As the opening night of Sundance approaches, World Movies sat down with four of Australia’s biggest filmmakers to discuss the experience of schlepping their work to an international film festival. Airing 6:30pm tomorrow on World Movies, interviews with filmmakers including Gregor Jordan (Two Hands), Brendan Fletcher (Mad Bastards), Matthew Saville (Noise, Cloudstreet) and Keith Thompson (Clubland) will screen throughout a marathon of films that have recently won awards at Sundance including The Maid, Girl Fight and Sleep Dealer.
Judging from the teaser (see below) their perspectives are fairly different – Jordan notes that “Sundance is mostly about snowboarding,” while Saville describes his experience as “harrowing” – but the overarching theme seems to be one of persistence.
Opening night kicks off tomorrow in Park City, Utah and will feature the world premiere of Kieran Darcy-Smith’s feature film debut ‘Wish You Were Here’, nominated in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition.
We think he’ll do well. When we spoke with the Sydney-based director last year he noted that Sundance currently has something of an Aussie fetish: “A friend of mine Brendan Fletcher, who directed Mad Bastards which was at Sundance last year, said that the whole festival seemed to be talking about Australian films,” he said. “And indeed the festival organisers mentioned something about the Australian New Wave.”
Check out the Sundance marathon teaser below…
