Oct 10

From a Sunday Too Far Away – FU City Gallery – From 20 Oct

From a Sunday Too Far Away

South Australian Film Corporation 40th Anniversary Exhibition

Saturday 20 October – Sunday 2 December 2012

Flinders University City Gallery State Library of South Australia, North Terrace, Adelaide

When South Australian Film Corporation staff cleaned out the old Hendon Studios in preparation for its move last year, they unearthed treasures from the infamous ‘film vault’ linked to the studio’s glorious past; tens of thousands of film reels, stills, sound recordings, awards and posters that together tell the story not only of the SAFC, but also the story of the Australian film industry itself. The vault contained artefacts from the creation of some of Australia’s most iconic movies including Sunday Too Far Away, Breaker Morant, and Storm Boy.

Now, as the SAFC celebrates its 40th Anniversary, the SAFC, with significant support from its program partners, has turned that treasure trove into a public exhibition. From a Sunday Too Far Away at the Flinders University City Gallery celebrates both the incredible role South Australian filmmaking has played in the history of the Australian film industry, and highlights how filmmaking itself is changing with new technology.

SAFC CEO Richard Harris said “the SAFC was unique amongst Australia’s screen agencies, playing an active role as a producer of films from 1972 to 1994. Thanks to this support, a significant number of iconic Australia films from this period come from South Australia. From a Sunday Too Far Away gives audiences a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the efforts of the many people many who have been instrumental in creating some of Australia’s most celebrated films.”

The exhibition features beautiful still photos taken on set, each image a time capsule revealing cast and crew camaraderie juxtaposed with iconic images familiar to most Australians. Artefacts such as the original flag from Breaker Morant, the AFI Award won by Sunday Too Far Away, original artwork depicting costume designs for Playing Beattie Bow, detailed set designs for Shadows of the Heart, restored documentary footage of Prince Charles’ visit to Hendon in 1983, as well as a restored copy of a training film made by SAFC for AFTRS on the set of Storm Boy will also be exhibited. Plus, Director Scott Hicks has loaned the SAFC a series of continuity polaroids, story board drawings and beautiful behind the scenes shots from Shine.

Curator Melissa Juhanson said, “Art is made hour by hour, day by day on a film shoot. With its ‘behind-the-scenes’ portrait of these artistic communities, this exhibition exposes the creative filmmaking process, drawing on a collection of materials never previously seen in public.”

From Saturday 27 October to Saturday 3 November for one week only, the exhibition will feature a rare screening of A Motion and A Spirit, the first commercial production made by the SAFC in 1972. This technologically ambitious Sensorama film was shot with nine cameras simultaneously and screened in a custom built nine-screen Super Circle Cinema, which is being re-created specially for the exhibition. The film is a 12-minute 360 degree panorama of Adelaide, shot from various vehicles including an aeroplane, a racing car, and a fire engine. The original set up played at the Royal Adelaide Show to over 35,000 people and then toured Australia before settling on Adelaide’s West Beach.

Coinciding with the exhibition, the State Library of South Australia will screen a season of classic SA films including Sunday Too Far Away, Playing Beattie Bow and The Club.

The SAFC film collection was recently classified by the National Film and Sound Archive as being of national significance.  Materials from From a Sunday Too Far Away will be stored by the NFSA after the exhibition and preserved for posterity.

Oct 09

Blasted – Space – 3K

By Peter Maddern

Watching Blasted last night I couldn’t help but think of Tracey Ermin’s Bed which we saw in all its dirty delights at the Saatchi exhibition last year – was this nothing more than Bed for theatre? For like Bed, there is nothing nice about Blasted even the somewhat regally decked out hotel room that the ill and addicted Ian takes his occasional lover Cate to gets verbally trashed before patrons are even comfortable in their seats.

Director, Netta Yashchin in her notes to the program says of playwright Sarah Kane ‘[her] art was something natural, like rain, like water, like piss, like food, like sex.’ Well, we certainly had full measures of all those elements in Blasted even if the result did not exactly seem ‘natural’. Is this a tale of how violence from the outside will eventually make its way inside, a parable about how we are all the same or some feminist fancy where man is always violent and the only creature capable of decency is woman? The viewer can make up their own mind but as an experience in the grotesque it succeeds handsomely.

