First I have some questions about well, an amazing movie. Clunky start, finish like some old time John Ford picture. Only Baz does close-ups as big as those or does someone else? Did Mandy Walker also photograph Tracey Moffat's Bedevil? Some of the shots look the same, particularly the studio interiors. David Wenham doing his whining act would be good if he hadn't done it before most notably in that movie where he appears as a witness at a Royal Commission. No chemistry between Hugh and Nick. Nick starting to look old but trying to hide it. Was all the stuff about Aborigines being warned that the film refers to dead people and the roller title at beginning and end about the stolen generations in the version the Oz critics saw? Are Aborigines now requiring that a fictional film referring to dead non-existent Aborigines requires a warning? Must ask Bordwell what his shot clock comes up with for average length of shot. 2.7 million feet of film and according to an ad in Inside film never less than six cameras running. Really?
"That was good" said an old lady nearby. "Not them again" said another old dear when we held the script about the The Stolen Generations for a moment. Interesting demographic emerging. Is it people closer to forty than twenty who will go to it. If so it defies all box office activity these days. Was there a scene with a pedophile priest shot or contemplated.
He's never dull but Snowy River made me more tearful, and was probably about as manipulative.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Ageless
Tucked away at the Chauvel is Youth Without Youth, the first film by Frances Ford Coppola for over a decade. It brings him full circle. His first official film the no-budget horror flick Dementia 13 was also barely in the public gaze, or at least the critical gaze. Yet I found it quite remarkable, the only film all year with enough plot and mystery and intrigue and ideas to make me want to see it again as soon as possible. The great man is so far out of the loop these days that he’s getting his money from smallish French and Italian producers and distributors, shooting in cheap foreign locations and minimising costs by film on HD. It might have been sad indeed, as such circumstances have been for many as they attempted to keep going in the face of general indifference. But Coppola’s rigorous methods and intelligence are on full show. Coppola has adapted a story, or is it a novel, by a Rumanian writer Mircea Eliade. The book was given to him by an old friend, a linguistics professor at the University of Chicago. I think the story posits the idea of a man who at the moment of his death is hurled back in time to relive the events of his life. This gives him an opportunity to be somewhat reflexive, and reflective, about things and he conducts his life again through a conversation with an all-knowing double. Coppola films it with a classical camera style. There are according to the director, only two occasions when the camera moves. The energy is generated in the editing and staging and not by an application of the current fad for unruly hand-held camerawork. Youth Without Youth wasn’t something I expected and it turned out to be the most involving experience I’ve sat through in a long time.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Phenomenal
Not having seen Australia I am at a disadvantage to thousands of others who have been herded into previews and advance screenings. I am aware however of two interesting emerging phenomena. The film seems to have been summed up in five critical words; “good but not great” and “long”. The most interesting response was in, of all places, R. Murdoch’s very own Sunday Telegraph. I read the piece by a young woman columnist sitting in a café at Berry. I expected to find it online but its not there so I cant tell you her name and my recall wont necessarily be perfect. This is what I took to be the gravamen of the piece from less than perfect memory. 1. Baz wanted to make a film about aboriginal dispossession. 2. This is a no-no. It would be regarded as dark and depressing (note those words) so to do. 3. That story has already been told anyway and no one went to see it. It was called Rabbit Proof Fence. 4. Baz thus made a love story involving whitefellas from different classes and embedded within his story set in the outback the 'real' story. 5. The ‘real’ central character is the young Aboriginal who goes through all the horrors that whitefellas have inflicted on blackfellas over a couple of hundred years. 6. Baz’s minders did not want journalists to ask Baz questions about this element of the subject for fear it might turn the punters off. There was a lot more including digs at the campus post-modernists and how they say you can tell stories. That I thought was interesting and I’ll take it with me into the movie.
