By FilmInk Staff
Success this month for the WIFT / Event Cinema ‘In the Works’ initiative with the release of Jed Malone’s debut feature, Birthday Adjustment Disorder.
The film was the first to screen at the Women in Film and Television/Event Cinema program which was set up to help female filmmakers access audience feedback.
Initially called The 33rd Wedding, Malone made major changes to the film and title after the test screening to industry and the public last October.
Malone says, “It was invaluable to see the film on the big screen and have such astute feedback afterwards. I took 20 pages of notes back to edit and from there Birthday Adjustment Disorder was born.”
The film is proving a hit on the international film festival circuit and has been accepted into eight international festivals in just three months, from the USA to Cyprus and Kolkata. Last week it won an Honorable Mention in the LA Underground Film Forum.
Shot mostly on location in Bondi, the film looks at the politics and personalities shaping the current debate about mental health.
Malone says, “Birthday Adjustment Disorder is a really personal film for me. It’s a comedy about anxiety and depression. I’ve had anxiety and depression myself, as have many people I know. They’re endemic. Overlaying that is the predominant societal message that we should be pursuing happiness, even though that isn’t proving to be making us very happy.
“I kept finding myself having these fascinating multi-dimensional conversations about mental health, at a depth that I felt wasn’t being reflected in the mainstream media or in medicine. I came up with the story and characters to further interrogate the politics and personalities framing the mental health debate that I was living and hearing – medicine, psychiatry, neuroscience, and the importance of art, connection, purpose, forgiveness and love.”
The micro-budget film was shot on what the team thinks might be a record six cameras – A 5D Mark II, 5D Mark III, 7D, C100, C300 and a GoPro. Malone says, “We improvised a lot. One of my favourite directing moments was the dolly shot we created by strapping the GoPro to a sliding wardrobe door.”
With a background in theatre and print, Malone is an emerging screenwriter and director, awarded a Screen NSW Director’s Attachment on Doctor Doctor. “I initially shadowed the brilliant Peter Salmon (Rake, The Beautiful Lie) and was then invited to hang around so was able to also spend time observing the equally masterful Kriv Stenders and Jeremy Sims, which was just invaluable.”
Malone hopes the film finds a niche in Australia. “Finding an audience for micro-budget films is as difficult as ever but of the four trends identified at Cannes MIPCOM for 2018 our film meets half of them. Films about anxiety and depression will apparently be hot sellers this year as will work by female showrunners. Of course, ‘showrunner’ is a TV term but as a writer/director/producer who certainly did a lot of running, I’m claiming it.”
Birthday Adjustment Disorder is playing at Canberra’s Palace Electric on August 6, Melbourne’s Cinema Nova on August 7, and Sydney’s Chauvel Cinema on August 9. Book tickets here.
Keep track of Birthday Adjustment Disorder at the official site.
