EXTENDED INTERVIEW: Hudson Sowada, Artistic Director of Fantastic Film Festival Australia.
Take a listen to Film Festival Guide Australia’s extended interview with the Artistic Director of Fantastic Film Australia’s Hudson Sowada.
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Interview: Johanna B. Kelly and Cameron Marshad
What inspired you to tell this story? How do you find out about this bug/food revolution? Johanna: Over brunch an old friend (main character of The Gateway Bug) and marine biologist, Tyler Isaac, was describing his Masters research at UCSB on the food drought set to hit humanity in the next 50 years and Earth’s overfishing problems. Rather terrifyingly, animal agriculture is now responsible for 80% of fresh water use, 91% of Amazon destruction, and 18% of greenhouse gas emissions (projected to increase 80% by 2050). We’ve wiped out 90% of the ocean’s top predators and at current fishing rates all the world’s fisheries will have collapsed by 2048. In that same time Earth’s population is predicted to reach 9 billion. In 2013 the UN cautioned that food must thus increase 70% by 2050 but warn that’s impossible with our current unsustainable practices. Nevertheless 4 years later we still harvest wild fish to feed the farmed fish that are supposed to reduce our reliance on wild fish, components in dog food, our food and so on …
Interview with Em Baker / Spoke
Beautifully shot from the front of a bike, the audience becomes a part of the adventure in Spoke which explores the camaraderie, exhilaration and dangers of being a cyclist in America and will screen in the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival. Em Baker (director of Spoke), one of three cyclists who rode across America (San Francisco to Orlando) to advocate for and empower cyclists gave us insight into their journey. What inspired you to tell this story and the story of the victims killed in bicycle accidents?It came about in two parts. I was curious about crossing America on a bicycle, but I didn’t know anyone who’d done anything like that. As I started looking into it more seriously, people expressed concern that I might get hurt. So I looked up the statistics, and was surprised to find that the U.S is a notoriously dangerous place to cycle. That became the focus of the film.How did you prepare for the trip mentally and physically?We didn’t! We left on a wing and a prayer and hoped it would work out! What cameras did …
Interview with Craig Boreham / Teenage Kicks
Director Craig Boreham pulls no punches with his directorial feature debut Teenage Kicks. The film follows seventeen year old Miklós Varga (Miles Szanto) as his world is turned upside down with the death of his older brother forcing him to confront grief, family, friendships and his sexuality. Boreham brings to the screen a courageous coming-of-age story (based on his 2009 short Drowning) that is brimming with a talented young cast. We chatted to Craig in the lead up to the Teenage Kicks world premiere at the Sydney Film Festival. The film explores a few emotional themes, how did this affect you and the cast during the filming? It was tough on the cast – they really had to go there. We were very lucky we had an amazing cast who up for the challenge. When were casting we were thinking about who gets the film and understands all that subtext and can bring it to the screen. They all worked hard and were amazing actors in their own right. I kept on running on nervous energy but it was …
Interview with Nick Barkla / Inside Fighter
We chatted with director Nick Barkla about his debut documentary Inside Fighter, and his journey following boxer Frank LoPorto’s crusade to win the world title in America against an undefeated champion, Austin Trout.What brought you to Frank’s story? I was training in the same gym Frank trains in and we had become friends. In getting to know each other, Frank told me he was ranked 12 in the world in the WBA light-middleweight division and might be in line for a world title shot. Time was running out for him as he was at the end of his career, so I became interested in making a documentary about a guy who may or may not get a chance to fulfil his lifelong dream before he has to retire. We’re still in touch. Frank is a good mate and he and his girlfriend Lisa are looking forward to seeing the film at the Australian premiere July 9 at MDFF with an audience. What were Frank’s thoughts on the documentary? Frank likes the film. It was confronting for him to watch initially, …
Interview with Jeff Hann / The Coffee Man
We chat with Jeff Hann, director of The Coffee Man screening at the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival in July. The Coffee Man follows Sasa Sestic’s journey to the 2015 World Barista Championships and his pursuit for the perfect cup of coffee. How did you meet Sasa and why did you want to tell his story? I met Sasa in Canberra through my brother in-law Mick. We had lunch together and talked about doing some filming around the coffee world and exploring direct trade coffee in countries such as Ethiopia. I then asked Roland if he wanted to get involved and he said “YES”. The filming evolved from a film about the coffee world, to a character Journey and we saw the obsession and passion for coffee that Sasa has and loved the way it came across on the camera, therefore we wanted to follow him and tell his story as we believe he’s an inspirational person, especially in the coffee scene. You guys did a lot of travelling in the documentary – What was the most challenging aspect of …
Interview with Peter Davies / The Four Horsemen
Peter Davies talks to us about the triumphs and challenges in directing the documentary The Four Horsemen and sharing the story of four Aussie brothers who took on the Equestrian Polo world in the 1930′s. The Four Horsemen will screen at the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival in July, How long it take you to make The Four Horsemen, you have put a lot of work into the film sourcing arrival footage, interviews and re-enactments. Yes, a lot of work went into sourcing footage, photos, interviews and re-enactments but I had a good team around me to assist with the process. In all, production of the doco took a year and a half. A lot of research went into the process prior to filming, and great family assistance was provided when it came time to organise and digitise the mountain of photos and newspaper clippings of the brothers that existed. Documentaries always have mountains of footage to cut down, and ours was no different. Luckily I had the excellent Ren Thackham, who was a great help in laying down part of the base edit, …
Interview with Hieu Chau / Filmed in Ether
Hieu Chau started Filmed in Ether in late 2014 when he felt that there wasn’t enough discussion about Asian film within the Australian space. “There are other sites like Heroic Cinema, but I wanted to put my hat into the arena to see how it goes. Ideally one day Filmed in Ether could be a hub for Asian cinema in Australia. My idea is to generate further discussion and to give a lot of writers a chance to talk about it.” The name for his website comes from Shunji Iwai’s teenage drama, All About Lily Chou-Chou, “The followers of the Japanese film’s otherworldly title singer claim her music is made from the fabric of the universe: the ether. I thought it was an interesting idea and I fashioned it across the entire Asian film genre”. Chau grew up surrounded by Asian film in his youth and was on a steady diet of Hong Kong action movies, with his father being a big influence. Later on he discovered what Asian films and films, in general, were capable of. Hieu Chau’s anticipated films: …