An intensely personal and autobiographical observation of the Melbourne artistic community of which director Tim Burstall was a part in the mid-1960s, Two Thousand Weeks is one of the first feature films of the modern era in Australian cinema.
The narrative concerns Will Gardener, a Melbourne journalist at a crossroads in his life. He wants to be a novelist, but he has a wife and two kids to support and at the same time finds himself struggling with the Australian cultural wasteland. His world begins to career into a series of crises as he finds himself having to choose between his mistress (who is about to leave for London with or without him) and family (including his father, who is dying in hospital). To make matters worse, an old university friend, Noel Oakshot, is returning in triumph from London, where he has become a darling of the media.
Two Thousand Weeks was written by Tim Burstall and his partner in Eltham Films, Patrick Ryan, after two years on a scholarship studying film techniques in the US. His studies included courses at the Actor's Studio (New York), scriptwriting with Budd Schulberg and Paddy Chayefsky, and work as an assistant to director Martin Ritt on Hombre (1967).
'It was rather poetic that my first IRL interaction with the festival, on the Sunday of the first weekend, was a much-anticipated, rarest-of-rare screening of The Afterlight (2021). Charlie Shackleton’s film was described in the program as something ephemeral, whose very existence as a single 35mm print only, is entwined with its deterioration. Introducing the film before its first screening, guest of the festival Shackleton noted that the film’s Australian distributors, Conor Bateman and Felix Hubble of Static Vision, had not even yet seen it. Starting with something that explicitly engaged with the ephemerality of cinema, and the cinematic experience, was apt. The Melbourne International Film Festival had been stalled by Covid restrictions not once but twice, thanks to Australia (in particular the festival’s home state, Victoria) having some of the most extensive periods of lockdown across the globe. This was impacted, particularly, by a snap lockdown in August 2021 that led to the cancellation of the entire in-person festival and its replacement in the lacklustre form of an online slate, made severely disappointing, at least for me, by an inadequate and often broken digital viewing platform that had not improved since 2020. With this being MIFF’s first return to an in-person festival with screenings, talks, events, and all other accoutrements since August 2019, my varied experience of it was, as with any other year, enriched by a memorable web of thematic connections between films and to life.' (Introduction)
Kennedy Miller has been located in Sydney since the early 1980s, when its reputation as Australia’s most successful production house was established. But its origins and trajectory as a company are intimately tied to Melbourne. Drawing on textual, historical, and archival sources, I argue that Melbourne’s screen culture and industry at the time of the Australian film revival played a fundamental key role in shaping the abilities and sensibilities of the company’s founders, George Miller and Byron Kennedy.
Kennedy Miller has been located in Sydney since the early 1980s, when its reputation as Australia’s most successful production house was established. But its origins and trajectory as a company are intimately tied to Melbourne. Drawing on textual, historical, and archival sources, I argue that Melbourne’s screen culture and industry at the time of the Australian film revival played a fundamental key role in shaping the abilities and sensibilities of the company’s founders, George Miller and Byron Kennedy.
'It was rather poetic that my first IRL interaction with the festival, on the Sunday of the first weekend, was a much-anticipated, rarest-of-rare screening of The Afterlight (2021). Charlie Shackleton’s film was described in the program as something ephemeral, whose very existence as a single 35mm print only, is entwined with its deterioration. Introducing the film before its first screening, guest of the festival Shackleton noted that the film’s Australian distributors, Conor Bateman and Felix Hubble of Static Vision, had not even yet seen it. Starting with something that explicitly engaged with the ephemerality of cinema, and the cinematic experience, was apt. The Melbourne International Film Festival had been stalled by Covid restrictions not once but twice, thanks to Australia (in particular the festival’s home state, Victoria) having some of the most extensive periods of lockdown across the globe. This was impacted, particularly, by a snap lockdown in August 2021 that led to the cancellation of the entire in-person festival and its replacement in the lacklustre form of an online slate, made severely disappointing, at least for me, by an inadequate and often broken digital viewing platform that had not improved since 2020. With this being MIFF’s first return to an in-person festival with screenings, talks, events, and all other accoutrements since August 2019, my varied experience of it was, as with any other year, enriched by a memorable web of thematic connections between films and to life.' (Introduction)
