the Opening Night film of the 2013 Sydney Film Festival next week.

I spoke briefly with director Ivan Sen - whose work I have been a huge fan of ever since I programmed Beneath Clouds at a Festival in Manchester in 11 years ago - and Demi Hopkins, of Sydney boutique design firm Carnival Studio (who'd already designed the key art for Ivan Sen's T oomelah).

Shot in central Queensland, Mystery Road stars Aaron Pedersen, Hugo Weaving, Ryan Kwanten and Jack Thompson. In this contemporary western, Detective Jay Swan (Aaron Pedersen) returns to his outback hometown to investigate the murder of a teenage girl found in a drain under the highway...

Here's the brand new poster (click for a large version):

Ivan: Before the script was even finished, i had an image in mind. A silhouette of a lone cowboy with a gun in his hand. During the location scout, I shot a few pics with Aaron, and one of them actually ended up as one of our final options. Although it was a striking image, it felt too much like an action film and not enough like a murder, mystery.

Demi: The film is really about Aaron's solo mission to discover who is behind the murders of local indigenous girls, and it's as much about latent racism in the country as it is about the crimes themselves.

Ivan: I came across a still very recently by accident, and it stayed in my mind. It shows the landscape, an old barbed wire fence, and showed Aaron with a rifle on his back. Also there is something contemplative about his walking stance. And he moves along the barrier which is the fence. A fence to lock up the land, but also to keep him away from the truth he is searching for. It had all the elements so we just focused on this one image to portray the film more truthfully.

Demi: There was a push from international partners to present the project as an action film, and highlight the ensemble cast, which is better known than the lead. While this angle works for the international market which needs to pigeon-hole and classify the film, we felt these directions were not contemplative enough. We initially sought to feature Hugo Weaving and Ryan Kwanten but this resulted in a 'gun fest' and brought a negative or violent aspect to the key art which is not present in the film. The final image of him striding across paddock captures the truth of the story, perhaps at the expense of commercial sell-ability?

Ivan: I was always keen on using text to show the amazing supporting cast. I'm not a fan of messy imagery, and I hope the film doesn't feel like that. Strong and clean, that's how i think we had to represent the film. So text was always going to be the best way to do it. Demi really understands the 'less is more' approach so it was quite a natural process in the end, where nothing was forced.

Demi: I'm yet to collaborate with two better creatives than Ivan Sen and producer David Jowsey - they are the perfect clients who foster great work through trust & mutual respect.

See Mystery Road at the Sydney Film Festival Opening Night on June 5th.

Anatomy of a film poster: PERCEPTION

2013-05-27T18:11:00.002+10:00

I'm thrilled to be able to offer an exclusive first look at the poster for Miranda Nation's PERCEPTION, which will have its world premiere at the 2013 Sydney Film Festival as a finalists in the prestigious Dendy Awards for best Australian short films.

It's a good opportunity to unpack the process of creating a poster. To this end, I spoke with the film's producer Lyn Norfor of Emerald Productions and the poster's designer, Demi Hopkins of Sydney-based design outfit Carnival Studio.

Front and center in the design is actress Maia Thomas, who plays Crystal, described as a mother, daughter, lover, stripper and survivor.

THE BRIEF

Lyn: The brief was to create a sexy and sophisticated image that was also vulnerable and sensitive, showing the the multiple ways in which Crystal sees and defines herself. We gave Demi a selection of still photographs from the shoot and he chose an image of Crystal reflected in a bathroom mirror and played with that, overlaying a second reflected image to give that slight double focus reflection look and feel.

Demi: We saw the film as a story that is about the complexity of people, and things not always being as they seem, so we sought to balance Crystal's sexuality against her quiet dignity. It is often tricky to convey subtlety but for this title it was at the heart of its telling - and that going too far towards her vocation as an exotic dancer would be misrepresenting the story.

DESIGNING FOR SHORT FILMS

Demi: We approach the process the same as for a feature in that we seek to find the heart of the film and represent this as clearly as possible, but short films are unburdened by commercial expectations and can therefore be far more experimental and ideas driven than a feature which seeks a return that often dictates a greater focus on billable actors. The condensed format of short films also means there is usually a singular message which the story centers on, and this translates into clarity of the art direction.

The blurring and double exposures serve as metaphors for Crystal's multiple facets and we sought balance the domestic (clothes pegs in background) with the red neon title alluding to the club. Subtlety is definitely harder to achieve when there is strong commercial imperative to the brief. This project allowed much creative freedom.

THE USE OF COLOUR AND TYPE

Lyn: Demi is a master of colour, working the delicate yellow hues into the deeper, more passionate oranges, blacks and reds. We had not used a yellow colour palette in the film at all, so it was a real surprise when he introduced yellow into the early versions. We loved the lightness and complexity the yellow brought and Demi has worked it in beautifully. His choice of the colour and font for the film title was truly inspired and really helps the poster stand out.

Demi: The title was custom designed based on neon strip club signage and builds upon the heavy warm colour grade of the image. We experimented with other concepts using neon characters of dancers seen in the club's entrance but in the end the title as neon was enough to deliver the setting without over-doing it. It was a case of designing elegant type that was sexy but not sleazy.

THE PROCESS

Lyn: It took a while and was a real collaborative process coming up with an image that encapsulated the essence of the whole film while capturing the attention of the viewer - and I think we have really achieved that with the Perception poster. It was great working with Demi as this was quite a challenging job. He was endlessly patient and creative and now I have to make another film so he can design another amazing poster!

See the film at the Sydney Film Festival as part of the Dendy Award finalists screening at Event Cinemas, George St in Sydney Saturday 15 June at 4pm, or Sunday 16 June at 11am. Visit the Perception website here.

CINEMA, RECONSTRUCTED

2013-05-11T13:51:00.001+10:00

CINEMA, RECONSTRUCTED

Programming the Sydney Film Festival Hub

Back when I was a teenager, cinema was so simple. Each week everyone I knew went to the cinema to see the same 2 or 3 films, after which we’d meet at the cafe across the street and talk about what we’d seen.

Recently, I feel cinema has splintered, fragmented and scattered.

Most people I know see films online (legally or not) at home (often with screening facilities that rival those of cinemas). There are so many ways to access cinema beyond brick and mortar theatres, and so many movies (and quality television series) to choose from that we find we’ve seldom seen the same things. When we chat about cinema, it’s often on twitter or facebook, and again, that conversation is splintered, fragmented and often somewhat superficial (try unpacking a film by Bruno Dumont or Ulrich Seidl in 140 characters).

Sure blockbusters are on everyone’s radar but it doesn’t mean we go and see them. When we do, we’re hoping for (at best) a guilty pleasure and it’s not often there’s anything there to discuss passionately with your mates over a cider.

There’s plenty of world cinema at the local arthouse theatre, even if sometimes the experience often leaves something to be desired. As for the selection, am I alone in thinking it leans too often towards the middle of the road, the Oscar-recognized and the French films where elegant people eat real food in high-ceilinged apartments?

And yet we’re still passionate about cinema. We’re still curious. And we still yearn for that social experience.

Festivals, and the Sydney Film Festival in particular, are the beating heart of world cinema in Australia. The program is broad, challenging and curated with care. The filmmakers are often there to chat about their work. The viewing experience is at the centre of the organizers’ preoccupations. Tickets are affordable, especially in bulk. The pleasures on offer are (mostly) guilt-free. And now we don’t have to look very far to find a bar in which to chat about movies into the night.

The Sydney Film Festival Hub is an attempt to reconstruct the thrill we experienced when we first discovered that cinema spoke to us in a way we did not think possible. It gives that thrill a home, a place where it can circulate and energize and shed light, like an electrical current.

Technology, art, business and our reduced attention spans have blown cinema apart: the way it’s made, distributed, shown, enjoyed and shared. The theme of the Hub program this year, therefore, is “Cinema, Reconstructed”.

I’ve invited artists, filmmakers, performers, academics and film buffs to rebuild cinema from the fragments, using cinephilia as glue. The results are unpredictable, strange and entertaining. One thing’s for sure: they are great conversation starters.

As a centrepiece, I’ve invited Jeff Desom to visit us from Luxembourg to present some of his work, including Rear Window Loop, where he (respectfully) reassembles the work of a master.

Ezra Pound once said “a classic is NEWS that stays NEWS.”

I think Alfred Hitchcock’s work, and Rear Window in particular, which is a meditation on the act of watching, a film about cinema in other words, is a gift that keeps on giving. Great art is work that has proven to be inexhaustible in terms of the value it gives to those who pay attention to it. Thanks to the work of critics, festivals and artists such as Jeff Desom, Rear Window is a work that’s always in the present tense. 60 years from when it was first premiered, it still has something to give.

Toronto’s Barr Gilmore lends us his own video installation, Essential Titles, which remixes title sequences from a hundred beloved films. In the screening room, you’ll get to see Final Cut: Ladies And Gentlemen which reconstructs a classic romance using clips from over 450 films we know and love (it’s the only ticketed event at the Hub which is otherwise entirely free, but I hope you’ll agree it’s worth the $10 admission).

Artists have seized this opportunity to create work inspired by their love of film and to show us how cinema has fuelled their creativity and inspiration. Burlesque performers, for example, will perform cheeky numbers inspired by cult films – and yes, the rumours are true, there will be pole dancing. Storytellers and comedians will bare all with a series of cinema-inspired confessions. A theatre group will even recreate the circus that is the Hollywood press junket (you get to play the journalists!).

The Hub will give passionate film buffs the chance to share their obsessions. Josh Wheatley (and his puppet film critic Harvey Feltztein) will host a VHS party celebrating a cinema that technology has left behind. Cinephile DJs such as Freak Me Out programmer Richard Kuipers, Burt Reynolds, Blofeld and Barry Lyndon will play their favourite soundtracks, from the rare and the obscure to Dirty Dancing. Geeks and DIY artists will show us how to hack our smartphone cameras to make our own experimental films.

We’ll hear from professionals too, from festival programmers to Golden Bear winners, from foley artists to stills photographers, from futurists to crowdfunders.

Academics and film buffs will kickstart conversations with quick 15 minute talks about sex, race, capitalism, gender roles and the most burning question of our time, is Vertigo really the best film ever made? Film critics, as always, will once again spoil everything.

That conversation will carry on at our daily Film Club, an open and inclusive discussion about what you’ve seen at the Festival, each afternoon hosted by a different film critic. It’ll carry on into the night over a glass of pinot or a game of film trivia – we’re open till midnight this year, you’ll be glad to know.

You might want to rush out and book tickets to the films at the festival, but doing so without first glancing at the Hub schedule is a classic rookie mistake.

When you drop by the Hub, come and say hi, tell me about the films you’ve loved (or hated) at the Festival, it’s our job to keep that spark alive. And what a lovely job it is too.

Full line-up: http://bit.ly/centrefold

12 FILMS TO SEE AT THE 2013 SYDNEY FILM FESTIVAL

2013-05-08T11:31:00.000+10:00

It's that time of the year again! The line-up of the 60th Sydney Film Festival has been announced. You may even have bought your flexipass already. Now comes the hard part. What to see? The following twelve films aren't for everyone, but I liked them all for various reasons so take it as a good place to start.

2013 SYDNEY FILM FESTIVAL: A DOZEN TO SEE

WHAT MAISIE KNEW

Directing partners Scott McGehee and David Siegel emerged from the indieverse as fully-formed auteurs (the excellent black and white Suture and The Deep End with Tilda Swinton) only to veer (not quite successfully) into more commercial highways (Bee Season, Uncertainty). Their star-studded What Maisie Knew is a slick, commercial drama with an indie sensibility that finds a sweet spot of accomplished and inspired, if somewhat comfortable, storytelling.

The 1897 Henry James novella is brought kicking and screaming into the NY zeitgeist of the 21^st century. The film tells the story of the acrimonious divorce of an ageing rock star (Julianne Moore) and her art-dealer husband (Steve Coogan), from the perspective of their neglected 7 year-old child. Caught in the middle, Maisie finds refuge her parents’ respective young lovers, a bartender (Alexander Skarsgård) and the nanny (Joanna Vanderham).

The self-involved parents behave like children, and yes, Maisie is somewhat of a precocious child. Newcome Onata Aprile is, however, sensational. Her performance betrays an intuitive and astute understanding of emotional restraint, as her character suffers all forms of neglect and passive aggressive abuse in the hands of her selfish parents. The film’s subtle nuances are almost entirely drowned out by the overbearing score, which is a real shame, but not in itself a strong enough reason to stay away.

COMPUTER CHESS

Andrew Bujalski’s films are deceptively small and lo-fi, and as a result they are too little seen and easily discounted. Beeswax is nothing less than a masterpiece, though sadly no one in Sydney ever got a chance to see it on the big screen (we did get access to Funny Ha Ha and Mutual Appreciation thanks to the Sydney Film Festival).

This time, Bujalski turns his attention to two incredibly nerdy subculture: computer programmers and chess players. The film is set entirely during a weekend in the early 80s, the action unfolding in a hotel over the course of a convention-cum-tournament pitting man against machine.

Bujalski’s main talent as a writer is observation, and his main skills as a director is effortlessly assembling seemingly random and innocuous observations into cogent, significant insights.

The comedy inherent in such a premise, a motel-full of competitive, antisocial eccentrics, is a good fit for Bujalski, who can apply his detached observational style rather than actively mine the material for laughs. The result is a deadpan chronicle of a time before geeks were superstars, when monkish nerds quietly accomplished miracles. It’s a strange little film shot in period-accurate black and white video, and much of the joy lies the rich detail of this tribute to a bygone era.

PIETA

Celebrated Korean auteur Kim Ki-Duk returns from the wilderness after a series of critical flops with a divisive film that managed to win the Golden Lion in Venice and alienate thousands of viewers. The poetic beauty of Spring Summer Autumn Winter... and Spring, 3 Iron or even The Isle, makes way for a dirty, almost amateurish aesthetic and an unhealthy dose of rape, cruelty and death.

A nihilistic loan shark lives alone in a dirty apartment, venturing out only to impart violent punishment on impoverished workers unable to pay their debt. One day, a woman claiming to be his long-lost mother shows up at his door. The friendless man, seemingly devoid of compassion, responds in the only way he knows, ruthlessly.

Many recent Korean films have exposed, Haneke-like, a moral rot lurking just beneath the fabric of Korean society, in some cases, something close to a pervasive and permanent psychosis: Old Boy and Samaritan Girl, Bittersweet Life and The Chaser. Kim goes a step further with this vicious cousin to Bong Joon-ho’s Mother. It’s not a pretty sight.

The loan shark is barely human, a cruel manifestation of the devil, unredeemable. Pieta isn’t a thriller or a horror film, it’s blacker-then-noir satire: our main character is also the product of a society which has forgotten compassion. The arrival of what may be his mother should be an opportunity for redemption, her maternal instincts a bandage over gaping wounds. Korean society, however, needs more than a bandage. With the violent Pieta, Kim offers instead a purging vivisection that – while not to everyone’s liking – is sure not to leave you indifferent.

THE EAST

The East is a tense thriller with a social conscience. Co-written by actress (and bright young thing) Brit Marling and the equally talented director Zal Batmanglij, it’s a riff on their earlier collaboration, Sound of My Voice (seek it out if youmissed it).

Hollywood doesn’t make smart 70s-inspired paranoid nail-biters anymore, except through independent projects championed by the likes of George Clooney. The East is produced by Ridley Scott and there’s certainly a slick commercial sheen to the proceedings. But while recent similar efforts have mined the zeitgeist and topical issues for a desperate stab at relevance, the political and social themes are well thought-through here. It’s a thriller first, but it does ask some probing questions about activism, civil disobedience and the unchecked power of lobby groups.

The compelling and suspenseful tale follows Sarah Moss (Brit Marling) as she attempts to infiltrate an anarchic eco-vigilante group on behalf of a private intelligence firm hired to protect a powerful corporate client. As Sarah ingratiates herself with its passionate members - becoming dangerously close to charismatic Benji (Alexander Skarsgård) - she begins to question her moral certainties.

While Sarah is crafted as a proxy for the audience, the film keeps you guessing by refusing to make her motivations and conclusions entirely transparent. Brit Marling portrays Sarah as an intelligent, confident woman with a vulnerable side. It’s a performance reminiscent of Jodie Foster’s best days, especially her star turn as Clarisse Sterling in Silence of the Lambs.

The generous characterization extends, as is rarely the norm with genre fare, to peripheral characters. It would have been easy to turn everyone into caricatured flag-bearers of corporate evil and fanatical zeal, but most characters here come equipped with their own set of contradictions. The supporting cast (Ellen Page, Patricia Clarkson, Julia Ormond and Alexander Skarsgård) is excellent.

If you suspend disbelief and resist the temptation (at the filmmakers’ invitation) to take it all too seriously, you’re in for a very good ride.

DOWNLOADED

Why a documentary on the rise and fall of Napster 12 years after the trial that brought down the peer-to-peer file-sharing music service? One answer is that the issues raised by Napster around intellectual property, internet freedoms and piracy are yet to be resolved today. Another is that the exact moment central to Alex Winter’s film, the microseconds it took for the Napster servers to go live, can arguably be described as the birth of digital culture as we know it.

In other words, you can’t fully grasp the politics, the economics, and the philosophical interrogations of the digital era without knowing its founding myth. Downloaded is well-structured, incredibly articulate and riveting rags-to-riches story with a responsible and intelligent approach to the material.

WILLIAM AND THE WINDMILL

William Kamkwamba, a young teenager from Malawi discovers an old instruction manual, builds a power-generating windmill from junk parts and rescues his family from famine. When William is picked to tell his story at the TEDGlobal conference in Tanzania, his life is changed forever. Suddenly a poster boy for African development, William is taken all over the world by well-meaning Westerners eager to share this inspiring success story, and forced to make some complex decisions.

Ben Nabors’ intelligent documentary is a must-see. It tells a simple story of a boy catapulted on the world stage, but there is plenty of reading to do between the lines. While Nabors wisely refrains from judging the parties involved, there’s plenty of material for the audience to reach its own conclusions. Taken as a whole, the film is a precise parable about Western attitudes to development and the Third World, as well as a potent meditation on education and self-determination, on the media and our celebrity-obsessed times.

WHAT RICHARD DID

Lenny Abrahamson follows up Garage with this observant Vinterbergian drama, demonstrating both his versatility and his considerable talent as a director. What Richard Did centres around golden boy and alpha male Richard Karlsen, a popular South Dublin student and rugby player, and what happens when a tragic incident at a party turns his world upside down.

Abrahamson examines a moral dilemma in the context of class and privilege, in a community whose apparent values and respectability betray a rot that fans of Haneke will be more than familiar with. The film and its lead actor Jack Reynor share a glossy, shallow handsomeness that belies the intricacy and depth of their actual craft. It’s a story whose ambiguities you may ponder through the end credits and beyond.

MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN

Fans of Salman Rushdie’s sprawling Booker Prize-winning novel will approach a film adaptation with skepticism. Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta (Water) certainly did, wisely recruiting Rushdie to help adapt (and narrate) the saga of India’s transition to independence and Partition. You’ll have to surrender fully to its melodramatic excesses and whimsical magic realism, a tumultuous current best not resisted. Jump on board and you’re in for an entertaining, colourful journey through some of the defining moments of the last century.

FRANCES HA

The existential ennui of white Americans in their late twenties / early thirties can all too easily provoke ennui of its own, especially in viewers who have outgrown that delicate age and (think they) have found themselves. But that may be because here in Sydney we are still relatively unfamiliar with the work of Joe Swanberg, Aaron Katz, Andrew Bujalski or even Lena Dunham (pre-Girls) on the subject.

The Nouvelle Vague-inspired Frances Ha is an exceptional addition to genre, illuminated by an adorable Greta Gerwig and a light touch from the great Noah Baumbach (Greenberg), who seems to have cheered up considerably. You may break into an ecstatic run as you leave the cinema, Bowie playing at full blast in your head, your faith in friendship and cinema entirely renewed. A sequel has already been shot: don't be the last to see this one.

PRINCE AVALANCHE

Prince Avalanche should please both the fans of David Gordon Green from his indie phase (George Washington, All The Real Girls, Undertow) and those of his more recent Hollywood work (Pineapple Express, Your Highness, The Sitter). The poetry and sincerity of the former blend comfortably with the juvenile stoner comedy of the latter. It’s a balancing act that won the filmmaker the Silver Bear for Best Director in Berlin this year.

Prince Avalanche is a tender and understated two-hander, making the most of Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsh’s comic chops to deliver a crowd-pleasing if offbeat tale of an unlikely friendship. Here’s hoping that the filmmaker will tackle female characters with as much ambition and talent in his future work.

REAR WINDOW

Ezra Pound once said “a classic is news that stays news.” I think Alfred Hitchcock’s work, and Rear Window in particular, is a gift that keeps on giving. There are scenes I could watch again and again, like the kiss which introduces Grace Kelly’s character: elegant, sexy, witty and shot like a scene from a vampire horror film.

Because it’s a meditation on the act of watching, - in other words, cinema about cinema – it has great thematic resonance. If great art is “work that has proven to be inexhaustible in terms of the value it gives to those who pay attention to it” (curator Robert Storr), then Rear Window is great art. 60 years from when it was first premiered, it still proves incredibly accomplished and eerily relevant.

MUSEUM HOURS

Jem Cohen’s new film is like a visiting a Museum with a stranger, someone you lose as you wander from room to room and happily find again as you round a corner, someone you get to know through their reactions to this or that painting. It’s a simple story, Anne, a foreign visitor to Vienna, seeks shelter from a city she barely understands in the Kunsthistorisches Art Museum. There she meets Johann, a museum guard with whom she develops a loose, undefined relationship.

Beneath this straightforward set-up lies a wealth of interpretations. Scenes are laid out like rooms on a Museum plan, but Cohen refuses to be your guide, to talk you through it. You’re on your own. If this is how you prefer your museum visits, then this film is for you. It’s a work that fully understands art’s ability to find an echo in our daily lives, in our moods and in our thoughts, by a filmmaker who clearly understands the part mystery plays in good storytelling.

In the interest of full disclosure, I’m one of the programmers of the Sydney Film Festival, though my work is limited to the Hub, and I had no part in selecting the films mentioned here.

Anatomy of a film poster: THE ROCKET

2013-02-05T13:46:00.000+11:00

Here's an exclusive first look at the poster for THE ROCKET, a new Australian film by Kim Mordaunt (the award-winning Bomb Harvest) which is about to have its world premiere at the Berlinale on February 10th, as part of film festival's Generation program.

Set in the rarely seen tribal mountains of Laos, The Rocket follows the journey of a boy believed to bring bad luck to everyone around him, as he leads his family and a couple of ragged misfits through a land scarred by the legacy of war in search of a new home. To prove he's not cursed he builds a giant rocket to enter the most dangerous competition of the year: the Rocket Festival.

Here's the gorgeous poster, designed by the talented folk at Carnival Studio:

Here's Carnival Studio's creative director Demi Hopkins: "I loved the film and was genuinely surprised by the journey & the unpredictability of Laos. 10-year-old Ki Sitthipon, who plays Ahlo, is a natural. There is a real volatility and randomness in Laos which is captured throughout the film. While not seeking to be too literal, the rocket is a cathartic symbol and its inclusion is designed to reflect the ups and downs Ahlo's journey. The rocket festival is an annual rural tradition where people construct homemade rockets to seek blessings from the gods and rainfall for the coming seasons crops. We sought to accentuate the strange beauty of Laos and capture some of its inherent volatility, a legacy of past conflicts."

The film will be released in Australia by Curious Distribution. Here's the trailer.

Top 20 of 2012

2012-12-30T09:20:00.000+11:00

This blog has been dormant of late as my time is invested in other projects, mostly professional. I'm posting my end of year favourites here more as a manifestation of compulsive list-making (and a personal record) than as an expression (however simplistic) of film criticism (I've only written a couple of significant pieces of film criticism this year, sadly).

2012 was a great year for me professionally, and I was exposed to some fantastic films and filmmakers. I ran and programmed the Possible Worlds and Young at Heart film festivals in Sydney, as well as the inaugural Sydney Film Festival Hub. My company The Festivalists also ran the World Movies Secret Cinema project which took 300 people to Goat Island for a Battle Royale extravagganza. I traveled to Canada, the US and France, attended several festivals - including Melbourne and Toronto - and was on the jury of Antenna, Sydney's 2nd International Documentary Film Festival.

My favourite films seen this year:

1. Amour (Michael Haneke, Austria-France)

2. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Tomas Alfredson, UK)

3. Something in the Air (Olivier Assayas, France)
4. Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach, US)

5. Weekend (Andrew Haigh, UK)

6. Holy Motors (Leos Carax, France)

7. Life of Pi (Ang Lee, US)

8. Margaret (Kenneth Lonergan, US)

9. Tabu (Miguel Gomes, Portugal)

10. Goodbye First Love (Mia Hansen-Løve, France)

11. Dead Europe (Tony Krawitz, Australia)

12. The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson, US)

13. Polisse (Maiwenn, France)

14. Rust And Bone (Jacques Audiard, France)

15. Laurence Anyways (Xavier Dolan, Canada)

16. Lore (Cate Shortland, Australia)

17. Skyfall (Sam Mendes, UK)

18. Inch’Allah (Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette, Canada)

19. Declaration of War (Valerie Donzelli, France)
20. Looper (Ryan Johnson, US)

Only 5 American films, but still not as diverse a list as I'd like. New year's resolution is to seek out smaller films further and wider than I currently do.

I also found a lot to love in the following: Moonrise Kingdom, Magic Mike, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Yossi, Elena, The Deep, Yellow Sea, Cafe de Flore, Francine, Collaborator, War Witch, Sleepwalk With Me, The Hunt, All That You Possess, Camion, Argo, Every Day, Pieta, Silver Linings Playbook, Barbara, Keep The Lights On, In The House, Burning Man,The Dark Knight Rises, Sister, The Raid, Bestiary and Farewell My Queen.

2012 releases that might've made the top 20 but I saw them last year: Take This Waltz, Oslo August 31st, Monsieur Lazhar, I Wish, Attenberg, Your Sister's Sister, Wuthering Heights, Alps, Hail, Kill List.

Potential candidates I've yet to see: Zero Dark Thirty, Lincoln, Django Unchained, Almayer's Folly, This Is Not A Film, The Day He Arrives, In Another Country, Neighboring Sounds, The Loneliest Planet.

Documentaries:

1. Stories We Tell (Sarah Polley, Canada)
2. Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present (Matthew Akers & Jeff Dupre, US)

3. Low and Clear (Kahlil Hudson & Tyler Hughen, US)

4. The End of Time (Peter Mettler, Canada)

5. The World Before Her (Nisha Pahuja, Canada)

6. Indie Game: The Movie (Lisanne Pajot & James Swirsky, Canada)

7. The Imposter (Bart Layton, UK)

8. Woody Allen: A Documentary (Robert B. Weide, US)

9. The Ambassador (Mads Brügger, Denmark)
10. The Interrupters (Steve James, US)

Experimental films:

1. Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Verena Paravel, France-UK-US)
2. The Clock (Christian Marclay, UK)
3. Springtime (Jeroen Eisenga, Netherlands)

SydFilmFest 2012: who to follow on twitter

2012-05-27T15:16:00.002+10:00

THE #SYDFILMFEST STALK LIST

The 59th Sydney Film Festival (June 6 -17, 2012) is nearly upon us. If you’re on twitter, you’ll get the most out of the experience by following a few insiders and joining the conversation.

