Engaging program at international film festival in Brisbane
By RAMA GAIND
The 18th annual Brisbane International Film Festival, which ends on August 9, has become an important feature of the city’s vibrant visual arts scene.
Screening an estimated 300 features, documentaries, shorts, animation, experimental works and foreign films, the festival attracts an ever-growing number of audiences.
With Queensland celebrating its 150th birthday this year, it’s only fair that Queensland films were highlighted beginning with the short film Auntie Maggie and the Womba Wakgun, from Leah Purcell.
The 11 days also saw the world premier of Subdivision, which was shot on location at Hervey Bay. It was co-written by Ashley Bradnam. This comedy/drama centres on the change a community goes thorugh when city developers move in. It stars Gary Sweet Sweet and Brooke Satchwell.
Another Australian film, Prime Mover, which centres on the dreams of a long-haul truckie, features a mainly Queensland-raised and trained cast including William McInnes, Michael Dorman, Gyton Grantley and Anthony Hayes.
Other Australian films screened included Jonathan auf der Heide’s Van Diemen’s Land, Khoa Do’s Missing Water and Blessed from Ana Kokkinos.
Among some interesting documentaries were Hair India which looks at how human hair is almost like currency for some poor Indians, while explaining the enormous trade in hair from both the buyers and sellers points of view.
Ending the festival is a tense, political thriller, Balibo, which recreates events surrounding the shooting of five Australian journalists during Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor in 1975. . Told through the eyes of Roger East, a sixth Australian who is lured to East Timor by Jose Ramos-Horta to investigate the truth behind the death of the five men, who were supposedly ‘caught in cross-fire’ during the invasion.
Apart from Balibo’s director Robert Connolly, four other Australian documentary filmmakers connect with Asia and have their works screened. They are Megan Doneman, John Hughes, David Bradbury and David MacDougall.
The festival’s exxecutive director Anne Demy-Geroe says that although BIFF has traditionally focused on directors, this year there had been an increased emphasis on actors, with spotlights on living legends Jeanne Moreau and Amitabh Bachchan.
“Once again we’ve maintained our commitment to Asian cinema, with a strong group of films from master directors such as Girish Kasaravalli from India, Prasanna Vithanage from Sri Lanka and Kore-eda Hirokazu from Japan and there are others from Iran, Turkey and hong Kong, Philippines and Kazakhstan.”
There were some notable Indian films on show: The Last Lear directed by Rituparno Ghosh with Amitabh Bachchan, Preity Zinta, Arjun Rampal and Shefali Shah; Amar Akbar Anthony directed by Manmohan Desai starring Vinod Khanna, Rishi Kapoor, Amitabh Bachchan, Neetu Singh, Parveen Babi, Shabana Azmi; Roots which is described as a ‘cultural document’ by director Father Joseph Pulinthanath of Kerala, and tells of the people displaced by the construction of the Dumbur Dam, which in 1979 submerged huge areas of arable land in the fertile Raima valley; and Gulabi Talkies which is set in a fishing community in Kannada, is a complex script based on a short story written by the well-known Kannada feminist writer Vaidehi. It is directed by Girish Kasaravalli.
Gandhi’s Children is an Australian/Indian collaboration with director David MacDougall spotlighting several hundred orphaned, abandoned and runaway boys who are accommodated, fed and educated in the Prayas Children’s School for Boys run by a non-profit NGO in a poor area on the outskirts of Delhi.
As another film festival comes to an end, it’s heartening to note that all the major sponsors have actually increased their commitment to the film festival in Brisbane.
This was another exhaustive program which enabled the festival to provide more than interaction with just the screen; it showed the importance of maintaining contact through seminars, juries, and talks with critics, academics, actors and filmmakers.
