Finally, a day off!

Sorry I haven’t blogged for a while, I’ve literally been working round the clock to get the festival program together and I’ve been averaging 3-4 hours sleep a night. Cumulative sleep loss is taking its toll! Last night I got 7 hours so feel marginally more fresh and energetic. I allowed myself a day off yesterday – to wander by the beach and chill out a bit, go to a gig, see some friends, attempt to feel normal – but now I’m back in the office.

Autumn in Bondi

Ahh, it’s all worth it – the festival program looks great – our launch went really well, I’m thrilled with the way things are going now and I can’t wait until June. There are some fab films in the program that I’m dying to see. I’ve also been working hard to get the website up and running – our new site can do lots of cool things and has plenty of images and video content which I’m really pleased about. There’s more content to follow too – the website was one of my key priorities and it’s great to make it grow and improve the technical features. It’s not perfect – there are still lots of things I would love to do with it, but we have $0 and are relying on the goodwill of many people to make these things happen. I’ve had to put a few things in the ‘2008 basket’ and admit to myself that I’m not going to achieve everything in 6 months, but some changes and innovations will have to wait until next year’s festival.

It’s now autumn in Sydney, which I’m loving. Cool enough in the evenings to wear jeans, closed shoes and little jackets. I’ve resurrected my morning porridge, and am even planning a roast dinner this evening for my housemates, in homage to an English Autumn. Who am I trying to kid? I still have to put suncream and shades on every day, and it’s too bright in our sunroom for the laptop… I can but hope it will get colder.

Whale spotting off the Tamarama headland

So this weekend I tried to potter around the house, put up some pictures (check out my framed Von – an original!), read a book (the new Graham Swift – excellent), chatted to my housemates (I listened to Ruth complaining about working 5 days a week with incredulity) and walked to the headland near Tamarama to breathe in the sea air. May-June is whale-watching season so you can spot whales off the coast if you’re lucky. Not sure I’ll have the time to spend looking out for them but if I see any I’ll take pics and put them up here.

My Von original

I’ve put some photos of my local area on my flickr site so take a look – plus some of the vintage bullfighters I won in the auction, and which are now flanking my window. Yum.

Will blog again when I’m feeling even more human.

cx

Function-hopping and proofreading

Working 16-hour days can take it out of you, so I’m pretty exhausted at the moment, and living the life of a zombie most days. However, I managed to get away from the madhouse a couple of times over the last week and soak up some Aussie culture. I’ve discovered a great local theatre – really cutting edge and great for new writers – very similar to the Donmar Warehouse in London – called the Belvoir Street Theatre. So I went with a crowd of theatre-loving girls to see Parramatta Girls – a new play about the experiences of women in a female detention centre in Western Sydney. The story is extremely harrowing, and the women’s performances were deeply moving. What a great play for female actresses in their 30s and 40s to really get their teeth into. I can’t believe these things happened to women so close to here and so recently. It was a great introduction to how fab theatre can be in Sydney.

Parramatta Girls

Last week I also attended the launch of the Sydney Writers’ Festival – close to my heart as it took me back to my roots – pre-BFI I ran the author events program at a large bookshop in Manchester – and I was there as a guest – essentially to schmooze and check out how they run their membership program (part of my remit in my new job). It’s a great program this year – I started getting excited about going to some of these readings and meeting the authors, and then I realised that the SWF is in May – immediately before my festival – so I doubt very much I’ll be able to attend more than a couple of events. :-(



I hot-footed my way from the launch to the home of our director, for a team-building barbecue on her roof. Despite the immense pressure and workload in the office, this was a great opportunity to hang out with the team, and chill out a little bit before it gets even more crazy. Much fun was had by all, and I discovered Nick cooks a mean steak!

Some of the team

Work duty on Monday took me to a Gala Dinner at AFTRS – the very prestigious Australian Film, Television and Radio School, where George Miller (of Mad Max, Babe and Happy Feet fame) received an honorary degree. Lots of Antipodean film and TV glitterati were there, including Sam Neill (Lord of the Rings), Susie Porter (Feeling Sexy), Dion Bebee (Memoirs of a Geisha) and lots of other lovely people. A slight seating faux pas led to myself and Clare being on the same table as my predecessor, but we escaped the awkwardness through plenty of charming mingling and delightful desserts.