Here’s a handy list of films, insiders, critics and personalities in Sydney for the 59th Sydney Film Festival, June 6 - 17, 2012.

Subscribe directly to the list on Twitter to see what they're tweeting without following each one, or pick and choose:

THE FESTIVAL

@SydFilmFest - official hashtag: #SydFilmFest
@SydFilmFestHub - the Festival Hub in Lower Town Hall, official hashtag: #SFFhub
@GrasshopperBar - the Festival Lounge, open late!
@ArtGalleryofNSW - the venue for the Bertolucci retrospective
@DendySydney - #SydFilmFest on the harbour!
@NashenMoodley - SydFilmFest director Nashen Moodley
@MattRiviera - Me! aka Mathieu Ravier, Festival Hub programmer
@sosolouise - Sophie Hodges is the SydFilmFest publicity manager
@fivegrand1 - Jim Poe is the Program Guide editor and a #SFFhub DJ

GUEST FILMMAKERS & JURY MEMBERS

@filmboyd - Film critic Boyd van Hoeij is on the Official Competition jury
@lornatee - Malaysian born/ HK based film producer & festival programmer Lorna Tee is on the Official Competition Jury
@Billy_Connolly - Actor, Brave
@musasyeed - Director Valley of Saints (@VoSfilm)
@colintrevorrow - Director of Closing Night film Safety Not Guaranteed
@OliverHermanus - Director of Beauty
@SallyElHosaini - Director of My Brother The Devil (@MBTDFilm)
@ani035 - Yeun Sang-ho, director of The King Of Pigs (tweets in Korean)
@LianLunson - Director of Sing Me The Songs That Say I Love You
@BenjaminGilmour - Director of Paramedico
@GrantScicluna - Director of Dendy Award finalist The Wilding

FILMS AND FILMMAKERS

@NSFC_TheMovie - Opening Night film Not Suitable For Children
@WoodyAllenDoc - Woody Allen: A Documentary, by filmmaker @BobWeide
@BeastsTheMovie - Beasts of the Southern Wild, Sundance winner
@SidebySidemovie - Side By Side, a documentary about filmmaking in the digital age
@BritShowOff - The Bitish Guide To Showing Off by @JesBenstock, free screening in the #SFFhub
@ankash1009 - director of Competition film Gangs of Wasseypur
@AWWNeverSorry - Documentary Ai Wei Wei Never Sorry ( 爱未来 - Love the Future!)
@DreamsofALifeUK - Documentary Dreams of a Life by Carol Morley
@WorldBeforeHer - India-set Canadian documentary The World Before Her
@ralver - Rick Alverson, director of The Comedy
@CrazyHorseDoc - Frederick Wiseman documentary Crazy Horse
@ImposterDoc - The Imposter
@BalletMovie - Documentary First Position
@ExcisionMovie - Freak Me Out entry Excision
@KillerJoeMovie - @WilliamFriedkin's Killer Joe
@LastCallOasis - Environmental documentary Last Call at the Oasis
@MarinaFilm - Art documentary Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present
@Graceland25Year - @JoeBerlinger's Paul Simon documentary Under African Skies
@Undefeated_doc - Oscar-winning documentary Undefeated
@DespiteTG - Penny Vozniak's documentary Despite The Gods

ARTISTS

@OfficinaMaltese - Fabrizio Maltese is in town to present his exhibition in the #SFFhub, ROLE/PLAY, and photograph the #SydFilmFest guests
@GaryEck - Comedian and filmmaker Gary Eck will peform at the #SFFhub comedy night.
@ComingSoonerTV - (aka @marcfennell, @Nivkhayden & @Nicholas_McD) will talk about The Art of the Movie Trailer in the #SFFhub
@FetishFrequency - This Sydney art collective will perform a graphic novel in the #SFFhub
@KPandthebruise - Kira Puru & The Bruise, who will perform live in the #SFFhub
@johnsongmusic - Sydney musician Johnsong, free gig in the #SFFhub
@youngromantics - Sydney band, free gig in the #SFFhub
@Shadow_Catchers - is a new book about Australian cinematographers, which you can get signed in the #SFFhub
@DJTomLoud - a video dj and sound designer who will perform 2 free gigs in the #SFFhub
@melodienelsonxo - Sydney musicians Melodie Nelson will perform for free in the #SFFhub
@Frankie_Faux - Rising star of Sydney's burlesque scene, on stage in the #SFFhub for Cinema Burlesque
@kellyanndoll - Australia's pin-up pocket rocket, on stage in the #SFFhub for Cinema Burlesque

CRITICS AND PANELISTS

@alicetynan - Critic Alice Tynan will speak about the Future of the Cinema Experience (#FCESFF) in the #SFFhub
@rsowada - the Head of Film Programs at @ACMI will speak about the Future of the Cinema Experience (#FCESFF) in the #SFFhub
@jayscoh - Journalist & documentary programmer Julia Scott-Stevenson ‏will speak about Interactive Storytelling in the #SFFhub
@gmaddox - Critic Garry Maddox covers everything #SydFilmFest for the Sydney Morning Herald
@jdrrr - ABC Radio National presenter Jason Di Rosso will speak about the Future of the Cinema Experience (#FCESFF) in the #SFFhub
@MikeCowap - Screen Australia Investment Manager, will speak about Interactive Storytelling in the #SFFhub

KEY PLAYERS

@KinokuniyaAust - Australia's largest bookstore will open a curated pop-up bookstore in the #SFFhub with books inspired by the program
@ADGdirectors - The Australian Directors Guild, which will be presenting a conversation between directors Oliver Hermanus (Beauty) and Tony Krawitz (Dead Europe) in the Festival Hub.
@GoogleSydney - They'll be running the Zagat Corner in the Hub (#ZagatAU)
@AFTRS - the Australian Film, Television & Radio School presents several panels and screenings in the #SFFhub
@MetroScreen - the largest content and screen development hub in NSW will present workshops and panels in the #SFFhub featuring the Dendy Awards finalists
@blackfellafilms - Curators of Indigenous cinema for #SydFilmFest
@ScreenAustralia - Australia’s government agency supporting the development of the Australian screen production industry
@transmission - Transmission Films are an Australian distributor (Woody Allen: A Documentary, Amour, etc)
@palacefilms - Palace Films are an Australian distributor (Beauty, Monsieur Lazhar, etc)
@boccalatte - Boccalatte are the designers behind the #SydFilmFest visual identity

Have I forgotten some? Let me know: @mattriviera

10 best film festival posters of the year

2011-12-23T16:09:00.001+11:00

As an organizer of film festivals who works with designers each year, on a tiny budget, to come up with appealing event visuals, I know too well how hard it can be to come up with a striking, beautiful and functional film festival poster. As a result, I have a tremendous amount of admiration for those who get it right.

Not many people do. So many rely on rote images: film reels, director's chairs, popcorn, celluloid strips and projectors to get their point across. Men with movie cameras for heads, for example, are frightfully common. Cliches are useful: they communicate what your event is about with effective visual shortcuts. Moving past them without losing the message is harder than it sounds.

The poster needs to say cinema and it needs to say festival. And beyond that it hopes to communicate - to the right audience - what kind of cinema it wishes to defend, what kind of festival it wants to be. Beauty, originality, humour or provocation may also be part of the equation.

Here are some of my favourite film festival posters of 2011. If you're interested in this subject, I recommend filmfestivalposters.com, which collates visuals from all around the planet.

10. SITGES FILM FESTIVAL

Catalonia's Fantastic Film Festival has it all: a great line-up of genre films, a sun-drenched setting, parties on the beach, even a zombie walk... The Sitges Film Festival began life in 1968 and hasn't looked back, making it one of the best festivals in Spain and perhaps the best fantastic film fest in the world.

Every year I look forward to their poster, as they rarely disappoint. This year they have two, very simple portraits, one male, one female. The photography is striking yet incredibly straightforward. There's something intense and vaguely unsettling about these portraits, as if the models weren't entirely human. At the same time, it's hard to point to the exact cause of this visual disconnect. As a result, you want to know these characters' stories, you yearn to find out who they are and where they come from. You have to admire a festival able to elicit that sense of curiosity and that desire to be told a story just through its poster...

Update: a friend has kindly pointed out what many of you probably knew, the models are in fact robots, Geminoids to be exact.

9. KARLOVY VARY INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

The Czech Republic's illustrious Karlovy Vary Film Festival is one of the most well-respected showcases in Europe. The festival often plays with typography in its posters, and this is one of the more successful attempts. Projections of light onto the body of woman, at night, spell out the festival name and dates. The photographic fragments of the contact sheet combine to give the illusion of moving image.

8. & 7. (TIE) TWIN CITIES ARAB FILM FESTIVAL & NEWPORT BEACH FILM FESTIVAL

Well-executed typography gives a poster impact. While it's harder to communicate specific ideas about cinema through typography, let alone to describe the event itself, it does align the festival with a very contemporary aesthetic which can strike a chord with new audiences. It also puts the emphasis on the text, and therefore drives home the identity of the festival and its remit. Here are two good examples: the 7th Twin Cities Arab Film Festival, and the 12th Newport Beach Film Festival.

6. THE WOODY ALLEN FILM FESTIVAL

A small festival dedicated to the films of Woody Allen is blessed with this fun, tongue-in-cheek poster by Californian graphic designer Elizabeth Chiu. Simple, memorable.

5. CAMERA_JAPAN_FESTIVAL

The Dutch are design-savvy and this piece of marketing collateral is no exception. Traditional Japanese imagery fuses with pop art to create the arresting poster designs for Camera Japan, Rotterdam's 6th Japanese Film Festival. The tagline, "Made in Japan?" invites us to ponder the global cycles of influence which shape world cinema. The event itself focuses on the intersections between film and other art forms, from architecture to music and dance. Many of the screenings are interactive or enhanced with live performances. Looks pretty awesome, if you ask me.

4. HELSINKI INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

The poster for the 24th Helsinki International Film Festival grabs your attention and holds it: bright colours, strange visual, gorgeous type. A childishly drawn character in a suit, holding an ax and what looks like a can of petrol. "Olen Valmis". "I'm ready". The "title" of the festival - in beautiful exotic red script - is "Rakkautta & Anarkiaa" which means "Love & Anarchy". How cool is that? Incidentally, the festival opens with Almodovar's baroque & grotesque queer noir The Skin I Live In, and the design feels somewhat appropriate. There's no reason this should work, but it does. I'm ready too.

3. NASHVILLE FILM FESTIVAL
Designer: Sam Smith

Sam Smith is one of my favourite graphic designers. He's known for his re-imagined, film poster screenprints for the Belcourt Theatre, in his home town of Nashville, one-sheets for arthouse distributors and a string of ace Criterion covers. When he's not creating awesome designs, he tours the world playing drums with Ben Folds, as you do.

For the Nashville Film Festival he designed this clever poster, clearly inspired by Palme D'Or winner Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives.

2. JOHN HOPKINS FILM FESTIVAL
Designer: Post Typography

This poster doubles as a "Real Life Media Player" with a die-cut window in the poster's center that allows viewers to experience their environment as if they are watching a YouTube video. The poster also incorporates usage instructions and encourages viewers to upload their own videos to the festival website, all relating back to the festival's 2011 theme of film and video embedded in everyday life. The John Hopkins Film Festival was established in 1997 and is run out of John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

1. CANNES FILM FESTIVAL

The poster of the 64th edition of Cannes is a stunning, minimal black-and-white shot of Faye Dunaway photographed by director Jerry Schatzberg in 1970 for his film Puzzle of a Downfall Child. The number "64" is both huge and in type so thin as to be nearly invisible. The result is pure elegance, movie glamour without hint of red carpet.

Sydney Film Critics: Best of 2011

2011-12-22T14:37:00.005+11:00

Every year I ask Sydney-based film critics to send me their top 10 films of the year. You can check out last year's poll, topped by The Social Network right here. Below is an overall Top 20 collating results from all participants. It comprises two lists: one for titles released theatrically in Australia in 2011 and one for unreleased titles (either coming in 2012 or currently without theatrical distribution).

The methodology was simple: 10 points for 1st position, 9 points for 2nd etc. Bullet point lists are those submitted by critics who refuse to rank their films (each title gets 5.5 points). Of course no sample is representative, no comparison objective, no ranking scientific - it's just an informal poll.

Because of how it's set up, films that have been seen by more journalists have an advantage over films seen by fewer. And films seen later in the year tend to be fresher in everyone's minds.

