Sydney Film Festival (SFF) in association with ACMI and the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) will present JANE CAMPION – HER WAY, a retrospective of films by the pioneering director. Campion herself will appear in conversation with David Stratton at SFF.
JANE CAMPION – HER WAY will encompass screenings of all nine of Campion's feature films, as well as a selection of her short films, and the Australian premiere of a new documentary about her life and career; screening as part of the 70th Sydney Film Festival in Sydney (7-18 June), at ACMI in Melbourne (15 June-2 July) and at NFSA in Canberra (20-30 July).
Sydney Film Festival audiences can see the extraordinary Campion in person as she reflects on her remarkable films and career at a not-to-be-missed in conversation with David Stratton following the screening of Jane Campion, The Cinema Woman on 10 June.
Sydney Film Festival Director Nashen Moodley said, "For our 70th edition, we wanted to present a retrospective commensurate with the milestone, reflecting the audacious and boundary pushing filmmaking synonymous with our Festival and region – and there was no one more appropriate than Jane Campion. She is a groundbreaking filmmaker who has made a profound impact on cinema with her daring and unforgettable films.”
“Campion has broken barriers for women in the industry, winning two Academy Awards and becoming the first woman to receive the Palme d'Or at Cannes. She has changed the landscape of cinema around the world, crafting films now etched in film history. It will be remarkable to see the full suite of her talents in one program, which take us to unexpected and exciting places with every frame and film,” said Moodley.
FEATURE FILMS
TWO FRIENDS (1986)
Made for the ABC in 1986 and with a berth in Un Certain Regard at Cannes – three years before Sweetie – Campion’s little-seen debut was the first of several feature collaborations with producer Jan Chapman (Bright Star, Holy Smoke, The Piano). Written by renowned Australian novelist Helen Garner, it’s an absorbing tale of adolescence and friendship revealed in reverse. In five episodes, Campion deftly charts the complicated bond between two 15-year-olds, studious Louise (Emma Coles) and defiant Kelly (Kris Bidenko), from their relationship’s painful dissolution to its hopeful beginning. Screens alongside Campion’s student film Peel, which won the Short Film Palme d'Or at Cannes the year Two Friends premiered.
SWEETIE (1989)
Greeted with a chorus of impassioned cheers and jeers when it premiered at Cannes in 1989, this bold, bawdy and often harrowing tale of two sisters announced Campion’s arrival as an uncompromising new cinematic voice. Exploring the fractious relationship between the volatile Sweetie (Genevieve Lemon in a star making turn) and the introverted Kay (Karen Colston), Campion refuses easy psychology and diagnoses. She challenges audiences to reckon with Sweetie’s increasingly erratic behaviour without the benefit of simple answers, just as the characters in her orbit do. As Lemon herself cheerfully admitted, “Campion wanted [audiences] to be bugged by Sweetie.”
AN ANGEL AT MY TABLE (1990)
Based on three autobiographical novels by Janet Frame about her coming of age from the 1930s onward, Campion’s film (SFF 1990) is a lyrical and heart-wrenching coming-of-age tale. It charts Frame’s life from her childhood through to her time in a psychiatric hospital (following a misdiagnosis of schizophrenia) to international fame. Featuring an outstanding performance from Kerry Fox as the adult Frame, An Angel at My Table is a fascinating study of a rare subject: the stigma of female genius. Revered director Claire Denis (Beau Travail) said, “this film changed my life as a woman, not simply as a filmmaker.” Grand Special Jury Prize, Venice 1990.
THE PIANO (1993)
Campion’s previous films put her on the map; The Piano launched her into the stratosphere. In her Oscar-winning role, Holly Hunter is unforgettable as Ada, a non-verbal pianist who arrives on the shores of 1850s New Zealand with her young daughter (Oscar winner Anna Paquin) and the beloved piano in tow, for an arranged marriage to a man (Sam Neill) she’s never met. When Ada’s new husband trades her piano to their neighbour (Harvey Keitel), she agrees to a deal to buy it back, key by key. A blend of sweeping period melodrama and overt feminist allegory that made Campion the first ever woman Palme d’Or recipient, also winning three Oscars and becoming a box office juggernaut, this masterwork recently ranked in the top 50 of Sight and Sound’s critics’ poll of the greatest films of all time.
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY (1996)
From its opening montage featuring images of contemporary womanhood, Campion’s follow-up to The Piano similarly defies expectations of the ‘period drama’, turning the heroine of Henry James’s 1881 novel into a classic Campion subject. Kidman plays Isabel Archer, a naive heiress who falls for the dashing Gilbert Osmond (John Malkovich) only to find herself trapped in a loveless marriage and subject to the manipulations of Madame Serena Merle (an Oscar-nominated Barbara Hershey). With sumptuous cinematography and an extraordinary cast (Richard E. Grant, Mary-Louise Parker, Christian Bale, Viggo Mortensen, Shelley Winters and Shelley Duvall), this epic boldly defies genre conventions.
HOLY SMOKE (1999)
Returning to the darkly comic territory of Sweetie but moving the sibling dynamic offscreen (Campion co-wrote the script with her sister Anna Campion), Holy Smoke stars Keitel as a deprogrammer sent to Australia by the parents of Ruth (Winslet, sporting a pitch-perfect Aussie accent), alarmed that their daughter has embraced a guru’s teachings a little too devoutly on her recent trip to India. A battle of the sexes ensues in this wild and surreal film, which Campion says was inspired by her interest in “the question of how you have a spiritual life in the ’90s and in the connections of spirituality, eroticism, and love.”