As for the production, far less conjecture is required. Yashchin and stage designer Wendy Todd do an excellent job of setting the scene and the effects of the blast in the hotel room are quite convincing. The structure of the seating in the Space to create the hallway in the hotel room door with the bright lights that beamed in with every new arrival was also highly creative.

Patrick Graham as Ian answers the call for a performance without inhibition and delivers on the dilemma of at one time being in control and powerful and at another being rendered lame and impotent. Mark Saturno’s soldier comfortably rests as a menacing, warped warrior rather than as some comic book character and Anni Lindner delivers as Cate, the supposedly naïve girl who finds her way into the ensuing mess at the outset.

The problem with Blasted is the play itself. Is all this nastiness a required part of the story or just there to shock? The unexplained absence of Cate for 20 minutes and the death of the soldier the work of a creative writer or signs of her laziness? The play with the guns was all contrived and often trite and given their history together, the premise that Cate is naïve seems somewhat generous.

So, bottom line, if you found Ermin’s Bed just the most exciting thing you have seen or heard about, then Blasted is for you. If not, this is a long 90 minutes in a world without redemption.

Kryztoff Rating   3K

Oct 08

Parklife Adelaide 2012 – Highlight Pix and Video

Parklife Adelaide 2012

See Kryztoff’s images from yesterday’s Parklife by clicking FOR VOLUME 1 and HERE FOR VOLUME 2 Or go to the Kryztoff facebook page.

Also, see our band images on our sister music site RAID – click the link HERE

Finally, see our sensational video of yesterday featuring our best people images, the idiotic and the quaint, the biggest rigs, all the kisses (well not them all) and video action from the pits. The link is HERE or go to the RAID facebook page for the link.

Oct 05

Arts In Adelaide – Ed 2 – 4th October

Hi All,

In this second edition of Arts In Adelaide, we look at the following:

*  Cate Fowler talks about Cambodia Sun Rising – the highly successful children’s show at the OzAsia Festival – for the OzAsia Website, CLICK HERE

*  Gabriella Smart, Artistic Director of Soundstream 2012 talks about her festival starting next week – for the Soundstream website CLICK HERE

*  Parklife here on Sunday – for the Parklife website CLICK HERE

*  The Italian Film Festival starting Oct 11 – for the Italian Film Festival website CLICK HERE

If you have any comments, please let us know here or by email to editor@kryztoff.com.

And the Second Edition Youtube link is HERE or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBD6g1YqL9w

Enjoy.

Oct 04

The Laramie Project – Ten Years Later – Higher Ground – 4.5K

By Peter Maddern

In 1998, Matthew Shepard, a young gay man, was brutally bashed and left to die just outside his home town of Laramie, Wyoming. In 2008, The Tectonic Theatre Project returned to Laramie to see what had changed in ten years. A feature of this play is the depth to which they did return and the efforts they went to in order to expose thoughts, themes and tensions that existed over the events of 1998, which had put this small community on the map, obviously in ways not desired.

As such it is a fascinating tale of how people react or often don’t react to such events, how some take the issue on as a cause celebre, how others don’t see it being about them and how those often closest involved seek to revise the past to suit a preferred future. If one struggles to relate to such a tale, consider our own Snowtown murders.

Had the play just kept on the events, the ‘hate crime’ and rather not strayed onto issues of same sex marriage and same partner pensions it would have been yet stronger for it, but no doubt that view will not be universally accepted. The opening premise, about what had changed, somewhat begs the question ‘what should have changed’ and in the end one wonders whether anything had changed in Laramie that didn’t also shift in the US or the western world anyway. But all that is for delicious red wine debate after.

But more attention needs to be given to the performance. As an audience we are greeted with nine actors spread out on chairs across the stage. Each is to convey the emotions of a variety of characters and straddle American accents with their own. In the nine, we have probably the full crop of Adelaide’s most talented young actors going at it to make their particular marks on the audience without competing for personal acclaim.