The second interesting phenomenon is more to be expected. The opportunity has been taken to hop into the rest of the recent, i.e, the last decade or so, Australian film production and, in passing, attack David Stratton for being too generous towards Oyster Farmer in particular and other unspecified films in general. That Oyster Famer review seems to have assumed the status of the single defining event that caused Australian audiences to turn off going to Australian films. The latest right wing mavens to take up this challenge, after Michael Duffy and that ratbag Andrew Bolt (as my late dad always referred to him), were Greg Sheridan in his secondary guise as editorialist on The Australian and the ludicrous Miranda Devine. I say only one thing. The fact that they all obsessively return to this minor matter, scatering their vitriol and insults along the way is amazing to behold. Sheridan insults the intelligence further by gratuitously slagging off Ivan Sen’s wonderful and prize-winning Beneath Clouds as well. I was always convinced that John Howard's press office ke[t an eye on Stratton's opinions. A ;little too pinko for their taste and when the opportunity presented itself Sheridan stuck the boot in. It seems that the demise of the Howard office with its endlessly updated clipping service for selected warriors is sorely missed.
The warriors seem to have collectively decided that apart from Australia (with its themes of aboriginal dispossession, the nation’s unpreparedness for military attack and its setting in a harsh, uncompromising landscape notwithstanding), the rest of our recent cinema is ‘dark and depressing’ as noted above. Occasionally someone remembers Happy Feet and Kenny in this context even though the latter got depressingly dull towards its end. Maybe this isn't the same as depressing. Nobody, except maybe Philip Adams, apparently thinks Mad Max is either dark or depressing. Maybe it’s when the film has both characteristics that it causes a problem.
Someone who continues to feed this into the debate is Brian Rosen, the now film industry feather duster, who continues to find a sympathetic ear with a couple of journalists, most notably Michael Bodey and Gary Maddox. Rosen apparently absolves himself from any responsibility for this state of affairs notwithstanding that he was the head of the Film Finance Corporation for half of the Howard years and decided where the money would be spent. That has given offence to some and you can read one response to it, and to The Australian’s editorial, by Rod Bishop, former and much admired head of the Australian Film, Television and Radio School here at Urban Cinefile. http://urbancinefile.com.au/home/view.asp?a=15116&s=Forum
The second interesting phenomenon is more to be expected. The opportunity has been taken to hop into the rest of the recent, i.e, the last decade or so, Australian film production and, in passing, attack David Stratton for being too generous towards Oyster Farmer in particular and other unspecified films in general. That Oyster Famer review seems to have assumed the status of the single defining event that caused Australian audiences to turn off going to Australian films. The latest right wing mavens to take up this challenge, after Michael Duffy and that ratbag Andrew Bolt (as my late dad always referred to him), were Greg Sheridan in his secondary guise as editorialist on The Australian and the ludicrous Miranda Devine. I say only one thing. The fact that they all obsessively return to this minor matter, scatering their vitriol and insults along the way is amazing to behold. Sheridan insults the intelligence further by gratuitously slagging off Ivan Sen’s wonderful and prize-winning Beneath Clouds as well. I was always convinced that John Howard's press office ke[t an eye on Stratton's opinions. A ;little too pinko for their taste and when the opportunity presented itself Sheridan stuck the boot in. It seems that the demise of the Howard office with its endlessly updated clipping service for selected warriors is sorely missed.
The warriors seem to have collectively decided that apart from Australia (with its themes of aboriginal dispossession, the nation’s unpreparedness for military attack and its setting in a harsh, uncompromising landscape notwithstanding), the rest of our recent cinema is ‘dark and depressing’ as noted above. Occasionally someone remembers Happy Feet and Kenny in this context even though the latter got depressingly dull towards its end. Maybe this isn't the same as depressing. Nobody, except maybe Philip Adams, apparently thinks Mad Max is either dark or depressing. Maybe it’s when the film has both characteristics that it causes a problem.
Someone who continues to feed this into the debate is Brian Rosen, the now film industry feather duster, who continues to find a sympathetic ear with a couple of journalists, most notably Michael Bodey and Gary Maddox. Rosen apparently absolves himself from any responsibility for this state of affairs notwithstanding that he was the head of the Film Finance Corporation for half of the Howard years and decided where the money would be spent. That has given offence to some and you can read one response to it, and to The Australian’s editorial, by Rod Bishop, former and much admired head of the Australian Film, Television and Radio School here at Urban Cinefile. http://urbancinefile.com.au/home/view.asp?a=15116&s=Forum
Monday, November 10, 2008
National Pride
We all have our prejudices. Some say that the reason that the Coen Bros Burn After Reading was a dud at the domestic box-office, after a strong opening week, is that it is viciously anti-American. It proposes a US intelligence establishment full of vain, selfish, pompous dunderheads, chronically incapable of understanding even the simplest fact or comprehending the most obvious event. They are contemptuous of husbands, wives, colleagues and rivals. (“Shall I inform the FBI?” “Oh God no. Don’t bring those idiots in on this!” …or something like that, says one.)* The working class stiffs, toiling away for a low hourly rate at a gym, who move the plot along when they stumble on what they think are state secrets, are also vain, stupid egocentric and selfish.
