SYDNEY FILM FESTIVAL 2012 DAILY PLANNER

To help Harbour City filmgoers plan their Sydney Film Festival experience, SCREEN-SPACE is providing its inaugural FESTIVAL PLANNER - a day-by-day breakdown of the biggest movies, hidden gems and special events on offer. Bookmark this page and follow the links to reviews, interviews (including Festival director, Nashen Moodley) and the Festival website.

DAY 1 – WEDNESDAY JUNE 6
Hot ticket – Opening Night red carpet arrivals at the iconic State Theatre (pictured, above) for the World Premiere of Peter Templeman’s Not Suitable for Children, starring Ryan Kwanten.
Don’t Miss – Writer/director Keith Wright’s bizarrely original UK zombie-mockumentary, Harold’s Going Stiff.
First-run Reviews – Woody Allen: A Documentary; Whore’s Glory; Tatsumi.

DAY 2 – THURSDAY JUNE 7
Hot Ticket – Premiere of Rachel Perkins’ Mabo, an intimate portrayal of the political life of Eddie Mabo (Jimi Bani) and life-long love he shared with Bonita (Deborah Mailman).
Don’t Miss – Celebrity photographer Fabrizio Maltese at meeting venue The Hub, talking of his life shooting the stars at festivals all over the world; Matthew McConnaughey in William Friedkin’s redneck-noir thriller, Killing Joe; Paul Dano in the Sundance sensation, For Ellen.
First-run Reviews – Killing Anna; Vivan las Antipodas!

DAY 3 – FRIDAY JUNE 8
Hot Ticket – Australian premiere of Sundance winner Beasts of the Southern Wild at the State Theatre, followed by Wes Anderson’s star-studded coming-of-age story Moonrise Kingdom; both direct from Cannes 2012.
Don’t Miss – The second and final screening of iconic Italian directing brothers Paolo and Vittorio Taviani’s prison drama Caesar Must Die; two documentaries exploring the power of music to unite communities – Joe Berlinger’s Under African Skies and Polly Watkins’ Dr Samast’s Music School; the latest French horror sensation, Livid; Season of the Sun, Takumi Furukawa’s 1956 disenchanted youth drama, kicks off the centenary retrospective of Japanese studio giant, Nikkatsu.
First-run Reviews – Livid.

DAY 4 – SATURDAY JUNE 9
Hot Ticket - First screenings in the Bernardo Bertolucci retrospective, 1964s Before The Revolution and 1970s The Spiders Startegem, both at the downstairs auditorium in the Art Gallery of NSW.
Don’t Miss – Pietra Brettkelly’s New Zealand doco Maori Boy Genius, to be introduced by its subject, inspiring teen Ngaa Rauuira Pumanawawhiti; Woody Harrelson as a violent, corrupt cop in Rampart, reteaming him with The Messenger director Oren Moverman; Cate Shortland’s follow-up to Somersault, the Australian-German co-production Lore.
First-run Reviews – A Royal Affair; The British Guide to Showing Off; Despite The Gods.

DAY 5 – SUNDAY JUNE 10
Hot Ticket – The Australian premiere of Cannes-honoured Amour, from German iconoclast Michael Haneke.
Don’t Miss – Kirsten Stewart in Walter Salles’ adaptation of the Jack Kerouac novel, On The Road; Veteran documentarian Frederick Wiseman’s revealing documentary filmed inside Paris’ most famous gentlemen’s club, Crazy Horse; Lee Hirsch’s controversial documentary, Bully.
First-run Reviews – Captive; Beauty; Last Call at the Oasis; Excision.

DAY 6 – MONDAY JUNE 11
Hot Ticket – Walt Disney Studio’s presentation of the latest animated adventure from Pixar, Brave, with co-star Billy Connolly and a host of Australian industry types walking the Red Carpet at Event’s George St Cinemas.
Don’t Miss – The 2012 Ian McPherson Memorial Lecture, during which leading critic David Stratton and Aussie acting great Bryan Brown chat about their careers and the Australian film industry; All 310 minutes of Bertolucci’s 1976 epic, 1900; the World Premiere of the Australian docu-drama, Coniston massacre, presented in traditional Warlpiri and Anmatyerre dialects.
First-run Reviews – The Warped Forest; Marley.

DAY 7 – TUESDAY JUNE 12
Hot Ticket – To coincide with the release of the ACS book Shadowcatchers, a Cinematographers Panel gathers together the artists who shot Mabo, South Solitary and Little Fish, along with author Martha Ansara, to examine the art and craft of capturing the film image.
Don’t Miss – South Korea’s Official Competition entrant, Yuen Sang-ho’s animated social drama The King of Pigs; the French police procedural drama, Polisse; Richard Bates Jr’s surreal splatter/melodrama Excision, featuring ex-porn queen Traci Lords and trash-king John Waters.

DAY 8 – WEDNESDAY JUNE 13
Hot Ticket – Berlinale Best Director winner Christian Petzold’s Barbara, a study in isolation and paranoia in a repressed society.
Don’t Miss – Pen-ek Ratanaruang reinterpretation of the hitman drama; Headshot; a free presentation of the best 40 years of shorts films from graduates of the Australian Film Television and Radio School (amongst them works by Jane Campion, Rowan Woods and PJ Hogan).
First-run Reviews – Postcards From The Zoo.

