A NOTE FROM FILMMAKER BILL MOUSOULIS SEEKING FUNDING FOR HIS NEXT FILM

Hi everyone -

For my next feature film, I’m making something in association with the young Adelaide crew Moviejuice (a really vibrant group of filmmakers, actors, critics). It’s an anarchic comedy called CRISPY CRACKERS, and it’s inspired by the films of Jerry Lewis in particular. Official film funding for such a film is not an option (we tried with Adelaide Film Festival Investment Fund, but they didn’t come through), so we have put together a crowdfunding campaign, asking for the modest sum of $7,500 (and I will put in the same amount of money myself, from my own pocket), to get the film shot and edited.

Please contribute to this if you can.  Here’s the funding page: 

And here’s the Trailer we have put together - 

CINEMA REBORN - FEBRUARY NEWSLETTER - 'Tell no lies': Four anti-colonial films by Sarah Maldoror and Flora Gomes

Cinema Reborn always hopes to draw its programme of new restorations from all corners. Our 2026 season will include two programmes devoted to the rich but virtually unknown cinema of Africa.  These programmes will be presented on a single evening in both Sydney and Melbourne.

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Mortu Nega (Dir. Flora Gomes, Guinea-Bissau, 1988)

4K Restoration, Australian Premiere

‘Gomes often says that cinema is rhythm, music, and above all, light. His enormous sensitivity to social nuance and his tempered optimism fill in the chiaroscuros of the everyday.’ – Ela Bittencourt, Metrograph Journal

The year is 1973 – the tail end of Guinea-Bissau’s eleven-year war against Portuguese colonial rule. A woman, Diminga (Bia Gomes), searches for her wounded partner, Sako (Tunu Eugenio Almada), among the rebel forces at a military camp. When the story seamlessly skips ahead to the mid 1970s, guerilla warfare has given way to the couple’s life together as celebrations in their fledgling nation are dampened by straitened conditions.

The first fictional feature film produced in independent Guinea-Bissau, Mortu Nega dwells – as its title loosely translates – on ‘those whom death refused’. Flora Gomes’s representation of the struggle of everyday life as just another kind of war, and of how challenges are dealt with through tools and processes embedded in the native culture, echoes and fulfils the desire expressed by the revered anti-colonial leader, pan-Africanist and poet Amílcar Cabral: for Bissau-Guineans to film their own people, country and liberation.

The latest restoration from Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project, Mortu Nega is 

part of the African Film Heritage Project, an initiative created by The Film 

Foundation’s World Cinema Project, the Pan African Federation of Filmmakers 

and UNESCO – in collaboration with Cineteca di Bologna – to help locate, 

restore, and disseminate African cinema.

Introduced by Lucia Sorbera at Ritz Cinemas and Guido Melo at Lido Cinemas

For session times and tickets at the Ritz click on this link

For session times and tickets at the Lido click on this link

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Festa: A Trilogy by Sarah Maldoror (France, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau 1979–1980, 91 minutes)

Australian Premiere, 4K Restoration

‘In this trio of shorts, Sarah Maldoror interweaves culture, tradition and politics, somewhere between documentary and poetry, culminating in a singular result.’ –Annouchka de Andrade

‘In today’s times, it’s hard to imagine an artist – a Black woman, no less – being so principled yet so prolific, particularly in a medium as capital-intensive as cinema.’ – Devika Girish, The Film Comment Letter

Best known for her radical and groundbreaking 1972 film Sambizanga (Cinema Reborn 2022), Sarah Maldoror directed more than 45 shorts, documentaries and feature films from the 1960s until her passing in 2020. In 1979, having chronicled the anti-colonial liberation movements of Angola and Guinea-Bissau, Maldoror travelled to the islands of Cape Verde to document the nation’s first years of independence from Portuguese rule. Immortalising the period before the Guinea-Bissau coup d’état of November 1980, in which the union of the two countries was broken, Maldoror produced three shorts: Fogo, l’île de feu (1979, 33 mins), Cap-Vert, un carnaval dans le Sahel (1979, 28 mins)and À Bissau, le carnaval (1980, 30 mins). Forming a loose trilogy, these poetic documentaries beautifully capture the jubilance of Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau’s Carnival and May Day preparations and festivities, serving as a testament to culture as the foundation of liberation.

Introduced by Annouchka de Andrade via video link.

For session times and tickets at the Ritz click on this link

For session times and tickets at the Lido click on this link

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MULTI-TICKET DISCOUNT PASSES

We are responding to public demand by introducing a discount pass for those who want to see the maximum of Cinema Reborn at the lowest possible price. Five ticket passes are $80 and ten ticket passes are a super-bargain at $140. Each ticket allows a maximum of two redemptions per session.

To buy a pass for sessions at the Ritz click here and fill in the box for which Voucher you wish to purchase

To buy a pass for sessions at the Lido click here and fill in the box for which Voucher you wish to purchase.

