To-do: Week starting Thursday 30th September: Malaysian Film Festival, La Haine, Deadwood, Raymond Depardon, Blade Runner
The Australian Malaysian Film Festival begins Saturday and finishes on Wednesday 6th October. Link here. Definitely sounds like it’s worth going to. Can’t say the same for ACMI’s Seniors Film Festival (but it’s worth checking out the weird schizophrenic program. Apparently old people just love Nanny McPhee and The Wolfman!)
On Thursday ACMI is screening Mathieu Kassovitz’s pretty great La Haine with a twist: the film will be soundtracked live by DJ Dexter of The Avalanches fame. Sounds intriguing. On the same night at ACMI, La Trobe is holding the event Welcome to Deadwood, a panel to discuss the expletive-happy HBO-produced American Western drama series that ran for 3 seasons before being cancelled in 2006. The panel includes Terrie Waddell, Rolando Caputo and Gabrielle Murray.
Cinematheque starts a retrospective season of the films of Raymond Depardon, a photographer and documentarian. This week’s films are Une Partie de Campagne, following the 1974 French presidential election, and Les Années Déclic, an autobiographical look at the director’s life.
The Astor is screening the director’s cut of Blade Runner from this Thursday until this Sunday. If you haven’t seen it on the big screen, don’t miss it.
On Saturday, ACMI screens Manganinnie, a 1980 Australian drama set in the 1830s giving a child’s-eye view of the genocide of the Indigenous peoples of Tasmania by British Colonial forces. Screening again the following Saturday.
New releases opening this week look pretty bad: Legend of the Guardians (about owls that talk), Dinner for Schmucks (a remake of Francis Veber’s Le dîner de cons) and The Tree, a drama about grieving which, judging by the trailer, looks really dire. (Yes the wretched line, “Well, you have a choice to be happy or sad. And I chose to be happy. And I am happy,” is an actual line of dialogue between two 8-year-old girls.)
