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Friday on My Mind Melbourne – Bentley Dean

Bentley Dean: Making Tanna

For seven months last year, Australian filmmaker Bentley Dean and his family lived with one of the South Pacific’s last traditional tribes, as he made–with regular fly-in visits from fellow director Martin Butler–the feature film Tanna, a dramatization of a controversial romance between a young couple from the the Yakel tribe from the mountainous areas of a Vanuatu island. Bentley first came across the tribe while shooting a program for SBS’s Dateline more than a decade ago, and Tanna takes a leaf out of Rolf de Heer’s Ten Canoes with non actors Marie Wawa and Mungau Dain playing the lead roles.

Bentley Dean and Martin Butler–who previously collaborated on the 2010 Walkley-winning Contact, which won two AFI awards and the 2010 Walkley for coverage of Indigenous affairs and First Footprints (a televisual archaeological ‘dig’)–have just seen their feature film selected to have its world premiere at the 30th Venice Film Festival in September and compete in the 30th edition of the Venice International Film Critics’ Week. Bentley’s 2003 film, The President Versus David Hicks, won an AFI Award for best documentary and a Logie.

Bentley will share with host James Hewison how his extensive experience as a long-form Walkley-winning and current affairs producer (for Four Corners, Foreign Correspondent and Dateline) has informed his filming practice and what motivates him as a filmmaker with a penchant for small crews and tribal structures.

Guest: Bentley Dean.
ACMI
Doors Open 6pm.

When

28th August 2015 06:00 pm
To 28th August 2015 07:00 pm

Where

ACMI
Federation Square
Melbourne 3000