News

Melissa Lucashenko.

Melissa Lucashenko’s novel ‘Too Much Lip’, which won the Miles Franklin Award last night, is headed for screen – having been optioned in May this year by newly-formed production company Cenozoic Pictures.

Lucashenko is a multi-award-winning Goorie writer, a Walkley Award winner for her non-fiction, and a founding member of the prisoner’s human rights group, Sisters Inside. ‘Too Much Lip’ tracks the story of wisecracking Kerry Salter, a Bundjalung woman whose intention to return home for 24 hours to farewell her Pop becomes a life-changing stay as she confronts family, corruption, buried secrets and the possibility of love.

‘Too Much Lip’ was also shortlisted for the Stella Prize, the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, the Nsw Premier’s Literary Awards and the Australian Book Industry Awards.

Filmmakers Veronica Gleeson, Luke Walker and Suzanne Walker founded the Melbourne-based Cenozoic Pictures last year, with an strong emphasis on providing writers with a creatively supportive environment.

Craig Carter..

One of Australia.s most respected sound designers, Craig Carter, has died in Melbourne.

The multiple AFI award winner had a heart attack last Friday, aged 60. The sound designer, editor, and recordist worked on more than 100 productions in a career spanning 34 years..

He was working with producer Tait Brady on Clayton Jacobson.s film Sibling Rivalry, now three weeks into production..

Brady, who first collaborated with Carter on Craig Monahan.s Healing, told If: .It.s incredibly sad. .Craig was such a great guy, gentle, thoughtful, so good natured and generous. A perfectionist who always went the extra mile and a very smart, sensitive sound designer who was also a musician and had a great musical ear, which fed into his work..

One of his last projects, PACmen, Luke Walker.s documentary on the inside workings of the controversial Political Action Committees which raise millions to support Us political candidates and causes,...

Luke Walker’s PACmen features a clip of Donald Trump vehemently asking the crowd at one of his rallies, “How stupid are the people of this country to believe this crap?” Unfortunately, Trump was talking not about himself but rather Ben Carson, whose misbegotten presidential run is chronicled in this documentary that recently received its world premiere at Toronto’s Hot Docs.

What Trump was specifically referring to was the tale Carson recounted in his rags-to-riches autobiography Gifted Hands about how, as a teenager, he attempted to stab someone only to have his knife broken by his would-be victim’s belt buckle. It...

Maybe no one is getting too sentimental about Ben Carson’s presence in the public eye, but it’s easy to understand why people might miss the levity his frequent slip-ups allowed. Luke Walker’s documentary, “PACmen,” seeks to remind us of what has turned out to be, bizarrely enough, a much simpler political time.

The film, which will run as part of Hot Docs, follows the super Pac behind Carson’s run for the Republican nomination. (Again, simpler times.) The filmmakers had complete access to the people on Carson’s team, following his stunning rise and fall.

Read More: Alex Gibney Doc ‘No Stone Unturned’ Pulled From Tribeca Film Festival and Hot Docs

In our exclusive clip, Carson’s infamous hummus/Hamas flub sends the men behind the super Pac into utter bewilderment in a scene that would not be out of place on an episode of “Veep.”

“PACmen...

The event screenings concept pioneered in Australia by Rob Connolly.s CinemaPlus with Underground: The Julian Assange Story and Tim Winton.s The Turning is catching on.

Uncharted Waters, a feature-length documentary profiling brilliant but troubled surfer Wayne Lynch, begins a national roll-out on November 15, with Lynch hosting Q&As at most screenings.

Written, directed and produced by Craig Griffin, the docu premiered at the Melbourne International Film Festival followed by the Adelaide Film Festival.Distributor Madman Entertainment has booked the film in about 30 cinemas starting in Lorne, Victoria, then Geelong, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Gold Coast, Noosa, Hobart, Perth and other cities.

According to the synopsis, .Wayne Lynch burst onto the Australian surfing scene in the 1960s and rode a wave like no one else. He opened up fresh possibilities with a radically new vertical style. He was a champion, a draft dodger, an outsider, a revolutionary, a messiah, an environmentalist,...

The Melbourne International Film Festival will close on August 18 with P.J. Hogan.s Mental.

Mental reunites writer-director P.J. Hogan with his original leading lady Toni Collette for the first time since Muriel's Wedding. The film follows the story of the Moochmore family after mother Shirley (Rebecca Gibney), unable to cope with her five teenage daughters and philandering husband, Barry (Anthony Lapaglia), suffers a nervous breakdown. A hitchhiker named Shaz (Collette) then enters the family home as nanny.

.How wonderful that we are able to book-end the 2012 Miff with what will surely be two of the biggest Australian films of the year, in The Sapphires and Mental," Miff artistic director Michelle Carey said. "Featuring an incredible ensemble cast, P.J. Hogan.s new film is as outrageously fun as it is smart and moving."

The festival will also hold a world premiere screening of local cricket comedy Save Your Legs! which stars Stephen Curry,...

P.J. Hogan’s Mental has been named as Melbourne International Film Festival’s closing night film on Saturday 18 August.

The film reunites the Muriel’s Wedding writer and director, Hogan with its star, Toni Collette.

Mental joins over 300 films including opening film, The Sapphires, about an Aboriginal all-girl singing group sent to Vietnam to entertain the troops.

Miff’s artistic director Michelle Carey said: “How wonderful that we are able to book-end the 2012 Miff with what will surely be two of the biggest Australian films of the year, in The Sapphires and Mental. Featuring an incredible ensemble cast, P.J. Hogan’s new film is as outrageously fun as it is smart and moving.”

The news comes at the announcement of the full program line-up.

The festival will also see a number of world premieres for Australian films including those from the Premiere Film Fund: 100 Bloody Acres, directed by Colin and Cameron Cairnes; Save Your Legs!