Every year as June approaches, Sydney’s cinephiles lunge for the Sydney film festival guide, book up a storm, then take to the streets a couple of weeks later like vampires, hissing at the sun and waiting for the lights to go down.
The restoration of the festival’s beloved mecca, the State Theatre, is now finally complete, meaning traditional day and night screenings will be held there for the first time since 2011. That won’t mean much to your average Joe or Jane but it means plenty to the festival’s rusted-on subscriber base: the addicts who return for a cinematic shot in the arm each year, some booking and sitting in the same seat, year after year for decades.
As always, the 11-day schedule is full of things to see and do. Here are 10 of them.
1) Aussie docos
This year boasts a particularly strong program of Australian documentaries, which are competing for a $10,000 cash prize. They include Gayby Baby (following children whose parents happen to be gay), Freedom Stories (capturing the lives of former boat people), Wide Open Sky (about an outback Australian children’s choir) and Women He’s Undressed, charting the life of three-time Oscar-winning Australian costume designer Orry-Kelly, directed by veteran Gillian Armstrong.
2) From What Is Before
This one is otherwise known as a cinematic endurance test. If you’re the kind of person who winces at the thought of watching a black-and-white foreign film about the gradual decline of a small coastal barrio in the Philippines, you’ll recoil in horror at the running time of From What Is Before, from Filipino director Lav Diaz. The film goes for a butt-crunching, eye-burning, deep vein thrombosis-inducing 338 minutes. Marking Diaz’s crossover from “visionary” to “sadist” is the director’s request for the festival not to screen his five-and-a-half-hour epic with an interval.
From What Is Before, Dendy Opera Quays, 8 June
3) SFF @ The Drive-In
When was the last time you went to a drive-in? Exactly. At Blacktown’s Skyline Drive-In, the only remaining twin drive-in cinema in New South Wales, SFF gets kitschy and retro, with a double feature of the 1956 classic political allegory Invasion of the Body Snatchers and the 1954 nuclear monster movie Them! (replete with giant cantankerous ants).
SFF @ The Drive In, Dendy Lounge, from 10 June
4) Alex Gibney in conversation
From the collapse of Enron to Wikileaks, sexual abuse in the Catholic Church and the fall of Lance Armstrong, US documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney is smashing through all the hot-button topics. His latest expose Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief is featured in this year’s program. He will also be discussing the ins and outs of his craft at Sydney Town Hall on 7 June.
Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, State Theatre, 6 June
In conversation with Alex Gibney, Sydney Town Hall, 7 June
5) Tehran Taxi
In 2010, Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi was convicted of conspiring to create anti-Islamic propaganda and banned from making films. Fortunately he continued in secret. His new documentary Tehran Taxi features the director himself as a taxi driver picking up passengers while navigating the busy streets of Tehran. The film won the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin film festival and critics are calling it a profound musing on the intersection (no pun intended) of life and art.
Tehran Taxi, State Theatre, from 8 June
6) Freak Me Out
If Mad Max: Fury Road got you in the mood for freaky films set in far-out places, that itch can be scratched in a sidebar program guest curated by Variety critic Richard Kuipers. Titles include Deathgasm (need we say more?) and We Are Still Here, a haunted house movie starring cult film actor Barbara Crampton (whose CV includes gnarly classics Re-Animator and You’re Next). Also in the line-up is a Horror Tragic Talkfest at the festival hub.
Freak Me Out, Dendy Newtown, from 3 June
7) Ernie Biscuit
Before he won a 2003 Academy Award for Harvie Krumpet, Australian claymation guru Adam Elliot made (in his gorgeously distinctive style) a trio of poignant short films: Uncle, Cousin and Brother. Ernie Biscuit, about a deaf Parisian taxidermist, is his first short film in more than a decade.
Ernie Biscuit, Event Cinemas, 13 June
8) Essential Bergman: selected by David Stratton
Australian film-reviewing royalty David Stratton no longer beams into our lounge rooms each week to squabble about new releases with his equally loved former co-host Margaret Pomeranz, but he will be at the festival in person, introducing a program of films selected from Swedish master Ingmar Bergman’s oeuvre.
Essential Bergman, Art Gallery of NSW, from 6 June
9) The Secret River
Given the ever-increasing use of the word cinematic to describe contemporary television shows, it stands to reason that small-screen programs will slither into the cinema. Get the skinny on director Daina Reid’s two-part ABC mini-series adapted from Kate Grenville’s award-winning bestseller, which features an ensemble cast including Sarah Snook, Oliver Jackson-Cohen and Tim Minchin.
The Secret River, Dendy Opera Quays, 11 June
10) Gourmet cinema
With cinema chains getting into the fine-films-and-fine-dining experience these days, why should a film festival be any different? Foodies can sit down for a three-course meal at Japanese restaurant Azuma after watching a film that may or may not cater for their sophisticated palates – a documentary called, well, Foodies, which explores the world of upper crust food bloggers.
Foodies and Azuma, Dendy Opera Quays, 10 June
- Sydney film festival runs from 4 to 12 June at venues citywide.
