F R O N T R O W @ T I M E O F F. C O M . A U
THIS WEEK IN
ARTS
WEDNESDAY 10
SUNDAY 14
Platform 2012 – an exhibition showcasing large scale wall based/ installation work by a group of contemporary artists. Including Heri Dono, Imants Tillers and Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan. Opening night, Metro Arts, 6pm to Saturday 27 October.
Fernando Espinosa: Galapagos Surreal – a photography exhibition from Ecuadorian photographer Fernando Espinosa. Focusing on the landscape and wildlife of the Galapagos Islands. Brisbane Powerhouse to Sunday 4 November.
THURSDAY 11 One Day More – a film based on the bestselling novel by Fabio Volo, think romcom about a thirty-something man falling for a bachelorette who has her sights set on moving to New York. Part of the Italian Film Festival, Special Event, Palace Barracks, 9pm. The Bully – a new Australian play from playwright and director Damian Overton, it introduces us to the world of the Mitchell family. A brash look at the ripple effect of gay bullying. Metro Arts, 7.30pm to Saturday 20 October.
FRIDAY 12 Tender Napalm – a new work from British playwright Philip Ridley about first great loves and passions destructive side. Following a young couple from first attraction to consuming devotion, that is danced as much as it is acted. Directed by David Berthold and Australian Dance Theatre Artistic Director and choreographer Garry Stewart. La Boite Theatre, 7.30pm to Saturday 13 October.
SATURDAY 13 Gregory Crewdson Lecture – American photographer Gregory Crewdson speaks on his work, followed by the Australian premiere of Ben Shapiro’s film Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters. The lecture and screening are a joint project with Queensland Art Gallery. IMA, 2pm.
down,” says Ansari. “I turned twenty-nine a few months ago, and that’s the way it seems to be.” And it’s this phenomenon that Ansari is exploring in his new stand-up show Buried Alive, which he’s bringing to Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane this month in his first Australian performances. As the title might indicate, Ansari isn’t that keen on taking the plunge into domesticity just yet – in a recent Los Angeles Times profile, he referred to himself as an “indecisive commitmentphobe” – but he’s still fascinated by those who have, especially the ones who seem ill-equipped to do so.
MONDAY 15 Dredd – the Australian Premiere of this futuristic neo-noir 3D action film that is a visceral incarnation of the Judge Dredd comic strip. Set on the streets of Mega City One. Written by Alex Garland directed by Pete Travis. Jupiters Theatre, Jupiters Hotel & Casino, 6.45pm red carpet arrivals. The Entrepreneur – Giuliano Montaldo’s multi-award winning drama film tells the story of factory owner Nicola Ranieri who is struggling both professionally and emotionally. Part of the Italian Film Festival, Palace Barracks, 9.15pm.
CASTING CALL TropFest 2013 Entries – entries to the world’s largest short film festival, Movie Extra Tropfest will open at the end of this month. Films must not exceed seven minutes and in the long-standing festival tradition, must contain the Tropfest signature item, which for 2013 is Balloon. Last year’s winner Alethea Jones (Lemonade Stand) is heading to LA next month for casting sessions on her new US feature film. Entries for 2013 will open in late October and close January 3, 2013 for more info head to tropfest.com.au
A STAND UP GUY
Making his Australian debut, American comedian and actor Aziz Ansari puts a microscope over couples his age in Buried Alive, as Guy Davis discovers. For stand-up comedian Aziz Ansari, the age of 30 is on the horizon. And he’s started to notice that friends and acquaintances – actually, pretty much everyone – of a
similar vintage is starting to tie the knot and begin producing the next generation. “But to me it all just seems so far away, that idea of getting married and settling
Malik Bendjelloul calls himself a storyteller, but he’s just as much a collector of stories. For years, the 35-year-old filmmaker worked for Swedish television while travelling the globe, collecting small tales
and bizarre anecdotes, including the true-life tales that would end up being turned into Hollywood concoctions The Terminal and The Men Who Stare At Goats. Bendjelloul would turn these stories
ART S TA R T E R
Five minutes with
GRAHAM HANCOCK What lessons can we learn from Ancient civilisations that might have been forgotten by modern humans? That life is magical, that the universe is enchanted, that the earth is a precious garden of experience, and that it is an incredible opportunity for the soul to be born in a human body. Your earlier work helped to bring the knowledge of the Mayan calendar to the western world. What do believe will happen in December 2012? I don’t believe anything will happen on 21 38 • TIME OFF
December 2012. The Mayan calendar is cyclical and what it predicts for that date is not the end of the world, as some foolishly suppose, but the end of a great cycle of the human story and the beginning of the next. What I find interesting is that the start date of the current cycle of the calendar is in 3114 BC with the end date in 2012 (ie, a period of 5,126 years) and this period does span the time of emergence, dominance and decline of big, centralised, hierarchical states; big, centralised hierarchical religions; and big, centralised, hierarchical corporations. The existing world order based on these controlling hierarchies is undoubtedly in a terminal decay
Ansari is not just intrigued by An people taking the plunge but by the pe connections that seemingly give co them the courage to do so. “That’s th what else I talk about in Buried Alive wh – how hard it can be to find people you connect with that much. Finding yo that deep, deep connection is tough because a lot of people from my generation… they’re kind of bozos. You talk to women, ask them what they’re looking for in a man, and they’ll say ‘Oh, you know, a nice guy who’s got a job and who makes me laugh sometimes.’ I’m like ‘There must be plenty of those around.’ There isn’t! There’s, like, three!
