MIFF 2012: films showing at the Melbourne International Film Festival that already have release dates

We interrupt the usual food-related content on this blog for a quick post about another obsession of mine: the Melbourne International Film Festival!

Happy MIFFmas, everyone!! If you're not a MIFF member already smugly clutching an advance copy of this year's program to your bosom, there's a copy in tomorrow's Age (Friday 13th). I look forward to setting aside several hours over the weekend to curl up with my copy and go through it with a fine-tooth comb, narrowing down the list of films I want to see and coming up with a workable schedule (extra degree of difficulty for me this year as I'll be away in Hong Kong (!!!) for the first week of the festival).

Because I like to maximise my chances of catching films that can ONLY be seen at the festival, I tend to exclude from my shortlist films that I know already have an Australian cinematic release date. I do this by checking the film release date schedules on websites like AtTheCinema and atonalFILM, and cross-referencing them with the MIFF 2012 program. This year, I thought it may be helpful for other similarly-minded MIFF nerds if I presented my findings on the web.

These lists are correct to the best of my knowledge based on what I've found online (EDIT: I've now also included films that have distributors but don't yet have release dates, thanks to the excellent list on Mel's blog A Wild Young Under-Whimsy). If you know of any additional films that should be on the list, dates/distributors that have changed or any other relevant information, please let me know! Updated as at 24/7/12.

The following films screening at MIFF are scheduled to screen later in the year at either the Nova, Palace Cinemas, or both:

• Opening Night film The Sapphires (showing at Nova and Palace from August 9)
• Bully (showing at Nova and Palace from August 23)
• Holy Motors (showing at Nova from August 23)
• Vulgaria (showing at Nova from August 23)
• Moonrise Kingdom (showing at Nova and Palace from August 30)
• Damsels in Distress (showing exclusively at Nova from September 6)
• Monsieur Lazhar (showing at Palace from September 6)
• Your Sister's Sister (showing at Nova from September 6)
• Beasts of the Southern Wild (showing at Nova and Palace from September 13)
• Warriors of the Rainbow, Seediq Bale (showing at Nova from September 13)
• ParaNorman (showing at Palace from September 20)
• Liberal Arts (showing at Palace from October 11)
• Ruby Sparks (showing at Palace from September 20)
• On the Road (showing at Palace from September 27)
• First Position (showing at Nova from September 27)
• Shadow Dancer (showing at Nova from October 4)
• Wuthering Heights (showing at Nova and Palace from October 11)
• Harakiri: Death of a Samurai (showing at Nova from October 18)
• Safety Not Guaranteed (showing at Nova from October 18)
• The Intouchables (showing at Nova and Palace from October 25)
• The Sessions (showing at Nova from November 8)

The following films have been picked up by distributors in Australia, but I don't know where/if they will be screening outside of MIFF (some of them will end up straight-to-DVD):

• Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (August 23, Roadshow has distribution rights)
• Wunderkinder (August 23, Umbrella has distribution rights)
• Amour (August 30, Regency has distribution rights)
• Mental (October 4, Universal has distribution rights)
• Robot and Frank (15 November, Sony has distribution rights)
• Being Venice (TBC, Curious Film has distribution rights)
• Beyond the Hills (TBC, Madman has distribution rights)
• Caesar Must Die (TBC, Palace has distribution rights)
• God Bless America (TBC, Potential Films has distribution rights)
• Hail (TBC, Madman has distribution rights)
• The Hunt (TBC, Madman has distribution rights)
• The Imposter (TBC, Madman has distribution rights)
• Last Dance (TBC, Becker Film Group has distribution rights)
• The Loneliest Planet (TBC, Palace has distribution rights)
• Miss Bala (TBC, Transmission has distribution rights)
• No (TBC, Rialto has distribution rights)
• Rampart (TBC, Madman has distribution rights)
• Sister (TBC, Palace has distribution rights)
• Tabu (TBC, Palace has distribution rights)
• The Taste of Money (TBC, Madman has distribution rights)

So, film nerds: what films at MIFF this year do we HAVE to see? I can strongly recommend using this extremely useful FestivalSessions festival online planner - it's brilliant!

And for the foodies still reading: any dining tips for me for Hong Kong??


(Other random non-food-related research I've been doing recently that I put online in case some readers may find it useful - I'm researching options that would allow the choir I sing in to sell our music online. iTunes, digital distributors CD Baby, TuneCore and ReverbNation, and direct-to-fans sales platforms like Bandcamp: here are my findings.)

