Jennifer Kent is about to direct her first film since the breakout success of horror film The Babadook three years ago.
The thriller The Nightingale, set in the 1820s, will start shooting in Tasmania soon with a cast headed by young Irish actress Aisling Franciosi, who plays Lyanna Stark in Game of Thrones and has featured in the TV series Legends and The Fall.
She plays a 21-year-old Irish convict who witnesses the brutal murder of her family by her lieutenant master and his cronies. Unable to get justice, she takes an Aboriginal tracker with her through the wilderness to seek revenge.
The cast also includes English actor Sam Claflin (Finnick Odair in The Hunger Games movies), Damon Herriman, Ewen Leslie, Harry Greenwood, Baykali Ganambarr and Magnolia Maymuru.
After the success of the The Babadook, which won acclaim overseas and claimed best director and shared best film at the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards in 2015, Kent was deluged with scripts from the US but has focused on writing and directing The Nightingale.
Having previously described it as a film that "explores the futility of revenge", Kent tells Short Cuts that telling the story with such an extraordinary cast and crew is a dream come true.
"Australia's colonial history is very tough and has repercussions that extend to the present," she says. "I'm heartened by the fact we can make a film that pulls no punches in this regard. I'm extremely grateful for the opportunity and proud to be telling an Australian story I care deeply about."
Controversial documentary to open Human Rights festival
After the resolution of legal action by a former Papua New Guinea politician, Hollie Fifer's documentary The Opposition will open the Human Rights Arts & Film Festival in Melbourne in May.
The film, about battle over the eviction of 3000 people from a PNG squatter community to make way for an Australian-backed property development, faced legal action by Dame Carol Kidu who wanted her image and dialogue removed from the film.
Dame Carol Kidu in The Opposition.
That meant a late change for the world premiere at North America's biggest documentary festival, Toronto's Hot Docs, last year. With 15 minutes of footage cut, actress Sarah Snook recorded a narration that was played when the screen was black.
Human Rights festival director Lauren Valmadre says the court's rejection of the legal action has meant the full version will screen. "I was really blown away not only by the technical brilliance but the powerful and moving story [Fifer] was able to capture," she said.
The festival runs at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image from May 4-18 then at Sydney's Dendy Newtown from May 23-27.
More books to the screen
As director Kriv Stenders shoots the mini-series Wake In Fright in rainy Sydney, production company Lingo Pictures has moved towards a stronger role in sourcing books for television adaptations.
Owners Helen Bowden and Jason Stephens have hired former HarperCollins publishing director Shona Martyn as "literary sleuth" to hunt down promising books.
Jack Thompson in the original Wake In Fright.
Bowden says books have been increasingly important sources for television adaptations, including her own projects The Slap and Underground - The Story of Julian Assange.
"Broadcasters are extremely interesting in looking at things that already have an audience - that have a level of IP that's already been created," she says. "It just makes a lot of sense to everybody."
Lingo's aim is to make "interesting, sophisticated, demanding high-end TV".
Bowden says the new version of Wake In Fright, starring Sean Keenan, is a contemporary adaptation of Kenneth Cook's novel about a schoolteacher whose outback adventure takes a dark turn rather than the classic film from 1971. "It's the same architecture but set in the present," she says.
While Bowden raves about the cast and crew, the weather has been a challenge during the shoot so far. "It's just raining all the time and we're trying to pretend we're in Broken Hill and it's the desert," she says.
A novel, a musical and now a Bruce Beresford film
Director Bruce Beresford is to shoot an adaptation of Madeleine St John's popular novel The Women in Black as his first Australian film since Mao's Last Dancer.
Called Ladies In Black, it is described as a coming-of-age story about a suburban schoolgirl who, when she takes a summer job at a large Sydney department store, has her eyes opened to a new world by a group of saleswomen in 1959. Tim Finn has previously adapted the novel into the hit musical The Ladies In Black.
With international distribution by Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions, the film has Screen Australia funding for a shoot in Sydney and surrounding areas later this year.
The cast of Tim Finn's musical Ladies in Black. Photo: Penny Stephens
Beresford, whose films include Breaker Morant, Puberty Blues, Tender Mercies and Driving Miss Daisy, says he had been obsessed with making a film since reading the novel 15 years ago.
"I was attracted by Madeleine's wit, her light touch, her deft characterisations and her portrayal of a Sydney I knew so well - the Sydney of the 1950s and '60s - a time when the whole of Australia began to change because of the influx of European migrants [most of them escaping a depressed war-ruined Europe], who brought a whole range of talents [and invariably delicious cuisine] that created the successful multi-cultural society of the Australia we live in today," he says.
Screen Australia chief executive Graeme Mason describes the film as "a female-led story that has the potential to be another box office hit like The Dressmaker".
Kong still monsters cinemas
Even after all these years, a giant ape can still attract a cinema audience. Kong: Skull Island, which stars Tom Hiddleston and Samuel L Jackson, remained the most popular movie in Australian cinemas on the weekend, taking another $3.1 million to reach $9.5 million.
It was ahead of the gritty Wolverine movie Logan, which added another $2.8 million to reach a strong $19.7 million.
Strong performance in cinemas: Kong: Skull Island.
With an extended version that includes an extra eight minutes of footage opening next month, Lion added another $500,000 to reach $28.6 million - leaving it fifth in the list of highest-grossing Australian films at the domestic box office that is still headed by Crocodile Dundee with $47.7 million.
Jasper Jones has cracked $2 million on its third weekend.
While Short Cuts knows one distributor who turned down Moonlight late last year, believing it was an excellent film that did not have a cinema audience in this country, the best picture Oscar winner has cracked $2 million on its eighth weekend.
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