WASTE LAND: Lucy Walker on her Oscar-nominated documentary

WASTE LAND finally hits Australian cinemas today, after a much buzzed-about premiere at last year's Sydney Film Festival. Below is a copy of that original posting (from Day 8 of the 2010 festival), where the film's Oscar-nominated director, Lucy Walker, discusses her landmark film, prior to attending to jury duties that evening.

Also featured is a never-before-published interview with maverick filmmaker Chris Morris (for his black comedy FOUR LIONS, out now on DVD), which also screened at Sydney last year. Given the highly controversial nature of the comedic great's work, the story ultimately had to be pulled from its originally commissioned weekend slot, never to be seen again. Until now...

GIVEN THE CANINE FLAVOUR of this year’s Sydney Film Festival publicity blitz, you’d be forgiven for thinking the phrase ‘Best in Show’ would best sum up the Showtime Audience Awards.

The awards – the sole winner of which is announced next week, after the festival closes – gives punters the opportunity to voice their opinions on the film that has stood head and shoulders above the rest over the 12-day period.

Last year’s winner, The Cove, famously went on to nab the Oscar for Best Documentary so, as the festival likes to put it, “Sydney filmgoers vote smartly”. Any film can be nominated from the 157 that feature in this year’s program, and votes are simply cast on forms that are handed out prior to each screening by SFF staff (and returned, after each screening, of course).

This year’s most likely contender could well be Lucy Walker’s very engaging documentary, Waste Land, which screens again tonight, at Dendy Opera Quays. The film examines the community of recyclers that lives and works in the world’s largest landfill site, in Brazil. Numbering close to 3000, the ‘pickers’ as they’re known have fought for government acknowledgement, workers’ rights and more – and have won.

Waste Land goes further than merely profiling key members of this unique village, though: it follows celebrated artist Vik Muniz as he assembles said members for an art-for-action plan. The final portraits, composed of recycled materials from the landfill and put together by the pickers themselves, go to auction in London – and prove to be the hottest items for sale.

Walker, who’s giving a just-announced talk this afternoon for film fans in the State Theatre’s Statement Lounge and features on this year’s Official Competition jury, says the experience is something she’ll never forget. Although she admits the stench was almost more than she could take.

“That’s the one thing you don’t get from seeing the film!” she says. “It was worse than you can possibly imagine. But the people – they are amazing. The one line I love more than any other in the film is that ‘99 is not 100’. It reminds you that every Coke can, every sheet of paper – it all makes a difference.”

Walker’s already busy with another project – she premiered her new documentary Countdown to Zero, about the nuclear arms race, at Cannes last month – but still hopes Waste Land can nab the Audience gong next week. “The film’s won the audience award at every festival it’s screened at, which is amazing,” she says. “So yes, I am hoping it will win in Sydney, too!”

(Art has featured significantly in this year’s festival program, with Tamra Davis’ moving document on street artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, The Radiant Child, screening earlier this week -- the film had its Australian premiere last Saturday, at Event Cinemas George Street.)

Another jury member in town for this year’s Official Competition, Yonfan’s lush Prince of Tears tells of a dark fairytale of another kind, involving brutal government suppression and family tragedy. Prince of Tears (pictured, above), which features the director’s own production design, screens again on Monday, at the State Theatre. As for which film Yonfan will nominate in his role as juror, he admits to feeling conflicted when asked to judge one film over another. “These films are art,” he explains. “It’s very hard to judge one piece of art over another. It’s not a game of sport, where there can only be one clear winner. So I’m not looking forward to having to vote at all!”

Waste Land screens tonight at 6.45pm, at Dendy Opera Quays

Prince of Tears screens Monday 14 June at 2.30pm, at the State Theatre

The Showtime Audience Awards will be announced next week, after June 14

Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child is due for release later in the year

ED GIBBS

FOUR LIONS: THE CHRIS MORRIS INTERVIEW

IF A COMEDY ABOUT MUSLIM EXTREMISTS sounds absurd, even twisted -- and almost certain to lead to career suicide for its creator -- imagine an even weirder scenario: the film’s premiere coinciding with a UK terror alert that reads ‘Severe’.

Such a bizarre coincidence would be unsettling for any first-time filmmaker, particularly one who’s showcasing their work at America’s leading independent film event. All, that is, except one.

As the man in question, satirist turned writer-director Chris Morris, explains, the audience at this year’s Sundance Film Festival premiere of Four Lions “got it”, cheering on his wickedly funny film long after the credits had rolled.

“In London, there’s still a diffuse response to the 7/7 attacks,” he says, referring to the London Underground bombings of July 2005, which claimed the lives of 52 commuters. “Whereas the Americans came to it with less baggage. To an extent, 9/11 is that much dimmer in people’s minds.”

Morris, a one-time contemporary of fellow comic-turned-movie man Steve Coogan, is renowned in his native England for outrageous, Chaser-like stunts. With the likes of TV’s Brass Eye and The Day Today (and Blue Jam, on BBC radio), he’s targeted politicians and celebrities, duping them into commenting on fictitious drugs (‘cake’) and Morris-concocted ‘news’ on the seemingly ultimate taboo, paedophilia.

Such pranks have seen him lynched in the British press -- but he had no qualms about treating his latest, thorny subject with similarly perverse humour (“There needs to be a perspective,” he says). And having spent four years exhaustively researching and interviewing for Four Lions, he’s at pains to points out that the idea of would-be bombers as bumbling fools couldn’t be more real.

“Surveillance transcripts reveal that their conversation is utterly ridiculous,” he says, of the UK’s covert tracking of suspect terrorists. “They talk about last night’s TV, the latest gadget they’ve got, whether one of them really looks like Frodo (after a girl said he did). Then suddenly it’s, ‘Oh, by the way, should we blow up a nightclub?’

“It’s very fractured,” he adds. “These lads are not in Chechnya, they’re just a bunch of lads in the north of England, acting like lads do. It’s their plan that is potentially lethal.”

While the absurdity of the self-proclaimed ‘Lions’ may be inspired by real-life events – the bombers spend much of the film bickering over what constitutes martyrdom, what they should blow up and what they should say in their official ‘video message’ – their ultimate target, the London Marathon, was one that Morris himself thought up.

“The marathon seems like a sort of plausible option,” Morris reasons. “But you do wonder if the more farcical stories are true. There was a man who shoved some explosives up his arse in the Middle East. He ran into the room, shouted ‘God is great’ – in Jordan, I think it was – and his arse exploded. And the King walks out unscathed. And you think, ‘Did that really happen?’

As Morris found, though, such laughably inept scenarios (“There was a guy who accidentally blew his balls off over Christmas,” he adds, only half-seriously) are just the tip of the iceberg. What surprises most about his film, in fact, is the audience’s inadvertent attachment to his characters: while it’s kitchen-sink drama meets slapstick, the film eventually plays out like a poignant comedy of errors. And, interestingly, the security forces don’t come off that much better than the terrorists.

“With this kind of story – with the brotherly bond between Waj and Omar -- I think it would be unusual to be inside an operation like the one they’re doing and not have some kind of emotion,” Morris says. “It’s so easy to simply collapse it all into a scary headline. But that’s the thing: they’re real people. They just – somehow, somewhere along the way – became terrorists.”

ED GIBBS