I *heart* MIFF

I'm sorry that things have been so quiet on the Melbourne Gastronome front over the last fortnight, but I've been spending all my free time at the Melbourne International Film Festival. Despite full time work and a three day trip to the Hunter Valley I still managed to squeeze in ten film sessions, and I am thoroughly sick of that ad with the guy who smarms "Yalumba. You know, the 'talk eat live laugh share' Yalumba" - it was on before every damn film. Anyway, here's a totally non-food-related, MIFF-related post reviewing the films I saw on my mini pass. Regular gastronomic programming will recommence shortly.

* * *
Nightwatching - new Peter Greenaway film starring Martin Freeman as Rembrandt (!!!). Stunningly beautiful cinematography and bravura performance by Freeman, but seriously dragged in the interminable second half (and I could have gone without ever having to watch Tim from The Office perform cunnilingus to the strains of a histrionic violin)...

Gomorrah - interweaving stories showing the insidious chaos the mafia brings to modern-day Naples. Well executed, but nothing we haven't seen before in grand scale crime dramas - dunno why it won the Grand Prix at Cannes. Give me City of God any day.

Revue - fascinating Sergei Loznitsa doco of clips from 1950s Soviet communist newsreel propaganda showing peasants, factory workers, indoctrinated schoolchildren, dancers, satirical puppets playing rock n roll, the Soviet space program and comrades worshiping statues of Lenin.

Boy A - one of my two favourites, a UK film about a young man released from jail with a new identity who must try to come to terms with the monstrous crime he committed as a child. Not at all heavy-handed but extremely powerful, touching and thought-provoking, with a knockout performance by Andrew Garfield. Exceptional.

A Girl Cut in Two - the disappointing latest offering from Claude Chabrol in which the gorgeous chain-smoking Ludivine Sagnier very improbably falls in desperate love and lust with a married and bitter writer thirty years her senior. He initiates her into his world of sexual perversion, her other (younger) suitor grows increasingly unstable, et c'est la vie. Yawn.

Strangers - fresh, unaffected love story between a young Israeli man and a Palestinian woman set and filmed (largely improvised) in the streets of Berlin during the World Cup and in Paris during the second Israel-Lebanon war. The ending was perhaps a little too neat, but the leads had great chemistry together.

Best of MIFF Shorts - the awards ceremony for the best short films at the festival, followed by a selection of the winners: John and Karen (adorable three minute UK animation about an awkward polar bear apologising to a seriously pissed off penguin for the things he said last night), Hell's Gates (brilliant haunting Aussie short film by VCA graduate Jonathan auf der Heide about Alexander Pearce, the cannibal convict of Van Diemen's Land), New Boy (sweet Irish short about an African boy's first day in an Irish school), 296 Smith St (Aussie short about a day in the life of a Smith St pawnbroker and the unsavoury types that frequent his shop), Jerrycan (Aussie short about bogan teenage bullies - won the Jury Prize at Cannes) and Dennis (excellent Danish short film about Dennis, a bodybuilder whose gargantuan physique is matched only by his painful shyness).

Flipping Out - great doco about the many thousands of young Israeli men and women who use the bonus granted to them after their military service to travel to India for some R and R. Of those that go to India to recover from the trauma of war, 90% of them use copious amounts of drugs and 2,000 of them each year have subsequent psychotic/emotional breakdowns requiring professional help.

Angel of the Wind - new Aussie film described in the program thus: "A groundbreaking 'hybrid' film, Angel poetically interweaves performance, Australian cinema and World War II air combat footage with a rich musical score. Emmy Award winner Tahir Cambis (Exile in Sarajevo) follows actor-turned-producer Matt Crosby and a large Tokyo cast, who stage a spectacular Melbourne theatre production - a vaudevillian journey to the underworld of dead kamikaze pilots." I always like to go along to support at least one new Aussie film each year, but must confess I didn't much like this one.

Waltz with Bashir - sen-bloody-sational. My equal favourite, along with Boy A. An exquisitely animated film retracing a former Israeli soldier's hidden memories of the first Israel-Lebanon war. Many of the beautifully surreal dream sequences and moments juxtaposing humour with tragedy took my breath away. This film caused a sensation at Cannes this year and both of the MIFF scheduled sessions were sold out, but happily Cinema Nova will be screening Waltz with Bashir as of 11 September. Do yourself a favour and go see it!