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Actor Dennis Hopper was the kind of artist myths are made from. He was an incredibly talented performer with a larger-than-life personality that frequently got him into trouble. His reckless behavior and intense drug abuse could make him incredibly difficult to work with, and he even tried to get Marlon Brando to fist-fight him after a misunderstanding before the filming of "Apocalypse Now," leading to the two being separated on set at all times. In the mid-1970s, however, he behaved so badly while filming a movie in Australia that he was not only declared dead on his feet and banned from driving a car in the state of Victoria ever again, but he was also kicked right on out of the country.

That movie was "Mad Dog Morgan," a disturbing 1976 outback Western based on the true life misdeeds of bushranger and outlaw Dan Morgan (whom Hopper played in the film). The Ozploitation,...

While in New York City to celebrate the 10th anniversary of her monster international hit “The Babadook,” Australian writer/director Jennifer Kent took a stop over at the Criterion Closet and proved that she not only enjoys making spooky movies — she likes watching them too. Her first pick of the shelf was one of the first films of the horror genre, the 1922 silent essay piece “Haxän: Witchcraft Through the Ages.” Kent described the film as “a huge inspiration for ‘Babadook.'”

She added, “It’s about the devil and about witchcraft, it’s also about women going nuts. Fantastic.”

Kent’s next selection was from her home country, Peter Weir’s 1977 mystery “The Last Wave,” which she’d initially avoided watching because she misconstrued the title.

“I’m embarrassed to say, I thought it was a film about surfing. It’s not a film about surfing,” said Kent. “It’s...

At the beginning of Baz Luhrmann’s Faraway Downs, 12-year-old Aboriginal boy Nullah (Brandon Walters) recounts the abiding lesson his grandfather taught him growing up in the wilderness of the Northern Territory of Australia: “Tell ‘em story.” Over the course of the six-part series, a reimagining of Luhrmann’s 2008 film Australia, story will emerge as one of the four cornerstones of Aboriginal identity, the others being country, song, and dreaming.

Luhrmann uses footage from the film, scenes that were lost to the cutting-room floor, and a modern soundtrack by Indigenous artists to expand the story and give it new depth. The narrative arc of the series, though, remains largely identical to that of Australia: When an English aristocrat, Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman), travels to Australia to convince her husband to sell the titular ranch, she comes into the orbit of a cattle drover named Drover (Hugh Jackman), and after embarking on a journey together,...

Plot: The story centers on an English aristocrat, Lady Sarah Ashley, who travels halfway across the world to confront her wayward husband and sell an unusual asset: a million-acre cattle ranch in the Australian Outback called ‘Faraway Downs’. Following the death of her husband, a ruthless Australian cattle baron, King Carney, plots to take her land and she reluctantly joins forces with a rough-hewn cattle drover to protect her ranch. The sweeping adventure romance is explored through the eyes of young Nullah, a bi-racial Indigenous Australian child caught up in the government’s draconian racial policy now referred to as the “Stolen Generations.” Together the trio experiences four life-altering years, a love affair between Lady Ashley and the Drover, and the unavoidable impact of World War II on Northern Australia.

Review: Baz Luhrmann’s films have always defied filmmaking norms. From Romeo + Juliet to Elvis, Moulin Rouge to The Great Gatsby,...

Australian and New Zealand indie distributor Umbrella Entertainment will launch Brollie, a free of charge, ad-supported streaming service later this month. It will lean on Umbrella’s library of classic content and claims to be the first free streaming platform specializing in Australian film and TV content.

Brollie will launch on Nov. 23 with over 300 titles including: “Babadook”; “Two Hands” (dir. Gregor Jordan, 1999); cult classics “Sweat”; “Erskineville Kings”; and “Cut” starring Kylie Minogue.

Brollie will also have a section for Indigenous Australia, including a collection of films starring Aboriginal screen legend David Gulpilil. These include “Walkabout”; “Storm Boy”; and “The Last Wave”.

A documentary slate includes “Servant or Slave” and “Ablaze”.

Subscribers will be invited to be part of the Brollie Film Club, where Brollie’s in-house team handpicks the best of the catalogue twice a month. Members can terrify themselves with the ‘Australian Nightmares’ collection exploring the best of Aussie...

"The only thing you really own is your story... just trying to live a good one." Surprise!! After the success of Baz Luhrmann's Elvis last year, they're revisiting one of his least successful films. Hulu revealed an official trailer for the mini-series Faraway Downs, which is a re-edit of Luhrmann's 2008 movie Australia. We actually covered this movie extensively back in 2008 when it was first released, including with editorials and more. "An iconic duo, to say the least." Faraway Downs is the reimagining of the film Australia told in six parts about an English aristocrat & a rough-hewn cattle drover who join forces to protect the million-acre cattle ranch of her late husband. Although Hulu describes Australia as a "cinematic masterpiece", it didn't do as well as they hoped; now it seems it will play better as a series. Nicole Kidman & Hugh Jackman co-star, with Brandon Walters, David Wenham, Bryan Brown,...

