‘New ideas and worlds’
This year’s special 67th Sydney Film Festival: Virtual Edition and Awards presents a distilled essence of Sydney Film Festival, and runs from June 10-21.
DIRECTOR Karen Pearlman’s I Want to Make A Film About Women – a documentary love letter to the Russian constructivist women who pioneered Soviet filmmaking in the 1920s – is one of many powerful films to screen at this year’s Sydney Film Festival (SFF) from June 10-21.
Bringing to life three artists in particular – Esfir Shub, Lilya Brik and Varvara Stepanova – Pearlman speculates on what they might have thought, felt and done had it not been for Stalin’s oppression of the arts during that period.
I Want to Make A Film About Women premiered at the Jewish International Film Festival in Australia last year.
In the short film Grevillea, a wrongly convicted Jewish teen caught in limbo at one of Australia’s scarred youth justice centres, is torn between new and old customs after asking a resident artist for a tattoo.
Grevillea was nominated for Best Short Film at the Berlin International Film Festival this year.
Butterflies sees a family from a kibbutz in northern Israel take a leisurely drive through the countryside, aware that it could be their last one together.
In Ros Horin’s second feature documentary, Rosemary’s Way, a charismatic change-maker, Kenyan-born Rosemary Kariuki, who has made it her mission to empower migrant women in Sydney, entices them out of cultural silos to connect with each other and wider Australian society.
Rosemary’s Way highlights the disparity between our concept and the reality of a multicultural Australia for many refugees and migrants, and has been announced as a finalist for the 2020 Documentary Australia Foundation Award as part of the Sydney Film Festival: Virtual Edition and Awards. Winners will be announced at the SFF’s Virtual Awards Ceremony on June 18.
SFF director Nashen Moodley commented, “Since the 66th Sydney Film Festival in 2019, everything and nothing has changed. We aren’t together in a dark cinema sharing new ideas and worlds – but film is still where we look for them.
“This year’s special 67th Sydney Film Festival: Virtual Edition and Awards presents a distilled essence of Sydney Film Festival, where audiences can not only watch mind-boggling films but support the filmmakers who’ve made them.”
All films will screen with bonus material exclusively filmed for SFF, including filmmaker introductions and the screening, followed by question and answer sessions.
Joining Tribeca Film Festival and other film festivals from around the world, SFF has also launched a 10-day digital festival which began on May 29, called We Are One: A Global Film Festival. Acclaimed Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid held a masterclass in conversation with actress and screenwriter Romi Aboulafia.
Films and ticket prices are available at ondemand.sff.org.au.
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