- Title
- Consistent pickings but few difficult pleasures (55th Sydney Film Festival)
- Creator
- Ford, Hamish
- Relation
- Senses of Cinema Vol. 48
- Relation
- http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/festivals/08/48/sydney-ff-2008.html
- Publisher
- Senses of Cinema Inc.
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2008
- Description
- The 2008 Sydney Film Festival was a bigger event – longer, and with more films – than previously, and the first year the festival has included work “in competition”. I managed to see around 50 features, the more notable – in one way or another – of which I’ll discuss here. Despite its larger size this year, the program needs bolder choices. No greater in number than last time, the relatively “non-narrative” fare in attendance like Glass Lips, You, the Living, and James Benning’s Casting a Glance (featuring over three decades of footage showing the enormous changes in the natural home of artist Robert Simthson’s Spiral Jetty) were corralled in an Art Films strand. Meanwhile attempts to make the event less threatening and more connected to the world of commercial releases continue apace, with the inclusion of films such as Kung fu Panda and simply unremarkable middlebrow fare like Quiet Chaos. And the festival presence of much worse titles like And When Did You Last See Your Father seems to essentially provide would-be “highbrow” openings for theatrical release. Overall, and again considering a greater number of films to choose from (and I saw more of them than is healthy), there were no really huge films for me this year. Nevertheless, I am hopeful Claire Stewart can continue to develop the festival so that Sydney audiences can be treated and challenged to seeing world cinema at its peak of difficult pleasure.
- Subject
- Sydney Film Festival; commercial releases; films; cinema
- Identifier
- uon:5206
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/43077
- Identifier
- ISSN:1443-4059
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