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Little Gem
Filmink spoke to Aussie director Camille Chen about her debut feature which will screen at this year’s Sydney Film Festival
When FILMINK last spoke to Camille Chen in December 2009, the West Australian director was just about to commence shooting her debut feature film, Little Sparrows (formerly titled Façade).
Six months later, Chen's film has wrapped and was recently selected to screen at the Sydney Film Festival as part of the ‘Love Me' pathway with Festival Director Clare Stewart describing the film as "beautifully nuanced."
Little Sparrows traces the emotional lives of three sisters whose mother Susan (Nicola Bartlett) is dying of breast cancer. A Christmas lunch in the middle of an Australian summer is the pivotal event around which the film's elliptical structure revolves, shifting between the interior journeys of the three daughters and Susan's own reconciliation with the life she has lived and her impending death.
The eldest daughter Nina (Nina Deasley) is widowed with two young children, Anna (Melanie Munt) is an actress married to a filmmaker and Christine (Arielle Gray) is a medical student. All three struggle to define themselves, their relationships with each other, their loves, and their detached actor father (James Hagan).
The film is a truthful and affective drama shedding light on both the fears and desires of men and women as they find the need to love and be loved.
When asked the extent to which the film mirrored experiences from her own life, Chen says, "the starting point did come from a place dear in my heart." She goes on to say, "Little Sparrows is about change. It's about the desire and journey for that change to be someone truer and stronger. That person is me, as a filmmaker, a mother and a woman.
"I look back on my life, my choices and my faults, people I loved and fell out of love with and things I cherished and lost. I look back and I realise that I have taken a few steps forward and I want to mark that awareness and reflection. I feel like that is what I have done with Little Sparrows," she says thoughtfully.
Shot over 19 days in December, Chen actually found herself revelling in the film's restrictive time frame. "It is scary, risky and very demanding," she admits. "However there is something to be said about making a movie so quickly because it forces you to be extremely focused, precise and intuitive.
"I had to make choices on set very quickly and stick to my choices," Chen says. "Sometimes I would choose to shoot a scene a certain way that I couldn't fully explain why but I felt right about it. The crew was extremely adaptable and could work with me under those highly demanding conditions. It was only when I started editing that I finally understood why I made those specific choices."
After generating international interest amongst a number of several high-profile sales agents, Bolderpictures - the production company which Chen established and manages with her partner - recently announced that it has granted Urban Media International (Umedia) worldwide sales rights for the film.
Umedia plans to launch the film on the international market.
Little Sparrows is set to play at the Sydney Film Festival On June 11-12. For more information and to purchase tickets, click here.
To find out more about Little Sparrows, visit the film's website.