The Current Cinema and Premiering at the Mardi Gras Film Festival - Rod Bishop highly recommends ALL OF US STRANGERS (Andrew Haigh, UK, 2023)

 

Paul Mescal, Andrew Scott, All of Us Strangers

Andrew Haigh’s latest – and his best – reaches our screens drowning in a welter of glowing, admiring reviews. Beguiling to begin with, it slow-burns its way to an incandescent conclusion. 

For those who regard themselves as supporting gay relationships, and bask in a warm inner glow while voting for same sex marriage, yet still struggle to understand the hostility some gays have to their portrayal in the cinema, Haigh’s two overtly queer films Weekend and All of Us Strangers make good antidotes.

The fiercer of the two, Weekend rages at the normalcy of heterosexual culture and its pervasive, unconscious way of marginalizing those with different sexual orientations. All of Us Strangers is far quieter, more subtle – it includes, for instance, painful, almost whispered agonies over families who claim acceptance of their gay son but at Christmas, still hurtfully centre all their attentions on his heterosexual siblings and their children. Leaving him, if not outside, then effectively always stranded on the periphery. 

Andrew Haigh

Adam (Andrew Scott) is traumatized by bullying at high school and, at the age of twelve, by the deaths of his parents in a car accident. He lives, virtually alone, in a huge block of new apartments in London, writing screenplays for film and television. He tentatively starts a relationship with the only other resident, Harry (Paul Mescal) - also gay and also intensely lonely.

Adam takes a train to visit his old family home and finds his parents alive, but still at the ages of their deaths, and therefore much younger than he is. It’s a brilliant magical realist device for unravelling the complexities of their relationships. Mum (Claire Foy), for instance, has only just heard about the gay plague, and is clearly disturbed by her son’s now declared gay status. His father (Jamie Bell) is more accepting, but still unable to reconcile his aloof, remote, emotionless fathering and the lasting impact it’s had on his son.  

Shot on 35mm, Haigh’s hypnotic and, at times, hallucinatory direction, is complemented by flawless performances from the cast. The mundane locations are transformed by the metaphysics and the wrenching emotions and Haigh effortlessly casts a spell over his heart-breaking story.

Frankie Goes To Hollywood, the 80s transgressive band from Liverpool, makes a welcome revival, particularly The Power of Love (“I’ll protect you from the hooded claw, Keep the vampires from your door…The power of love, A force from above, Cleaning my soul, Flame on, burn desire, Love with tongues of fire, Purge the soul, Make love your goal.”)

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All of us Strangers has its premiere in Sydney at the forthcoming Mardi Gras Film Festival. For information regarding session times and bookings CLICK HERE

CINEMA REBORN 2024 - JANUARY NEWS, A SNEAK PEEK + Other festival classic restorations in February

DATES AND A SNEAK PREVIEW

A belated happy new year to all of Cinema Reborn’s supporters, friends, contributors and sponsors. Just a quick note to remind you of our dates for 2024.

 

We go on at the Randwick Ritz on Wednesday 1 May through to Tuesday 7 May. We ALSO go on, for the very first time, in Melbourne at the Hawthorn Lido from 9-15 May. Final confirmations still to be received but we are aiming at 17 programs of wonderful new 4K restorations from five continents. Many of the titles will have both daytime and evening screenings in both cities. The full program will be released around March 15 and bookings for both cities will open then.  

 

In the meantime, above and below are a couple of photos of directors whose work will screen at Cinema Reborn in May..... And, although  many of you who have attended recent sessions at the Ritz will have seen a trailer produced by our great supporter Ben Cho drawing attention to one of the real sparklers of the program but if you haven't and your curiosity is whetted you can find it If You Click Here

 

CHARITABLE DONATIONS

Cinema Reborn’s work over the years has long been sustained by the generosity of our donors who help us make up the shortfall between our income and the costs of obtaining and screening our program. Distributors and producers who have paid for expensive restorations cant be expected to give their work away. Some place extremely high values on their work and that’s a burden we’ve been able to meet over the years with the help of many friends. All donors are acknowledged in our catalogue and those making substantial gifts are recognised as having supported particular titles in the program. If you would like to know more just reply to the email address filmalert101@gmail.com or you can straight to the Cinema Reborn 2024  page on the website of the Australian Cultural Fund and make a tax deductible donation. All donations great and small are very welcome. The Australian Cultural Fund page can be found If You Click Here

 

FRIENDS AND PARTNERS

On Saturday February 24 at 4.30 pm at the Event Cinema in George Street, the Mardi Gras Film Festival is presenting a major restoration this year of Marek Kanievska’s ANOTHER COUNTRY. Celebrating its 40th anniversary, this groundbreaking gay classic features star-making (and swoon-worthy) performances from Rupert Everett, Colin Firth and Cary Elwes. Based on Julian Mitchell’s acclaimed play and inspired by true events, Another Country explores the impact 1930s British boarding school life had on Guy Bennett (Everett), and his later decision to become a Soviet spy. After falling madly in love with a fellow student (Elwes), Guy must decide between asserting his sexual identity or conforming with the school’s oppressive student hierarchy. With its thought-provoking screenplay and sublime performances, the film unforgettably captures the dreamy idealism of youth and first love. BOOKINGS If You Click Here

The Europa Europa Film Festival is a major annual survey of the best of modern European Cinema. This year it will also feature two superb restorations - Bernardo Bertolucci’s THE CONFORMIST and Jean-Luc Godard’s LE MEPRIS among several dozen selections. The festival takes place from 15 February to 11 March and screens in Sydney at the Randwick Ritz and in Melbourne at the Elsternwick Classic and the Hawthorn Lido. Full program details and links to session times and bookings can be found If You Click Here

It's Raining Film Festivals in Sydney - A Quick Guide and a couple of recommendations

Charles Chaplin and Oona O'Neill

Hope springs eternal in the movie trade and some people are still putting on a show directed at cognoscenti and specialist audiences.