EARLY PROGRAMME ANNOUNCEMENTS

We have already announced a bundle of titles that will screen in our 2026 season. For information about session times and links to bookings head to the Cinema Reborn website

CHARITABLE DONATIONS

Cinema Reborn charges regular Ritz and Lido admission prices with the lowest student discount tickets of any festival. We keep to these admission charges thanks to tax deductible donations from our friends and supporters. We have once again set up a page via the Australian Cultural Fund to receive donations of any size, large or small. You can find it IF YOU CLICK ON THIS LINK

Bill

FILM CRITICS CIRCLE OF AUSTRALIA AWARDS: CHARLES WILLIAMS’ INSIDE WINS BEST FILM, DIRECTOR, SCREENPLAY & ACTOR

Guy Pearce (winner Best Actor), Vincent Miller (Nominee Best Actor), Inside

Director/writer Charles Williams’ indie prison feature INSIDE was named BEST FILM among four major awards presented last night by the by the Film Critics Circle of Australia (FCCA) in their annual awards for Australian film. 

 

Charles Williams was awarded the Best Director and Best Screenplay awards, and Guy Pearce was recognised for Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Lead Role, in addition to the Best Film award for producers Kate Glover and Marion Macgowan. 

 

The FCCA Awards, Australia’s foremost critics’ awards, are positioned to provide a unique critical perspective on the best of Australian cinema during the international ‘awards season’.  The sold-out awards ceremony was held for the first time at the iconic Rose of Australia Hotel in Erskineville. 

 

Best Animated Feature went to LESBIAN SPACE PRINCESS, directed by Emma Hough Hobbs and Leela Varghese, produced by Tom Phillips. 

 

Best Documentary Feature was presented to Gabrielle Brady’s THE WOLVES ALWAYS COME AT NIGHT, producers Julia Niethammer, Ariunaa Tserenpil and Rita Walsh. 

 

BEAST OF WAR and THE SURFER each received two awards. 

 

The late Julian McMahon was awarded Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role for THE SURFER, accepted at the event by his daughter Madison.  The film also picked up the Best Music (Original Score) for composer François Tétaz. 

 

BEAST OF WAR took home the Best Cinematography and Editing awards, for DOP Mark Wareham ACS, and editors Kiah Roache-Turner, Regg Skwarko, Stephen Evans. 

 

The female performance awards went to Susie Porter for Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Lead Role for THE TRAVELLERS, while Marta Dusseldorp won Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role for WITH OR WITHOUT YOU. 

 

Kriv Stenders’ THE CORRESPONDENT was recognised for Best Production Design for Fiona Donovan APDG.

 

The new award honouring the late David Stratton was presented by his longtime friend and collaborator Richard Kuipers who thanked David’s widow Susie Craig for her endorsement of the award which acknowledges the finest films made outside Australia. 

 

Kuipers praised Stratton’s immeasurable contribution to Australian cinema over his 57-year career, citing his revolutionary battle against censorship, and in doing so, the creation of a new classification code – the R Rating in November 1971 – which helped the Aussie New Wave of cinema to flourish and permitted countless more international films to be screened here commercially. 

 

“From almost the moment he was born David loved cinema. Upon becoming Sydney Film Festival director in 1966 David made it his mission to bring the very best in world cinema to audiences here, and to fight for the rights of audiences to watch these films uncut, as their makers intended them to be seen. 

 

“What he wrote and what he said about Australian and international cinema will be read and listened to forever. David travelled EVERYWHERE to find these films for SFF and it is in that spirit of discovery and embracing films and filmmakers from all over the world that this award is named, and given.”

 

The inaugural David Stratton Award for International Film is presented to Director Jacques Audiard for EMILIA PEREZ. 

 

 

 

The FCCA Awards are sponsored by See Saw Films, Bunya Productions, Piccolo Films and Allen and Unwin. 

 

Media contact

Cathy Gallagher 0416 227 282 cathy@abcgfilm.com

 

ABOUT THE FCCA

The FCCA exists to add support to Australian film culture, to provide a forum for issues affecting film and filmgoers (such as film classification and censorship), to participate in international critics’ juries, and assist Australian film festivals with international jury representation, and to provide professional support for critics. Visit fcca.com.au for more.

 

FCCA Awards for the Australian Films of 2025 – WINNERS

 

BEST FILM

Inside (Prod: Kate Glover, Marian Macgowan)

 

BEST DIRECTOR

Charles Williams for Inside

 

BEST SCREENPLAY

Charles Williams for Inside

 

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

Mark Wareham ACS for Beast of War

 

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A MALE ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE

Guy Pearce for Inside

 

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A MALE ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Julian McMahon for The Surfer

 

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A FEMALE ACTOR IN A LEAD ROLE

Susie Porter for The Travellers

 

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A FEMALE ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Marta Dusseldorp for With or Without You

 

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

The Wolves Always Come At Night 

Director: Gabrielle Brady. Producers: Julia Niethammer, Ariunaa Tserenpil, Rita Walsh

 

BEST MUSIC (ORIGINAL SCORE)

François Tétaz for The Surfer

 

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN

Fiona Donovan APDG for The Correspondent

 

BEST EDITING

Stephen Evans, Kiah Roache-Turner, Regg Skwarko for Beast of War

 

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

Lesbian Space Princess

Directors: Emma Hough Hobbs, Leela Varghese. Producer: Tom Phillips

 

THE DAVID STRATTON AWARD FOR INTERNATIONAL FILM

Emilia Perez (Dir: Jacques Audiard)