AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE
FILM
AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE
Joe Papp in
Five Acts (USA)
FILM
The Miners’
Hymns (UK/USA)
&
Release (USA)
Dir. Tracie Holder
& Karen Thorsen
Dir. Bill Morrison
Trailblazing champion of the arts Joe Papp finds the recognition
he deserves in Joe Papp in Five Acts, the story of New York’s most
prolific theatre producer.
Filmmaker and artist Bill Morrison (Decasia) pries open the
past, patching together a hypnotic collage of archival footage
to reconstruct England’s vanishing mining communities.
Driven by a vision of arts for the everyman, Joe Papp transformed
the world of theatre forever, introducing interracial casting to
the American stage, presenting counterculture to Broadway with
Hair, and returning Shakespeare to the people with his free annual
productions in Central Park.
Northeast England was once dotted with coal mines, with entire
communities living off the black gold pulled from the bowels of the
earth. That all ended after the miners’ strikes of 1984, with a wave of
brutal police suppression and mine closures.
Celebrating his lifework, Joe Papp in Five Acts pays loving tribute to
the stubborn and spirited producer, featuring candid interviews with
Meryl Streep, James Earl Jones, Kevin Kline, Christopher Walken,
Martin Sheen, Olympia Dukakis, Mandy Patinkin and many more
greats of the stage and screen that Papp nurtured to stardom.
84min, 2012, 15+
ACMI – Thu 11 Oct at 7.30pm
Greater Union – Sat 20 Oct at 2pm
A production of The Papp Project, Thirteen’s American Masters for WNET and ITVS.
Morrison’s mesmerising film unearths vivid images of the coal towns’
heyday, piecing together a lost way of life rich with community and
celebration, and marked by intolerably hard and dangerous work.
Screens with Morrison’s Release, an experimental short constructed
from archival footage of a crowd awaiting the release of Al Capone
from prison.
Release – 13min, 2010; The Miners’ Hymns – 52min, 2011, 18+
ACMI – Tue 16 Oct at 6pm
Greater Union – Sat 20 Oct at 1.30pm
AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE
FILM
Making
War Horse (UK)
Love and
Politics (USA)
Dir. David Bickerstaff
& Phil Grabsky
Dir. Azad Jafarian
Before it was an epic Steven Spielberg film, War Horse was an
elaborate, blockbuster play – a landmark production that used
extraordinary feats of puppetry to bring its equine hero to life.
New York theatre icon Judith Malina gets a fitting tribute
with Love and Politics, an insightful documentary debut from
Azad Jafarian.
The inspiring documentary Making War Horse profiles the
monumental work that went into creating this acclaimed
theatre production, and the groundbreaking techniques used
by South Africa’s Handspring Puppet Company to create lifelike
horses onstage.
Anarchist, pacifist and theatre revolutionary Judith Malina has left
an indelible mark on the New York arts scene. Having co-founded the
US’s oldest experimental theatre group, The Living Theatre, she h