SPAA Fringe 2007
Coming up in October, SPAA FRINGE will feature prominent industry professionals and offer filmmakers the opportunity to speak out and be heard on an international platform. To be held in Sydney, the event covers producing, writing, directing, editing, animation and gaming. Young filmmakers will have the chance to meet and interact with speakers and peers who are at the top of their field.
SPAA Fringe
Paddington Town Hall & Chauvel Cinema on 26-27 October
For more information go to the website.
Films You Might Have MIFF’ed
19 days only, indeed. The juggernaut that is MIFF might have ended in a sea of blurry eyes, but the films live on… or at least, they might, should their exposure through the festival lead to wider national distribution. We take a look at a few of the films that you are sure to see on the big screen, some you might catch on television, and those that will perhaps be less fortunate (despite their obvious merits).
SICKO
Sicko, as might be readily surmised, has already hit the cinemas here in Australia, and indeed did so during the festival. Michael Moore’s latest work was a no-brainer for national release - the man is, after all, the person who almost single-handedly made feature-length documentary films blockbuster material - and is possibly his best yet, largely steering away from the more outrageous set-ups of his last two films Bowling for Columbine and Farenheit 9/11. The reason for this is that, despite its focus on the American health-care system, its premise is one of universal concern - the health and well-being of the world’s citizens, regardless of colour, creed, or bank balance. It sounds a warning for countries like Australia, where conservative-minded governments might be tempted to go down the kind of path that has left millions of Americans under-protected in their health-care provisions. Moore might be justly criticised for tilting the weight of evidence in his favour through his dissertation, but the fact remains that his agit-prop style sparks debate where it is needed most.
MANUFACTURING DISSENT
In a clever act of counterpointing, the Festival secured screenings of Canadian documentary maker Debbie Melnyk’s film Manufacturing Dissent, a gently savage deconstruction of Michael Moore and his ‘little-guy’ myth. The film follows Debbie and her crew as they try and secure a face-to-face with Moore, only to find themselves foiled at every turn by bodyguards and a cagey subject who is always too busy
saving the world to dignify their requests. Manufacturing Dissent explores the now widely exposed fabrications present in Moore’s Roger and Me, Bowling for Columbine, and Farenheit 9/11, though the seriousness of these charges are best measured against the heinous nature of the subjects Moore initially investigated. After one screening, the hubbub of the departing crowd was a veritable din. One gentleman muttered a single word: “Damning”, while an older man said to his wife “There is a mix of right and wrong in everything - so it is with his films.” The true strength of this documentary, much as in Moore’s work itself, will be its ability to foster debate, placing the onus of responsibility back onto the consumer to remain informed and make their own minds up through an objective measuring of the facts as presented to them. Manufacturing Dissent should probably see a limited release in the smaller cinemas - failing that, a screening on SBS is inevitable.
PAPRIKA
In line with previous films of Satoshi Kon such as Millennium Actress and Perfect Blue, in Paprika the line between what is real and what is imagined or perceived is a slippery agent indeed. Whereas Millennium Actress investigated the role of memory in the construction of happiness and Perfect Blue took the paranoia of fame to the extreme of murder, Paprika centres around the dream. Dr Tokita has invented a device, the DC Mini, that looks set to re-invent psychological studies, allowing investigation into the dreaming mind of subjects. The device, however, proves unstable, and when three of the Mini’s go missing, the separate dream-lives of researchers and subject alike begin to bleed into one another. Satoshi Kon’s films are challenging works that consistently push the boundaries of anime narrative, and while at times his films can be ponderous or even obscure, the sumptuosness of his artistic vision cannot be denied. Paprika is a major work that will further cement his reputation among lovers of Japanese animation, and as such it is disheartening that the film is unlikely to secure a cinematic release. This will in all likelihood be a straight-to-DVD affair, denying a wider audience the chance to experience its stunning visuals on the big screen. That said, however, it could very well get a screening at the Astor in the coming year, so keep an eye out for it.
