By Cameron Parker
If you have the time and motivation, the annual Sydney Film Festival is an escapist experience par excellence. The 44th Sydney Film Festival will be presenting about 150 films, from 25 countries, over 15 days in June. Ticket options range from the gold subscription (50 sessions, weekends and week nights, $175), to green (50 sessions, weekdays, $135) and red and blue (32 sessions, evenings for the first and second weeks, $140). The best value for money is the flexi-ticket (three films for $21).
The torn and tattered copy of the festival program has done the rounds at Green Left and we have selected some of the highlights of this year's festival.
Capitaine Conan (France): A forgotten chapter of French military history. A French army faction stationed in the Balkans continued killing for nine months after World War I ended.
The Six O'clock News (USA): Film maker Ross McElwee criss-crosses the US to meet people whose personal traumas and tragedies have featured on the TV news. A comment on the mainstream media's fixation on disasters.
East Side Story (Germany): An eastern bloc movie musical, with singing tractor drivers, dancing economists and happy factory workers. A documentary about the search for pure socialist fun.
Bolshe Vita (Hungary): In 1989, refugees of war, poverty and politics cross into Hungary. Two musicians, a Russian engineer and two women from Britain and the US meet in a chaotic summer.
Exile in Sarajevo (Australia): A Bosnian-Australian actor from Melbourne returns to his mother's home city in 1995 to live with others suffering through the civil war.
Mabo — Life of and Island Man (Australia): Eddie Mabo spent most of his life in exile from the Torres Strait island he loved. This documentary traces his life, death and final return home.
Maverick on a Mobile (Australia): A road documentary that follows the re-election campaign of politician Graeme Campbell, who can't shut up even though his foot is permanently in his mouth.
No Names on the Doors (Israel): Several interwoven stories from a modern Israeli kibbutz where the old ideas of collectivism are changing.
Girls Like Us (USA): Award-winning documentary about the lives of four working-class teenage women in south Philadelphia, filmed over four years, from the age of 14 to 18.
Pretty Village, Pretty Flame (Serbia): The first film produced from Belgrade that depicts war crimes committed by Serbian troops in Bosnia. An anti-war, black comedy.
Red Hollywood (USA): What kind of messages were the communists in Hollywood able to get into their films before and after the black lists? The first film to examine their work, rather than their persecution.
Solidarity Song: The Haans Eisler Story (USA): Eisler, a committed communist and gifted composer, was persecuted by the Nazis in Germany, the McCarthyites in the US and the Communist government in East Germany. Featuring Robin Archer and Gisela May.
How I Learned to Overcome my Fear and Love Ari Sharon (Israel): A peacenik, leftist film maker sets out to make a film on the right-wing Israeli militarist and politician, Ari Sharon, during the 1996 elections.
Isle of Lesbos: Rather than marry the school football hero in her home town of Bumfuck, Arkansas, April goes through the looking glass to the Isle of Lesbos, and finds love in the arms of a diesel dyke called Blatz. A full-scale queer musical comedy with songs like "Same Sex Love" and "I'm a la-la-la-la-lesbian".
A Bit of Scarlet: A romp through the queerer parts of British cinema, from Carry on Camp to Priest. Lots of clips.