Sydney Film Festival Documentary Prize Invitation

Please come and meet the filmmakers!

A review by Ric Spencer of the Transient States group photography show in Perth was published by The West Australian newspaper on page 7, on Friday 22nd May. Here is a screenshot from the PDF kindly supplied by The West’s online editor Charmaine Rapp:

Review of Transient States photography exhibition, by Ric Spencer, The West Australian, 22nd May 2009.

Candace Gottschalk is a Brooklyn-based artist and photographer.

• A Conversation with Candace Gottschalk, at Nymphoto.com
• Op-Ed by Candace Gottschalk, at Nymphoto.com

Sydney Film Festival, FOXTEL Australian Documentary Prize media release.

Sydney Film Festival, program overview.

Internal Link:

• More details about My Asian Heart in the Films page on this website.

The Sydney Film Festival has announced today that My Asian Heart has been selected for the 2009 FOXTEL Australian Documentary Prize competition.

It will be screened at 8:00pm on Friday 5th June 2009 in the Sydney CBD at the Greater Union cinema complex in George Street, Sydney.

Please book your tickets via the Sydney Film Festival page linked to below.

My Asian Heart, Sydney Film Festival 2009 program.

Internal Link:

• My Asian Heart – in the Films page in this website.

External Links:

• Inside Film – Sydney Film Fest announces program
• Sydney Film Festival – My Asian Heart

The West Australian newspaper has reported on Transient States this morning. The report is not on their website – only selected items are published there – but I have been kindly sent a PDF of the double page spread by staff member Charmaine Rapp.

Report, The West Australian, cropped double page spread.

Report in The West Australian.

From the ScreenWest website:

New Australian Documentary Prize

For the first time, filmmakers with productions over an hour in length can compete at the Sydney Film Festival. The Festival has replaced its previous short documentary award with a new prize for Australian-produced documentaries of any length. Finalists will be screened at the 2009 Sydney Film Festival and the winner will receive a cash prize of $5,000.

Robert Cook, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, has kindly given permission to quote from his characteristically long, loping and excellent opening speech:

In Karin Gottschalk’s seminal series A Poverty of Desire at over a hundred incredible images, arguably the most significant photo-series on the City of Perth ever produced – the body pitches itself against shadows – of buildings and buses, and other people. The multiple figure – whom Gottschalk has dubbed, brilliantly, the cardiganed flaneur – lurches from bus stop to bus stop amidst a slo-mo chaos of city movement, seen from close and mid-range, the camera obeying the haptic logic of the Terrace following and mirroring the shifts of the moving body as it encounters the hard-arsed big-lettered Capital City itself.

The whole speech itself is worthy reading and I encourage Robert to have it published somewhere! For example, the following is another extract:

So, obviously, the work in Transient States is a complicated mix, and equally obviously, also more than a photo show as it deals with what and how it means to live in a place full of hidden conflictions and clefts and, by way of closing, it is worth noting that all of this is produced under the domain of the heightened Perth gaze, the new panoptical ultra-visibility, a world of lock-down and curfew as authorities seek to quell the rioting on the streets, the uproar of the hoons and, most of all, the young bearded anti-structuralists throwing fire bombs down Murray Street mall, chucking passengers off the South Perth ferry and calling for The Thousandth Plateau as they ride the train to Mandurah.

Sally Quin, curator of the Transient States group show at the University of Western Australia’s Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, has kindly sent me PDFs of the exhibition catalog.

Here are some images from it. We are awaiting reviews of the exhibition now, and a copy of the opening address by Robert Cook, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of Western Australia.

Transient States, catalog, cover.

Transient States, catalog, internal page.

Transient States, catalog, text.