World Socialist Webpage review

55th Sydney Film Festival—Part 1

A few intelligent movies, but lost in an increasingly industry-oriented event

By Richard Phillips and Ismet Redzovic
16 September 2008

While commercialisation of the event continues apace—a trend obviously not confined to Sydney—this year’s festival included dozens of mainstream features already slated for local multiplex screenings. In fact, some were in suburban theatres even before the festival had concluded.

Serious work

Despite these problems, the festival provides one of the few opportunities in Sydney to view the work of serious filmmakers—those animated not by the profit motive but the desire to make sensitive and intelligent artistic work. Whilst there are some encouraging signs, the festival had its fair share of weak, distorted and unconvincing work—social reality almost appears accidentally in some films, and often with large doses of pessimism.

Some of the better documentaries at the festival were Matt Norman’s Salute, an inspiring tribute to an Australian sportsman who joined two African-American athletes at the 1968 Olympics to protest attacks on democratic rights in the US, and young Canadian director Yung Chang’s Up the Yangtze. Other noteworthy efforts included Kelrick Martin’s Bad Morro, Annie Goldson’s An Island Calling and Brian Hill’s The Not Dead, from Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, respectively.

Edited from original.