Michelle Carey’s 17 festival picks
MIFF’S artistic director would like to make the following suggestions, spanning hot docs to fabulous fictions, Australia to Zambia
01 Abacus: Small Enough to Jail
“This documentary is about the one bank they tried to prosecute in the US after the GFC, a small family-run Chinatown bank in New York. There’s a lot of issues around racism. This is the one bank they went after! I was crying.” 02 Alipato: The Very Brief Life of an Ember “This is just bizarre, made by a young Filipino punk guy called Khavn. It’s about a gang of kids in Manila who rob a bank, so it’s very pulpy, but beautiful looking with bright neon colours, a dreamy aesthetic. It’s pretty out there.”
03 Celia
“Last year we worked with the National Film and Sound Archive in Canberra to restore
Proof, and this year we’re doing Ann Turner’s Celia [1989], which for me is one of the great, underseen gems of Australian cinema.”
04 Daphne
“It’s a British indie that follows a self-destructive woman [Emily Beecham] negotiating life moving into her thirties. She works in a café, she parties, she boozes. She’s a great character. The filmmaker, Peter Mackie Burns, is coming out for the festival.”
05 Have You Seen the Listers?
“It’s a really strong year for new Australian films and my pick is
Have You Seen the Listers? It’s directed by Eddie Martin who made [searing skateboarding doco] All This Mayhem. This one is a portrait of artist Anthony Lister.”
06 I Am Not a Witch
“It’s set in Zambia with a cast of complete unknowns and focuses on this young girl who is accused of being a witch by the town she lives in. It’s quite funny and just a real surprise.”
07 Lemon
“Lemon is a dry black comedy set in LA. It’s directed by Janicza Bravo and starring her husband Brett Gelman, who is a Larry David-style comic, as a problematic acting teacher.”
08 A Life in Waves
“I really love this Suzanne Ciani documentary. Chiani was here in January she played some concerts. She’s a pioneer in analogue and electronic music from the ’70s, she worked on the Buchla synthesiser.”
09 Lucky
“Harry Dean Stanton is the lead and he’s 90 years old! It follows this old man through his daily life in a desert town and the rituals that he plays out every day.”
10 The Paris Opera
“A great documentary. As someone who works in the arts I thought it was hilarious – it really exposes the bureaucracy.”
11Rat Film
“This is an essay film ostensibly about the rat problem in Baltimore, Maryland, but it also looks at the 20th century history of the city, especially its racial segregation and how the rat problem is a big part of that story.”
12 Rey
“A fantastical film about a French explorer in Chile. It’s a film that was literally dug up from underground. Niles Atallah shot the film, buried the celluloid in the soil then dug it up again, so what you see is a lot of degraded film.”
13Shame
“A ballsy Australian classic from 1988 that has been restored, about a motorcycle-riding lawyer tackling a rape case in a corrupt, small town. It was the breakout role for Deborra-lee Furness who’s going to be there for the screening.”
14 The 10th Victim
“I love this 1965 Italian scifi film, with Ursula Andress and Marcello Mastroianni. It’s so much fun. I remember seeing it in the 1990s and being bowled over by the set design, the costumes, and the whole story, which anticipates The
Hunger Games and reality TV.”
15 There Will Be Blood with the MSO
“Film festivals should be about transcending a normal viewing experience. We love this film and it will be wonderful to see it with a full orchestra playing the iconic soundtrack by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood.”
16The Untamed
“The Untamed is a fantastical, dark erotic thriller from Mexico. It’s quite dreamy, it’s got the fantastical element embedded in this realistic drama.”
17 Western
“Western is a funny German film that looks at masculinity – two groups of male manual workers on the border of Greece and Bulgaria facing off , like a western.”