4.48 Psychosis
directed by Alyson Campbell
with Olivia Connelly, Richard Bligh, Tom Davies and Suzette Williams
at Red Stitch Theatre until August 25
$30 / $20 (concession)
Sarah Kane is almost a figure of myth amongst the theatrical community - and with ample reason. Taking much of her inspiration from Barker’s notion of the catastrophic theatre, she burned into the consciousness of British theatre-goers with her first play Blasted, leaving critics shocked or diffident but audiences intrigued. Her works were raw and jagged, dealing intimately with pain and disconnection, with an almost casual violence - through meticulously carved poetry. Her last play, 4.48 Psychosis, is her shortest work, and is perhaps her most famous given that she ultimately took her own life before the play saw public performance. 4.48 Psychosis is a dense, yet fragmentary text that taxes actors and directors alike, but here Alyson Campbell and Red Stitch have crafted an honest and accomplished rendition for its Melbourne premiere.
The stage is a construct of receding arches, across the floor of which white polystyrene beads are liberally scattered as though the cold wastes of illness have carpeted the interior of the mind. It is a simple, stark design that is lit well and that is a highly evocative metaphor for the paradox of a limit to the infinitude of thought, and the gordian knot of depression. The soundscape is a minimal dirge of occasional squall and creeping oblivion, and is well integrated to the language, which is bleak, unremitting, and expertly handled by the players (Olivia Connelly, Richard Bligh, Tom Davies, and Suzette Williams). It makes the occasional streak of jet black humour all the more piercing, and unnerving.
Campbell has divided the text, which is written as a whole without characters, in such a way as to reflect the universality of the abyss confronted by legions of sufferers. Yet it is done in such a way as to suggest one person’s journey refracted through the mirror of the many, and loses nothing in such a translation. This is not the place to investigate the intricacies of such a journey, nor to speculate on the playwright’s ends and motivations, but to commend this exploration of such a seminal and affecting work. Campbell, who is completing her Phd on Kane’s work, has ably charted the long, dark night of this soul and left audiences with a piece of theatre that fulfils what the stage can be capable of when it is handled with boldness and dedication.
Grassroots
One source of online medical advice that is expanding in that there are now some nurses online who can help to provide you with medical info. Something else that may be of help to you are online medical dictionaries where you can look up a slew of medical terms.
Melbourne Arts Festival: Interview with Shaun Parker
In the midst of rehearsals for his upcoming Melbourne Arts Festival production, This Show Is About People, Shaun Parker took time out to talk to us about the work and what brought him to it.
Parker graduated from the VCA dance school in 1992 and is credited as the director-choreographer of This Show Is About People but, as became clear in our conversation, music and song has been just as vital as dance in shaping his artistic vision. In his childhood, up until the age of seven, Parker struggled with a speech impediment. However, his mother quickly noticed that his stutters vanished whenever he joined in with the songs on Playschool and thus began his continuing fascination with song. While working as a dancer with Meryl Tankard’s ADT in Adelaide, Parker researched mediaeval music. Being a natural countertenor, Parker’s voice was inherently suited to the style and he was taken under the wing of Leslie Lewis who developed his knowledge of baroque and early music. Parker’s talents as a singer led him into work with groups like Adelaide Baroque and artists like that doyenne of avant-garde voice, Meredith Monk.
In This Show Is About People, Parker’s passions for music and dance have come together in a thoroughly entwined manner. Of course, dance and music are hardly odd bedfellows, but Parker started this project with the conceptual undertaking of using live music and dance as interactive elements that, through the development process, would react with each other in a loop of mutual inspiration. This development of the project began well over two years ago with an initial three weeks of work in January 2005. A collaborative understanding of the rehearsal room was key, especially in this early phase, and Parker was keen to have the idiosyncrasies of the dancers feed into the work. He set tasks for them, with each individual’s personal style and background ensuring a plurality of responses. At the same time, musicians came into the process on a regular basis in order to begin matching the growing physical vocabulary of the group to songs.
