By Jackie Shannon
“I love storytelling where you don’t know what’s happening, and you have to get off your arse and learn something,” director, Warwick Thornton, told the ABC. “That’s storytelling to me. You have to be engaged and want more, and that’s what I hope people get out of my work.” Warwick Thornton has certainly been keeping audiences guessing since he took out the Camera d’Or at The Cannes Film Festival for his striking 2009 debut, Samson & Delilah. He’s worked in TV documentary, and primarily as a cinematographer, shooting the likes of The Sapphires, Here I Am, and Septembers Of Shiraz. His sole big screen directorial efforts have been a segment in the Tim Winton portmanteau, The Turning, and The Darkside, a collection of indigenous ghost stories told to-camera by a collection of top-tier Aussie thesps. “It’s a foundation for the kind of cinema that I want to make,” Thornton told FilmInk upon the release of The Darkside. “I want to work in a more intelligent thriller genre world – not torture porn – but stuff where you can think about your existence in the world. Cinema that does that to you, when it works, is amazing.”
It looks like Thornton will be following this unofficial mission statement with two new projects. The most high profile of the duo will be Sweet Country, a period western set on the Northern Territory frontier where justice itself is put on trial. Just the thought of a visual stylist and powerful storyteller like Warwick Thornton cinematically and metaphorically heading out west is enough to make any local film fan’s mouth water. The project has received production funding from Screen NSW, as has the director’s documentary project, We Don’t Need A Map, an in-depth look at the rich and surprising history of one of Australia’s most iconic and contentious symbols: The Southern Cross. Stick with FilmInk for more developments on Warwick Thornton’s new projects.
Click here for FilmInk’s in-depth look at the making of Warwick Thornton’s Samson & Delilah.
Hi Jackie, a clarification: It’s production funding, not development funding, that Screen NSW is providing to Sweet Country and We Don’t Need a Map. Cheers.
fixed Courtney, thanks for the note