SYDNEY FILM CRITICS' TOP 20 FILMS RELEASED IN 2011:

Drive

Black Swan

Melancholia

The Tree of Life

Incendies

Senna

We Need to Talk About Kevin

True Grit

Certified Copy

Midnight in Paris / Sleeping Beauty (tie)

Super 8

Project Nim

Bill Cunningham New York

Take Shelter

Bridesmaids / Snowtown (tie)

Another Year / The Trip (tie)

Beginners

SYDNEY FILM CRITICS' TOP 20 UNRELEASED FILMS OF 2011:

Martha Marcy May Marlene

A Separation

The Turin Horse

The Muppets

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Tyrannosaur

Shame

Tomboy / Hugo (tie)

The Artist

The Arbor

Kill List / Dogtooth (tie)

How to Die in Oregon / The Descendants (tie)

End of Animal / The Troll Hunter (tie)

Young Adult / Cold Weather (tie)

Here are a few observations:

Dennis Villeneuve's Canadian drama Incendies is the only subtitled film to make the top 20 in theatrical releases (not counting the multilingual Senna), pointing to a rather disturbing absence of foreign-language films in Australian theatres (the unreleased list, in contrast, features no less than six).
A good year for Australian cinema, with Cannes entries Snowtown and Sleeping Beauty both making the top 20. The latter was rejected by audiences and divided critics (witness the bashing Julia Leigh's film gets at SBS Film). The Tall Man, Burning Man, The Hunter, Oranges & Sunshine and Wasted on the Young also got votes from the panel.
Documentaries continue impress. Senna made grown men cry, Project Nim taught us about human nature and Bill Cunningham New York proved the most entertaining superhero film this year.
Some films aged better than others. 127 Hours was runner-up best unreleased film last year, but failed to break the top 20 theatrical releases of 2012. Others such as Black Swan endured in our collective memory as potential future classics.
The Sydney Film Festival played a strong role for most of the critics polled, and half of the unreleased list is made up of films which premiered at the prestigious June event.

Following are the individual Top 10 lists from all participating journalists.

_____________________________________________________

ANDREW BUCKLE

BEST RELEASED:

Senna
The Tree of Life
Incendies
Project Nim
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Drive
127 Hours
Black Swan
Take Shelter
Midnight in Paris

BEST UNRELEASED:

A Separation
Martha Marcy May Marlene
Armadillo
The Muppets
The Descendants
Trust
20 Cigarettes
Even the Rain
The Troll Hunter
Elite Squad 2: The Enemy Within

2011 has been the biggest viewing year of my life to date, clocking in well over 100 films. I have enjoyed a lot of the films I have seen, and personally, I think this year has been a strong year. Rango was the first great official 2011 release and I still think it is the year’s top animated feature. Then Incendies, after being unsuccessful in the Foreign Language category, came along and blew me away. The Sydney Film Festival was a highlight. I saw a string of great films – many of which have since received theatrical releases (but some, like the Golden Bear winner, A Separation, have yet to have a release scheduled). The blockbuster season was disappointing, dominated by sequels and an endless stream of superhero films. There were some big duds (Transformers: DOTM and Pirates 4: On Stranger Tides) but also some surprises (Super 8, Kung-Fu Panda 2 and Rise of the Planet of the Apes). October and November have brought us more solid films – with Midnight in Paris, Take Shelter, Drive, Moneyball, The Ides of March and We Need to Talk About Kevin all hitting cinemas. Boxing Day will serve up something for everyone. Spielberg delivers on one of his two films (Tintin), while Almodovar is in top form with The Skin I Live In. But in addition to the films, I will remember 2011 as the year I met some talented industry professionals and bonded with a worldwide network of film bloggers, for which I am most grateful.

Andrew Buckle blogs at Andy Buckle’s Film Emporium

KATIA NIZIC

BEST RELEASED:

Drive
Submarine
Melancholia
Red State
Midnight in Paris
Attack the Block
Super 8
Burning Man
Restless
The Tall Man

BEST UNRELEASED:

Martha Marcy May Marlene
Tyrannosaur
Polisse
Being Elmo: a Puppeteer's Journey
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
The FP
King of Devil's Island (Kongen av Bastøy)
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Comic-con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope
The Corridor

2011 was, in my opinion, a very good year in film. I like to feel intensely when I go to the cinema—whether it be joy, sadness, disgust, anger, longing, or very importantly, fear—it's got to have that sort of kick to leave me with a lasting impression. One of my favourite films of the year, Drive, allowed me inside the mind of a troubled, reserved, deeply loyal individual. For every word Driver (Ryan Gosling) left unsaid in that film, the unbidden urge to crawl inside that world and comfort that character. The tension, the small details in the script (that elevator scene, which my colleague, Alexeem Boyle, writes about here), and the sound design formed a picture that was just my angst in 2011. I'm also in no doubt that Nicholas Winding Refn's film will be ignored by the Academy: too edgy, a film that isn't easy to categorise, nor fully understand the heightened, blood-pumping enjoyment you experience while watching it. Gilded accolades seem to matter very little, given the cult following the film has gained in a remarkably short period of time.

Katia Nizic is a film blogger and writer, who will be jumping the fence in 2012 to study a Graduate Diploma in Producing at the Australian Film Television and Radio School. Her work can be found at The 500 Club, FILMINK, RAVE Magazine, and her own blog, And Cut!.

DANIEL CRICHTON-ROUSE

BEST RELEASED:

Drive
Take Shelter
Senna
The Trip*
Black Swan
Hanna
Submarine
Crazy, Stupid, Love.
The Tree Of Life
Sleeping Beauty

*I still consider this to be a TV series, and in that format it works so much better, but I'm including it here in the hope that it rates well.

BEST UNRELEASED:

The Turin Horse

Martha Marcy May Marlene

Life In Movement

Arrietty

Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy

Shame

The Troll Hunter

Elena

Sydney Film Festival this year was particularly strong for me, but Drive was the clear winner as soon as Kavinsky started playing over the opening credits. I only saw a few films this year that weren't theatrically released - more than the six that I have listed, but not all of them worth including. Everything I caught at SFF seemed to get a national or limited run. For me, 2011 is defined by the films that I wanted to see but never quite got to - which includes a total of 41 films from the At The Movies list of 2011 theatrical releases. The film I'm most ashamed of not having yet seen is Snowtown. The film I still want to watch more than any other is Le Quattro Volte. Here's to having the time to watch more in 2012.

Daniel Crichton-Rouse is the national Arts Editor at Street Press Australia. His words can be found on printed paper and dotted across iPad screens in Drum Media, Inpress, and Time Off.

NICK DENT

BEST RELEASED:

True Grit
The Guard
Bridesmaids
Midnight In Paris
We Need To Talk About Kevin
War Horse
Incendies
The Fighter
Rio
Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Nick Dent is the editor and film editor of Time Out Sydney and writes film reviews for the Sunday Telegraph newspaper.

IAN BARR

BEST RELEASED:

The Tree Of Life
Certified Copy
Le Quattro Volte
Drive
Melancholia
Another Year
We Need To Talk About Kevin
The Skin I Live In
Snowtown
13 Assassins

BEST UNRELEASED:

The Turin Horse
Martha Marcy May Marlene
The Kid With A Bike
Mysteries of Lisbon
Hail
Terri
Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles
Policeman
Good Bye
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

An unusually strong year for Aussie theatrical releases, so I’ll rattle off some runners-up that could’ve easily made the top ten depending on mood: Take Shelter, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Meek’s Cutoff, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, This is Not a Film. Other film-related highlight: Peter Tscherkassky retrospective & masterclass at MIFF, not just for the quality of his films or his animated discussion with audience members – his work’s bracing (and fun!) engagement with the materiality of film itself felt like the most poignant eulogy for 35mm in a year rife with (often dopey) written ruminations on the transition to digital production/projection. Worst of 2011: The Iron Lady, OFLC, Jim Schembri’s Scream 4 review/spoiler gaffe.

Ian Barr is a film critic for Drum Media, and more of his writing on film can be found at http://sydneyfilmhappenings.blogspot.com

JOSHUA BLACKMAN

BEST RELEASED:

Senna

Black Swan

Never Let Me Go

Melancholia

Drive

We Need to Talk About Kevin

Bridesmaids

Midnight in Paris

The Tree of Life

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

BEST UNRELEASED:

Kill List
The Muppets
Martha Marcy May Marlene
The Artist
My Week with Marilyn

2011 was a relatively average year, despite their being new films from Terrence Malick, Lars von Trier, Martin Scorsese, David Fincher and two from Steven Spielberg. Hugo and Dragon Tattoo have been shoved to January on local shores, I haven’t seen War Horse, and Tintin, despite its technical mastery (there’s never been a Spielberg action pic quite like it), doesn’t quite hang together as well as it should. What’s left is the astonishing and infuriating Tree of Life (at #9), and the overblown symbolism, by way of Wagner, of Melancholia (at #4). Drive reminded everyone that too much style – and directorial fastidiousness – is never enough. Never Let Me Go is a delicate gem, while Bridesmaids affirmed Kristen Wiig as a viable big-screen star (and also passes the Bechdel test more easily than any other mainstream films in recent memory). Asif Kapadia’s brilliant doco Senna tops my list for telling a true story, entirely with archival footage, that’s more dramatically satisfying that most fiction films. Honourable mentions include Source Code, for confirming Duncan Jones as the director (w/ Neil Blomkamp) to watch for smart science-fiction, and Rango, for its audacity and madcap inventiveness. Captain America, too, however simple in design, I think is underrated for how well it captures the pulpy-1940s spirit, and for featuring an old-skool romance that actually sparkles.

Josh Blackman writes for FilmINK and atonalFILM.

BETH WILSON

BEST RELEASED:

Incendies

We Need To Talk About Kevin

Drive

Bill Cunningham New York

Another Year

Melancholia

Pina 3D

Project Nim

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Attack the Block

BEST UNRELEASED:

The Arbor

Martha Marcy May Marlene

Tomboy

How to Die in Oregon

A Separation

The Interrupters

The Hollywood Complex

Tiny Furniture

Freedom Riders

Tyrannosaur

2011 has been the year of the documentary, and as a massive fan of the medium I have enjoyed them all, even the ones about boring sports (Senna and TT3D). They have come in all shapes and sizes; the delightful (Bill Cunningham New York), the inspiring (Freedom Riders, The Interrupters), the tragic (How to Die in Oregon, Project Nim) and the jaw-dropping (The Hollywood Complex). Some have pushed the boundaries of what a documentary can be (The Arbor, Catfish), others have embraced 3D and shown Hollywood how it should be done (Pina, TT3D). While most of my documentary watching has come from festivals this year, it is heartening to see more and more docos getting a cinema release.

Beth Wilson is the film editor of Trespass Magazine.

RICHARD GRAY

BEST RELEASED:

The Tree of Life

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Midnight in Paris

BEST UNRELEASED:

The Muppets

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Milocrorze: A Love Story

Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel

Arrietty

From the return of the Western, to kids fighting aliens, 2011 was one of the best. In a year when two great filmmakers looked at the origins and the ends of the Earth, there was little choice but to place Terrence Malick at the top of the list. Malick’s most challenging work to date may defy conventional description. Stunning and provoking, it is sure to divide audiences in its unabashedly pretentious examination of the meaning of existence. Beautiful and haunting, The Tree of Life is what cinema was created for. Of course, if The Muppets had been released in Australia in 2011, it may have been a different story. A celebration of all things joyous in its own right, it reminded us that life's a happy song, when there's someone by your side to sing along. This is undoubtedly something Lars Von Trier may need to be reminded of occasionally, although Melancholia may just be his masterpiece.

Richard Gray is the Editor of online film magazine The Reel Bits, and the co-host of podcasts Behind the Panels and Film Actually.

MARC FENNELL

BEST RELEASED:

127 Hours

The Ides of March

Super 8

Black Swan

We Need to Talk about Kevin

Red State

Moneyball

Crazy Stupid Love

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

The Greatest Movie Ever Sold

2011 gave us a murky field. It was a year of giant ups and downs in the quality of cinema. So much so that it wasn’t really until I sat down to compile this list that I realised just how many great films there had been. There is one moment that I look for when making a list like this. It’s that split second in the cinema where you find yourself leaning in and think to yourself “This is not what I expected”. It was that spark, that moment of suprise that I looked for. These were the movies that pushed me to the edge of that chair, and pulled me closer to that screen. Honourable mentions: Catfish, Submarine, The Help, Attack the Block, True Grit, Hanna, Warrior, Oranges and Sunshine and Source Code (except for the last 10 minutes). Missed: Senna, The Guard, Incendies, Melancholia.

Marc Fennell is a film critic (triple j, ABC Radio and The Circle), media mischief maker and the author of That Movie Book.

5SPROCKET

BEST RELEASED:

Drive

Melancholia

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Justin Bieber: Never Say Never

Meek's Cutoff

The Lion King 3D

Bill Cunningham New York

Unstoppable

Kaboom

Scenes From The Suburbs (Arcade Fire)

BEST UNRELEASED:

Rubber
Head (1968, Criterion DVD)

Dogtooth

Nine Types Of Light (TV on the Radio)

Super Night Shot (Sydney Festival)

Drive is like having your nipples tickled by Ryan Gosling. Melancholia is heartbreaking and beautiful, and absolutely overwhelming. Uncle Boonmee's world is a place I'd like to stay forever. There are few things as bizarre as watching the Justin Bieber in a cinema packed with 'tween' girls, screaming hysterically as their arms stretch to touch the face of their (now in 3D!) icon. Kelly Reichardt is one of the great contemporary US filmmakers, who along with Gregg Araki (Kaboom) and Tony Scott (Unstoppable), continue to hone their craft. Rubber is hysterical, and Scenes From The Suburbs is an admirable failure that could all too easily be lost to history… Also, HEAD! What a film!! What a year!!

5sprocket writes about TV and Film for 3D World magazine.

