Australian Flavour - Something For Everyone's Taste

Newcastle Herald

Saturday April 12, 2008

GR

The flavour of the Dungog Film Festival will be

unmistakably Australian again this year, with some

16 Australian feature and documentary films to

be showcased along with 40 new short films and four

Australian classics.

The full program guide will be released on May 28, the

night before the festival opens.

Highlights include screenings of The Black Balloon,

presented by the film's maker, Elissa Down, and Cactus which

was produced by Bryan Brown (who also acts in it).

Brown will also be attending the Dungog event.

Unfi nished Sky, a feature film starring William McInnes as

outback farmer who takes in an illegal refugee, will

also screen.

The documentary Never Say Die Matildas, about Australia's

national women's football team, will also be shown.

Among the presenters of master classes are Al Clark,

who produced Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Chopper, Razzle

Dazzle and Thunderstruck among others, and Jim McElroy,

co-producer of The Cars

That Ate Paris and producer

of Picnic at Hanging Rock, The

Last Wave and The Year of Living

Dangerously.

The workshops include

sessions on Final Cut Express,

pod-casting, Garage band and

after-effects editing programs.

Five screenplays will be

performed "in the raw" by

actors in front of an audience, giving the writers realistic

feedback.

For history buffs, there will be some real treats. The

Outback on Screen: Physical Space/State of Mind will be

presented by Graham Shirley, senior

curator with the National Film and Sound

Archive.

Shirley will also present a rediscovered

print of Australia's earliest surviving sound

film, consisting of 10 minutes of coverage of

the arrival of the Duke and Duchess of York

at Farm Cove, Sydney, in March 1927.

The film, held for many years by the UKs

National Film and Television Archive, was

only recently repatriated to Australia.

© 2008 Newcastle Herald

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