PREVIEW: 2024 SYDNEY FILM FESTIVAL

The 71st Sydney Film Festival program has launched with a blockbuster roster of talent and international titles - Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinds of Kindness, starring Emma Stone, fresh from the Cannes Competition; the World Premiere of Aussie boxing drama Kid Snow; the first Indian film to appear in the Cannes Competition in 30 years, Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light; Lee Tamahori’s intense drama The Convert with Guy Pearce; The Bikeriders (pictured, below) starring Jodie Comer, Austin Butler and Tom Hardy; and, Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner Sujo.

In 2024, the Festival will present 197 films from 69 countries including 28 World Premieres and 133 Australian Premieres, bringing together hundreds of new international and local stories, with more to be announced. The program is made up of 92 narrative feature films, including prestigious international festival prize-winners and 54 documentaries tackling crucial contemporary issues, from established and upcoming documentarians.

Opening the festivities will be the World Premiere of Midnight Oil: The Hardest Line (pictured, right). Featuring unheard interviews with every band member, unseen live and studio footage, alongside signature moments like the outback tour with Warumpi Band, their Exxon protest gig in New York and those famous “Sorry” suits at the Sydney Olympics, this film traces the singular journey of Australia’s quintessential rock band across their 45-year career.

Direct from the 2024 Cannes Film Festival will be Grand Tour, the latest from Miguel Gomes, about a romantic pursuit across Asia; Christophe Honoré’s Marcello Mio, featuring an all-star French cast playing themselves in a meta comedy paying homage to the great Marcello Mastroianni; acclaimed actor Ariane Labed’s directorial debut September Says, a Gothic psychological drama in which the closeness of two sisters becomes increasingly disruptive; and Cannes Un Certain Regard contender Việt And Nam, which tells the love story of two gay mineworkers.

Internationally awarded films in competition include Berlin Film Festival Silver Bear honouree Dying, a multi-generational epic about a conductor and his turbulent family and Rich Peppiatt’s raucous and rude comedy Kneecap stars three real-life Belfast rappers, Audience Award winner in the Sundance NEXT strand.

Italian box office juggernaut There’s Still Tomorrow (trailer, above) is a melodrama directed and starring Paola Cortellesi about an industrious woman in post-WWII Rome. It screens in competition at SFF alongside Puan, an incisive comedy about a philosophy professor at a Buenos Aires university who is threatened by a charismatic rival.

Ten documentaries (including seven World Premieres) will contest the 2024 Documentary Australia Prize, amongst them Dale Frank – Nobody’s Sweetie, an intimate portrait of artist Dale Frank; Aquarius, documenting a 1973 gathering embraced by activists, hippies, and radicals that changed the town of Nimbin forever; The Blind Sea (pictured, right), following professional athlete Matt Formston as he takes on the challenge of surfing the biggest wave ever tackled by a blind surfer; and, Sally Aitken’s Sundance Selected Every Little Thing, a story of a woman finding herself as she cares for injured hummingbirds.

Special Presentations at the iconic State Theatre include Jodie Comer, Austin Butler and Tom Hardy in The Bikeriders, Jeff Nichols’ take on the rise and menacing transformation of an iconic American motorcycle club; Lee, featuring Oscar winner Kate Winslet alongside Alexander Skarsgård in the true story of model turned WWII correspondent Lee Miller; My Old Ass, a comedy-love story starring Aubrey Plaza and Maisy Stella, produced by Margot Robbie; and, Viggo Mortensen opposite Vicky Krieps in The Dead Don’t Hurt, a feminist western about a romance in a time of corruption and war.

Two presentations are set to leave audiences reeling with their visual inventiveness. Choi Dong-hoon's Alienoid (trailer, above) and its sequel Alienoid: Return to the Future are mind-bending sci-fi thrillers that masterfully intertwine the fates of alien prisoners trapped in human bodies with 15th-century magicians, brought to life by an all-star Korean cast. And Skywalkers: A Love Story follows two hardcore daredevils as they scale the world’s highest buildings to capture footage for social media and ignite passion in the process - which audiences can also experience at a stomach-dropping screening at IMAX.