Holding this together is director Charles Sanders who may in The Laramie Project consider this his coming of age in that role. We have seen Sanders excel in solo shows but this was a master work, commanding the magnificent nine, covering nearly 50 characters across a large space with the most minimal of props. Yet, we knew clearly who they all were and where they were, particularly the stage setting for the questioning of the two murderers made it all seem quite harrowing and claustrophobic. In all of this, Christian Donoghue’s lighting must be noted for being exquisite.

To choose or highlight particular performers is perhaps unfair as each was called on and delivered important monologues and all possessed perfect timing. But Josh Battersby’s Jonas Slonaker (Shepard friend), Eddie Morrison’s Russell Henderson (murderer) and Tamara Lee’s Judy Shepard (Matthew’s mother) have stuck in this reviewer’s mind. But, as I say, this list could happy extend out.

We talk a lot of what good things there are in our local theatre but struggle to sometimes locate them. This, ladies and gentlemen, is it – our best on and off stage performers of the next generation are all here at Higher Ground til Oct 14th. Don’t say you weren’t told.

Kryztoff Rating  4.5K

Oct 02

Jeffrey Smart – Master of Stillness – Samstag from 12 Oct – Preview

The Samstag Museum of Art and Carrick Hill, in partnership with TarraWarra Museum of Art, present Master of Stillness: Jeffrey Smart paintings 1940–2011, a definitive survey exhibition of over sixty paintings from one of Australia’s most important living painters: Jeffrey Smart. Master of Stillness is an extraordinary opportunity to experience the complete scope of works from this master artist, from the early years to his most iconic works on loan from all over Australia as well as overseas, assembled by curator Barry Pearce, Emeritus Curator at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Jeffrey Smart’s work has been a part of Australian culture for more than half a century. The painter’s iconic urban landscapes have seeped into our national consciousness, and are among our most famous and beloved paintings. Smart is Australia’s master of the urban vision; seeing beauty in the landscapes of modernism, his works feature industrial wastelands and concrete streetscapes with precise attention to clean lines, composition and geometry.

Exhibition curator Barry Pearce said, ‘Jeffrey Smart created an entirely new vernacular of modern painting. He confronted a brave new universe of technology and architecture and declared that it was beautiful. He became its poet.’

This major exhibition gives due recognition to Smart’s exceptional achievements over a long life in art, and his exemplary contribution to Australian painting that continues today. Awarded the Order of Australia in 2001 for services to visual arts, Smart’s work is held by the National Gallery of Australia, all Australian State galleries, and internationally by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In 2011, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of South Australia.

Master of Stillness celebrates the artist’s special links to the University of South Australia as one of the South Australian School of Art’s most acclaimed alumni. Despite residing in Tuscany for over four decades, Smart’s visual language was formed in the grids of Adelaide, a city with a particular topography of long straight lines and vanishing points, couched by hills.

Master of Stillness draws on a large range of works from Smart’s oeuvre to illuminate the consistent artistic and technical qualities that animate his art, revealing the sustained vision that has deservedly grown his reputation over several decades. Carrick Hill, the home of Smart’s valued friends and arts patrons, the Haywards, presents a selection of archival material and the artist’s early work produced in Adelaide during the 1940s, while the Samstag Museum presents the masterpieces created by Smart in Sydney from 1951 and later in Italy where he still resides.

Samstag Museum Director Erica Green said, ‘Now is the perfect moment to survey Smart’s work and bring his vision home to Adelaide where it all started. For the first time it is possible to define his career from the beginning, not only as the most distinguished graduate of the South Australian School of Art, but also perhaps Australia’s most important living painter.’ Don’t miss this unique opportunity to immerse yourself in the vision of Jeffrey Smart – from Adelaide to Tuscany, 1940 to 2011, an extraordinary body of work from a true master artist.

Master of Stillness: Jeffrey Smart paintings 1940–2011 opens Friday 12 October and continues until Friday 14 December 2012. Opening hours are Tuesday to Friday 11–5pm, Saturday and Sunday 2–5pm.

