latest features
Hard Knocks
With recent reports that life for the residents of Toomelah has reached crisis point, Ivan Sen’s feature about the troubled Aboriginal community hits home even harder.
From A Faraway Land
The inaugural Indian Film Festival of Melbourne will attempt to show audiences that there’s more to their thriving cinema scene than song and dance… though there’s that too.
Last Dance
Director Martha Goddard gives us the back story on shooting her experiential short film ‘Dance Me to the End of Love’ which is vying for a Dendy Award at Sydney Film Festival.
Trolls and Tribulations
Having raised the funds via crowd-funding, Snowgum Films are bravely attempting to bring Terry Pratchett’s short epic, ‘Troll Bridge’, to screen.
search the site
newsletter
Enter your email address below to receive the weekly Filmink newsletter
Sydney Duo’s Short Film Screens at Tribeca
Filmink speaks with two Sydney filmmakers who recently had their short film – inspired by their personal lives – screen at the Tribeca Film Festival
Have you ever thought you made a big mistake by inviting someone to a party and afterward are so relieved they came because the party would have been a dud without them? That is the premise of a new a short by director Gemma Lee and producer/actor Charlie Clausen, only the misfit is the life of a wake, not a party. In late April, Filmink sat down for a chat with the Sydney filmmakers just before The Wake screened at the Tribeca Film Festival.
I would guess from the film's title that someone is dead?
Clausen: The premise is that the best friend of the son of the man who died comes to the wake. He's an outsider and a misfit and is uncomfortable being there. He finds the youngest member of the family, an eight-year-old boy, also hiding outside during the wake. He's an outsider, too, and they come together and form a bond.
Lee: The idea is that even when you feel that you don't fit in you can sometimes make things better. And this older friend of the family who they haven't seen in a long time fumbles through the whole day but ends up bringing the family back together. We wanted to see if we could make people laugh and cry in under ten minutes. I think we managed to do that.
Clausen: It's based on a true story. My older brother's best friend was one of those guys who was always in bands and never had a steady job and our family thought he would amount to nothing. When my father died, he kind of took me under his wing. In an unconventional way, he became like a father figure. He'd take me to pubs, which was really a great way of getting me through the traumatic time. So the film is a tribute to him.
Why did you respond to Charlie's story?
Lee: Charlie and I are partners in life as well, so I knew his family and what he'd been through. One of the most interesting things I found out back when we first met was the story of his family. Nine kids, several are gay, his dad died when he was ten - it's a Royal Tenenbaum-like family. It was fascinating to me and I wanted to hear all the family stories. There were so many stories that we had trouble picking one. Charlie's father passing away was such a big event for the family and really tragic. It was a story worth telling, I thought.
Can you tell us a little about the cast?
Lee: There are three principals. Charlie is one of them. He plays his older brother in the film. The young boy is played by Gully McGrath and he's a phenomenal talent. He's eight years old. He almost got cast in the new Martin Scorsese film. Angus Sampson plays the family friend. He's quite a well-known comedic actor in Australia and was in Where the Wild Things Are.
There must have been something else about Gully that made you want to cast him.
Lee: Wisdom. It felt like we were talking to an adult. He had a great grasp on the script and the subject and the emotions involved. The energy he brought to the part told us that we were going to get more than what we expected. You can tell when someone has that star quality. I've worked a few times with child actors doing commercials and when they walk into a room they have the same presence as adults. You can tell they are something special. And Gully had that.
Clausen: Of course, the relationship between the boy and the family friend is pivotal to the film. And when we got Angus and Gully together for the first time there was an immediate chemistry. We could sense there was this kind of playfulness and affection.
Charlie, did you tell him anything specific because he was basically playing you as a kid?
Clausen: No, though it's based on a real event, you want the actors to interpret the script the way they wanted... We needed extras because it's a wake that a lot of people would attend, and I got a lot of my family to be in it so the people the film was about were actually on the set. There's a really lovely moment when my mother and the actress playing her are saying goodbye to each other and they both got really choked up. For my mother, it was a really emotional experience being there and the actress understood the gravity of what was going on. It was quite beautiful.
Lee: We realised we had a feature as well because all nine kids have a different interpretation of that day. They all had strong responses, and it could be like nine chapters of a story, of nine different experiences.
Rashomon
Clausen: Exactly! All different perspectives.
I think what Kurosawa was saying was that a director can tell a story in different ways.
Lee: Right. I've heard that directors always make the same movie.
There's a consistency of theme.
Lee: Yeah, and mine seems to be death. Unfortunately. That's in every film I've made.
What are you working on now?
Lee: We are developing The Wake into a potential feature. But we're also making another feature called Blackwood. We started that five years ago.
If this becomes a feature, what will be the changes you have to make?
Lee: I don't know if we'd have to change a lot. What we shot would just be a couple of scenes of the feature.
Clausen: A common reason people have liked the short is that to them it feels like a snapshot of a much bigger story. I was deliberately trying to avoid that short film structure of two-thirds buildup and then ta-da the punchline. I wanted to tell an organic, natural drama. Sometimes stories just unfold with no big twists at the end. That's the film's strength when it could have been its weakness. What works is that people want to know what happens next. You peek into this family and then it gently fades out, leaving you curious about more. I think we could use what is in the short to begin the feature.
Currently Lee and Clausen are promoting The Wake on the festival circuit and will then look to distribute the film to the general public.
The Wake will be screened at The St. Kilda Film Festival which runs from May 25-30. For more information, visit the festival website.
View the trailer for the film here.