The actors called upon to deliver this raucousness are brilliant at portraying such vanity. In fact, making the movie must have been a hoot for all those Hollywood liberals involved. Even the usually abysmal John Malkovich is perfectly cast as an alcoholic analyst shafted in a bit of bureaucratic byplay. Never in fact has such fun been had from a Coen Bros movie, despite a lot of attempts. Even the editor of Sight & Sound, not renowned for a sense of humour, found the movie affecting enough to describe it as “a minor Coens comedy with major stars goofing off”. Very kind.
Notwithstanding, Americans apparently, and American critics especially, though they get the joke, don’t like it. Australians on the other hand are going to it in such numbers that it is defying all attempts to knock it off the box office leadership charts.
But Australians are not immune to this syndrome. The only time I went to Cannes, along with the world’s film critics, I had the misfortune to suffer through Werner Herzog’s Where the Green Ants Dream, a film which played fast, loose and inventively with Aboriginal mythology. Needless to say the white guys were the bad guys. The rest of the world judged it largely as another of Herzog’s badly directed japes at civilisation but the Australians went apoplectic at the thought that the world might believe Herzog’s inventions were, rather like Bruce Chatwin’s in his novel “The Songlines”, the product of documentary reportage.
Philip Adams, then Chair of the AFC, was so enraged as to write a “Dear Werner you are a complete idiot” open letter published gleefully in the Cannes daily press. If there had been an organisation called Handwringers Anonymous we would all have been forced to join, such was the collective dismay.
The poor sods who try and control the cinema in China also have to suffer such indignity frequently as well. Each year a bunch of tyros with digital cameras go into the streets, back alleys and byways of far flung outposts of the celestial empire, usually without troubling even the local authorities for permission, and make movies like Xiao Wu, Blind Shaft, Blind Mountain and Little Moth to name just some. At Vancouver this year there was Sweet Food City among others. All of them are portraits of how the underclasses, the left behinds, the forgotten and the misbegotten go about their daily lives in tough times. Blatant misrepresentations no doubt abound, but as the Coens and Herzog know, these only serve to make the movies smarter, more pointed, more accessible and, frankly, more interesting to the wider world. Those whose sensitivities are affected, like genteel critics, po-faced officials, censors and rabid nationalists wont be given more than scant regard. So be it always.
*That may be why a film like Traitor, is so boring and, after its main twist is revealed, predictable, in its attempts to be fair to all sides. In so doing it employs a principled and highly ‘moral’ FBI agent as a key protagonist. Who can believe that? Americans I guess.
The actors called upon to deliver this raucousness are brilliant at portraying such vanity. In fact, making the movie must have been a hoot for all those Hollywood liberals involved. Even the usually abysmal John Malkovich is perfectly cast as an alcoholic analyst shafted in a bit of bureaucratic byplay. Never in fact has such fun been had from a Coen Bros movie, despite a lot of attempts. Even the editor of Sight & Sound, not renowned for a sense of humour, found the movie affecting enough to describe it as “a minor Coens comedy with major stars goofing off”. Very kind.
Notwithstanding, Americans apparently, and American critics especially, though they get the joke, don’t like it. Australians on the other hand are going to it in such numbers that it is defying all attempts to knock it off the box office leadership charts.
But Australians are not immune to this syndrome. The only time I went to Cannes, along with the world’s film critics, I had the misfortune to suffer through Werner Herzog’s Where the Green Ants Dream, a film which played fast, loose and inventively with Aboriginal mythology. Needless to say the white guys were the bad guys. The rest of the world judged it largely as another of Herzog’s badly directed japes at civilisation but the Australians went apoplectic at the thought that the world might believe Herzog’s inventions were, rather like Bruce Chatwin’s in his novel “The Songlines”, the product of documentary reportage.
