Sydney Film Festival - Film Review - Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia from Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan could be best be described as being as lost as the desolate Anatolian landscape in which it was shot. Wide panoramic landscapes, sweeping continuous takes, use of other atmospheric devices and some initial light-hearted dialogue for the principal characters, does not subsequently salvage a film which has a sparse and threadbare storyline. The film is centred on a group of men searching for the corpse of a murder victim in the Anatolian countryside. The group includes the Chief of Police, the Prosecutor, a court doctor, police officers, grave diggers and the alleged suspects being held in custody (who have ageed to lead the group to the location of the body). Almost half of the film covers the group's travels across the countryside mostly in the darkness of night. The is no doubt as to the guilt of the perpetrators so this is not a thriller or 'whodunnit' murder investigation. A mystifying element of the film is the abrupt switch from the group and its key leaders to an almost exclusive and narrow focus on the doctor alone with no indication or clues given for this change. Many minutes are spent with the doctor's brooding, contemplative face on screen without any dialogue. This creates a disjointed narrative without adding anything to the overall understanding of the story, such as it is. Perhaps more mystifying is the fact this film won the Grand Prix at Cannes.

Sydney Film Festival - Film Review - Beasts of the Southern Wild

Beasts of the Southern Wild - Hushpuppy

Beasts of the Southern Wild is not an easily classifiable film but rather carries a number of elements of storytelling, metaphor and messages. The film is set in the marshy, swamp Bayou country somewhere around Louisiana in the Southern United States within a small self-sufficient community who live defiantly away from mainstream society. The story is focussed on six-year-old Hushpuppy who lives with her father, Wink, in "The Bathtub", the swampy marshland where the community lives and which is under threat due to storms, rising water levels and the levees which protect the rest of society. Wink periodically disappears leaving Hushpuppy to fend for herself amongst the semi-domestic animals they keep. The community's children are taught in school about natural selection in evolution, global warming and the ecological shifts underway thorugh the melting of the icecaps. A massive storm comes, the icecaps melt, destructive prehistoric beasts are released and 'the Bathtub' is threatened with extinction. Wink is also terminally ill and this story about community is as much about the underlying powerful relationship between a father and his daughter. Benh Zeitlin's film is, at times, slow moving  and occasionally a bit baffling (with the appearance of prehistoric creatures) nonetheless it captures a community's fierce independence in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.

Sydney Film Festival - Film Review - Moonrise Kingdom

L to R - Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton,  Bruce Willis and Edward Norton

Wes Anderson's latest film offering, 'Moonrise Kingdom' opened the Cannes Film Festival this year and has a strong cast with Bruce Willis, Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Edward Norton and Frances McDormand. Harvey Keitel also appears in a number of scenes. The storyline is set on an island in New England in the Summer of 1965 and centres on two twelve year olds, Suzy (Kara Hayward) the daughter of two lawyers, and Sam (Jared Gilman) an oprhaned Khaki Scout who fall in love and run off together into the wilderness of the island. When their disappearance is discovered they are hotly pursued by Suzy's parents (Bill Murray and Frances McDormand), the local Sheriff (Bruce Willis), the Scout Master (Edward Norton) and the entire squad of Scout Troop 55. The film is a mixture of satire, parody, slapstick humour and sharp dialogue including somewhat introspective and unlikely statements by the teenage cast. Its a light humoured film overall but the mix of style elements, misplaced contradictory genre and bizarre situations, does not always gell and the film is more of an oddity than a completely easy-on-the mind comedy or a intuitive parody. Wes Anderson is the director, screenwriter (with Roman Coppola) and producer of the film with previous credits for The Royal Tannenbaums, Fantastic Mr Fox, and Rushmore.

Australia and international military conflict

1919 North Russia - 45th Battalion (Australian Company) Royal Fusiliers

Global strategy and intelligence consultancy, Stratfor has produced a recent brief on Australia analysing the historically large number of international military conflicts in which Austalia has been engaged - its worth noting Stratfor is a US based company but does have Australian clients including major media outlets and defence. Not all the conflicts Australia has been involved-in are mentioned (such as the Malaysian Emergency) nor is the timeframe fully encompassing as Australian's military history extends back to the Sudan in 1885 and arguably the Crimea War. Stratfor's perspective is that ideology does not explain the phenomena but rather its a question of having an ally which is a major martime power and can keep the sea lanes open to Australia. Perhaps but, in fact, Australia's involvement not only in wars but military peacekeeping operations points to a 'world view' where Australia seeks to influence global affairs and 'bat above its weight' as an international citizen. Australia still does participate in wars as a partner of a much more powerful maritime power (Great Britain and now the United States), but equally it has evolved a foreign policy to choose its own conflicts, for good or for worse. An abridged version of Stratfor's analysis follows:

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Australia is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, ranked in the top 10 in gross domestic product per capita. It is one of the most isolated major countries in the world; it occupies an entire united continent, is difficult to invade and rarely is threatened. Normally, we would not expect a relatively well-off and isolated country to have been involved in many wars. This has not been the case for Australia and, more interesting, it has persistently not been the case, even under a variety of governments. Ideology does not explain the phenomenon in this instance.

