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A scene from the Travelling Film Festival’s first offering, Charmian Clift: Life Burns High. Photo: Travelling Film Festival.
A documentary about Kiama’s own Charmian Clift will open the 50th-anniversary tour of the Travelling Film Festival (TFF) at Warrawong’s Gala Cinema.
Nine feature films and two award-winning short films will screen over two days, from 26-28 July, in the first stop on TFF’s tour of regional Australia.
TFF programmer Karina Libbey said it was exciting to open the festival with Charmian Clift: Life Burns High, directed by Rachel Lane, who will attend the screening.
“Not only does the film shine a light on a talented female artist, who had long been undermined, but also on an up-and-coming Australian filmmaker, Rachel Lane,” Karina said.
“When it premiered at the 2024 Sydney Film Festival, all sessions sold out quickly, so Warrawong audiences will want to get in quickly.”
Charmian, one of Australia’s finest and most iconic writers, was born in Kiama in the 1920s. She was considered a glamorous rebel, admired by esteemed friends such as Leonard Cohen, Peter Finch, Sidney Nolan and William Dobell.
Interest in Charmian’s work was revived with the recent publication of her unfinished novel The End of Morning, which she put aside to help her husband George Johnston write his Miles Franklin-winning book, My Brother Jack.
The Travelling Film Festival, founded by film critic David Stratton in 1974, takes diverse stories to regional cinemas around Australia.
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Illawarra residents have the chance to be among the first in the world to see fresh hits from the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, including the witty homage to classic Italian cinema, Marcello Mio, and two major award winners: Grand Jury Prize winner All We Imagine as Light and Un Certain Regard winner Black Dog.
Hits from Aussie and New Zealand filmmakers also feature, including the surf movie You Should Have Been Here Yesterday, with narration from Tim Winton and Wayne Lynch.
From New Zealand, Ka Whawhai Tonu, by celebrated Maori director Mike Jonathan, stars Temuera Morrison and Cliff Curtis, who reunite from Once Were Warriors, for an action-packed epic about Aotearoa’s first land war.
The short film and winner of Sydney Film Festival’s Rouben Mamoulian Award for Best Australian Director, The Meaningless Daydreams of Augie & Celeste, directed by Pernell Marsden, will screen before the feature film Charmian Clift: Life Burns High on Friday, 26 July.
Other TFF films will include Istanbul Film Festival multi-prize winner, the legal thriller Hesitation Wound. Saoirse Ronan (Little Women, Brooklyn) stars in an adaptation of Amy Lipnot’s autobiography The Outrun, and director Pawo Choyning Dorji (Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom) returns with The Monk and the Gun.
The Travelling Film Festival will run from 26-28 July at the Gala Cinema, Warrawong, before moving to Huskisson from 9-11 August. Tickets, subscriptions and Flexipasses are now on sale. For screening details or to book, visit the website or phone 1300 733 733.