DAVID MARIN-GUZMAN

BEST RELEASED:

The Tree of Life

Melancholia

Sleeping Beauty

Snowtown

Wasted On The Young

Black Swan

Certified Copy

The Skin I Live In

Norwegian Wood

Contagion

BEST UNRELEASED:

The Turin Horse

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

The Woman

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

End of Animal

Martha Marcy May Marlene

A Separation

The Grey

Coriolanus

The Descendants

Australian films featured heavily in the top half of my ten films of 2011. Amazingly, all three came from debut filmmakers. But while Snowtown attracted the most praise, Sleeping Beauty and Wasted On The Young appear destined to face critical oblivion as both audiences and critics turn their backs. Here’s hoping these two extraordinary films are rediscovered. The rest of the year was dominated by a strong showing of foreign language films interrupted by Hollywood flicks with a distinctly European feel (Black Swan, Contagion). My top two - The Tree of Life and Melancholia - should really be a tie. Each connects the personal with the cosmic but in entirely different ways. Both offer astounding cinematic experiences. It'd be unfair to choose between two works that are each so completely in a league of their own.

David Marin-Guzman reviews films on Eastside FM's Cinemascape program as well as his own blog http://daveguzman.blogspot.com

GILES HARDIE

BEST RELEASED:

Black Swan

Incendies

Oranges and Sunshine

Project Nim

The Help

Crazy, Stupid, Love

Midnight in Paris

Drive

Warrior

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

BEST UNRELEASED:

Young Adult

J Edgar

Martha Marcy May Marlene

Tyrannosaur

Tomboy

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

The Best Exotic Marigold

The Muppets

A Separation

As ever I make my lists in a slightly different manner to everyone else. First I list my fifty-ish favourite films from the year, then break them into ten sub-categories, then choose a favourite in each. It means films I love lose out, but there’s more breadth to the ten. As ever, they could really be in any order. This year that highlighted how many good Australian films there have been, how many good action films (no that’s not a contradiction in terms) and lead to me anointing a new genre ‘Extremely violent drama’ which had some killer entries – Drive, The Fighter, Warrior. A comparatively weak year for animation. As ever the films from the beginning of the year either fade or improve with my dubious memory.

Giles Hardie is the Entertainment Editor at SMH Online.

DWAYNE LENNOX

BEST RELEASED:

Beginners

Bridesmaids

Drive

Midnight In Paris

Project Nim

Rango

Snowtown

Super 8

The Tree of Life

True Grit

The Future

BEST UNRELEASED:

The Artist

How To Die In Oregon

Hugo

Le Havre

Like Crazy

The Muppets

Shame

Weekend

Young Adult

It seems churlish to say 2011 was a good-not-great year in film when we had releases from Allen, Aronofsky, the Coens, Refn, Spielberg (x2), von Trier, and a magnum opus by Malick. Still, I can't decide on a #1, so Best Released are my 10 favourites in alphabetical order. Most of my Best Unreleased films will be receiving an Australian cinema release in the first three months of 2012. While they are listed alphabetically, I can state categorically that Michel Hazanavicius's The Artist is my #1 choice. Believe everything you've heard about The Artist: it's a beguiling piece of movie making magic.

Dwayne Lennox is the film reviewer for Sydney's Cafe Society magazine since 2004 and the founder of The LennoX Files.

ALICE TYNAN

BEST RELEASED:

Drive

Bill Cunningham New York

Melancholia

The Tree of Life

Black Swan

Cave of Forgotten Dreams

Midnight in Paris

Incendies

Bridesmaids

Jane Eyre

BEST UNRELEASED:

Martha Marcy May Marlene

A Separation

Shame

Hugo

Tomboy

The Arbor

Tiny Furniture

The Forgiveness of Blood

Attenberg

How to Die in Oregon

Another cinematic year has shot by and I’m left grappling with my sieve-like memory: Black Swan was released in 2011, right? Indeed I feel a bit sorry for the films from early in the year, especially lighter fare like Tangled or Rango - both of which I was giddy about at the time – as they seem to have found themselves elbowed out by art-house behemoths like Tree of Life and Melancholia. In fact it strikes me that my list reads a little like a who’s who of art-house snobbery, so forgive me! I promise films like The Guard, The Trip and even True Grit were vying for position on this list. And what of local cinema? The brilliant Burning Man, the delightful Griff the Invisible or Fred Schepisi’s impeccable The Eye of the Storm definitely deserve honourable mentions. As does Snowtown…for haunting my nightmares. Bring on 2012 (minus the apocalypse, please!)!

Alice Tynan is a film critic for Limelight Magazine, The Movie Club, 702 ABC Sydney, The Vine and The Big Issue. See more at The Plot Thickens.

SCOTT HENDERSON

BEST RELEASED:

Drive
Certified Copy
Senna
Black Swan
127 Hours
Moneyball
True Grit
Beginners
Bill Cunningham's New York
Sleeping Beauty

Have to qualify my 2012 top 10 list by saying I missed out on Tree Of Life, Melancholia and The Skin I Live In. All three are high on my to see list before the year is out, just didn't squeeze them in before this write up. Some oldies on there due to the nature of the Australia release calendar but looking back Black Swan, 127 Hours and True Grit are films that lingered long in my thoughts, which is a major qualifying feature of my selection. While Certified Copy was easily the most stimulating intellectual experience I enjoyed at the movies in 2012, Senna was equally as gripping; immersed in tragedy, inspiration and technical prowess. But my top film was a genre-bending, populist, pulp adventure from director Nicolas Winding Refn, whose thriller Drive delivered a symphony of aesthetic, emotive and acoustic harmony rarely equaled.

Scott Henderson writes for The Vine and Empire Magazine.

MATT RAVIER

BEST RELEASED:

Tree Of Life
Certified Copy
Sleeping Beauty
Black Swan
Incendies
Melancholia
Take Shelter
Pina
Beginners
Drive

BEST UNRELEASED:

Cold Weather
My Sister's Sister
Dogtooth
Take This Waltz
Martha Marcy May Marlene
The Story of Film
Oslo, 31 August
Beauty
Kill List
Nuit #1

I traveled a lot this year, visiting six different countries and watching a lot of films in the process. It's endlessly reassuring to me to see that diversity can still be found on screens around the world (if one looks hard enough) and that we don't all have to watch (& talk about) the same 60 movies. The films that left a strong impression were the ones that seemed to shake up their genre, or in some cases the very foundations of cinema. There were a lot of very good films that left me somewhat indifferent: they were quickly forgotten. Great titles that didn't quite make the list but to look out for in the new year include ALPS, Perfect Sense, Into The Abyss, Le Havre, Wetlands, Shame, Samsara, Rampart, I Wish, Trishna, The Deep Blue Sea, Jeff who Lives at Home and Monsieur Lazhar.

Matt Ravier runs The Festivalists, which programs & produces film festivals. This is his blog and he also writes for a variety of publications including Metro Magazine and The Big Issue.

DAVID MICHAEL BROWN

BEST RELEASED:

Black Swan
Drive
Melancholia
The Skin I Live In
Another Year
X-Men: First Class
The Hunter
Super 8
Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes
Submarine

BEST UNRELEASED:

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
The Muppets
Hugo
Martha Marcy May Marlene
Kill List
Troll Hunter
Tyrannosaur
Hobo With A Shotgun
Exporting Raymond
Cedar Rapids

2011 has been a hell of a year for movies. Yes, the blockbusters have scampered into obscurity but any year that features new films by Darren Aronofsky, Lars von Trier and Nicolas Winding Refn must be saluted. Released in January and the much vaunted companion piece to the machismo posturing of The Wrestler, Aronofsky ballet horror, Black Swan, handed Natalie Portman a well-deserved Oscar, despite accusations of ballet stand-ins. Winding Refn’s Drive was a glorious slice of neon lit ‘80s tarmac featuring Ryan Gosling at his toothpick chewing best, with an awesome soundtrack and able support from Albert Brooks and Carey Mulligan, Drive was an exhilarating ride and a close contender for pole position. In Antichrist Lars von Trier destroyed the lives of a grieving couple, in Melancholia he destroyed the world. A masterful collision of Dogma aesthetics and sci-fi tropes, Melancholia was a glorious end to our civilization. It’s the end of the world as we know, and Lars feels fine.

David Michael Brown is senior editor at Empire Magazine. You can read his work at www.empireonline.com.au.

DEE JEFFERSON

BEST RELEASED:

Beginners
Drive
Melancholia
Take Shelter
Tree Of Life, The
The Future
True Grit
Black Swan
Ides Of March
Incendies
Le Quattro Volte

BEST UNRELEASED:

Alps
Attenberg
Shame
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
People Mountain People Sea
A Separation
Faust
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
The Descendants

Dee Jefferson is a film journalist and the Arts Editor at The Brag.

_____________________________________________________

This is an informal poll and doesn't represent an official organization or critics group. Apologies to any Sydney-based film journalists who haven't been included, I tried to reach out to everyone but not everyone was in town etc. Please get in touch so I can include you in future polls.

I'm inviting all film lovers out there to post their own analysis and top 10 lists in the comments below. Happy new year everyone!

In Conversation: Jody Shapiro

2011-07-26T11:14:00.002+10:00

Here's a conversation I had with talented Canadian filmmaker, producer and cinematographer Jody Shapiro at Metro Screen as part of the 2011 Sydney Film Festival.

Jody Shapiro is well known for his work with Guy Maddin and Isabella Rossellini. He was recently in town to present his new feature documentary How To Start Your Own Country, as well as Animals Distract Me, a uniquely personal documentary collaboration with Isabella Rossellini.

Jody has carved out a fascinating shared creative space for himself and the artists he most admires, no mean feat in an era when the odds seem stacked against the financing, production and distribution of truly independent films. There's a lot to learn from his holistic, passion-driven approach: his is an inspiring story of independence, intuition and artistic integrity.

Thanks to Metro Screen for hosting this chat, and to the Sydney Film Festival for inviting me to facilitate.

Cinephilia as Activism (Project: New Cinephilia)

2011-07-02T16:35:00.002+10:00

Recently I was asked to participate to a fascinating international round-table for PROJECT: NEW CINEPHILIA, a conversation hosted by MUBI.com and the Edinburgh International Film Festival.

The online round-table sought to define contemporary cinephilia (here's its curatorial statement). You can read the full round-table discussion here, and you should check out PROJECT: NEW CINEPHILIA's great resources and original essays too.

The discussion sought to answer some of the following questions. What does it mean to be a cinephile in the 21st century? How has film discourse adapted to today’s environment? What is the impact of the other arts on film writing? How are we naturally equipped to “read” a film? What are best practices for teaching film appreciation? How have new modes of distribution affected what we see and how we interpret film?

Here's an excerpted version of my contribution.

RECLAIMING THE SCREENS: CINEPHILIA AS ACTIVISM

I’ll start by claiming cinephile pride. Perhaps it’s because I’m French, but the word “cinephile” works for me. I like “fan”, but how many people out there don’t consider themselves fans of film? A distinction seems necessary, and in years of watching (reading about, writing about, dreaming about) cinema, no better term has been suggested to me. It describes – from Ancient Greek to French to English – someone with a passionate interest in cinema. That’s us, isn’t it?

In recent years (as I write this even!) the way in which we make, watch, share and talk about films has changed. Merci technology. More people seem to be joining the conversation and that conversation seems to be both more fragmented and less inhibited (by class, by education, by gender, by geography).

I believe you can be a cinephile even if the majority of your film watching happens outside the cinema. (As an aside, some of my friends’ home cinema set-ups, and the inclusive generosity with which they are used, puts the so-called “cinema experience” to shame.) Mostly, cinephiles have more tools at their disposal (…and there are more films to talk about), but has the conversation itself really changed? One outlet for cinephilia has changed: professional film journalism, but the conversation rages on.

The lack of diversity and representation are still problematic. On the one hand, technology is levelling the playing field: making films, sharing films, watching films and talking about films is, more than ever, accessible to everyone. On the other hand cinema, in the name of free trade and globalization, is slowly but surely being shoved away from the protective embrace Governments have traditionally reserved for the arts, left to fend for itself in a liberal economy defined by supply and demand.

As a result, I feel the multiplicity of voices behind and around the camera is less reflected in mainstream culture, media and awareness than it could be. The diversity of what’s on our screens is under threat. And, due partly to ignorance about alternatives, it isn’t being demanded. This offers a tremendous opportunity to define new cinephilia as a form of activism or resistance.

The end of paid criticism has a silver lining: editorial freedom. Couple that editorial freedom with the inexpensive and accessible new ways of making, distributing, discussing and promoting films. Fuel it with a cinephilia that seeks to reach out and preach to the unconverted (rather, perhaps, than with fandom, which brings together people around a hermetic sub-culture?), and you have a tremendous force at your disposal. Do cinephiles have a responsibility?

I don’t have a background in film theory or in filmmaking. I’m an arts administrator and a festival programmer. My modest activism as a cinephile expresses itself through the organization, financing, production, marketing (and yes, programming) of film festivals, by repeated attempts (often thwarted by compromise: festivals are the realpolitik of evangelical cinephilia) to bring together creators and an audience.

But everyone is different. A cinephile activist is anyone who lets true cinephilia inform their actions. Cinephile activists can include published academics, cultural policy makers, archivists, media studies professors, passionate film distributors, independent critics, educators and of course, filmmakers. It can manifest itself on a global scale (Mubi.com,Cannes, TIFF Lightbox, Benten Films, the International Cinephile Society) or at your doorstep (underground film festivals, zines, street art, public disobedience, guerrilla screenings).

Cinephile activism is an inclusive, open-minded enthusiasm unshaped by dominant market forces, unburdened by self-censorship, unafraid of questioning itself, one which is informed by personal history and experience as much as by received wisdom, buoyed by critical thinking, sharpened by constructive discussion, curious of under-represented voices, aware of the underground, and which eventually dedicates itself to enhancing cinematic diversity, innovation and originality.