Always a stand-out is the Freak Me Out Program, curated by Richard Kuipers, which returns with six features, six shorts and a special live event. These include Cuckoo (pictured, right), starring Hunter Schafer as a troubled teen working at a holiday resort where very strange goings-on start to take place; Annick Blanc’s debut, Hunting Daze (Jour de Chasse), a SXSW Midnighters hit centred on a woman stranded at a buck’s party in the Quebec wilderness; Yannis Veslemes’ She Loved Blossoms More, a Greek Weird Wave fever dream about time travel and family ties; and, Michael Duignan’s The Paragon, the story of a tennis coach who team up with a mysterious psychic tutor to seek revenge on a hit-and-run driver.

A special film and live music event not to be missed is Hear My Eyes: Hellraiser which will give audiences the opportunity to experience Clive Barker’s 1987 extra-dimensional horror classic, re-scored live by EBM explorers Hieroglyphic Being and Robin Fox, and a synched laser-art show at City Recital Hall.

Sydney Film Festival runs from 5-16 June 2024. Tickets and Flexipasses to Sydney Film Festival 2024 are on sale now. Please call 1300 733 733 or visit sff.org.au for more information or to book.

LUKAS DHONT’S CLOSE EARNS SYDNEY FILM FEST TOP HONOUR

The 69th Sydney Film Festival tonight awarded Close by Belgian filmmaker Lukas Dhont, a stunningly beautiful examination of boyhood friendship, the prestigious Sydney Film Prize. The winner of the $60,000 cash prize for ‘audacious, cutting-edge and courageous' film was selected by a prestigious international jury headed by David Wenham.

The announcement was made at the State Theatre ahead of the Closing Night film, the Australian Premiere screening of the 2022 Cannes-award winning South Korean drama Broker.

Dhont said, “Thank you to the festival for expressing its love for the film, the jury for choosing it among all these outstanding pieces, and its first Australian audience for opening hearts and spirits to a film that comes from deep within. We wanted to make a film about friendship and connection after a moment in time where we all understood its necessity and power. I decided to use cinema as my way to connect to the world. And tonight I feel incredibly close and connected to all of you.” (Pictured, top; Close stars Eden Dambrine and Gustav De Waele).

In addition to Wenham, the Festival Jury was comprised of Australian BAFTA-nominated writer and director Jennifer Peedom (Mountain, SFF 2018); Bangladeshi writer-director-producer Mostofa Sarwar Farooki (No Land’s Man, SFF 2022); Golden Berlin Bear winning Turkish writer-director-producer Semih Kaplanoğlu (Commitment Hasan, SFF 2022); and Executive Director at the Kawakita Memorial Film Institute, Tokyo, Yuka Sakano. (Pictured, right; The Jury deliberates)

Wenham said, “[Close] displayed a mastery of restraint, subtle handling of story, astute observations and delicate attention to finer details. A film whose power was felt in things unsaid, the moments between the lines of dialogue. A film with inspired cinematography and flawless performances. A tender, moving, powerful film. A mature film about innocence.”

Australian filmmaker Luke Cornish was presented with the Documentary Australia Award’s $10,000 cash prize for Keep Stepping, about two remarkable female performers training for Australia’s biggest street dance competition. (Pictured, left; Director Luke Cornish, sitting, with street dancers Gabi Quinsacara, left, and Patricia Crasmaruc, from Keep Stepping. Photo:Louie Douvis)

The Dendy Awards for Australian Short Films saw the inaugural AFTRS Craft Award (a $7,000 cash prize) presented to the character artists behind Donkey; Tjunkaya Tapaya OAM; Carolyn Kenta; Imuna Kenta; Elizabeth Dunn; Stacia Yvonne Lewis; Atipalku Intjalki; Lynette Lewis; and Cynthia Burke.

The $5,000 Yoram Gross Animation Award was also awarded to Donkey, directed by Jonathan Daw and Tjunkaya Tapaya OAM. Both the $7,000 Dendy Live Action Short Award and $7,000 Rouben Mamoulian Award for Best Director were presented to Luisa Martiri and Tanya Modini for The Moths Will Eat Them Up (pictured, right).

The 2022 recipient of the $10,000 Sustainable Future Award, made possible by a syndicate of passionate climate activists led by Award sponsor Amanda Maple-Brown, is Australian documentary Delikado directed by Karl Malakunas, which reveals the tribulations of environmental crusaders on the Filipino island of Palawan.

