64th Sydney Film Festival 7-18 June 2017

The 64th Sydney Film Festival has opened with 11 days of screenings (excluding the Opening Night) over 9 venues with films from across the world and many drawn from the other key film festivals of Venice, Cannes, Berlin, Toronto and Sundance. This year there are 12 films submitted for the official competition which is now in its tenth year and provides a cash prize of $60,000. In most years, the selection of the winner by the jury has left most of the audience and other festival attendees more than a little mystified: The award is meant to recognise a film as being 'audacious, cutting-edge and courageous' however some winners have been productions where it's difficult to deduce where this criteria can be applied. It remains to be seen whether the 2017 festival is any different.

National Parks in the United States - visits increase but not for millenials

Yosemite National Park with Bridalveil waterfall - Shutterstock

In both the United States and Australia, visits to National Parks have shown a consistent and in some cases, dramatic increase in visitors over the past few years. But the increased interest although impressive disguises another aspect - the actual composition of the visitors. While Millenials constitute 21% of the US population, they only contribute 14% to the visitor cohort to the National Parks. Baby boomers in contrast are 24% of the US population but are 39% of the park visitors.  Despite a high level of environmental awareness amongst Millenials, there is not a corresponding level of practical engagement with nature. In the table below, the visitor data from the 15 most popular parks are listed. For ongoing public support for the parks in future decades, a high level of commitment will be needed from today's Millenial generation.

Major US National Parks

	National Park	2015	2016	Change %
1.	Great Smokey Mountains	10,712,642	11,312,786	5.6 increase
2.	Grand Canyon	5,520,736	5,969,811	8.1 increase
3.	Rocky Mountain	4,155,916	4,517,585	8.7 increase
4.	Yosemite	4,150,217	5,028,868	21.2 increase
5.	Yellowstone	4,097,710	4,257,177	3.8  increase
6.	Zion	3,648,846	4,295,127	17.7 increase
7.	Olympic	3,263,761	3,390,221	3.8 increase
8.	Grand Teton	3,149,921	3,270,076	3.8 increase
9.	Acadia	2,811,184	3,303,393	17.5 increase
10.	Glacier	2,366,056	2,946,681	24.5 increase
11.	Cuyahoga	2,284,612	2,423,390	6.0 increase
12.	Joshua Tree	2,025,756	2,505,286	19.1 increase
13.	Hawai’i Volcanoes	1,832,660	1,887,580	2.9 increase
14.	Bryce Canyon	1,745,804	2,365,110	35.4 increase
15.	Hot Springs	1,418,162	1,544,300	0.8 increase

Source: National Park Service Visitor Use Statistics https://irma.nps.gov/Stats/Reports/Park/GRSM

ANZAC Day 2017

While the focus of ANZAC Day remains firmly planted on the Gallipoli peninsula with the Dawn service commemorating the landings on 25 April 1915, increasingly over the years, greater attention has been paid to the Australian National Memorial,  located outside of the village of Villers-Bretonneux in France and the Menin Gate in Belgium which commemorate losses and sacrifice on the Western Front of World War 1. This will be even more important next year.

ANZAC Day in Belgium honours the almost 13,000 ANZACs who fought and gave their lives in the battles of the Ypres Salient during World War One.  In effect there were four actual battles in the Ypres salient but for Australians, the Third Battle is of most significance and 2017 marks the 100th anniversary. Of note, most Australian soldiers buried in Belgium died during the Third Battle of Ypres (comprising of the Battle of Menin Road, Battle of Polygon Wood, Battle of Broodseinde, Battle of Poelcapelle and the Battle of Passchendaele).

In 2018, there will be commemorations to mark the 100th Anniversary of the Armistice which ended World War 1. At that time of the Armistice, the Australians were part of the 100 Day Offensive and for the first time were in a single formation, the Australian Army Corps with Australian officers and commanded by an Australian General, Lieutenant General Sir John Monash.

Lest we forget.

General Sir John Monash with Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes, 1918

Earth Day - April 22

April 22 is Earth Day -

Earth Day 2017 - Website link (click here)

Predominantly American-based, since its inception in 1970, the Earth Day movement has connected people in 195 countries across the world.

Easter 2017

Hand decorated Easter Eggs

Many events listed on religious calendars which share a common date frequently involve the fusion of different beliefs either inadvertantly or deliberately. Easter is one very clear example whereby the calendar event relates to a specific event in Christianity (the death and resurrection of Christ) but the practices of celebration have multiple sources including pagan and other non Christian religions.

Easter eggs are a point in case. While there is a strong connection between the Christian faith and the cruxifiction and arising of Christ, there is evidence of practices involving eggs from Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and Crete which provided influences on early Christians. Paschal eggs, a well established custom in central Europe, involved the exchange of gifts of hand-decorated eggs but shares its origin with the traditional symbol of springtime, fertility and rebirth. The early Christians of Mesopotamia are believed to have stained their eggs with the colours of green and yellow. The Easter egg in general is meant to represent the empty tomb of Jesus Christ.

The use of chocolate eggs originates from the 16th and 17th century in Germany where the "Easter Hare" included sweets in his basket of coloured eggs which were distributed to children. In the 20th and 21st Century, Easter now denotes a general 'chocolate festival' usually with little religious connection.

Australian Opera - 2017 Season - La Boheme

Australian Opera 2017 Season - La Boheme - Cafe Momus

Puccini's La Boheme is a staple of any opera company's performance repertoire and in any given two year period almost always makes an appearance on the seasonal programme. Director Gale Edwards has repositioned La Boheme in the 2017 version into the historical period of the Weimar Republic in Germany on the eve of the Nazi period. The sets and costumes are reminiscent of the 1930s with just a hint of the nationalism and arising Nazi influence which characterised that period. In many respects this version of La Boheme often resembles the musical Cabaret  given the Cafe Momus is more of a cabaret/cocktail lounge replete with bare breasted young women gliding along the poles of the private boxes.

The opera is in four Acts and centres on the relationship of two couples - the first being Rudolfo, a writer poet and Mimi a young seamstress and the second, Marcello, a painter and Musetta, a singer and former flame of Marcello's. Rudolfo and Marcello share a studio together visited by their comrades Colline, a philosopher and Schaunard, a musician. Like their other contemporaries, they are very poor and scratch out a living.

Essentially La Boheme is a story of tragedy and lost love and the opera concludes with the death of Mimi. The sets are impressive, the casting of the singers well chosen (Arthur Espiritu as Rodolfo, Andrew Jones as Marcello, Greta Bradman as Mimi, Julie Lea Goodwin as Musetta) and the staging of the production is faultless. Nonetheless the repositioning of La Boheme into Weimar Germany hits a jarring note and provides a needless distraction. The presence of quasi fascist uniforms and a drum corp of the League of German Girls adds to the disconnect between Puccini's original work and the reinterepretation. In this sense it is not a successful production.

Wikileaks - friend or foe of the public interest ?

Recent statements from the Director of the US Central Intelligence Agency describing Wikileaks as a 'non state hostile intelligence service' should not altogether be dismissed. A cursory review of the material released on the website reveals that the vast majority of the content constitutes intelligence leaks from Western democracies with no documents sourced from Russia or from China. There is some documentation about the Church of Scientology (but very old), some from Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Yemen but not much else in terms of other nation states with totalitarian regimes. Wikileaks is therefore quite biased in terms of what it releases or what it is able to obtain. Perhaps the potential threats from China and Russia, both of whom have counter-intelligence capability in cyber warfare is enough to deter Wikileaks from disclosures about those regimes or perhap's its more of a case of not biting the hand that feeds you.