DAY 9 – THURSDAY JUNE 14
Hot Ticket – The Blackfellas Shorts Program features over 2 hours of short-films from indigenous filmmakers; screening free at The Hub from 5pm.
Don’t Miss – Marc Fennel and cohorts dissect modern movie marketing with their Hub presentation Coming Sooner: The Art of the Movie Trailer; vying for the feel-bad film of the year award, Rick Alverson’s ironically-titled US-indie, The Comedy; the World Premiere of Dead Europe, the adaptation Christos Tsiolkas’ book by Jewboy director Tony Krawitz.

DAY 10 – FRIDAY JUNE 15
Hot Ticket – The latest version of Wuthering Heights, from Fish Tank director Andrea Arnold, spins the classic on its head with a radical new interpretation.
Don’t Miss – Lea Pool’s cage-rattling Pink Ribbons Inc, an expose of the financial practices of the breast cancer charity group; globe-trotting Australian filmmaker Benjamin Gilmour looks at the trials and tribulations of being a first-response Paramedico, in his gripping doco; slice and dice in the third dimension with the legendary Takashi Miike’s Hara-kiri: Death of a Samurai 3D.

DAY 11 – SATURDAY JUNE 16
Hot Ticket – The final film in the Nikkatsu retrospective, Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter, is an anti-everything shocker celebrating individual style, personal privileges and a f***-you stance against political correctness.
Don’t Miss – Keanu Reeves interviews Hollywood’s leading directors in Side by Side, his doco on the digital-vs-film revolution that is changing how films are made; Canadian auteur’s Philippe Falardeau’s Oscar-nominated classroom drama, Monsieur Lazhar; director Costa Botes introduces the heart-breaking The Last Dogs of Winter, a personal take on the working dogs of Canda’s frozen North. 

DAY 12 – SUNDAY JUNE 17
Hot Ticket – At a headline-grabbing 320 minutes, and presented in 2 parts at The State Theatre, Anurag Kashyup’s sprawling, vividly cinematic crime drama Gangs of Wasseypur will test the mettle of even the staunchest last-day audiences.
Don’t Miss – ....anything you’ve missed already! The last day of the Festival is your last chance to catch up on the most buzzed-about titles; Bertolucci’s sexually-frank 60’s set free-love tale, The Dreamers, with Eva Green; The Closing Night film, Colin Trevorrow’s hipster-cool romantic/fantasy/comedy Safety Not Guaranteed.

FESTIVAL WRAP-UP....
Having watched the world flash by in widescreen ratio for the best part of the last two weeks, SCREEN-SPACE feels qualified to cast a critical eye over the 59th Sydney Film Festival (also feeling drained, unfocussed and tired, but will push on....). The selection of Yorgos Lanthimos' Alps as the Official Prize winner was certainly unexpected, as most of those I shared the long lines with favoured Beasts of the Southern Wild, Caesar Must Die or Neighbouring Sounds to take out the honour. The 'Greek New Wave' is not for everyone's taste (Ex-SFF director Lynden Barber was a vocal hater of Lanthimos' film - one of two he walked out of during the Festival), but in the Jury President's Rachel Ward's view, "Alps is intelligent, uniquely emotive filmmaking from an important new voice in Greek cinema, a finely calibrated, absurdist study of power and identity." Perhaps...
In his first year as Artistic Director, Nashen Moodley scored big with his Opening and Closing Night choices; the rousing reception afforded Colin Trevorrow's Safety Not Guaranteed set the party-mood perfectly for the Festival's State Theatre curtain call. Some other programme choices were met with raised eyebrows - Walter Salles' On The Road divided opinion ("long and shit", was one audience members boisterous response when queried); in hindsight, the inclusion of Anurag Kashyap's ambitious but flawed epic Gangs of Wasseypur Parts 1 and 2 may have seemed indulgent (Moodley is an avowed expert on Indian cinema); few considered Tony Krawitz's Dead Europe a serious contender amongst the Competition films.
For SCREEN-SPACE, highlights included Matthew McConnaughey's performance in William Friedkin's Killer Joe; New Zealander Costa Botes' documentary The Last Dogs of Winter; and, Side by Side, an examination of the pros and cons of the film industry's digital conversion. We struggled with Umesh Vinayak's Kulkarni's The Temple, Shunchiro Miki's The Warped Forest and Maiwenn's Polisse. The dubious honour of being named the Festival's biggest duds included Paul Gallasch's hardsell-mockumentary Killing Anna (inexplicably awarded the Best Documentary prize) and pretentious French horror film Livid.
Organisers have confirmed year-to-year growth for the Sydney Film Festival. 122,000 patrons, an increase of 10% on 2011, and a 27% uptick in Flexipass sales suggest Sydney continues to value the worth of its annual celebration of film culture. With Melbourne International Film Festival boldly upping its press release announcements during the SFF fortnight, competition for the top honour of being considered Australia's premier film event is at an all-time high.