By © Jane Freebury During the Academy Awards this year, when a foreign language film from South Korea carried off the top awards, it seemed a watershed moment for Hollywood. The time to invite the rest of the world to the red carpet had at last arrived. Let’s also remember that in 2011 Michael Hazanavicius’… Continue reading Alliance Francaise French Film Festival 2020
Tag: News
Spanish Film Festival 2019
The Spanish Film Festival 2019 is book-ended with comedies. It has opened with Champions and will close with Pedro Almodovar’s Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, 30 years young this year. Javier Fesser’s critically acclaimed Champions was the biggest hit at the Spanish box office in 2018 and Spain’s entry for best foreign film… Continue reading Spanish Film Festival 2019
FCCA awards outstanding achievement in Australian film
Film Critics Circle of Australia awards are held annually to recognise outstanding achievement in Australian film. This year’s contenders for best fiction feature are Breath, Cargo, Ladies in Black, Strange Colours and Sweet Country. The awards recognise the best in direction, performance, script writing, musical composition, editing and cinematography, and in feature documentary filmmaking. Backtrack… Continue reading FCCA awards outstanding achievement in Australian film
Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot
Review © Jane Freebury Rated M, 1 hr 54 mins Screening at Dendy and Palace Electric The cartoon that lends its caption to this Gus Van Sant film shows a sheriff’s posse staring at an empty wheelchair among cactus in the desert. The rough line drawing instantly conveys a lot about the artist and… Continue reading Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot
Jirga director
Jirga, a new fiction feature from Benjamin Gilmour, is about a former Australian soldier who returns to Afghanistan to ask forgiveness of the family of a civilian he accidentally killed three years earlier. Writer-director Gilmour (Son of a Lion) filmed clandestinely on location. A Q&A with director Benjamin Gilmour will be held at Dendy Cinema,… Continue reading Jirga director
Top Films 2016: 20 of the Best
… in no particular order: Love and Friendship (dir. Whit Stillman) Hunt for the Wilderpeople (dir. Taika Waititi) Nocturnal Animals (dir. Tom Ford) The BFG (dir. Steven Spielberg) Goldstone (dir. Ivan Sen) The Nice Guys (dir. Shane Black) Joe Cinque’s Consolation (dir Sotiris Dounoukos) Elle (dir Paul Verhoeven) Mustang (dir. Deniz Gamze Erguven) Fantastic… Continue reading Top Films 2016: 20 of the Best
Tehran, Shiraz, Isfahan: friendly people Iran’s main attraction
By Jane Freebury As I look around on the flight to Tehran, none of the other female passengers is wearing a headscarf. Not yet, anyhow, and not until we land. And Argo, the movie about US Embassy hostages escaping post-revolutionary Iran, seems a rather surprising in-flight entertainment option as we make a low-key entry into… Continue reading Tehran, Shiraz, Isfahan: friendly people Iran’s main attraction
Stronger Than Fiction Documentary Film Festival
First published in the Canberra Times on 23 July 2016 © by Jane Freebury Two years ago, a bitter-sweet documentary about the backing singers behind stars like Jagger, Sting, Springsteen and Bowie won the Oscar for best documentary. Not only did the Morgan Neville doco, 20 Feet from Stardom, beat The Square, about upheavals in… Continue reading Stronger Than Fiction Documentary Film Festival
Tentmakers of Cairo
Published in the Canberra Times on 26 March 2016 at: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/canberra-life/canberra-filmmakers-the-tentmakers-of-cairo-shows-artisans-during-arab-spring-20160322-gnoebd.html © Jane Freebury Something tells me that the cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead would have enjoyed hearing that a documentary award in her name had gone to a film about men who sew. Mead became famous in the 1920s-30s for her books based on research in… Continue reading Tentmakers of Cairo
Alliance Francaise French Film Festival 2016
Published in The Canberra Times on 27 February 2016, and in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald online. http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/french-film-festival-2016-vive-la-difference-20160223-gmycel.html © Jane Freebury A snippet of film that ran for under one minute was projected at a trendy cafe in Paris in 1895 and the rest is history. The film of workers leaving the… Continue reading Alliance Francaise French Film Festival 2016