Cult Australian film Celia announced as opening night film
Director Ann Turner and star Rebecca Smart will take part in a special post-screening discussion and launch of a new book about children in film and television
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Hobart - 28 July – The Stranger With My Face Horror Film festival is back for a third year from 21-24 August in Hobart, and has announced its opening night film.
The opening night film on Friday 22 August in Hobart is the 1989 cult film Celia, directed by Ann Turner (Dallas Doll, Irresistible) and starring then child star Rebecca Smart (nominated for an AFI award for Black Rock).
Both Turner and Smart will be attendance at the special screening honouring a film that was widely acclaimed on its release but has steadily grown in reputation since then. In 2009 English Time Out included the film in its “50 Greatest Debut Movies” list.
Celia is the story of a rebellious child growing up in Melbourne in the 1950s, in a community gripped by paranoia about ‘reds under the bed’. Her fear and confusion come to a head when a government ban on rabbits robs her of her beloved pet, and fantasy and reality begin to merge.
“It’s actually not exactly a horror film, despite the fact that it was renamed Celia: Child of Terror for release in North America,” says festival director Briony Kidd. “But it’s a dark, very powerful story with fantasy elements. It encapsulates what our festival is about, in terms of the idea of entertainment as response to personal and political struggle. It’s also just a superb piece of filmmaking.”
The event will double as the Australian launch of a new international anthology, Spectacular Optical Book 1: Kid Power!, which features an essay about the film Celia. Also present will be Melbourne-based author Alexandra Heller-Nicholas (Rape Revenge Films: A Critical Study), whose essay on Italian child actor of the 1970s, Nicoletta Elmi, features in the book.
Ann Turner says, “I’m excited to be coming to Hobart, home of the freshest air on the planet and the best titled film festival, Stranger With My Face, and to team up with Rebecca Smart who I haven’t seen in person for 26 years, although I’ve viewed her extraordinary performance through those years, magically alive on celluloid. Women making horror films, Kid Power…. I’m looking forward to days and nights full of chills and thrills.”
Kid Power‘s editor Kier-La Janisse: “I’m elated to be collaborating with the Stranger with My Face Festival, a festival that in only a few short years has become an integral event in the international genre film community. I couldn’t ask for a more fitting Australian launch, considering that Celia is not only a central film in the book, but also one of many amazing Australian contributions, including new writing from scholar Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and a poignant essay on Seven Little Australians.”
The four-day Stranger With My Face Horror Film Festival in Hobart, Tasmania, features a shorts film program, the awards nights of the 48-Hour Tasploitaiton Challenge and the Tasmanian Gothic Script Challenge (two events conducted by Stranger With My Face during July), and a range of talks, workshops, panels and events.
The full program will be online on 30 July at http://www.strangerwithmyface.com and tickets go on sale on 3 August. The festival’s principle supporter this year is Screen Tasmania, with additional support from Events Tasmania.
Contact: Briony Kidd
email: briony [at] strangerwithmyface.com
Festival director Briony Kidd, Ann Turner, Rebecca Smart and Kier-La Janisse are available for interviews, please contact the festival to arrange.
FURTHER INFORMATION
Tasmania’s STRANGER WITH MY FACE HORROR FILM FESTIVAL is an annual event which returns for the third time in August 2014. The event’s featured filmmaker in 2013 was American filmmaker Jennifer Lynch. SWMF has recently been voted one of the Top 5 Coolest Women’s Film Festivals in the world by the readers of influential Movie Maker Magazine. Stranger With My Face Horror Film Festival takes its name from the teen suspense novel by Lois Duncan and focuses on highlighting the work of female filmmakers in genre, from exploitation to gore, art house to exploitation.
In 2014 the event will start on 21 August with the awards night and screening of the 48-Hour Tasploitation Challenge, a filmmaking comp that is open to both male and female participants from around Australia. The opening night film and party are on 22 August, followed by a weekend of screenings, talks, workshops, panels discussions and social events, including a short film program on the evening of 23 August and a live reading of a new play on 24 August.
ANN TURNER’S CELIA was released in 1989 and starred Rebecca Smart as Celia, with Victoria Longley, Nicholas Eadie, Mary-Anne Fahey and William Zappa. Both Fahey and Longley were nominated for AFI Awards. The score was by Chris Neal and cinematography by Geoffrey Simpsons’s cinematography. Peta Lawson was production designer and Ken Sallows the editor.
Celia won the Grand Prix at the Creteil International Women’s Film Festival. It was lauded by Janet Maslin in the New York Times as “transfixing, assured, extremely lucid”; by Tom Hutchinson in The Mail as, “One of those classics of childhood such as Reed’s The Fallen Idol or Truffaut’s The 400 Blows”; and by Phillip French in The Observer as “a work to be set beside Richard Hughes’s A High Wind in Jamaica, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and John Rae’s The Custard Boys.”
It was named one of the world’s 10 best films of 1990 by Village Voice, The Face and Film Comment. The screenplay won the Australian Writers Guild Monte Miller Award. In 2009 English Time Out rated Celia in its “50 Greatest Debut Movies” and also placed the DVD release in its top ten DVDs for that year.
Spectacular Optical’s first anthology book, KID POWER! – is all about cool, tuff and inspiring kids in cult film and television. Co-edited by Kier-La Janisse and Canuxploitation’s Paul Corupe and featuring writing by a diverse array of genre film criticism’s most unique voices, Kid Power! covers the gamut from The Peanut Butter Solution to The ABC Afterschool Special and the dark side of Disney. And tons more! Kid Power! had its international launch at the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal on 20 July and will launch in Australia at the Strange With My Face Horror Film Festival in Tasmania on 22 August.
PRESS COPIES: Promotional copies of Kid Power! are available to the press for review. To request a press copy of a Spectacular Optical book, please email bigsmashproductions (at) gmail.com with the name of your media outlet and its web address, your mailing address and an approximate time when we can expect the review to be published. PDFs are also available. Visit http://www.spectacularoptical.ca/2014/06/buy-spectacular-optical-book-one-kid-power/.
KIER-LA JANISSE is a writer and film programmer based in Montreal, Canada. She has written for Filmmaker, Rue Morgue and Fangoria magazines, has contributed to The Scarecrow Movie Guide (Sasquatch Books, 2004) and Destroy All Movies!! A Complete Guide to Punk on Film (Fantagraphics, 2011), and is the author of A Violent Professional: The Films of Luciano Rossi (FAB Press, 2007) and House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films (FAB Press, 2012).
