This Fridays screening is Babies……

Four countries, four babies from birth to first steps..…a mesmerizing look at the world of babies.

This Friday night the Port Fairy Film Society is looking forward to bringing the delightful and extraordinary documentary “Babies”. It captures on film the earliest stages of the journey of humanity that are at “once unique and universal to us all.” The children are, in order of the screening Ponijao, who lives in Namibia, them Bayarjargal, who resides with his family in Mongolia, near Bayanchandmani; Mari who lives in Tokyo and Hattie from San Francisco, California.

The French film maker Thomas Blames has chosen four very contrasting parts of the world to capture the universal truths of a common existence where from the time of birth, we observe babies experience the beginning of their  journey into the world , their families, their environment  and their culture.  This is all presented in an observational style, without narration and only the occasional squeals and sounds of the babies as they interact with their surroundings, siblings, parents and animals. The film is captivating and mesmerizing in its simplicity and a joy to watch. Movie goers should find this an enjoyable and engaging way to pass the time in a warm and welcoming theatre on a Friday night.

Margaret from “At the Movies” gives “Babies” 4 **** “Babies” is Rated PG and screens at 7:30pm on Friday September 16^th at the Reardon Theatre.  All Welcome.

View the trailer http://www.madman.com.au/videos/view/2450

Tuesday Classics:                                                                  The Tuesday classics continues its current season with its second film on Tuesday September 27^th with the Classic “Paint your Wagon” from 1:30 pm at the Reardon Theatre. All welcome. 

View the Trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0idoJnBAvk

Call out for films for Port Fairy's Short Film Showcase

Do you want to see your film on the big screen?

Port Fairy Film Society and ABC Open invite you to submit your short films for our short film showcase screening on Friday 28 October.

Please send in your films for selection:
· Films under 15 minutes

· We welcome films of any genre, old & new: documentaries, dramas, animations, experimental.

· All ages welcome.

· Closing date for submissions: EXTENDED to 12 October.

DOWNLOAD A submission form http://freepdfhosting.com/4f1dbe77f3.pdf

Our CHEEZY PROMOTION:  http://vimeo.com/27891573

Top short films from 2011 St Kilda Film Festival to delight audiences

Prizewinning films and outstanding favourites from this years St Kilda Film Festival’s Top 100 Shorts will soon be enjoyed at 7.30pm Wednesday 17 August at Port Fairy’s Reardon Theatre as part of its national tour .

The St Kilda Film Festival tour will ensure that film buffs around the state will have the opportunity to view this year’s exceptional entrants from Australia’s largest short film competition.

Festival Director Paul Harris says of the Tour “The awesome shorts chosen for our national showcase offer audiences the opportunity to view some of the most innovative, cutting edge, inspiring and just plain entertaining work from Australia’s current crop of emerging filmmakers, who are literally taking the world by storm.”

Straight from taking the Festival’s top honour for Best Short Film and the richest cash prize in Australian short film is The Kiss, directed by Ashlee Page and produced by Sonya Humphrey. The film follows the story of two teenage girls, fuelled by alcohol and hormones, whose fun night out takes a dangerous turn when they become trapped in a water tank. Ashlee Page also picked up the Best Director award for the film.

This year’s tour program also features a showcase of Australian talent: Nash Edgerton presents his new short Bear written by him and David Michod (Animal Kingdom), while Nadine Garner makes directorial debut with festival favourite Afterglow. This moving film follows the story of a young woman in post World War II Australia as she meets her forbidden love to tell him she has not terminated her pregnancy.

Jack Thompson, Gary Sweet and Sigrid Thornton appear together for the first time in The Telegram Man, a tale set in World War 11 where the once popular telegram man becomes a figure of fear and repulsion as he delivers the onslaught of bad news.

These films, along with other festival winners and crowd favourites will screen in two sessions at each destination- tour dates and the full list of touring films is attached below.

The St Kilda Film Festival is proudly produced and presented by the City of Port Philip . For more information, visit http://www.stkildafilmfestival.com.au/2011/

"Potiche" - very French and very funny.

This months offering at the Port Fairy Film Society should tempt film lovers out into the cold and into the warmed up Reardon Theatre, for this very French and very funny film, complete with famous French stars and silly, farcical situations in a retro 70's setting. Based on a very successful hit comic play, Catherine Denueve plays Suzanne, the "Potiche" or submissive, housebound, trophy wife of a successful but tyrannical businessman Robert (Fabrice Luchini).

