Red Carpet #2

Okay. So, we had our launch. I loved it. I hated it, too, for passing so quickly and for being so overwhelming that I can't remember much of it except for the initial desire to die when the screening began, the desire to drink my weight in free beer to silence my nerves, and, later, the desire to curl up in the corner with every one's kind words and scratch them into a pile like some creepy, aging rodent, and, finally, the desire to make the night last for ever - which, to be honest, we gave a pretty red hot go at doing.

There are probably only a handful of times in your life where you can gather all the people you love, dig, and want to hang tuff with, into one place and ask them to bear with you while you indulge in the rare opportunity of humiliating and exposing yourself. It's a rare and strange privilege. And this rare, strange opportunity went off without a hitch. Lots of love, emotion, generosity, party pies, free wine, beautiful folks, sleazy dancing, achingly lovely songs, heartfelt speeches, good yarns, great friends, grinning family. We got to share it all with the beautiful folks of our extended Black Arm Band family with who we shared the journey and the film along the way. One of the great night's of this strange little life.

Below is a random arrangement of shots taken by the pretty damned great photographer Leah Robertson:

Red Carpet #1

It's the eve of the premiere of 'murundak - songs of freedom', the feature doc we've been working on for so long, and it feels surreal. The artists and subjects of the film are flying in from around the country, crew members are coming to town, we're running around frantically picking up posters, organising after screening bevvies and food, we're sitting through meetings with all the pretty damned extraordinary sponsors and donors, and checking off times for tech checks, sound checks, guest list checks and waistline checks for dusty red carpet outfits. It's mayhem. But a mayhem you know will have a release.

I walked past the Forum Theatre today, where we are hosting the premiere, and, looking up, realised they had already laid out the banner text. After collecting a new pair of pants, I couldn't help but think of all the great screenings I've been to in that beautiful old cinema. It feels kinda outrageous and kinda amazing to be able to show your own little flick in that same hallowed theatre.


When you squeeze every last dollar from a budget and every last bit of energy from your reserves it's easy to forget that you need to rev up and do it all again in getting the film out to folks. We know that any documentary film and any independent film is fighting an uphill battle in this period in time, but we believe in the film and the people who've invested in it, and what other option do we have but to slog it out and organise a big, sprawling, messy kick off, a bunch of subsequent public events, a theatrical run and lots and lots of spruiking to get people to come and catch the film in some way at some venue at some time.

We're pretty proud that a whole bunch of people seem to be as excited as we are, and that a whole lot of folks have thrown their weight, their support and their time into helping us launch it. We're also pretty proud of our artwork designed by the good men of small studio. You dig it?

Sophistication

"You have to fight sophistication. Sophistication comes to anybody that has been doing their job for a while. You have to fight knowing, because once you know something, it's hard to be open and creative; it's a form of passivity - something to guard against."

John Cassavetes

A Single Word

"Sometimes, a single word can kill"

Pedro Costa

Homestead Festival

A damned fine weekend in.

It's the hiatus between completing the planning for the launch of murundak and the launch itself. Key artwork locked off. Premiere planned. Sponsors locked in. Theatrical distribution on the move. Artists booked on flights and in hotels. Thank you speeches written.

So, by way of reward and retreat, a weekend hidden away watching flicks, finishing books ('Freedom') and starting new ones ('Tokyo Vice'), eating the unbelievable sandwiches at The Bell Jar, making dumplings, and writing notes for projects to come.

Friday PM
'The Father of My Children' (dir: Mia Hansen-Løve)


Saturday AM
'Anvil: The Story of Anvil' (dir: Sacha Gervasi)
'Karate Kid' (dir: Harald Zwart)



Saturday PM
'Goodbye, Dragon Inn' (dir: Tsai Ming Liang)
'Genova' (dir: Michael Winterbottom)



Sunday AM-PM
'Ossos' (dir: Pedro Costa)
'The Kiss' (short, dir: Ashlee Paige)
'The Limits of Control' (dir: Jim Jarmusch)
...and a sublime rough cut of a new as yet untitled documentary by fellow traveller Tim Mummery.




Bliss.

Terrible Things

"...The first film and the first photograph are somewhat terrible things. They're not love stories, they're anxieties. Somebody took a machine in order to reflect, to think and to question. For me, there is in this gesture, this desire – be it the gesture to make a film or a photograph, or today to make a video – there is in this gesture something very strong, something which says to you: ‘Don't forget.’ Of course, the first gesture, the first film, the first photograph, the first love, is always the strongest, always the one that we don't forget."

Pedro Costa

Two/Out

Some years back, fellow traveller Emma Crimmings and I got together and edited a saucy little book called Short/Site: Recent Australian Short Film which we saw as a celebration of some of the best short filmmaking going on at the time. It emerged from a frustration with the continual reductive discussion of shorts as a 'stepping stone' or 'launching point' for directors and never as a form in and of themselves. We decided to take a serious and considered approach to 10 short films, publishing the script for each film, an interview with the director, stills from the films and the director's storyboards or notebooks, and a personal, passionate essay by either Emma or myself, or one of a handful of invited writers - novelist and essayist Christos Tsiolkas, writer and filmmaker Spiro Economopoulos, filmmaker and cinema programmer Natasha Gadd (now my wife!), curator and filmmaker Fiona Trigg and programmer (now Sydney Film Festival director) Clare Stewart. The films we included had some of my favourite shorts and some of the more perfect shorts made in this country including 'Crackerbag' by Mr Glendyn Ivin, 'Dust' by Mr Ivan Sen and the sublime 'Flowergirl' by Ms Cate Shortland among others.

One of the films we included was a difficult choice as it was not available for any viewing other than on 35mm print and would, therefore, have been tricky for readers to get their hands on. Two/Out is, however, one of the finest short films ever made in this country by one of our now most prolific directors, Mr Kriv Stenders, so we didn't feel there was much of a choice. After this film, he seemed to have a production hiatus before bursting out of the gate in the last decade with feature dramas Illustrated Family Doctor, Blacktown, Boxing Day, Lucky Country and now Red Dog. Just today, it has finally been crunched down to postcard size and put up on youtube. It is definitely a big screen film - austere and expansive with incredible perfomances - but better to watch on the tiny screen than not at all. Dig it.

Girls and Cigarettes #5

The Suburbs

I'm an outer suburban kid. Wastelands and nature reserves. Burnouts and ghosting bikes. Over- watered lawns, closed blinds and hot tarmac. Skateparks at night, lonely winds and wandering kids.

Like a lot of folks I got a buzz from the Arcade Fire's album 'The Suburbs'. That appreciation only surged when friend and past collab Greig Fraser shot the epic short film for Mr Spike Jonze and Arcade Fire...

... and has now truly peaked that I've seen this incredible poster series by the Minneapolis design collective Burlesque of North America (Mike Davis, Wes Winship, Ben LaFond et al.) Each poster was designed for different show dates throughout the Arcade Fire but each poster is like it's own suspended moment, another refracted view into the world of the music.















All these posters (except the suckers that have sold out) can be bought here. More about Burlesque here.

Summer Skin

Evil genius compañera, amiga y colaboradora Amy Gebhardt (mentioned in my most recent post) was invited by Screen Australia to create a short film evoking her sense of the Australia summer for a series they are presenting. She worked with multidisciplinary artist Justin Shoulder and crazy brilliant cinematographer Jody Muston to create this hypnotic, seductive thing of intense beauty: