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Maleny Australian Film Festival - March 13, 14 & 15
Focus on Australian stories
Maleny’s Australian Film Festival, to be held from Friday, March 13 to Sunday, March 15, is a showcase of the way Australia’s stories are currently portrayed in cinema.
Festival organiser Andrew Wallace said that whether a film was fictional or a documentary was a bit beside the point, as the films dealt with our concerns or informed us about Australians who have led unusual lives.
Some of these examples include an Aboriginal girl in a country town who befriends an emu and gets into trouble by stealing food for it, finding herself caught between conflicting cultural norms in 'Emu Runner'.
In 'Slam' a feisty competitor in a slam poetry contest goes missing. She is Middle Eastern. Has she become an Islamic radical?
In his eulogy for one of Australia’s most gifted pianists, Paul Keating lambasted the way he was mistreated. 'The Eulogy' looks at whether it was quite so simple.
After an atrocity in colonial Tasmania a young convict woman joins forces with an Aboriginal man to seek revenge in 'The Nightingale'.
'H is for Happiness' is about a plucky girl who ponders the complication and misery of the lives around her and is determined to do something about it.
"All the films, in one way or another, are about coming to terms with life in present-day Australia, even if that includes acknowledging our violent past or looking for ways to cope with a worrying future," Andrew said.
They are issues also addressed in novels, television, the news media and even visual art.
"It’s also stimulating to share our responses with others and, as always, the Maleny Film Festival facilitates this," he said.
The Sunday morning session Our Stories, Our Films will involve both informal and more structured discussion about the films, as well as activities to enhance appreciation of what goes into the making of a film.
