The 59th Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) has announced that American cinema legend Joe Dante will attend the Festival for a special film tribute – Dante’s Inferno. Known for his subversive humour and social critique, in films such as Gremlins, Piranha, Small soldiers, The Burbs, Dante will also present the Australian premiere of his very first film, the 4.5 hour The Movie Orgy.
Hollywood actor, star of HBO TV series, Entourage, now documentary filmmaker, Adrian Grenier will present his film, Teenage Paparazzo on Friday 23rd July. The film follows 13 year old paparazzo, Austin Visschedyk, as he elbows away men three times his age to capture photographs of the most “famous” people in the insular world of Los Angeles.
The boy from Ballarat, Michael Rowe, will be a guest of the Festival with his Camera d’Or winning film, Leap Year, one of 17 Cannes Film Festival films to screen at MIFF. Other Cannes titles include Im Sang-soo’s The Housemaid, Sophie Fiennes’ Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow, Jean-Luc Godard’s Film Socialisme, Olivier Assayas’ 5 hour long Carlos, and Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy starring Juliette Binoche.
New to MIFF is a spotlight on Indian film titled Not Quite Bollywood. To celebrate the program, superstar Aamir Kahn, will be in town on Friday 6th August to present his film, Peepli Live in a gala presentation at the Regent Theatre. Other Indian films include LSD, one of the first all-digital films to break through to mainstream Indian cinema – Dibakar Banerjee and Priya Sreedharan from LSD will be guests of the Festival alongside Abhishek Chaubey who will launch his directorial debut Ishqiya.
After eighteen days of jam packed film events, MIFF will close with a biopic on musician Ian Dury, Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll. Ian Dury, played by Andy Serkis (Lord of the Rings, King Kong), was a hard-living, hard-hitting punk rocker famous for his antics both on and off stage and for his lyricism and his live performances.
Waste Land, UK/Brazil, 2009, Melbourne International Film Festival 2010
Cities on Speed, Denmark, 2009, Melbourne International Film Festival 2010
This year will see an expanded number of special events including:
• MIFF Drive In at Open Channel – experience MIFF old-school style during the weekend of July 30th.
• Full Dome Screenings at the Planetarium – three special full dome screenings taking place in the Melbourne Planetarium.
• Salon Lumiere – The National Film and Sound Archive presents Patineur Grotesque, Australia’s earliest surviving film. Shot in 1896 in an unknown Melbourne location, this film reveals the history of Marius Sestier and his Australian works.
• MIFF Short Awards – MIFF’s shorts program not only presents the best short films from around the globe but it also houses one of the biggest short film awards in the southern hemisphere. The winners – who are then eligible to be nominated for the Academy Awards – are announced on Sunday 1 August, following a special screening of this year’s MIFF shorts picks.
• 72 Hour Movie – using Melbourne, the festival and its people as a backdrop, a team of people have 72 hours to shoot and edit a feature film to be screened on Sunday 8th August 2010.
The 59th Melbourne International Film Festival will screen across 18 days, screening 227 features and 99 shorts across 50 countries, of which 11 features are world premieres.
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