Sydney Film Festival is here again!
Dust off your winter coats, polish your best shoes and set these dates in your diaries, for Sydney Film Festival is on again. From the 7th to the 18th of June, the 64th Sydney film festival is inviting you to be part of all the glitz, glamour, fun and excitement that is Sydney’s premium cultural event that celebrates cinema in all its forms.
Whether it be premieres of inspiring and entertaining films, features, shorts, documentaries, free or ticketed talks, parties, international directors, actors and industry professionals in attendance or just a wonderful way of escaping the winter cold there’s lots to do and plenty to choose from.
So far a sneak peak of 28 films have been announced including a never-before-seen backstage look at six-time Grammy winner Whitney Houston’s stardom, ‘Can I Be Me’ produced by award-winning documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield (who is also attending the festival and presenting an industry masterclass), non-traditional horror film ‘A Ghost Story’, starring Oscar winner Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara, Filipino independent filmmaker Lav Diaz’s ‘The Woman Who Left’ winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, Afghanistan’s first female director Shahrbanoo Sadat’s debut feature ‘Wolf and Sheep’ winner of the Art Cinema Award at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, recipient of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam’s award ‘Nowhere to Hide’, local Aussie indie comedy, ‘That’s Not Me’ starring Isabel Lucas and actor-writer-producer Alice Foulcher, controversial documentary ‘The Opposition’ finally hitting the screens after being suppressed by a court order last year and ‘Spookers’ a look into the inner workings of the Southern Hemisphere’s largest horror theme park and the tight-knit New Zealand family who run it.
There’s also a Akira Kurosawa retrospective curated by David Stratton in partnership with the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA) and The Japan Foundation screening at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and Dendy Opera Quays cinema on specially imported 35mm prints, as well as John Landis’ cult classic ‘An American Werewolf in London’ screening under the full moon at the Skyline Drive In.
The Festival will take place in venues across the greater Sydney region including the State Theatre, Event Cinemas George Street, Dendy Opera Quays, Dendy Newtown, Skyline Drive-In Blacktown, Art Gallery of NSW, Hayden Orpheum Picture Palace Cremorne, Casula Powerhouse, the Festival Hub at Sydney Town Hall, SFF Outdoor Screen in Pitt Street Mall, and for the first time Randwick’s Ritz Cinema which is celebrating its 80th year.
The full Sydney Film Festival program featuring 200+ films will be announced on Wednesday 10 May at 11am but if you can’t wait you can head over to http://www.sff.org.au in the meantime to check out the 28 films announced so far, grab yourself a flexipass, a subscription, or sign up to volunteer during the festival (I’ve done it before and it’s heaps of fun).
Go and get amongst it!
Words by Addy Fong.
