Sydney Film Festival 2022 - Film Review - The Phantom of the Open

Mark Rylance (right) in The Phantom of the Open

Within any major film festival there is always a need for a light hearted absurdist film to be included in the screenings, more so when the story is anchored in true events. This film fits that slot. Based loosely on the real life of would-be tournament golfer Maurice Flitcroft, the story follows the successful effort by Flitcroft, a crane driver, to enter the British Open although he had never played golf in his life. 

With the support of his wife, his disco dancing twin sons and a somewhat dubious co-worker, Flitcroft finds his way through the entry obstacles to enter the competition and produce the worst round in the history of the British Open. The eternal optimist, Flitcroft does not leave this as his sole effort and continues to seek further entry to this World ranked sporting event. The film follows the almost cat and mouse moves between British Open officials and Flitcroft as they try to keep him away from the golfing competition permanently.
 

A highly experienced cast support film director, Craig Roberts to give effect to this 'fact is stranger than fiction' story. Sir Mark Rylance is Maurice Flitcroft, the versatile Sally Hawkins as his wife, Jean, Jonah and Christian Lees are Flitcroft's twin sons (disco dancing being their forte) and Jake Davies as his step son who initially rejects his father's golfing efforts but eventually supports them.   

This is an amusing, light hearted film and a welcome theme in the current serious world.

Sydney Film Festival 2022 - Film review - Navalny

Alexei Navalny with photos of his would-be assassins

Documentary film maker Daniel Roher brings this very topical portrait of Russian Opposition Leader, Alexei Navalny, to the screen and introduces him to a wider international audience than may have been the case otherwise. In 2020 Navalny sensationally survived an assassination attempt by a hit team from Russia's security agency, the FSB using the nerve agent Novichok while he was visiting Siberia. He was able to recover in Germany through the efforts of his wife and international pressure whereupon it was discovered that the nerve agent had been used on him. Russia consistently denied all such allegations.

With the assistance of online investigation agency, Bellingcat, all four agents were completely identified and shown to have stalked Navalny for a number of years. With key contact details sourced by Bellingcat journalist Christo Grozev during this film, Navalny was able to phone each of them direct until one agent, under the impression that Navalny was from within the security service, divulged most of the details of the operation. It's a stunning and breathtaking set of statements captured during the filming. 

Also interviewed in the film are Navaly's wife, Yulia (a key person in her own right) their adult children, his media adviser and his chief-of-staff. Navalny is shown to be a charismatic lawyer who does not shy away from difficult questions and enjoys strong support in Russia. This makes him the key target for Russian president Vladimir Putin who refuses to even mention his name when asked. On arrival back from Germany, Navalny was arrested and sent to a penal colony facing 20 years imprisonment.

Given Putin's autocratic rule in Russia and the war again the Ukraine, this documentary could not be more pertinent. It is a must-see film to better understand the severity of the forces that Putin deploys in Russia.

69th Sydney Film Festival - 2022 - in full swing

 
The Sydney Film Festival has returned in full for 2022 shaking off the effects of COVID-19 and being staged with 14 screens in multiple locations in Sydney including its main venue, the State Theatre with satellite film screenings located at Event Cinemas, Dendy Newtown, Palace Cinemas, Ritz Cinemas Randwick, Hayden Orpheum Cremorne, Casula Powerhouse and the Art Gallery of NSW.

Full deatils can be found at this link: Sydney Film Festival

Sydney Film Festival 2022 - Film Review - Baz Luhrmann's "Elvis"

Austin Butler as Elvis Presley in Elvis

 
For any film director the prospect of creating a biopic around a cultural icon such as the late Elvis Presley is always a daunting and high risk venture. Will the film do justice to its subject ? Will the legion of Elvis fans accept the representation of 'The King of Rock and Roll' as shown in the film ? Is there a proper balance between the undoubted talent of the man and his ultimate decline ? Australian film director, Baz Luhrmann has made a valiant and generally successful effort with this high production values film which focusses on the ascent of Elvis Presley from his initial performances to becoming a major international star prior to his decline in health and ultimate death in 1977. Presley was only 42 years of age. 

Luhrmann's rumoured $200M budget production was filmed on Australia's Gold Coast with a predominantly Australian cast and crew. As a biographical musical drama there is a strong concentration on the actual Elvis' music and performances many of which were documented events in themselves. Perhaps the most unusual element is the fact that narration in the film and the perspective taken is from the view of Elvis' manager, the controversial Colonel Tom Parker. Parker remains a controversial figure to this day for his financial exploitation of Elvis with seeming control and manipulative restriction of his performances in the United States. 