TEN ‘FIRST GLANCE MUST-SEE’ FILMS FROM THE SYDNEY FILM FESTIVAL PROGRAM LAUNCH

With 307 films from 55 countries rostered to unfold from June 5, it would be madness to try to tackle all of the Sydney Film Festival’s program the day it goes go public. Even Festival Director Nashen Moodley, presenting his 8^th program this morning at Sydney’s Town Hall, could only snapshot the mammoth line-up. “This year’s program holds a mirror to titanic shifts culturally and politically,” he said, highlighting qualities certainly on offer amongst the ten films that stuck in our minds after our first glance at the 2019 program. That, and so much more… 

PALM BEACH (pictured, above; l-r, Bryan Brown, Jacqueline McKenzie and Richard E. Grant)
OPENING NIGHT; WED 5 JUN 7.30 PM
Director: Rachel Ward | Screenwriters: Joanna Murray-Smith, Rachel Ward | Cast: Sam Neill, Bryan Brown, Greta Scacchi.
FROM THE PROGRAM: “In Rachel Ward’s funny, uplifting drama/comedy a group of lifelong friends reunite
for a party at Sydney’s Palm Beach; but tension mounts when deep secrets emerge.
With a fantastic cast including Bryan Brown, Sam Neill, Richard E. Grant, Greta Scacchi, Jacqueline McKenzie and Heather Mitchell, Palm Beach is an exuberant and life-affirming celebration of friendship. “
SEE THIS BECAUSE…: You loved The Big Chill.

SLAM
SAT 15 JUN 2.05PM | SUN 16 JUN 4.00 PM | SUN 16 JUN 7.15 PM
Australia, France | 2018 | 115 mins | In English and Arabic with English subtitles | Australian Premiere | Director, Screenwriter: Partho Sen-Gupta | Cast: Adam Bakri, Rachael Blake, Rebecca Breeds
FROM THE PROGRAM: “A young Muslim activist and slam poet goes missing in this tense Sydney-set mystery with a sharp perspective on Islamophobia by Partho Sen-Gupta (Sunrise, SFF 2015).”
SEE THIS BECAUSE…: Partho Sen-Gupta is one of the great unheralded talents of Australian cinema. His incendiary study of intolerance and bigotry will be one of THE hot-button films of 2019.

MONOS
MON 10 JUN 6.20PM | TUE 11 JUN 4.00PM | SAT 15 JUN 6.45PM
Colombia, Argentina, The Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Uruguay | 2019 | 102 mins | In English and Spanish with English subtitles | Australian Premiere |
Director: Alejandro Landes | Screenwriters: Alejandro Landes, Alexis Dos Santos | Cast: Julianne Nicholson, Moises Arias, Julian Giraldo.
FROM THE PROGRAM: “Alejandro Landes’ incendiary allegory follows child soldiers holding a female doctor hostage in a remote jungle location. A film of lush visuals and raw emotion, Monos adopts the personality of a twisted fairy-tale (commenting) on the dehumanising effect of war and the seemingly endless cycles of violence in many South American nations.”
SEE THIS BECAUSE…: Stunning locations in the service of a film that captures the horrors of close-quarters jungle warfare and psychological torment. Best trailer of the fest, too.

DIVINE LOVE
WED 5 JUN 8.30 PM | THU 13 JUN 6.00 PM  
Brazil, Uruguay, Denmark, Norway, Chile, Sweden 2018 | 100 mins | In Portuguese with English subtitles | Australian Premiere |
Director: Gabriel Mascaro | Screenwriters: Gabriel Mascaro, Rachel Ellis, Esdras Bezerra, Lucas Paraízo | Cast: Dira Paes, Julio Machado, Emílio De Melo
FROM THE PROGRAM: “Religion in Brazil in 2027 is a little strange.
Raves, drive-through churches and group sex sessions are all part and parcel of the evangelical Christian group Divino Amor.
 An unsettling, futuristic look at faith and sexuality, Divine Love is wildly imaginative, visually spectacular and entrancing, with a sharp political edge.
SEE THIS BECAUSE…: Our favourite film of SFF 2018 was Gaspar Noe’s Climax; this looks cut from the same cloth.