In the 1960s, there were few cameramen who shared Nicolas Roeg’s ability to render sirenic, jittery sensuality at 24 frames per second—and this was an era whose dominant culture arguably cracked open and redefined the sensual palate. Even more impressively, Roeg’s gift often manifested itself most lucidly while serving the orgiastic gimmicks of Roger Corman’s The Masque of the Red Mask and the bucolic splendor of John Schlesinger’s Far from the Madding Crowd with the guarded glee of a merry prankster spiking a corporate water cooler with LSD.

But it’s not just that Roeg successfully snuck timely art into the mise-en-scène of those and other studio-centric films, it’s that he seemed incapable of recording anything but subtle art within whatever limitations his aspect ratio enforced. And so while Walkabout may have been his proper directorial debut, it’s far more significantly his final cinematographic statement.

Lady in a Cage: de Heer’s Dystopia Explores the Enduring Echoes of Colonialism

Dutch-born director Rolf de Heer has been a mainstay of Australian cinema since the mid-1980s, though his most well-traveled films dealt specifically with a reclamation of the country’s Indigenous population. Titles like Ten Canoes (2006) and Charlie’s Country (2013) featured Aboriginal actor David Gulpilil. Gulpilil died at the age of sixty-eight in 2021, which seems to have led de Heer to his most distressing film to date with The Survival of Kindness, a more experimental take on racism and colonialism featuring newcomer Mwajemi Hussein.…...

Questions of authenticity and authorship in cinema – who gets to tell what stories — are thorny ones. With his trilogy of films on the Aboriginal experience, The Tracker, Ten Canoes and Charlie’s Country, Dutch-born white Australian filmmaker Rolf de Heer has managed to avoid charges of cultural appropriation. This is due in large part to de Heer’s obvious respect for Indigenous culture and traditions and to his working method, which involves deep collaboration with the communities involved, as well as the on-screen talent, most famously with the late, great Aboriginal actor David Gulpilil.

For his new film, The Survival of Kindness, De Heer again takes on the ugly legacy of racism and colonialism. The film, which premiered in competition at the Berlin International Film Festival, is the story of a Black woman (identified in the credits only as Black Woman) and her harrowing odyssey out of captivity. Shot entirely without intelligible dialogue,...

It is probably Australia. But it could be anywhere where the sun is hot enough to bake the earth into boundless stretches of cracked crazy-paving. It is probably an alternate recent past. But it could be any period in human history when mankind has divided itself into categories of oppressor and oppressed. The most remarkable aspect of Rolf de Heer’s elegiac, elemental “The Survival of Kindness” is that it is an allegory so direct as to be obvious, told in a style so spartan as to be opaque. Not one syllable of intelligible language is spoken, but the choral anguish of generations subjugated to colonial cruelty rings loud through every wordless frame.

In a forbiddingly desolate desert landscape, shot with Dp Maxx Corkindale’s elegantly unadorned realism, the only evidence of humanity is the very definition of inhumanity: a crude iron cage in which is locked a woman (an...

In his films The Tracker, Ten Canoes and Charlie’s Country, Rolf de Heer has mixed lyrical allegory with naturalism and genre conventions, ethnographic docudrama with morality tale and Aboriginal storytelling traditions to reclaim the dignity of Indigenous Australians and decry the injustices of white colonization. The collaborative spirit of those projects — notably with the great Aboriginal actor David Gulpilil, who died in 2021 — has enabled the Dutch-born writer-director to avoid charges of cultural appropriation.

His new film, The Survival of Kindness, returns to the theme of racism, this time as a minimalist tone poem entirely without intelligible dialogue, its key characters identified in the credits only as BlackWoman, BrownGirl and BrownBoy. The dystopian vision is set against harshly beautiful landscapes that are recognizably Australian yet distinctly abstract in their depiction of place and time.

The degree to which this lament for humanity connects with any audience will vary wildly. Some will...

Si Litvinoff, the visionary producer behind Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange and the Nicolas Roeg-directed films The Man Who Fell to Earth and the Australian New Wave classic Walkabout, has died. He was 93.

Litvinoff died peacefully Dec. 26 in Los Angeles, his friend Shade Rupe announced. Rupe interviewed him for the Blu-ray release of Litvinoff’s groundbreaking 1968 film The Queen, which revolves around a national drag queen contest.

Litvinoff also produced the London-set All the Right Noises (1970), starring Olivia Hussey, Tom Bell and Judy Carne, and executive produced a Roeg-directed documentary about the 1972 Glastonbury Fayre music festival that featured performances by Traffic, Fairport Convention, Melanie and Arthur Brown.