I’m now feeling v sheepish for thinking this kind of social life is possible when we’re ‘on deadline’! This morning was our sponsors’ breakfast – lots of mingling with our lovely supporters in a Sydney hotel, introducing people to each other, making lots of grateful noises, and generally using my outer calm to hide a deep-rooted panic beginning to consume me as we approach our deadline. The program is looking great but there’s a long way to go yet.

When oh when will I get my life back?

cx

Cheap and cheerful

Despite the fact that I barely get to see the inside of my new house due to my current looooong working hours, it’s rapidly becoming home, and I’m so glad I made the move.

My new home

I’ve quickly succumbed to the call of the beach, and am living on a quiet little street close to Bondi Road, with Christina (ex-LFF graphic designer and all-round Lovely Person) and Ruth (yoga teacher, bright-eyed, hippyish, seems fab if a little dappy) and I’m finally starting to feel settled in Sydney.

The local swimming pool

Little London on my mantlepiece

We have a great selection of local shops, delis and restaurants, and we’re 5 minutes walk from the beach (not that I’ve had much time to venture down there of late). We have a huge garden with a vegetable patch, but the weather has been particularly autumnal recently, so we’ve not had chance to enjoy the garden much. Christina’s friend Martin is an arborist, so we’ve booked him to come over for lunch on the first fine weekend we get, so he can overhaul the garden and teach us what to grow.

Our garden - view from the sun room

The neighbours seem friendly – on one side are a somewhat argumentative couple who keep strange hours (he’s a sound engineer and she’s a nurse) who have an over-enthusiastic and friend-starved pit-bull puppy who’s broken through the fence on more than one occasion, and on the other side are a selection of Europeans with bikes and guitars who we don’t see much of. My local breakfast establishments of choice are Gertrude and Alice (bookshop/café combo who do great museli) or Katapo (hidden gem of a café with a fantastic range of mismatched sofas).

My morning commute (finally a decent 40-minute cycle) takes me through the stunning Centennial Park – think Roundhay Park or London’s Hyde Park – which adds a note of tranquility to my hectic days. Plus, Noreen you’ll be pleased to know I share my cycle path with Sydney’s skaters – have finally found where they hang out. I have also discovered that Sydney is much, much hillier than London, and I shall have buns of steel before too long. Hurrah.

Morning commute through Centennial Park

My Easter weekend has been very low-key. The weather has been bloody awful – one minute deceptively sunny clear blue skies, the next minute it’s pouring down with rain and you’re soaked within 5 seconds, unless you take cover under the shop fronts with all the other thong-wearing beach types until the shower passes. (Note to UK readers: thongs = Aussie for flip-flops before you get your hopes up). On Friday I went to Hoyts Entertainment Quarter (like an out-of-town multiplex/shopping/restaurant thing: think Trafford Centre only less tacky) to sample their ‘La Premiere’ experience. This is where you pay outrageously inflated cinema ticket prices for the pleasure of enjoying unlimited popcorn, a pre-screening lounge area away from the riff-raff, and food and beverages (including alcoholic) delivered upon request to your seat. Oh, and the seats were so luxurious and huge that my feet didn’t touch the ground! Luckily Nick (SFF colleague) and I didn’t need to pay a cent as he used to work there, plus we were purely there on the grounds of ‘research’ to ‘test’ the recently-refurbished art-deco style lounge. Hmmm. The new swords-and-sandals epic movie 300 seemed the perfect match for the experience, but I was somewhat disappointed. Not by La Premiere, which was a charmingly lavish experience, but by the movie itself. I was expecting to sit back and enjoy the romp, but it was all-too-obvious that the whole thing was filmed in front of a blue screen, and the only thing holding my interest for the two hours were the deliciously well-sculpted abs on all 300 of the scantily-clad Spartan warriors. Not quite enough to redeem it above one star out of five from me though.



