There have been more than twenty film versions of Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland, but none starring a local Canberra girl in the title role. In 1903 May Clark played the first screen Alice, the longest film ever made in Britain at the time. At a whopping 12 minutes, it was considered far too long […]
It may seem that an Italian-Glaswegian who spent three years working on a failed doctoral thesis about Milton’s Paradise Lost is the least likely person to put in charge of a biting contemporary film about transatlantic politics, but Armando Iannucci has long been observing and parodying the behaviour of those in charge. “At school I […]
It’s been quite a year for Warwick Thornton. After his debut feature film Samson & Delilah picked up the Camera D’Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival, it has gone on to collect a string of other gongs and nominations, including six IF awards, the Audience Award at the Adelaide Film Festival, and eight nominations […]
When Patricia Clarkson comes on the other end of the line, there’s absolutely no mistaking the voice. “Hi, I’m fine” she says with that deep husky tone that has become the trademark of her extraordinary career – particularly over the last six years. After being crowned the darling of independent cinema in 2003 with key […]
When film editor Anthony Buckley saw the first batch of footage for Wake In Fright, he knew he was looking at something very special. It was of a professional kangaroo cull that had been shot by cinematographer John Maclean. “It was beautifully photographed,” says Buckley, recalling the moment back in 1970, “and it was all […]
Werner Herzog has always been attracted to driven characters: men (for there are few women in his films) on the edge of a madness for life, pushing boundaries, pushing other people, pushing themselves. In two of his most well known films - Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo - the men grappling with the […]
Philip Claudel’s debut feature film I’ve Loved You So Long had its Australian premiere at the Canberra International Film Festival last month and was ranked the second most popular film of the festival, no doubt thanks in part to the performance of Kristen Scott-Thomas as Juliette, its troubled central character. Now the movie is about […]
There have been cries, in this the 50th anniversary year of the Australian Film Institute (AFI), that it hasn’t been a very good year for the Australian film industry, and if box-office is the measure you use to judge success, then something is clearly amiss. The combined takings for the four Australian films nominated in […]
French film director Claude LeLouch definitely has a thing about cars. In his most celebrated feature film A Man And A Woman - released in 1966 - much of the story takes place in moving vehicles, and the ‘man’ of the story (played by Jean-Louis Trintignant) is a racing car driver. After the film won […]
Gary Sweet’s first film role – in a John Lamond slasher film called Nightmares is not one that “has a big asterisk next to it on my resume” says Sweet with a huge laugh. “I was diabolical.” The role came just before a stint on The Sullivans which Sweet says was more of a dare […]
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