Conor Bateman's Blog, page 8
June 26, 2015
Scrum
For a film abouta team of rugby players competing for a hallowed Cup, Poppy Stockell’sScrumshirks much of what is expected of asports documentary, taking one of the early lines ofvoiceover as its mantra – “it’s not just rugby.” What it is, then, is a story about connection and acceptance. Following the 2014 Bingham Cup campaign of Australia’s first gay and inclusive rugby union team, the Sydney Convicts, the film finds its strengths in small, intimate moments – the camaraderie of training se...
June 22, 2015
NZIFF Announces Impressive and Eclectic Auckland Programme
The New Zealand International Film Festival,which aims to showcase engaging and innovative world and local cinema across the country, has unveiled the Auckland programme for this year. The festival, which plays across 13 cities in New Zealand from July to September, kicks off with the largest collection of films, the Auckland leg, and the 150-film strong line-up is an impressive cobbling together of Cannes premieres, films from Sydney Film Festival and the upcoming Melbourne International Fil...
June 16, 2015
Of Men and War – An Interview with Director Laurent Bécue-Renard
Of Men and War was one of the most powerful documentaries that played this year at Sydney Film Festival, a moving and confronting look at American war veterans suffering through PTSD who go to therapy at The Pathway Home in California. Following the Australian premiere of the film, Conor Bateman spoke to directorLaurent Bécue-Renard.
So this is the second film in your “Genealogy of Wrath” trilogy, and I’ve read that before becoming a filmmaker you were a journalist, you edited Sarajevo Onlin...
June 15, 2015
Sydney Film Festival Roundtable: Official Competition (2015)
In our Sydney Film Festival Official Competition Roundtable for 2015, we have gathered together members of the editorial staff who have seen all, or nearly-all, of the competition films to briefly discuss each of the contenders. The actual winner of the Sydney Film Prize this year, as announced on Sunday night, was Miguel Gomes’ Arabian Nights.
Participating in this roundtable are Conor Bateman, Jeremy Elphick, and Imogen Gardam.
The Daughter (dir. Simon Stone) – AUSTRALIA – Review
Imogen G...
June 13, 2015
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s second feature and another film in the seemingly endless line of young adult fiction adaptations that use cancer as an emotional crutch, comes to Sydney Film Festival’s official competition having garnered two awards at Sundanceearlier this year.Its reception there, and at the State Theatre here in Sydney, is something of a disappointment; tears and laughs abounded, praise heaped on a film that, really, has no place being at a film festiv...
The Forbidden Room
From the moment the opening credits begin in The Forbidden Room, Guy Maddin’s latest and his first feature length collaboration with Evan Johnson, you know that what you are about to see is a bizarre and singular view of the world and the films that aim to catalogue it. We’re treated to rapidly shifting stylised titlecards, designed by Johnson and aiming to look as if ripped straight from once-loved prints of Hollywood melodramas, adventure classics and Universal Monster films. The Forbidden...
June 11, 2015
Only The Dead
Documentaries about soldiers and war are something of a staple at film festivals internationally, and over the last few years select filmmakers have been able to find inventive and engaging approaches to the coverage of war, distinguishing these films from the relentless news coverage that followed the Iraq War from 2002 onwards. Two films this year come to mind with regards to how they each took a nuanced and creative approach to covering conflict, firstly Laurent Bécue-Renard’sOf Men and W...
June 10, 2015
Victoria
The one-take film is less a genre unto itself than a strange merger of theatre and film, every moment running with an underlying tension for the actors and cinematographer, each passing minute renders the possibility of a mistake even more terrifying – it might be the closest cinema will get to a high-rise tightrope walk. And whilst films likeBirdman, with its digitally stitched together long takes,have turned the one-take film into act of publicity over artistry, Sebastian Schipper’s debut...
A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence – An Interview with Cinematographer István Borbás
István Borbás has been working with acclaimed director Roy Andersson since the mid-1980s, where they worked together on commercials which helped shape Andersson and Borbas’ distinct visual stylings. Following the Australian premiere ofA Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence,Conor Bateman sat down with Borbás and his assistant (and translator) Frida Elmströmto discuss his work.
A lot of writing about Roy’s films and your cinematography within them tends to compare them to paintings,...
June 9, 2015
The Club
Pablo Larrain’s follow-up to the critically lauded and commercially palatable No is both a step forward and step backwards. Gone are the overt experimentations with aspect ratio, colour and editing; in their place is a remarkably assured bleak character piece that tonally returns to Post Mortem and swaps that film’s more obvious black comedy with a slow-burning and unrelenting cynicism. It would perhaps be too easy to say Larrain, and co-writers Guillermo Calderon and Daniel Villalobos, have...
