Top
honours: These Final Hours,
an apocalyptic road movie. Photo:
Supplied
Garry Maddox, The Sydney Morning Herald, reports
So why are so many good films coming out of Western Australia?
These Final Hours, the apocalyptic road movie that
won the critics prize at the Melbourne International Film Festival this month,
has joined a strong list that includes Red
Dog, Mad
Bastards, Drift,
Wasted on the Young and
Satellite Boy.
Yet to be released from the state are Julius Avery's drama Son of a Gun, starring Ewan
McGregor, John V. Soto's thriller The
Reckoning, the Tim Winton adaptation The Turning - six chapters were filmed in WA
- Carmelo Musca's thriller Foreshadow
and Rachel Ward's World War I telemovie An
Accidental Soldier.
And two more promising films are due to start shooting soon - Kriv
Stenders' Kill Me Three
Times, another thriller starring Abbie Cornish and Simon Pegg, and
Robert Connolly's Paper
Planes, about a boy who wants to compete in the world paper plane
championships.
The west also has what's described as the country's fastest
growing ''destination'' film festival, with this week's CinefestOz in Busselton
attracting such film identities as David Wenham, Gillian Armstrong, Jack Thompson,
Robert Connolly and executives from Screen Australia, Roadshow Films, Hopscotch
and Madman Entertainment for screenings and industry workshops.
Perth-based producer Tania Chambers, a former chief executive of
both Screen West and Screen NSW, says Western Australia had a long filmmaking
slump after producing Fran,
Shame, Windrider and Father decades ago, with
producers focusing on children's television drama and factual programming.
But a long process of fostering talented directors, state lottery
and regional funding, mining industry finance and new sources of private
investment have produced results.
''There was a deliberate focus over the last 10 years to try and
bring through talent and team people up with experienced executive producers
and co-producers,'' she says.
The chairman of CinefestOz, David Barton, says festival attendance
has grown from 1800 to an expected 15,000 in six years, with screenings and
events expanding from Busselton, a three-hour drive south of Perth, into nearby
towns.
As well as the world premiere of Ward's An Accidental Soldier, the
program includes Australian films that have only screened at the Sydney or
Melbourne film festivals so far, including These
Final Hours, The
Rocket, Mystery
Road, Patrick,
Aim High in Creation
and the WA chapters of The
Turning.
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