33rd Festival 1986

This year is infamous in the history of the Sydney Film Festival for the protests and picketing of the presentation of Jean-Luc Godard’s controversial film Hail Mary. A number of protestors were arrested. From Rod Webb’s Director’s foreword in the 1986 program guide, which was printed prior to the protests:

“In recent weeks, a tiny majority of (largely) unidentified individuals has enlisted a number of sadly ill-informed individuals in a campaign of hostility towards the festival. On the basis of their readings of one or two quite amateurish reviews, and of their misrepresentation of perhaps one or two more, these people have decided that they would not wish to see one of the films in the Festival programme.

Fair enough. People have the right to make up their minds about a film they haven’t seen. They also have a right to attempt to persuade – within the bounds of the law – others not to see it. But these people are demanding the right to deprive others of the right to see it. The strategies employed in this campaign have known few bounds. Not content with direct protest (not to mention harassment), attempts have been made to impede the festival’s operations through approaches to our sources of financial support: the Australian Film Commission, the New South Wales Government (Office of the Minister for the Arts) and our corporate sponsors.

The fact that these strategies have not succeeded is, I would like to think, a measure of the cognisance of just what such an attitude represents, and I welcome this opportunity to record my appreciation of those individuals and organisations who upheld the festival’s right to determine its own affairs.”

In addition to Godard’s film, others screened included Jane Campion’s Two Friends, restoration screenings of Powell and Pressburger’s The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and Gone to Earth and Lasse Hallström’s My Life as a Dog. Special screenings of Spanish and Chinese cinema and new Japanese independents were also held, as was a restoration screening of Rouben Mamoulian’s Becky Sharp.

Screenwriter Moya Wood delivered the Ian McPherson Memorial Lecture.

Opening Night Film: The Fringe Dwellers (directed by Bruce Beresford)

Closing Night Film: Kangaroo (directed by Tim Burstall)

Award Winners

Greater Union Award for Australian Short Films (General):

My Life Without Steve (directed by Gillian Leahy)

Greater Union Award for Australian Short Films (Fiction):

Double X (directed by Julie Cunningham)

Greater Union Award for Australian Short Films (Documentary):

Chile: ¿Hasta Cuando? (directed by David Bradbury)

Rouben Mamoulian Award

David Bradbury (director of Chile: ¿Hasta Cuando?)

Greater Union Distributors Prize:

What Is a Jew To You? (directed by Aviva Ziegler)