Out Takes

The Melbourne Queer Film Festival is Australia’s oldest and largest queer film festival and returns from November 14 to 24 with a program that celebrates the way sound and vision have been a source of inspiration and transformation for LGBTQIA+ communities and everyone across the world. MQFF Program Director Cerise Howard and MQFF Chief Executive Officer David Martin Harris joined us on the show in October to give us the scoop on this year’s festival and the incredibly diverse program on offer, so with this show it’s now our turn to look at some of the films we’ve seen in advance and let you know what we’re recommending at MQFF 2024. From musical documentaries to First Nations sports dramas, experimental science fiction and more, there really is something for everyone at this year’s MQFF. We also revisit our interview with David Charles Rodrigues from earlier this year who’s beautiful and timely documentary ‘Gay Chorus Deep South’ is screening again after its debut in March 2020 before COVID locked us down. Happy MQFF to all who celebrate, we look forward to seeing you out and about and in the cinema this November!

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We go to great lengths to highlight the diversity and representation on offer in LGBTIQA+ cinema and for this program we looked at two very different films that showcase this perfectly. ‘Audrey’ is a new Aussie dark comedy coming to cinemas in November that will have you laughing and gasping at its in your face look at life in the suburbs for a family with big ambitions and a few queer secrets in its closet. We were joined by its director Natalie Bailey to talk about her extensive 25+ year career spanning theatre, music, film, and television, both as a performer and her reason for taking on this project as her feature film debut. We were also joined by special guest Stephen Soucy to talk about his educational and entertaining documentary ‘Merchant Ivory’ which is featured in this years British Film Festival. This film explores the legendary creative team behind Merchant Ivory Productions who in the 80’s and 90’s became synonymous with prestige arthouse cinema, known for its stunning cinematography, lush settings, elegant costumes, enchanting music, complex characters, and literary adaptations.  We hear from Stephen about his introduction and connection to Merchant Ivory, including his relationship with the man and legend himself, James Ivory, who is also an executive producer on this wonderful film.

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With spooky season upon us, we thought it was a good time to look at some of the latest supernatural and scary content on offer including a new First Nations lead Australian psychological horror that will be in cinemas from this Halloween. ‘The Moogai’ tells the story of Sarah and Fergus, a hopeful young Aboriginal couple who just welcomed their second baby into their family after a very traumatic birth. In what should be a joyous time in their lives becomes sinister when Sarah starts seeing a malevolent spirit that she is convinced is trying to take her baby which leads to a chain of events that show this young couple will do everything they can to protect their family. We reviewed the film and spoke to Jon Bell, it’s writer and director, about the importance of representation of First Nations people on screen and the connection of transgenerational trauma and systemic racism in telling this modern-day horror story.

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If you listen to Out Takes regularly, you know we love a film festival and one at the top of our list is MQFF a.k.a the Melbourne Queer Film Festival. It returns this year from November 14 to 24 with a program that celebrates the way sound and vision have been a source of inspiration and transformation for LGBTQIA+ communities, and everyone across the world. MQFF audiences will be treated to 42 features and 19 documentaries throughout the festival, and in what is becoming an annual tradition for Out Takes, we welcomed back MQFF Program Director Cerise Howard and MQFF Chief Executive Officer David Martin Harris to give us the scoop on this year’s festival and the incredibly diverse program on offer. We also revisited our review and interview from June with award-winning and proud Australian queer filmmaker Timothy Despina Marshall who’s feature film debut ‘In the Room Where He Waits’ is featured in this year’s Melbourne Queer Film Festival.

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If you listen to Out Takes regularly, you know we love a film festival and one at the top of our list is MQFF a.k.a the Melbourne Queer Film Festival. It returns this year from November 14 to 24 with a program that celebrates the way sound and vision have been a source of inspiration and transformation for LGBTQIA+ communities, and everyone across the world. MQFF audiences will be treated to 42 features and 19 documentaries throughout the festival and in what is becoming an annual tradition for Out Takes, we welcomed back MQFF Program Director Cerise Howard and MQFF Chief Executive Officer David Martin Harris to give us the scoop on this year’s festival and the incredibly diverse program on offer. We also revisited our review and interview from June with award-winning and proud Australian queer filmmaker Timothy Despina Marshall who’s feature film debut ‘In the Room Where He Waits’ is featured in this year’s Melbourne Queer Film Festival.

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When it was announced that the latest film from the incredibly talented Melbourne based Academy Award winning filmmaker Adam Elliot was the opening night film for the 2024 Melbourne International Film Festival, it was met with much excitement and the screening was incredibly well received by audiences and critics. With ‘Memoir of a Snail’ coming out in cinemas on October 17, we were delighted and honoured to speak with Adam about the film, his career and much more, along with reviewing this gorgeous and heartbreaking film that is in the running for one of our picks for the best films of the year.