IN THE CUT (2003)
Meg Ryan slashes her sweetheart screen persona as a New York City English teacher who becomes dangerously involved with a detective (Ruffalo) investigating the brutal murder of a young woman, in what remains Campion’s most provocative and polarising film. Adapted from Susanna Moore’s novel of the same name and impressionistically shot by Oscar-winning Australian cinematographer Dion Beebe (Holy Smoke), Campion uses the erotic thriller as a Trojan horse for her ongoing exploration of female autonomy and desire. The film notoriously divided critics – but not David Stratton and Margaret Pomeranz, who both gave it five stars on The Movie Show, with Pomeranz deeming it “absolutely the best film that Jane Campion has ever made.”
BRIGHT STAR (2009)
After a six-year gap between features, Campion returned with an intimate but emotionally walloping romantic tragedy about the love affair between legendary poet John Keats (Whishaw) and Fanny Brawne (Cornish). Shot in gorgeous naturalistic hues by cinematographer Greig Fraser and featuring delicate, empathetic performances from Cornish and Whishaw, it makes an apt companion piece to An Angel at My Table, focusing on the inner torment of artists and reuniting Campion with Kerry Fox in the role as Fanny’s mother. Bright Star is a visual and poetic wonder.
THE POWER OF THE DOG (2021)
Montana, 1925. The Burbank brothers, Phil (Cumberbatch) and George (Plemons) own a sprawling and successful cattle ranch, and still share a bedroom. Where George is taciturn, Phil is charismatic, hyper-masculine and a bully – constantly taunting his brother. When George secretly marries the gentle, restaurant-owning widow Rose (Dunst), her very presence enrages Phil. He’s even more antagonistic towards her sensitive son Peter (Smit-McPhee). Campion brilliantly ramps up the tension as these characters, at undeclared war with each other, head towards a shocking climax. With a tremendous score by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, both beautiful and unnerving, and uniformly fine performances, The Power of the Dog (SFF 2021) is a triumph.
JANE CAMPION, THE CINEMA WOMAN (2022)
Brimming with candid anecdotes and a treasure trove of never-before-seen archival footage, this is an insightful and wildly entertaining documentary. César Award-winning director Bertuccelli charts Campion’s extraordinary life journey from her childhood under theatre-world parents in New Zealand, to her young adulthood as a film school pariah in Sydney (“I didn’t want to compete with the [male students] … I just wanted to tell stories that were so private they couldn’t even imagine them”), to Cannes darling and internationally renowned auteur. Campion proves a generous raconteur of her own story – with one of the most infectious laughs in the game – in this treat for Campion devotees and fans of mould-breaking artists alike.
SHORT FILMS
PEEL (1982)
Winner of the 1986 Cannes Palme d'Or for Best Short Film – making Campion the first woman and only New Zealander to ever achieve the honour – her first film school project was inspired by her childhood and is vividly portrayed by a real family of rambunctious redheads. SFF 1983.
A GIRL’S OWN STORY (1983)
This 1960s coming-of-age tale packed with iconic imagery and memorable musical moments won the 1984 Rouben Mamoulian Award at SFF and Best Achievement in Direction at AFI. It screened in Un Certain Regard at Cannes alongside Peel and Passionless Moments (Campion’s other film school works).
PASSIONLESS MOMENTS (1983)
Winner of the AFI Award for Best Experimental Film, Campion’s collection of awkwardly familiar and embarrassing vignettes, co-written and directed with Gerard Lee (Top of the Lake), went on to wow Cannes audiences. SFF 1985.
AFTER HOURS (1984)
Continuing a fruitful period for Campion, After Hours (SFF 2003) provocatively depicts the gamut of responses when a young office worker reports her boss for sexual harassment. An ahead-of-its time examination of truth and power.
THE WATER DIARY (2006)
An extreme drought is seen through the eyes of a young girl in country NSW, narrated by Alice Englert (Ginger & Rosa), starring alongside Genevieve Lemon (Sweetie). Created for an eight-part feature about the UN’s goals to address pressing social, economic, health and environmental challenges. Cannes and SFF 2006.
The full Sydney Film Festival program is announced on Wednesday 10 May 2023.
Tickets for the SFF season are now on sale
Venue: Art Gallery of NSW (7 – 18 June)
Single ticket $24 | $18.50, Ten Pack $150
/sff.org.au/her-way/
In Conversation: Jane Campion with David Stratton
Tickets: $15 | $10 when purchased with a ticket to Jane Campion, The Cinema Woman
Location: The Hub, Lower Town Hall
ACMI Screenings
Tickets for the ACMI season will be released on Thursday 20 April.
Venue: ACMI (15 June – 2 July)
Single ticket – $18-12, 3-Session Pass $45-$33, 6-Session Pass $84-66
acmi.net.au/whats-on/jane-campion-her-way/
NFSA Screenings
Thursday July 20-Sunday July 30
Tickets Now on Sale
Arc Cinema, National Film & Sound Archive
McCoy Circuit, Acton, ACT
Tickets $12 / $10. 3 film pass $30 / $24
nfsa.gov.au/events/jane-campion-retrospective/
