Sommaire pour No. 199 de Metro

Colin Thiele’s 1963 novella Storm Boy was meant for children first and foremost, and the same can be said about Henri Safran’s beloved 1976 film adaptation, scripted primarily by Sonia Borg. But the story told in both is part of the larger body of white Australia’s mythology. Unlike many such myths, this one concerns a hero at home in the landscape – specifically, the landscape of the Coorong, the long stretch of saltwater lagoons running parallel to the coastline in the eastern part of South Australia. In a shack between the Coorong and the sea lives an eccentric beachcomber nicknamed Hide-Away Tom (played by character actor Peter Cummins in Safran’s film), who has retreated from civilisation following the death of his wife. But the real escape is accomplished by his…

Memories of happiness lost haunt the script of Brisbane-based writer/director Ben Hackworth’s sophomore feature, Celeste (2018) – both on the page and between the lines during its writing process. Radha Mitchell stars as the eponymous opera singer, who gave it all up for love just as her career was reaching its high notes. Retiring to a crumbling but fecund and fanciful retreat in Far North Queensland, she finds herself, years later, all but alone after her husband’s death a decade earlier, hitting the bottle hard and dreaming of a comeback. This unfortunate event is clouded in half-glimpsed mystery, teased out in flashback and connected to her estranged stepson Jack, played by Kai Lewins as a teen and by In Like Flynn (Russell Mulcahy, 2018) lead Thomas Cocquerel as an adult.…

I came out as trans to my grandma about a year before she died. My mother was against it, insisting it was unfair to ask someone of her advanced age to contend with such new, complex ideas. I gave my grandma more credit than that. In a recent interview, Karamo Brown – one of the presenters of the recent Queer Eye reboot – reflects on how he doesn’t like using the term ‘coming out’, instead preferring ‘inviting someone in’: ‘For me, “coming out” gives the power to the other person to accept or deny you,’ he explains. ‘When you’re “inviting them in,” you have the power.’1 I wanted to invite my grandma into my life. I didn’t expect her to understand, but I wanted to give her the opportunity to…

When Hirokazu Koreeda won the Palme d’Or – the Cannes Film Festival’s highest prize – in 2018, it was seen as something of a surprise. Not simply due to the fact that Shoplifters, which premiered there, was a modest, humanist picture, but also because it was Koreeda’s thirteenth narrative feature, and a familiar one at that. The director had been in competition at Cannes on four prior occasions – with Distance (2001), Nobody Knows (2004), Like Father, Like Son (2013) and Our Little Sister (2015) – and, of those, only Like Father, Like Son had earned an award, the Jury Prize (though Yūya Yagira, at the time just fourteen, won Best Actor for Nobody Knows). There seemed no reason to suspect Koreeda’s latest trip to Cannes would find a change…

There’s a developmental stage in toddlerhood so universal that it’s essentially a comic trope. Moving from the primitivism of infancy towards higher brain functions, the small child is a sponge, soaking up everything they can about the world around them. And their research methods can be summed up in a single word: ‘Why?’ Though parents and carers can find these infinite inquiries maddening – and feel like this question–answer dynamic is a one-way street – this ‘why’ phase gets at the intellectual curiosity that’s a bedrock of humanity. And, in turn, the best ‘why’ questions can function as challenges to the beaten-down adult’s acceptance of assumed truths or the status quo, causing the world to be looked at with the fresh eyes of a child. This type of child–parent exchange…

Jason King is not afraid of the dark. In many ways, he seeks it out. He earns his living as a security guard on long, lonely night shifts. In his spare time, he volunteers his services as a ghost hunter to Sydney residents struggling with haunted homes. He heads fearlessly into places others would never dare enter – a dark, claustrophobic crawl space apparently ripe with paranormal activity, a pitch-black drain tunnel infamously haunted by a deceased angry widow. He doesn’t do it for the money: the satisfaction of making people feel safe is enough payment for him. The darkness Jason himself struggles with is metaphorical rather than literal. Much of his childhood is a mystery to him, blocked out for reasons he can’t recall. His mother has refused answers,…

Black absorbs meaning the way it absorbs light. In clothing, it’s the colour of authority and sophistication, secrecy and simplicity, grief and lust. It can be both bold and sober, making its wearers stand out glamorously or blend in discreetly. In Bruce Beresford’s 2018 comedy-drama Ladies in Black, set in Sydney during the summer of 1959–1960, the titular characters are not merry widows or Gothic femmes fatales, but shop assistants at the fictional upscale department store Goode’s. While their work attire is designed to make them appear alike, this film is interested in the particularities of women’s identities and desires. Curiously, though, the charm of this deliberately quaint film depends on the smoothing away of rough edges. Ladies in Black raises social tensions – class inequality, sex-based double standards and…

In Jirga (Benjamin Gilmour, 2018), an Australian undertakes a perilous journey to return to the site of an Afghan firefight from three years earlier. Mike (Sam Smith) makes the difficult trip not out of professional duty, however, but out of personal need. Haunted by his past deeds – specifically, the accidental killing of an unarmed civilian during an evening raid of a village – the ex-soldier is driven to atone for his actions. When he presents himself before the court of tribal elders that gives the feature its name, he risks his life, should the jirga deem an-eye-for-an-eye retribution the appropriate course of action. In charting Mike’s trek through often difficult, sometimes surprisingly beautiful Afghan terrain – from Kabul to Kandahar and beyond – as well as the emotional journey…

This article refers to the original Japanese-language release. Mamoru Hosoda’s Mirai (2018) opens in anticipation. Sheet glass fogs over with breath, only to be quickly wiped away as Kun (Moka Kamishiraishi), a four-year-old boy, stares out the window of his parents’ house. He’s awaiting the return of his mum (Kumiko Asō) and dad (Gen Hoshino), but, really, he’s awaiting the future. It arrives shortly in the form of his initially unnamed infant sister, who is soon given the moniker ‘Mirai’: ‘future’ in Japanese.1 Over the coming months – and by way of fantastical adventures through space and time – Kun will grow to love his new sibling, as Hosoda builds on the themes of familial interdependence established in his earlier films. But first: fierce jealousy. Like any only child relegated…

No Friend but the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison1 must have a fair claim to be the most politically significant book to have been published in Australia in recent history. Its author, Behrouz Boochani, provides readers with an evocative, firsthand account of what it is like to be an asylum seeker in offshore detention. The immediacy and power of this book leave little doubt that it is an essential political read for any Australian – and, in time, the sheer quality of its writing will no doubt also guarantee its ascendance as a vital piece of literature. Boochani’s book is, however, only one narrative about those seeking asylum in Australia. Equally deserving of being heard are the stories of those who flee their homes to neighbouring countries, those who are…

At any time, around 1600 Australians are on waiting lists for organ transplants.1 On average, one dies every week.2 Yet, as of 31 August 2018, just 2.3 million Australians aged sixteen and over have been legally accepted as donors – comprising 14.7 and 8.9 per cent of the national female and male populations, respectively – and a total of 6.6 million have registered their interest in donating.3 As of 2015, however, 69 per cent of Australian adult respondents have expressed their willingness to donate, according to a survey commissioned by the Australian Organ and Tissue Donation and Transplantation Authority.4 These statistics came as a shock to filmmaker Richard Todd, who previously made coal-seam-gas documentary Frackman (2015). ‘I started asking, how can this be?’ he tells me. If there’s such a…

Karrabing is not a clan, not a language group, not a nation. It is an aspiration.1 There is just one fixed protagonist in the installations and short films of the Karrabing Film Collective: the Australian landscape features prominently in each of its works. However, the reality of life in the Northern Territory’s Indigenous Belyuen community makes such continuity difficult for the human cast and crew. Such factors as economic and health status, legal interventions and premature death rates make this grassroots collective a somewhat-unstable group. In fact, it isn’t unusual for a character to be played by one performer, only to be inexplicably taken over by another later in the film. The reason? Incarceration. ‘[P]art and parcel of the politics and aesthetics of Karrabing films are the constant disturbances that…

In this era of entertainment oversaturation, when films can live or die on word-of-mouth praise, the documentary is having a mini moment. Showing in Australian cinemas at the time of writing are blockbuster documentaries on two fashion luminaries (McQueen, Ian Bonhôte, 2018; Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist, Lorna Tucker, 2018) and one on US President Donald Trump (Fahrenheit 11/9, 2018) by pop-doco superstar Michael Moore. Time reports that, over the 2018 American summer alone, three US documentaries with theatrical releases – Morgan Neville’s Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, Julie Cohen and Betsy West’s RBG, and Tim Wardle’s Three Identical Strangers – collectively grossed US$45.7 million at the domestic box office.1 And online it’s no different: streaming services Netflix, Stan and their competitors have stocked up on a cache of documentaries on…

Jia Zhang-Ke has been busy. In the year since his last feature, Mountains May Depart (2015), he has produced several films through his company, Xstream Pictures; contributed a segment to the omnibus film Where Has the Time Gone? (2017); played a key role in inaugurating the Pingyao International Film Festival; and also knocked out a standalone short, The Hedonists (2016). And, while it wouldn’t be unreasonable to fear that Jia seems to be spreading himself mightily thin, fans need not worry. Returning with Ash Is Purest White (2018), the writer/director is firing on all cylinders, his focus as refined as ever. Jia’s is a body of work marked by subtle inflections and modulations as he returns to the same set of concerns from film to film. His characters have often…

We see four men – lanky, floppy-haired, tufted with goatees – sporting Converses and Pink Floyd T-shirts. They play air guitar and air drums; they make the sign of the horns with their hands. They’re into Metallica logos, and they rehearse atonal noise in a graffitied basement riddled with spiders and mice. ‘Where did you learn to play drums?’ asks an off-screen Australian voice. ‘Nowhere,’ replies Pedram, the drummer. Music documentaries have covered the myth of the lost, fallen artist before – Finding Fela (Alex Gibney, 2014), No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (Martin Scorsese, 2005), countless Kurt Cobain tales. They’re redemption fables, often. Australian filmmaker Travis Beard’s RocKabul (2018), however, follows an aspiring metal band from first rehearsal, to first gig, to final downfall. District Unknown was, in the early…

This wasn’t the distant nightmare scenario experienced by Jodie Foster’s Sarah Tobias in The Accused (Jonathan Kaplan, 1988) or the faraway feminist fantasy of Geena Davis’ and Susan Sarandon’s titular characters in Thelma & Louise (Ridley Scott, 1991); the women in Shame had the same accents we did, the same clothes, and had the same groceries and magazines in their houses. Many of them we knew from locally produced kids television shows and sitcoms that we watched, zonked out after school. We’d grown up with a lot of these people. They felt like family. On this front, revisiting Shame now – at a cultural moment when critical and mainstream discourse surrounding sexual violence and harassment have been transformed by the #MeToo movement1 – is a shattering experience when considering the…

SCREEN FOREVER CRECHE IS A GAME CHANGER Cameron Williams For the first time ever in its history, the Screen Forever conference has offered a free creche to delegates. The service – a joint initiative between the South Australian Film Corporation (SAFC), Create NSW, Screen Producers Australia and Women in Film and Television (WIFT) – was situated on site at the 2018 event’s Crown Conference Centre location and was managed by childcare provider Crechendo. The creche accommodated up to twenty children. Returning to work after becoming a parent can be tough – less sleep, zero time to yourself and the stress of balancing the demands of employment. While a lot of workplaces have begun to offer flexible arrangements to working parents, they don’t tend to account for or extend these to…