The ten-day London Australian Film Festival returns to the Barbican on March 15 for its 13th consecutive year with 24 new features (including for the first time this year all the 2006 Australian Film Institute award winners), eight documentaries, two family films, and three archive classics, including the UK Premiere of the digital restoration of the earliest film ever made, The Story Of The Kelly Gang.
As in previous years the programme includes shorts selected from Flickerfest, Australia’s short film festival. In addition, the London Australian Film Festival hosts a free, first-come-first-served evening showing the 16 finalist Sony Tropfest short films.
This year’s event kicks off on Thursday March 15 with an Opening Gala Screening of Ray Lawrence’s psychological thriller, Jindabyne, his eagerly awaited follow up to Lantana, starring Gabriel Byrne and Laura Linney. Adapted from a Raymond Carver short story Jindabyne is the deft and chilling story of four friends who discover a dead woman on a fishing trip, but decide to continue fishing and delay reporting the body until later, with far-reaching consequences which shake their lives to the core.
At the Closing Night Gala on Sunday 25 March director Rolf de Heer will attend his intriguing and funny Ten Canoes, the first major Australian film to be shot in an indigenous Aboriginal language. Set in the distant mythical past of the remote Arafura Swamp region of north-eastern Arnhem Ten Canoes tells of an epic journey of kidnapping, magic, love and revenge (see also Rolf de Heer’s The Balanda And the Bark Canoes showing in the Documentary strand).
The festival also includes the UK premire of 2:37, the directorial debut of 19-year-old Murali K. Thalluri’s, that was inspired by a video suicide note sent to the director by a friend before she took her life. Over one day, Thalluri’s film chronicles the lives of angst-ridden teens attending an Australian high-school, which ends in one of their year committing suicide.
Throughout the festival filmmakers and actors give Barbican ScreenTalks. Confirmed so far are: director Rolf de Heer for the Closing Gala of Ten Canoes; writer/narrator Bob Randall for Kanyini; director Martin Simpson and actress Ayse Tezel for the World Premiere of Gene X; actress Ayse Tezel and co-producer Michael Rowe for Court of Lonely Royals; actress Sally Phillips for the European Premiere for Boytown; director Daniel Lapaine for the UK Premiere of 48 Shades; actress Amanda Douge for UK Premiere of Five Moments of Infidelity; Stephen Moyer for Ravenswood, and cast and crew members for Like Minds.
For more information visit the official site.
