Artist Q&A, Thursday 28 October, 8-9PM // To some, doors represent opportunity. To others, they can be barriers. // Part contemporary dance and part digital documentary, 12 DOORS is an international collaboration between Korean Australian installation artist Jonathan Kim and choreographer Sunyoung Lee working alongside dancers with disabilities to explore obstacles they have passed through to become independent members of society. Represented as twelve key moments in the dancer’s lives, or ‘doors’, it is the story of when those doors were found locked, when they were guarded and when their families were there to help them through. // Featuring dedicated dancers from Light Sound Friends and 29-Dong Dance Theatre, it is a fearless and innovative exploration of the journey to reach the final door.

A young woman's sexual awakening brings horror when she discovers her urges transform her into a monstrous black leopard.

POST SCREENING Q&A WITH DIRECTOR CLARA LAW // FLOATING LIFE is a poignant and funny film about a Chinese family that falls apart after moving from Hong Kong to Australia. Gradually they find a way of coming together again. // Director Clara Law deftly encapsulates the immigrant experience as one cut off from history, both from one’s personal history and the nation’s history. What does existence mean away from one’s country, the non-existence of an existence when one is cut off from one’s roots?

A businessman suffers a professional humiliation and pursues the crisis all the way to Rome, returning to his childhood home determined to bring an old, rundown vineyard to the glory of past success. Among the village’s many comedic denizens, he finds purpose, love, laughter, as he makes the final decision as to what life should mean.

This sunburnt lark stars Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman as palpably untalented lounge singers who stumble into an international incident. For decades the notorious flop sealed Elaine May’s fate as Hollywood’s #1 difficult woman. But as the writer, director and reformed comedian observed, “If all of the people who hate ISHTAR had seen it, I would be a rich woman today.”

“Hell is a teenage girl.” So opens this oft-misunderstood story about the horror and romance of young women’s friendship. Diablo Cody’s (Juno) witty script turns the body monstrous on its head, while Megan Fox – playing for the same team as director Karyn Kusama (Destroyer) – gives a wink and a nod to the monotony of the male gaze.

With her sharp mind and sharper tongue, Chantel (Ariyan A. Johnson) is 17 going on 30. She dreams of leaving Brooklyn, studying medicine at college, and graduating into middle-class security. Can Chantel learn to navigate a world that wasn’t built for her? The first and, to date, only feature directed by Leslie Harris remains feverishly relevant.

In his late-teens Kenneth Anger discovered his sexuality, was arrested for it, and produced the homoerotic and honest FIREWORKS (1947), the first in his MAGICK LANTERN CYCLE spanning four decades of psychedelic, ritualistic, ecstatic filmmaking outside the bounds of liberation. Includes in addition: PUCE MOMENT (1949), RABBIT'S MOON (1950), EAUX D'ARTIFICE (1953), INAUGURATION OF THE PLEASURE DOME (1954), SCORPIO RISING (1964), KUSTOM KAR KOMMANDOS (1965), INVOCATION OF MY DEMON BROTHER (1969), and LUCIFER RISING (1981). Screens with intermission.

All Corrine (Diane Lane) wants is to become a punk icon, desperate to escape and destroy her suffocating small town — with her garage band The Stains (Laura Dern at her side), she’s well on her way. A disappointment on its initial release, The Fabulous Stains has since become a rapturous cult classic and the founding mother of every riot grrrl worth her salt.

From acclaimed actress Robin Wright comes her directorial debut, the poignant story of one woman’s search for meaning in the vast and harsh American wilderness. Finding herself unable to stay connected to the world she once knew, she retreats into the magnificent, unforgiving wilds of the Rockie Mountain Range, brought from the brink of death, desperate to live again.

In the tail of Halley’s comet lies a succubus, caught in a crystal cage, brought to earth by a group of unsuspecting astronauts and unleashed upon London. Tobe Hooper took his post-Poltergeist goodwill and spun it into a blood and sex Hammer-throwback spectacle of neon-flame, zombie lightning, and nude aliens, shot directly at the heart of Hollywood niceties.

A married couple transcends a long-distance relationship; another reignite their love with a spontaneous trip across the sea; a loss brings together a disparate group of women for a memorial meal—three beautifully told stories of love, commitment, and loyalty between couples, friends, and lovers, lead by an all-star cast.

Presented in partnership with Feast Festival // All Alex has dreamed of is winning the Miss France beauty pageant, ever since they were a little boy. After an adolescence held back by gender-norms and personal torment, a fresh encounter spurs them on the joyful journey of a lifetime. Ruben Alves’ celebratory success is made by its status-quo-breaking star, Alexandre Wetter, in their film debut.

Gore Vidal’s Myra Breckinridge follows the double-life of a woman flung to Hollywood, after an inheritance, a career, and the destruction of the American male in all his particulars. In adaptation, Myra Breckinridge is a camp, perverse, cult classic, absurd and hedonistic, a fantastical satire of identity. Notorious and impossible to possess — much like Myra herself.

Winston Duke spends his days on a remote outpost, watching the lives of others. When one dies, several candidates—unborn souls—arrive to fill their place, determine their suitability, or else face oblivion. However, as each meet one another, they find themselves changed, challenged, as unexpected powers forge against fate, striking new paths. A heartfelt, meditative vision.

1942. Gilles, a young Belgian man is sent to a concentration camp, only avoiding execution by swearing he’s not Jewish, but Persian. The lie threatens to unravel when he’s given an impossible task, to teach Farsi to a commanding officer. Gilles finds he must invent a language he does not know, word by word, always on the brink of being exposed.

Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor star as a sexless, loveless couple, cooped up on an army post’s artificial homestead. Thrown into the mix is a brooding young private, who covets the sadistic Taylor and is coveted in-turn by the repressed Brando, having caught his attention with moonlight horse rides, bareback to behind. Adapted from Carson McCullers’ queer serial and shot with a sumptuous golden hue, you’ll be amazed at what Hollywood was once capable of.

Following the rise of Aretha Franklin’s career from a child singing in her father’s church’s choir to her international superstardom, RESPECT is the remarkable true story of the music icon’s journey to find her voice.

In the 50s, Alice leaves her natal Swiss mountains for the sunny shores of Beirut. She falls madly in love with Joseph, a quirky astrophysicist intent on sending the first Lebanese national into space. After years of bliss, a civil war threatens her Garden of Eden in this stunningly told story of love under fire.

Some Kind of Heaven sets in its sights The Villages, a manicured home to 130,000 seniors, Disneyland for Retirees. America’s largest retirement community has a utopian sheen, safe and engaging with pre-packaged positivity, but in interviewing a number of residents living on its margins we find another perspective, one of heartbreak, homelessness, and the strive for happiness.

Walter Hill, Jim Steinman, Stevie Nicks, and Tom Petty awash with a neon-noir sheen in this epic, unmatched rock ‘n roll fable proving after all, there’s nothing more 80s than the 50s. When merciless bikers kidnap a young starlet, it's up to our protagonists to hit the pavement and light up the night.

A transformative documentary crafted around the Harlem Cultural Festival, 1969, an epic celebration of black history, culture, and fashion. Long-lost footage has been revived and restored, revealing the healing power of music and shining a light the on never-before-seen performances from Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Sly & the Family Stone, Gladys Knight & the Pips, among many more.

Presented in partnership with Feast Festival // South Australian Premiere! Udo Kier stars as a fabulous, flamboyant former hairdresser, “the Liberace of Sandusky”, brought out of retirement in order to fulfill the posthumous wishes of a wealthy client (Linda Evans). Trekking across the midwest for hairspray and pomade, his encounters with a hysterical array of colourful characters (including Jennifer Coolidge) lead his confrontation to a new, liberated world

From the Icelandic auteur behind Rams, Grímur Hákonarson, The County follows Inga, a middle-aged cattle farmer who is forced to stand by her deeply indebted dairy alone after her husband dies in a car accident. Starting a new life with a tragically fresh perspective, she decides she must fight against the injustice that rules her corrupt countryside community.

Anthony is 80, mischievous, living defiantly alone and rejecting the carers that his daughter, Anne, encouragingly introduces. Yet help is also becoming a necessity for Anne; she can't make daily visits anymore and Anthony's grip on reality is unravelling. As we experience the ebb and flow of his memory, how much of his own identity and past can Anthony cling to? How does Anne cope as she grieves the loss of her father, while he still lives and breathes before her? THE FATHER warmly embraces real life, through loving reflection upon the vibrant human condition; heart-breaking and uncompromisingly poignant -- a movie that nestles in the truth of our own lives

Frank Cabot has cultivated Les Quatre Vents for decades, a magnificent private garden and a well-pruned temple for the worship of horticulture in all its varied forms. Only open to the public a few days a year, this documentary provides a rare view toward a dazzling setting, and insight to the man behind it.

POST SCREENING Q&A WITH DIRECTOR TONY AYRES // Based on writer/director Tony Ayres' own life, THE HOME SONG STORIES is an epic tale of mothers and sons, mothers and daughters, unrequited love, betrayal and secrets. // Tom (Darren Yap), a Chinese Australian man in his early forties, writes about his childhood where his mother - a Shanghai nightclub singer (Joan Chen) - struggles to raise her two children after moving to Australia in the seventies. // Beautifully shot and artfully designed, THE HOME SONG STORIES features strong performances and the kind of intimacy and honesty that you can only get from an autobiographical film.

As sexy and stylish as they come, The Hunger sees Tony Scott make the jump from commercial director to the big screen, adapting the novel by Whitley Strieber (who also wrote Wolfen) into a dark, erotic dream. All his trademarks are here, backlighting, billowing curtains, smokey rooms, forecasting a trend of style-forward filmmaking. Plus! David Bowie!

This documentary follows an unlikely friendship, between Barbora Kyslikova, an Oslo-based artist, and her new muse: the man who robbed her. While those paintings were never recovered, she sought out a new subject in thief Karl-Bertil, and their portraiture process provides an intimate insight through a remarkable relationship’s unexpected twists of fate, one which exemplifies the power of human connection.

Talking Heads’ David Byrne takes the open road to Virgil, Texas, a heartfelt and musical ode to the eccentricities of middle America, the beauty of flyover country and the larger-than-life characters that fill it. Shot by Ed Lachman, with John Goodman and Spalding Gray, this is the greatest feature-length music video you’ll ever see.

After losing her mother a shy teenager is taken into her aunt’s loving, if dysfunctional, family. However, she begins to learn of a shady side to the family business, questioning their gestures of affection while drawn deeper into their world. A brooding, criminal coming-of-age and a striking Scandi noir dedicated to Denmark’s underbelly.

Barbra Streisand’s directorial debut is a masterwork of mainstream feminist cinema. The multihyphenate shines as the titular difficult woman who, in turn-of-the-century Poland, adopts a male persona so that she may study Jewish theology. Inside the Yeshiva boys’ club, Yentl falls for fellow pupil Avigdor (Mandy Patinkin), leading to a love triangle that destabilises gender, sexuality, patriarchy, and the gaze.