Another reason for my lack of a social life is that I’m achingly skint at the moment, having blown all my money in the entire world on a new bed. I decided that an investment should be made in this area, despite the fact that I’m trying not to acquire lots of ‘stuff’ in Australia, as sleeping well is imperative, and a good bed is a long-term investment. I did make sure I bought one that can be taken apart and shipped back to the UK, should I need it to, and a mattress than can be folded. The bed is from the Natural Bedding Company, and is being built at the moment in their Erskinville workshop by a guy called Sam, made to my specifications from sustainable Australian wood and stained to the shade of my choice (how cool!). Plus I’ve invested in an alarmingly expensive mattress, made from 100% organic natural fibres (latex and wool) with no nasty chemicals, and guaranteed for 25 years. So I might have no money but at least I’ll sleep soundly once it arrives.

For those of you who know her, my friend Ros who lives in Paris has recently had a baby girl, called Chloé. Mother and baby both doing fine, and Fab has sent pics of little Chloé – she is adorable! Congrats to you both.

cx

The calm before the storm

Work has definitely gone up several gears – these will be the busiest three months of the year for me. BFI-ers will understand it when I say that ‘print weekend’ is in three weeks – so it’s really crunch time. My life can begin again on 1 July, but until then, I probably won’t have very many thrilling things to blog about. I’ll try, but comment me if I’m getting boring!

So in preparation for the next three months, I had a Day Of Joy on Friday, courtesy of mum. After a 2-hour breakfast meeting with my website coordinator (even on my day off I can’t leave work behind), I journeyed to The Rocks, the oldest area of Sydney, peppered with beautiful houses and old warehouses and quaint little streets. For Christmas, mum had bought me high tea and a day at the spa at The Observatory Hotel. How exciting. So I bought the Sydney Morning Herald, turned my phone off, and sat in the hotel’s beautiful tea rooms, sipping my pink champagne, nibbling on divine little cakes, and tasting gorgeous crème brulee and chocolate mousse. I lounged around in there for some time, really enjoying the calm, and the delicious feeling of treating myself. The paper ran a ‘green’ special too, in honour of Earth Hour (one hour this weekend when the whole of Sydney’s Central Business District turned off their electricity to raise awareness of climate change). It was interesting reading – I’ve always bought locally-produced food in the belief that the air freight is one of the biggest causes of carbon emissions, and it’s something we can have a direct power over through our purchasing decisions. However, the article talked about how we should also factor in the energy it takes to produce the food, and that judging the carbon emissions of goods is less simplistic than just talking about ‘food miles’. For example, apples in Britain can use up three times the amount of energy than apples produced in New Zealand, and that’s after factoring in the export energy!

The whole aviation debate has scared quite a lot of people over here – Australia spends lots of its time thinking it’s part of Europe, when actually it’s part of Asia. If Europeans, in their bid to go green, avoid long-haul flights for their holidays, Australia’s tourist industry will really suffer. Plus exports of wine and other goods could decrease. And yet there is widespread acknowledgement of the dangers of climate change – the damage to the barrier reef, for example – but Australia in its remoteness stands to suffer the most from conscientious people in Europe ‘buying local’ and holidaying closer to home. It’s an interesting conundrum – which deserves more pondering… perhaps another time.

Anyway, back to the High Tea. A quintessentially English experience – small salmon sandwiches with no crusts, petite cakes, mini scones with clotted cream and jam, silver teapots, books adorning the shelves with titles such as ‘Round About Wiltshire’, ‘Sea Fishing’ and ‘Tramways, Their Construction and Workings’. And yet despite the attempt at classic ye olde England furnishings, it was a quintessentially Australian setting – underneath the Harbour Bridge on a gloriously sunny Autumn day.

High Tea


After lounging around for a few hours I moved on to the second part of my Christmas present – a trip to the spa downstairs. The heavenly swimming pool had faux-italian marble pillars, and the ceiling was filled with twinkling stars. I hung around in the sauna, swam for a bit, and then went on to have a one-hour facial treatment from an old Chinese lady called Jade. She draped my face with hot towels, massaged my shoulders, arms and hands, and taught me some new skincare tips suitable for the climate of my adopted country. By the evening I felt like I was floating on air, thoroughly relaxed and cleansed. Thanks mum, for the best Christmas present ever.

