Tunnelling Bastards

The week of the AFI Awards is one of the only times throughout any given year when the Australian media actually pay attention to local films for anything longer than a day (unless, of course, they find some kind of success in America then they're all about claiming everyone as "out" so-and-so, for evidence here this). With the Industry Awards on tonight and tomorrow's big televised ceremony there will sure be a lot more talk about Animal Kingdom, which is bound to win all the big categories and a few of the "smaller" ones, too.

But looking forward, here are a couple of trailers for upcoming Aussie productions that will pop up in 2011. The first is The Tunnel, a groundbreaking production in that they raised their budget by asking regular, ordinary folks to purchase frames of film for $1 (or, a second of film for $50 and so forth), which is a very nifty idea. Furthermore, The Tunnel will skip theatrical release and DVD and will, instead, premiere on torrent services. It's been one of the most fascinating productions to follow and I look forward to the movie, especially since the trailer makes it look like it's got its wearing its Blair Witch Project / [rec] inspirations with pride. If you look at the newly released poster to the left you'll notice it's made up of some of the names of people who donated to the filming.


The second trailer is for the wonderfully titled Mad Bastards, which I'm sure someone will describe as "something something Samson & Delilah something something of 2011!" Apparently it's about "an urban street warrior who meets his match in the form of a local police officer", and while I'm not quite sure I get that from the trailer (produced for the Sydney Festival), it looks quite good. It also "weaves performances and music from real people from the Kimberleys through the music of Broome musicians the Pigram Brothers", which could make for a really exciting film.