Showing all posts about film
The 2022 Virtual Indigenous Film Festival
24 May 2022
Now in its fourth year, the 2022 Virtual Indigenous Film Festival is an event held exclusively online, showcasing Indigenous Australian film. This year’s event takes place from Thursday 26 May 2022, until Monday 30 May.
My Name is Gulpilil by Molly Reynolds, Off Country by John Harvey and Rhian Skirving, and Wash My Soul in the River’s Flow by Philippa Bateman (trailer featured above), are among titles being livestreamed during this year’s festival.
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Australian film, film, Indigenous film, trailer
Whina, a film by James Napier Robertson and Paula Whetu Jones
23 May 2022
Whina, trailer, directed by James Napier Robertson, and Paula Whetu Jones, is the story of Dame Whina Cooper, a twentieth century Māori activist and leader, who fought for Māori rights in New Zealand. Whina will screen at the 2022 Sydney Film Festival.
The daughter of a Māori chief, Josephine (‘Whina’ for short), was born in Hokianga in 1895. For nearly a century, Whina (Miriama McDowell, as younger Whina, and Rena Owen, Once Were Warriors) never stopped asserting the rights of her people and striving for unity between Māori and Pākehā. In 1975, Whina, frail but still determined, led a sacred hīkoi over 600kms, from the top of New Zealand to Parliament House in Wellington.
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film, James Napier Robertson, Paula Whetu Jones, trailer
The Impact, a film by 50 directors and 50 writers
21 May 2022
Made up of thirty-seven short films, The Impact, trailer, counts down the final two hours on Earth before a catastrophic meteor strike. Grim storyline aside, The Impact is a feat of filmmaking, with fifty directors and fifty writers collaborating to produce the feature. I’m not sure if we’ll see it on Australian film screens, but The Impact premieres in London on Tuesday 31 May 2022.
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Adèle Haenel exits reactionary racist patriarchal film industry
19 May 2022
French actor Adèle Haenel, who won best actress prizes in the César Awards and the European Film Awards, for her role as Héloïse, in Céline Sciamma’s 2019 film Portrait of a Lady on Fire, has walked away from film making, she said in a recent interview:
“I don’t make films anymore,” Haenel said. “Because of political reasons. Because the film industry is absolutely reactionary, racist, and patriarchal.”
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Before, Now & Then, by Kamila Andini, Sydney Film Prize contender
18 May 2022
Before, Now & Then, trailer, by Indonesian filmmaker Kamila Andini, is one of twelve films in competition for the Sydney Film Prize, at the 2022 Sydney Film Festival:
Kamila Andini tells a very personal story set against the backdrop of tumultuous political times in Indonesia in this beguiling period drama. Nana (a luminous Happy Salma) loses her family, including her husband, in the war in West Java. Years later, now in the 1960s, we meet her again. Her poverty now a thing of the past, she has remarried a significantly older man, Mr Darga, who is wealthy and a philanderer. Though her life is comfortable, Nana’s dreams are still occupied by the past.
A chance discovery of a carelessly forgotten item of clothing leads Nana to discover that Darga is having an affair with an even younger local woman, Ino. What follows is unexpected. Rather than a confrontation, Nana and Ino become friends, and take comfort in each other, jointly imagining a path to freedom. Meanwhile, through talk in the town of secret communists, and on radio broadcasts, the political tensions that will alter the future of Indonesia are made clear.
Before, Now & Then, also known as Nana, is competing against eleven other films for the Sydney Film Prize, the winner of which will be announced on Sunday 19 June 2022.
- Alcarràs by Carla Simón
- All The People I’ll Never Be by Davy Chou
- Blaze by Del Kathryn Barton
- The Box by Lorenzo Vigas
- Burning Days by Emin Alper
- Close by Lukas Dhont
- Fire of Love by Sara Dosa
- Godland by Hlynur Pálmason
- The Quiet Girl by Colm Bairéad
- Utama by Alejandro Loayza Grisi
- You Won’t Be Alone by Goran Stolevski
It looks like a tight contest to me.
