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The Magic of Antipodean Cinema


What is there to discover at the festival?

The Saint-Tropez Festival aims at offering a distinctive selection of films diverse enough for everyone to find a personal interest.

The Rencontres Internationales du Cinéma des Antipodes is:

.films :

  •  A short film competition.
  • A dozen feature films, among which unreleased films, premiered at the festival.
  • Special screenings for school groups and young people.
  • Tributes and retrospectives, not-to-be-missed occasions to discover the wealth of Antipodean talents and the diversity of Australian and New Zealand cinema.
  • Many screenings are followed by meetings and discussions with our guests.
  • Documentaries.The Café-Antipodes concept was created in 2002. The aim is to invite festival-goers to meetings and discussions in a St Tropez café around a topic introduced by the screening of a documentary. A unique opportunity to discover informative documentaries and discuss them in a welcoming atmosphere with the filmmaker or qualified and passionate speakers.

.exhibitions :

  • In 1999: “Australia at Heart” by Australian artist Kirsten Jeffcoat (in partnership with the France-Australie Provence association)
  • In 2000: “From St Kilda to St Tropez” by Australian photographer Emmanuel Santos, a comparative portrait of two towns, St Kilda (near Melbourne) and Saint-Tropez.
  • In 2001: “Earth Drawings” by Australian painter Peter Griffen.
  • In 2002: “Esperance, in Time’s Wake” by photographer Marc Muller, and “A selection of paintings by Aboriginal Peoples” by Sonny Neale.


.guests :

  • From Australia, like directors Fred Schepisi (Six Degrees of Separation), Nadia Tass (Amy), Gillian Armstrong (Little Women), producers Allanah Zitzermann and Marti Georgeff, Kari Hanet (former president of the Alliance Française in Sydney and former head of the Sydney Film School, the AFTRS), actors David Wenham (Better Than Sex, Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers), Danielle Hall (Beneath Clouds), Ben Mendelsohn (Mullet, Vertical Limit), Susie Lindemann...
  • From New Zealand, like director Harry Sinclair...
  • Mr. Michel Rocard, former French Prime Minister and President of Terra Australis 2001.
  • Mr. Léon Bertrand, Minister for Tourism.
  • Mr. Peter MacGauran, Australian Minister for the Arts.
  • Australian Ambassador to France, Mr. William Fisher.
  • New Zealand Ambassador to France, Mr. Adrian Macey.
  • From France, like director Pierre Beccu (Québec Libre), distributors Sybil Hanhart (CTV International), Patick Neubout (Bac Films), Vincent Paul-Boncourt (Carlotta Films), producers Fabien Liron (Gaumont), Jean-Pierre Neyrac (President of the CST, of the Louis Lumière school)...

.meetings :

  • Between professionals during informal lunches and dinners, during the formal gala dinner, after the screenings, or during a game of petanque.
  • With the audience after the screenings.
  • A professional forum on co-production and co-financing, hosted in 2000 by Kari Hanet. Twenty or so industry representatives and members of film institutions attended, like Caroline Verge (Australian Film Commission), Suzan McKinon (Australian Film Finance Corporation), Dominique Green (Studio Canal +), Isabelle Prat (TF1 Production), Daniel Goldman (vice-president of the syndicate of French distributors)...

.media coverage :

  • Television : SBS (Australian channel), Arte, RFO.
  • Radio : France Culture, Radio St Tropez, Europe 2
  • Internet : Infonie, UrbanCinefile
  • Newspapers and magazines: Ciné Live, Ecran Total, Le Film Français, Le Monde, Télé Cassette, Le Figaro Madame, Var Matin.

.as a result of the festival: :

  • "Ca ira mieux demain" was much appreciated by the audiences when it was released in France, a few months after its screening at the festival.
  • Paul Cox’s "Innocence", and an animated short film programme by Lucinda Clutterbuck, have finally found a French distributor.
  • Ray Argall has found French partners for the production of his next feature film.
  • "The Monkey’s Mask", "Legally Blonde", "Magic Pudding", "Young Blade", "Rabbit-Proof Fence" were all previewed in Saint-Tropez, and have since opened successfully on French and European screens.

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Australia, just like France, is a country which loves cinema. With George Miller, Russell Crowe or Nicole Kidman as emblematic figures, Australian cinema is being more and more widely recognised by the audiences and the media throughout the world. Australian film production is on a roll and has offered us such colourful and brilliant films as Stephan Elliott’s Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, PJ Hogan’s Muriel’s Wedding, and Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge, to name but a few.

New Zealand also has its own gems, among which Lee Tamahori’s Once Were Warriors and, recently, Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Two centuries after Baudin’s voyage of discovery, celebrated as is proper by the two nations, the Antipodean cinema festival aims at enriching and boosting cultural and economic exchanges between the two hemispheres through a selection of films offering little-known gems and previously unreleased works.

 

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