Trouble and triumphs on screen at Byron’s film fiesta The second half of the Byron Bay Film Festival contains some of its ‘heavy hitters’ – feature-scale dramas and documentaries from around the world. Let’s leave aside the rock n roll explosion that is Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World … although this
A decade of artistic connection between Byron Bay Film Festival and the Canadian filmmaking community has this year been formalised into a showcase program called Creative Canada. Highlighting the best of Canadian culture from across the country – in film, music and the emerging realities mediums – Creative Canada is based on our nations’ common
The seasoned ABC Open journalist Catherine Marciniak has covered hundreds of stories on the human condition. We asked her: Does someone in that position ever become hardened to emotion? Her answers may move you. The seven examples she gave in quick-fire succession to our writer, Gail Knight, put her “smack in the middle of some
Renowned big wave surfer and filmmaker Dayla Soul said it was an honour to be included in BBFF16 when we spoke to her. But it is our privilege to be screening her documentary It Ain’t Pretty, based on her own and other women’s experience of sharing the big waves around San Francisco with the men
In the lead up to the 10th annual Byron Bay Film Festival we spoke to two local filmmakers, Poppy Walker and Sophie Hexter whose short, Hitch, will be screened as part of this year’s event. We asked them about their pathway into film and what it is about the Northern Rivers that inspires them.
In dark times courage is born… sometimes in a cow paddock The Bentley Effect is a poignant, personal and powerful feature documentary chronicling the rise of the social movement against unconventional gas mining in the Northern Rivers region of Australia – and it will be hitting our cinema screens next month. Five and a
Hitch is a captivating story of a young, deaf boy in rural Australia who, when faced with unfortunate circumstances, runs away from home. This universally resonant tale highlights the turbulent journey of understanding and learning to cope with loss through the eyes of a child. The young runaway (Xander Mclean) communicates the experience without saying
THE Byron Bay Film Festival opens on October 14 with a feature documentary about an Aboriginal father and his son, and the lad’s initiation into manhood through ancient tribal ceremonies. Zach’s Ceremony is both an intensely personal look at Zachariah Doomadgee and his father Alec’s sometimes fraught relationship and a celebration of the profound and
It’s 1996 in inner city Los Angeles and only three public skate parks exist in the entire country. This is a time where smartphones weren’t everywhere, and where the Internet was only a shell of what it is now. City youths were left running wild, ripe for misdirection, and often turned to wicked vices –
The mother behind the model’s mask Dutch filmmaker Tom Fasseart ‘s beautiful and poignant documentary A Family Affair is a forensic study of his grandmother Marianne Hertz, a former model, now 95, and the dark heart of the film. Inexplicably, Marianne repeatedly abandoned Tom’s father Robert and his siblings, firstly in a children’s home when
