Opening night at the Lexus Short Film Festival. Photo: Amy Owen
The Lexus Short Film fellows of 2017 presented their new works at the Dendy Cinema at Circular Quay as part of the Sydney Film Festival last month.
The fellowship is aligned with such names such as Marta Dusseldorp, Judy Davis and David Wenham, and selects four adept filmmakers from a pool of applicants annually, distributing some $200,000 among them. Furnished with funds, beneficiaries create a short film to be received the following year at a celebratory screening. This year’s screening was a sumptuous seaside affair. Marta Dusseldorp introduced the winners while guests quietly devoured the chocolates strategically placed around the theatre. The goal of Lexus’ initiative, she explained, is for voices that would otherwise go unheard to make a splash.
Marta Dusseldorp and David Wenham at the Lexus FF. Photo: Amy Owen
Indeed a variety of fresh themes, foreign languages and faraway places featured in the winners’ work, and all filmmakers demonstrated a vectored determination to construct realistic, insightful narratives that overthrew, disrupted and laid issues bare.
In two of the films, the gravity of the thematic crux was not paired with a compelling narrative arc, which made for some confusion. The first short film was by Thomas Baricevic: The Coin. The plot has Suli, a trolley-collector, searching for a coin that will bring him a better life. The film appears to elevate issues of refugees in Australia but it attempts to brew so many elements the essence of the work is somewhat lost. Similarly, Fitting, Emily Avila’s film on women’s support for one another in medical crises and beyond, excels in theory but suffers from vague characterisation and awkward dialogue, and lacks an engaging contour.
In the last half of the screening, films by Lara Köse and Goran Stolevski rise to an unprecedented standard. Two revelatory narratives are captivating, and benefit from emotional performances, considered storytelling and well-placed humour. Köse’s Kaya explores religious and social tensions in a remote Turkish village where an ostracised orphan girl challenges her boundaries. While her young friends do not seem concerned about the village’s unforgiving divides, Kaya is not limited by them and escapes from the orphanage’s confines to experience an alternative way of life. Kaya exudes a peaceful, spontaneous, limitless energy and provides a symbol of perseverance against ideological enslavement.
Stolevski’s My Boy Oleg, produced by Jessica Carrera, is a tour de force on entrapment and fear, uncovering pervasive racial pressures in the Ukraine. Afraid her dark-skinned child Oleg will not be accepted in her homeland, a Ukrainian actress (Olena Fedorova) visiting Australia leaves Oleg in a public playground, convinced the child will be better off meeting this fate than returning with her to Kiev. The child was conceived in Australia on a previous visit, and the actress cannot find his father despite her best efforts as she struggles in vain to compel her past lovers to accept their potential relationship to Oleg.
While My Boy Oleg captures vividly the rigid racial conformity standards in Kiev its primary theme is the ubiquitous plight of women. The film compares racial intolerance here and overseas, at times placing Australia on a pedestal, only to remind us it is still women who take sole responsibility for the consequences of sexual activity in this country. Shamed, isolated, blamed and berated for not self-regulating, the actress’ desperate appeals are met with confusion, disgust and collective indifference.
By the end of the night it is clear the Lexus Short Film fellowship has proved itself to be an effective primer and launchpad for Australian filmmakers.