Exhibition entry is free. To coincide with the exhibition, a major publication on Jeffrey Smart will be published by Adelaide’s Wakefield Press.

Sep 28

Looper – 4.5K

In 2072, when the mob wants to get rid of someone, the target is sent 30 years into the past, where a hired gun awaits. Someone like Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who one day learns the mob wants to ‘close the loop’ by transporting back Joe’s future self (Bruce Willis.)

Written and directed by Rian Johnson and co-produced by Gordon-Levitt, Looper is one of the better time travel movies of recent times. Though set in 2042, the staging in Kansas is very reminiscent of the depression and the western gun battle films of that era. Not even mobile phones seem to have survived the next 30 years though hologram type screens are in use and some of our next generation have acquired the use of ‘TK’ – the ability to make the world move around you.

One of the great failings of Inception, the most highly recognised of the recent time travel genre, was it simply asked too much of most of its patrons and for those it left behind it resorted to silly action sequences to keep you engaged. Johnson and his crew have taken extra care to ensure there are clues all long as to what’s happening – the use of the somewhat bleak depression era and a humble corn field help ensure there isn’t too much happening, technologically at least, to create confusion in their audience’s minds.

Gordon-Levitt is great (though often with excess make-up) and Willis is well cast as an aging and tired warrior of past physical and emotional battles (though one has to suspend in one’s mind that these two are meant to be the same person just thirty years apart in age.) Emily Blunt as the struggling farm owner, Sara, is a delight and Jeff Daniels as the unhinged Abe is well cast. Pierce Gagnon as Cid, Abe’s forebear and Sara’s child also does an excellent job.

The cinematography is slick, the effects excellent and story is as plausible as time travel movies can allow.

If you were disappointed that you couldn’t buy into the Inception hype two years ago because you couldn’t work out what the heck was going on, then don’t let that deter you from seeing what will be rightly regarded as one of the best films of the year.

Sep 28

OzAsia Festival – Love in the Buff – 4K

By Julia Loipersberger

One of the latest movies to come out of Hong Kong, this delightful sequel to ‘Love in a Puff’ is a romantic comedy which follows the lives of Cherie (Miriam Yeung Chin Wah) and Jimmy (Shawn Yue) after the closing credits of the initial film.

Having met and fallen in love in their native Hong Kong, the two lovers try – and fail – to settle into a domestic routine. Jimmy is a perennial teenage boy who admits he hasn’t changed since high school and who loves putting dry ice in the toilet to watch the smoke pour out. Cherie, meanwhile, is trying to make a grown up life for the two of them and reminisces about her teenage love affair with popular movie star Ekin Cheng (playing himself). Things between the two of them finally snap when Jimmy changes the location of a barbeque which Cherie has arranged with her friends and family so that he can incorporate it into a photography shoot with the advertising agency he works for.

After their relationship has ended, Jimmy finally takes his boss up on a job offer in the ‘big smoke’ and moves to Beijing. Six months later, Cherie, a cosmetics salesgirl, is also transferred to Beijing, and within days of moving there runs into Jimmy – along with his new girlfriend, the stunning You You (played tenderly and delicately by gorgeous Mini Yang). Predictably, this unravels a whole series of emotions for the two former lovers. Is either of them really over the other? Is it time for Jimmy and Cherie to re-evaluate what it is they want from their lives, and move on with more compatible partners?

A highly entertaining comedy set against the backdrop of modern Hong Kong and Beijing, this film strikes a chord in all the right places, with an extremely able cast of supporting actors interweaving  their own romantic disasters  and successes.

Truly a movie made for the modern love lives of singles in 2012, this film will have both local and global appeal, and is certainly a delightful way to while away two hours.

Kryztoff rating   4K

Sep 28

OzAsia – Cambodia Sun Rising – Space – 4K

By Peter Maddern

The story of Cambodia is not a happy one; a peaceful agrarian society drawn into the Vietnam War by US bombing in pursuit of an enemy they never defeated that unleashed in 1975 four appalling years of the Pol Pot regime. Even more than 30 years on, things are not much recovering even if the invaders and the despots are gone.

