• National Indigenous Documentary Fund 6 Loved Up is calling on Indigenous filmmakers from across the country to submit half-hour documentary ideas that explore this universal human expression. Deadline Friday 27 February


• US producer Geoff Stier is confirmed as an international advisor at the second national SPARK script workshop, to be held in February


• QPIX is calling for producers interested in producing a film under the Raw Nerve initiative. Raw Nerve is funded by Screen Development Australia and the AFC. For further details contact kerrin@qpix.org.au


• The AFC-funded publication Prefiguring Cyberculture: An Intellectual History edited by Darren Tofts, Annemarie Jonson and Alessio Cavallaro has been receiving warm reviews. Copies available from general book stores


• The final stage of the Indigenous Writing for Series Television Workshop was held in Bateau Bay from 23-29 November 2003


• The Indigenous Drama Initiative, Dramatically Black cinematic storytelling workshop was held in Glebe in the first week of October 2003 and facilitated by AFC Project Manager Jackie McKimmie


• AFC Film Development and Industry and Cultural Development funding approvals


• AFC funding deadlines

Top

• The AFC will have a stand at the European Film Market from 5-15 February. Please register with us if you are planning to attend: marketing@afc.gov.au


• The AFC is calling for Travel Grant applications to attend the MIPTV and MILIA markets 2004. Deadline 5pm Monday 2 February


• The AFC, in conjunction with Rotterdam Festival organisers, will fund three producers to attend this year's Rotterdam Lab in January, which offers emerging feature producers a framework to learn more about international financing in a European context. Last year the AFC funded producer Vincent Sheehan to attend the lab. This year Vincent's project The Hunter has been selected for Cinemart


• The World Congress of Science and History Producers was held from the 3-10 December 2003 in Paris, France. The AFC strategically supported six documentary producers with projects based in science and/or history to attend: Chris Hilton, Gisela Kaufmann, Alan Lindsay, Sonya Pemberton, Julia Redwood and Mike Searle

Top

• FLiCKERFEST winners were announced in Sydney on 11 January


• Cannes Official Selection scout Christian Jeune and Critics' Week preselector Jean Rabinovici are coming to Australia in February to select films for the 2004 Cannes Film Festival


• Harvie Krumpet has received seven international awards since November 2003, and Phillip Noyce won the Sao Paulo Audience Award for Rabbit-Proof Fence. See recent international awards


• Nine Australian projects have been selected to screen in Rotterdam's Official Selection, 21 January-1 February. Clermont-Ferrand, Sundance and Göteborg Film Festivals have also announced their Australian line-ups for 2004. See recent international screenings


• Deadlines are approaching for the following international festivals (Jan/Feb): Visions du Reel, Singapore, Oberhausen, Annecy, NY Lesbian and Gay Film, Hamburg Shorts and Banff


• Tom Nurse has been posthumously awarded the annual ScreenSound Australia Ken G Hall Award, which recognises outstanding contributions to the preservation of Australia's film heritage


• Burberry Productions' mini-series Bootleg took home the British Academy Children's Film and Television Award for Best Children's Drama. Don't Blame the Koala was also nominated for Best International Television Series


• Australian nominees for the 61st Annual Golden Globe Awards include Peter Weir and Russell Crowe for Master and Commander, Cate Blanchett for Veronica Guerin, Nicole Kidman for Cold Mountain, Anthony LaPaglia for Without a Trace and Judy Davis for The Reagans

Top

• FLiCKERFEST will travel to 13 venues in Australia, ranging from Broome to Byron Bay, in the next two months


• The AFC, in association with the Australia International Cultural Council, the Australian Consulate in Los Angeles and the American Film Institute, will present a week of Australian films at the Arclight Cinema in Los Angeles, 15-19 January


• A seven-day Embassy Roadshow event will be held in Jakarta, Indonesia in January and special Australia Day events will be held on 26 January in Malta and Chicago


• Film and Hip Hop Workshops are operating throughout January at the Broken Hill Regional Gallery. Phone (08) 8088 5491 for further details


• Documentary Molly and Mobarak will open its national theatrical season through Hopscotch Film Distributors at the Valhalla Cinema in Sydney on 29 January, Dendy Kino in Melbourne on 6 February and the Schonell Cinema in Brisbane throughout February


• The Australian Interactive Media Industry Association (AIMIA) Awards will be held in Ultimo on 6 February


• The second X|Media|Lab Professional Day Conference is being held at The Studio, Sydney Opera House on 6 February


• Sony Tropfest will be held on 22 February


• The OPENChannel funding seminar 'Funding Opportunities for Film' will be held in Melbourne on 24 February


• The Australian International Documentary Conference will be held in Fremantle, WA, 26-28 February


• IF magazine's What's On in Film January to June 2004 guide to screen events has been released. What's On in Film is sponsored by the AFC


• Other AFC-supported activities and events

Top

• The AFC has released a paper on Documentary Production and Funding in Australia which attempts to identity some of the key issues and concerns that exist within the Australian documentary sector


• AFC Chief Executive Kim Dalton addressed the Opening Plenary session of the Screen Production and Development Association's (SPADA) annual conference in New Zealand on 23 November 2003. Manager, Indigenous Unit, Sally Riley also spoke on the panel, 'Culturally Specific, Internationally Successful'. Download Kim Dalton's speech


• In Conversation With... features interviews with writer/directors from the films We Have Decided Not to Die, Floodhouse, Roy Höllsdotter Live, Queen of Hearts, The 13th House, Martha's New Coat, Preservation and So Close to Home