HER SMELL
FRI 7 JUN 8.30PM | SUN 9 JUN 6.45PM |
WED 12 JUN 8.05 PM  
USA | 2018 | 135 mins | In English | Australian Premiere | Director, Screenwriter: Alex Ross Perry | Cast: Elisabeth Moss, Dan Stevens, Cara Delevingne
FROM THE PROGRAM: “Channelling the infamous Courtney Love in her role as Becky Something, Moss is a rock star whose band has reached its use-by date. A self- destructive narcissist, Becky’s coke-fuelled tirades alienate her bandmates, partner and manager as she hurtles towards impending doom.”
SEE THIS BECAUSE…: Elizabeth Moss is on an Oscar-bound career trajectory. She’s America’s most versatile and fearless young actress.

ANTHROPOCENE: THE HUMAN EPOCH
WED 5 JUN 6.45 PM | TUE 11 JUN 6.45 PM
Canada | 2018 | 87 mins | In English, Russian, Italian, German, Mandarin, and Cantonese with English subtitles | Australian Premiere
 | Directors: Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier, Edward Burtynsky | Screenwriter: Jennifer Baichwal | Narrator: Alicia Vikander
FROM THE PROGRAM: The striking images demonstrate how humans are shaping our planet at an ever-increasing rate; hence the title, for this is the age in which human activity is the dominant influence on the environment. De Pencier’s epic cinematography and Alicia Vikander’s narration capture the immense power and terrible beauty of our endeavours.
SEE THIS BECAUSE…: We are the virus.

AMAZING GRACE
SUN 9 JUN 4.45 PM | MON 10 JUN 4.15 PM
USA | 2019 | 87 mins | In English | Australian Premiere | Realised and Produced by Alan Elliott
FROM THE PROGRAM: “Over two days at L.A.’s New Temple Missionary Baptist Church, accompanied by
the Southern Californian Community Choir, Aretha Franklin sang from the heart and her astounding performance was captured by filmmaker Sydney Pollack. The resulting recording, Amazing Grace, became her most successful album, but the film of her performance – for multiple reasons – was never released...until now.”
SEE THIS BECAUSE…: There has never been, and will never be, a singer like 29 year-old Aretha Franklin.

DARK PLACE
SAT 15 JUN 8.45 PM | SUN 16 JUN 6.30 PM  
Australia | 2019 | 75 mins | In English | World Premiere
Directors and Screenwriters: Björn Stewart, Perun Bonser, Kodie Bedford, Liam Phillips, Rob Braslin | Cast: Clarence Ryan, Charlie Garber, Leonie Whyman
FROM THE PROGRAM: “Australian genre cinema takes an exciting leap forward with Dark Place, a quintet of tales
that approach post-colonial Indigenous history through the lenses of horror and fantasy.”
SEE THIS BECAUSE…: The horrors endured by Australia’s indigenous population since European settlement seem entirely appropriate inspiration for a (long overdue, frankly) genre film deconstruction.

SHORT FILMS BY AGNÈS VARDA
Screening with the feature presentations as part of the sidebar VIVA VARDA.
FROM THE PROGRAM: “Across six decades Agnès Varda made over twenty short films. The titles represented in this season are perfect capsules of the times in which she lived and showcase the vast creativity that she brought to films – large and small.”
BLACK PANTHERS | FRANCE | 1968 | 30 MINS | Varda's observational doco captures the essence and impetus behind the Black Panther movement.
RÉPONSE DE FEMMES | FRANCE | 1975 | 8 MINS | Varda assembled a group and asked, “what it means to be a woman”. This is their reply.
SALUT LES CUBAINS | FRANCE | 1963 | 30 MINS | Agnès Varda travelled to Cuba to photograph life under Fidel Castro: a celebration of culture, rhythm and the women of the revolution.
UNCLE YANCO | FRANCE | 1967 | 19 MINS | Agnès Varda’s encounter with a long-lost relative brims with joy and playfulness.
SEE THIS BECAUSE…: It is a rare opportunity to see some of the finest film works from the most influential period in the history of the artform.

DEPRAVED
WED 5 JUN 8.15PM | MON 10 JUN 8.15PM
USA | 2019 | 114 mins | In English | Australian Premiere | Director, Screenwriter: Larry Fessenden | Cast: David Call, Joshua Leonard, Alex Breaux
FROM THE PROGRAM: “Mary Shelley’s classic has inspired countless
films since 1910. It’s to the enormous credit of indie horror king Larry Fessenden that Depraved feels so fresh. A scary, tense and darkly comic tale laced with hallucinatory imagery and driven by powerful emotion.”
SEE THIS BECAUSE…: Frankenstein + Fessenden (Fessenstein…?) is too good a concept to resist.

