Actor moves to director’s chair
GREAT Australian actor David Wenham stepped into a role he’s long coveted for his latest screen project Ellipsis – that of director.
Wenham will walk the red carpet at the Arts Centre Gold Coast on Thursday for the Queensland premiere of the 86-minute feature, shot in seven days in Sydney.
The first feature film Wenham’s directed, Ellipsis follows two strangers (Emily Barclay and Benedict Samuel) who spend a night on the town in Sydney after bumping into each other crossing the road.
“I’ve been acting for a long time and for the past 15 years I’ve been a frustrated director in an actor’s body,” Wenham said.
“It was a micro budget film that took 10 days to make from inception of the idea to the filming right through to completion,” he said.
“We did it on purpose – not to make the world’s quickest feature film.
“I’ve always been up front about wanting to make an experimental film.
“For three days, myself and two actors (put ourselves in a room and workshopped a narrative idea then we filmed those characters operating in a real environments in sequential order.”
The result is a sort of ‘fantasy doco’ – a ‘dramedy’ Wenham calls his ‘love letter to Sydney’.
“It certainly has documentary elements to it thanks DAVID WENHAM
to Simon Morris, who shot the film – I needed someone who had shot docos and feature films,” Wenham said.
“There was no rehearsal – 95 per cent of the film is one take with two cameras.”
Wenham said the film documented a Sydney he fears will soon be lost.
“I know how Sydney feels to me. Where the film was set was basically my home,” he said.
“I’m just down the road from Kings Cross, an area I have a huge amount of affection for.
“Kings Cross will not exist as we know it soon ... In the next few years people will be coming down and seeing generic apartment blocks.”
Wenham will also be seen as Christian Travers in the Gold Coast-filmed biopic In Like Flynn, due out later this year.
“I’ve spent time on the Goldie over the years making big and small movies from Pirates through to Gettin Square and Errol Flynn,” Wenham said. “I have a huge affinity for the Gold Coast as a place and a place to make a movie.”
Would he consider directing a film here in the future?
“I have a project that all going well, may involve the Gold Coast in the not too distant future,” he said.
Ellipsis premieres at the Arts Centre Gold Coast on Thursday at 6.45pm followed by a Q & A with Wenham and Ellipsis executive producer Rob Connelly.
Tickets are $18 adults and $15 concessions via www.gcfilmfestival.com.
I’VE ALWAYS BEEN UP FRONT ABOUT WANTING TO MAKE AN EXPERIMENTAL FILM