Since 1900, Australia has engaged in several wars and other military or security interventions (including the Boer War, World War I, World War II and the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq) lasting about 40 years total. Put another way, Australia has been at war for more than one-third of the time since the Commonwealth of Australia was established in 1901. In only one of these wars, World War II, was its national security directly threatened, and even then a great deal of its fighting was done in places such as Greece and North Africa rather than in direct defense of Australia. This leaves us to wonder why a country as wealthy and seemingly secure as Australia would have participated in so many conflicts.

The Australian strategy therefore involves alignment with the leading maritime power, first Britain and then the United States, and participation in their wars. We began by asking why a country as wealthy and secure as Australia would be involved in so many wars. The answer is that its wealth is not as secure as it seems. 

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Coal seam gas - a case study - Pilliga Forest, Australia

The risks and impact of coal seam gas mining can be amply demonstrated by looking at the example of the Pilliga Forest in NSW where this form of mining has been in operation for the past ten years.  On the site there have been a series of damaging incidents:

• Major spillage of saline water leading to extensive tree deaths in the forest,
• Clearing of vegetation without Federal environmental approval,
• Over-flow of contaminated drill ponds into surrounding areas during rain,
• Repeated failures to line drill ponds leading to major salt scalds on surrounding soils,
• Leaking gas pipes and water drains leading to methane escape,
• Poor handling of chemicals leading to spillage during a flood event.

And what is the significance of the Pilliga Forest ? The Pilliga sandstone is an important recharge area for the Greaty Artesian Basin, crucial to the quality and volume of water on which most of inland Australia relies.  In terms of hydrology, the surface water of the Pilliga form part of the Murray-Darling Basin, running north into the Namoi River and thence into the Barwon-Darling system. In addition the Forest is a key National Biodiversity hotspot with 24 nationally listed threatened or endangered species, an internationally recognised important bird area and the largest temperate woodland in Australia.The mining exploration phase also led to considerable environmental damage and degradation to this critical environmental region. It is for good reason that there has been continuing campaigning on this issue.

Rio + 20: two decades further in time

Twenty years ago, the United Nations organised the Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED)  from 3 June to 14 June 1992 otherwise known as the 'Earth Summit' in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The Rio Earth Summit was focussed on a number of critical global issues such as: patterns of production and the use of toxic substances; alternative sources of energy to reduce reliance and remove the use of fossil fuels; the use of public transport to reduce emissions and the increasing scarcity of water. The Summit also agreed on the Climate Change Convention (preceding the Kyoto Protocol) and opened the Convention on Biological Diversity for signatories of member states.

 

       In less than a month's time the UN is again bringing governments, international institutions and major groups together to seek agreement on a range of smart measures that can reduce poverty while promoting jobs, clean energy and a more sustainable and fair use of resources. The UN has initially outlined the two main themes of the Summit as: "How to build a green economy to achieve sustainable development and lift people out of poverty, including support for developing countries that will allow them to find a green path for development; and how to improve international coordination for sustainable development".

Does the direction have a familiar sound to it ? It does, for the aims of the original Earth Summit are as relevant today as twenty years ago showing that much progress continues to lag behind actual need. In terms of reality, the Conference on Sustainable Development is a Conference on Survivability.

Putin and Power in Russia - Masha Gessen, Sydney Writers Festival May 2012

The Man Without a Face -  the mysterious rise of Vladimir Putin, in less than a decade, from low-ranking KGB nonentity to Kremlin master has been explored in detail in this book by journalist Masha Gessen. In Sydney, as a guest of the Sydney Writers Festival, Gessen presented a carefully researched, detailed analysis of the character of Putin, the impact he has on Russia and the many questions and shady elements of the Putin era. As a Russian American living in Moscow, Gessen is able to bring a focus on the way in which Putin perceives Russia and the influences and events which have shaped his perspective. His years as a KGB officer in particular left him with a sense of betrayal when 'Moscow was silent'  and the Soviet Union ended. His propensity for absolute control stems from this experience. It is always extremely hazardous to write insightful material on Putin and his associates - the last guest of the Sydney Writers Festival in May 2006 who covered Russian politics, Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, was assassinated near her apartment in Moscow only five months later - a fact not lost on those attending the session with Gessen at the Sydney Theatre. Gessen's masterful and 'brave' book, as described by 'The Guardian' newspaper in the United Kingdom, will not have endeared her to the Putin Regime (while available worldwide, the book is not sold in the Russian language and only a single bookseller in Moscow has copies in English). With Putin under pressure in Russia, his efforts to silence critics may also be curtailed.