Philip Adams, then Chair of the AFC, was so enraged as to write a “Dear Werner you are a complete idiot” open letter published gleefully in the Cannes daily press. If there had been an organisation called Handwringers Anonymous we would all have been forced to join, such was the collective dismay.
The poor sods who try and control the cinema in China also have to suffer such indignity frequently as well. Each year a bunch of tyros with digital cameras go into the streets, back alleys and byways of far flung outposts of the celestial empire, usually without troubling even the local authorities for permission, and make movies like Xiao Wu, Blind Shaft, Blind Mountain and Little Moth to name just some. At Vancouver this year there was Sweet Food City among others. All of them are portraits of how the underclasses, the left behinds, the forgotten and the misbegotten go about their daily lives in tough times. Blatant misrepresentations no doubt abound, but as the Coens and Herzog know, these only serve to make the movies smarter, more pointed, more accessible and, frankly, more interesting to the wider world. Those whose sensitivities are affected, like genteel critics, po-faced officials, censors and rabid nationalists wont be given more than scant regard. So be it always.
*That may be why a film like Traitor, is so boring and, after its main twist is revealed, predictable, in its attempts to be fair to all sides. In so doing it employs a principled and highly ‘moral’ FBI agent as a key protagonist. Who can believe that? Americans I guess.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Young masters and untamed youth - Vancouver in Autumn
Vancouver is off the beaten film festival track. It's not a mega event withhundreds of world premieres fighting for the attention of thousands ofcritics, buyers and festival programmers. Its main program collectstogether the usual hundred or so suspects for international art houseattention and it presents a broad based focus on new Canadian cinema.Its distinguishing mark is a focus on new, and 'young', cinema from EastAsia. It's a program which attracts a small but hardy band of scholars andfestival advisors if not directors, and has been developed over twodecades of complete devotion first by Tony Rayns and now by Rayns andChinese film expert Shelly Kraicer. It has succeeded in launching a dozenmajor film-makers into the west and continues to unearth new talent throughthe annual Dragons and Tigers competition with its prize of $10,000provided by local arts patron Brad Birarda.
This year the selection ran to close to fifty new films and again it wasbookended by full house screenings of two Korean hits. The opener was KimJie-woon's The Good The Bad The Weird a playful action-packed homage toSergio Leone set in the war zone of Manchuria in the 30s. The closer wasYim Phil-sung's fairy tale for adults Hansel and Gretel a film whichchocolate box colors that might have been designed for Jacques Demy with a tale straight out of Angela Carter to concoct pure contrived pleasure.Otherwise though it was the Japanese, both their quality commercialfilm-makers and their aspirational and very youthful debutantes, who shookthe place up. The best film on show was yet again a new film by Kore-eda Hirokazu. The director's first feature Maborosi was an early winner of the D&T prize andhe has sent each of his five succeeding films to the festival as they comealong every couple of years. Last time it was his period samurai flick Hana which knocked us about and caused people to compare him with Jean Renoir.This time it's Still Walking a family drama which evokes the work of themaster Yasujiro Ozu. The generations come together for a reunion on the date of the accidental death of one son. They're quietly respectful buteach cant stand one or more of the people in the room and each has theirown unresolved issues with others. A few of those matters get a little better, some get a little worse and everyone goes home. Kore-eda has a knack for masterful simplicity and there's no doubt that the festival invitations toscreen the film are going to flood in from around the world.
There is one peripheral matter of some astonishment about this film. Both Cannes and Venice rejected it for inclusion in their competitions, decisions which utterly baffled those who saw the film here where it was the hit of the week.