HOLY AIR: THE SHADY SROUR NTERVIEW

Set in Nazareth, Holy Air is the story of a Palestinian named Adam, striving against the socio-political barriers he faces everyday, to achieve his full potential and a meaningful happiness. His entrepreneurial vision inspires him to bottle and sell ‘holy air’, small jars of the very atmosphere found at the most spiritual of places, Mount Precipice. Writer/director Shady Srour, who also stars as the forlorn but determined protagonist, has crafted both a wonderfully funny satire that tackles faith, oppression and gender roles, and a deeply etched portrait of a man at an existential crossroad. Ahead of the long haul flight that will bring him to the Australian premiere of Holy Air at the Sydney Film Festival, Shady spoke to SCREEN-SPACE from his home in Israel… (SPOILER ALERT)

                                                                                                                  Photo credit: Sofyan Zhalka

SCREEN-SPACE: The very notion of 'holy air' is so wonderfully absurd yet entirely believable in this age of fanatic beliefs and blind faith. When did the concept of 'bottled holy spirit, weighing one gram' first come to you?

SROUR: When I started to write the script, I wanted to create a trinity – the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit - so I modeled it along three lines. The ‘Father’ is the story line with the father; the ‘Son’ is the story with the wife and fetus, which is also connected to the annunciation; and, the ‘Holy Spirit’, which is the selling of spirituality as a commodity, like the toilet paper scene. And, of course, in writing and developing the script over eleven years, all the other ideas started to be built within this frame.

SCREEN-SPACE: Your hero, Adam, is so disconnected from all that surrounds him. The traffic jam opening suggests his life is in motion, but not really moving at all. There is universality about how lost he truly is; that moment many men feel as youth fades and adult responsibility beckons...

SROUR: Nazareth is one of the most densely populated Arabian cities in Israel, with no space to expand. It’s part of an occupation plan to suffocate the Arabs inside their villages, places that look like refugees camps. So the traffic is part of our reality. The traffic jam is a motif, a symbol to say that our life here is stuck, its not moving anywhere, not politically or socially or religiously. It’s going to hell. And when Adam, who is smart and ambitious, can't fulfill his dreams and his goals because of unfair situations - because he is Arab, Palestinian - he is like everybody else, very tired and exhausted. His disconnection from his surroundings is like a self-defense mechanism, so he won't go crazy. That’s part of the character's development; starting from that disconnection from reality, he gets the annunciation that he is having a baby, so his fatherhood seeds begin to grow. He has to be rational in this crazy land, face a more rational reality. This is the tragedy; he has nothing to do but accept the reality of fatherhood. (Pictured, above; Srour, second from left, as Adam in Holy Air)

SCREEN-SPACE: Your script finds shading in the relationship between the various ethnicities and religions of Nazareth. Was making all these characters as 'human' as possible part of your plan?

SROUR: To be honest, I think I have so much anger here regarding Israel\Palestine. Every side – Judaism, Islam and Christianity - is getting more fanatical; that’s why no one is safe from my satire. I tried to make it in a smart way, because here every one is so sensitive about anything to do with religion. It’s dangerous to my life; I was boycotted and threatened for different projects in the past and I'm expecting tension for Holy Air as well. When Dante wrote the Divine Comedy, he went against the Pope but he wrote it in a smart way so the church wouldn't get rid of him. And, as you mentioned, the warm moments were intentional, because my main target was to bring the human being to the front and push back the political aspect. I wanted to challenge the audience to look at my main characters as human being and not through the stereotypical Israeli-Palestinian conflict they know from the news. (Pictured, above; Shady Srour as Adam)

SCREEN-SPACE: There is something slightly askew about the film's reality. Adam keeps disappearing into the bath, at one point for a long time as his wife talks about their baby-future. It can be theorised that your film exists in a dream-like state?

SROUR: Since the whole idea of Holy Air is trippy, I was trying to play with the reality, or what’s called magic-realism. You can ask yourself is it for real or not, and I wanted to give the film a hallucinatory aspect. That’s why Adam gets into the bathtub at the beginning and at the end there is a shot of the bathtub empty; does Adam stay in the bathtub from the beginning till the end and all of what happened to him is only in his head? In scenes where Adam smokes weed, and drinks whisky, I was playing within a thin line between reality and not reality. By the way, rarely has the audience taken it this way but I wanted them to instinctively feel it.