In 1965, Litvinoff optioned Anthony Burgess’ 1962 novel A Clockwork Orange for a reported 500 and sent the book to Kubrick. While paying for screenplays by Burgess, Terry Southern and Michael Cooper, the producer sought Mick Jagger to star in it, all while Kubrick...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSEnys Men (Mark Jenkin).The New York Film Festival announced its Main Slate. Highlights include new films from Park Chan-wook, Claire Denis, and Kelly Reichardt; a fiction feature from Frederick Wiseman; Mark Jenkin's Bait follow-up Enys Men; and much more.Hong Kong action director John Woo will reimagine his 1989 crime classic The Killer in a new remake due out in 2023. French actor Omar Sy (The Intouchables) will play the lead.Lars Von Trier has been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, his production company Zoetrope has confirmed. The director is doing well, and is currently being treated for symptoms whilst continuing to work on The Kingdom Exodus.Artist and El Planeta filmmaker Amalia Ulman's visa is expiring, meaning she may have to leave the United States, where she is currently working on her next feature film.

To mark the release of Walkabout on 8th August, we’ve been given 1 copy to give away on Blu-ray.

Following the suicide of their father, Mary (Jenny Agutter) and her younger brother Peter (Luc Roeg) are left stranded in the blistering heat of the vast Australian outback. Facing exhaustion and starvation, their salvation comes when they cross paths with an Aboriginal boy on ‘walkabout’, a ritual in which he must leave his home and learn to survive off the land. He teaches them how to survive in the wilderness, but a clash of cultures leads to terrible and tragic consequences…

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Open to UK residents only The competition will close 15th August 2022 at 23.59 GMT The winner will be picked at random from entries received No cash alternative is available Please note prizes may be delayed...

The American film and television landscape may have exhausted its share of vampire slayer stories, clearing a path for refreshing twists on the subgenre to tread. Enter the new AMC+ series “Firebite,” which shakes up the mythology by setting its yarn in the Outback. It introduces fans of Blade, Buffy, and even Abraham Lincoln, to Tyson (Rob Collins) and Shanika (Shantae Barnes-Cowan), two Indigenous hunters on a quest to eradicate the last outpost of vampires in the middle of their south Australian desert town. The series’ originality stems primarily from its backdrop and the barbarous colonial past that informs it — although “Firebite” isn’t a history lesson as much as a celebration of Aboriginal agency, telling an entertaining story of a human battle against literal bloodsucking parasites, in a biting take on manifest destiny.

Co-creators Warwick Thornton and Brendan Fletcher reimagine the arrival of the “First Fleet” on Australia’s...

Indigenous Australian actor best known for his roles in films such as Walkabout, Crocodile Dundee and Rabbit-Proof Fence

As the British film-maker Nicolas Roeg was scouring Arnhem Land, in Australia’s Northern Territory, in search of an Indigenous Australian man to star in Walkabout (1971), he chanced upon the 16-year-old ceremonial dancer David Gulpilil. When asked his name, the teenager responded with the only English word he knew: “Yes.” Looking back on the film in 2015, he said: “I thought I was going to be John Wayne.”

Gulpilil, who has died of cancer aged 68, was a more amorphous and mysterious presence. As if Roeg’s fragmented, free-associative storytelling was not startling enough, Gulpilil’s performance was a shock to the system for many viewers.

The Australian Academy Of Cinema and Television Arts (Aacta) has crowned its winners for 2021, with Justin Kurzel’s Nitram scooping the Best Film award among eight total prizes.

The movie, which debuted at Cannes, recounts the factors leading up to the 1996 Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania, Australia. The pic also won Best Director for Kurzel, Best Lead Actor for Caleb Landry Jones, and Best Lead Actress for Judy Davis.

Presenting the Lead Actress prize, Sam Neill delivered one of the better jokes of the evening. Referencing the recent trend of dropping gender specific acting awards at ceremonies, Neill commented it was “a really bad idea” because“if men were put up against women actors they’d wipe the bloody floor with us”.

Nitram also picked up Best Supporting Actor for Anthony Lapaglia, Best Supporting Actress for Essie Davis, Best Original Screenplay for Shaun Grant, and Best Editing for Nick Fenton.

Australian stars of film and TV arrive at the Sydney Opera House for the annual awards, which this year pay tribute to the late David Gulpilil. Justin Kurzel’s controversial Port Arthur massacre film Nitram swept the film nominations, with the Anna Torv-starring ABC series The Newsreader leading for TV. The ceremony will be broadcast from 7.30pm on Network Ten...

Edu-tainment

Sony Pictures Television‘s YouTube channel Impossible Science, fronted by magician Jason Latimer, has partnered with the Los Angeles County Office of Education and the Los Angeles Unified School District to provide programming blocks in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (Stem) subjects.

The lesson plans, which are funded via Sony Pictures Global Relief Fund for Covid-19, can be used as part of the Klcs summer and winter learning programming blocks, which are focused on supporting children’s education through home school periods and vacations.

Over 30 bespoke plans, based on existing ‘Impossible Science’ YouTube videos, are available for educators and parents to download via a free-to-access website.

Impossible Science was launched with Latimer at the helm in fall 2020. Since then it has grown exponentially with nearly 220 Stem-inspired videos, amassing over 40 million views worldwide.

