Conor Bateman's Blog, page 18

You Have to See… My Winnipeg (dir. Guy Maddin, 2007)

You Have to See…is a weekly feature here at4:3, where one staff writer picks a film they love and makes a group of other writers watch it for the first time. Once this group has seen the film, the suggestor writes a piece advocating the film and the others respond below.Whilst not explicitly spoiling the film, the article is detailed. We would recommend seeking out and watching the film each week, then joining in the debate in the comments section.

This week editor Conor Bateman looks at Guy M...

Hotell

Grief permeates Lisa Langseth’s Hotell. The opening twenty minutes, which sees the premature birth of a child and a mother’s instantaneous affliction with post-natal depression, is played with a startling realism; the camera is mostly handheld throughout, the editing has a sharp sense of pacing to it and we are intimately connected with the sequence of events despite being intentionally placed at an emotional distance from the protagonist. Erika, a young interior designer, is introduced to us...

Home (Hemma)

There’s something to be said for ‘pleasant’ cinema. That is, a film not necessarily burdened with ambition or any especially unique narrative yet one which, by virtue of its characters, sense of humour and some strong emotional connection, rises above its premise. Maximilian Hult’s Home is a film in that vein, a dramedy that follows the intersection of four characters at crossroads in their lives – an old woman mourning the death of her husband, her granddaughter, who suffers (presumably) fro...

Blue Ruin

Revenge is a well-worn narrative path, the notion of violence begetting violence seems to have been hardwired into crime films over the course of cinema history. It’s easy – cause and effect, action and reaction – plot becomes reflex. Films concerning vengeance, though, are often interchangeable, bogged down by either a lack of substance or character, they merge into one big mess of genre – for every Taken we have many Stolens in its wake. There are a few exceptions to this, Jeff Nichols’ Sho...

Dungog Festival Announces Australian Short Film Prize

With Sydney Film Festival now behind us and MIFF fast approaching, it’s easy to forget that there are a lot of worthwhile smaller festivals both in Sydney and outside the CBD. One such non-city fest is the newly rebranded Dungog Festival, which covers film, food and music and will be held on the weekend of 28-31 August in the upper hunter town of Dungog.

This week they announced “The ‘Gog” short film prize for outstanding Australian short filmmaking that has a $1000 cash prize. The film needs...

SFF Retrospective: James Benning – An Outsider Visionary

James Benning: A Primer

An American experimental filmmaker, Benning has made engaging and challenging works of cinema for over 30 years, playing with form and time. This years Sydney Film Festival held a miniature retrospective of his work, programmed by Double Play director Gabe Klinger. You can read our interview with Gabe here and our interview with James Benning here.

American Dreams (lost and found)

James Benning’s 1984 cinematic experiment is comprised of four essential elements – first, p...

Snowpiercer

Snowpiercer, a co-production from the United States and South Korea (and based off of a French graphic novel) was saddled with some high expectations prior to its Sydney Film Festival screening. Bong Joon-ho was coming off of Mother in 2009, a superb play within the crime genre and once more a successful commentary on the nature of family, as in The Host. The five year wait, coupled with the jump across the financial pond from contemporaries Park Chan-wook and Kim Jee-woon, has positioned Sno...

Fish & Cat

It’s safe to say that I didn’t expect to be sitting through the end credits of Iranian post-modern slasher film Fish & Cat with the biggest and goofiest grin on my face but that’s how it was at the State Theatre, a large portion of the audience swiftly making their way to the exits before the lights came up as I tried not to cackle like a delirious maniac in the mezzanine. Shahram Mokri has made a film so unexpected in both content and execution that it’s hard not to be impressed, even on an...

Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter – An Interview with David Zellner, Writer/Director/Actor

The Zellner Brothers’ latest film, Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter, is a bittersweet fable about passion over creative works and the desire to escape within them. The film played in Sydney Film Festival’s official competition and our review of the film is here. We caught up with writer/director/actor David Zellner to talk the film.

When did you first hear about this urban legend of the Japanese woman chasing after the treasure from Fargo?

Well I’d heard about it in 2001, this is before Twitter and...

An Interview with James Benning – Filmmaker/Artist

James Benning is an American experimental filmmaker whose work has had a major influence in both his home country and abroad, most notably in Austria, where the Austrian Film Museum has published books and released DVDs of his work. His friendship with, and influence on, Richard Linklater is showcased in Gabe Klinger’s documentary Double Play: James Benning and Richard Linklater and he is in Sydney for that and the miniature retrospective of his work, which begins Saturday 14 June at the Art...