A year later, Parker returned to the project with a further fortnight of development, this time focused on music. During his seven year stint with Tankard at ADT, Parker was involved with the production and tour of Songs with Mara, which brought him into contact with Mara and Llew Kiek - musicians who are now the musical directors of This Show Is About People. Their involvement ensures that the show is steeped in the rich vocal heritage of Bulgaria, but their work with Parker has been as much about finding a coherency for the musical smorgasbord that has made its way into the show: word art, beat box, baroque, Hawaiian slide guitar and pop. And now, with only weeks to go until the world premiere at the Melbourne Festival, director, musicians and dancers alike are applying the finishing touches to Parker’s debut major-cast work.
In Kristy Edmunds’ recent chat with Spark Online, she stressed how important it was for the local artists she commissions to have a confidence in their vision and aesthetic. In Parker’s case, seventeen years in the dance world has given him the opportunity to absorb the processes of many significant choreographers. He is a strong believer in aspiring choreographers taking the time to dance and learn through rehearsal and performance before looking to stamp their own footprint.
Indeed, the harsh realities of the arts world can be a daunting slap in the face for the unseasoned. Making This Show Is About People a reality has taken Parker several failed grant applications and several successful ones over the course of several years. Keeping a large-scale project such as this one afloat for so long has at times felt overwhelming for him. Nevertheless, he has been staying afloat and supporting his family thanks to a Robert Helpmann Scholarship from Arts NSW and the fiscal bonuses of commercials and film work. In the end, it was Edmunds’ support that guaranteed Parker’s hard work would receive an audience.
The effect his work has on an audience - its capacity to transform them - is fundamental to Parker’s approach. He wants This Show Is About People to be viscerally engaging and thought-provoking, with meaning that is neither obscure nor ham-fisted. From a thematic point of view, the piece began its evolution around various perceived dualities: life/death-afterlife, religion/war, violence/undoing it, man/woman. They are grand themes all and it is an ambitious undertaking to render such weighty matters in a coherent and unsentimental manner, but for Parker they are tied together.
Why belong? This seems to be the question at the heart of Parker’s investigation of the human condition. The answer for him has been an optimistic affirmation rather than a bleak abyss, though Parker is quick to point out the distinction between optimism and cheesiness - there will, we can thankfully assume, be no Hallmark cards folded in with the program.
This Show Is About People will play from Thursday October 11 to Sunday October 14 at the Malthouse’s Merlyn Theatre as part of the 2007 Melbourne International Arts Festival. Further festival dates in other cities can be anticipated in 2008-2010.
Holiday
Holiday
By Raimondo Cortese
Directed by Adriano Cortese
With Paul Lum and Patrick Moffatt
Playing August 8 – 22 @ Arts House, North Melbourne Town Hall
Holiday is the newest production from Ranters Theatre, a company that has been producing original work in Melbourne and internationally for over 10 years. The show begins with two men in a space. Their reasons for interacting, their relationship to one another is of minimal importance. However, as the play progresses, as the men relay stories to one another and talk or sit in silence, their mere existence is reason enough for a dramatic narrative. Occasionally, the men break into a capella baroque love songs that highlight the restrained nature of the performance yet amplify the character’s emotional make-up.
Paul Lum and Patrick Moffatt as the men are superb and completely engaging, never have I been so drawn to someone putting on thongs or to just how a man stretches his arm above his head. They seem inseparable yet create two distinct men simply by responding to one another.
Raimondo Cortese writes with such a keen ear, it feels as easy as breathing. It is the most artful dialogue as no line feels strange, tinny or clichéd. Cortese seems to be purposely avoiding conventional naturalism (there is great pleasure in breaking the fourth wall half-way through the show), so it is as if a new type of performance has been created. However, I hesitate to categorise it, as even calling it “hyper-realism†seems reductive. The direction, by Artistic Director Adriano Cortese, must be commended for allowing every aspect of the production to meld in a clean and unobtrusive way. The sound design by David Franzke and the lighting by Nikolas Pajanti are perfectly suited, the sound in particular is an amalgam of natural sounds that become other-wordly when placed together. Anna Tregloan’s set is at once austere and open, allowing the audience to project their imaginations onto setting, with a few choice set pieces (chaise lounge, stools, wading pool and beach balls) that are characters themselves.