Award

David Gulpilil, the iconic Indigenous actor who died earlier this week, is to be given a...

The late David Gulpilil will receive Aacta’s highest honour, the Longford Lyell Award, for his outstanding contribution to Australian cinema on Wednesday.

The legendary actor died on Monday, aged 68, four years after a diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.

Aacta began work on the tribute and award six months ago, with Gulpilil accepting the honour a few weeks ago from South Australia as he was unable to travel.

First presented in 1968, the award honours Australian film pioneer Raymond Longford and his partner in filmmaking and life, Lottie Lyell. Previous recipients include Cate Blanchett, George Miller, Paul Hogan, Jack Thompson and Jacki Weaver.

Aacta has said this year’s prize acknowledges not just Gulpilil’s incredible body of work, but his role in creating more diverse, inclusive, and truthful Australian stories.

A Mandjalpingu man from Ramingining, Arnhem Land, Gulpilil’s first role was in Nick Roeg’s 1971 film Walkabout as a teenager.

Legendary Indigenous actor David Dalaithngu, known for his roles in Walkabout, Storm Boy, and Ten Canoes, has died aged 68.

His death comes after he attended the premiere of documentary My Name Is Gulpilil at the Adelaide Festival earlier this year, defying a terminal lung cancer prognosis from 2017 that had only given him six months to live.

The news was confirmed on Monday night by South Australian Premier Steven Marshall, who described the trailblazing actor as a “once-in-a-generation artist”.

“It is with deep sadness that I share the passing of an iconic, once-in-a-generation artist who shaped the history of Australian film and Aboriginal representation on screen – David Dalaithngu Am,” he wrote in a statement.

“My thoughts are with his family, and his dear friend and carer Mary Hood.”

A Mandhalpuyngu man from the Arafura Swamp region in Arnhem Land, Dalaithngu was just 16 when he starred in his breakout role in Nicolas Roeg’s 1971 film Walkabout,...

Young was director of the Nfts from 1971-92.

Colin Young, the founding director of the UK’s National Film and Television School (Nfts), has passed away aged 94.

According to a statement from the Nfts, Young died peacefully at home, surrounded by his family, on Saturday (November 27).

Young was born in Glasgow in 1927. He started off writing film and theatre reviews in Aberdeen, before heading to Los Angeles to study film at UCLA. After graduating, he worked as a technician at the university, and eventually made his way up through various departments to be put in charge of the Department of Theatre Arts,...

David Gulpilil, an actor who who lit up the screen in his 1971 debut film “Walkabout” and recently starred in a biographical documentary about his remarkable life, has died. Gulpilil was diagnosed with lung cancer four years ago. He was 68.

The Australian actor was a pioneering indigenous performer with talents including acting, singing and painting. His film credits include “The Last Wave,” “Crocodile Dundee,” “The Tracker,” “Rabbit-Proof Fence,” “Ten Canoes,” “Goldstone” and “Charlie’s Country.” TV credits include “Pine Gap” and “The Timeless Land.”

“It is with deep sadness that I share with the people of South Australia the passing of an iconic, once-in-a-generation artist who shaped the history of Australian film and Aboriginal representation on screen – David Gulpilil Ridjimiraril Dalaithngu (Am),” said South Australia’s Premier Steven Marshall in a statement.

“David Gulpilil was from the Mandhalpingu clan of the Yolŋu people, and was raised in the traditional ways in Arnhem Land.

The actor starred in films including ‘Walkabout’, ‘Crocodile Dundee’ and ‘Rabbit-Proof Fence’

David Gulpilil, one of Australia’s most recognisable actors both locally and abroad, has died at the age of 68.

In a statement issued today, the premier of South Australia, Steven Marshall, described him as an “iconic, once-in-a-generation artist who shaped the history of Australian film and Aboriginal representation on screen”.

Gulpilil was first cast in Walkabout (1971), directed by Nicolas Roeg, and has been a feature of Australian cinema for the past 50 years, including roles in two local films that are among the highest-grossing releases ever in Australia: Crocodile Dundee...

David Gulpilil, the revered Indigenous Australian actor and dancer, known for his performances in films such as Rabbit-Proof Fence, Crocodile Dundee, The Tracker and Walkabout, has died aged 68 following a battle with cancer.

Gulpilil’s death was confirmed Monday in a statement by South Australian Premier Steven Marshall. “It is with deep sadness that I share with the people of South Australia the passing of an iconic, once-in-a-generation artist who shaped the history of Australian film and Aboriginal representation on screen – David Gulpilil Ridjimiraril Dalaithngu (Am),” he posted on social media.

Gulpilil received mainstream recognition for his performances in blockbuster comedy Crocodile Dundee (1986) and Phillip Noyce’s drama Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002), which garnered the actor his first best actor prize from the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards.

He was also well known for 2002 feature The Tracker, in which he played the title character, and further collaborations with director...

David Gulpilil, the beloved Indigenous Australian actor who introduced the world to his culture in Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout and went on to make his mark in the blockbuster Crocodile Dundee and in the Rolf de Heer dramas The Tracker and Charlie’s Country, has died. He was 68.

