Riding on their wave of festival success, filmmaking couple Alice Foulcher and Gregory Erdstein’s debut feature film That’s Not Me shows just what you can achieve with a low budget and bucket loads of passion. Shot on a budget of $60,000, That’s Not Me follows the day to day slog of Polly (Alice Foulcher), a…
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We caught up with director Patrick Buchanan talks Lunar Orbit ahead of the screening of his film about iconic group The Orb at the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival this week. As a filmmaker, can you tell me a little bit about your process behind making this film: Did you find the story in the edit…
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If you have never heard of The Orb before I would recommend listening to their 1989 hit A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules from the Centre of the Ultraworld. Even just reading that title would be enough to vaguely understand what The Orb is about and what they continue to represent. Mixed in…
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Like it’s Tsotsitaal namesake meaning “to go”, Vaya, Directed by Akin Omotoso, literally begins on the move. Opening on a train bound to Johannesburg Vaya follows the intertwining paths of three young South Africans journeying from their rural homes in Kwazulu-Natal to eGoli, the city of Gold. All three are tasked with their own promises…
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Placing itself somewhere between the genres of mumblecore and slice of life, A Quiet Dream directed by Zhang Lu, is an almost observational look into the invisible world of lower class Seoul. Set in the grimy fringe suburbs of Seoul, A Quiet Dream is a glimpse into the everyday of misfits bound to a life determined…
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It is hard to know where to start with 13 Reasons Why as the story unconventionally begins with it’s end. In this case, it is the end of Hannah Baker’s life, her suicide. Based on Jay Asher’s novel of the same name, 13 Reasons Why explores the unravelling of a high school tapestry after text…
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With La La Land having recently dominated the Oscars, its story about 2 hopefuls trying to make it in Hollywood uncomfortably lingered in the back of my mind while watching California Dreams. Both La La Land and California Dreams share a similar premise of “dreams are built on sacrifice”, however the films attack their subject…
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San Andreas is a fault line that extends through a large majority of California and is overdue for a BIG earthquake. “It’s not a matter of if but when” is the premonition that Lawrence (Paul Giamatti) a professor of seismology gives his class at Caltech, and after years of research into the prediction of earthquakes,…
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Usually when imagining a career in rock n’ roll and a band called “Ricki And The Flash” you wouldn’t imagine it to involve a handful of old timers in a shabby Californian bar with a 60 something year old lead lady whose only ever record produced is stored in her ex-husband’s rubbermaid. And yet, this…
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Originally a play by the same name, Stories I Want To Tell You In Person was funded by the ABC to make a version for the screen. Intended to be a play about the GFC and commissioned by the Sydney Belvoir Theatre, playwright Lally Katz Stories I Want To Tell You In Person is the…
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From the maker of Oscar Winning Harvie Krumpet (2003) and Mary and Max (2009), claymation pioneer Adam Elliot brings to screen his next installation of the little blobs of clay which he has so strongly attached himself and his career to. Running for 21mins Ernie Biscuit tells the tale of a how deaf Parisian Taxidermist,…
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As part of their Retrospective program, MIFF has re released Chilean director Sebastian Silva’s 2013 psychological horror Magic Magic. The film has a classic horror premise: a group of young people road trip out to some far off island location with no reception and relatively detached from the world. Cue chaos. But even though this…
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With apparently no story arc, protagonist or resolution, Two Shots Fired moves away from conventional story structure and becomes an observational film focusing on events and physical journeys and location, rather than a personal exposition. Directed by Martin Rejtman, this Argentinian film dwells on the mundane happenings of life with an array of commonplace events….
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Alexander Dunn’s expositional documentary 808 takes its name from the Roland TR-808, one of the first programmable drum machines. Originally manufactured in early 1980 for studio musicians to record demos, the 808 was criticized for its unrealistic drum sound and was likened to the sound of marching ants. However, the snappy, tinny sound of the…
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Daft Punk’s 2006 directorial debut Electroma is a step away from previous pop- film collaborations such as Discovery 2003 to a more surreal and conceptual journey. Running for 74 minutes without dialogue, Electroma follows the journey of a robot duo who try to achieve humanness. If there was any doubt that the robots desired to…
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When faced with the challenge of representing over 20 years of the evolution of “French Touch”, a music genre inspired by American Garage, it can be difficult to know where to start. Directed by french auteur Mia Hansen-Love and co-written with her DJ brother Sven Love, Eden is somewhat an autobiographical film taking inspiration from…
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Interstella 5555 is the result of a collaboration between french House duo Daft Punk with Anime legend Leiji Matsumoto, and director Kazuhisa Takenouchi. It’s hard to define what makes this eclectic, feature length animated album collaboration so engrossing. Is it the melodramatic narrative with visuals that hit the House beats again and again? The satisfying…
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Man and Super Man, distributed by the National Theatre, is spectacular epic with torrential dialogue and entertaining albeit reverential musings on the human condition. Written in 1903 by Bernard Shaw and then subsequently deemed “unstageable”, this seemingly untameable three hour epic has been breathed to life with the patient, clever and guiding adaptation of Sam…
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Aloha tells the story of skeptical military contractor, Brian Gilcrest’s (Bradley Cooper), who returns to Hawaii after losing himself to the “grey side” of the military. It is here he is given a fresh start with the military and is reunited with his ex girlfriend Tracy (Rachel McAdams) after 7 years of lost contact. With the company of…
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San Andreas is a fault line that extends through a large majority of California and is overdue for a BIG earthquake. “It’s not a matter of if but when” is the premonition that Lawrence (Paul Giamatti) a professor of seismology gives his class at Caltech, and after years of research into the prediction of earthquakes,…
Read More