Highlights of 45th Sydney Film Festival
By Conrad Barrett
The 45th Sydney Film Festival will begin on June 5 and continue until June 19.
A highlight of this year's festival will be a feature selection of African cinema, including films made in the last 10 years from Mali, Tunisia, Madagascar and Senegal. The films, selected by Cameron Bailey, former programmer of African films for the Toronto Film Festival, will be shown through the festival.
Another feature is a special on Welsh cinema, with some very early films as well as new films produced with the help of increased government grants. One of the new films, House of America, follows the lives of two brothers and a sister whose valley is engulfed by a strip mine.
New Vietnamese cinema will also be featured with the screening of The Long Journey, a road movie about the "new" Vietnam, and Ten Girls from Dong Loc, about young women at war.
There will be a late night animation special, a number of music specials including Lou Reed: Rock and Roll Heart and Don't Look Back, a documentary on the life and music of Bob Dylan, and a late night special on jazz featuring Wild Man Blues by Woody Allen, Charles Mingus: Triumph of the Underdog and Dr Jazz, made in Australia.
Other highlights: Chile, Obstinate Memory is a documentary that follows Patricio Guzman as he presents his earlier documentary about the overthrow of Salvador Allende, The Battle of Chile, to people in Chile and asks viewers to remember the time.
Silver Screen/Colour Me Lavender examines films from the "golden years of Hollywood" and finds some surprising secret gay images.
Public Housing is a documentary about housing in Chicago; A Place Called Chiapas documents the struggle of the Zapatistas in southern Mexico; and Paradjanov: The Last Collage is a biography of the Armenian film-maker, painter and poet sent to a Soviet gulag for his homosexuality.
Welcome to Sarajevo is an all too realistic portrait of the experiences of war correspondents in Sarajevo. A British reporter finds orphans trapped in the war-torn city. He launches a campaign through his TV reports to pressure the United Nations to evacuate the orphanage. Serb forces also call for an evacuation. Afraid of appearing to collude with the Serbians, the UN does nothing.
Bound by a promise to one of the orphans, the reporter tries to rescue the child by smuggling her out of the country.
The film is light on the politics of the war but heavy on the emotion. It seems to use actual footage (much of it too gruesome to reach the nightly news) which is not easy to endure. The film's strength is the way it portrays the everyday living conditions of the people in Sarajevo during the war.
Cigarettes become the new currency, food and water gain new value, and everything is for sale. People carve out a living myriad ways. It is an aspect of war not often depicted in such detail. Strong performances are given by Kerry Fox and Woody Harrelson.
The festival will be held at the State Theatre and the Pitt Centre. Tickets are available at the State Theatre and Ticket Master. For more information call 9660 9826.