St George Bank Brisbane International Film Festival
July 31-August 10
Visit http://www.stgeorgebiff.com.au, ph (07) 3007 3003
You could be forgiven for turning your attentions to other art-forms with the sheer amount of popcorn-filler (Sex and the City, Kung Fu Panda, You Don't Mess With The Zohan, Get Smart, the list goes on) clogging the arteries of local cinemas right now.
But this very fact seems to draw into sharp focus the reason why we have film festivals to champion foreign films, independent titles and rarely seen classics — giving audiences proper alternatives to the Hollywood juggernaut. Brisbane's international film festival from July 31 to August 10 features a strong line-up of politically charged films that should revive your faith in film making.
Now in its 17th year, the St George Bank Brisbane International Film Festival has carved out a niche on the international scene as a festival dedicated to cinema from the Asia-Pacific region as well as diverse retrospective programmes. This year is no exception and one of our major focuses, Resist!, is dedicated to exploring post-WWII European terrorism and the parallels to today's geopolitical climate.
Classic screenings of The Battle of Algiers, Z, The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum and Nada stand side-by-side with rarely seen films including Germany in Autumn (directed by a who's who of the German New Wave), The Raspberry Reich and Yoyes. The programme is topped off with a special seminar of panellists discussing civil liberties, international justice and the mutating concept of "terrorism".
The theme of terrorism continues in our screening of Barbet Schroeder's Terror's Advocate, which highlights the life of controversial lawyer Jacques Verges who has represented the notorious Nazi Klaus Barbie, Carlos the Jackal and Cambodian dictator Pol Pot. Schroeder is no stranger to documenting contentious historical figures, he previously helmed the documentary General Idi Amin Dada. In addition to Terror's Advocate being an endlessly fascinating look inside Verges' life — a very entertaining central subject — it's an extremely timely review of the global terrorist network.
I'm particularly ready to champion John Gianvito's latest work, Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind, which is a loose adaptation of Howard Zinn's massively influential A People's History of the United States. You could easily make the argument that Gianvito is one of North America's finest film-makers working right now. Profit Motive is a documentary exploring the US's heroes of resistance, from the obscure to Malcolm X and Eugene Debs.
Gianvito's extraordinary aesthetic move is to film each of his subjects' gravesites and memorial signs in exquisitely framed static shots. The film's unhurried pace finally climaxes to the present protest campaign against the occupation of Iraq in a flurry of movement and sound.
This documentary will screen with the short film Allen Ginsberg Gives Great Head, an equally uncompromising piece of artistic vision from X'Ho, one of the Singapore's true mavericks. I think the pair will seriously challenge and inspire.
There were environmentally themed docos before An Inconvenient Truth, but it feels like Al Gore's film kickstarted a whole new level of hyper-awareness about global warming. This year, the trend continues with The Burning Season and Garbage Warrior, which both look at inspiring figures who are dedicated to cleaning up the earth in their own unique ways.
Narrated by Hugh Jackman, The Burning Season follows Dorjee Sun, an Australian entrepreneur on a mission to end heavy deforestation that devastates flora and fauna and causes 20% of all carbon emissions. Meanwhile, renegade architect Michael Reynolds is the "garbage warrior" who designs and constructs houses out of discarded bottles, tires and other disposables with the aim of achieving eco-harmony.
Complications arise however when the government forces Reynolds to comply with US housing standards and he goes on a mission to convince state legislature to change the laws to enable him to continue experimenting with his "biotecture".
Elsewhere our world cinema collection delves into warfare, past and present, in Katyn, Redacted and Raja 1918. Andrzej Wajda is widely hailed as a master filmmaker with classics such as Ashes and Diamonds, A Generation, Kanal and Lotna under his belt. Katyn further testifies to his top-tier status.