Hashiguchi Ryosuke's All Around Us has a similar quiet focus on a familybut this time its just a couple working their way through eight years ofmarriage. The relationship started offhandedly and endures some harshpsychopathology before it finally achieves some sort of serenity. Long andcontemplative but very moving.Elsewhere Kitano Takeshi's Achilles and the Tortoise amused intermittently and Miike Takashi demonstrated yet again why he ought to be the permanentoverseer of the James Bond franchise. Miike still makes several films ayear, his total being over a hundred by now and could easily fit in Bond's slam bang action sequences on his schedule. His God's Puzzle cheerfullymixes a story about quantum physics (!) with his trademark jokey action andnone do it better than he, especially where the action takes place in therain-soaking open air. Among other new work by established directors a word should also be put infor Service another low-budget and very raunchy peek at the Filipino underbelly by the prolific Brillante Mendoza. Its subject is a dysfunctional family who operate a rundown cinema named ‘Family” somewhat ironically, that mostly serves as a pickup joint (to put it politely) for the local gay community.
The D&T competition for eight young directors remains at the heart of Vancouver's engagement with Asia. This year, for probably the first time inany film competition, half the entrants were made by women. My own favorite among them was Sode Yukiko's Mime Mime, a supersmart story of a young bored teenager, a mild rebel with bad attitude and a risky sex life involving office visits to her middle-aged former school teacher. He's mostly bemusedby her infatuation but more than happy to be the complacent recipient ofher experiments. The jury gave prizes to two others of the women. Emily Tang's Perfect Life won the $10k. It's enigmatic but very assured, much influenced you suspectby the work of its co-producer Jia Zhangke. The story has parallelnarratives about two young women, one trying to disengage from her familyand the other, thousands of miles away, whose husband has peremptorilydisengaged from her and their two kids. Both of them live in the world ofChina's economic miracle but, as In Jia's work, Tang wants to look at justwho wins and loses in the orgy of 'progress'. Do the stories connect? Forjust a revelatory instant. More temperamental was Yokohama Sutoko's German + Rain another story abouta temperamental and rebellious young girl but this time one almost outsidethe borders of polite Japanese society.The other prizewinner was Gao Wendong's grim but fascinating Sweet Food City symbolically set in a model metropolis built a mere fifteen years agobut now a slum inhabited by thieves, pimps and prostitutes among others,all trying to live in buildings that are literally being scavenged and pillagedfor their bricks even as people squat within them. Gao's camera prowlsaround the architecture, to shoot in places where the image ofdeconstruction is astonishing. His story of a prostitute and her man has anarrative that's a bit messy and requires you to fill in some gaps yourselfbut you cant beat a good Chinese indie film (last year's Little Moth wasanother) when they decide to show us a good hard peek at the people beingleft behind.
Finally a word should be said for what was perhaps the most unusual movieof all, this year at least. Seo Won-tae's Synching Blue is a formal contemplation of solitariness and contemporary alienation.. A young Asian man spends his time alone in a large house and resorts to what young menoften resort too in such circumstances. He has some connection with a young American woman who works as a swimming pool attendant. Most of the activityat the pool is taken up by a mixed gender team of synchronised swimmers. Seasoned observers could not recall any previous work of art which thus asked its audience to even contemplate the possible connection between that amusing 'sport’ and the gentle practice of onanism. If you came looking for the unusual or for young people to give us something naughty Seo's film,completely free of dialogue, supplied it. So did several others. Vancouver in the autumn when uninhibited youth comes out is quite a place to be. Thecrowds that come out testify to that.
This year the selection ran to close to fifty new films and again it wasbookended by full house screenings of two Korean hits. The opener was KimJie-woon's The Good The Bad The Weird a playful action-packed homage toSergio Leone set in the war zone of Manchuria in the 30s. The closer wasYim Phil-sung's fairy tale for adults Hansel and Gretel a film whichchocolate box colors that might have been designed for Jacques Demy with a tale straight out of Angela Carter to concoct pure contrived pleasure.Otherwise though it was the Japanese, both their quality commercialfilm-makers and their aspirational and very youthful debutantes, who shookthe place up. The best film on show was yet again a new film by Kore-eda Hirokazu. The director's first feature Maborosi was an early winner of the D&T prize andhe has sent each of his five succeeding films to the festival as they comealong every couple of years. Last time it was his period samurai flick Hana which knocked us about and caused people to compare him with Jean Renoir.This time it's Still Walking a family drama which evokes the work of themaster Yasujiro Ozu. The generations come together for a reunion on the date of the accidental death of one son. They're quietly respectful buteach cant stand one or more of the people in the room and each has theirown unresolved issues with others. A few of those matters get a little better, some get a little worse and everyone goes home. Kore-eda has a knack for masterful simplicity and there's no doubt that the festival invitations toscreen the film are going to flood in from around the world.
