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Careless Love Opening Night + Q&A
With director John Duigan ('The Year My Voice Broke') and cast Nammi Le and Peter O’Brien. THU 17 MAY – 7pm RITZ CINEMA, 45 St Pauls Street, Randwick NSW 2031 TICKETS ON-SALE – book now www.ritzcinema.com.au “Careless Love” tells the story of...
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Winners of Australian Directors' Guild Awards Announced
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Gold Coast Indie Film & Television Network Presents 'Getting Behind The News'
Gold Coast(QSL)
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All About The Music.... Or is it? Day 8 of Sydney Film Fest. A Daily Blog.
It was all about the music for Filmink today or was it? We spoke with two documentary makers who have made films about two very different icons of the music industry.
First up, we sat down with debut documentary maker Josh Whiteman to chat about his film Shadow Play, a look at the life and work of Anton Corbijn, famed music photographer, director of music videos for U2 and Nirvana and director of the Joy Division bio-pic Control. Corbijn has a stellar resume of work capturing amongst others REM, Coldplay and the changing face of mega band U2 from their infancy. "Having a picture taken, there's an intimacy, it's like sex," says U2 front man and humanitarian Bono during the doco. "I've been having sex with Anton for more than 20 years. He's very good at it."
Whiteman discussed Corbijn and his fascination with him from an early age.
"I became very interested in Anton's work when I was quite young. At age 11 or 12 I was a U2 obsessive and that was around the time The Joshua Tree came out and Anton did all the photography for that. As my experience of music started to broaden and I started to listen to other artists and become more interested in artists other than John Farnham, I just kept seeing his name on things. At the time, I had a subscription to Rolling Stone Magazine and he was the staff photographer there and I'd go through old copies of NME and his name just kept popping up. It sort of occurred to me that a lot of the things I was into, whether it was musical or film or writers or whatever, Anton seemed to be the glue between all of those different things - he'd either worked with these people or photographed them. It was almost like he was a filter for all the stuff I was interested in. I'd see Anton's name pop up on music videos for Nirvana, U2 or Johnny Cash.
"Here's this guy that is essentially a king maker. He increases the fame of people with his style and yet he himself is essentially anonymous. It's a very interesting paradox. He's like 6 foot 7, incredibly tall and hunched over and has always stood out for that reason. The camera for him is really a way for him to hide. He always wanted to be a musician and as far as I know he hasn't managed to. But he'd go to concerts on his own with his camera. It gave him a reason to be there. He loved music and musicians and photography gave him a reason to be around them."
Shadow Play will screen on the ABC later this year.
We also chatted with Vikram Jayanti (producer of When We Were Kings) on the line from the US about his intriguing talking-head documentary The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector, a look into the bizarre mind of the very eccentric uber music producer, found guilty of the 2003 shooting murder of Lana Clarkson.
Rather than simply giving Spector a voice when speculation was in overdrive prior to his 2007 murder trial, Jayanti was more interested in exploring a troubled genius going up against the might of the American justice system.
"I had no interest in the murder case. I hate to admit that," says Jayanti. "I don't really make investigative films, I don't really make fact driven films at all. I try to get inside what it feels like to be somebody else and the sort of people I happen to be interested in, happen to be people like Phil Spector - difficult, troubled, brilliant people. I just want to know what it feels like to look through their eyes at a moment of such duress as a murder trial. You certainly get quicker to the nub of who somebody is when they're cornered by fear and anticipation. I wasn't really trying to make any kind of exploration of his guilt or his innocence. I just wanted to know what it was like in that existential moment of facing possible life in jail and having someone dead in your house. Meanwhile, to know what it's like to have a record that plays in your head continuously of this sort of cavalcade of some of the greatest hits of the foundation generation of rock and roll [produced by Spector].
Jayanti is hoping his film's exposure during the Sydney Film Festival will secure a theatrical release.
Red Carpet Watch - Desperate Housewive' Teri Hatcher for Coraline.
