In what is going to be a stacked next few months, Luna Palace Cinemas Leederville will be hosting a series of Q&A sessions for a whole bunch of great Australian films. Now, there’s already a bunch of great Q&A sessions coming up (even one with honorary Aussie Ben Elton), but it’s worthwhile circling out these particular screenings given how difficult it can be for independent Australian films to even get a moment of glory on the big screen.
Chocolate Oyster – Q&A with Director Steve Jaggi
Wednesday April 3rd at 6:30pm
Australian observational comedy about young millennials in Sydney struggling to get ahead in love and their careers.
Chocolate Oyster follows twenty-somethings Ellie and Taylor, who live in Bondi apartments they can’t really afford and pursue their dreams in a city that seems intent on thwarting them. Taylor chases a dance career by day and works as a waitress at night while supporting her new boyfriend Henry, an aspiring playwright. Tired of being with a dependent and juvenile boyfriend, Ellie ends her relationship and begins to see Craig, a chef who dreams of creating a signature dish that will make his name. With the story workshopped between actors and director, and a great deal of improvisation, the monochrome Chocolate Oyster has a breezy quality that reflects both the beauty and difficulty of life.
2040 – Q&A with Director Damon Gameau
Friday 26th April at 6:30pm
2040 is an innovative feature documentary that looks to the future but is vitally important NOW. Award-winning director Damon Gameau (That Sugar Film) embarks on a journey to explore what the future could look like by the year 2040 if we simply embraced the best solutions already available to us to improve our planet and shifted them rapidly into the mainstream. Structured as a visual letter to his 4-year-old daughter, Damon blends traditional documentary with dramatised sequences and high-end visual effects to create a vision board of how these solutions could regenerate the world for future generations.
Acute Misfortune – Q&A with Director Thomas M Wright & Author Erik Jensen
Friday May 10th at 6:30pm
Shooting in the Blue Mountains where Adam Cullen was based, ACUTE MISFORTUNE spins Jensen’s award-winning book into a subtle, striking tale of two wildly different men. Making his debut as a feature film filmmaker, theatre director and actor Thomas M Wright (Top of the Lake, Balibo) delivers a portrait of the writer and of the artist as a troubled and troubling man. With remarkable access – Daniel Henshall (The Babadook, Snowtown) wears Cullen’s actual clothing as he fully inhabits the role, and the artworks that appear onscreen are the real deal – this MIFF Premiere Fund-supported feature was co-scripted by Jensen, with Wright, and is executive produced by Robert Connolly (Paper Planes, Tim Winton’s The Turning, These Final Hours).
RocKabul – Q&A with Producer Brooke Silcox
Thursday May 23rd at 6:30pm
At the outset of the film, Qasem, Pedram, Qais, Lemar Yosef are members of the head-banging outfit District Unknown (DU)…and they can hardly play…tuning up is something you do when you play onstage, not when you rehearse right? Enter Australian journalist Travis Beard whose admiration for the boys and his own love of music begins to channel things in a much more productive way to a point of significant international success and local notoriety. In Afghanistan however, nothing can be taken for granted and the hopes that blazed so brightly for the band and Travis collide with political and social realities.
RocKabul covers so much ground it’s excellent and fascinating viewing from start to end and well deserving of its international success on the film festival circuit.
Me & My Left Brain – Q&A with Writer/Director Alex Lykos and actress Chantelle Barry
Tuesday May 28th at 6:30pm
From award-winning writer/director Alex Lykos (Alex & Eve) and starring Rachael Beck(Hey Dad) and Logie Nominee Mal Kennard (Catching Milat), Me & My Left Brain is an intelligent romantic comedy about love, career choices and the paralysing effect of over-thinking.
Arthur is in love with Helen, has a job interview in the morning but cannot sleep?
The conventional romantic-comedy is flipped on its head with the comical physical representation of Arthur’s inner-critic in what is the first ever Australian film with an all-jazz score by award-winning composer Cezary Skubiszewski(Red Dog, The Sapphires, Two Hands)
Pulse – Q&A with Director Stevie Cruz-Martin
Wednesday May 29th at 6:30pm
Mixing sexuality and teen angst with an undercurrent of sci-fi, this bold fantasy follows a gay disabled teen who undergoes a mysterious procedure that gives him the body of a young able-bodied woman in order to pursue his love object.
Honestly, the lineup of films here is superb and definitely worth a night out. Both Pulse and RocKabul were on my Best Australian Films of 2018 list, and the others will likely appear on the 2019 list. Book your tickets early!