It isn’t new, but has it ever felt more urgent? Has it ever been more within reach?

I’m thrilled about how information technology is changing the way films are made, seen, disseminated and talked about. It’s opened up new opportunities for many who were previously excluded from this creative universe. It’s turned cinephilia from a secret club for the privileged to a “Broad church” in which anyone can worship.

I don’t think this new unfettered access, even defined as overexposure, poses a threat to thoughtful criticism. Those sensitive to its charms had to seek it out in the past, they will seek it out in the future. The same can be said of contemplative cinema. Isn’t part of our role to aggregate, demystify, point the way? If anything, I think the abundance of un-sponsored, unedited, multifaceted voices helps bridge the gap between an audience too often treated like a market, and a cinema too often marginalized by its inability to compete for attention in a media-saturated landscape. For all the trash that washes up on its beaches, the internet is still a place where one can access treasures of cinema, gems of criticism. It’s an ocean of information, not a tidal wave.

Cinephilia is about time, and sometimes it seems cinema and thoughtful criticism move to a different timescale than the internet and online banter. Negotiating this disconnect, moderating our unlimited access to knowledge and materials, these are the challenges of the age (and not just for cinephiles). It requires incredible self-discipline, but isn’t it a fascinating, stimulating exercise?

I’m less interested in the size of the screen at the moment than in what’s on it. I have a multitude of devices on which I can (and do) watch moving images. And yet like everyone here, there is nothing I like more than watching films the way most were meant to be seen: in a cinema, in a comfortable seat, on a big screen, with proper sound. But it’s not something I can take for granted anymore.

I live in Sydney. There is no cinematheque here. There is no centre for the moving image. The last repertory cinemas have been turned into office buildings. Independent cinemas are all but extinct. Five or six so-called art houses all show the same 7 or 8 movies. A quick glance at some of the titles screening there this weekend: Pirates of the Caribbean 4, Water for Elephants, Insidious, The Hangover 2. And then there’s the multiplex.

This is not some provincial backwater, this is the biggest city in the country, a city of over 4 million people in one of the world’s richest economies. This is the place small town youth flee to in search of culture. The films of Denis or Breillat, Tsai or Weerasethakul, Costa or Lanthimos, they cannot be seen in a cinema here, outside of a festival. Ozon’s Potiche, for many here, is as leftfield as cinema gets.

I’m all for the purist’s cinema experience, but not at the expense of diversity. Is it better to stream Tropical Malady on a TV, computer or home projector, or never to see it at all? If we must resort to other screens to awaken and preserve interest in the work of true artists, past and present, so be it. If tweets and podcasts are helpful to share that enthusiasm and alert people to alternatives, then bring it on.

Cinephiles run film festivals here because without them, the cinema experience would boil down to consuming event movies with popcorn. The internet has levelled the playing field, provided accessible and powerful opportunities for promotion and discussion, allowed us to keep in touch with audiences and filmmakers year-round and to champion under-represented cinema. The aim is still to bring people together in a darkened, acoustically-sound cinema, and in the case of my next event, to introduce them to the work of promising Quebec auteurs such as Sebastien Pilote and Stephane Lafleur.

Alongside traditional film festival, I started a monthly short film night here called Kino Sydney 5 years ago, where we show uncurated short films made specifically for the night. It’s the other end of the spectrum. The films are of varying quality, the sound is average, cushions replace red velour seats and everyone’s drinking and talking. But we’re drinking and talking about film. We’re sharing our experience (and our understanding) of shooting and assembling videos, and how that relates to our experience (and our understanding) of cinema. The lines are blurred.

There are so many new ways to engage with filmmaking, criticism and viewing. Each has become more accessible than it’s ever been. If there is a new cinephilia, then perhaps it’s one which allows us to seamlessly alternate between taking on, learning from and commenting on each of these three roles. The possibilities are endless.

Sydney Film Festival: Critics' Poll 2011

2011-06-20T20:10:00.002+10:00

SFF competition jury: producer Mark Herbert, director Sarah Watt, director Chen Kaige, actress Kerry Fox & critic Julie Rigg.

The 58th Sydney Film Festival has just wrapped. Asghar Farhadi is the recipient of the $60,000 Sydney Film Prize for A SEPARATION, a film which, according to jury president Chen Kaige, "best demonstrates emotional power and resonance, a film which is audacious, cutting-edge, courageous and goes beyond the usual treatment of the subject matter." The Iranian film has already won the Golden Bear at this year's Berlin Film Festival and will screen at the Melbourne Film Festival next month. A special mention was also awarded to Mohamed Diab's Egyptian entry CAIRO 678, "for it’s courage in using a popular form of cinema to successfully communicate the frustration and anger of women in Egypt with sexual harassment, and their determination to change this."

Festival director Clare Stewart

It's festival director Clare Stewart's fifth and last year at the Sydney Film Festival, and the consensus within the small community of critics and cinephiles with whom I spent the past 12 days is that the 2011 line-up, while leaner, was eclectic, diverse and full of genuine discoveries.

Once again, the #sydfilmfest hashtag on twitter acted as a water cooler around which many conversations began. Many of these continued in real life in the lobby of the cinema, or in the bars nearest the State Theatre. Interestingly this year, several SFF-selected filmmakers who couldn't attend actively took part in the conversation with us on Twitter, including Paddy Considine (Tyrannosaur), Asid Kapadia (Senna) and Ben Wheatley (Kill List).

Miranda July on the red carpet for The Future

I polled a sample of local film and visiting critics about the films they've seen at the Festival. The star rating system is obviously very limited, it certainly isn't criticism. Taken together however, these ratings create an insightful snapshot of the overall critical reaction to this year's line-up. I'm thrilled that this year's poll includes contributions from visiting critics based in Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane.

I've also included links to the contributors' writing about the festival if you'd like to read a more in-depth analysis of the program. Some reviews will continue popping up on line and in print in the day and weeks to come.

Click on the pictures below to enlarge. Films in blue were in competition. Note that the films which do not appear on the list were not seen by anyone on the panel.

Feature Films

Feature Documentaries

Short Films

Here are some initial observations:

A Separation was the highest rated competition film. It actually won the Sydney Film Prize, showing the critics alignment with the jury this year. Terrence Malick's eagerly anticipated The Tree Of Life was close behind.
Tomboy was the highest rated film, though only two people in the panel saw it.
Sleeping Beauty, Norwegian Wood and The Future seemed the most divisive. Julia Leigh's Cannes entry certainly seemed to inspire the most heated conversations during the past fortnight.
In the documentaries, Asif Kapadia's portrait of the Brazilian F1 champion Senna was a clear favourite, transcending the subject matter to move and inspire even those allergic to formula one.
Too few of us saw too few the shorts for the results to mean much, but I thought I'd include them any way. Here are the Dendy Award winners.

Thanks to all who took part!

A gaggle of critics

Read / hear more:

Joshua Blackman (The Brag, Atonal Film)
Julian Buckeridge (AtTheCinema)
Matt Clayfield (The Australian, various publications)
Simon Miraudo (Quickflix)
Dave Marin-Guzman (Eastside FM)
Sarah Ward (The Reel Bits, DVD Bits)
Alice Tynan (Various outlets)
Ian Barr (Drum Media)
Richard Gray (The Reel Bits, DVD Bits, KOFFIA Blog, At The Cinema)
Scott Henderson (Dark Habits, The Vine)
Daniel Crichton-Rouse (Street Press Australia)
Matt Ravier (this here blog, The Brag, The Big Issue)
Richard Haridy (Rich On Film)
Dee Jefferson (The Brag)

If you're a Sydney based film critic and you'd like to take part in future polls, get in touch!

Here are other recent polls:

In conversation with Canadian filmmaker Jody Shapiro

Did you see any films at the Sydney Film Festival program? Do you agree with these local critics? Which were your favourites?

Eyes Wired Shut (Sleeping Beauty)

2011-06-10T17:15:00.000+10:00

Note: This review is better read after seeing the film.

Julia Leigh's debut Sleeping Beauty is only the second Australian film to be selected in Official Competition at Cannes in over a decade. The other was Bright Star, directed by the only female Palme d'Or winner in history, Jane Campion, whom Leigh cites as a mentor and facilitator here. Interestingly, Sleeping Beauty wasn't welcomed with rapturous applause in Cannes, much like Jane Campion's first film Sweetie, which met with indifference and hostility when it was unveiled in 1989.

While inclusion immediately elevates first-time filmmakers out of obscurity, Cannes' official competition can be unforgiving to first features. The build-up begins when selection is announced. Suddenly a film below everyone's radar, one seen by less than a dozen people worldwide, is presented as being on an even keel with the work of Malick, Von Trier or Almodovar. Once the festival starts, the competition unveils one film at a time, subjecting the work to accelerated appraisal, impossible expectations and immediate comparison with the well-resourced films of firmly established masters. In the mad rush of getting critical responses filed (or tweeted) before the 4th or 5th screening of the day begins, critics and commentators make snap judgments read by millions around the world, long before anyone else has a chance to even see the film, let alone formulate a counter-opinion.

Films screened in official competition often have only one chance to impress, and the rushed critical consensus on the Riviera after that initial screening was that Sleeping Beauty, while by no means a failure, didn't entirely live up to the hype.

Now that the film begins a wider roll-out, starting with an international premiere at Sydney Film Festival, it is possible to allow ourselves a little more time to think about the film, ponder its ambitions and reflect upon its achievements.

Sleeping Beauty's graphic images of female subjugation, emotionally detached tone and refusal to subscribe to traditional narrative conventions will continue to alienate many viewers. Those who seek a heroin they can relate to will be frustrated by a selfish, possibly unfeeling protagonist. Nowhere to be found is a character arc which conveniently maps the learning of valuable life lessons, preferably ones which tie in neatly with the accepted morals of the day, or articulate feminist theories in a way that comforts us or easily validates our opinions.

Many in Australia will be predisposed to hate it, to dismiss it sight unseen as yet another example of self-indulgent homegrown filmmaking, a metaphorical punching bag to vent their frustrations about the local film industry. Some will compare it to films designed to entertain, to make money, to reach for universal resonance, and find it lacking. Conservative commentators will misread the film's comments on sexual exploitation and react hysterically to its matter-of-fact depiction of the sex trade. But some film lovers, as equally unmoved by the glow of international recognition and the Campion stamp of approval as they are by the lukewarm reaction of major Cannes-accredited critics, will hopefully champion this confident, fearless and strikingly accomplished first film.

Sleeping Beauty's opens with a young university student (an excellent Emily Browning) undergoing what we assume are paid medical trials. A lab technician gently but firmly inserts a probe down the woman's throat, challenging both her gag reflex and our comfort zone. In a single tableau, Julia Leigh efficiently sets the tone of the film - detached, clinical, confronting - and provides a great introduction to Lucy: beautiful, fearless, and seemingly comfortable with letting others use her body in exchange for cash.

The clinical gaze ensures that the scenes of nudity and sexual violence are never exploitative nor engineered to arouse. Leigh chronicles a world in which social interactions - whether it is passing notes to your housemates or making plans for sex - are designed and codified to a degree that prevents actual raw, emotional exchange to ever truly occur. The artificial nature of a life lived without emotional engagement is the main subject of this film, it's the true slumber of this sleeping beauty. Leigh's framing of her story is cold and symmetrical, her main character is detached and remote. Numbness, as a subject, is well served by this clinical, minimal style.

It's also a refreshing change from young filmmakers' compulsive need to cram every film school trick into their first feature. A successful novelist, Leigh is clearly already a confident storyteller. For all its formal rigour and technical elegance, Leigh's style hasn't yet found, perhaps, a personality of its own. A monologue on age and experience, delivered straight to camera in one scene, hints at what could have been. Here and there, the influence of Kubrick, Bunuel or Haneke can be felt. There's an intuitive understanding of the power of visual storytelling at work, it just begs to be further developed.

This static medium shot which coldly monitors the action in the lab in that first scene recurs through most of the film, putting us at arms' length from the subject. We are not encouraged to relate as much as to reflect on our position as voyeurs. In other words, we can look but cannot touch.

Later, in a club, a second economical scene conveys a lot of information with scarcely a word being spoken: Lucy needs money, she's comfortable using her sexuality to obtain it, she's in control even when she seems to be the most passive player in the room. Initial forays into prostitution lead her to audition for a position as a lingerie waitress before graduating to the role of "sleeping beauty".

Her icy, aristocratic employer Clara (Rachel Blake) explains: "you will go to sleep: you will wake up. It will be as if those hours never existed". For serious money, Lucy - working under the name Sara - accepts to be drugged into dreamless sleep and spend hours alone with wealthy clients. "Your vagina will not be penetrated," Clara assures her, "your vagina is a temple".

While clients are instructed to "not leave a mark" on the young woman's body, it soon becomes clear that Lucy doesn't emerge from artificial sleep unscathed. Aloof as she may be, she begins to wonder about that unknowable part of her life. In one brilliant scene Lucy sees a sleeping woman on the train, wipes the drool from her chin. The vulnerability, loss of control and potential indignity of sleep, merely hinted at here, register on Emily Browning's face as so many tiny ripples of recognition and horror.

Cracks begin to appear in her armor, in her psyche. Even back in the safety of a her own glass apartment, for example, she discovers that she can no longer sleep naked. There are silent cries for help, like a handful of berries released in the car that takes Lucy to her clients (a nod perhaps to European fairy tales), or a desperate marriage proposal to an old flame...

