The Mercury Cinema and Media Resource Centre are showcasing a boutique bunch of the latest Australian films. On fire with excitement, they called it ‘Flamin Films’. Audiences will decide if they should have hosed down the rhetoric to a quiet glow of encouragement.
Blacktown, the winner of a best film award at this year’s Sydney Film Festival, opens the Flamin Films season on Friday 2 September. One of the most exciting locally produced and documentary-style dramas of recent years, Blacktown begins tensely, hinting at the drudgery and violent undercurrent of life in this western suburb of Sydney. When Nikki’s date turns sour, an Aboriginal bus driver called Tony rescues her from being dragged into a car, but then insists on walking her home – and now knows where she lives. From these tense beginnings, Sydney writer-director Kriv Stenders (The Illustrated Family Doctor) charts a tentative romance between two lost souls searching for meaning in life’s emotional confusion. Kriv Stenders is a special guest and will open the screening and take questions afterwards.