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film, Kamila Andini, Sydney Film Festival, trailer
Everything Went Fine, a film by François Ozon
16 May 2022
I don’t know what someone else would say, but if I had to describe the work of French filmmaker François Ozon in two words or less, I’d go for thought provoking. Look at Potiche, In the House, and The New Girlfriend, and tell me you disagree.
End of life plans, living wills, and euthanasia, are matters featuring prominently in Everything Went Fine (Tout s’est bien passé), trailer, the latest movie from Ozon:
When André, 85, has a stroke, Emmanuelle hurries to her father’s bedside. Sick and half-paralysed in his hospital bed, he asks Emmanuelle to help him end his life. But how can you honour such a request when it’s your own father?
Everything Went Fine opens in Australian cinemas on Thursday 19 May 2022.
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No aliens: Carl Sagan’s big 2001: A Space Odyssey contribution
16 May 2022
Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, who co-wrote the screenplay for 2001: A Space Odyssey were at loggerheads for years as to how to portray the highly advanced aliens who created the mysterious black monolith seen throughout the film.
Kubrick had been considering depicting the extra-terrestrials as human-like, until American cosmologist and author Carl Sagan suggested not showing them at all. Best idea ever. The approach created so much more intrigue.
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2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C Clarke, Carl Sagan, film, science fiction, Stanley Kubrick
Charli XCX: Alone Together, by Bradley Bell and Pablo Jones-Soler
13 May 2022
Charli XCX: Alone Together, trailer, a documentary by Los Angeles based director duo Bradley Bell and Pablo Jones-Soler, follows British singer and songwriter Charli XCX, as she goes about recording her fourth studio album How I’m Feeling Now, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
It’s early 2020 and the world is thrust into lockdown, grinding everything to a halt – including pop superstar Charli XCX’s North American stadium tour. Stuck at home in LA and not working for the first time in her adult life, instead of bingeing both Netflix and junk food, Charli decides to push herself to her creative and physical limits by recording and releasing an entirely new record in just 40 days.
Armed with a producer sending her beats remotely, speedy Amazon deliveries of recording and filming equipment, a reluctant and utterly charming boyfriend and her legions of fans offering suggestions, video clips and adoration, Charli XCX embarks on both an introspective and deeply collaborative journey into the creation her widely celebrated album How I’m Feeling Now.
Charli XCX: Alone Together will screen in selected Australian cinemas, for a few days only, over the first weekend of June 2022.
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Bradley Bell, Charli XCX, film, music, Pablo Jones-Soler, trailer
Asghar Farhadi wins Cannes Grand Prix award for A Hero
11 May 2022
Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi has won the Grand Prix award at the Cannes Film Festival for his latest feature A Hero. Farhadi is the master of suspenseful drama, and A Hero — which opens in Australian cinemas on Thursday 9 June 2022 — is said to be his best work since A Separation in 2011. Check out the trailer.
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The Hill Where Lionesses Roar, a film by Luàna Bajrami
10 May 2022
Luàna Bajrami first came to my attention in her role as Sophie, in Céline Sciamma’s stellar 2019 film Portrait of a Lady on Fire, but the French-Kosovar actor is also a writer and director, and La Colline Où Rugissent Les Lionnes (The Hill Where Lionesses Roar), trailer, is her debut feature:
Best friends Jeta, Li and Qe live in a remote Kosovan village from which they see no way out. Bored and restless, the young women spend their days dreaming big but not living large – until, in a moment of aimless distraction, they rebrand themselves as a gang and fall into a life of crime. Exhilarated by the newfound sense of independence offered by their illegal pursuits, the trio soon discover that their ill-gotten gains come with some dangerous caveats.
The parallels between Bajrami’s film and Portrait of a Lady on Fire are intriguing, with — to be succinct — both stories featuring three women contravening social norms.
While The Hill Where Lionesses Roar screened at last year’s Melbourne International Film Festival, it didn’t appear to have a wider Australian theatrical release, so it looks like streaming may be the only option for seeing the film in this part of the world.
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