OBSCURE SUGAR
Swedish purveyor of stories unusual usual and earthly, Malik Bendjelloul takess Anthony Carew through the legend of the enigmatic and elusive musician that frames his new feature, Searching For Sugarman.
Brief Encounters by Gregory Crewdson
“Friends of mine who are really dumb are having kids, and I’m like ‘Whaaaat?’” he laughs. “You lik know? ‘There’s no way this is kn going to work!’ I don’t know if it’s go the same way in Australia but th where I’m living in New York and wh LA you just start seeing it happen constantly with people of this age.” co
and something new – hopefully something better that honours individual sovereignty, that nurtures love rather than hatred, fear and suspicion, and that has reverence for the cosmos – is in the process of being birthed. Do you believe that tours like the Origins Of Consciousness are a good forum for discussing these ideas? Yes, an excellent forum. The new consciousness that is being born in the world is based around communities of ideas in which like-minded people can get together to reimagine reality. I hope the tour will act as a catalyst for
new and better ways of thinking about the past and the future. WHAT: Origins Of Consciousness Tour WHEN & WHERE: Thursday 18 October, Tribal Theatre and Friday 19 October, Byron Bay Community Centre.
into TV segments he approached as six-minute short films, but was always hhoping i hhe’d, ’d one dday, fifindd the h story he’d want to make into a feature. Then, in 2006, in South Africa, he struck gold, when a Cape Town record store owner told him the legend of Sixto Rodriguez, an obscure folkie singer-songwriter from the early ’70s who disappeared into oblivion in his hometown of Detroit, yet became a countercultural figure – and anti-apartheid touchstone – in ’80s South Africa. “It was the best story I’d ever heard in my whole life,” Bendjelloul says. “I got completely obsessed with telling this story. I’m a storyteller, that’s what I do. So, this one felt like the big one... It sounded like it was a script. Like a writer had a good day and came up with this amazing idea. But maybe it wouldn’t have been a good script, because it would’ve been too unbelievable for someone to make this up. Like everything is just a bit too much. But when it’s a true story, you don’t pick it apart, you don’t complain, you just say: ‘Wow! That actually happened!’” Somehow – popular myth traces it back, perhaps, to one song on one mixed tape brought back from America – Rodriguez’s two obscure, forgotten, Nick Drake-sih LPs found their way from America to South Africa. There, their tales of anti-establishment
It’s so hard finding someone you really like and can connect with.” Still, Ansari shrugs off the notion that his busy work schedule – when he’s not playing would-be mogul and ladies’ man Tom Haverford on the popular US sitcom, Parks & Recreation, he’s appearing in movies like Funny People and Observe & Report or performing stand-up – might keep him from finding that special someone. “It doesn’t change it that much,” he says. “It’s still a job.” (Admittedly it’s a job where he can appear in a music video alongside buddies like Jay-Z and Kanye West.) It’s one he takes very seriously, though. He’s done plenty of formal and informal research into marriage, parenthood and divorce for Buried Alive, and he’s spent time in comedy clubs around LA, “to make sure it’s all tight before I come down to see you guys. “I feel like stand-up is a really interesting art form,” Ansari. admits “It’s like a one-man play – you do a one-hour set that is very tightly scripted and constructed and honed. But people don’t always treat it like that. They go ‘Oh, that guy is up onstage talking about funny stuff,’ like it just popped into the comedian’s head at that moment. Yeah, stand-up is often really misunderstood.” WHO: Aziz Ansari WHAT: Buried Alive WHEN & WHERE: Wednesday 10 October, QPAC Concert Hall
rebellion struck a profound chord with local listeners. “They talk about him in the same breath as The Beatles and The Stones,” Bendjelloul explains. “Rodriguez everywhere else in the world is for people in record stores. In South Africa, it’s people on the street, it’s everyone.” Of course, whilst he becam became famous in a far-off country, Rodriguez Rodrig never knew; somewhere betwee between an isolated, state-controlled ccountry and a reclusive songwriter living without a telephone, the nnews got lost on the way. So, “tragi “tragically and horribly”, did the roya royalties. In South Africa, Rodriguez be became a myth; the lack of biograp biographical information leading to tall tales, including an urban legend that he died after setting fire to hi himself on stage. “For them, he was a dead man man,”” Bendjelloul says says. “T “They were never looking to see if he’s dead or alive, they’re only trying to find out how he did die.” When a South African journalist eventually went digging for the facts of Rodriguez’s demise in the late-’90s, they discovered that, shockingly, he was very much alive, and that he’d spent the years working in demolition, and even served as a local politician. He was brought back to South Africa for a hero’s welcome, and eventually Rodriguez returned to touring, coming to Australia in 2007 and 2010. Now, Rodriguez plays after Searching For Sugarman, the film Bendjelloul made about his story. “He plays songs in the cinema, and people go crazy for him,” the filmmaker beams. “After they’ve seen this movie for 82 minutes, they love him. They’re singing, dancing, crying. They’ve been insane reactions that we’ve had so far.” WHAT: Searching For Sugarman WHEN & WHERE: In cinemas now We have ten in-season double passes to giveaway to Searching For Sugarman. For your chance to win enter at facebook.com/timeoffmag