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Adelaide Film Festival.  With
over 300 films and a huge range of related events on offer, the 2005
Adelaide Film Festival is the overload event that Director Katrina
Sedgwick believes an international film festival must be. Here's a
meagre pointer to a few events. If Sarah Watt's short films are any indication, the frocked-up opening night film and party (Fri 18 Feb) with her debut feature 'Look Both Ways' will be a great event. The film screens again (Thu 3 Mar) and her astonishingly-animated, painterly shorts can be seen when Watts is in conversation with Margaret Pomeranz (Sun 20 Feb) for free. These works feature people and other animals swimming and dissolving, dream-like as Watts explores human identity. The consummate 'Small Treasures' is voiced by Rachel Griffiths, 'Living with Happiness' has Sigrid Thornton and 'Local Dive' depicts a public pool. All are full of humour and chime with deep truth. Lovers of contemporary music will appreciate the range of styles covered this year. 'Dig' ( Sat 26 Feb) is seven years of insider footage documenting the rivalry between The Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre, narrated by Courtney Taylor-Taylor. Many will find Neil Young's 'Greendale' some compensation for Adelaide missing the live show that toured to Australia last year. This music-theatre suite is Young offering a new story for the 21st Century and it's a visionary masterwork from a mature and assured artist. He sings ten long, closely-related ballads that tell of the Green family's extraordinary and tragic lives, all heartfelt, hopeful and superbly voiced and played. In 'Searching For The Wrong-Eyed Jesus' (Sat 19, Mon 28 Feb), we hit the road with singer/songwriter Jim White at the wheel of a beat-up Chevy, on a meandering odyssey into the deep south of the USA. We ride-around to witness devilishly-haunting, lo-fi musical performances from The Handsome Family, David Johansen, Johnny Dowd, Catpower and more. It's a laid-back, drawling celebration of dark and curious swamp-ballads, observed in their natural habitat. From beer-bars to trailer parks, God-bothering pentecostals mix with backsliding sinners. This film will thrill lovers of backwoods music, and intrigue the uninitiated. There's also 'Moog' (Tue 1 Mar), the story of the instrument's inventor with Stereolab, Rick Wakeman and others, and 'Kill Your Idols' (Fri 25 Feb, Wed 2 Mar) which focuses on 'No Wave' artists including Sonic Youth and Lydia Lunch. The return of 'Breath Control: History Of The Human Beatbox' (Sun 27 Feb) will be welcomed by those turned away from the sell-out screenings of this superb film at the last festival. Amongst the feature films, the Canadian gem 'Rhinoceros Eyes' (Thu 24, Mon 28 Feb) is guaranteed to please connoisseurs of smart movies. Exquisitely androgynous Chep lives and works amongst the paraphernalia of film sets, except when he goes alone to the cinema to watch romantic drivel. He expertly locates bizarre props but animated hallucinations confuse him as to what to do with his life. Brilliantly recreating familiar film images and scenarios, this alternately hilarious and grim metaphysical tale is visually extravagant, and stars Michael Pitt, Gale Harold and Paige Turco. It is well-matched with the short, 'Ryan', a moving homage to Ryan Larkin, a brilliant, Oscar-nominated pioneer of stop-motion animation from the sixties. Psychedelic and somewhat macabre images (including a cameo from Bill Griffith's 'Zippy') tell the ripped-off, tragedy-strewn and substance-abusing story of his now, down-and-out hero. 'Midwinter Night's Dream' (Tue 22, Sun 27 Feb) is a gentle fable about love, hope and acceptance in a world that has gone mad. It is the Serbian winter of 2004 and a haunted peace has settled on the former Yugoslavia. For Lazar, a belated homecoming is made even more uneasy when he discovers that his mother has died and neighbours have looted the family home. In the house he finds, instead, Bosnian refugees, a mother Jasna and her autistic daughter Jovana. Beautifully filmed without pretention, it stars Jovana Mitic who has autism. 'The Hidden History Of Homosexual Australia' (World Premiere Sun 27 Feb) is a feature-length documentary examining the changing social and legal position of homosexual people in Australia from the time of non-Indigenous settlement to the present. There's the police riot at the first Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, and a survey of 'treatments' such as maiming brain-surgery and aversion shock-therapy, but ultimately the film celebrates an 'out and proud' present represented by Justice Kirby, David Marr and others. The 'Made in SA Shorts' program (Sat 19 Feb) includes 'Frames', about memory loss. It stars Roger Cardwell as Frank, doing his woodwork in a suburban, Australian, backyard shed. It's a surprising story full of love, patience and hope; tenderly written, and superbly acted. And that's the tip of the iceberg! Get the program or go to www.adelaidefilmfestival.org.
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