Robert is taken hostage by irate workers who go on strike at his umbrella factory and Suzanne steps in and takes charge of the factory and the situation, proving herself to be more than competent and capable. Things of course get complicated, and so the battle of the sexes and the classes ensues with comic consequences. With further great performances from Gerard Depardieu, playing a former union leader and Suzannes ex-lover ("a lovelorn political beast") and an ensemble cast of comic actors the film unfolds to be a hugely enjoyable and entertaining satire.

Critics have said of "Potiche"

"For pure pleasure of cinema, there's nothing better out there at the moment."

and

"This frothy, farcical film from Francois Ozon dotes on its star and Deneuve delivers. She's fabulous and funny. The song and dance routine she does with Depardieu is alone worth the price of a ticket." Margaret ABC

"Potiche" will be screened on Friday July 15th at 7:30pm at the Reardon Theatre Bank St. Port Fairy. It is Rated M and its running time is 110 Minutes. New and existing members always welcome. Free tea and Coffee and sweets for sale.

In A Better World

This film will keep you talking long after it’s over, which is often the mark of a very good film..

This Friday 17 June, the Port Fairy Film Society brings a beautifully crafted and thought provoking drama from Danish Director Susanne Biers who brought us such fine movies as "After the Wedding" and "Brothers".

Winner of the Golden Globe in 2010 and in 2011 the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, "In A Better World" approaches violence and justice from a variety of angles, and at separate stages of their evolution. It focuses on the domestic story of a new friendship between two boys and the consequences of bullying, violence and revenge, but is set against a broader conflictual back drop which links to the refugee camps of Africa, where the father of one of the boys works and where violence exists on an everyday basis.

The film asks moral questions and presents challenges through exploring the themes of how adults teach their children to handle conflict, to control their own potential violent urges, and how to provide a peaceful response in a violent world.

Margaret from "At the Movies" describes "In a Better World" in this way;

"It's a beautiful, sad, ultimately compassionate film about the origins of iolence, wherever it rears its head, and the implications of dealing with it."

She then goes on to rate it at 4 out of 5 stars.

Viewers will hopefully find "In a Better World" a poignant and provocative film about masculinity, parent's responsibility and the dangers of violence in everyday life.

http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi1945869593/

"In a Better World" is rated MA15+, and is a Danish film with subtitles. It screens at 7:30pm on Friday June 17th at the Reardon Theatre. All members current and new are welcome. Memberships are on sale from 7:10pm. See you round the Urn.

* 7.30PM Friday 1 July SIDEWAYS

As part of its July romantic Winter Weekend program, the PF WWE screens Sideways.

A Miles, a dedicated wine buff and unpublished novelist, takes his old friend Jack, who is about to get married, on a week long bachelor's trip to Californian wine country, where they meet Maya and Stephanie and learn about the true nature of pinot noir. Their different notions of love and lust take them on an amusing but complicated and painful journey.

.ABC Margaret: 4.5 Stars David: 5 Stars (USA) MA (127 mins) Tickets at the door.

http://www.abc.net.au/atthemovies/txt/s1249884.htm

http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi864551193/

It's a big movie month at Port Fairy in May..

Friday May 6th: 7:30pm. Movie: "Strange Birds in Paradise" A community fundraiser for the West Papuan Association SW Victoria.

The Australia West Papua Association (SW -Vic) and the Port Fairy Film

Society are proud to present the award winning full length feature

documentary by Australian film maker. Charlie Hill-Smith, "Strange Birds in

Paradise".

Winner of the 2010 IF award for "Best Documentary" and nominated for four

AFI awards, Strange Birds in Paradise is a journey into just some of the

more than 250 West Papuan cultures.

Intercut with Hill-Smith's travelogue

and short animations, the interviews paint a picture not only of a country

with a rich musical tradition and breathtaking nature, but also of a country

weighed down by Indonesian military oppression.

A large number of retired

army generals have substantial economic interests in West Papua, and the

army uses extreme violence to keep the lid on the West Papuan population's

independence movement.

In 2006, Hill-Smith decided to return to West Papua,

this time equipped with a professional camera and all the knowledge he had

gained about the country's history.

While the Indonesian army continues to dominate the indigenous inhabitants

of West Papua, three friends gather in Melbourne to record outlawed folk

songs with renowned Australian rock musicologist David Bridie.

Charlie Hill -Smith confronts a basic question: how could these two vibrant

cultures be at war and how can the rest of the world seemingly not care?

