SILVER SCREEN - GOLDEN ANNIVERSARY

SYDNEY STAR OBSERVER

May 8, 2003

By Annette Willis

WITH THE SYDNEY FILM FESTIVAL CELEBRATING ITS 50TH YEAR, FESTIVAL DIRECTOR GAYLE LAKE TALKS TO ANNETTE WILLIS ABOUT THIS YEAR’S PROGRAM.

The first Sydney Film Festival screened in lecture halls around the University of Sydney campus in 1954. A sold-out event, it attracted 1,200 people to see Carl Dreyer’s The Passion Of Joan Of Arc as well as Australian productions like John Heyer’s feature-length documentary on outback culture, Back Of Beyond.

When I spoke to current film festival director, Gayle Lake, the off-screen organising frenzy was at its peak in the run-up to the golden jubilee of the Sydney Film Festival.

“This is a watermark for the Sydney Film Festival,” said Lake. “We are taking the opportunity this year to have a look at how films and filmmaking have evolved over the past 50 years, from 1954 when a large proportion of films were born out of a world divided during the Cold War era and the festival was one of the few venues where domestic audiences could see foreign cinema, especially Japanese films. There were years when the focus was French New Wave; then the Berlin Wall came down and freed up some Eastern-bloc countries; and finally the global commercialisation of the film process that we see today. It’s hard to imagine now, but for many years the Sydney Film Festival was deemed ‘subversive’ and was under ASIO surveillance.”

To celebrate the anniversary, the festival program includes Perspectives 54>03, a retrospective screening of 16 significant feature films and documentaries chosen by previous festival directors. “This is a terrific opportunity to revisit filmmaking history and an opportunity for a new audience to experience these films,” says Lake. The program spans festivals from 1955 to 1993 and includes Living (Ikiru), directed by Akira Kurosawa in 1952; The Exterminating Angel (El Angel Exterminador), directed by Luis Buñuel in 1962; Family Life, directed by Ken Loach in 1971; Fox And His Friends (Faustrecht Der Freiheit), directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder in 1975; The Spirit Of The Beehive, directed by Victor Erice in 1973, and Blue Kite (Lan Fengzheng), directed by Tian Zhuangzhuang in 1993.

This year certainly promises to be a bumper festival, with Lake sounding confident that the new arrangements put in place over the past few years have widened the accessibility and relevance of the festival and the size of the program has grown accordingly. “It’s a meaty, hefty haul for the audience this year, over 180 shorts, features and docos,” she says. “World premieres, award-winning films, comedies, noir, silent films, animation and more all nested within the general theme of contemporary Australian and world cinema.”

Lake insists the 2003 program is better than ever and is strengthened by what she terms the “variety of entry points”. This year’s festival includes a host of special screenings and symposia, some especially chosen to celebrate the 50th anniversary. As well as the features retrospective, the anniversary events include Future Perfect, an idiosyncratic tour of experimental film and video history, current digital practice and future directions in screen-based media, hosted by dLux media arts. Bright Sparks: An Australian Short Film Retrospective will feature 23 short films which were finalists or winners of the Sydney Film Festival’s Short Film Awards from 1970 to 2002. There will also be a two-day symposium, History Of The Festival And Cinema: How Festivals Have Changed, to be hosted by the University of Sydney and featuring panellists and guest speakers who include present and past festival directors, local and international filmmakers, critics and theorists.

“A must, especially for lovers of the sub-continent,” she says, “is the Indie India program. Following on from the success of the Apu Trilogy shown two years ago, we decided to have a mini-focus on art house India and screen films that are difficult to distribute as they are not mainstream Bollywood.” Lake notes, “It has been a big production year in India and money for alternative films is finally coming from offshore.” The program includes films in most of the major languages too, which is “quite a triumph”, she says. The Indian program has five films including one of Lake’s personal festival favourites, A Tale Of A Naughty Girl, directed by Buddhadeb Dasgupta, who is a festival guest. And, continuing the festival director’s love affair with long silent films, Shiraz, a 1928 film about the origins of the Taj Mahal, will screen accompanied by original instruments.

