The Australian
July 26, 2006
THE new chairman of the Australian Film, Television and Radio School is Peter Ivany. The former Hoyts chief executive now operates the Ivany Investment Group, with interests in IMAX Theatres, Base Backpackers and the Momentum Pacific Group.
Ivany is already on the board of the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Sydney Swans Foundation and is an adjunct professor of the University of Technology, Sydney. He also chairs the Sydney Film Festival advisory board.
Reel Time sat in front of him on the closing night of the Sydney festival. To the annoyance of those around him, Ivany and his party didn't stop talking throughout the formalities. He replaces Daniel Gilbert, who has been in the job at AFTRS for six years.
LET'S be honest about this: Melbourne is generally regarded as having the best film fest in Australia. Indefatigable executive director James Hewison's final fling opens tonight with a mystery film which, people being the gossips they are, is not a mystery to dozens of people at all. But the idea was a good one to encourage an audience to watch a film with no preconceptions.
All sorts of people will be on the ubiquitous red carpet, from overseas guests Ronnie Yu (Fearless), Amy Berg (Deliver Us From Evil) and Dario Bergesio (Sonhos de Peixe), to the lovable MIFF patron Geoffrey Rush, to such directors as Paul Cox, Clara Law, Tony Ayres and Sarah Watt. And no photo call would be complete without on-screen talent: Emily Browning, Sigrid Thornton, Daniela Farinacci and many more.
Then it's one long smorgasbord of films until August 13. If you are in a position to sample some of what is on offer, you would be mad not to.
WATT'S hubcap, William McInnes (Look Both Ways) and Dutch actor Monic Hendrickx will play a farmer and an Afghani illegal immigrant who fall in love, much to the surprise of them both, in the romantic thriller Unfinished Sky. The long-awaited next film from Peter Duncan (Passion, Children of the Revolution) is one of three features that received production finance from Film Finance Corporation Australia last week.
The FFC also confirmed that the adaptation of Booker Prize-winning novel Disgrace will also get cash. To be directed by Steve Jacobs (La Spagnola), it stars none other than John Malkovich as a Cape Town university professor in a story that explores ethical complexities in modern South Africa. The producers are Jacobs's partner Anna-Maria Monticelli and Emile Sherman. The FFC is also backing Newcastle, a youth drama from writer-director Dan Castle.
Unfinished Sky is a remake, unusual for an Australian production, of the 1998 Dutch film The Polish Bride. It will be shot in rural Queensland from September and is the first film to be made under a long-planned joint venture between Dutch company IdtV Film and Australia's New Holland Pictures. The producers are Australia's Cathy Overett and The Netherlands' Anton Smit. The three executive producers are Mark Overett, Smit's business partner Hanneke Niens, and San Fu Maltha, who is presently in post-production on director Paul Verhoeven's Zwartboek.
JANE Smith will not renew her contract as chief executive of the NSW Film and Television Office when it expires at the end of the year after more than nine years. FTO chairman Neal Blewett says Smith has been "energetic and committed" and her "intellectual rigour, strong leadership and flow of ideas will be greatly missed".
Others who sang her praises included NSW Arts Minister Bob Debus, producer Jan Chapman, who congratulated Smith for introducing the Aurora script development scheme, and film-maker and board member Robert Connolly.
More than $19.4million worth of film and television production will flow to NSW from the FTO's latest investment decisions.
THE new Australian film Footy Legends had its premiere last night in Sydney with the help of The Footy Show and NRL players. Yes, the film has a rugby league theme. The central character is Luc Vu, who brings together all his seemingly no-hoper mates in the hope of winning a football competition, getting a job and preventing the authorities taking his little sister away. Vu has been her carer since their mother died.
It is the second feature from Khoa Do, who worked with street kids in the Sydney suburb of Cabramatta to develop and make the gritty The Finished People in 2003. His good works earned him the title Young Vietnamese-Australian of the Year in 2001, Bankstown City's Young Citizen of the Year Award in 2002, a Centenary Medal in 2003 and Young Australian of the Year in 2005, the first time a film-maker had been awarded such an accolade.
The producer is Megan McMurchy and the director's brother, Anh Do, is the co-writer and lead actor. Some will know him as a stand-up comedian. The big cast also includes Angus Sampson, Steven Rooke, Jason McGoldrick, Shane MacDonald, Peter Phelps and the ever-so-lovely Claudia Karvan.