Holiday made me excited by the possibilities of theatre in Melbourne. Having been repeatedly disappointed recently by mainstream offerings, it is always a relief to see there is creative, inspiring work being produced.
Half Bent: 3 composers, 11 artists and 6 hours to bring it all together
Half Bent : In 3 Acts
Three composers, 11 artists and six hours to bring it all together.
Half Bent: In 3 Acts invites audiences to witness the birth of three new contemporary works by three prominent Australian improviser/composers, unveiled and brought to life in a festival-style showcase.
Making Half Bent: In 3 Acts unique is the open compositional and rehearsal process that is integral to the project as a whole. In order to demystify the process and language behind contemporary improvised music, audiences are invited to witness a day of open rehearsals. Eleven members of the Half Bent Fully Creative ensemble are given the challenge of just two hours rehearsal per composer in order to bring the three different musical creations to life using a mixture of vocals, guitars, saxophones, flutes, trumpet, trombone, percussion, double bass, piano and electronics. This article continues, click here to read on…
Experimenta Playground
From the August 25 until September 23, the Arts Centre’s Blackbox space plays host to a new exhibition of playful, interactive artworks by some local and international artists, including Shu Lea Cheang’s Baby Love (pictured right).
Emergency Exit
(Naoto Fukusawa, Japan, 2003)
Immersion
(Angela Barnett, Christian Rubino, Darren Ballingall, Andrew Buchanan & Chris Mackellar, Australia, 2007)
Guide to Recent Architecture: Fountains
(Shaun Gladwell, Sydney, Australia, 2007)
Baby Love
(Shu Lea Cheang, 2005) This article continues, click here to read on…
Giveaway: Forbidden Lie$ double passes
We have 15 double passes to hand out like candy to those who send us their name and address to comps “at” vcasu.org.au for the brand new Aussie film Forbidden Lie$ that featured at this year’s Melbourne International Film Festival. The passes are valid for sneak-peek preview screenings that will run from September 7-9. So, get in quick smart!
Forbidden Lie$
by Anna Broinowski
A real-life thriller about Norma Khouri, the people she conned and how no-one’s safe in the age of spin.
In July 2004, Norma Khouri, best-selling author of Forbidden Love, was exposed as a fake. She had won fame and fortune as a Jordanian virgin on the run from Islamic extremists who had put a fatwah on her for her campaign against honour killings. But she was really Norma Bagain, a Chicago real estate agent on the run from the FBI for one million dollars of fraud.
Weaving murder, politics, greed and literary scandal into a web that ensnares us all, Forbidden Lie$ unveils this brilliant con artist, the people she’s duped and why, despite everything, people still want to believe her. This article continues, click here to read on…
MIFF: Films explore the animal within (Cages, Bug)
Cages, the debut feature from Belgium’s Olivier Masset-Depasse, is an entertaining but ultimately unsatisfying jumble of offbeat humour and empty earnestness. Eve and Damien, proprietors of The Zoo café, enjoy a passionate and apparently deeply fulfilling relationship – they have sex on windswept cliff tops, carve their initials into stones, and mutter such saccharine nothings as “I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love youâ€.Eve loses the power of mutter, however, when she is injured in an ambulance accident, gruellingly documented in a self-consciously graphic scene during the film’s opening minutes, the first of its many impotent gestures toward the ‘cutting edge’. This article continues, click here to read on…
MIFF: Reprise (Norway)
Very stylish and sometimes beautiful, Norwegian Joachim Trier’s debut feature Reprise follows the journey of two young writers as they deal with the conflicting requirements of art (selfishness) and love (selflessness), themes which play out well in that nowhere zone between youth and adulthood. That said, it’s sometimes hard to tell whether the film is making a point about immaturity or simply being immature (the story about ‘Porno Lars’ for instance), and the film’s most genuine moments come when it forgets its central conceit and wallows in the tawdriness of the boys’ friends: sexist, arrogant and vacuous but funny and real. When playing with its youth the movie soared, exuberant, charming and hilarious, but when we delved into adulthood I was unmoved, not believing that the writers wrote or that the lovers loved.
