икониThe Sydney Underground Film Festival has today announced their audacious line up for the fifth annual festival. True to its pursuits as a festival showcasing films that push the boundaries of convention, this year’s line-up will include a unique mix of both local and international films that delve in to the perverse, the political and the diabolical.

Screening 100 shorts and 21 features over one huge weekend, the Festival will kick off on 8th September with the Sydney premiere of the eagerly anticipated SUPER from director James Gunn (TROMEO AND JULIET, SLITHER) and starring Rainn Wilson, Liv Tyler and Ellen Page.

Festival highlights are also set to include GUILTY OF ROMANCE from acclaimed Japanese filmmaker Sion Sono (SUICIDE CLUB), music documentary LAST DAYS HERE from American filmmakers Don Argott and Demian Fenton, WILLIAM S BURROUGHS: A MAN WITHIN by American filmmaker Yony Leyser, the politically charged documentary BETTER THIS WORLD from Kelly Duane de la Vega & Katie Galloway, and Sydney based film X from local filmmaker Jon Hewitt. There are also favourite short film sessions such as ANIMATION FORNICATION, LOVE/SICK and LSD FACTORY and also screening will be short films by Guy Maddin, Jonathan Caouette, Don Hertzfeldt, and Harmony Korine.

Sydney Underground Film Festival director Stefan Popescu said ‘We are delighted to present the program for the 5th annual Sydney Underground Film Festival. Our aim for 2011 was to present a diverse program that was wild, edgy and unconventional and we are certain this year’s line-up will titillate the senses and provide Sydney film-goers with a cinema experience they will never forget!’

DATES: 8th – 11th September 2011
LOCATION: Factory Theatre, Marrickville
TICKETS: www.suff.com.au

The call is out for bands and filmmakers in the 2011 Music Video Mash Up – a yearly competition that pairs up and coming musicians and directors across Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.  Following on from a huge inaugural year last year, The Music Video Mash Up filmmaking competition is back for 2011- and with the addition of Sydney and Melbourne to the competition,  bigger and better than ever.

There’s a stack of info @ www.mvmu.com.au and below but in short: MVMU is a time-based music video making competition. It’s simple:

•    Bands and filmmakers register (for their respective city – Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane)
•    They are then paired up randomly and given just THREE days (Queen’s Birthday Long Weekend (June 10-13, 2011)) to create, shoot, edit and submit a music video.
•    Bands – all you need is a recorded original song (no covers)
•    Filmmakers – all you need is a camera and a crew

There are stacks of prizes to be won including the winning clip playing on Video Hits, PLUS a representative from the winning band and filmmakers will be flown to the Video Hits set to be interviewed on air!  All entries are also showcased at a special premiere at Palace cinemas in their respective cities.

Over at Design Federation they are giving readers the chance to win one of 10 double passes to see Gainsbourg, a movie about the life and times of the legend Serge Gainsbourg.

To enter, click the link

I sat down and watched arguably the best Australian film of 2010 last week, Animal Kingdom. If you like a good crime thriller, Underbelly & The Combination you will enjoy this cinema experience. Based on the Cody Family of Melbourne in the 1970’s, this little production punches well above its weight.

This Australian film won the World Cinema Jury prize at Sundance earlier this year and deservedly so. The story was quite compelling and I was gripped to my seat with all of the twists and turns. In the centre of this story is Josh (James Frecheville); whose mother dies from an overdose and is thrown into an urban war zone and with his grandmother who he hardly knows. This young Aussie actor is superb in his first lead role.

His grandmother (Jacki Weaver) who plays Smurf is brilliant as head of a criminal family; the Cody Clain for which her four (4) sons; Baz (Joel Edgerton) who is thinking of giving up the world of crime; Pope (Ben Mendelsohn) who is just out of prison and lying low; Darren (Luke Ford) who is quiet and withdrawn and Craig (Sullivan Stapleton) a lunatic and is as unstable as they come; all of who form a gang that travel around Melbourne robbing banks.

The gang is pursued by Leckie (Guy Pearce), a detective who is hot on their heels. It was good to see Guy back on our screens and he really does well in this film. Overall, a movie well worth seeing.

Article written by Checkmate

“I liken social change to the shifting of tectonic plates underneath the earth’s surface.  The process is incredibly slow but when the plates collide the results are life-altering earthquakes and tsunamis.  Social change does occur, but it occurs far too slowly.  I’m an impatient man.  I want to see real change in my lifetime, and I want The Other Film Festival to act as an agent for that change.  I want complete cinema access for people with disabilities to be taken for granted in the future.” Read the rest of Ryan Nances article on Embracing 'otherness' at The Other Film Festival»

No, not the Sydney Film Festival, and not the Melbourne Film Festival… The Other Film Festival!

Check out something a bit different and adventurous as the 2010 festival of New Cinema By, With and About People with a Disability kicks off at the Melbourne Museum this Wednesday 25th August through to Sunday 28th August.

The festival dares to dream that one day everybody’s story will be written boldly across the cinema screen and that universal access to the cinema will be the norm not the exception. The program this year offers an exhilarating array of choices: sessions dedicated to the experience of people who are Deaf or hard of hearing, films that celebrate the power of expressive dance, workshops for emerging actors and filmmakers, a forum on accessible cinema, and of course Rob Spence and the world premiere demonstration of the Eyeborg prosthetic eye.

So come and check out the future, because it’s right here, right now.

Click here to view the program and buy tickets!

 With over 800 entries from countries including the UK, USA, France, India, Iran, Cuba and South Africa, The Sydney Underground Film Festival has announced a brazen new program for its 4^th annual festival, which runs 9^th-11^th September this year.

Held at the Factory Theatre Marrickville, with 89 films screening from 10 countries internationally, the festival is sure to have something for everyone. Covering the political, the perverse and the simply bizarre, the festival boldly goes where no other festival dares tread, screening a number of films never before seen in Australia. 

The festival will kick off with a truly political flavour, with the Australian premiere of Oliver Stone’s SOUTH OF THE BORDER, a controversial documentary following the filmmaker’s trip through South America and interviews with past presidents.

Festival highlights are also set to include ENTER THE VOID from famed French filmmaker Gaspar Noé, a screening of THE TAINT, Australian film EL MONSTRO DEL MAR!, LIFE AND DEATH OF A PORNO GANG, and Harmony Korine’s TRASH HUMPERS

DATE: 9^th – 11^th September, 2010
LOCATION: Factory Theatre, Marrickville
TICKETS: www.suff.com.au

Watch this space as we will doing a ticket giveaway for this film very soon!

Read all about The Kids are all right»

The sunshine state’s coolest creative hotspot, the Brisbane Powerhouse, is hosting a screening of indie, surf montage Last Hope.

Read all about Andrew Kidman's surf and music indie film, showing at the Brisbane Powerhouse.»