Lucy's behaviour grows wilder, riskier, more dangerous, but her body is preserved, nearly unmarked, a paragon of virginal beauty. Like Dorian Gray, she keeps her alter ego locked up, hidden from view. Here, it takes the form of her only friend (Ewen Leslie), a house-bound addict she visits episodically. He is her one source of true human warmth. This contact that is also codified (they trade unnecessarily polite banter) but it remains untainted by transaction. This man - the one person who knows and loves her - has lost the will to live, is dying. Lucy is unable to save him. His body, like Dorian Gray's portrait, grows older, uglier and weaker by the day. While a hedonistic Lucy sells her immaculate youthful body, it is as if her soul withers away in a cage. Interestingly, her friend is called Birdmann.

Scramble the letters in LUCY and SARA and you can phonetically spell "Australia". Julia Leigh's film is open to interpretations: I read Sleeping Beauty as an indictment of contemporary Australia, with Emily Browning's character acting as a metaphorical key to explore our nation's place in the world.

Australia, the young, white-skinned nation, is healthy, vigorous, beautiful and aware of her gifts. She has poise but sophistication doesn't come naturally. She is the lucky country, untouched by war, strife or natural disasters. Her assets are bountiful, attracting the attention of older nations who lust after her beauty, her youth, her natural resources. Unburdened by shame or conscience, she sells herself to the highest bidder, lets herself be subjugated by powerful nations, whose markets and influence she in turn covets. She sells off her land, her resources, her energy. She closes her eyes to the consequences of her actions, to the plight of others. She turns a blind eye to the price she may one day have to pay for the hedonistic, irresponsible and dangerous excesses of her youth.

That metaphor, of course, will not work for everyone. It's important to remember however, that none of the fairytales which inspired Sleeping Beauty were meant to be taken at face value. Most are cautionary tales which conceal deeper meanings behind scenes both grotesque and preposterous. The best ones are story archetypes which, when revisited (like Catherine Breillat's other Perreault update, Bluebeard) can shed new light on the modern narratives we use to define morality.

Like a psychopath, Lucy seems almost emotionally deaf. Her sleepwalk through life, uncaring and unfeeling, can easily be imagined as the detached, irony-infused apathy of an entire generation. In the fairytale, it takes a prince's kiss to wake her from her slumber. In this contemporary update, it takes a lot more to wake Lucy up from her numb existence. When she finally wakes from this state, she does so with a heart wrenching howl in the final frames. Once again, this time to her irreversible horror, she has allowed someone to die in her arms. It is not the fairytale's Kiss of Life that wakes her, it is the realization that everything Lucy touches withers and dies: hers has become the Kiss of Death.

The last frames, like something from a Michael Haneke film, are a discomforting reminder of our complicity in the actions of those who take advantage of Lucy. The video footage of Lucy sleeping is nothing new to the audience, who have been sitting there throughout, all too aware of what fate awaits her when she sleeps. The final scenes of this deceptively simple narrative aren't just a wake up call to our sleeping beauty, they are a wake up call to those who stand there, bear witness, and do nothing.

Sleeping Beauty had its world premiere at Cannes 2011 and its international premiere at the Sydney Film Festival on June 10th. It releases in Australia on June 23rd.

Days of Earth (The Tree Of Life)

2011-05-27T08:00:00.002+10:00

There’s a breath-holding moment in Terrence Malick’s The Tree Of Life when Jack, aged 2, meets his newborn brother for the first time. The toddler – almost a boy - approaches the baby, laid out on a blanket on the family’s front lawn. The camera hovers gracefully above his shoulder, occasionally blinded by the warm light of the setting sun. In the space of a single take, Jack’s face betrays a succession of raw emotions: confusion, fear, the discovery that he isn’t the only (the golden) child, a realization that his parents’ love will need to be shared, the first awareness perhaps, of himself as a toddler, grown from an infant such as the newborn now before him, competition, curiosity, a sense of superiority laden with responsibility, protectiveness and, eventually, love.

This incredible scene beautifully encapsulates the rare and magical nature of Malick’s work, simultaneously a construct and the opposite of a construct. While we are never allowed to forget that what we are watching is a film – the camera floats and spins, constantly calling attention to itself – we are also witnessing a moment seemingly so entirely natural as to be borrowed from reality. It’s safe to call a 2 year old actor a non-professional, but this isn’t the European über-realism of Bruno Dumont or event the Dardenne Brothers. This is slick, polished filmmaking with an undeniable Hollywood sheen, and superstar Brad Pitt is just there in the background, slightly out of focus.

More perhaps than the infrequency of his films (5 in 4 decades) or the constant shunning of the spotlight (he hasn’t been interviewed once between 1973 and 2007), Malick’s reputation amongst cinephiles rests on this ability to defend a unique artistic vision which borrows from both a bigger-than-life Hollywood tradition and an intimate, uncompromising European auteur cinema… yet belongs in neither. Only the late Stanley Kubrick, perhaps, compares.

The film begins with a quote from Job 38:4: “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth?” In other words, how can man - the finite creature - fathom the infinite wisdom of the creator? How can man understand God’s aims, not having been present at the moment of creation? The dizzying ambition of The Tree Of Life is its attempt to tackle this most philosophical of questions.

The simple story is that of an all-American family living in the Suburban hinterland (Texas?) in the late 50’s. Brad Pitt plays the authoritarian father, Jessica Chastain the stay at home mother of three boys. This tableau is conjured through a series of recollections by the older son Jack O’Brien – now a middle-aged man working in the City (Sean Penn). How – he wonders - did he become the man he is today?

A significant part of the film centres around Jack’s daily life with his brothers. It’s told mostly in internal monologues made up of the characters’ whispered (and unanswered) interrogations: there is no distinction made here between talking to oneself and talking to God.

The microcosm of the O’Brien family, of course, stands for humanity as a whole. Jack’s existential investigation is shorthand for our need to come to terms with the origins of the world, so as to understand our place within it.

There are two ways through life, the director posits. The way of Nature (man, the father, John Smith and his kind in The New World) and the way of Grace (woman, the mother, Pocahontas and her pre-lapsarian tribe). Nature only wants to please itself, to have its own way. Grace, meanwhile, is a state of innocence so pure as to be uncorrupted by civilization (“no one who loves the way of grace ever comes to a bad end”).

Jack’s parents embody this dichotomy, but it can also be read as a reference to the Fall of Man. Jack is born innocent, his childhood is the universal story of the corruption of this innocence, of man’s fall from grace. It’s a hypothesis that can be explored both through religion and through secularity – the film allows both interpretations.

Moving past metaphor, Malick even reaches back to creation itself, offering us a majestic sequence charting the origins of the universe and the beginning of life, from ocean-born bacteria to dinosaurs to man. In an attempt to pinpoint the exact moment when God is forgotten and the world lapses into corruption, he returns to this symbolic family, inviting us to revisit the wonder of our childhood and to understand when, how and why we (the viewers, mankind) lose our innocence.

The teachings of the father – strict and arbitrary – are the first clues. Childhood is portrayed as the learning of a series of rules and roles which accumulate to form the human condition, tearing us from grace: the introduction of private property (this is our yard, this is the neighbour’s), of competition, of role play (costumes for Halloween), of fear (the cautionary morals of fairytales), of dogma (the rituals of organized religion), the arbitrariness of authority (the one who forbids does what is forbidden)…

The climax is the discovery of that most bewildering of contradiction: innocents are made to suffer. As Jack learns, God punishes innocents and sinners alike, indiscriminately. This contradiction pushes the child into adulthood and in doing so, breaks man’s bond with nature (an idea explored further in The New World) and makes it possible for him to go to war (The Thin Red Line).

In the end, Malick folds time upon itself, allowing the adult Jack to re-unite with his childhood self, his brothers, his father, his mother. This final opportunity afforded by memory (and the medium of film), is a peaceful reconciliation, nature and grace bridged through forgiveness (literally, the last shot is a bridge).

Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain are superb as the laconic parents, but it’s Hunter McCracken as the 11-year-old Jack who really impresses. His face a subtle mix of steely determination, pained resolve and inquisitive curiosity, he captures in a largely silent performance the complex contradictions of childhood.

Filmed as a philosophical daydream, The Tree of Life casts a spell on those willing to surrender to its counter-intuitive narrative, mystical overtones and languorous rhythms.

As with all of his work, the film is a spellbinding spectacle. No one captures nature’s ability to provoke awe and wonder, to humble and arouse the senses, like Malick does. Emmanuel Lubezki’s luminous photography alone turns an ordinary suburban street into a richly evocative garden of Eden. Alexandre Desplat’s discreet score, meanwhile, threads an ambient, ethereal soundscape through these images, leaving the majestic emotional crescendos to Berlioz or Ligeti.

Don’t allow the lush images, languid cadence and calm whispers to lull you into a dream-like trance, however. There is much reward to be reaped from an active questioning of the film’s silent invitation to philosophical consideration.

The Tree Of Life had its world premiere at Cannes on May 16th (this review was written 3 weeks before that day). It won the Palme d'Or. It is out May 27th (today) in the US. It has its Australian premiere in competition at the Sydney Film Festival on June 14th before its national release on June 30th.

A Life Less Ordinary (Life In a Day)

2011-05-22T14:00:00.004+10:00

What were you doing on Saturday July 24th 2010?

A glance at my online calendar tells me I spent that Saturday in the office, writing copy for our website, two weeks ahead of the launch of a festival that I run, Sydney's Canadian Film Festival. There's no entry for the evening, but I might've gone to see a movie, or maybe had some friends over for dinner. By virtue of being decidedly ordinary, this day was a good a reflection of who I am, or at least who I was 10 months ago.

I remember that I knew about the Life In a Day project. I loved the idea of crowdsourcing a film and in fact, had crowdsourced a short film myself (albeit on a very modest scale) just a few months earlier. And although, like many people today, I had access to a camera and a computer, I didn't think my life was interesting enough to contribute. Perhaps I also felt a little cynical towards a project that I imagined would try too hard to strive, in vain, for the universal.

Edited from 80,000 YouTube submissions sent in from 192 countries, the feature-length documentary Life In A Day chronicles the lives of a handful of our planet's residents on Saturday July 24th 2010. Contrary to my intuition, what makes this document so worthwhile in fact, is precisely that these scenes are culled from the ordinary. One person's daily routine, it turns out, is another's exotic or adventurous daydream.

Free of voice over or context, Life in a Day is 90 minutes of back-to-back amateur clips of people's lives. I recommend sitting as far back in the cinema as you can if you want to avoid a low-res, aspect ratio headache. Arranged chronologically and thematically to chart the unfolding of a day on Earth, from midnight to midnight, the film's main concession to cinema conventions is an original score by Harry Gregson-Williams and Matthew Herbert, which threads the segments together.

While it lacks the thematic integrity of Babies or Oceans, the political agenda and widescreen photography of Koyaanisqatsi or Baraka, Life In A Day presents a surprisingly coherent if incredibly simple aesthetic and philosophical argument, one which belies its eclectic, unpolished origins.

Some clips - twelve different people getting out of bed for example - fly past in blink-and-you-miss-them fragments, others linger or recur. Some do indeed reach for the universal - a father teaches his teenage son how to shave - but most, thankfully, are comfortably anchored in the personal, the specific, the strange, the regional. The latter are the most fascinating for their ability to break with sentimental clichés and stereotypes, and give you a precious glimpse of true stories you've never heard before.

Directed by Kevin McDonald (Touching The Void) and seamlessly edited by Joe Walker (Steve McQueen's Hunger), Life In A Day impresses most by its refusal to skip over the unpleasant, or that to which it is hard to relate: a cow being slaughtered, revellers getting trampled to death during Berlin's Love Parade, a man likening homosexuality to a disease that must be eradicated.

It makes the cute vignettes more palatable, the inspiring moments less sappy, the idealistic banalities less grating. Everyone will be affected by different scenes of course, and I'll admit to shedding a few tears when a young man comes out to his grandmother over the phone. Recurring images of a Korean man in his 10th year of cycling around the world are particularly affecting, as is the last segment which highlights the atomised nature of our hyper-connected reality.

By definition, this is a reductive exercise, the result is bound to frustrate. One the one hand we don't spend long enough with anyone to let their contributions truly sink in, one the other, too many things are missing. The political is telegraphed in excerpts rendered harmless by their brevity and lack of context. The sexual, meanwhile, has been all but erased from the record. I find it hard to believe that no one on the entire planet had sex (even on camera) on the 24th of July 2010.

The filmmakers defended their editorial choices at Sundance, when the film had its world premiere earlier this year, while being live-streamed on YouTube around the world. What they chose to keep, they asserted, closely reflected the diversity of the submissions themselves. All we have is their word.

One interesting revelation, then, is the incredibly optimistic, simple and joyful tone of the film overall. The media feeds us an endless visual torrent of war, crime, abuse, scandal and celebrity hysteria, in its remit to reflect our needs for both information on world events and entertainment. When it's the people's turn to speak however, 80,000 of us reply with positive messages, grounded observations and simple pleasures.

I wish Life In A Day had been conceived as a 24 hour film, with geographical context available at the touch of the button, and perhaps on one of the film's many delivery platforms, this will be possible. Even in its current form, and taken only as seriously as its obvious limitations allow, Life In A Day is an incredible document which will handsomely reward those who check their cynicism at the door.

Update: It looks like UK distributors are crowdsourcing some of the film's marketing as well, using easyfundraising.org.uk as platform for user-promoted online tickets sales, with the incentive that a quarter of the ticket price is given away to charity.

Life in a Day screens at the upcoming Sydney Film Festival, is out in the UK on June 17th and in the US on the one-year anniversary of the shoot, July 24th 2011.
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What to see at the 2011 Sydney Film Festival?

