The Eye Of The Storm recently won The Age Critics Award at MIFF. Director Fred Schepisi spoke with Alice Terlikowski about his return to Australian storytelling, upcoming projects and the industry at large.
Roxanne, The Russia House and Six Degrees Of Separation, to name a few, are all under the belt of Australian director Fred Schepisi but it’s his latest work starring Geoffrey Rush and Judy Davis that holds a particular significance to the Australian industry.
The 71-year-old director told Encore he’s been working on Australian stories for “quite a long time” but has always aimed to strike a balance between work in Hollywood and at home. The Eye Of The Storm is his first Australian film in 22 years, since Evil Angels – based on the story of Lindy Chamberlain.
“My generation grew up on very few Australian films. In most of the cinemas were American films but if you were really interested you joined a film society and went to festivals and got really engaged by European work. So while you want to work in your own culture and say things with your own country’s voice, you also want to work in other cultures because that’s what you’ve grown up with.”
However, despite 22 years away from the Australian movie-making scene, Schepisi knows what should be done to make a good Aussie film – make it about Australians, in Australia, dealing with Australian issues.
“We need to make films that are about us and deal with our problems, our lives and our feelings. Sometimes that won’t travel, sometimes it surprisingly will. The more specific into a culture something is, the more attractive it can be to people overseas. Are we going to make a lot of films that are going to make a fortune? No. Are we going to make a lot of films that matter to our community? Yes.”
The Eye Of The Storm is not be your typical Australian story in the way, say, Red Dog is.
The film follows siblings Basil (Rush) and Dorothy (Davis) who return home to Sydney to the death bed of their fragile yet manipulative mother, played by Charlotte Rampling. Basil is a knighted actor famous in London while Dorothy married into French nobility. Both are desperate for their mother’s inheritance, to which she is well aware and eager to drag out, if not for just staying alive, but to be cruel to her offspring. It scored The Age Critics’ Award for best Australian feature at last month’s Melbourne International Film Festival.
The Eye Of The Storm opened in cinemas on 15 September.
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