Hillside #2

On a hillside in Barcelona with actor Lily Sullivan... Galore hardcore.

Hillside #1

On a hillside in Ainslie, with this one, actor Ashleigh Cummings, who is about to go through the wringer with me on the Australian release of our flick Galore.

Lost Time and Evidence

Making up for lost time.

More lost months. Been wandering. 

Lost in books. Lost in films. Lost in other worlds, other nights and other places. 

A month lost in Mexico; in Chiapas, Yucatan, DF, Campeche, Tabasco. Strange lost moments and lost days spread over many weeks in the film landscapes of Malmö, Helsinki, Barcelona, Paris; across frozen seas, lazy afternoons on sun drenched balconies, in back rooms and underground dens. A thieves' den of books by Bolaño, Murakami, Houellebecq, Marquez, Mishima, Faulkner. A forged trip to Berlin to premiere Galore and The Turning at the Berlinale and endless lost nights in that city that can so easily steal pockets of your soul if you don't keep vigil.

Weeks spent trying to finish off old scripts. Travelling back and forward. Weeks spent losing things, losing people, losing paths and losing track.

Now, spinning compasses and trying desperately to get home, to return to somewhere where the feet are settled again. 

The missing words from places like this blog are testament to the distance travelled from home. No more time to lose.

Some 35mm evidence:

Galore-ing

This happened.

Galore has been invited to screen at Berlinale 2014. One of my most memorable festival experiences (except perhaps for this little foray into the middle of the pacific with murundak) was screening my short film Love This Time at Berlinale 2006. My mind was blown by the intensity and passion of the cineastes there. The discussions we had, in the freezing fucking cold, in between incredible screenings, made my film nerd eyes roll back in my head with bliss. So, to go back there, with our crew, and with Galore in our pocket to throw up on a screen seems like something truly extraordinary. I know I am going to be wigging out.

So, there's that.

And then, to add to that, The Turning has also been invited to be a part of the festival. Fucking madness. So, without any other real plans for 2014 - except to do more, be more, make more which is the usual mantra around the year's end - I'll be heading off to the middle of winter, hiding inside heavy, ill-fitting coats, misting up the night air with hot breath and laughter, and running from bar to cinema to bar with a rolling entourage of actors and crew and stupid excitement.

And, to make things even more insane and overwhelming, I just read that two of my favourite filmmakers Claudia Llosa and Tsai Ming-Liang will be premiering their new films at Berlinale. I'm gonna be such a fanboy stalker hanging outside the cinemas to see them in the flesh. (I saw Tsai Ming-Liang and Lee Kang-Sheng hanging together at Rotterdam Film Festival some years back and I just stared at them like some schoolyard creep. I hope I can be slightly more composed this time.)

With all this in mind, we announced the Berlin news a few days back and finally got to release our trailer onto the world at the same time. Here it is. Hope you dig it. And if you dig it, pass it on to a friend to see if they dig it, too.

Spaces Between

Our first public screenings of Galore happened these past weeks as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival.

Of course it was bizarre and beautiful to be letting it loose on the screen. Of course it was overwhelming to hear people's thoughts. We can't imagine it could have gone better.

We got to meet and dine and drink with heroes (in the form of Jia Zhangke) and new filmmaking friends (who were also doing the walk of shame around the festival with their films rendering them nude and vulnerable). We got to bliss out to 30 or so new films and remember how many voices are yelling out from the screens. We got to eat endless dumplings, huge vats of chili and to roll around in tequila bars and rock clubs and destroy endless dance floors with bad moves and drunken mauling. We got to share in the celebration of Tim Winton's The Turning (one part of which, Small Mercies, we had made and was hidden amid the 17 diverse treasures in the film). We got to talk shit in front of crowds, present talks, struggle to articulate through hangovers, play heart DJ at the end of emotional nights and hang out with with friends we hadn't seen for far too long.

It is a kind of impossible reflection, thinking back on this first, final letting loose of a film. We were all there pushing it out kicking and screaming and, between the moment of release and the inevitable come down as life comes crashing back into your mind and senses, there is the blissful abyss of all of the sublime conversations where you discover the secrets of your film. People tell you the stories the film brought up in them, or the images that they responded to, or what moved them or outraged them and left them cold. This is the good stuff. The things you can't control or direct. The slippery, elusive space of dream and emotion between the film itself and the audience.

We got some amazing words back in the form of reviews. We also got some clumsy, angry inarticulate words of criticism. None of those words, glowing or disparaging can change the film as it exists in the world. So, it's time to return to the unfinished scripts, the begging and scrimping, the refuelling and reforming of forces to get onto the next thing.

Now, looking at the pile of scripts at various stages of completion, wondering in which direction back to swing the pendulum.

Oh, and PS, I designed this poster for the festival. I'm not sure if it will end up being anything like the release artwork when Hopscotch release the film, but I figured I should share it.

Away

Been away. Mind and body. Fuck knows where and how the days are passing. Working on finishing off a new script. Tying up loose ends. Working out what just happened? Taking stock of the months and years past. Been writing poetry for fuck's sake, for the first time in many moons. And, of course, waiting for the premiere of Galore and The Turning. Waiting for the film festival to start so I can get high on a supply of Farhadi and Denis, Zhang-ke and Cohen, as well as docos on Kathleen Hanna and Slavoj Žižek. Waiting for friends to come to town. Waiting for slow cooked meats to stew. Devouring flicks and books and bad TV. Wandering through mountain temples. Sitting in the same bars. Getting drunk on a medieval level. Watching winter sun sets. Getting a sore back from horizontal couch slouching. It's been those kinds of weeks. Here's a small catalogue of the hours and days from badly taken snaps from an aging camera on it's last legs.