2011-05-15T15:31:00.007+10:00

The 58th Sydney Film Festival runs from the 8th to the 19th of June. For some of us, it's the year's main event. In a city without a dedicated centre for the moving image nor repertory movie houses, where arthouse cinemas seem to all play the same half-dozen films, this is our annual fix for quality world cinema.

First: a few tips:

If you're a serious cinephile, prioritize the films in the Official Competition (for a $60,000 prize): they were put there for a reason. You don't just get to sit in a cinema with jury president Chen Kaige and his colleagues, you get to dish out informed opinions once the winner is announced ("Kaige and his cronies *so* got it wrong on Attenberg..." etc)
The print program lets you know which titles have Australian distribution (look for a recognizable distributor listing in the main credits). Some are hard to resist, but you might want to leave others until later in the year when they hit cinemas, leaving more time for those films which will never screen in this country again!
If you're on twitter keep an eye out on the #SydFilmFest hashtag: it brings together punters and critics' opinions on the films in the festival and is a great way to keep an eye on what's hot and what's not.
During the Fest, get to Grasshopper in between screenings. That's where filmmakers, industry, critics and hardcore cinephiles will hang out to share their recommendations.
Start sniffling and coughing conspicuously in your workplace a few days before the Festival starts so it's less suspicious when you call in sick to catch a morning screening of Scorcese's A Letter To Elia.

At the end of the Festival, I'll publish my Sydney Film Festival 2011 critics poll (here's last year's), aggregating opinions from local film critics (if you write about film professionally and you'd like to be included, drop me a line!).

Even though it's a leaner line-up this year, the size of the program can be daunting. Last year audiences were up 20% and a whopping 66 screenings sold out. To help you (and I) make sense of it, I've asked a handful of local film critics and cultural commentators to give me - informally - their #1 most anticipated film at the festival...

Joshua Blackman (The Brag, Atonal Film): HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN

There are more respectable offerings that I'm equally excited about, but the B-movie, horror-schlock geek in me can't wait to get hold of Hobo with a Shotgun. Rutger Hauer stars as the titular hobo - angry at the world and eager to dismember, decapitate and otherwise cause grievous bodily harm to, presumably, those more unfortunate than him. This is the type of movie you want to see at a late night festival showing with a packed, receptive audience. It's unlikely going to be anything more than gleeful trash, but the insanity and humour of the trailer below certainly makes it look more focused than last year's Machete, Robert Rodriquez's similar attempt at the same kind of thing. And Rutger Hauer? In a starring role? I'm there.

Katia Nizic (And Cut!; various publications): TROLL HUNTER

With each separate viewing of the trailer, Troll Hunter (Trolljegeren) is looking more and more like a hybrid of The Blair Witch Project and Nazi zombie comedy Død snø, which charged out of Norway courtesy of Tommy Wirkola in 2009. This is a good thing—very, very good.

Shot in an obvious mockumentary format, Troll Hunter shows a group of students (led by Glenn Erland Tosterud as Thomas and Johanna Mørck as Johanna) investigating a series of bear killings, when the strings begin to unfurl and they realise they are in fact following the Trolljegeren (Otto Jespersen).

In his first feature since 2000's Future Murder, Writer/Director André Øvredal presents audiences with a self-explanatory concept that is virtually limitless in its potential to thrill, delight, and scare the bejeezus out of us. Check out the trailer below for hilarity and madness wrapped in a Norwegian package.

Julian Buckeridge (AtTheCinema): TYRANNOSAUR

While Thomas McCarthy’s Win Win and the Berlin Festival dominating A Separation are high on my list, Paddy Considine’s Tyrannosaur is my “must-see” film at SFF. Maybe I am a sucker for bleak British dramas or maybe I am obligated to see anything that has an association to Hot Fuzz, Boy A and Peep Show. An extension of the stunning 2007 short film Dog Altogether, Tyrannosaur is a raw drama that has steadily gained buzz. With both Peter Mullan and Olivia Colman grabbing praise for their performances and Considine taking the World Cinema Directing Award at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, I believe Tyrannosaur will be one of the most intense and profound experiences at the festival.

Matt Clayfield (The Australian, various publications): THE MILL AND THE CROSS

Peter Greenaway has more or less cornered the market for arthouse-films-about-art, but Lech Majewski’s The Mill and the Cross looks like a far more inventive contribution to the genre. The trailer is a small compendium of strange and stunning images: a spider web glistening in the dew, an endless wooden staircase in the dark, a man’s face being eaten out by a crow as he lies prostrate and bloody atop a high-hoisted pole. And it will be interesting to see whether Rutger Hauer can play a Fleming with a paintbrush as well as he can a hobo with a shotgun.

Giles Hardie (SMH.com.au): SENNA

So many vying for contention yet the film I can't get out of my head is Senna, I'm not even a formula one fan, but this looks like it should be a truly amazing documentary.

Simon Miraudo (Quickflix): ATTENBERG

Alright Greece, you have my attention. I caught Yorgos Lanthimos’ deliciously demented Dogtooth at the Revelation Perth Film Festival last year, and it landed at #7 on my Top 10 Films of 2010. Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Attenberg shares more than enough DNA with that film to arouse my interest (not only did Tsangari produce Dogtooth, but Lanthimos is part of the cast), and is without question my most anticipated film of SFF. Like Dogtooth, Attenberg purportedly features a young woman whose understanding of the world is decidedly warped.. Living in isolation, Marina (Ariana Labed) studies David Attenborough docos – mispronounced ‘Attenberg’, geddit? – and imitates the behaviour of those featured animals in her day-to-day life. Labed picked up the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival - although they gave the Best Actor Cup to Wesley Snipes back in ‘97, forever making the sheen of its prestige forever dull. Regardless, if Attenberg explores the twisted ties between love, sexuality and biology half as wonderfully as Dogtooth did, I’ll be satisfied.

Dwayne Lennox (Cafe Society, The Lennox Files): LIFE, ABOVE ALL

Life, Above All was one of the films Roger Ebert was full of praise for during Cannes 2010, where he noted the “audience rose up as one person to cheer it”. Given that it's a year later and there appears to be no Australian cinema release scheduled for Life, Above All, the 2011 Sydney Film Festival may be our one and only chance to catch the South African film, which deals with the issue of AIDS in a country not exactly known for its effective handling of the disease. No doubt Life, Above All will screen on SBS in the not-too-distant future (and there's nothing wrong with that), but I'd rather have the same cinema/festival/communal viewing experience as Ebert, and hopefully with the same positive result.

Sarah Ward (The Reel Bits, DVD Bits): MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE

It’s not often that a feature starring a member of the Olsen family features on a “must-see” list (or even a “see” list, for that matter), however Martha Marcy May Marlene has been breaking with tradition across the board. With Elizabeth Olsen, younger sister of Mary-Kate and Ashley, front and centre in writer / director Sean Durkin's full-length debut, the film has amassed considerable buzz courtesy of its casting alone, with the
newcomer joining Academy Award nominee John Hawkes as well as Sarah Paulson and Hugh Dancy. Add the 2011 Sundance Film Festival best director’s award to the mix, and subsequent selection in Un Certain Regard at the current Cannes Film Festival, and the scene is set for a keenly awaited effort of any genre. That the dramatic thriller is reported to weave normal and abnormal events into an already elaborate and ambiguous narrative only further whets the appetite, making Martha Marcy May Marlene my most anticipated film of the 2011 Sydney Film Festival.

Alice Tynan (Various outlets): THE TREE OF LIFE

We've been waiting with breath that is bated for some five years now and finally Terrence Malick's Tree of Life it set to shimmer on the silver screen. Malick has been a favourite of mine for years - I'm even a fan of The New World (yes, the one with Colin Farrel's eyebrows) - so after that gorgeous poster and breathtaking trailer, I'm uber keen to sit back and contemplate life, death and immortality with Malick and his masterful collaborators.

Ian Barr (Drum Media): THE TURIN HORSE

Ok, really it's The Tree of Life. But that film gets a general release a few weeks afterwards; The Turin Horse is only the second of Bela Tarr's films - Werckmeister Harmonies being the first - to play at the Fest, and
none have been released on DVD locally. ScreenDaily described it as follows: "a film for anyone who feels that Samuel Beckett is just too flippant in his view of the human condition, Tarr’s latest is about as bleak as cinema gets". It could be a punishing masterpiece or a punishing unintended self-parody, but Tarr's films have always had enough apocalyptic conviction to make 99% of films look puny by comparison. Most assuredly not coming soon to a cinema near you… and looking at the program, you can’t say that about many others.

Richard Gray (The Reel Bits, DVD Bits, KOFFIA Blog, At The Cinema): MEEK'S CUTOFF

From the preview announcement in April, it was clear that this would be a strong year full of highly anticipated films. Yet one film has stood out for this critic throughout the whole pre-program hype: Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff. Apart from reuniting with her Wendy and Lucy star Michelle Williams, this (along with last year’s True Grit) gives us the hope that the Western will finally be returned some of the legitimacy it has lost as an art form over the last few decades. From all glimpses of the movie to date, it promises to be a visually stunning and original take on a saddle-sore genre that has not managed to find many strong female voices up until now. If for no other reason, it may just be our only chance to see the film in Sydney in the near future.

5Sprocket (3D World): SLEEPING BEAUTY

I am most excited to see Sleeping Beauty. I want to see it because it looks like pants. Nice pants. That are tough and uncomfortable at first, and still are, but they're pants that itch you even though you've taken them off to go to sleep. Pants that tear into your soul, bringing up memories that you don't want to think about. You want to talk to people about these pants, and see if they have had similar issues with their pants. Wearing these pants is an intensely personal experience, both terrifying and itchy and necessary. I want this movie to be pants.

Victoria Waghorn (AWOL Monk): SLEEPING BEAUTY

Choosing just one is hard. There are a few films i'm really excited about, including The Future and How To Die In Oregon, however my pick is Sleeping Beauty. Harbouring an age-old fascination for Alice In Wonderland and the subversive, the lurid world Julia Leigh conjures - where fantasy and reality mesh in an accessible tapestry of sensuality and exploitation, with a likely gen-Y symbol heroine journeying down the titular rabbit hole to meet the consequences of her casual neo-liberalism face to face - is all-pervasive and utterly compelling.

Scott Henderson (Dark Habits, The Vine): BOXING GYM

If you've met me you'll know one of the great love stories of my life has been US culture and one town in particular, Austin. I lived in the state capital of Texas, a sanctuary for liberals and creatives surrounded by an ocean of red politics, for a year in 2007 and it was one of the best cinematic years of my life. Throw in a huge affinity for documentary film and sport and you'll be someway to understanding why Frederick Wiseman's Boxing Gym is my pick for SFF '11.

Matt Ravier (this here blog): I WISH I KNEW

Jia Zhangke's Still Life is probably the best Chinese film I've ever seen. I feel I learned more about contemporary China - its complexity and contradictions - from that film than from a hundred news reports. I Wish I Knew is a portrait of Shanghai, and I'm hoping Jia Zhangke's documentary will focus on the intersection of the political and the personal with visual flair, sly humour and a keen eye for compassionate satire. I often think of China as "the future", which would make his films crystal balls... wouldn't you want to stare long and hard into that?

What's your most anticipated film of SFF 2011?

New poster: Toomelah

2011-05-10T10:21:00.010+10:00

The 64th Cannes International Film Festival begins tomorrow, and as I write this, thousands of industry executives, film critics and buyers are landing in Nice or unpacking in their hotel rooms. It's a good year for Australian cinema in Cannes: Julia Leigh's Sleeping Beauty is in competition, Justin Kurzel's Snowtown is in the Critics Week sidebar, while Ivan Sen's Toomelah is in the official selection (Un Certain Regard).

Hundreds of films will be competing for attention: alongside the official and non-official selections, Cannes has one of the largest film markets in the world. Great poster art is one way to break through the clutter and establish a title as a prestigious offering.

In the case of Ivan Sen's Indigenous drama Toomelah, Sydney-based designers Carnival Studio worked closely with the director (for whom they'd already designed the poster for 2001's Beneath Clouds), to design key art for Cannes.

For this poster, a new high quality photograph was shot on location at Toomelah Aboriginal Mission, in the Moree Plains Shire at the border between New South Wales and Queensland. The image wisely focuses on 10-year-old Daniel Connors. His face seems to reflect a childhood innocence, but also traces of inner-conflict, hinting at the film's darker themes.

A minimal, simple approach hints at the film's style. Nothing is spelled out, but visual clues are everywhere: the impulsive typography, the traditional animal totems, the antisocial hoodie, the soothing presence of nature.

Find out more about Carnival Studio and the poster here.

Here are a couple of other just-revealed posters for Cannes 2011 titles.

Sydney Film Festival 2011 in posters (part 1)

2011-05-09T10:01:00.005+10:00

Here's an initial selection of posters from films screening at this year's Sydney Film Festival. In brackets is the poster's country of origin.

All About Love (Hong Kong)

Armadillo (UK)

Attenberg (Festival)

Black Venus (French)

Cool It (US)

Elite Squad: The Enemy Within (Brazilian)

Even The Rain (Spanish)

The Guard (Festival)

Happy, Happy (Norwegian)

Life In A Day (US)

Meek's Cutoff (US)

Mutant Girls Squad (Japan)

Norwegian Wood (Russian)

Project Nim (US)

Sacrifice (China)

Senna (British)

Three (German)

Troll Hunter (US)

Tucker & Dale Vs Evil (Russian)

Win Win (British)

Windfall (Festival)

The 58th Sydney Film Festival runs from the 8th to the 19th of June. Full line-up revealed 10am on Wednesday 11th May. Check back here soon for a preview of the films in the 2011 program.