Rachael Turk

A regular and brand spanking new showcase of cutting-edge short films and music clips is set to launch in Melbourne on July 3.

Red Hot Shorts is a venture by a Gus Berger, whose track record spans music and film industry. I like his style.

First session includes Nash Edgerton’s Sundance hit Spider, as well as Bertie Blackman’s ‘Heart’ clip and Bjork’s ‘Human Behaviour’.

Studio 1, Australian Centre for the Moving Image
Federation Square, Melbourne
From 7.30pm

$10 Adult / $8 Conc. Tickets from the ACMI Box Office

For details on submitting your film, email
films@redhotshorts.com.au

My short film Feeling_Lonely? (produced with Melissa Beauford), which toured LA Shortsfest, Manhattan Short Film Festival, Sydney, Brisbane and Rome Film Festivals before winning Best Short Drama at the WOW Film Festival, will screen at ACMI, Melbourne this Saturday at 4pm.

Friday On My Mind is delighted with the official news that Bright Star (dir. Jane Campion, prod. Jan Chapman) and Samson & Delilah (dir. Warwick Thornton, prod. Kath Shelper) have been selected to screen at the 2009 Cannes International Film Festival.

Bright Star will screen in Official Competition while Samson & Delilah has been selected for the Festival’s Un Certain Regard section.

Samson and Delilah screened to a full house tonight at Friday On My MInd after the news came through late yesterday. Jan Chapman also had the theatre full to overflowing when she joined us on April 3.

Friday On My Mind is AFTRS‘ weekly event bringing you face to face with the industry’s brightest thinkers.

If work drinks weren’t unruly enough, all hell breaks loose when God is picking up the tab.

Look out for this riotous short written and directed by Angus Sampson and shot by the supremely talented Adam Arkapaw.

I haven’t seen it yet but I have read the script and, knowing those concerned, am laughing already.

With cast & crew screening happening March 31 in Melbs, it won’t be too long before we see it on the international circuit.

Miss it at your own peril.

As I’m researching an essay on Self-Help Genre on Screen, I find a Yahoo 7! clip I was involved in with He’s Just Not That Into You author Liz Tuccillo about the single scene in Sydney.

Catch my brief cameo at 0:23!

(Thankfully, I have not had to visit The Establishment since.)

Filing from the Broadcasting Summit in Sydney this morning…

NBC Universal’s VP of Technology, Standard & Policy, Sheau Ng acknowledged to the summit that, in order to build a platform beyond television, the individual features and capabilities of new platforms needed to be put to good use.

This is a considerable evolution from the launch two years ago of NBC’s “TV360″ – advertising packages that encompassed TV, internet and mobile – in which the emphasis was still on distributing the same content across a diverse set of platforms.

“In the future, the specific benefits of each technology will increasingly influence the content itself,” Ng said.

This was mirrored in a later session in which Foxtel’s Executive Director of Sales and Product, Patrick Delaney conceded that mobile hadn’t been perceived by the cable network as snack content in its own right to date but that this will change.

Filing from the Broadcasting Summit in Sydney this morning…

Australia was identified by BBC Worldwide CFO Neil Chugani as “one of the most important territories for BBC Worldwide across all seven of its business areas”.

The reasons for this cited by Chugani were
– English language
– cultural affinity with British product; and
– economic conditions (comparative to elsewhere)

Examples used were Top Gear, success through the localisation of TV show with SBS, the magazine in 50/50 joint venture with ACP, and the Jeremy Clarkson event at Acer Arena; and Lonely Planet, a home-grown Australian brand which has been relaunched online, integration with BBC content in a magazine and released as a Lonely Planet block on UK television.

A key focus across BBC Worldwide’s 23 global offices will be the localisation of brand product.

“Eight out of ten of our best performing shows are local versions,” Chugani said.