Tag: film festival
German Film Festival 2018
Friday, May 18th, 2018 Film Reviews,There have been occasions when the German Film Festival has chosen to kick off with an echte deutsche Komödie. This allowed many iterations of that lazy gag about German comedy being a contradiction in terms. This year the Germans have returned to more familiar territory: earnest dramas, with perhaps a touch of Olympian irony. This […]
Alliance Française French Film Festival 2018
Friday, February 23rd, 2018 Film Reviews,Every year at the opening of the Alliance Française French Film Festival we gasp with excitement at the news that this is the biggest festival of French films in the world, outside of France. Unless we think of Cannes as a “French Film Festival” this probably means it’s the biggest in the world. Australia’s love […]
Russian Resurrection Film Festival 2017
Friday, October 27th, 2017 Film Reviews,Why Russian Resurrection Film Festival? Is it a reference to Tolstoy’s famous novel, or to the revival of the Russian film industry in the post-Soviet era? A bit of both, I imagine, as the 14th RRFF is preocuppied with history and the literary classics. This year’s festival features a retrospective of films by Andrei Konchalovsky […]
Sydney Film Festival 2017: A Preview
Thursday, June 1st, 2017 Film Reviews,As the arrival of winter drives people indoors the organisers of the Sydney Film Festival will be hoping they seek out the warm embrace of the State Theatre or another venue, from the Dendy Newtown to the Hayden Orpheum in Cremorne. Is there any better way of spending a fortnight than sitting in a darkened […]
German Film Festival 2015
Saturday, May 16th, 2015 Film Reviews,“What does cinema know, that we don’t?” This is the question asked by Rüdiger Suchsland’s documentary, From Caligari to Hitler, one of the highlights of this year’s Audi Festival of German Film. The topic is the cinema of the Weimar Republic, Germany’s first tempestuous experiment with democracy, which lasted from 1919 -1933, when it was […]
Palo Alto
Saturday, August 16th, 2014 Film Reviews,There never seems to be a week in Sydney without some sort of film festival. Although the French brand reigns supreme in terms of size and popularity, there are many well-regarded smaller events. For instance, KOFFIA – the 5th annual Korean Film Festival In Australia, has just opened, and will run until 21 August, before […]
JFF Encore
Saturday, July 5th, 2014 Film Reviews,With film festivals increasing in number every year, and existing festivals getting bigger, it’s easy to miss the stand-out items in any program. The Japan Foundation has found an innovative way of addressing this problem with the Japanese Film Festival Encore screenings. From 9-13 July, the Foundation will be running a “Japan Academy Awards Edition” […]
Film Festivals
Saturday, September 1st, 2012 Film Reviews, Other Writing,National film festivals are one of the lesser-known growth industries in Australia. The big attraction is still the French Film Festival, but every year the German, the Italian, the Japanese and the Spanish seem to grow a little larger. Coming up quickly are those festivals devoted to films from Korea, Russia, Israel, Mexico, India, Iran, […]
French Film Festival
Saturday, March 10th, 2012 Film Reviews, Other Writing,Last year 130,000 people attended the Alliance Francaise French Film Festival, making it by far the most popular of all the international film events held annually in this country. To be fair, it is also the biggest. This year’s program features no fewer than 45 features, plus the usual round of celebrity visits and other […]
A Ghost of a Chance
Saturday, November 26th, 2011 Film Reviews,With some films box office success owes as much to timing as to the intrinsic qualities of actors, directors or cinematographers. I don’t mean genre pictures made for the Christmas market, but those rare films that capture the spirit of the times. Frank Capra’s movies did this in the 1930s and 40s, with their parables […]