MAN ABOUT TOWN

It's been a busy week, and one that's been both exciting and totally draining. As well as the by-now standard stress of putting out a new issue of MCV - this week with a fabulous cover by Dole Diary - and my weekly radio show on 3RRR , I've also been focussed on the closing night of Q + A (queer + alternative) which took place on Thursday night. Before that, however, there were a couple of arts events I had to attend first... On Wednesday I attended both the media launch and the official opening of Pixar: 20 years of animation exhibition at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. Why both? Well the media launch was a much better time to actually view the work, while the evening's formal affairs was an opportunity for free booze, nibbles and networking (amongst other dignitaries, I had a chat with Richard Moore, the new director of the Melbourne International Film Festival - so hopefully he remembers me come red carpet time when I'm trying to score a quick i...

Last Wednesday witnessed the official opening of the latest exhibition in the subterranean screen gallery at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), Centre Pompidou Video Art 1965 – 2005 . Drawn from the Musée national d'art moderne Collection of the Centre Pompidou in Paris , the exhibition traces the evolution of the video image in contemporary art, and presents the aesthetic realisations of artists who have utilised video as a creative medium. From early, small-scale works to more recent and ambitious pieces, it’s a remarkably intimate exhibition, featuring numerous small monitors, equipped with multiple sets of headphones, that facilitate an individual appreciation of the various works rather than being dominated by larger, more cinematic displays. That said, more elaborate full and split screen works are also on display, including UK artist and film-maker Isaac Julien ’s Baltimore (a homage to 1970s blacksploitation films such as Shaft and Cleopatra Jones , b...

The Melbourne Queer Film Festival runs from March 15 - 22 at ACMI , and I can't wait! Definitely my favourite festival of the year, without doubt, although Melbourne Fringe comes a very, very close second. Hmm, as the Deputy Chair of Fringe I probably should put Fringe first, shouldn't I? Oh well... Meanwhile, the latest wave of queer films have just screened at the Sundance Film Festival , including a documentary about a real-life gay gangster (eat your heart out The Sopranos ) and the latest movie from Gregg Araki. Here's a report from the Bay Area Reporter to whet your appetite! I wonder if any of this lot will be screening at the MQFF next month? Hope so!

The Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) hosted the Victorian premiere of the newly-restored 1906 film The Story of the Kelly Gang on Thursday night, with a crowd of screen culture luminaries (and at least one freeloading blogger) in attendance. Introducing the night, ACMI director Tony Sweeney commented that while some people might think an evening at the tennis was the best way to kick off the Australia Day long weekend, for him, watching a classic Australian film such as that we were about to view struck him as eminently more appropriate. I found myself nodding in agreement, because The Story of the Kelly Gang is more than just a landmark Australian film. Directed by theatre entrepreneur Charles Tait, it is widely regarded as the world’s first feature-length narrative film. As recently as the 1970s The Story of the Kelly Gang was thought lost forever, but in recent years, scraps and fragments of the film have gradually emerged, including footage found on a Melbourne...

Myself, a rather sleepy Mike and my girlfriend Lisa met up at ACMI last night to catch a screening of the 1941 classic The Maltese Falcon . If you haven't seen the film before I highly recommend it: Humphrey Bogart (shown left) at his tough-guy best, matched only by his performance in Casablanca , and a startling cinematic debut for director John Huston . It's the film that gave birth to film noir , a cinematic style that refuses to be confined to a single genre, and of which I am utterly enamoured. For many people noir is synonymous with detective films and crime stories, but there is also western noir and melodrama noir , to name but two other genres that embraced the noir style in its heyday from 1941 - 1958. Film noir is a bubbling cauldron of influences, from the shadow-heavy images of German expressionist cinema to Italian neo-realism. Then-contemporary, post-war fears about the roles of women emerged in noir as such iconic femme fatales as Phyllis Dietrichson, B...