SCREEN-SPACE: As ‘Lamia’, Laëtitia Eïdo has a wonderful chemistry with you. As issues such as politics, history, religion and patriarchy unfold, what did her character ‘Lamia’ convey about gender in modern Nazareth?

SROUR: In general, the stereotypical Arab women in Nazareth are the women wearing hijab, but the modern Arab woman doesn't get much representation in cinema. So imagine in a conservative society such as the Arab society there are also Palestinian women like Lamia. Politically speaking, the society expects Palestinian women to sacrifice and be strong, filled with pride so she doesn't collapse. I wanted to convey that it’s legitimate to show her weakness sometimes, as it is something that makes her even stronger. (Pictured, above; Srour with co-star Laëtitia Eïdo)

SCREEN-SPACE: Superbly timed, often very small moments provide big laughs - the 'confessional sales pitch'; the 'papal banner'; the 'take 10%' sequence. Whose comic sensibilities have influenced you?

SROUR: Oedipus by Sophocles, Macbeth by Shakespeare, The Wild Duck by Ibsen, Tartuffe by Molliere, Divine Comedy by Dante and the Bible, are mostly my inspiration. I came from a theatre background; I did my B.A in Theatre Acting, and my M.F.A in Cinema, and I'm a university lecturer in theatre analysis. I believe in the continuation of theatre, so my inspiration comes from theatre. My big inspiration was Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, so this film has the existentialist conflicts, circular principle and forced pairings between all the characters of a tragi-comedy. ‘Lamia’ was inspired by Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth, while Adam was designed as a ‘Hero’, employing elements from old Greek theater. For instance, he has kind of supernatural powers, that’s why he speaks five languages. Like a ‘hero’, he focuses on a target and he goes for it until the end. There is also the conflict between Rationalism and Idealism. Adam is spacey but uses the corrupted system in a rational way, while Lamia is a feminist, a humanist so idealistic that she wants an abortion. Hers is a destructive idealism. And of course, this is a story happening in Nazareth, so there are some references from the bible; it’s a kind of a new annunciation after 2000 years. When Jesus said he was the Son of God and was kicked out of Nazareth, he fled to Mount Precipice. So for Adam, it's a place where he can get fresh air and be a little spiritual, away from his negative city. My inspiration for the story has many layers that don’t have to reach an audience with this clarity of vision, but I was trying to have it in the background so that the audience had a sense of it.

HOLY AIR screens June 17 and 18 at the Sydney Film Festival. Session and ticket information can be found at the event’s official website.

WHITNEY CAN I BE ME: THE NICK BROOMFIELD INTERVIEW

2017 SYDNEY FILM FESTIVAL: From the moment Nick Broomfield arrived in the US, the British documentarian has dug deep into the darkest recesses of American society. From the juvenile detention system (Tattooed Tears, 1979), to the mind of a psychopath (Aileen Wournos: The Selling of a Serial Killer, 1992), Broomfield has sought truths with a fearless, occasionally reckless, sometimes controversial eye for factual film. Some of his most acclaimed works have been dissections of doomed celebrities, including Monster in a Box (1992), featuring the late Spalding Gray; Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam (1995); Kurt & Courtney (1998); Biggie and Tupac (2002); and, Sarah Palin: You Betcha! (2011).

His latest is Whitney: Can I Be Me, a heartbreaking work that charts the meteoric rise and addiction fuelled decline of America’s Pop Princess, the late Whitney Houston. The film is a combination of fresh interview footage and archival content, the most remarkable being concert and backstage footage shot in 1999 by the great Rudi Dolezal. From his car, sitting immobile in the daily traffic gridlock of one of Los Angeles busiest motorways, Nick Broomfield spoke with SCREEN-SPACE about his unauthorised exposé of one of pop culture’s sweetest, saddest talents…  

SCREEN-SPACE: Was a Whitney Houston project in your plans, or did Rudi’s footage give it impetus, a fresh focus?

