Migrant Stories "I grew up in an immigrant neighborhood. We just knew the rule was you're going to have to work twice as hard." Lin-Manuel Miranda Twice as hard in anything that you have to do, that is what being a migrant is all about. I arrived in Australia as a baby, so in a lot of ways, it is as if I was born in this country, but not quite. I lived in a world that was inherently Greek, with a work ethic that was austere, and as a little girl I had to follow suite to make sure that I was able to keep up. My parents worked in factories, as hard as any other migrant who arrived in Australia. They had a goal, and that was to save for a house, for without owning a house the rest cannot follow, priority number one. Priority number two fell on me, and that was to study hard. "Να διαβάσεις" Sometimes I had to create extra work for myself, pretending that Enid Blyton was on the curriculum, or that the poster sprawled...
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Lifting Clouds Life and death are one thread, the same line viewed from different sides. -Lao Tzu Director's Statement-Lifting Clouds For the past few years I had been thinking about the definitives in life. But, no matter how hard I thought about it, there were no ‘definitives’ as such, except one ‘definite’, and that was, once we were born, we were all on the way to a death of some sort. It was such a grim thought, but, it was what got me thinking about the types of deaths that humans have and whether there could be some control with the way that humans die. After all, there is control in every other aspect of the human life, so why the persistence in leaving human deaths to chance, particularly when they are imminent and obvious. Pets’ deaths, when they are terminally ill, are not left to chance. Pets are surrounded by their family, swaddled in blankets and love for their final goodbye. Yet humans...
"Memories are the key not to the past, but to the future. " Corrie Ten Boom Corrie Ten Boom was a Dutch watchmaker, who had helped many Jews escape during the Holocaust, was a prisoner and then a writer. She held many memories, no doubt, fears; images that would stay forever and haunt her, but they were able to unlock a future for her that she would never have imagined. Her writing and her boldness initiated her knighthood by the Queen of the Netherlands, The King's College in New York City named a new women's house in her honour, her book "The Hiding Place", was made into a feature film, twice. Locked away in our computer hard drives are examples of our work and lives that we lock away when our computer sleeps, forgetting about their importance because we are always told to focus on the now, forgetting about our past. Well, perhaps it is time that we also learn to love our past, regardless of what it was like, so that we can understand what our...
"Life imitates art far more than art imitates life". Oscar Wilde I had to include a photo of me taking a picture, recording life, events and never leaving home without it. In fact, no body leaves home without their camera any more. It sits in the back pocket, ready for a selfie, to snap a weird combination of objects set aside somewhere, or a recording of any event that is important. Art imitates life, constantly, and those recordings are of everything that exists, everything that the eye or the heart can see. Art is not just about photography however, art encapsulates all the creations that come from an enlightened thought or inner gift. All creations for me are art. Film is art, and film, also needs to imitate life, but for a long time now, life has been imitating art, meaning that life has been imitating film. I'm spurred on today by the comments made by a friend after watching Rogue One; A Star Wars Story, that there were not en...
"Even though the future seems far away, it is actually beginning right now." Mattie Stepanek Mattie Stepney died at the age of thirteen,but in his very short life, he managed to publish poetry, and complete a volume of essays on peace. He also suffered from a rare disorder, dysautonomic mitochondrial myopathy. Despite his age, he was a visionary and a philosopher. To me, the quote that revolves around the future starting right now is very poignant, especially in the shift that is evidently occurring in the exhibition of film. If we are stop and look into the future of what exhibition would look like for film, it is best to look at what is actually happening right now. No other time in history has the ability to exhibit and view film been so easy. Gone are the days where the only time you could view films was with a collective audience in a public space or cinema. Nowadays, films can be viewed onl...
Chevalier-a film by Athina Rachel Tsangari Chevalier has a few meanings in the English language-It could mean a member of the French orders or knighthood, or it could mean a chivalrous man. When Athina Rachel Tsangari and Efthimis Filippou co wrote their screenplay for Chevalier which Athina Rachel Tsangari went on to direct, I suspect that the latter definition was at the fore of their thinking for their film. Six men, connected in some way through relations or friendship, come together to holiday and dive on the doctor's yacht. The nature of their relationships are vaguely conveyed through their work, or loosely tied by the relationship of some to the doctor's daughter, Anna. This though, is not the driving theme behind the film, what drives the story forward is the game that they all decide to participate in; a game that will narrow in on a winner who will ultimately become the general best at everything and win the signet ring, the chevalier, and wear ...
Marketing the Indie Film "Good marketers tell a story." Seth Godin It wasn't long ago that I had blogged about the importance of marketing the Indie Film. I knew that marketing began at the very start of the film, what I wasn't entirely sure about, however, was what sort of tactics the studios were using to let people know about their new film in the making. After some research on the marketing techniques used, I came to realise that clever marketing begins with the accumulation of 'fans'. For, it is the 'fans' that become an audience. A film cannot be successful without an audience and the marketing must revolve around this one simple fact. The techniques that the studios use, mainly revolve around the utilisation social media tools, and whilst this is certainly accessible and free to everyone, the question still begs on how it can be used cleverly, interestingly and uniquely to formulate a marketing plan that is going to a...