There is one peripheral matter of some astonishment about this film. Both Cannes and Venice rejected it for inclusion in their competitions, decisions which utterly baffled those who saw the film here where it was the hit of the week.
Hashiguchi Ryosuke's All Around Us has a similar quiet focus on a familybut this time its just a couple working their way through eight years ofmarriage. The relationship started offhandedly and endures some harshpsychopathology before it finally achieves some sort of serenity. Long andcontemplative but very moving.Elsewhere Kitano Takeshi's Achilles and the Tortoise amused intermittently and Miike Takashi demonstrated yet again why he ought to be the permanentoverseer of the James Bond franchise. Miike still makes several films ayear, his total being over a hundred by now and could easily fit in Bond's slam bang action sequences on his schedule. His God's Puzzle cheerfullymixes a story about quantum physics (!) with his trademark jokey action andnone do it better than he, especially where the action takes place in therain-soaking open air. Among other new work by established directors a word should also be put infor Service another low-budget and very raunchy peek at the Filipino underbelly by the prolific Brillante Mendoza. Its subject is a dysfunctional family who operate a rundown cinema named ‘Family” somewhat ironically, that mostly serves as a pickup joint (to put it politely) for the local gay community.
The D&T competition for eight young directors remains at the heart of Vancouver's engagement with Asia. This year, for probably the first time inany film competition, half the entrants were made by women. My own favorite among them was Sode Yukiko's Mime Mime, a supersmart story of a young bored teenager, a mild rebel with bad attitude and a risky sex life involving office visits to her middle-aged former school teacher. He's mostly bemusedby her infatuation but more than happy to be the complacent recipient ofher experiments. The jury gave prizes to two others of the women. Emily Tang's Perfect Life won the $10k. It's enigmatic but very assured, much influenced you suspectby the work of its co-producer Jia Zhangke. The story has parallelnarratives about two young women, one trying to disengage from her familyand the other, thousands of miles away, whose husband has peremptorilydisengaged from her and their two kids. Both of them live in the world ofChina's economic miracle but, as In Jia's work, Tang wants to look at justwho wins and loses in the orgy of 'progress'. Do the stories connect? Forjust a revelatory instant. More temperamental was Yokohama Sutoko's German + Rain another story abouta temperamental and rebellious young girl but this time one almost outsidethe borders of polite Japanese society.The other prizewinner was Gao Wendong's grim but fascinating Sweet Food City symbolically set in a model metropolis built a mere fifteen years agobut now a slum inhabited by thieves, pimps and prostitutes among others,all trying to live in buildings that are literally being scavenged and pillagedfor their bricks even as people squat within them. Gao's camera prowlsaround the architecture, to shoot in places where the image ofdeconstruction is astonishing. His story of a prostitute and her man has anarrative that's a bit messy and requires you to fill in some gaps yourselfbut you cant beat a good Chinese indie film (last year's Little Moth wasanother) when they decide to show us a good hard peek at the people beingleft behind.
