Win tix to the Sydney Latin American Film Festival!

The best and most diverse selection of Latin American films, visiting filmmakers, forums and fiestas are in store for Sydney-siders when the Sydney Latin American Film Festival opens next week.

The Sydney Latin American Film Festival have five double passes to selected sessions giveaway to SFF lovers!

They're offering one double pass to each of the following sessions: Beauty of the Fight, The Booby Prize, 199 Tips to be Happy, Corumbiara, and Yuma.

To win email webmaster@sydneylatinofilmfestival.org including the name of the film you'd like to see in the subject line. Only winners will be contacted.

The Sydney Latin American Film Festival will be screening more than 60 films at Dendy Opera Quays, Mu-Meson Archives, Macquarie University and Casula Powerhouse over 18 amazing days.

For the complete program and to buy tickets visit sydneylatinofilmfestival.org

Update on SFF 2010 films and filmmakers

SFF 2010 filmmakers and their films are up to great things in Australia and around the world. We would love to have been a fly-on-the-wall when Ahmed Ahmed, the hilarious director of Just Like Us, attended the Iftar dinner at The White House hosted by Barack Obama during Ramadan - check out his Facebook picture! Festival Director Clare Stewart will be catching up with Luca Guadagnino, director of I Am Love, at Venice Film Festival where he is serving on the Official Competition Jury. Javier Feuntes Leon’s much loved film Undertow (Contracorriente) is set for a theatrical release in San Francisco (spread the word to your friends in Sydney’s sista city!) and follows hot on the heels of dual USA releases of SFF Jury Member Lucy Walker’s Waste Land and Countdown to Zero. Michael Winterbottom’s new television project The Trip will be premiering at Toronto, if you missed The Killer Inside Me at SFF, it opens in cinemas this Thursday. Festival guest Ewan McGregor’s new film Beginners, directed by Mike Mills, will also premiere in Toronto while fellow Scot Shirley Henderson’s new film Meek’s Cutoff, directed by Kelly Reichardt, screens in both Venice and Toronto.

Shirley Barrett’s South Solitary, SFF’s 2010 Opening Night film, is on release in Australia now and Shirley has been busy directing episodes of Offspring, currently screening on Channel 10. The Waiting City is also in release and Claire McCarthy will be attending the Travelling Film Festival’s opening night in Huskisson this weekend. Patrick Hughes’ Red Hill is due out later this year and will be released in November in the USA, Julie Bertucelli’s Official Competition The Tree and Sean Byrne’s The Loved One’s opens in September and October respectively.

Also screening in cinemas around Sydney are festival hits Exit Through the Gift Shop, I am Love, Cairo Time, The Ghost Writer and The Runaways. Our Audience Award Winner (State Theatre) Boy opens this Thursday, our Closing Night film The Kids Are All Right opens next week, Julie Bertucelli’s Official Competition film The Tree, The Disappearance of Alice Creed and Cyrus are all coming up. Do the right thing by these films – if you loved them at the festival, spread the joy!

SFF Official Competition films selected for Toronto

The final Toronto International Film Festival line-up was announced today, and TIFF will screen four SFF Official Competition titles, including Xavier Dolan’s Sydney Film Prize winning film Heartbeats, both highly commended titles – Ben Lucas’ Wasted on the Young and Alexej Popogrebski How I Ended this Summer – along with Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives which had its first screening in the world at SFF following its Palme d’Or win. We are thrilled that Wasted on the Young will have its International Premiere in Toronto’s prestigious Discovery section and that Paramount have acquired the film for distribution locally after its World Premiere screening at SFF. The much admired animation The Illusionist, which had its Australian Premiere at SFF, will also be screening at TIFF.

Festival Director Update

We Catch Up With Festival Director, Clare Stewart

There is no easy way to wind down after the adrenalin pumped experience of delivering the Sydney Film Festival. 

Two days after we closed, I had a rush of empathy watching the brilliant Sir Ian McKellen (who had been a guest at our Official Competition Awards lunch) at the opening night of Waiting for Godot. When his character Estragon declared ‘there is no lack of void’, the sweep of his gesture perfectly described the grand emptiness of the moment when the audience and the filmmakers all go home.

