Halls Gap Film Festival

Festival Dates: 6 – 8 November, 2009.

Where Held: Classic Cinema, Centenary Hall, Grampians Road, Halls Gap.

This year the Halls Gap Film Festival celebrates its 30^th anniversary and the festival committee is gearing up for a big weekend. The opening night will begin from 6pm with patrons and guests being served light refreshments before the official opening at 7pm.

During the evening, The Featurettes, three talented ladies who specialise in music from the movies, will delight the audience with their unaccompanied harmony style singing.

The committee has also planned that the film component of the evening will follow the format of the 1970s with a newsreel, short documentary and 'trailers' preceding the main feature film.

The remainder of the weekend will also hold a few surprises.

For information on festival programme and bookings contact any of the following

• Phone: 03-5356 4300 or 5356 4448
• Email:
• Web: www.visithallsgap.com.au/filmfestival

For accomodation you can book your own or call the Halls Gap Visitor Centre 1800 065 599.

(Not in the order of screening)

AMREEKA Canada/USA/Kuwait 2009 (Not yet rated 18+)

A humorous and touching fish-out-of-water story in which mother and teenage son decide to escape the daily grind of checkpoints and tension in Palestine and move to the USA, exchanging the military-occupied West Bank for the fast-food occupied Midwest. Things do not quite work out as they expected and filmmaker Cherien Dabis makes the most of the embarrassing, funny and sometimes distressing situations which occur with greater frequency as the family try to assimilate.

Amreeka won the FIPRESCI prize at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.

This is its first screening in Victoria since the this year's Melbourne International Film Festival.

PEACEFUL TIMES Germany 2008 (Unrated 18+)

The period is Germany in the 1960s where Irene Striesow and her family have moved from East Germany to the West, but Irene is homesick and the film traces how the family deals with this uncomfortable situation.

The story is told from the point of view of the children and as such is very touching, although the humerous, tongue in cheek description of the family sets the tone for the film.

The director is Neele Leana Vollmar and this is her second feature film.

Peaceful Times is in Australia for the Perth Festival later in the year and will be released in 2010.

INDONESIA CALLING: Joris Ivens in Australia. Australia 2009 (PG)

John Hughes, who himself is at the forefront of Australian Documentary filmmakers, here tells the story behind the famous Dutch documentarian Joris Ivens and his time in Australia after World War 11 making a film supporting Indonesian independence. Ivens film, Indonesia Calling, not only had an impact on the Indonesian independence movement but also on the emerging Australian film culture. Made with passionate commitment, the film helped to create a fertile ground for later independence documentaries.

At a time when Balibo is getting maximum publicity and exposure, John Hughes film shows how it all evolved. The original documentary, Indonesia Calling, will also be screened at the festival.

Producer, director and writer, John Hughes, will be a guest at the Halls Gap Film Festival and will introduce his film.

KISSING PARIS Australia 2008 (M)

Anna Kannava is a young Melbourne filmmaker with an impressive body of work including a highly regarded first feature, Dreams for Life.

Although set mainly in Paris, Kannava's new film is a uniquely Australian story that speaks to the sensibilities of a European audience, yet like all of her films belongs to a culture all of its own. Claire seeks to recapture something of her mother's romantic past in Paris, a journey which also becomes a love poem to the city.

Kissing Paris comes to us from the Brisbane International Film Festival.

LAKE MUNGO Australia 2009 (M)

Shot near Ararat on a minute budget, director John Anderson has made a ghost story structured like a documentary in which the participants in a strange event are quizzed by an unseen interviewer in the style of the ABC television's Australian Story.

Allowing for the limitations of the budget, the film is effective because it is very low key with no big dramatic moments which adds up to a far creepier film than most mainstream productions.

Joel Anderson, the director of the film, will be a guest at the Halls Gap Film Festival and will introduce his film.

IN THE LOOP U.K. 2009 (Not yet rated 18+)

The bumbling political road to the Iraq war on both sides of the Atlantic comes under fire in this densely plotted, whip smart and distressingly plausible satire. The film is directed by Armando Ianucci in the style of his award winning TV series, The Thick of It.

Beware! Profanities abound in this very funny and ferocious attack on the wheeler-dealers behind politicians in both the US of A and the UK. It is Yes Minister on speed.

This is In The Loop's first screening in Victoria since the Melbourne International Film Festival.

KISSES Ireland 2008 (Not yet rated 18+)

Two young runaways spend a night of adventure on the streets of inner-city Dublin.

“With remarkably accomplished performances .... and a most unique vision of Dublin, Kisses is sure to provoke emotion of enchantment, wondor and horror” - Toronto Film Festival.

Directed by Lance Daly, this film has won all the directing and acting honours in Ireland for the past year. It gains immensely from the music of Bob Dylan.

First Victorian screening since the Melbourne International Film Festival.

WAKE IN FRIGHT Australia 1970 (M)

Although made by a Canadian (Ted Kotcheff), and with three British actors in the lead, this has become an iconic Australian film. There has not been a complete or pristine print available since its release in 1971 and so it is a pleasure that we screen a print restored by the National Film and Sound Archive.

The film was made before the “revival” of the late 1970s but gives a deeply perceptive and unadorned look at life in outback Australia when a young male schoolteacher becomes stranded on his way to Sydney for the holidays. John Meillon, Chips Rafferty and Jack Thompson more than balance the three English actors.

In September, 1981, a notice in the Federation of Victorian Film Societies quarterly journal began with the words, “The third (now becoming famous) Halls Gap Weekend is being brewed in the programme kitchen of the Federation and Stawell Film Society”.

Nearly three decades later the successful recipe, a combination of the latest critically acclaimed Australian and foreign films not previously released commercially in Australia, has ensured the ongoing popularity of the Halls Gap Film Festival held in early November each year.

Initiated by the Stawell Film Society in 1979, it attracted 140 people for a weekend of good films in a glorious setting. The following year the Stawell Film Society sought the assistance of the Melbourne based Federation of Victorian Film Societies (FVFS).

During 1981 and 1982, the FVFS ran the event but in 1983 the Horsham Film Society joined forces with the FVFS and the partnership continued over the following decade. Then from 1993, the FVFS again took over the sole reins but organising the annual event from such a distance gradually took its toll on some of the Federation's executive, resulting in the cancellation of the 2006 film festival.

Unfortunately 2006 was the year of the devastating Grampians bushfire and the festival's cancellation hit local businesses hard. An approach was made to the FVFS by Halls Gap Tourism and the Grampians Film Society to assist in re-establishing the film festival in 2007 and since then the two local bodies have organised the festival weekend with films chosen by a member of the Federation. .