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

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

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.”

This impassioned opening address from festival director Rick Randall kicked off five days of films, forum discussions and after-parties at the 2010 edition of the The Other Film Festival; a fully-accessible (i.e. accommodating every body) festival of new cinema by, with and about people with a disability; the 4^th since its 2004 inception.

The program featured short and feature-length films, and documentaries, from an astounding array of global perspectives – from up and down the Americas, across the UK and Europe, and down through South Korea, India and Australia.  All of the films explored a common theme of what it is like to live with a disability.  The appeal of any film festival is being able to front up unprepared with the confidence that you will be able to see a quality selection of interesting films.  Some of my highlights included:

Coming Out, a quirky British short-film about a young man who is having difficulty revealing to his mother that he is deaf – the film not only serving as a clever twist on ‘coming out’ as a homosexual, but also expressing the common unwillingness from parents to accept a child with a disability.

Rita, a very confronting Italian film shot from the perspective of a young blind girl who is oblivious to violence which surrounds her.  The perspective taken allows for a translucent style, with some shots falling out of frame or focus, creating an intriguing and dark cinematic experience for the audience.

Nobody’s Perfect, a German documentary about a group of people who have been the victim of thalidomide poisoning (the disastrous sedative drug developed in the 1950s that resulted in over ten thousand birth defects in the children of its users).  The group are brought together by the film’s director Niko von Glasow (himself a victim of thalidomide poisoning), who attempts to have them all pose naked for a calendar he is producing.  The director engages in philosophical discussion with the group, exploring – and ultimately breaking down – the feelings of insecurity and isolation associated with being perceived as different.  This documentary was at once uplifting, shocking, sad, and as the festival patron Adam Elliot announced during the closing awards ceremony, it “represented the very ethos of The Other Film Festival.”

The remarkable thing was that despite such a vast spectrum of cultures on screen, there was fluidity across all of the films.  The cultural barrier lifted and we were all engrossed in the age-old art of story-telling; of expressing the human condition through art.  It is this desire to experience other people’s stories that is the reason why millions of Australians flock to cinemas every weekend.  The only difference was that at this particular festival the stories told were the ones that are rarely given a platform to be heard.

Similar to any minority group of people – for example Aborigines, refugees, or the homeless – the most frustrating thing that those with disabilities are confronted with from mainstream society is indifference.  People just don’t take any notice.  This indifference usually stems from feelings of insecurity; of uncomfortableness, fearing the unfamiliar.  The only way to break through those barriers is to put yourself in a position where you are able to engage with ‘the other’.

Through establishing The Other Film Festival, Rick Randall and the team have presented to mainstream society an opportunity to engage with and embrace the unheard stories of proud, strong, and brave people.  The numbers of people attending the festival have doubled with each program, with Rick declaring that this year, “after taxiing across the runway, the plane has finally taken off”.  All the signs are indicating that the next time The Other Film Festival hits our screens the scale will be significantly greater.  I urge you to join in and embrace this film festival, the rewards are rich and transforming.

The Other Film Festival is currently held every two years at the Melbourne Museum.  Keep up to date with details of the next festival here.

Article written by Ryan Nance  /  Photography by Jorge De Araujo (click here for website)

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!

A sexy comedy of errors about a very modern family. The Allgoods are a close family experiencing life’s typical ups and downs: 18-year old daughter Joni (Wasikowska) is heading off to Stanford University and starting to distance herself from her parents; 14-year-old Laser is hanging out with a deadbeat friend who constantly leads him into trouble. The only difference is that this family has two mums. Jules (Julianne Moore) and Nic (Bening) have been together for years, deeply in love, and had both children through artificial insemination.

This loving but strained home life is thrown into comic disarray when the kids track down their biological donor-Dad, Paul (Ruffalo), and invite him home for dinner. Paul is a bachelor whose sudden longing for a family introduces an interesting sexual dynamic to the not-quite-ordinary equation of the Allgoods. At first Joni is so happy to have a cool, handsome dad like Paul. But soon enough she comes to realise that Paul is fun loving but lacks self-control and when he starts sleeping with one of her mums chaos reigns.

Director: Lisa Cholodenko  Cast: Julianne Moore, Annette Bening, Mark Ruffalo, Mia Wasikowska

IN CINEMAS 2nd SEPTEMBER, 2010 

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

Renowned surf filmmaker, Andrew Kidman’s latest offering is a unique fusion of surf movie and music is “a brief journey into the heart and soul of surfing through music and film.”

Editing 16 original short films to the wicked tunes of Smog, Sufjan Stevens, Dirty Three, Explosions in the Sky, My Morning Jacket, Vetiver and Mogwai, Kidman’s film has attracted a fan following from surfers and film buffs and wannabe surfers and film buffs alike. The concept was a collaboration aiming to elevate the traditional surf film into an artistic vision, treading deep to the heart of the subculture.

With very little dialogue, the film is an immersive experience washing over the viewer with hypnotic vintage footage and inspired music. The music lulls the audience into a trance, where you become lost in the vastness of this pagan love song to the sea.

Last Hope sold out at the Perth International Arts Festival, so don’t miss out. The film is showing Wednesday, August 25th at 7:30pm.

Tickets are $29 for details go to www.brisbanepowerhouse.org