I have discovered over four years that the best solution is to fill the post-festival black hole by jumping on a plane and throwing myself into holiday mode at intoxicating events like Durban, Sarajevo and this year, Edinburgh International Film Festival.  

EIFF Artistic Director Hannah McGill attends many of the same festivals throughout the year and since EIFF moved to June, there is an even greater collegiate bond between our programming and print traffic teams. It was terrific to have the chance to dip into the tail-end of EIFF which has an overall emphasis on discovery and a reputation for breaking first films by significant talent. The festival’s Closing Night film Third Star was an impressive new British production and the first feature film directed by Australian Hattie Dalton whose short film The Banker received a BAFTA in 2005 and who has been working in the UK as an editor. 

While in Scotland, I also caught up with author Christos Tsiolkas, who is doing a residency on the Loch Long Peninsula, as well as Glaswegian producer Paul Welsh just days before funding was announced for both Matchbox Pictures 8-part TV series of Christos’ The Slap and Cate Shortland’s (Somersault) next feature Lore, a German/Australian co-production which Paul is producing with SFF Board alumni Liz Watts and Karsten Stöter, Benny Drechsel and Gabriele Kranzelbinder. In the same round of Screen Australia funding, producer Angie Fielder’s (who was our Industry and Guest Manager at SFF for the 2007 and 2009 festivals) first feature Say Nothing was also green lit. It will be directed by Kieran Darcy-Smith who is no stranger to SFF audiences for his appearances in 2008 Official Competition feature The Square and Dendy Award-winning shorts Miracle Fish (2009) and Katoomba (2007).

Other holiday highlights included doing the Laurel and Hardy dance from Way Out West with Tilda Swinton, Mark Cousins and eager local Scots at Edinburgh’s Festival Square for the launch of their new Eight and a Half foundation www.eightandahalf.org and attending the World Premiere of Inception at Leicester Square in London with the entire cast in attendance. Tom Hardy (the star of our 2009 Official Competition winner Bronson) is sensational in Inception and I am full of anticipation for what he will bring to role of Mad Max in SFF Patron Dr George Miller’s upcoming production.

After this all too brief reprise, the Venice and Toronto film festivals are just around the corner, and planning for SFF festival 2011 is in full swing.

Clare Stewart, Festival Director

Image (c) Karen Steains

Sunday, Bloody Sunday

Sunday, bloody Sunday – the 27th of June to be exact – was a day many Sydney film lovers will remember. Almost two weeks after SFF2010 had finished for the year we Sydneysiders had to farewell another bastion of quality world cinema; this time for good. The beloved Palace Academy Twin held it’s last screening ever (Oscar winner The Secret In Their Eyes), and closed its doors after over three decades of presenting quality art house and foreign films to a hungry Sydney audience. Yes, Sunday was a grim day in many respects, but amongst the sad farewells and the void left by the Academy Twin… a glimmer of hope.

It may be all about mining in the west, but SFF unveils the most unexpected gem

When I saw the synopsis for Little Sparrows on the Sydney Film Festival program, I will admit, it hit a little close to home. Being one of three daughters and having three daughters of my own it hit a nerve and part of me was wondering whether I was up for the task. I knew it was possible this film was going to make me cry. And cry I did.  I cried with joy.  I cried with emotion.  Ironically I didn't cry with sadness which was what I expected.

Cutting Edge Filmmaking and Catfish: 2010 SFF Wrap Up

You know you've watched a powerful film when a man at the urinal in the toilets afterwards asks everyone what they thought of the homages to Hitchcock. Or when you feel elated, or moved, or physically ill as the credits roll. If you've lined up outside on the street on a rainy winter’s day to get into the theatre and you can walk out of it thinking it was all worth it; feeling excited about it; you know you've seen something special on the screen. 

For all these experiences and more, I’ve got to give up a resounding holler to Clare Stewart and her fantastic festival team. It’s been over a week since the festival officially closed and although I’m still shaking the glitter out of my going-out wellies, I think it’s time to reflect on what the Sydney Film Festival brought us this year.