The Sunrise Villages run by Geraldine Cox are orphanages (near Phnom Penh) acting as oases and hopefully staging grounds for the young generations of Cambodia to pursue meaningful, productive and educated lives. Of course, their work can affect only the lucky few, even if they arrive there devoid of life’s fortune.

Cambodia Sun Rising endeavours to tell this whole story through a mostly child ensemble, from the classical, traditional and ordered world of the Kampuchea ancient civilisation through to the modern day realities of street kids and westernised culture. From Apsara dances to hip hop and folk tunes to western beats, the performers are complimented by video stories from some of them of their lives to date and their aspirations.

The scenes depicting the Pol Pot regime from Year Zero are most effective, leaving none without a sense of the losses – cultural as well as human – without over reaching.

The performance ends metaphorically as well as dramatically with a plead to us, the audience, about what we can to assist these children and so many more like them as well as the country as a whole. Whereas, the major charities tend to tug ever so hard on the heart strings in the 30 seconds of the time they may capture your attention, directors Cate Fowler and Ninian Donald allow these feelings to develop much more intrinsically, naturally and thus more convincingly. The message is neither one of despair nor inevitable triumph, but a measured view of the rights children should have to a safe upbringing and the opportunity to prepare themselves for adulthood (that is, those we consider our own to possess) in a country that lost everything and is trying to rebuild in a world that preys on the weak.

The dancing, singing and musicianship are all finely executed, many of the 30 or so kids’ personalities become known to us without creating stars and the pacing of the performing and the story is all craftily handled.

Jacinta Thompson and her OzAsia Festival and others who supported making this show happen this year all need to be congratulated and one hopes this ‘world premiere’ leads to other countries embracing this very modern story of youth, hope and sadly still unresolved tragedy in their theatres as well.

Sep 25

Lavazza Italian Film Festival – Preview – Oct 11-28

REDISCOVER ROMANCE…

at the LAVAZZA ITALIAN FILM FESTIVAL 2012

See the Youtube Preview by clicking Here

Indulge your senses at the 13th annual LAVAZZA ITALIAN FILM FESTIVAL presented by Palace Cinemas with the proud support of Lavazza, the ‘numero uno’ authentic Italian coffee of connoisseurs, the world-over.

The Festival, like Lavazza, continues to encapsulate the spirit of Italy with a thrilling program of over 30 award-winning, critically acclaimed features and includes highlights from internationally revered film forums, including Cannes, Sundance and Berlin, Rome and Venice.

For lovers of quality European cinema, the Festival also provides an opportunity to experience films from famed directors such as Marco Tullio Giordano, Pupi Avati, the Taviani brothers, Paolo Genovese, Ferzan Ozpetek and Emanuele Crialese, that might otherwise not be seen on these shores.  And with performances from many of Italy’s finest actors, from Asia Argento, Raoul Bova, Valentina Lodovini, Carlo Verdone, Pier Francesco Favino, Claudio Santamaria and Pierfrancesco Favino to Carolina Crescentini, Barbora Bobulova, Valeria Golino, Margherita Buy, Isabella Ragonese and Luigi Lo Cascio, these are films not to be missed!

And in response to popular demand, this year’s Festival will include a host of special events incorporating live entertainment, cooking demonstrations, cocktails, gourmet delicacies, wine tastings along with the Festival’s romantically indulgent opening and closing night celebrations.  WELCOME TO THE NORTH, the eagerly anticipated sequel to last year’s hit-comedy, WELCOME TO THE SOUTH, will launch the 2012 Festival, whilst Woody Allen’s latest movie, TO ROME WITH LOVE, starring Penélope Cruz, Judy Davis and Roberto Benigni, has been selected for closing night in Sydney and Melbourne and will screen courtesy of Hopscotch Films.  A FLAT FOR THREE, the latest comedy from beloved Italian actor Carlo Verdone, will close the Festival in Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth.