MIFF: Animalia (Australia)
This festival screening shows 3 instalments from David Scott’s 40-episode adaptation of Graeme Base’s classic kids’ book. In aiming at the 6 - 9 year old market, the lavish animation hits the mark: bright, fast-paced and funny, playful with language and replete with moral messages. It’s a large scale production (costing $20 million and taking 7 years to bring about) and will surely succeed commercially, but I can’t help being a bit sorry that they didn’t go for a slightly older market, and in doing so produce the darker and more complex world that Base’s intricately drawn book evokes in my mind. But the term “adaptation” is being used loosely here, and for what they’ve done, they’ve done it pretty well.
MIFF: Interview (USA)
Theo van Gogh’s legacy as a filmmaker is darkly tied to the tragic end of his life but as Interview illustrates, his sense of humour is equally worthy of our attention. The film has the deceptively simple structure of a two-hander conversation that, in its rich text and complex psychological games, unearths a complex thematic through-line. Steve Buscemi and Sienna Miller play wonderfully off each other as determinedly opposing but complementary members of society. He is a middle-aged, alcoholic, cynical, self-serving political journalist. She is a young, coke-snorting, blonde, self-serving starlet. At least they have one thing in common from the outset. The battleground is sexual, gendered and all about the assumptions and haunted pasts that encumber both the characters and the audience. Throughout the film van Gogh’s spectre looms, with plenty of self-referential details in the set dressing, but Buscemi has made the film not as a cloying tribute but as the sinisterly creeping satire and provocative set piece that van Gogh would have wanted.
Screening at Greater Union: Fri, 10th of August, 9:00 PM
MIFF: The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (AUS)
Shot over 38 hours in and around Melbourne’s CBD in the dead dark of night, A Poor Theatre’s film adaptation of Hamlet has been generating some fierce word-of-mouth, and with good reason. It is a triumph, an electric jolt of unrelenting energy and daring.
Filmed entirely on a single hand-held camera and heavily abridged, the performances contained within its lean 2 hour length have all the meat one could ask for. An excellent ensemble cast has been assembled, all assured in their command of the language and vividly real, and Richard Pyros as Hamlet is a fury of laughing, wide-eyed wit and withering acidity, his unstoppable trajectory powered by an intellect as dangerous as it is intoxicating. Oscar Redding has captured a roving, dynamic arc through this most familiar tale by pruning the text of all but its essential tragedy, and in doing so has made some interpretative decisions that will alienate some, but be embraced by others. Gone is the larger political context, and Ophelia’s descent into madness is greatly reduced; but the net effect is one of cumulative shock, with the rendering of Horatio as hand-puppet to Hamlet and the murder of Polonious in particular giving the film the raw potency of a full-blown psychosis. Indeed, the stabbing of Polonious and its aftermath reaches into the realm of pure horror in its intensity, and is an unforgettable cinematic nightmare.
The dangers of attempting a contemporary rendering of such a work is evident. As Geoffrey Wright learned with his recent Macbeth, near enough just ain’t good enough when it comes to the Bard, yet Shakespeare is one of those writers who, in the hands of the skilled, unfailingly presents new vistas with each revisiting - and this micro-budget rendition, despite all its textual cutting and the roughness of its craft, gives a new and invigorating take on one of the jewels in the crown of the Western canon. It is perhaps the most intriguing Hamlet commited to film, and deserves to earn A Poor Theatre a million bucks.
Screening at RMIT Capitol: Sun, 5th August, 7:30 PM and Thu, 9th August, 5:00 PM