During World War II, more than 15,000 Polish officers disappeared and initial fingers pointed squarely at the Nazis. Although mass graves were found by the invading German forces, Soviet propaganda continued the belief that the Nazi regime had "disappeared" the Polish officers, and during the Cold War mention of "Katyn" (where the massacre took place) was strictly forbidden with lengthy jail terms handed out to dissenters.
In 1990, the Kremlin finally confessed that Stalin's secret police were in fact responsible for the massacre. Harrowing and brutal, Wajda's film draws from actual diaries and letters from the period to tell the fate of four officers and their families who were eternally split by the Katyn massacre.
Another forgotten side of history is unveiled in Raja 1918, set during the aftermath of the Finnish civil war as borders were being established between Soviet Russia and Finland. Lauri Torhonen's absorbing film doesn't shy away from the moral complexities faced by his protagonist, a young captain sent to create the border and deal with the influx of refugees, but tempers the politics with a romantic sweep as the captain falls in love with a local schoolteacher who's harboring a fugitive.
As rousing entertainment the film works undoubtedly, but it's a valuable reminder that every nation has a few skeletons in their closet too.
Veteran Brian De Palma has a filmography containing everything from experimental flicks (Hi, Mom!) to Hollywood blockbusters (Scarface, The Untouchables) but his latest, Redacted, could not come at a better time. De Palma has the Iraq war in his sights and he fashions an extremely compelling tale of barbaric US soldiers who rape and kill an innocent Iraqi family utilising a mixed media palette of YouTube outrage-posts, documentary, CCTV and video-diary.
Redacted earned De Palma the best director prize at the Venice Film Festival in 2007, as well as the wrath of conservative talkshow loon Bill O'Reilly who accused the director of smearing the military. The film has caused immense controversy and split audiences in the US, but now is your chance to catch it on the big screen here and experience De Palma's best film in years.
The rest of the program also comes marbled with a number of films dealing with hot-button topics sure to spark debate. From our British cinema focus, Turner-prize winning artist Steve McQueen turns to feature film-making with Hunger, which won the coveted Camera d'Or prize at the Cannes film festival this year.
The tone is grave but the imagery is at once beautiful and horrific as incarcerated Irish Republican Army prisoner Bobby Sands (played with frightening intensity by Michael Fassbender) starves himself to death in protest at republican prisoners in British jails being denied political prisoner status.
Also in the British focus, Penny Woolcock's Exodus re-conceptualises the classic biblical tale with the Pharaoh as a right-wing politician playing to the people's racist impulses and Moses as the leader of a ragtag guerilla army.
Chinese independent films Good Cats and Little Moth are key examples of the nation's continuing indie renaissance and how Chinese filmmakers are using digital filmmaking for important socio-political ends. In Good Cats the nation's rapid urbanisation is put under the microscope, while in Little Moth the problem of orphan-trading and illegal begging gets the social-realist workout with alarmingly heartbreaking results.
Our music program features Public Enemy: Welcome to the Terrordome, a celebration of the iconic hip hop band and their musical and political contribution to pop culture, as well as What We Do Is Secret — a terrific biopic on tortured soul Darby Crash and his punk band The Germs.
Australian cinema is prominently featured in the festival — Benjamin Gilmour's amazing debut Son of a Lion and Andrew Pike's charming documentary The Chifleys of Busby Street are definite highlights. Once again we're also proud to host a specially curated forum of films by or about Indigenous people which contains the Australian documentaries In My Father's Country and Island Home Country.
Finally a rather terrific piece of news about our opening night film, Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?, directed by Morgan Spurlock, famous for devouring McDonalds for a month in Super Size Me. Spurlock will be our special guest in attendance at our opening night bash.
A film festival can be a daunting prospect with so many films and only a week or so to digest them all but I hope this overview has been able to connect some thematic threads in the overall programme and steer people towards films thAt will be of serious interest to them.
I hope to see everyone in the cinemas!
[Ben Cho is a programmer for the festival. He was selected for the 2008 Berlin Film Festival's Talent Campus.]