Selected highlights of the 2012 programme include:

CAESAR MUST DIE directed by Paolo Taviani & Vittorio Taviani

Starring Salvatore Striano, Cosimo Rega & Giovanni Arcuri

Winner of the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, the story follows the inmates of the high-security Rebibbia prison as they rehearse for a performance of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. As the rehearsal process infiltrates the daily lives of the inmates, suppressed tensions slowly start to surface.

DOWN THERE: A CRIMINAL EDUCATION directed by Guido Lombardi

Starring Kadser Alassane, Esther Elisha and Moussa Mone

Winner of the Luigi De Laurentis Award for a Debut Film at Venice and winner of the 26th International Critics’ Week Kino Audience Award, this is the moving story of Yussouf, an aspiring artist, who arrives in southern Italy full of hope, only to find he is just another African immigrant struggling for survival.

ISLANDS directed by Stefano Chiantini

Starring Asia Argento, Ivan Franek, Giorgio Colangeli and Anna Fernuzzo

An eastern European bricklayer seeking work, is befriended by a young woman who has retreated into silence in this engrossing drama set against the haunting backdrop of the Tremiti Islands.

KRYPTONITE! Directed by Ivan Cotroneo

Starring Valeria Golino, Luca Zingaretti & Cristiana Capotondi

It’s 1970s Naples and bullied, nine year-old Peppino is watching the world around him as his extended dysfunctional family change. With Italian versions of period classic songs, and all the colours of peace and love amid the city’s backstreets, this is a fresh, tender and funny tale exploring love, diversity and dreams.

MAGNIFICENT PRESENCE directed by Ferzan Ozpetek

Starring Elio Germano, Margherita Buy, Vittoria Puccini Giuseppe Fiorello and Andrea Bosca

A critically acclaimed ghost tale, about Pietro, a lonely, aspiring actor, struggling to accept his homosexuality, who discovers that the grand old Roman house he has purchased is occupied by a ghostly 1940s vaudevillian troupe.  Initially terrified, Pietro slowly begins to value and accept his ‘new’ friends.

PIAZZA FONTANA: THE ITALIAN CONSPIRACY directed by Marco Tullio Giordana

Starring Valerio Mastrandrea, Pierfrancesco Favino, Michela Crescon, Laura Chiatto & Luigi Lo Cascio.

This impressive Machiavellian drama dissects the Piazza Fontana bombing, highlighting the cynical manipulations and tragic consequences of the event and subsequent investigations.

REALITY directed by Matteo Garrrone

Starring Aniello Arena, Loredana Simioli, Nando Paone & Lello Ferrante

Matteo Garrone, whose acclaimed earlier film GOMORRAH also won the Grand Prix at Cannes four years ago, took out the Grand Prix again this year with this biting satire on reality television and Italian culture.

SHUN LI AND THE POET Directed by Andrea Segre

Starring Tao Zhao, Rade Serbedzjia and Marco Paolini

In this multi award-winning drama, two lonely people from different cultural backgrounds form an innocent friendship, which sparks the all too familiar forces of hate prejudice and paranoia from those around them.

TERRAFERMA directed by Emanuele Crialese

Starring Filippo Pucillo, Donatella Finocchiaro, Mimmo Cuticchio & Claudio Santamaria

Set amidst a community on a small fishing island near Sicily, this critically lauded, suspenseful drama tells the story of a broken family confronting great changes as they try to survive.

THE BIG HEART OF GIRLS directed by Pupi Avati

Starring Cesare Cremonini, Micaela Ramazzotti & Gianni Cavina

A delicate tragicomedy of love, compromise and the role of women, set in Mussolini’s Fascist Italy of the 1930s, inspired by the story of famed director, Pupi Avati’s own grandparents.

THE ENTREPENEUR directed by Guiliano Montaldo

Starring Pierfrancesco Favino and Carolina Crescentini

This multi-award winning drama tells the story of factory owner Nicola Ranieri, whose pride has caused emotional heartache and taken him to the brink of ruin.

The LAVAZZA ITALIAN FILM FESTIVAL will screen at 14 Palace locations around the country as follows:

ADELAIDE : 11-28 Oct

For more details go to the Festival website by clicking Here