International projects chosen for Aurora
Five feature projects have been chosen for the script development workshop Aurora, including entries from Liz Watts, Tony Ayres, Rachel Perkins and Trish Lake, with four projects set overseas – and two of them in South Africa.
“It reflects a trend amongst Australian producers to be genuinely engaged in the international market place and they are therefore developing projects more likely to engage both Australian and international audiences and leverage international finance, sales and distribution,” NSW Minister for the Arts Virginia Judge told Encore.
According to Judge, Screen NSW did not set out to find projects with international elements, but four of the best five just happened to be partly set overseas. Judge said while the South African setting of two of the projects is coincidental, the international focus is a result of producers becoming “increasingly financially savvy and more sophisticated in their approach”.
“It isn’t unusual for Australian projects to be partly or fully set overseas (The Waiting City, Mao’s Last Dancer, Bright Star) and sometimes even if they are set overseas, they can be shot here (Accidents Happen),” added Judge.
Well those five projects look like a real barrel of laughs…
Gee what a surprise to see these names here. They have already made films that no one wanted to see.
It’s hard to judge a script from its synopsis, but from the project summaries here it could be argued that producers in this country aren’t just ignoring audience tastes, but actually don’t care. (though Sentido and The Comet do actually look like stories we haven’t seen before). Why oh why are we so obsessed with dramas about violence and addiction? Please list for me the previous Australian films of this nature which have been embraced by audiences?
Chopper
Wolf Creek
Mad Max
The Boys