Moruya’s 2011 Foreign Film Festival – Focus on Oscar Winners

by Bill Nagle
(Moruya Film Festival)

Media release: 31/1/2012

12 September 2011

Past Academy Award winning films is the basis for selection of the three foreign films for this year’s Moruya Community Film Group’s film festival.

The films will be screened over two days – Friday 23 and Saturday 24 September, at the Performing Arts Centre, St Mary’s Primary School, Queen St, Moruya.

Members and non-members are invited to attend all or some of these screenings, as well as food, refreshment and speaker sessions interspersed throughout the program.

Note: This festival is open to all - non members can attend for $10 a film or $25 for the three films and, of course, members can attend for free.

The festival will open at 7.30pm on Friday evening with the recent Argentine film The Secret in their Eyes – the winner of the 2009 Best Foreign Language Film.

The story is set in Buenos Aires and straddles two time frames 1999 and 1974. This murder mystery lives up to its Oscar with an engrossing plot assured direction and mesmerising performances. It is a stylishly crafted blend of cold-case thriller and smouldering romance. The film is preceded with a speaker looking at Argentina in the 1970s and Argentine refreshments – Poste Vigilante.

On the Saturday afternoon and evening the festival has two films scheduled.

The Russian film, Burnt by the Sun is on Saturday at 5.00pm. It is a provocative and very moving meditation on the political and social realities of life in Stalinist Russia which deservedly earned the 1995 Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Set in 1936 revolutionary hero Colonel Kotov is spending an idyllic summer but things change with an unpleasant arrival…

Saturday evening at 8.30pm is the 2009 Oscar winning Japanese film, Departures. A newly unemployed cellist unwittingly takes a job preparing the dead for funerals. This may sound grim but the film has a wicked sense of humour and is genuinely moving and beautifully told.

Between these two latter films will be food and refreshments for a nominal $7.00 a head.

For full program and membership details phone Bill on 4473 6010.

12 September 2011

Bill Nagle, Publicity Officer, 0429 108616