Chill


Of course the whole thing was undone the next day, with Australia’s inaugural V Festival – in Centennial Park. It’s so funny because I remember going to V96, V97, V98, and now, here I am at V1! Basically, Virgin have come up with the great idea of giving the big acts a warm-up gig before Europe’s summer music festivals. So we saw Phoenix, New York Dolls (quite a lot of facial surgery on stage there!), Groove Armada, and various other great bands. But then the sun set over Sydney, and the godlike Jarvis succeeded the stage, charming the Aussie audience with his rendition of ‘C***s Still Rule the World’ among other ditties. What a genius. Beck were next, with a puppet band behind them on stage, playing along to the music. And then finally, a terrible clash of interests – Pet Shop Boys on one stage and Pixies on the other. Christina and I opted to forsake our spot near to the stage, and sat back on the hill – with the faint strains of Pet Shop Boys interspersing the great Pixies songs. ‘Let’s take a ride, run with the dogs tonight, in suburbia…’, ‘On a wave of mutilation, wave of mutilation, wa…av…ve…’, ‘It’s a, it’s a, it’s a… it’s a sin…’, ‘Here comes your man…’ etc. What fun. They were both great.

Jarvis wows the crowd


So that’s how the Aussies do V. Not bad – hope it becomes an annual warm-up gig. Bands don’t come out here very often so it’s great to see so many bands in one day.

Ok, getting quite rambly now, so will sign off. Hope you’re all enjoying the beginnings of Spring, as I cycle home in ever-darkening evenings, and wear the occasional cardigan.

cx

PS Have changed my flickr page back to public so you can all see my photos.

Work work busy busy

It almost felt like back in the good old days at the NFT, sitting in the office until 3am, beer in hand, iTunes blasting, take-out Thai when things were getting slow, shouting questions across the office as we all worked through the pain barrier, but this was somehow different… There was air conditioning for a start. Oh, and windows. And the lovely Mr Dan Smith had been replaced by a blonde Swedish female, and I didn’t have Cosi, Marc, Stephen, Camilla or Neda there to share the moment with. Plus, the 3ams in Sydney don’t happen every night for 6 months – they’re once in a blue moon. This is what life should be like!

I’ve been working hard, as you can probably tell from my delirium, to get my shiny new website up and running – isn’t it beautiful? I’m so proud… It’s not the full festival website – that will be launched on 9 May. This one’s just a teaser – an interim website to leave people wanting more. Over the next few weeks it will grow and have lots of fab content, but I’m still really pleased. After working with Dan for the last few years on the festival websites in London, it was with horror that I encountered the website I was to take over in this job. It was one of my first major goals to give it a complete overhaul and make it a rich and innovative place where people felt they were being taken behind the scenes of the festival, and which enriched their festival experience. Hopefully I’m one step nearer to that with this teaser site.

Creating the main image for the festival was a blast too. I organised a photoshoot last week in Wentworth Park in West Sydney, with a range of actors and even a couple of cute dogs! We waited until the footballers’ floodlights were turned off at 10pm, and began our photoshoot. We had a cherry-picker (like a small crane crossed with a window-cleaner’s hoist) which some poor sod sat up in until 4am pointing a spotlight down onto the park ground. Then two colleagues who I’d dragged from the office operated the smoke machine, wafting the smoke with a wooden board until it flowed beautifully and eerily in the spotlight. Meanwhile each actor got a crick in their neck as they took it in turns to gawp upwards into the light for about an hour each. What fun. It doesn’t sound very glamorous (sorry if I’ve taken the mystique out of it for you!) but the images we have for our campaign are beautiful. We’re only using one lead image at the moment, but we’re rolling out the rest over the next few weeks. I’m really looking forward to working with this idea and developing a really strong and effective campaign.

The campaign's hero image


So, for those of you who wonder what it is that I do with my days, and what took me all the way to the other side of the world, check out my mini biog on the Our team page (that was my idea) – you can also see the lovely Australians I work with.

Location, location, location


I’m moving house tomorrow so my next blog will be from my lovely new place in Bondi, 5 minutes walk from the sea. Home sweet home.

cx

Fillums fillums and more fillums

Am back in Sydney from my jaunt in Adelaide. And what fun was had. It’s great visiting other film festivals as a delegate – you get treated v well and don’t have to pay for anything – I could definitely get used to this life. My days in Adelaide consisted mainly of films, (occasionally interspersed with food, working on the laptop in the State Library, and the odd festival drinks event). I did manage to fit in a trip to the art gallery, which was pretty fab – they had a cute little video art exhibition on, which I took some pics of (check them out on flickr).

