Jane Campion's Sweetie + intro

A rare screening of SWEETIE, a film that vividly links Campion’s early shorts with her later work and heralded a daring new feminist cinematic voice in independent cinema of the 1990s It was with her stunning feature debut Sweetie, at the Cannes Film Festival in 1989 that New Zealand filmmaker Jane Campion exploded to critical attention. It set the scene for her to become one of the most famous women directors in the world, rightly acclaimed for her bold filmmaking style and uncompromising female characters that continue to characterise her work. Once again championing radical new filmmaking, the film played at the Rio on its release in 1990, but not since! SWEETIE is the tale of two sisters- the wild and idiosyncratic Dawn, aka Sweetie- a screen-busting performance by Genevieve Lemon, and her timid, superstitious older sibling, Kay (Karen Colston). Campion brings alive the emotional turmoil of this family’s domestic drama when spoilt daughter Sweetie returns with her stoned boyfriend/agent to upturn their conventional middle-class life. Sally Bongers’ fantastic cinematography uses a colourful palette with surreal flourishes and unexpected camera angles to make the everyday seem quite bizarre. The non-naturalistic visual style is integral to the subject of the film. It is part of how we are invited into the unique universe of SWEETIE. + VIENNESE WHIRL, UK, 2015 Written, directed, edited by Bev Zalcock and Sara Chambers with camerawork by Carol Morley, THE VIENNESE WHIRL is loosely based on Tom Lehrer's dark comic song 'The Wiener Schnitzel Waltz'. This no budget film was made in the filmmakers' flat in 2015, and features two Viennese waltzes and a couple of celebrated movie sequences, to provide the backdrop to a night of glamour and romance. Sadly, the evening unravels into a night of depravity due to a surfeit of alcohol and buttery biscuits! SWEETIE and THE VIENNESE WHIRL be introduced by filmmaker Bev Zalcock, author of Girls Own Stories: Australian and New Zealand Women’s Films, Scarlet Press, 1997. The Rio feminist film programming group is Sarah Chorley, Selina Robertson and Helen De Witt, inspired by the passionate feminist programming work that took place at the Rio in the 1980s by Rio Women’s Cinema and the Women’s Media Resource Project, we are reinstating feminist film screening and events that link the Rio’s feminist history with contemporary feminisms. Everyone is welcome!PT1H37M152024-12-01

Genevieve Lemon

Karen Colston

Tom Lycos

Jane Campion

Jane Campion's Sweetie + intro"Jane Campion's Sweetie + intro"

Showtimes

December 1, 3:30 pm