BROOMFIELD: Rudi’s footage certainly gave it more focus and impetus, but I was working for a year without his footage. I’d done my interviews and got all the music together and was thinking about my edit when I met with Rudi this time last year and we decided to amalgamate our forces. I did not know going in I would have his footage but I was completely delighted when I saw it. It was unique and intimate and never been seen before. I have a profound respect for what Rudi managed to do. It was the luck of the Gods that it all worked out this way. (Pictured, right; Whitney I Can Be Me co-director, Rudi Dolezal)

SCREEN-SPACE: The chasm between her soaring talent and beauty and the depths of her addictions and mental health issues is heartbreaking. How do you perceive of her rise and fall?

BROOMFIELD: She was an incredibly sweet kid, who was funny, funny, funny growing up on the streets of Newark. She was someone who wanted everyone around her to be happy, so went along with the flow to a big extent. In that regard, she was malleable, which I think is what Clive Davis had been looking. She had talent but, unlike Aretha Franklin or Dionne Warwick, was very new to her career and talent. She was the perfect vehicle for Clive’s vision. But she paid an enormous price for that because, like most creations, they fall apart, when they want to be themselves. They don’t want to be something they know they are not.

SCREEN-SPACE: Having been devoutly involved with her neigbourhood, the backlash from the black community clearly left scars…

BROOMFIELD: It was increasingly hard for her to be ‘Whitney Houston’, particularly with the whole racial thing in the United States, which was so powerful. It was very hard for her to not be accepted by her own people, by the black community, who thought she was sell-out. They called her ‘Oreo Cookie’ or ‘Whitey Houston’, and that was pretty devastating for her. She couldn’t understand where that was coming from. I’m sure Bobby Brown had much more influence than he would have done if these things hadn’t happened. As soon as she stopped being the ‘angel’, the American Sweetheart, which took awhile to happen, and she became the target of ridicule on the late night talk shows…well, I think she was very thin-skinned and that response drove her deeper into her addictions. It was a sad downward spiral. (Pictured, above; Whitney Houston)

SCREEN-SPACE: It is fascinating to view her in hindsight, of her place in 80s pop culture. There was Madonna’s rawness, Michael Jackson’s ‘King of Pop’ status, Springsteen’s working class man persona. Whitney was the 'Princess', an innocent who just wanted to dance with somebody. In the end, it was all that was shitty about the 80s – drugs, corporatisation, race issues – that claimed her…

BROOMFIELD: That's very true. It was decade where all the black artists wanted to make the crossover to this big white audience, and I think the degree of sacrifice they had to make to achieve that was enormous. Not only in what they sang, but how they had to portray themselves. It was very much about forgetting or ignoring where they came from (to become) something that was acceptable in this country. In the same way that O.J. Simpson kind of ended up in a no man’s land that cast him as neither black nor white, Whitney went through not dissimilar things for a long time. When she decided to get back to her roots, she did it with a vengeance, with real defiance.

SCREEN-SPACE: Your film is typically insightful and thorough, but there’s a softer edge to how you approach her story as opposed to your portraits of Kurt Cobain or Tupac or Heidi Fleiss. Did the nature of her story demand that or are you getting melancholy in your old age?

BROOMFIELD: (Laughs) Well, it might be both. I think the film I did before this one, Tales of The Grim Sleeper, was also tender and more loving so, yes, maybe that’s true. Maybe there is more heart in it (pause). You know, I was definitely moved, unexpectedly moved by Whitney’s story. The editor and I would often have tears welling up as we cut it, and we’d both seen it I don’t know how many eyes. It is a very moving, very tragic story.

SCREEN-SPACE: Looking back at your portrait films, those that have featured the likes of Spalding Gray, Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love, Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur, and now Whitney Houston, can you see a through a line in these character types that your films address?

BROOMFIELD: People who give what all those artists give in a performance, who feel things so deeply, who are that charismatic…well, it’s very hard for them to fly so close to the sun and not get burnt. They so celebrate life, are so life affirming, that when we are in their presence you feel alive. Because they are so alive, they make incredible film subjects; they have that elixir. We are excited by the shiniest star and all those people have that, don’t they? Also, they are the icons of our time in history, of the culture we are part of. Portraits of people who have significance to our time and place are fascinating and speak volumes.

WHITNEY: I CAN BE ME screens June 7 and 9 at the Sydney Film Festival before a nationwide release on June 15 via Rialto Distribution. Festival session and ticket details can be found at the event’s official website.