australian director toasts absent female friends
Last Updated : GMT 05:17:37
Emiratesvoice, emirates voice
Emiratesvoice, emirates voice
Last Updated : GMT 05:17:37
Emiratesvoice, emirates voice

At the 72nd Venice International Film Festival

Australian director toasts absent female friends

Emiratesvoice, emirates voice

Emiratesvoice, emirates voice Australian director toasts absent female friends

Australian director Sue Brooks
Venice - Arab Today

Female directors are a rare species at major film competitions and Australia's Sue Brooks is not expecting their numbers to flourish any time soon.

In Venice with her latest drama "Looking for Grace," Brooks is (along with Laurie Anderson), one of only two women among the 21 directors competing for the Golden Lion, the top prize at the world's oldest cinema festival.

And after more than three decades fighting -- often in vain -- to get her projects from script to screen, the 62-year-old does not see the industry's chronic gender imbalance changing.

"Why would it?," she asks. "I haven't seen it change in the last 40 years.

"Australian women filmmakers are making some extraordinary films and we are still not seeing a lot of them."

"Looking for Grace" is a wry portrait of a suburban Australian family which has its faultlines exposed when teenage daughter, Grace, runs away, along with an inexplicably large amount of cash her father has stashed in the safe.

Odessa Young has been tipped as a future star on the strength of what one critic described as her "pitch perfect" performance as Grace, while established Australian actors Radha Mitchell and Richard Roxburgh feature as the hapless parents who find their lives unravelling in more ways than one.

Set in Western Australia's wheat belt and constructed as a series of intertwined stories, it is Brooks' first feature since 2009's "Subdivision" and only her third since she made the multi-award winning "Japanese Story" in 2003.

The intervening years have been filled with films that never got made for lack of financial backing and Brooks says it is at that stage of the production process where women face the biggest obstacles to progress within the industry.

"All around the world I think the financiers are not reading women's work with a broad enough mind," she said. "It is as simple as that."

"The money decisions get made by men. What they are drawn to end up being those films. And we get to see more of the same."

- Life changing -

Which helps to explain why Brooks was not expecting to be spending September mingling with Hollywood stars and European arthouse auteurs on a Venetian island and then flying on to Toronto, where the film will feature in that festival's newly introduced Platform section.

It was while she was having a late-night discussion about the merits of aubergine grey for a friend's planned paint job that she got an email telling her to immediately call the film's sales agent.

"He said, 'Sue your life is going to change. You are in Venice. In competition'," she recalled.

"And, yeah, it has changed a bit. It is pretty amazing being here.

"Australia is a long way away for making cultural films. So to land in the Mecca of Venice with such a history of cinema and such a respect for films ... it hasn't changed as in my career has taken off but it has changed as in here is a moment of our work really being taken seriously."

Mostly well received, "Looking for Grace" has prompted the full range of reactions from critics, from rapturous praise to damning dismissal.

The Huffington Post's reviewer said it "takes the audience on a series of journeys that still make the little hairs on my arms stand on end," while Indiewire complained that "all the chopped-up chronology and teasing perspective shifts in the world cannot conceal the Aussie daytime soap nature of the storyline."

Brooks though has been happy to bask in the glow of the positive reaction the movie has generated amongst its Venice audiences.

"It was pretty good (at the premiere) when the film finished and people stood up and clapped," she said. "There was this moment where I thought 'ah well of course, you're here, that's what they do' and then there was this moment afterwards when I thought 'they really mean it'."

The winner of the Golden Lion will be announced on Saturday. The Toronto Film Festival runs from Thursday until September 20.
Source: AFP

Name *

E-mail *

Comment Title*

Comment *

: Characters Left

Mandatory *

Terms of use

Publishing Terms: Not to offend the author, or to persons or sanctities or attacking religions or divine self. And stay away from sectarian and racial incitement and insults.

I agree with the Terms of Use

Security Code*

australian director toasts absent female friends australian director toasts absent female friends

 



Name *

E-mail *

Comment Title*

Comment *

: Characters Left

Mandatory *

Terms of use

Publishing Terms: Not to offend the author, or to persons or sanctities or attacking religions or divine self. And stay away from sectarian and racial incitement and insults.

I agree with the Terms of Use

Security Code*

australian director toasts absent female friends australian director toasts absent female friends

 



GMT 05:06 2024 Tuesday ,06 February

New hunt for flight MH370 gets under way

GMT 06:15 2018 Tuesday ,23 January

Volkswagen clinches record sales

GMT 09:54 2018 Wednesday ,24 January

'Friendly and kind' N. Korean skaters

GMT 11:03 2018 Tuesday ,23 January

No end to eyesores at Taj Mahal

GMT 10:56 2017 Tuesday ,21 March

MP amongst Palestinians kidnapped by IOF overnight

GMT 18:05 2012 Friday ,09 November

Rome film fest favours emerging directors

GMT 12:19 2016 Monday ,28 March

Japan loses track of $273m black hole satellite

GMT 21:39 2017 Monday ,06 March

Arab Movement forces control Timbuktu

GMT 14:13 2017 Saturday ,11 March

CHELSEA Beat SWANSEA City 3-1

GMT 09:09 2017 Thursday ,21 September

Kagawa leads Dortmund 'fire engine' back

GMT 06:43 2017 Thursday ,23 March

Wael Jassar says he still works with Arabica

GMT 07:41 2017 Thursday ,16 March

IOF raid West Bank, injure five, arrest 23 by dawn

GMT 12:37 2017 Wednesday ,15 March

Antarctic penguin numbers
 
 Emirates Voice Facebook,emirates voice facebook  Emirates Voice Twitter,emirates voice twitter Emirates Voice Rss,emirates voice rss  Emirates Voice Youtube,emirates voice youtube  Emirates Voice Youtube,emirates voice youtube

Maintained and developed by Arabs Today Group SAL.
All rights reserved to Arab Today Media Group 2021 ©

Maintained and developed by Arabs Today Group SAL.
All rights reserved to Arab Today Media Group 2021 ©

emiratesvoieen emiratesvoiceen emiratesvoiceen emiratesvoiceen
emiratesvoice emiratesvoice emiratesvoice
emiratesvoice
بناية النخيل - رأس النبع _ خلف السفارة الفرنسية _بيروت - لبنان
emiratesvoice, Emiratesvoice, Emiratesvoice