The film features music by award winning performer, composer and frequent

visitor to SW Victoria, David Bridie.

The film is presented as a fundraiser to support educational programs about

human rights and non-violent resistance in West Papua and to support health

and education for West Papuan refugees living in camps on the PNG - West

Papua border.

entry is $12/$8 concession Rated PG, 78 Mins.

To see the film trailer go to http://www.strangebirds.com.au/

Friday May 13th: 7:30pm.Movie: "The Girl who Kicked the Hornets Nest" Rated MA 15+. A community Fundraiser for St.Patrick's School Port Fairy.

The Third film in the Millenium Trilogy based on Stieg Larssons popular crime thrillers.

It takes up where the previous two films finished with Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) recovering in a hospital from horrendous attacks and awaiting trial for three murders. When she is released, Mikael Blomqvist (Michael Nykvist ) must prove her innocence. Meanwhile, Lisbeth is plotting her own revenge against the people who put her in this situation.

"The third and final entry in Stieg Larsson's enormously successful series is perhaps the least thrilling, but it's easily the most satisfying."

Tickets available at the door. Rated MA 15+ 147 Mins

The trailer can be viewed at http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi650316057/

Friday May 20th: Usual monthly PFFS Screening. Movie: "Another Year" Rated M (UK) 130 Mins

Directed by Mike Leigh (Secrets and Lies, Vera Drake, Happy go Lucky), Starring Jim Broadbent & Ruth Sheen.

The PFFS brings yet another of Director Mike Leigh’s wonderful domestic dramas with the 2011 released "Another Year" starring Jim Broadbent, Lesley Manville and Ruth Sheen. This drama & comedy follows the story of a married couple who have managed to remain blissfully happy into their autumn years, are surrounded over the course of the four seasons of one average year by friends, colleagues, and family who all seem to suffer some degree of unhappiness.

It is described by critics as "An unassuming little masterpiece.." "Desperation and fulfilment, anxiety and warmth, pain and contentment -- all come together in the darkly splendid Another Year. " . “a deeply involving, intelligent, compassionate drama of the sort only Leigh can create” (Peter Bradshaw) ..with all the sadness and happiness that Leigh can staple onto the screen in the amalgam that is life around him”(Andrew Urban)

The Trailer can be viewed at http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi4561177/

Tuesday May 24th: Tuesday PFFS Movie Classic: 1:30pm. "Rebecca"

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine and George Sanders. Rated PG 130 Minutes

Rebecca is a masterpiece of haunting atmosphere, Gothic thrills, and gripping suspense.

A lonely man, a lovely girl... struggling against the secret of Manderley….The shadow of a remembered woman came between their lips... but these two had the courage to hope... and to live their love!

The Trailer can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwneccC52fY

Final film in this 2011 Feb-May series of Classic Movie matinees; Next season August- November 2011, starts at 1.30pm on Tuesday 23 August. Concession Memberships through the PF Day Centre, Senior Citizens Club and Moyneyana House.

Have a Great May!!!!

The Tree in Port Fairy this Friday

Described as one of the better Australian films of 2010, Julie Bertuccelli’s “The Tree” has wonderful cinematography of the Australian landscape, fine acting by Charlotte Gainsbourg, Marton Csokas, Morgana Davies, Aden Young, Christian Byers, Tom Rusell, Gabriel Gotting, Penne Hackforth-Jones, Gillian Jones. It was the closing night film at the 2010 Cannes film Festival.

The Tree is the story of young Simone and her mother Dawn. After her father is killed in an accident, Simone decides her father lives on in the tree and protects them. With time the huge Morton Bay Fig Tree becomes entwined with their house. When Dawn finds herself a new love problems emerge.

Whilst it is generally agreed Bertuccelli, who wrote the screen play and directed the film, has not made a masterpiece, “this is a beautifully made film and it is beautifully acted, I think, by the entire cast. I think they are all very, very good”( David ABC). Both Margaret gave the film 3.5 Stars.

http://youtu.be/iSLTwvurWA0

The Tree is a Port Fairy Film Society screening at 7.30pm on Friday 15 April at the Reardon Theatre, Bank Street Port Fairy. Memberships are on sale from 7.15 pm. All Welcome. Free tea and coffee.

This month the Tuesday Matinee Classic, “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” with Jane Powell and Howard Keel is on the THIRD Tuesday at 1.30pm at the Reardon Theatre.

http://youtu.be/CfFFFfRwsR0