Finally a word should be said for what was perhaps the most unusual movieof all, this year at least. Seo Won-tae's Synching Blue is a formal contemplation of solitariness and contemporary alienation.. A young Asian man spends his time alone in a large house and resorts to what young menoften resort too in such circumstances. He has some connection with a young American woman who works as a swimming pool attendant. Most of the activityat the pool is taken up by a mixed gender team of synchronised swimmers. Seasoned observers could not recall any previous work of art which thus asked its audience to even contemplate the possible connection between that amusing 'sport’ and the gentle practice of onanism. If you came looking for the unusual or for young people to give us something naughty Seo's film,completely free of dialogue, supplied it. So did several others. Vancouver in the autumn when uninhibited youth comes out is quite a place to be. Thecrowds that come out testify to that.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Bureaucracy rampant when direct Ministerial intervention is what's needed
After my last post, see below, I had a look at what's happening at Screen Australia. Is there to be any end of the bureaucratic bullsh-t going on which seems quite contrary to the plans for direct selection and investment set out in the previous post? First of all, the Minister, the Bald Eagle aka Peter Garrett, released his Statement of Expectations at to what Screen Australia will get up to. This to a statutory authority, a status which once upon a time a time conferred independence of judgement and freedom not merely from Ministers but also from the apparatchiks that increasingly crowd out Ministers’ offices and stultify any smart thoughts. Screen Australia has now released its draft Statement of Intent (SOI) for 2008/09, in response to that Statement of Expectations. Screen Australia advises that these “SOIs are formal commitments by Screen Australia to meet the expectations of Government.” Can you believe an alleged arts/industrial organisation participating sensibly in such nonsense. If you do then you will believe that huge box office successes, Oscars and Cannes entrants are a matter of weeks away and the tooth fairy will squire Nick and Russell down the red carpet on Oscar night. Who dreamed this up? Please step forward and identify yourself so that the nation can laugh at you. Screen Australia says its draft sets out preliminary thinking within the organisation on the shape of its future programs. And that it “will use the directions articulated in the SOI as the basis for developing the suite of programs to be offered in 2009. A second round of industry consultation regarding guidelines and programs will take place in October”. Those meetings should be, as the old mate Counihan used to say, a real hoot but, sufficiently prolonged, the process could take the Government and its befuddled film bureaucrats through to the next election without a single movie being made to reflect either expectations or intentions or even the achievement of KPIs or any other bit of new management jargon designed to ensure nothing really happens. The process will also have the benefit of allowing bureaucrats to hide fear of failure or acknowledge failure itself. I’ll bet some consultancy firm has been hired to handle all this if not dream it up. That company would have a chortling bank manager and in eighteen months or so it will be favourite, based on its experience, to supervise a whole new round of announcements and consultations as to how Screen Australia, under its new Chief Executive Officer, plans to refocus, restructure and concentrate on achieving commercial and other success. …
The debate about quality Australian film
The Sydney Film Festival recently made an interesting contribution to the discussion about how to get our best film-makers working. Here's what they published in their online site. I'm surprised that nobody took the matter up further
Question 5SFF: Federal Arts Minister Peter Garrett recently announced that he will be giving direct grants of $10 million each to twelve currently unemployed filmmakers. Informed sources have suggested recipients may include Ivan Sen, Jane Campion, John Ruane, Richard Lowenstein, Ray Argall, Jocelyn Moorshouse, Leo Berkeley, Scott Murray, Shirley Barrett, Rowan Woods, Albie Thoms and Brian McKenzie. If you were handing out the money, who would you pick - excluding yourself, of course?
Randall Wood (Rare Chicken Rescue): "Ivan Sen - He's got a big heart and that shines through in his films - He's a wonderful storyteller (but I don't think he's unemployed)."
Tony Radevski (Ephemeral): "Ivan Sen."
Lisa Matthews (Ten Pound Poms): "The majority of those above are mostly not unemployed. If such a welcome magic money wand was to appear - I would like to see the following filmmakers realise their next film: Curtis Levy, James Middleton, Lawrence Johnston, Jessica Hobbs, Samantha Lang, Ivan Sen, Jocelyn Moorhouse, Jeremy Simms, Andrew Dominik, Stavros Kazantzidis, Matthew Saville and Andrew Lancaster."
Michael Mier (The Sound of CRY): "Filmmaking is such a hard process I really couldn't decide who should get grants. It seems those that are determined always find a way to make their films and I really love helping others realise their projects so it would be too hard to select ten names."
Glen Hunwick (Mutt): "Lisa Hunwick, Jake Hunwick, and Taylor Hunwick, (no relation of course)."
John Evagora (296 Smith Street): "Rowan Woods - The Boys is still one of my favourite Australian films."
Stefan Moore (The Cars That Ate China):"I would pick Dennis O'Rourke and Susan Lambert (who is admittedly my wife) but unless any of the suggested recipients are proposing to use the grant to make a very good film or films, I would say that this is a shocking waste of money."