This is a better year for queer cinema following the very minimal content of last year. Lake is excited by the strength and quality of the program. “Quality is always most important when I consider films,” says Lake. “This year the quality and content of the films was very high. Ballroom, a French film in the New Directors category, won the 2002 Prix Presse in Paris and is a really interesting film about one man’s search for himself through his art. The two guys are bears and are very cute too,” she laughs. Other films include Road Movie, South Korea’s first gay film; Yossi And Jagger, an Israeli film that has been a hit on the festival circuit, and a Brazilian 1930s-set biopic Madame Sata, “one of the most confrontational films to come out of Brazil in a long time”, she says. In Don’t You Worry It Will Probably Pass, Swedish girls tell their coming of age stories with a bisexual twist and Becoming Julia is an Australian documentary about a male to female transgender. A Fassbinder film is screening in the Perspectives 54>03 program and Morris Loves Jack (1979) and Tread Softly … (1980) are screening in the Bright Sparks retrospective. Lake is particularly pleased that the two short films are screening. “These films reflect the real political agenda behind late 70s gay and lesbian cinema. I hope people think about these films in the context in which they were made.”

Lake describes the Australian content in the festival this year as “massive”, adding, “We even have a strand dubbed Seven Little Australians, a collection of features and documentaries under 75 minutes, many of which are digital productions.” One of the films, Watermark directed by Georgina Willis, has been selected to screen at Directors Fortnight in the 2003 Cannes Film Festival. Two Australian films will have world premieres. Molly And Mobarak is Tom Zubryki’s (The Diplomat) new documentary. The festival’s opening film will be The Honourable Wally Norman, Ted Emery’s (Kath And Kim, The Craic) latest feature. According to Lake, Emery is one of Australia’s top comedy directors. “Even though this is quite a mainstream film it is very warm and combines levity and gravity to appraise who we are as Australians. It’s also about corrupt party politics. Very Australian!”

When pressed to name her festival picks, Lake enthusiastically rattles them off. Her list includes I’m Taraneh, 15, an unprecedented look at Iranian youth; Pure, starring David Wenham as a pimp and a pusher; the very funny Europudding Spanish Apartment which is really about change in Europe; Gus Van Sant’s return to form, Gerry; Patrice Leconte’s small masterpiece The Man On The Train; Brazilian doco Bus 174; Oliver Stone’s debut documentary about Fidel Castro, Commandante, and the fabulous documentary Jimmy Scott: If Only You Knew about a jazz vocalist with Kallman’s Syndrome.

As well as a huge crop of new cinema from Asia, Europe and South America, there will be a Fright Night on Friday 13 June at Dendy Opera Quays. Three films will screen. Lake describes the Japanese Arigami as “fun and spooky with the best demon swordplay seen on the screen”; Undead, an Australian take on Night Of The Living Dead, described by Lake as “zombies, aliens and regional Australia”; and Cabin Fever, recommended by Lake to “people interested in exploring transgressive cinema”.

George Clooney’s directorial debut, Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind, will have its Australian premiere at the festival and controversy is likely to be generated by Ken Park, Larry Clark’s latest disturbing foray, and Oasis, Korean Lee Chang-Dong’s award-winning controversial story of outcasts in an unaccommodating world.

As always, the festival includes the Dendy Awards for Australian Short Films. The New Directors program continues at Dendy Opera Quays, which will also host the Young Filmmakers Fund screenings.

The Sydney Film Festival opens on Friday 6 June with the screening of The Honourable Wally Norman followed by a very big party at the Town Hall. The closing night film to be screened on Friday 20 June is the Australian premiere of François Ozon’s latest jewel to arrive fresh from Cannes, Swimming Pool, which is Ozon’s first feature in English and stars the legendary and seductively gorgeous Charlotte Rampling.

Tickets are available from Ticketmaster7, from the festival office on 9660 3844, the State Theatre or Dendy Opera Quays. You can buy single tickets or in bundles of four or 10. If you’re really lucky, you can purchase them at the door of the respective venue on the day.