Gulpilil was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2017, and his death was announced Monday in a statement by South Australian Premier Steven Marshall. “It is with deep sadness that I share with the people of South Australia the passing of an iconic, once-in-a-generation artist who shaped the history of Australian film and Aboriginal representation on ...

David Gulpilil, the beloved Indigenous Australian actor who introduced the world to his culture in Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout and went on to make his mark in the blockbuster Crocodile Dundee and in the Rolf de Heer dramas The Tracker and Charlie’s Country, has died. He was 68.

Gulpilil was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2017, and his death was announced Monday in a statement by South Australian Premier Steven Marshall. “It is with deep sadness that I share with the people of South Australia the passing of an iconic, once-in-a-generation artist who shaped the history of Australian film and Aboriginal representation on ...

A spirit of optimism pervades this compelling film about trying to create an Indigenous Australian haka

It’s been a wonderful year for documentaries about Indigenous Australian artists, with Firestarter: Story of Bangarra charting the evolution of the magical Bangarra Dance Theatre and My Name is Gulpilil presenting a portrait, in the spirit of a living wake, of the great Yolŋu actor David Gulpilil.

Now comes director Larissa Behrendt’s Araatika: Rise Up! – which isn’t about artists per se but certainly about creative expression, poised at the intersection of art and sport, following a group of Nrl players as they create the First Nations equivalent of a haka.

Veteran Australian director Rolf De Heer (“Ten Canoes”) is shooting a new film titled “The Mountain,” for which Italy’s Fandango Sales is launching sales at the online AFM.

“The Mountain” (pictured above in a first-look image) tells the story of a central character named BlackWoman, who is abandoned in a cage in the middle of the desert. Following her escape from the cage, “she walks through pestilence and persecution, from desert to mountain to city, to find … more captivity,” reads the film’s synopsis.

“BlackWoman walks and walks, past ruins and dunes until she finds boots, and skeletons and skulls, a wrecked world where few survive and your newly gained boots can get stolen at the point of a gun.”

“Those responsible are reluctant to release their privilege, and BlackWoman, escaping once more, must find solace in her beginnings,” it adds. The film stars Mwajemi Hussein, Deepthi Sharma, and Darsan Sharma.

Six films are set to vie for this year’s Aacta Award for Best Documentary, with voting for the winner open from today until August 2.

For consideration are Christopher Nelius’ Girls Can’t Surf, the highest grossing feature doc of the year so far; Sally Aitken’s Sundance-selected Playing With Sharks, and Molly Reynold’s My Name Is Gulpilil, a portrait of one of Australia’s leading actors, David Gulpilil.

They will compete against Matthew Walker’s I’m Wanita, about to premiere at the Melbourne International Film Festival following a HotDocs bow; Tosca Looby’s examination of the attacks that faced Julia Gillard in office, Strong Female Lead; and Jane Castle’s portrait of her mother, filmmaker Lilias Fraser, When The Camera Stopped Rolling.

‘Strong Female Lead’.

As If has reported, Aacta has adjusted its voting framework this year, with rounds per category staggered throughout the year.

The Best Documentary...

From Walkabout, Storm Boy, Crocodile Dundee and Rabbit Proof Fence, to Australia, The Proposition and Charlie’s Country, the work of David Gulpilil forms a throughline in modern Australian cinema.

Knowing that his career has touched Australians far and wide and across generations, distributor Abcg Films wanted to ensure documentary My Name Is Gulpilil was accessible and could reach audiences across the country.

Directed by Molly Reynolds, the film sees the legendary Indigenous actor, who has terminal lung cancer, tell his story in his own words – there are no talking heads from anyone else.

The film was originally intended to exist as a posthumous tribute, though Gulpilil has defied the odds. Indeed, despite his illness, he was even able to be there in person for the film’s premiere at the Adelaide Festival in March.

Abcg Film, led by Alicia Brescianini and Cathy Gallagher, has a long history of working with...

Horrors The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It and A Quiet Place Part II might have led the box office last weekend, but the national tally was far from scary – even despite the Melbourne lockdown.

Warner Bros’ Conjuring 3 was no. 1, bowing on $2.9 million from 321 screens. That marks the third highest opening for a film in the supernatural universe, which consists of eight films.

Based on the 1981 murder trial of Arne Cheyenne Johnson, the film sees Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga reprise their roles as husband-and-wife paranormal investigators. Aussie James Wan produces with Peter Safran, with Michael Chaves directing from a screenplay by David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, who conceived the story with Wan.

The film’s result, which works out a whopping $8,998 per screen, is significant given cinemas in Melbourne were closed for the second weekend running.

Elsewhere in Victoria, cinemas were able to reopen with a cap of 25 per cent venue capacity,...

Two new major releases in A Quiet Place Part II and Cruella helped to breathe life back into the box office last weekend, though results were stymied by the closure of cinemas across Victoria.

