Having been an avid film watcher from birth, once I started uni, I got involved with people who either didn’t like movies, or only liked rubbish movies. I fell into a big black movieless hole and I’ve spent a few years now trying to dig my way out. I find myself in the hypocritical position of proselytsing for the Australian film, whilst having seen not nearly enough of them.
So. Geneva, summer, 2018. An education in Australian films. Bring it on.
#1 Beneath Clouds 2002
People take the place of actors and their real lives are even sadder than their on screen personas. Damien Pitt died in a car crash in 2009, never having made another movie. Dannielle Hall, despite winning a Best New Talent award at the Berlin Film Festival and receiving other accolades was never offered another script. She became a bookkeeper and was pregnant at age 21 when interviewed in 2005. The moral of the back story? You have to be on the inside. Unless you are Ivan Sen, the director of Beneath Clouds. He has managed to make a career out of being on the outer. But for each Sen, how many Halls and Pitts are there?
It’s a wonderful movie, a perfect slice of rural Australia with a harrowingly sad, but still sweet, story on the top.
You can see this on youtube at the moment. I’m all for buying films, but there doesn’t seem to be a way of buying this, so youtube comes to the rescue, as it sometimes does.
This and That 