The key cast members are American actors Austin Butler (as Elvis), Tom Hanks (as Colonel Tom Parker) with the largely Australian cast including Olivia DeJonge (as Priscilla Presley), Helen Thomson (as Elvis' mother Gladys) Richard Roxburgh (as Elvis' father, Vernon) and David Wenham (as musician/singer Hank Snow). 

The final ten or so minutes of the film use archival footage of the real Elvis Presley at the end of his career.

With a running time of 159 minutes, this is a film for those who enjoy the music and style of performance of Elvis Presley. Luhrmann has succeeded in executing a very capable and entertaining production.

2022 federal election loss for the Liberal Party - where to now ?

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The results from the 2022 Federal election have underscored the disconnect between the direction of the Liberal Party of Australia and both the broader community and a key part of its own support base. The results thus far are -

• 76 seats are needed in the House of Representatives to become a Government
• Australian Labor Party on 71 seats
• Liberal National Party on 52 seats
• Other being Independents or The Greens have 15 seats
• Counting on postal votes and prepoll is continuing as over 6 million eligible voters used these methods.

In terms of percentage of total votes -

• Liberal/National has 35.4 % (a fall of 3.29%)
• Australian Labor Party has 32.8 % (the ALP vote actually fell 0.5%)
• The Greens has 12.1 % (increased by 1.7%)
• One Nation has 5.0% (increased by 1.9%)
• United Australia Party has 4.3% (increased by 0.8%)
• Independents have 5.51%  (increased by 2.14%)
• Others are at 4.95%  

The Liberal Party has lost many of its key heartland seats in major metropolitan cities to Independents. 

In the seat of Wentworth in Sydney's high income, educated Eastern suburbs many of the campaign workers for successful Independent candidate, Allegra Spender, identified either individually or collectively as former members of the Liberal Party. Many had voted for the now defeated incumbent Dave Sharma in previous elections. But they had left the party finding it had become extreme and was failing to address the existential crisis of climate change. This was excerbated with a range of secondary issues such as a federal anti-corruption agency being deemed critically important but managed in a dismal, if not pitiful manner by the Morrison Government.

In terms of climate change, many Liberals, including Members of Parliament and Ministers now belong to, or support, an external organisation called the Coalition for Conservation (C4C). This inoccuous sounding body advocates for renewable energy, carbon reduction, carbon capture and storage, electric vehicles, transition programs for clean industries and clear measures to bring down greenhouse gas emissions. C4C attended the meetings around COP26 in Glasgow last year. It is telling about the Liberal Party that it is only through another body can any sensible debate occur on climate change initiatives but not within the party itself.

The issue therefore is less to do with the change in Government from the Liberal National Coalition to the Australian Labor Party (the overall national swing of 3.5 % is close to a standard change of Government) but more so the loss of the inner heartland of the Liberal Party itself. While the ALP has won Government, it has done so with a stagnant voting base with the real winners being the Independents and The Greens. Unless the Liberal Party is able to restore its broad church umbrella, the Party will find winning the electorates necessary for Government to be well nigh unattainable for many years, if not decades. This in itself has echoes to the wilderness years the Australian Labor Party experienced during the great split with the Democratic Labour Party (the DLP).

Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes 2022

Journalist Laura Tingle by James Powditch

Australia's arguably most voyeuristic portrait prize exhibition is on display at the Art Gallery of NSW (AGNSW). This year, 52 portraits were chosen for inclusion from the 816 entries submitted to the AGNSW and generally the exhibition could be described as operating on safe territory with no controversies coming to light. 

Absent were images of politicians with the subjects for painting being drawn mainly from sports, film and television actors, singers, academia, writers, art collectors/benefactors, artists painting other artists and not a few self portraits (a common approach each year). Subjects included actors Lisa McCune, Hugh Jackman and Debra Lee Furness; fim director Taika Waititi; art collectors / benefactors, Liz Laverty, Patrick Corrigan, Peter Wegener; singers Deborah Conway, Peter Garrett, TV personalities such as Brooke Boney and Yumi Stynes to list a few.