Paramount’s A Quiet Place Part II was one of the first films to be delayed by the pandemic. Some 14 months later than planned, the John Krasinski-helmed sequel premiered ahead of the 2018 original, topping the box office with $3.1 million from 542 screens. With previews from the previous weekend, it sits on highly respectable $5.2 million.

In the US, where it is Memorial Day weekend, the horror, starring Emily Blunt, Krasinski, Cillian Murphy, Millicent Simmonds and Noah Jupe is expected to post $58 million by Monday.

Despite a simultaneous PVOD release on Disney+, Cruella, starring Emma Stone in the titular role, still drew a respectable crowd for the Mouse House, bowing at no. 2 from $1.5 million from 452, or $1.6 million with previews.

"I'm an actor, I'm a dancer, I'm a singer and also, a painter. This film is about me. This is my story of my story." Abcg Film has released a trailer for My Name is Gulpilil, a feature film about the extraordinary life of Indigenous actor, dancer, artist, and screen legend, David Gulpilil. You definitely know who he is! The only actor to appear in both of the two highest grossing Australian films of all time, Crocodile Dundee (1986) and Australia (2008), Gulpilil is known throughout the world for his unforgettable performances - from his breakthrough in Walkabout (1971) to films including Storm Boy (1976), Mad Dog Morgan (1976), Peter Weir's The Last Wave (1977), The Tracker (2002), Rabbit Proof Fence (2002), The Proposition (2005) and his Cannes Best Actor award winning role in Rolf de Heer's Charlie's Country (2013). Integral to the telling of so many legendary screen stories, Gulpilil, now nearing the end of his life, generously shares...

Molly Reynolds’ superb documentary rises to the challenge of doing justice to the extraordinary life and career of the great veteran Yolŋu actor

People in the entertainment industry sometimes speak about performers having the “it” factor – a difficult to define quality not necessarily apparent in real life, but ushered into shimmering existence on stage or screen.

Nobody in the world has ever had “it” quite like the great Yolŋu actor David Gulpilil, a titanic force in Australian cinema and now the subject of director Molly Reynolds’ superb, sad, yet in its own way wonder-filled documentary, which achieves the intimidating task of doing justice to the life and career of this extraordinary artist.

Integral to the telling of so many legendary screen stories, David Gulpilil, now nearing the end of his life, generously shares his own story in My Name is Gulpilil.

The actor, dancer, singer and painter takes audiences on the journey that is his most extraordinary, culture-clashing life.

From his breakthrough performance in 1971’s Walkabout to today, Gulpilil is known for performances across films such as Storm Boy, Mad Dog Morgan, Crocodile Dundee, The Last Wave, The Tracker, Rabbit Proof Fence, Australia, Charlie’s Country, and Goldstone.

Early in 2017 Gulpilil was diagnosed with lung cancer. His doctors estimated six months, but David being David, was always likely to defy the odds.

Directed by Molly Reynolds, and produced by Gulpilil, Rolf de Heer, Peter Djigirr and Reynolds, My Name is Gulpilil marks the culmination of a 20 year creative collaboration.

A Vertigo Production, My Name is Gulpilil was commissioned by the Adelaide Film Festival...

To mark the release of Walkabout on 31st August, we’ve been given 1 copy to give away on Blu-ray.

Following the suicide of their father, Mary (Jenny Agutter) and her younger brother Peter (Luc Roeg) are left stranded in the blistering heat of the vast Australian outback. Facing exhaustion and starvation, their salvation comes when they cross paths with an Aboriginal boy on ‘walkabout’, a ritual in which he must leave his home and learn to survive off the land. He teaches them how to survive in the wilderness, but a clash of cultures leads to terrible and tragic consequences…

Please note: This competition is open to UK residents only

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The Small Print

Open to UK residents only The competition will close 3rd September 2020 at 23.59 GMT The winner will be picked at random from entries received No cash alternative is available Please note prizes may be delayed...

Stan Grant.

As a proud Wiradjuri, Kamilaroi and Dharawal man, Stan Grant learned from the earliest age about the exploits of Pemulwuy, Australia’s first Indigenous resistance fighter who led a 12-year war against British Colonial oppression.

So the former broadcaster, author and writer of The Australian Dream was delighted when Phillip Noyce, who has wanted to tell Pemulwuy’s story for more than 50 years, asked him to serve as a co-executive producer on the biopic.

Catriona McKenzie is attached to direct the drama scripted by Jon Bell.

Andrew Dillon and Ian Sutherland will produce Pemulwuy for That’s-a-Wrap Productions with Noyce, Mathew Walker and James Robinson serving as executive producers alongside Grant.

A member of the Bidjigal clan, Pemulwuy led the opposition to British forces’ attempts to take over traditional hunting grounds from the early years of the colony until he was shot dead in 1802.

Bennelong, who helped establish a...

