I’ve been editing some short films & trying to remember how to upload them… NM

These photos taken by Paul Henderson at the TAFE Front Room Gallery Screening Hunter Street Newcastle NSW.

The high flying life of a difficult but award winning Australian filmmaker.

I’ve finally started making some short films out of the video I shot whilst in Anchorage for the Film Festival. Here’s film number one:

A Streetsweeper In Alaska December 2008

NM

Found Notes & Photos on Filckr
Click above to go there.

“… 2009 will be one of the strongest years on record for Australian films with potential IF [Inside Film] eligible nominees including:Love the Beast – Eric Bana; Australia – Hugh Jackman & Nicole Kidman; My Year without Sex – dir. Sarah Watt; Mary and Max – Toni Collette & Phillip Seymour Hoffman (voices); Charlie and Boots – pairing of Paul Hogan & Shane Jacobson; Bright Star – dir. Jane Campion & Abbie Cornish; In Her Skin – Sam Neill, Guy Pearce & Miranda Otto; Disgrace – John Malkovich; Daybreakers – Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, Sam Neill  & Claudia Karvan; Last Ride – Hugo Weaving; Accidents Happen – Geena Davis ; Mao’s Last Dancer – Joan Chen; The Combination – dir. David Field; Boys are Back In Town – dir. Scott Hicks & Clive Owen; Bran Nue Dae – dir. Rachel Penkins, Geoffrey Rush & Missy Higgins; Balibo – Anthony Lapaglia . Among many other films releasing in 2009…”

Er, it’s not hard to spot the disproportionate number of films starring & made by Baby Boomers.

Half of the Australian population is under the age of 4o.

“Commercial” films must appeal to 15 to 25 year old filmgoers.

After a decade of failure the so-called Australian Film industry remains in the firm grip of the “usual suspects”who take most of the funding but little of the responsibility: ScreenAustralia is now set give more money to the filmmakers with the biggest CVs.

But interesting & engaging “cinema” cannot be produced without risk & innovation.

We need lots of new blood, right now! NM

A number of keen young filmmakers (see crew list & photos) who worked for a day or two without payment on Streetsweeper (total budget $20,000)  also “volunteered” to work on that other recently released Novocastrian feature film (which had a budget of $3,000,000).  I’m proud to say that we at least fed our crew very well… & made sure everyone got invited to the numerous free (& celebrity-free) screenings. The new local surf film had it’s red carpet opening the other night and it turns out the “cheap” (i.e. unpaid) crew weren’t invited: shabby! NM

shanks’ pony pictures/wrong foot’d present
idiosyncratic novocastrian cinema

Streetsweeper
outdoor ‘feature film’ screening

fundraiser for ‘acetate’: alternative cinema east coast tour late 08
plus new film clips & live music by Grandmastermonk & Tad Poedee

Sunday 17th August, 2008
sunset

Lass O’Gowrie Hotel
14 Railway St Wickham
Newcastle

ramble on
(streetsweeper screening no. 9)

I love the idea of film festivals. The romantic idea that they are a place where cinema might matter.

We are waiting on a final few before completing the festival cycle – but we have had 43 rejections. No interest at all from any “local” film festivals. Dungog and Sydney both rejected the film. I called and emailed SFF, and was not even replied to. We had a last minute glimmer of an offer from Dungog, but they seem content showing mostly films that have been in general release at Hoyts.

More and more I feel that the festival circuit is a pile of shit. The open entry system appears to be merely a paper pushing facade for an actual selection process that depends entirely on whom the filmmakers, and more importantly their distributors know.

I’ve wasted an enormous amount of time learning this and entering all these festivals. I don’t mind that they are a commercial and corporate concern, but I wish that they would drop the charade and simply select the films that they are lobbied to do – be open and transparent in their festival marketing and branding exercise. I would be shocked if any festival accepted our film now. It’s a good film. Real Australian Cinema. Audiences like it, and I am the harshest critic.

At least I know that the next film we make should be gently inserted into the rectum of the festival director over a long lunch – and then we’ll be getting somewhere… TR

I just sat on a panel for Megan Spencer’s Destination Film Festival, talking about the internet and filmmaking. It was pretty exciting. I think that Megan is trying to start a revolution in the Australian filmmaking community. This involves screening a cool film or ten, inviting a diverse bunch of bodies to chat and field questions on any given topic to do with our chosen art or craft, and then getting the whole mob down at the pub to talk and drink together.

The pub is the important part. Inevitable excitable exchanges take place, but the jist of it all is that – we ‘young’ and younger filmmakers can get together and help each other with knowhow and encouragement, and just the rare feeling that we are not all alone in our little isolated worlds. The rough consensus seems to be that the old models do not work for us, and that we need to reinvent the system to suit ourselves, rather than wrestling it from the hands of the babyboomer gatekeepers in their death throws.

This presents us with a situation that is both exciting and daunting. We now have the technology to make a film like Streetsweeper in three days, and, with the financial goodwill of our friends and allies, we use this new freedom to liberate the medium of filmmaking, big or small, for a renaissance in the biggest small country in the world. It’s a grand ambition, but then – why the fuck not? Let’s do it.

Thanks Megan. You’re a bloody champ. TR

Shots from Destination Film Festival at Carriageworks