In Film Australia - all about Australian films

To celebrate the theatrical release of Last Ride (opening nationaly July 2) In Film Australia gives readers the chance to win one of 20 in-season double passes. To win, simply email us with your name, postal address and tell us why you want to see it. Read the rest

Aloof and intellectually superior professor David Lurie (John Malkovich) has duel passions maintaining the impetus of his campus life: the poetry of the romantics and an affair with one of his young students. Read the rest

Director Tim Burstall’s first film released after Alvin Purple (actually made a year earlier in 1973) proved to be just as raunchy and a break-out role for Jack Thompson in more ways than one. Cast as a former football star striving to reinvent himself through a late run at higher education, Petersen (Thompson) spasmodically continues his duties as an electrician whilst trapped in an insular marriage that’s becoming barely tolerable. Read the rest

It can’t be easy winning Cannes’ Palme d’Or with your first short film. How do you top that? Glendyn Ivin’s Cracker Bag took home the top prize in 2003 and this year his feature film debut Last Ride confirms the promise we saw back then and establishes Ivin as a talent to watch. Read the rest

To celebrate the theatrical release of Four of a Kind, the debut feature film of director Fiona Cochrane, In Film Australia gives Melbourne readers the chance to win one of 10 in-season double passes. The film opens at Cinema Nova on June 11. To win, simply email us with your name, postal address and tell us why you want to see it. Read the rest

Writer/director Samuel Genocchio’s dark and abstruse thriller Bad Bush is set in a remote farmhouse, where a young woman and her newborn baby spend a night alone with a drug-crazed dope grower. The film is a creepy cat-and-mouse story intelligently handled and resourcefully shot, squeezing every penny out of a total budget of $220,000 (including marketing). Bad Bush premiered at this year’s Dungog Film Festival and will be released in select cinemas across the country from June. Genocchio sat down to chat about the film with Luke Buckmaster. Read the rest

From 2008 remaining in memory as one of the more creatively bankrupt years in recent Australian cinema (and, let’s face it, just plain bankrupt – without the hyperbolic Australiana strainings of Baz Luhrmann’s patriotically titular Kidman-fest, 2008 was a 30 year low for box office takings around these here parts), 2009, thankfully, seems to be turning the tide to date with a succession of successful local productions – Mary and Max, Samson and Delilah, and, happy to report, Sarah Watt (Look Both Ways)’s second feature, My Year Without Sex. Read the rest

The Dungog Film Festival (May 28 to May 31) is one of innumerable annual festivals spread across the Australian film landscape, but, argues Dungog director Allanah Zitserman, the weekend-long event offers enough unique incentives to carve its own niche. In Film Australia caught up with Zitserman via email. Read the rest