If you’re looking to dive into the best of independent and foreign filmmaking, The Criterion Channel has announced their August 2020 lineup. The impressive slate includes retrospectives dedicated to Mia Hansen-Løve, Bill Gunn, Stephen Cone, Terry Gilliam, Wim Wenders, Alain Delon, Bill Plympton, Les Blank, and more.

In terms of new releases, they also have Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles’ Bacurau, the fascinating documentary John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection, the Kenyan LGBTQ drama Rafiki, and more. There’s also a series on Australian New Wave with films by Gillian Armstrong, Bruce Beresford, David Gulpilil, and Peter Weir, as well as one on bad vacations with Joanna Hogg’s Unrelated, Ben Wheatley’s Sightseers, and more.

See the lineup below and explore more on their platform. One can also see our weekly streaming picks here.

25 Ways to Quit Smoking, Bill Plympton, 1989

The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, Roy Rowland,...

"It was just an amazing opportunity that we were all given." Second Sight Films has debuted an official re-release trailer for the new "Limited Edition" UK Blu-ray of the seminal Australian classic Walkabout, first released in 1971. This film originally premiered at the Cannes Film Festival back in 1971, but didn't win any awards then. It has since gone on to earn critical acclaim and be heralded as one of the defining films in Australian cinema, and one of the first to highlight the Aboriginal experience in a transcendent way. Jenny Agutter and Luc Roeg star as two city-bred siblings are stranded in the Australian Outback, where they learn to survive with the aid of an Aboriginal boy on his "walkabout": a ritual separation from his tribe. The great David Gulpilil also co-stars in his debut as the Aboriginal boy. It was released before by Criterion, but this UK box set...

Travelling 10,000 miles – from Australia to Morocco – may sound like a long trek just to receive a tribute, but that was the distance travelled by most of the members of Australia’s 22-person delegation of actors, directors and producers to attend the Marrakech Film Festival’s country tribute.

Notwithstanding the radical differences between Morocco and Australia, both countries share something in common, which has captured the imagination of filmmakers since the birth of the medium – the desert.

For this year’s festival poster the Marrakech Film Festival Foundation pondered depicting the two deserts of Morocco and Australia side by side, but ultimately opted for a simple warm orange glow.

Australia has been a structuring element of the fest’s 18th edition – Australian actor Naomi Watts officially opened the festival and British actor Tilda Swinton, this year’s jury president, has a direct family link to the country, since her mother was born in New South Wales.

An amazing Blu-ray year is capped by a genuine favorite, rescued by its filmmaker and set aside for almost twenty years. Wim Wenders was forced to make a shortened version of what he hoped would be his greatest success, following Wings of Desire: but he cleverly saved his 4.5-hour uncut version, making its Blu-ray debut on December 10. Longform video is currently the rage, so perhaps the time has finally come for the uncut Bis ans Ende der Welt. The music soundtrack is nothing less than fantastic, not to be missed.

Until the End of the World

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 1007

1991 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 158, 181, 287 min. / Bis ans Ende der Welt / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date December 10, 2019 / 39.95

Starring: Solveig Dommartin, William Hurt, Sam Neill, Rüdiger Vogler, Jeanne Moreau, Max von Sydow, Chishu Ryu, Kuniko Miyake, Allen Garfield, David Gulpilil, Ernie Dingo, Lois Chiles, Adelle Lutz, Chick Ortega, Eddy Mitchell,...

Kelton Pell.

Actor Kelton Pell is the first Western Australian to receive the Screen Legend accolade from CinefestOZ in the event’s 12-year history.

In a career spanning more than 25 years, his film credits include Blackfellas, Australian Rules, September, Bran Nue Dae, Mad Bastards, Looking For Grace, Red Dog:True Blue and Three Summers.

In his latest screen role he appeared alongside Bill Nighy, Victoria Hill and Milan Burch in director Tim Brown’s Buckley’s Chance, which was partly shot in Wa.

Nighy played Spencer, the estranged grandfather of Burch’s Ridley, who moved to Wa with his mother Gloria (Hill) after his father dies. Spencer tries to reconnect with the boy but he gets lost the outback.

Pell has been a familiar face in such TV shows as Pine Gap, The Gods of Wheat Street, The Circuit, Redfern Now and The Heights.

“It’s a huge honour,” he says of the award.

Anni Browning accepts the 2017 Spa Award to Film Finances for Best Service and Facilities.

In 22 years with Film Finances Australasia, Anni Browning experienced numerous highs and faced a few challenges as the cinema industry ebbed and flowed.

Browning, who has stepped down as MD of the completion bond company but is still a consultant, supported Rachel Perkins’ debut feature Radiance.

She took one of her biggest risks on a Rolf de Heer movie, which she counts as one of her proudest achievements.

The biggest trend during her time has been the proliferation of low budget films, despite the need to pay crews and allocate reasonable money for post- production. Film Finances bonded a lot of films budgeted at $1 million- $1.5 million and one-off feature docs costing as little as $100,000- $200,000.

One thing which has not remained constant is the insurance bond premium. When she started it was as high as 6 per cent of the budget.

