Romanian Culture in Australia
For the next few months, we’re screening our films on Sunday afternoons. Just around normal high tea time, but instead of tea and cucumber sandwiches, we are serving our signature dish of Eastern and Central European film and culture. Tempted?
Doors will open at 2:15pm with a start at 2:30pm. Hope to see you at our next screening.
The movie poster for Elena is an incredible graphic representation of the film. It’s rare to see such a good story synthesis incorporated into one design. Here is the story of the making the poster in the words of Adrian Curry from Notebook, a sought after and highly referenced movie publication for mubi:
“(…) Sam Smith has become one of the most sought-after designers on the independent film circuit with his refreshingly simple, witty and indelibly striking hand-drawn designs (it doesn’t hurt that he also has a great knowledge of both film history and the history of movie poster design). (…)
Zvyagintsev’s dark and beautiful film premiered at Cannes (…) where it won the Special Jury Prize. For the US (…) release we wanted to emphasise the noirish aspects of this captivating modern Russian crime drama and none of the keyart we’d seen from Europe really captured that aspect of it (though I am quite fond of the Australian poster).
Sam, with his love of Czech posters of the 60s and 70s and their frequent animal iconography, immediately zeroed in on the crow that appears at the start of the film as a linchpin element for his design. One of my favorites of his early comps featured nothing but a thicket of wintry trees silhouetted against a teal blue sky, and, above the title, that ominous bird. But much as we loved it as a piece of art we felt that the poster needed its titular character or it wouldn’t really be telling you enough about the film (unlike the great Czech and Polish designers, we can’t afford to be quite so oblique). However, the title treatment and color scheme were strong enough to survive throughout successive drafts.
Sam experimented with a number of ways to represent Elena herself, some of which made her look a little too babushka-like in our opinion, but he quickly settled on the perfect look for his crow.
After a number of variations Sam hit upon the silhouette that is used in the final design. Windows are a major feature of the film (Elena lives with her rich husband in a modern glass-walled penthouse) so to have Elena looking out of the window, her back to us, ruminating, maybe plotting, fits the feel of the film perfectly and also gives her a hint of Joan Crawford at her most devious. Sam refined his horizon of leafless branches reaching up like grasping hands (one of my favorite elements of the poster), and even created his own stylized laurels for the film’s many accolades.
Early in the process, Sam had shown me a bunch of Penguin crime paperback covers (many of them the work of Polish emigré Romek Marber) that he was looking at as a possible direction for the poster. You can see that a couple of them clearly influenced our final look.
Going beyond the call of duty, Sam also made a smaller, pared-down screenprint version of his design which was printed at Kangaroo Studios in his home town of Nashville, TN. His friend Adrian Cobb has made this wonderful short film documenting the process.
You can see more of Sam’s work on his website, and you can read about his process and see more of his favorite posters and other graphic work on his blog Sam’s Myth.
Thank you to everyone who joined us this Saturday for the screening of Life is a Miracle. Our evening was certainly a lot more interesting with a good dose of Kusturica in it.
A big shout-out to Nela Trifkovic, who delivered a touching introduction to the film. Nela shared some of her own experiences as a young person caught in the Yugoslavian conflict and gave us an insight into the realities of the conflict the film is placed in.
Kusturica’s characters are colourful and vivacious, so you can easily find yourself laughing. But they are often one step away from annihilation and their verve seems a desperate attempt to stay alive. Quite a journey for our audiences.
Stay tuned for next month’s screening, thought-provoking film from Russia.
Saturday’s screening is scheduled for 6pm. Please arrive on time so you don’t miss any of the action. Doors open at 5:45pm and we aim to start the event at 6:15pm.
If you haven’t been to The Dock before, make sure you allow plenty of time for parking and getting there.
The exact address is 107 Victoria Harbour Promenade, Docklands. Enter via sliding door facing the park. The Performance Space is on the 2nd floor – take the lift or get your step count up by taking the stairs.
See more details on how to get there.
Don’t forget if you came to our launch, you have free entry to Saturday’s screening. This will be the last screening included in your launch ticket. The good news is that you can still extend this to a full year pass just by paying the difference of $25 on the night. That gives you free entry to all of our films for the rest of the year and a whole lot of other pretty special perks.
If it’s your first time at EuRaw Stories, not to worry, tickets are easy to buy online or in person on the day. Buy your three-movie pass here.
See you on Saturday for our special movie date with Emir Kusturica.
With two Palmes D’Or awards under his belt, Emir Kusturica is the punk kid of Serbian cinema. He wears more hats that wikipedia can keep track of: he’s a musician and tours with his band No Smoking Orchestra. A sell-out writer. An actor with several French films in his repertoire. And he is also the former president of the Ski Association of Serbia.
He is nothing if not a character and controversy seems to follow him, but love him or hate him, you are missing a huge chunk of European cinema if you haven’t seen his films. And this is where we can help.
We want to introduce you to Emir Kusturica the filmmaker though his gem Life is a Miracle. Join us for the screening on 16th of April. You can safely call this a not-to-be-missed opportunity.
We’re stoked with our EuRaw Stories second screening. Thank you to all who got curious about what we have to offer and joined us on the night.
The film delivered its promise of quirky, dark humour, and Clara Voda’s presence made the night all the more interesting. We got some insight into the process of filming Domestic and her observations about the film industry in Eastern Europe and in Australia. Clara currently teaches at the New York Film Academy Australia in Sydney.
The Woolshed Pub turned out to be the perfect place to get moving and chatting after the screening.
Overall, we had a great night and hope you did too. We’d love to hear your feedback and ideas on how we could do better in the comments below.
We sure hope so! Here’s a recap of what we have in store for you at tonight’s screening:
Buy your pass online or at the door. If you came to our launch last month, just bring your launch ticket along and you get free entry. Hope to see you there from 6pm.
Last month we were telling you our March film director, Adrian Sitaru, had his latest film, ‘Illegitimate’, selected for the Berlin Film Festival. The screening didn’t go unnoticed and he went home with a little extra luggage, namely the CICAE Art Cinema Award.
Adrian Sitaru’s films approach taboo topics, ask unspeakable questions and wonder out loud about moral dilemmas, exposing the absurdity of life in the process. He somehow manages to approach the most serious topics while making audiences laugh out loud.
Come see his film ‘Domestic’ on 19th of March at The Dock Performance space in Docklands.