Tali Gal-on (Lucille): "Sarah Watt - because I love Look Both Ways, and I can't wait to see what she does next. Dee McLachlan - The Jammed was a horrifyingly powerful film. And some up and coming directors that I met at the VCA: Daniel Agdag, Rosalie Osman and Sam Bryant."
Alex Holmes (Ali and the Ball): "Emerging filmmakers... excluding myself, of course."
Keri Light (Wanderlust/Wonderlost): "Because he is talented, because he has been my mentor and because he is now one of my best friends, I shall say Richard Lowenstein. That's one. But if there is a conflict of interest in picking one's mentors and friends, I shall nominate Michael Cody so that we can make our film...which may be even more of a conflict of interest... hmm. Maybe Minister Garrett should do as is stated in the question and give $10 million to each of the 12 directors listed or $5 million to 24 directors. How very cool. How sweetly divine. Brilliant."
Sean Kruck (Summer Breaks): "It would depend on the project. I would look at established filmmakers but also take a punt and mix it up with some fresh blood. Australian films generally don't seem to make much money so why not take bigger risks on the filmmakers and the style of films?"
Good thinking in there and a ringing endorsement of direct ministrial intervention in an ailing industry!
Question 5SFF: Federal Arts Minister Peter Garrett recently announced that he will be giving direct grants of $10 million each to twelve currently unemployed filmmakers. Informed sources have suggested recipients may include Ivan Sen, Jane Campion, John Ruane, Richard Lowenstein, Ray Argall, Jocelyn Moorshouse, Leo Berkeley, Scott Murray, Shirley Barrett, Rowan Woods, Albie Thoms and Brian McKenzie. If you were handing out the money, who would you pick - excluding yourself, of course?
Randall Wood (Rare Chicken Rescue): "Ivan Sen - He's got a big heart and that shines through in his films - He's a wonderful storyteller (but I don't think he's unemployed)."
Tony Radevski (Ephemeral): "Ivan Sen."
Lisa Matthews (Ten Pound Poms): "The majority of those above are mostly not unemployed. If such a welcome magic money wand was to appear - I would like to see the following filmmakers realise their next film: Curtis Levy, James Middleton, Lawrence Johnston, Jessica Hobbs, Samantha Lang, Ivan Sen, Jocelyn Moorhouse, Jeremy Simms, Andrew Dominik, Stavros Kazantzidis, Matthew Saville and Andrew Lancaster."
Michael Mier (The Sound of CRY): "Filmmaking is such a hard process I really couldn't decide who should get grants. It seems those that are determined always find a way to make their films and I really love helping others realise their projects so it would be too hard to select ten names."
Glen Hunwick (Mutt): "Lisa Hunwick, Jake Hunwick, and Taylor Hunwick, (no relation of course)."
John Evagora (296 Smith Street): "Rowan Woods - The Boys is still one of my favourite Australian films."
Stefan Moore (The Cars That Ate China):"I would pick Dennis O'Rourke and Susan Lambert (who is admittedly my wife) but unless any of the suggested recipients are proposing to use the grant to make a very good film or films, I would say that this is a shocking waste of money."
Tali Gal-on (Lucille): "Sarah Watt - because I love Look Both Ways, and I can't wait to see what she does next. Dee McLachlan - The Jammed was a horrifyingly powerful film. And some up and coming directors that I met at the VCA: Daniel Agdag, Rosalie Osman and Sam Bryant."
Alex Holmes (Ali and the Ball): "Emerging filmmakers... excluding myself, of course."
Keri Light (Wanderlust/Wonderlost): "Because he is talented, because he has been my mentor and because he is now one of my best friends, I shall say Richard Lowenstein. That's one. But if there is a conflict of interest in picking one's mentors and friends, I shall nominate Michael Cody so that we can make our film...which may be even more of a conflict of interest... hmm. Maybe Minister Garrett should do as is stated in the question and give $10 million to each of the 12 directors listed or $5 million to 24 directors. How very cool. How sweetly divine. Brilliant."
Sean Kruck (Summer Breaks): "It would depend on the project. I would look at established filmmakers but also take a punt and mix it up with some fresh blood. Australian films generally don't seem to make much money so why not take bigger risks on the filmmakers and the style of films?"
Good thinking in there and a ringing endorsement of direct ministrial intervention in an ailing industry!
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