Tracey Rigney (Photo credit: Michelle Grace Hunder).

Growing up in western Victoria, Tracey Rigney, a member of the Wotjobaluk and Ngarrindjeri peoples, rarely saw black faces on television apart from David Gulpilil and Ernie Dingo.

Today the writer-director, who started out as a playwright with Belonging and How Blak R U? in 2002, is among the screen industry’s fast-rising Indigenous storytellers.

Currently she is crafting ideas for one of eight shorts which will comprise the anthology feature Cook 2020: Our Right of Reply, jointly commissioned by Screen Australia and the New Zealand Film Commission.

When there was a call-out for applications initially she decided not to apply, given the demands on her time and energy as the mother of a two-and-a-half year-old girl.

A producer friend told her she had some good ideas and encouraged her to give it a go. “I applied not thinking I would get anywhere,” she tells If.

Colin Thiele’s 1963 children’s novel about a boy and his beloved pelican receives tender and touching treatment in its second film adaptation. Adding a contemporary wrap-around story to the 1950s-set tale, and wringing well-judged changes to Henri Safran’s much-loved 1976 film, this version of “Storm Boy,” directed by excellent Aussie small-screen helmer Shawn Seet, has the emotional heft and visual splendor to win the hearts of domestic and international family audiences. Sony will release the film Down Under on Jan. 17, during the summer school holiday season. U.S. theatrical release via Good Deed Entertainment is scheduled for April.

In purely cinematic terms “Storm Boy” has all the ingredients for commercial success. How well it performs will depend at least partly on public response to controversy surrounding top-billed star Geoffrey Rush, also one of the film’s executive producers. Australia’s Federal Court will soon deliver a decision on the...

Madrid — New York-based independent distributor Monument Releasing has secured North American distribution rights to “Our Time,” from Mexico’s Carlos Reygadas, winner of Cannes Jury (“Silent Light”) and Director (“Post Tenebras Lux”) prizes.

Monument Releasing will open “Our Time” in cinema theaters in North America in June 2019, followed by a VOD and home entertainment release.

Struck with Michael Weber’s The Match Factory, the sales agent on the film, as well as one of its co-producers, the deal will give more outlets to a title which world premiered at last year’s Venice Festival, after Reygadas’ first four main features played Cannes.

“Our Time” turns on a couple who live on a ranch in , central Mexico, raising fighting bulls. Esther runs the ranch, Juan, a renown poet, raises the bulls. They have an open relationship, but Juan’s world is thrown out of kilter when Esther becomes infatuated with the estate’s horse trainer.

‘Storm Boy’

Good Deed Entertainment has acquired the North American rights to Ambience Entertainment’s Storm Boy.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, who broke the news, the distributor plans to release it during the American springtime, with the deal brokered by Kathy Morgan International.

In Australia, Sony Pictures Releasing will launch the film during the summer school holidays on January 17.

Studiocanal previously held the rights to the film locally, but Sony swooped on it after the deal did not pan out.

Shot in South Australia, Storm Boy is based on the classic novel by Colin Thiele, and is directed by Shawn Seet, produced by Matthew Street and Michael Boughen, and written by Justin Monjo. Leading the cast are Jai Courtney, newcomer Finn Little and Geoffrey Rush.

Rush plays Mike ‘Storm Boy’ Kingsley, a retired businessman who starts to see things which at first he can’t explain. When his grand-daughter...

The 1970s were the heyday of what was still known, with Victorian understatement, as the love scene: those writhing arenas of nude intimacy, which moviegoers experienced with a touch of voyeuristic awe, to the point that the scenes were talked about for years, or even decades. And except for the clashing close encounters in “Last Tango in Paris,” no love scene of the ’70s was as celebrated, as talked about, or as swooned over as the one that appeared a year later in “Don’t Look Now,” the splendidly creepy 1973 chiller that’s arguably the greatest movie directed by Nicolas Roeg, who died Friday at 90.

The film’s two stars, Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie, were both considered deliriously sexy at the time, though if you watch the movie today they look more or less like what they were playing — a handsome but ordinary middle-class couple still reeling in grief...

Director and noted cinematographer Nicolas Roeg, whose offbeat films included “Performance,” “Don’t Look Now,” “The Witches” and “The Man Who Fell to Earth,” has died. He was 90.

His son Nicolas Roeg Jr. told the BBC his father died Friday night.

A daring and influential craftsman, Roeg’s idiosyncratic films influenced filmmakers including Danny Boyle and Steven Soderbergh.

He worked his way up from the bottom of the business and by the 1960s was much in demand as a cinematographer, responsible for the lensing of films including “Petulia,” “Far From the Madding Crowd” and “Fahrenheit 451.”

The controversial, oddly compelling Mick Jagger-starring “Performance,” which Roeg co-directed with Donald Cammell, was almost not released and then was recut by Warner Bros.; execs at the studio found it incomprehensible as a gangster thriller. It was eventually recut, released in 1970 to modest business and decades later received widespread acclaim as a classic of British cinema.