36th Festival 1989

There were a few changes to the festival in 1989. Dendy Cinemas took up sponsorship of the Short Film Awards (formerly under the Greater Union banner) and the festival held its first (official) late screening, Midnight mAD-AD-ADness. Perhaps most notable of all, there was a new Festival Director in Paul Byrnes, formerly a film critic for the Sydney Morning Herald.

Films this year included George Sluizer’s The Vanishing, Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay!, Errol Morris’ groundbreaking documentary The Thin Blue Line, Mike Tollin’s The Final Season, Mike Leigh’s High Hopes, Al Reinert’s For All Mankind, Geoffrey Wright’s Loverboy and Paul Greengrass’ Resurrected. Greengrass, Sluizer and Leigh all appeared as festival guests. Retrospective screenings included John Ford’s She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and D. W. Griffith’s Way Down East.

A special program celebrating the bicentenary of the French Revolution was screened, consisting of eight French films. A special night of Polish cinema, including Kieslowski’s A Short Film About Killing, was also held.

A restored screening of David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia was shown as a ‘director’s cut’, although Lean did not work alone. The restoration combined the efforts of Lean, archivist Robert Harris and Anne Coates, the Oscar-winning editor of the original version, in an attempt to restore the film to a close approximation of its original runtime of 222 minutes. This version clocked in at 215 minutes.

The Ian McPherson lecture was delivered by Peter Sainsbury, General Manager of the Australian Film Commission.

Opening Night Film: The Reader (directed by Michel Deville)

Closing Night Film: 14 July (directed by René Clair)

Award Winners

Dendy Award for Australian Short Films (General):

An Ordinary Woman (directed by Sue Brooks)

Dendy Award for Australian Short Films (Fiction):

Loverboy (directed by Geoffrey Wright)

Dendy Award for Australian Short Films (Documentary):

Contradictions (directed by David Knaus)

Yoram Gross Animation Award:

Still Flying (directed by Robert Stephenson)

Rouben Mamoulian Award:

David Knaus (director of Contradictions)