Film Festivals are a strange experience – just as your breakfast is going down and the sun is getting high, you settle in a darkened and air conditioned room, and allow yourself to be transported to another reality, then you stagger out two hours later into the blazing sun, grab some lunch, then plunge into another cinema, later dragging yourself back into the real world, only to repeat it all again – in my case only 3 times a day for 5 days, but some festival programmers average 5 films a day and can be on the road at consecutive festivals for a month at a time – it’s an emotionally and mentally exhausting experience. I had the good fortune to see some fantastic and often uplifting films, but my chum Matt made some unfortunate program decisions and had a couple of days of back-to-back depressing films. Here are my faves of the AFF:

Infamous – cracking film – I think it might have been out in the UK already – if you thought Capote was good then go and see this – you’ll be blown away by Toby Jones’ performance as Truman Capote.




Still Life – this beautifully made Chinese film had some exquisitely composed and lingering shots, and transported me to a world where a dam causes a whole community to be submerged and disappear, and a man doesn’t call his wife for two years and then asks ‘are things alright at home?’ Episodes from this film are still echoing in my mind. Brilliant.




Dr Plonk – silent film by Rolf de Heer that closed the festival. (World Premiere.) I thought this was going to be a painful experience, but was stunned at how well it worked – and the audience loved it. A captivating time-travel comedy with a live accompaniment by the all-girl Stilletto Sisters. I almost feel like it heralds in a new era of cinema.




Home Song Stories – another World Premiere, this Australian film centres around a Chinese immigrant family in 70s Melbourne, with a fantastic performance from Joan Chen as a night club singer and mother of two. The film deals with how her unstable, turbulent lifestyle affects her children, and while there was one too many suicide attempt for my liking, and it became a bit rambly and lost direction, it was still a great character study.




The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema – fascinating romp through cinema theory (including the cinema of Hitchcock, David Lynch, Tarkovsky) led by Slovenian-born cultural critic Slavoj Zizek – total dude and my new hero. Will read up on his theories and am sure I'll bore you with how wonderful he is once again. Not that I agree with him 100% but I like his approach to film, that’s for sure.




Oh and lots lots more, but won’t attempt to put it all on here.

Am now back in Sydney, working very hard, and looking forward to my festival brand and website launch in a couple of weeks. Good luck to all you guys at the NFT, (sorry, BFI Southbank), for your venue launch this week, let me know how it goes. I eagerly await write-ups on the BBC and Guardian websites (my main ways of keeping in touch!).

More pics of me enjoying Adelaide on my flickr page. Drop me a line if you need me to invite you as a contact (the page is set to private).

cx

Going Interstate

Greetings from sunny Adelaide, where I’m here for the Adelaide Film Festival. This is my first trip ‘interstate’ which means I’ve left my home in New South Wales (NSW) and am now in the state of South Australia (SA) – there are all sorts of strange rules about going interstate which dictate your behaviour (apparently), but all I keep thinking of is the fact that I flew here on a plane, the distance is about the same as London-Warsaw or something, and no-one even asked to look at my passport! Crazy.

Film fan in Adelaide

Five Fascinating Facts about Adelaide

1) Adelaide is in a different time zone! Yes, I’m currently half an hour behind Sydney, so only 10 1/2 hours in front of the UK. Can’t really see the point of this, but there you go.
2) Adelaide has the largest number of churches per capita than any other place in the world.
3) This weekend the Clipsall motorcar race is taking place in Adelaide, bringing a certain type of fan to town. The place is absolutely teeming with bogans (Bogan = Aussie slang for Chav). Wonderful.
4) Next weekend is Womadelaide – literally Womad in Adelaide – sweet!
5) It’s bloody hot. If you hear no more from me it’s because I’ve melted. Plus the air is really dry. You don’t know what Thirst is until you’ve been here.

So I’m watching plenty of movies, hanging out with the lovely Matt, and attempting to meet lots of cool and influential film types. Will take some photos and fill you in on my adventures when I’m back in Sydney next week.

cx