Talking about Movies

The ACMI Lowdown

Warning: This podcast contains coarse language and adult themes and is not suitable for children under 18 years of age.

Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures screens at ACMI from the 22nd September.

ACMI's Head of Film Programs, James Hewison shares his thoughts on the film and the man.

Is Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures a film you can take your mum to?

Our latest VR Commission, Ghosts, Toast and the Things Unsaid is an intimate virtual reality experience that invites audiences to become the ghosts of couple, Steve and Maude, and revisit the kitchen where they fell in love, grew old and apart. The work provokes a meditation on our propensity to keep secrets, the words that go unheard, and what this means for our relationships.

Ghosts, Toast and the Things Unsaid

Lauded by the Museum of Modern Art in New York as “one of the great modern masters of the cinema” Roman Polanski has over the course of five decades refined a formal film language and expressed a mordantly ironic worldview in genre-defining films that are provocative, compelling and inventive.

ROMAN: 10 x Polanski proposes ten key films drawn from Polanski’s filmography – from the director’s Polish New Wave debut, Knife in the Water to his 2010 political thriller, The Ghost Writer, by way of the director’s British films of the ‘60s, New Hollywood classics Rosemary’s Baby and Chinatown and Paris-set thrillers The Tenant, Frantic and Bitter Moon.

In this podcast Roberta Ciabarra who curated the season talks to  Spiro Economopoulos about her reasons for picking these 10 films and how the extraordinary circumstances of Polanski's life are reflected in his work.

Roman: 10 X Polanski

Since 1988, when his first film Fleurs (1987) was presented as a background for a weather broadcast on French television, Philippe Parreno has sought to redefine the exhibition experience. Working with the exhibition itself as a medium, Parreno explores its possibilities beyond the presentation of individual works to create scripted spaces within which a series of events unfolds.

Parreno is a collaborative artist whose practice encompasses film, sculpture, drawing, and text. The dialogic nature of his work is evident in the films and exhibitions that have been produced through collaboration with artists, architects, musicians, composers and philosophers. Through work that draws on cinema, science fiction, architecture, the phantasmagorical, and the natural, Parreno merges reality and fiction to produce exhibitions that radically challenge our notions of reality, memory and the passage of time.

Philippe Parreno Thenabouts: Conversation with Amelia Barikin & Emma McRae

"He looks superbly rock-n-roll in every connotation of the word." Media Production Team Leader Richard Greenhalgh talks with Senior Film Programmer Kristy Matheson about the upcoming film season on Jim Jarmusch, his distinctive directorial approach and his fabulous cameo characters.

Jim Jarmusch: Rock and Roll

Fire At Sea is a masterly work of documentary filmmaking about the Mediterranean island at the epicentre of the refugee crisis in Europe.

Panel discussion by filmmaker and cinematographer Bentley Dean (Tanna) will moderate a discussion with lawyer, filmmaker and President of Liberty Victoria, Jessie Taylor; journalist and editor Michael Green (They Cannot Take the Sky, Behind the Wire); Behind the Wire contributor and former asylum seeker Aran Mylvaganam; and media professional and former Director of Multicultural Arts Victoria (MAV), Fotis Kapetopoulos.

Fire At Sea Panel Discussion

Join us for this animation industry masterclass with the founders of Aardman Studios Peter Lord and David Sproxton, and Academy Award-winning animator Adam Elliot (Mary & Max, Harvie Krumpet).

Aardman Studios is renowned for their signature animation style and unique character creations, like the eccentric inventor and his loyal canine in Wallace & Gromit and the melancholy mountain lion of Creature Comforts.

The masters will share trade secrets about the studio’s storyboarding, model making and animation techniques, as well as insider tips on producing for animation and how to forge a sustainable animation career.

Peter and David will also discuss their predictions for the animation industry, including new platforms, markets and opportunities, as well as their latest foray into the brave new world of VR.

3:45 The beginnings of Aardman
10:00 The arrival of Morph
12:37 Aardman’s secret plasticine formula
14:50 Documentary animation.
20:53 “British people are so dull.” - Creature comforts
24:45 Where the ideas come from?
29:20 How ideas progress in drawings, the progression of Wallace
37:20 Innovations in stop motion animation
42:39 Aardman’s handmade style
43:40 Scripting
52:00 Storyboarding and the Train Chase sequence
57:00 Music magic
58:30 Puns and humour
1:03:11 Secrets in the Sets
1:08:11 Camera movement
1:12:40 Acting out
1:17:00 Switching to digital cameras and cinematography
1:23:10 Financing and crowd funding
1:29:40 VR
1:34:20 Q&amp;A

Aardman Masterclass

In Cambodia's first Oscar-nominated film, director Rithy Panh uses clay animated figures, archival footage and voice-over narration to tell a deeply personal story.

Starting with a photograph taken between 1975 and 1979 by the Khmer Rouge when they ruled over Cambodia, Panh uses the image as a source of contemplation, meditation and as a verbal and visual record of genocide. The only surviving records of the Cambodian genocide are the propaganda images and films that the Khmer Rouge created, compelling Panh to recreate the 'missing picture' between the state sanctioned lies. In the process creating a powerful document on the potency of the moving image and the brave act of bearing witness.

Please join us for a a post-screening Q&A with the film’s director Rithy Panh and hosted by Philippa Hawker.

The Missing Picture

Editing Masterclass with Erin Casper

In this exclusive masterclass, Erin will share her personal approach to editing by thinking about the construction of each film as a language of its own, spoken cinematically through an editor’s hands.

Drawing on excerpts from her award-winning films such as Our School, American Promise, The Last Season and The New Black, this masterclass will explore her creative process, writing with images and crafting cinematic language in non-fiction films.

The Art of Cutting it Fine AIDC 2018

Australia's only national museum of film, video games, digital culture and art - situated at the heart of Melbourne in Fed Square. Listen to our latest podcasts of live events, playlists associated with exhibitions, and more.

Located at Fed Square. Open daily. #acmimelbourne www.acmi.net.au

Roman: 10 X Polanski

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