• A revised version of the AFC guide Interactive Digital Media: Where to get Money, Information, Advice is now available


• Upcoming Production Report


• Latest updates to Get the Picture Online industry statistics

Top

• Comments are invited by 16 February on proposals contained within the Directions Paper regarding the future direction, policies, activities and organisational framework of ScreenSound Australia as an integrated part of the AFC. See media release ScreenSound Jobs to Stay


• Richard Brennan has been appointed as the new Film Development Project Manager in the Melbourne office starting 8 March replacing Cristina Pozzan who left the AFC at the end of December to return to the industry


• The AFC Annual Report 2002/03 including an erratum is now available to view online. To obtain a hard copy please contact publishing@afc.gov.au


• Positions vacant

Top

FEATURE: Tom Zubrycki interview

• Tom Zubrycki writer/director of innovative documentary Molly and Mobarak speaks to AFC Film Development Administration Officer, Sarah Runcie. Tom received an AFC travel grant to attend the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam.
  
  
  In his distinguished 25-year career, Tom Zubrycki has tackled many important political issues through observing the microcosm of familial personal experience at times of crisis. Molly and Mobarak is his latest feature documentary that returns to the themes of displacement and the search for home in the context of an unfolding love story between Mobarak, a young Hazara Afghani refugee, and Molly, a country town school teacher. The film tracks this would-be romance against the background of rural socio-political dynamics between the sympathetic volunteers who welcome the Afghani men into their homes and those that cling to their xenophobic prejudices.
  
  The story of Molly and Mobarak starts where the hysteria and hyperbole of media commentary on the Tampa incident and refugee problems leave off. It is a film that provides an intimate insight into what it means to be on a temporary protection visa, to be only partially accepted by the country you live in and to endure the emotional implications of seeking belonging.
  
  Molly and Mobarak had its international premiere in Toronto this year and opened the Margaret Mead Film and Video Festival in New York. It was also shown in the prestigious Joris Ivens Competition for feature documentaries at IDFA in Amsterdam, the world's largest documentary festival.
  
  Molly and Mobarak will open its national theatrical season through Hopscotch Film Distributors at the Valhalla Cinema in Sydney on 29 January followed by the Dendy Kino in Melbourne on 6 February and the Schonell Cinema in Brisbane throughout February.
  
  
  
  SR: For you as a filmmaker, what is the aim of documentary?
  
  TZ: I think that as a documentarian you use your skills to enlighten, to provoke, to entertain, to tell a good story - but more importantly you have a moral responsibility to contribute to a shared humanity whether it's to sensitise people to cultural understanding or to illuminate social injustice. For me it's also very important for the audience to make an emotional connection with my films, that's why all my documentaries revolve around personal stories.
  
  SR: Why do you approach issues in an emotional narrative way?
  
  TZ: That is probably the way I have worked over the last 15-20 years with possibly a few exceptions - one being Amongst Equals. It's the way I feel comfortable working as a filmmaker. I've always looked for subjects and situations where there is flux and change - points of transition or rites of passage. Telling stories about real people is incredibly satisfying, but of course it's always fraught with difficulty because you have to be at the right place at the right time, and I prefer not to use reconstruction. It's always about choosing the right moment to film.
  
  SR: Is that partly what makes observational documentary unique?
  
  TZ: The thing about observational documentary is that it's got a closer connection to the 'real' than other forms of documentary. We're not talking about truth necessarily but fidelity (a term Gill Leahy uses in an article on observational filmmaking). There's an expectation on the part of an audience that they're not going to be fooled, they're not going to be deceived. That what you, as a filmmaker, are showing them is something that is generally faithful to the events that actually occurred - apart from your own spin on them, of course. The other important point is that documentary gives you the time to engage at that very basic face-to-face everyday level with your subjects and to build up a relationship with them. I think it's something documentary makers do that people working in other areas of non-fiction don't and that is part of its enduring allure. In the world of quick turnaround current affairs, reporters will tend to think more of what their subjects are going to say and how that will fit in a thesis that has already been scripted. Observational documentary filmmaking is more of an exploration. The 'script' is born at the very moment of pointing a camera at someone and rolling tape. One is being led along by the subjects rather than driving them.
  
  SR: When you talk about the subjects leading you, at what point are you imposing a narrative structure as opposed to teasing out the narrative elements of these people's lives?
  
  TZ: In some ways it is a fine line. True, you don't want to impose a structure on a situation you may not yet be familiar with. However once you begin shooting you need to start thinking in terms of sequences and you start putting those sequences into a structure which serves to guide you to what next to shoot. After a while you might think you know the people so well that you are expecting events to happen and they don't - something else happens! It's that necessity to accommodate the unexpected which to me is probably the most exciting moment in documentary because it's those unplanned moments that take documentary to a different level. And it's those same moments that a script writer would find hard to write into a screenplay - and yet they happen in real life. And you're behind the camera thinking 'I could never ever have predicted this'.
  
  SR: Did you have any of those moments with Molly and Mobarak?
  
  TZ: The moment I didn't predict was Mobarak's final exit from Young. He decides to leave the people who have given him comfort for so many months, who've been like a second family to him. Plus he also leaves his other Hazara friends behind. It's a mark of a kind of extraordinary bravery and, I would say, maturity. He knows that he can't win over Molly's affections, and to live in the same town would make life very hard because there's no way he can avoid seeing her. So he has no option but to leave and start a new life.
  
  Read the full interview
  
  *AFC News banner image: Queen of Hearts

Top