Blur may have sung about “girls who are boys who like boys to be girls,” but it was writer, Virginia Woolf who got there first. Her short novel, Orlando is about a young, aristocratic man who wakes up one day and discovers he’s become a woman. It was a novel that was written by Woolf…
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Albert Namatjira remains one of Australia’s most revered artists. At the time of his death, his collection exceeded two thousand individual paintings, a perceptive catalogue of the landscapes that form the barren heart of Australia’s central regions. Yet his significance far extends his body of work. In 1957 Albert became the first Aboriginal person to…
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You get the feeling that the story of The Church has enough in it to fill up several movies. But the documentary, Something Quite Peculiar doesn’t try to be a definitive guide to the band. Instead, it lays its focus squarely on front man, Steve Kilbey and adapts his 2014 memoir of the same name….
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Powershop and the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) are inviting filmmakers, and anyone in the filmmaking spirit, to create a short film for the inaugural Powershorts Film Comp in Australia. To enter, contestants must shoot a film using only their smartphones, keep it anywhere between 10 sec and 3 mins and it must include the…
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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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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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She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry is a little documentary with a big, important message. It chronicles the second wave of feminism in the United States from 1966-1971. It was a tumultuous time that saw some radical changes. This film is an illuminating one that tackles one key part of a complex social movement. This documentary…
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Mississippi Grind commences with a fixed camera shot of a pastoral landscape, a glorious rainbow stretches across the horizon in the background. Yet, when Ben Mendelsohn’s Gerry remarks on the spectacle with wonder around a local casino poker table later that evening, he is seemingly the only player to have witnessed it. At least, he…
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How To Dance In Ohio is an intimate documentary that allows viewers to see the world through the eyes of a young person on the autistic spectrum. It’s an uplifting film that shows three young women who are coming-of-age and the challenges and triumphs they experience. The story is a gentle, subtle and uplifting one…
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B-Movie: Lust & Sound in West-Berlin 1979-1989 is a historically-oriented documentary that takes you through the unique underground music scene of the titular city that emerged during the 80s. Though clumsily-titled, it’s a fascinating portrait of a lost world of almost-surreal parties, rampant counter-culture and uninhibited artistic potential. Structurally, B-Movie follows the gradual immersion of…
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A Poem is a Naked Person was completed back in 1974 and has only found wide release in this year. That has to do with legal issues, or creative differences, or some other things, all of which means little to you and what you intend to watch. Suffice it to say that you can very…
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Tonight the 2015 Melbourne International Film Festival kicks off with the anticipated world premiere of the Australian film Force of Destiny in an opening night gala. Running until 16th August, the festival will bring us hundreds of screenings over the next two or so weeks, and it’s quite hard to decide which films to see! So, we…
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Funded by Kickstarter and produced by the filmmakers behind The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, Finders Keepers is a documentary that tackles the bizarre story of a legal dispute between a man who lost his severed leg in a plane crash and the man who found the appendage inside his barbecue.
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Get excited Melburnites, for the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) has unleashed the First Glance selection for its 64th year, which includes an exciting program of experimental film and audiovisual artistry in Vertical Cinema; the Centrepiece Gala screening of Holding the Man; a David Gulpilil retrospective; and a new principal partnership with Metro Trains Melbourne….
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Film-makers who operate in the area of short films have the unenviable task of captivating their audience in a very short period of time. There’s no time for the film to find its feet or grow on the audience; it must make its impression quickly and precisely. It is particularly impressive when a short film…
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A quietly devastating meditation on female adolescence, It Felt Like Love is the feature debut of director Eliza Pittman made on a tiny budget, and shot over 18 days in August 2012. The film opens with an awkward teenaged Lila (Gina Piersanti), childishly smeared in sunscreen at the beach. It’s this yardstick from which Lila’s character arc moves over the…
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Gebo and the Shadow is film that prides style over pace. It tells an old tale about money, sacrifice and family. Michael Lonsdale (Munich, Moonraker) is possibly the most recognizable cast member from this French/Portuguese film. It is based on the play of the same name by playwright, Raul Brandao. The director Manoel de Oliveira makes…
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