Artists selected for the most part are the well established names such as Wendy Sharpe, Ross Townsend, Nick Stathopoulus, Natasha Bieniek, Anh Do, Robert Hannaford, Tsering Hannaford (Robert Hannaford's daughter), Jasper Knight, Mathew Lynn, Noel McKenna, Vincent Namatjira, Thom Roberts, Joan Ross, Paul Newton, Richard Lewer, Catherine McGuiness, Natasha Walsh amongst the group.

The winner this year is Blak Douglas for his portrait of artist, Karla Dicken standing knee deep in flood water (the Lismore flood being the background for the painting and very topical at present) carrying leaking buckets. Blak Douglas is the second Aboriginal artist to win the Archibald prize.

The Wynn Prize for landscape painting or figurative art has around 34 entries with an increasing number of Aboriginal artists submitting large works. These entries predominantly from Central Australian or APY communities have increased the scope of the exhibition and added a new dimension. Quite a few artists submit entries for both the Archibald and Wynne prizes with this year, Jude Rae, James Powditch and Noel McKenna being in both. 

The smallest of the 3 exhibitions is the Sulman Prize for subject, genre or mural painting and 31 entries were selected this year. This is the exhibition with the largest number of new artists being shown. Its a more esoteric and often mixed media/materials for the works. 

The exhibition runs from 14 May to 28 August 2022.

Great Barrier Reef in Australia - coral bleaching increases in latest report

                      Aerial survey  (c) Great Barrier Marine Park Authority

The lastest surveillance report on Australia's Great Barrier Reef confirms the ongoing damage to the reef through increased temperatures as a result of climate change. Of particular alarm has been the repeated events of bleaching which now number 4 in seven years. The expected relief from a change in weather systems to La Nina did not occur and a mass bleaching resulted. This prolonged heat exposure is occuring across the wider reef system. 

The latest reef snapshot report published this month (May 2022) describes the current situation in clear terms which are not easily disputed -

• A total of 719 reefs were surveyed from the air between the Torres Strait and the Capricorn Bunker Group in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. Of these 654 reefs (91 per cent) exhibited some fomr of bleaching and a significant core of the central reef had severe or extreme bleaching. 
• Coral bleaching seen from the air is largely consistent with the spatial distribution of heat stress accumulation with a larger proportion of coral cover bleached on reefs that were exposed to the highest accumulated heat stress this last Summer (late 2021 and early 2022)
• The waters around the Great Barrier Reef exceeded historical summer maximums for the hottest summer months with three distinct heat waves increasing thermal stress throughout the Central and Northern Great Barrier Reef.
• The 2022 Aerial Survey Map [shown above] illustrates the variation in bleaching observed across the reef in the second half of March. The aerial surveys were conducted by trained observers from the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and the Australian Institute of Marine Science.

The full report can be accessed at this link: Great Barrier Reef Snapshot Report 2022

Environmental, social and governance - the ESG direction

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ESG, the abbreviation for environmental, social and governance (as in corporate governance) has become the latest buzz method for performance measurement and reporting for large corporate entities. It covers a myriad of activities (for example, climate change, biodiversity, pollution, risk management, diversity, employee engagement and so on) and there are a plethora of ways of measuring ESG and weighting various scores with the result that there is not an overall single rating determined. Different ESG audit companies use different methods that can and do lead to different ESG ratings being given to the same client company. Confusing it can be.

ESG is not directly the same as environmental sustainability as ESG involves measuring against a set of criteria which are focussed on company process and practices. Sustainability in contrast is focussed on outcomes. Highly polluting and environmentally damaging industries would use ESG as a risk management tool to ensure that they have best practice processes to mitigate pollution, avoid accidents,  reduce the need for expensive regulatory requirements/compliance and hence the risk of costly litigation. Sustainability in contrast is focussed on the impact of the company's activities on people and the environment including the sustainability of the services and products.

In one respect ESG has evolved as a result of the strong movement to ethical investing and increasing demands from funding bodies (such as banks), investors and consumers for greater corporate responsibility to be demonstrated. Such demands also focus attention on company's social licence to operate in a range of industries that may have high impacts on communities. Where corporations do not demonstrate responsibility, the social licence to operate is placed at risk. 

Russia - a nation with a history of military conflict

                                    Russian Armed Force Parade Moscow        Shutterstock

The war with Ukraine is bloody, merciless and brutal however it follows a well established path for Russia (or its previous incarnation, The Soviet Union) who has invaded and occupied many of its neighbours repeatedly over the past 200 years. This period spans the Tsarist era to the Russian Federation demonstrating that a change in political institutions has not led to a change in foreign policy. 