A quick guide to what's happening:

Antenna Documentary Film Festival is currently screening and finishes next Saturday 12th. Various venues.

Two films to recommend among the more than 40 programs;

The Real Charlie Chaplin (Peter Middleton & James Spinney, UK/USA, 2021)

Ablaze

Ablaze (Alec Morgan & Tiriki Onus, Australia, 2021)

Alec Morgan,renowned documentarist and a many times contributor to the NFSA's Oral History collection, and Tiriki Onus (with a big assist from producer Tom Zubrycki and others) have assembled an extraordinary story about the life (and film-making career) of Bill Onus, a leader of Australia's First Nations people. Packed house at the first screening. One more to go on Saturday 12th February

Europa! Europa! is currently screening at the Randwick Ritz. Finishes on February 27. (Also in Melbourne)

Hit the link above to explore the 43 titles that will be screened.

Naked

The program includes a new 4K restoration by the BFI of Mike Leigh's searing Naked which won the Best Director and Best Actor prizes at Cannes in 1993. Also screening (once only) are a doco on the formidable British producer Jeremy Thomas The Storms of Jeremy Thomas, a re-edited version of Matteo Garrone's 2008 film Gomorrah You have already missed a feature documentary on Luis Bunuel.

Mardi Gras Film Festival starts on 17 February and runs to 3 March at various locations. Hard to work out the exact number of titles, probably well over fifty, and the festival also has online screenings which can be accessed from anywhere in Australia.

Distant Journey

Jewish Film Festival from 2 March to 3 April at the Randwick Ritz and also in Melbourne. Over seventy programs including shorts, docos and three nights of standup comedy. Among the highlights is Distant Journey directed by Alfred Radok in Czechoslovakia in 1949 which will have the benefit of an introduction by long time Film Alert contributor Barrie Pattison. Described as "One of the first films to confront the horrors of the Holocaust remains one of the most powerful. Suffused with the visceral dread of a waking nightmare, Distant Journey draws from director and Holocaust survivor Alfréd Radok’s own experiences to tell the story of a Czechoslovak Jewish family—including a young doctor and her gentile husband—whose lives are torn apart by the terrors of the Nazi occupation, leading them to a grim fight for survival in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Blending expressionistic cinematography with archival documentary footage to potent effect, this harrowing vision of human atrocity was banned in its home country for more than forty years, only to remerge as urgent and impactful as ever."

The Light Ahead

Also screening is The Light Ahead made in 1939 by the prolific Edgar G Ulmer. It is described thus: "Made on the eve of WWII, this 1939 Yiddish film classic by Edgar G. Ulmer—adapted from a Mendele Mokher Sforim tale—is a sweetly romantic part-comedy, part-satire. David Opatoshu and Helen Beverley, stars from New York’s Artef and Yiddish Art Theaters, are magnetising as two passionate but impoverished lovers who dream of a better life in Odessa. They want to get married, and they dream of a future that transcends their own limitations.

"Offering a meditation on hope, love, and the Jewish faith, The Light Ahead also reflects a painful awareness of the events that will soon overcome European Jewry".

Maigret

Then there is the big one, the biggest exhibition of new French Cinema outside France, an Australia-wide extravaganza the French Film Festival. Title numbers are a little down on previous years. There are only forty one films all told. Among the possible pleasures Gerard Depardieu as Maigret and a restored copy (possibly the same one which has screened quite frequently over the last couple of years at Sydney's Golden Age Cinema or maybe it is indeed a 2022 restoration) of Alain Delon as Highsmith's Tom Ripley in Plein Soleil/Purple Noon. In Sydney there are dozens of sessions of most of the films all over town in the Palace cinemas and the Cremorne Orpheum from 1 March to 6 April. Also playing in Melbourne, Canberra, Adelaide, Perth Brisbane and Byron Bay.

Let's hope that the crowds venture out and by the time you have seen at least some of the more than 200 films and programs you get yourselves all prepped for restored cinema classics at Cinema Reborn at the Ritz from 27 April to 1 May.

In Sydney Cinemas - Queer Screen's 29th Mardi Gras Film Festival - 17 February - 3 March

A word from the organisers of the Festival!!

Explore the queer frontier with Queer Screen’s 29th Mardi Gras Film Festival! Coming to cinemas in Sydney and On Demand in homes all around Australia with over 110 LGBTIQ+ features, docos and shorts!

Download the Festival trailer  30 second 16:9 trailer here

The Mardi Gras Film Festival has grown considerably since 1993. It is now one of Australia’s largest film festivals of any kind, and one of the top five queer film festivals in the world. It is highly regarded by filmmakers all over the world, and is the most important platform for promoting LGBTIQ titles to distributors and exhibitors in this territory.

For ten years, Queer Screen’s documentary festival, queerDOC, was the first and only LGBTIQ documentary festival in the world. The annual My Queer Career competition pioneered queer short film competitions exclusively for locally produced work. Both events are now part of the Mardi Gras Film Festival.

Full details  IF YOU CLICK HERE