Sexual humiliation, human trafficking and drug addiction - according to the latest movies, Australia is a grimmer place than its tourist board would have us believe.
But this year's London Australian Film Festival recalls the glory days of the 1970s, when a new wave of Australian filmmakers introduced audiences to a dark vision of their young country. Think of Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock, or The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Fred Schepisi's harrowing tale of racially-motivated violence.
The current generation of Australian filmmakers is more interested in the undercurrents of modern society than in the search for a national identity. Dee McClachlan explores the seedy world of human trafficking in her debut feature The Jammed, while Anna Kokinnos examines sexual exploitation in The Book of Revelation. |
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Aussie auteurs offer a dark but gripping view of home at the London Australian Film Festival, says james clasper
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And two new films deal with heroin addiction: Neil Armfield's unflinchingly bleak Candy, starring Heath Ledger, and Alkinos Tsilimidos's Em 4 Jay, as grim as anything by the Dardenne brothers.
Then there's 2:37. Feted at Cannes, 19-year-old Murali K Thalluri's debut chronicles the devastating insecurity of adolescence. Set during a single day at an Australian high school, its elegant tracking shots, classical score and chilling conclusion owe much to Gus Van Sant's Elephant.
The festival closes with Rolf de Heer's award-winning Ten Canoes (left), the first feature made solely in an indigenous Aboriginal language. And there's another treat: a rare screening of The Back of Beyond, a sepia-toned classic light years from the austerity of contemporary Australian cinema.
The London Australian Film Festival is at the Barbican from March 15-25
FIRST POSTED MARCH 8, 2007
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