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At Out Takes, it’s no secret we love highlighting local queer cinema and the talent behind it, so for this program we were delighted to spotlight one of our very own team members who’s new film is having its Australian premiere at this year’s Greek Film Festival. Demetra Giannakopoulos is not only our co-host but also a talented filmmaker and with ‘Love Rewind’, she brings her debut feature film to the big screen this October. This heartfelt story was made in Melbourne and is set against the backdrop of the same-sex marriage postal vote with the film focusing on the relationship between Penny and Althea. Penny wants to revive the love in her long-term relationship with Althea, but when Althea suffers a stroke and her hidden affair is revealed, Penny is forced to discover what true love means to her.  We were delighted to speak with Demetra and the two leads in the film, Ruth Katerelos, who plays Penny, and Maria Papas, who plays Althea, to discuss the film, their experiences and contributions in getting it made, and the importance of seeing our stories and our community being represented on screen.

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With so much content coming our way on our small and big screens, we took this opportunity to put together a mixed bag of reviews and recommendations for some new releases and welcomes the return of a film festival that is all about accessibility and celebrating people with a disability. We started off with ‘Will & Harper’, a new Netflix documentary that has received a lot of attention due to the involvement of Will Ferrell and the subject matter, specifically looking at the friendship between him and Harper Steele and what happens after her transition which is explored on camera as they go on a road trip across the U.S. Then we took a trip back to the future with ‘My Old Ass’, a queer coming-of-age story that is in cinemas now about free-spirited Elliott (played by Maisy Stella) who after an 18th birthday experience with her besties on a mushroom trip, brings her face-to-face with her wisecracking 39-year-old self (played by Aubrey Plaza). But when Elliott’s “old ass” starts handing out warnings about what her younger self should and shouldn’t do, Elliott realises she has to rethink everything about family, love, and what’s becoming a transformative summer. Next up, we celebrated the return of The Other Film Festival which is back in 2024 with a fantastic selection of shorts and features that celebrates 20 years of disability-led storytelling. Their free program of international and Australian films is screening via ACMI Cinema 3 from October 3 – 16. All films are made by Deaf and Disabled people either as key creatives, collaborators, and/or performers and all films are free to watch, audio described and captioned. From the festival program, we highlighted ‘Leilani’s Fortune’, a documentary feature film that follows Witch Prophet, a queer, immigrant Ethiopian-Eritrean musician, as she navigates newfound momentum in Canada and stands true to her unique voice while on the verge of a major international breakthrough. Finally, with the release of ‘The Critic’ in cinemas from October 3, we took the opportunity to celebrate the incredible professional career and advocacy work of Sir Ian McKellen and look at his latest film that sees him tackle the role of Jimmy Erskine, an extravagantly malicious theatre critic who strikes fear into the thespians of 1930s London.

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For this Out Takes we said Ciao to the St Ali Italian Film Festival which is returning to cinemas this September and October across Australia. We took a look at some of the films on offer, including the gorgeous coming-of-age story ‘The Beautiful Summer’ that follows Ginia, a young working-class woman in Turin navigating the throes of burgeoning adulthood amidst a tumultuous backdrop of pre-WWII Italy, and ‘Gloria!’, which tells the music-fuelled story of an overlooked maid at a Venetian refuge whose hidden talent helps inspire an uprising. We featured an exclusive interview with Italian actress, singer-songwriter and filmmaker Margherita Vicario who directed ‘Gloria!’ who was a special guest of the festival and in Australia to premiere the film. We also caught up with the festival’s program director Elysia Zeccola to find out about the diverse range of films on offer in this year’s program plus her personal recommendations for you to check out too.

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When we got the press release about ‘Buried’ it ticked so many boxes that we knew we needed to feature it on the show. This five-part Melbourne-based series brings us the school run drop-off from hell; after single mum Abi accidentally kills a cyclist on the morning school run, her to-do list gets a lot more complicated as she tries to juggle the battle of everyday parenting with the disposal of a corpse. Over the course of one not-so-average school day, Abi must navigate a suspicious rival parent, avoid the police, and hide the evidence – all before 3:30pm pick-up. Other than the murder and disposal of a body, this series rang very true for our co-host with kids so we were delighted to be joined by the series co-writer, co-creator and director Charlotte George to give us the origin story behind this innovative series, the incredible cast involved and more.

We were also inspired by our recent review and interview with the team behind ‘Videoland’ to revisit some of the queer films from the 90’s, a few classics and some personal favourites, that we rented over and over again back in the day and that we recommend you revisit or check out for the first time.

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