Proper Aussie cinema at LFF

This is a great year for British film, and I have relished the opportunity to champion so many of them in the weeks leading up to the Festival. Now, I must say a word for this year’s terrific selection of Australian films, which includes a number of premieres still to come in the next few days. Like many Londoners (and I am now unequivocally and jubilantly a Londoner), I embrace my new heartland while keeping one foot firmly planted in my homeland.

When I read my colleague Michael Blyth’s terrific 10 great horror films of the 21st century article, I briefly wondered what exactly had provoked the comment “no one blends the horrific and the hysterical with quite the same perverse irreverence as the Australians”! Was this his reflection on three inspiring years of working together?

Then I began to enjoy this strange tribute, because in different ways this observation resonates across many forms of Australian cinema. Aussie filmmakers have a great history of making inventive films that sneak up on you and take you by surprise, of working with unexpected combinations of tone, and using levity in really impactful ways. Creatively, Australians like to take risks, to fly in the face of what is proper – and that attitude reverberates across this year’s selection.

This glorious road movie follows Ben Howard, the Staves, Nathaniel Rateliff and Bear’s Den as they hit the road – in five VW camper vans – playing their delicate and rousing folk-tinged music on a tour that takes them from SXSW to Boston.

Directed by James Marcus Haney, and featuring Mumford & Sons’ Ben Lovett, the project by London’s Communion is a three-way co-production and its Aussie connection is through editor Kitty Green who directed last year’s LFF Documentary Competition entry, Ukraine Is Not a Brothel.

Rolf de Heer is one of Australia’s great maverick directors, who came to international prominence after the success of the macabre, funny and subversive Bad Boy Bubby at the Venice Film Festival in 1993. This is his third film with David Gulpilil, the indigenous actor whose first role was in Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout.

Charlie’s Country, which won Gulpilil best actor in Un Certain Regard at Cannes this year, is about an ageing Aboriginal man living in a rundown community in contemporary Australia who fights back against a system of injustice and neglect. It’s inflected with the same diverting blackfella humour that rippled through the magical Ten Canoes (de Heer’s 2006 film collaboration with Peter Djigirr and Gulpilil’s community, the people of Ramingining), however Charlie’s Country is altogether darker and less optimistic, circling back thematically to the much starker period film The Tracker (2002).

The three films form a loose trilogy, foregrounding as they do the indigenous Australian experience, each with a different central premise that also reverberates thematically in all three films – racism, the spiritual relationship with ‘country’ and fraught assimilation. Seen separately or collectively, they leave an indelible imprint, not only in the mind of the viewer, but also on the history of Australian cinema.

Director Mark Hartley is the definitive exploitation movie buff. His knowledge is extraordinary and his passion runs deep. We used to do film reviews on the same radio programme in Melbourne back in the 90s – RRR’s Film Buff’s Forecast.

Since then, he has made three terrific, highly enjoyable documentaries – Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild Untold Story of Ozploitation!, Machete Maidens Unleashed! and now Electric Boogaloo: The Wild Untold Story of Cannon Films. He’s also remade Richard Franklin’s weird horror film Patrick and has done countless mini-docs for Australian DVD label Umbrella Entertainment’s releases and reissues.

Kriv Stenders first came to my attention when his knock-out short film Two/Out, a muscular two-hander set in a prison cell, won the top prizes at the AFI Film Festival and the Melbourne International Film Festival back in 1998. He went on to direct some very smart, formally inventive films, including Boxing Day, which is made as if it is real-time one take. His last film, Red Dog, was a popular hit in Oz and he looks set to follow that success with this bold, appealing comedy thriller starring Simon Pegg as a gun-for-hire.

Actor Josh Lawson is well known in Australia for his television work, in particular his improvised comedy, which has also seen him land recent roles in mainstream American films like Anchorman 2 and The Campaign.

He turns his hand to directing (and also stars) with outrageously funny results in The Little Death, a film that manages to lampoon some pretty risqué sexual taboos in a way that is both provocative and somehow strangely innocent. Made on a shoestring, this is an exuberant first feature, throbbing with comic vitality.

This riveting, cold case documentary has been a personal journey for director Andrew Lancaster as the subject is his great uncle, Bill Lancaster, an early aviator hero whose final years were shrouded in mystery and accusations of murder.

This is Andrew’s first foray into documentary-making (he is also a film composer and musician) and follows his first feature Accidents Happen (2009), which starred Geena Davis and was scripted by Brian Carbee, the writer-performer of Lancaster’s brilliant, acerbic award-winning short In Search of Mike (2001).

Much-loved actor, broadcast personality, writer and genuine funnyman, Angus Sampson, teams up with Tony Mahony – who has a strong reputation in Australia for his music video work and photography – to direct this tonally complex film that blends smart comedy with brutal thriller.

The screenplay was co-written with Leigh Whannell, who wrote the Saw and Insidious films with James Wan and who, like Sampson, also performs in The Mule as well as in Wan’s films. I remember these Melbourne boys from the days they used to host a really influential Saturday morning youth culture show called Recovery … nearly 20 years on and they’ve still got bite!

Son of a Gun is the much anticipated directorial debut of Julius Avery, whose short film Jerrycan was a Jury Prize winner at the Cannes Film Festival and won the AFI Award for Best Short. He also wrote the screenplay for Yardbird, which won Best Short at Cannes in 2012.

Son of a Gun is a muscular thriller directed with real flair, featuring a scorching performance from Ewan McGregor as the hardened crim and Brendan Thwaites as the rookie with a razor-sharp survival instinct.

Lynette Wallworth is one of Australia’s leading artists. Londoners would be familiar with the glorious Coral Rekindling Venus, which screened at the Greenwich Planetarium during the London Olympics, as well as her beautiful earlier work Hold: Vessel, where the audience was invited to ‘catch’ exquisite natural imagery in bowls (presented at the BFI Southbank gallery).

Her first feature-length documentary is as gorgeous, funny and life-affirming as a film about setting up an alternative, not-for-profit funeral service could be! Tender is produced by Kath Shelper (Camera d’Or winner Samson & Delilah) and features an evocative score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis.

Producer Robert Connolly (Balibo, The Bank) mines a rich vein of creative talent for this expansive adaptation of celebrated Australian author Tim Winton’s short stories. Each of the 18 segments is made by a different filmmaker, including Justin Kurzel (Snowtown), Tony Ayres (The Slap) and Warwick Thornton (Samson & Delilah).

Actor Mia Wasikowska makes an impressive directorial debut and acclaimed artist Shaun Gladwell also contributes a segment. The stories are loosely linked by characters, a sense of place and a recurring, explorative theme: life’s moments of change. Its sparkling cast includes Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving and Rose Byrne.

Australian shorts at BFI London Film Festival are: Blood Pulls a Gun, Ghost Train, Magic Miles and The Unmoving Mountain.