Press release from Dungog Film Festival
After years of meteoric growth, the winner of the Inside Film Award for best film festival, Dungog Film Festival, returns to its roots to present the 2012 "unplugged" version.
Announced at the Honeysuckle Hotel in Newcastle on Tuesday 12 June the full program promises to deliver 3 days of inspirational, satisfying and original Australian cinema.
The sixth Dungog Film Festival kicks off with the romantic comedy Not Suitable for Children, with director Peter Templeman attending to celebrate the opening night. The film will be followed by the legendary opening night party.
The festival will also feature screenings of: Careless Love, written and directed by John Duigan (Sirens, The Year My Voice Broke) follows a Vietnamese Australian university student who secretly begins working as an escort. Our Saturday Fright Night thriller is Crawl, set in a rural town, where a seedy bar owner hires a mysterious Croatian to murder an acquaintance over an unpaid debt. The plan backfires and an innocent young woman becomes involved, held hostage in her own home. Directors Paul and Benjamin China and star of the film Georgina Haig will be attending the festival.
Our classic features are the ground breaking 1995 film Angel Baby, attended by Jacqueline McKenzie whose performance in the film earned her an AFI and Film Critics Circle Award for Best Lead Actress and Dot and The Kangaroo starring Spike Milligan, a film for young and old alike.
This year we are excited to announce three documentaries that all tested the faith of the filmmakers and will scintillate audiences. We have the World Premiere of Grammar of Happiness, directed by Michael O'Neil and produced by festival guest Jay Court, which sees linguistics professor Daniel Everett do a complete 360 on his lifelong beliefs when he visits Brazil's Pirahã tribe, a tribe whose language can be spoken, whistled or drummed and contains no words for colours and numbers, fiction, art, or any reflective past tense.
Also premiering at the Dungog Film Festival is Jack Rath's Between Home, a film about novice sailor Nick Jaffe who, inspired by his mysterious father's history in Berlin, decided to undertake a 2.5 year journey to sail solo across the Atlantic, he and Jack Rath will also be guests at the Festival.
Finally Despite the Gods makes our doco trilogy, an eye opening film by Penny Vozniak, which follows award-winning filmmaker Jennifer Lynch (Boxing Helena), cult film figure David Lynch's daughter, over 8 months as she embarks on a journey to make her most ambitious film yet on location in India. Vozniak will be in attendance to reveal more about her 8 months of observations.
In addition to the feature films it's Student Day on Friday 29 June when we'll be running short film programs for primary and secondary school children, workshops that look behind the scenes at NBN, a chance to study time lapse photography and an industry panel discussion on Music Video and Animation presented by filmmakers who have made video clips for artists such as Goyte, Lior, Sia and All India Radio.
Saturday 30 June brings the much-celebrated annual street parade, themed this year to pay respect to last years blockbuster Australian film, Red Dog as well as screenings of over 60 short films and an In the Raw reading of the new feature film Diving for Poland.
The full Dungog program is available at www.dff.org.au.
Make sure you don't miss one of the biggest celebrations of Australian film, book your tickets and accommodation now for the festival weekend from 29 June to 1 July.