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Last seen on Directors Notes with her unforgettable spa retreat drama Hot Mother, Lucy Knox’s most recent project is a 7 minute acknowledgement, educator and reminder of the difficulties of growing, learning, experiencing and moving forward in the present day. Eighteen lends itself as a momentary scope into the reality of young adults and the world they are coming to conform and adapt to. With the help of the production company Trust, alongside her returning Dop Max Walter and the rest of her talented crew, Knox brings forward a documentary that “acts as a time capsule” for these adolescents and the entire generation around them. Exemplified by a triad of individuals from her home turf in Australia, Knox’s short curates an intimate, thought-provoking and contemporary nostalgic glimpse into these lives on the cusp of adulthood, offering an opportunity for their voices and stories to be shared and understood. Join...

Whilst a spa retreat may seem like the ultimate luxury and a perfect setting for some familial bonding, Lucy Knox instead uses the idyllic locale to house her tormented drama short Hot Mother, with the surrounding expansive mountains of Aotearoa serving in direct opposition to the confined and tense atmosphere playing out inside. Knox’s naturalistic approach deftly captures the bickering, acerbic relationship that exists between its mother-daughter duo, an idea that she felt the need to explore after spending time with her family on holiday. The short thrust its audience directly into the uncomfortable chill between the two women, brilliantly played by Alison Bruce and Erana James, before leading us into the oppressive tension of their relationship which all comes to a head in the steam room. Hot Mother is a film which will stick in your mind for a lot longer than you may want it to and...

Though their “’80s Horror” lineup would constitute enough of a Halloween push, the Criterion Channel enter October all guns blazing. The month’s lineup also includes a 19-movie vampire series running from 1931’s Dracula (English and Spanish both) to 2014’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, the collection in-between including Herzog’s Nosferatu, Near Dark, and Let the Right One In. Last year’s “Universal Horror” collection returns, a 17-title Ishirō Honda retrospective has been set, and a few genre titles stand alone: Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte, The House of the Devil, and Island of Lost Souls.

Streaming premieres include restorations of Tsai Ming-liang’s Vive L’amour and Ed Lachman’s Lou Reed / John Cale concert film Songs for Drella; October’s Criterion editions are Samuel Fuller’s Forty Guns, Bill Duke’s Deep Cover, Haxan, and My Own Private Idaho. Meanwhile, Ari Aster has curated an “Adventures...

Wurandon Mariwili.

Vice, Screen Australia, and the Australian International Documentary Conference (Aidc) have selected four finalists for the $50,000 documentary funding initiative, Pitch Australiana.

Pitch Australiana provides early career Australian filmmakers an opportunity to collaborate with Vice in telling a story that speaks to communities, individuals, perspectives and subcultures that are overlooked or ignored in mainstream media.

The winner of this year’s competition will secure $50,000 of funding for a short-form documentary to be released on Vice.com as part of the digital documentary series Australiana which is seen in 35 countries, as well as airing on Sbs Viceland.

Finalists will compete for the prize in a pitching session in front of a panel that includes representatives from Vice, Screen Australia and the wider documentary community. This live pitch session will take place on March 4 during Aidc 2020 in Melbourne.

The four finalists will also get to develop their pitch in advance of the Aidc competition with writer,...

Richard Roxburgh, Emma Booth and Daisy Axon in ‘H is for Happiness.’

The Australian presence at the Berlin International Film Festival has been bolstered with the selection of the shorts Elders, Grevillea and The Flame in the Generation program.

It will be the world premieres for Jordan Giusti’s Grevillea and Nick Waterman’s short doc The Flame. Tony Briggs’ Elders played at the Melbourne and Sydney Film Festivals and had its first international screening at the imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival in Toronto.

John Sheedy’s debut feature H is for Happiness, which opens in Australian cinemas on February 6, was announced today as the opening film of the Generation KPlus section, its international premiere.

In addition, Australian director Kitty Green’s #MeToo Us drama The Assistant will screen in the Panorma sidebar, which the programmers say is “emblematic of the urgency for political action and civil disobedience.”

The Generation...

Past Pitch Australiana winners ‘Shooting Cats’ and ‘Burlesque Boys’.

Vice and Screen Australia will once again run the Pitch Australiana competition at the Australian International Documentary Conference (Aidc) next year.

This is the third iteration of the initiative, which offers filmmakers the chance to pitch for a $50,000 commission for a short-form documentary to be released on Vice.com as part of the digital documentary series Australiana, which is seen in 35 countries. The winning documentary will also air on Sbs Viceland.

The Pitch Australiana competition is open to early career Australian filmmakers that have at least one documentary production credit to their name. Four concepts will be shortlisted to compete, pitching live to an audience and a panel of judges.

Australiana aims to present a raw and diverse portrait of modern Australia. Stories should focus on the perspectives of individuals, communities, and subcultures from across the country that are overlooked or ignored,...

The real Burlesque Blokes – MenXclusive Australia (Photo: James Le Tegola).

Vice and Screen Australia have announced director Isaac Elliott and producer Lucy Knox’s Burlesque Blokes as the winner of their joint annual pitching comp, Pitch Australiana, held at the Australian International Documentary Conference (Aidc) earlier this month.

The creators will receive $50,000 in production funding for a short form documentary commission which will be released through Vice’s global digital network, and broadcast on local TV channel Sbs Viceland.

Burlesque Blokes is an observational documentary that follows a group of male erotic entertainers as they go on tour. It explores both the gruelling schedules and how the performers navigate consent in-the-moment with female participants. It also looks at the personal toll their work has on their relationships, self-image and the financial realities of working in one of the only industries where in their experience, male performers are paid far less than their female counterparts.

‘Cleaning Trauma’.

Four filmmaking teams will square off for the chance for $50,000 in funding and their documentary to be released through Vice at this year’s Australian International Documentary Conference (Aidc).

This is the second year that Vice, Screen Australia and Aidc have run the documentary funding initiative, known as Pitch Australiana. It aims to provide provides early career Australian filmmakers an opportunity to collaborate with Vice in telling a story that speaks to communities, individuals, perspectives and subcultures that are overlooked or ignored in mainstream media.

This public pitching session will take place in front a panel that includes representatives from Vice, Screen Australia and the wider documentary community.

Last year’s winner was director Inday Ford and producer Dylan Blowan’s Shooting Cats: Australia’s War on Feral Cats, an ob doc that explores the catastrophic impact feral cats have on Australian wildlife and the complexities environmentalists face...

I Will Treasure Your Friendship is a short film that tells the story of Rayson Light, a YouTube singer obsessed with fame, who Photoshops himself into the lives of celebrities and Australian murder victim Anita Cobby. “This story began in Potts Point where, three years ago, I noticed a small paper advertisement stuck to a shop window in Llankelly Place that read ‘I knew Elvis, go to my YouTube Channel to see’. This is where the story begins,” said director Lucy Knox. “We originally thought we were making a film about an Elvis fan, who had some kind of connection to Elvis. I couldn’t have expected that this story would evolve to be something much more interesting. After spending time with Ray each weekend...

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