It is slightly over 30 years since the Soviet Union controlled vast swathes of Eastern Europe and parts of Northern Central Asia for over half a century or more. Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslavakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova and the 'Stans' (Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan) were under direct Soviet control or being governed by puppet Communist regimes. These countries armed forces were integrated into the Warsaw Pact and there were Russian KGB officers stationed or co-located with the respective security services. Belarus still refers to its security police as the KGB. Afghanistan was a late inclusion being invaded in 1979 with the Russians leaving in 1989, the same year as the fall of the Berlin wall (which occured on 9 November 1989).

A short summary of Russian military conflict in the 20th Century from the Communist era onward is provided below. The Russian Civil War and Revolution occured during the period of 1917 to 1922 and much of the conflict involves neighbouring countries seeking independence and freedom from Russia, being successful but later being overtaken again by the Russians. World War I and World War II are excluded from this list due to being global conflicts where Russia was not the aggressor.

The wars -

• 1917 - 1921: Ukrainian war of independence. Ukrainians defeated and Ukrainian Soviet Sociliast Republic created
• 1917 - 1920: Kazakhastan campaign and incorporation of Kazakhastan into the Soviet Union
• 1918: Finish Civil War: Soviets defeated, IFinland independence defended.
• 1918 - 1920: Latvian War of Independence, Soviets defeated and Latvia gains independence
• 1918 - 1920: Estonian War of Independence, Soviets defeated and Estonia gains independence
• 1918 - 1920: Lithuanian - Soviet conflict: Soviets defeated
• 1918 - 1920: Georgian/Ossetian conflict. Ossetian rebellion for Russia defeated
• 1919 - 1921: Russian - Polish War. Soviets forced to negotiate at Peace of Riga Treaty. Poland independence gained.
• 1920: Invasion of Azerbaijan. Soviets win and Azerbaijan Democratic Republic overthrown
• 1920: Invasion of Armenia: Soviets win and Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic established
• 1921: Invasion of Georgia: Soviets win and Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic established
• 1921 - 1922: Intervention of Russia in conficts in Mongolia and East Karelia uprisings. Soviets win.
• 1929 - 1930: Soviet army intervention in Afghanistan leads to victory for ally of Russia.
• 1932: Chechen uprising is redefeated by Soviet army
• 1939: Soviet Union invades Eastern Poland while Nazi Germany invades Western Poland.Poland defeated and occupied. Later fully controlled by Nazi Germany following commencement of World War II and invasion of the Soviet Union by Germany.
• 1939: Finland Winter War: Soviet win and Finland cedes territory to Russia.
• 1944 - 53: Soviet army defeats Nazi German forces and reoccupies Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Partisan movements in Ukraine and Poland defeated and Russia occupies those countries.
• 1953: East German uprising. Soviets win and uprising suppressed
• 1956: Hungarian Revolution: Soviets win and revolution crushed
• 1968: Czechoslovakia invaded by Russia. Soviets occupy Czechoslovakia and remain until 1991
• 1991 - 1993: Georgian civil war. Soviet success
• 1994 - 1996: First Chechen War: Soviets defeated
• 1997 - 1998 Soviet - Afghan war: Russia initially wins but are later forced to leave.
• 1999- 2009: Second Chechen War: Russia wins and gains control over Chechnya
• 2008: Georgian War. Russia succeeds and occupies Abkhazia and South Ossetia
• 2014 - present: Ukrainain War

For countries neighbouring Russia's border, independence has always been an academic proposition only. Russia has sought continously to control regions well beyond its borders either directly or through installed governments by Moscow or considered favourably by them.

Easter 2022

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Easter Sunday or Resurrection Sunday (referred to as Pascha in Armaic, Greek or Latin) commemorates the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, three days after his crucifixion by the Romans at Calvary dated approximately at 30 AD. This period is a cultural festival and holiday for those of the Christian faith marked by hot cross buns, chocolate eggs (and bunnies) and preceded a week earlier by Palm Sunday.

Easter 2022 occurs at a time when the world continues to face consider pressures with an ongoing pandemic (SARS-CoV-2), a serious nation state war between Russian and Ukraine, many smaller unresolved conflicts in the Middle East and a general economic impact across the world. 

Despite these serious challenges, Happy Easter.