Sophie Mathisen is a writer/director and the Executive Director of For Film’s Sake (FFS), Australia’s flagship female film festival and not-for-profit distributor. During her time as President of WIFT (Women in Film and Television) she instigated and implemented the now infamous AACTA Sausage Party Protest, resulting in a complete overhaul of eligibility criteria for the national awards. In 2017, she was chosen as one of Westpac’s ‘200 women who will change the world’ and was awarded a Churchill Fellowship in 2018 to undertake global research into gender equity policies and programs.
Nick Cave: 20,000 Days On Earth
Jane Pollard and Ian Forsyth’s exceptional portrait of Nick Cave was already mythic upon arrival. Contemplative and insightful, the film mixes artifice and observation to deliver a fitting portrait of an artist both everyman and icon. Owing to Cave’s narration, unseen archive footage and moments of captured intimacy between father and sons in his Brighton home, the film seems as conceived by Cave himself.
The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology
Sophie Fiennes follows up The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema with the equally thought-provoking installation following Bosnian provocateur and pop culture raconteur’s explanation of the ideologies simultaneously driving and imprisoning us. I don’t know how many times I’ve trotted out the “They Live” explanation but in delivering a perfect interrogation of “lowbrow” culture, Fiennes’ and Zizek make watching favourite B-movies not only justifiable, but essential.
The Queen of Versailles
In Lauren Greenfield’s (and Trump’s) America, rapacious greed can be no better summed up by a house, still under construction, with ten kitchens and a bowling alley. It’s a hilarious, and heartbreaking summation of a family, and a nation, unknowingly on the precipice of collapse. As David and Jackie Siegel’s dreams of replicating the Palace of Versailles crumble alongside their time-share fortune needed to build it, what’s left is a portrait of confusion and emptiness as the family are forced to downsize and return once more to their “humble” beginnings.
Aim High in Creation
Anna Broinowski - Australia’s rabble rousing Ruby Wax, takes exceptional access to a new level in her anti-Coal Seam Gas extravanganza. As the State Government negotiates a possible new mine in Sydney Park, threatening her village and daughter’s welfare, Broinowski does what only she can (or would) and travels to North Korea to enlist the support and assistance of Kim Jong Il’s propaganda machine to smash capitalism and the patriarchy in the creation of the perfect piece of leftist cinematic propaganda.
Black Panther Woman
Searing, essential viewing outlining the under-recognised contributions of Australia’s First Peoples to the global Black Panther Party. Focusing on Marlene Cummings, director Rachel Perkins reveals the simultaneous pride and progression of the early 70s Aboriginal resistance whilst unfolding a quiet story of struggle and redemption. The film highlights the important intersections of gender and race, bringing to mind Audre Lorde’s famous quote, “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.”
