Adelaide Film Festival Celebrates Roguish Success, Launches 2017 Festival Theme and Creative Campaign - Vive Le Punk!

Fresh from the successes of a Rogue October packed with ADL Film Fest Fund Premieres and events, the Adelaide Film Festival launches straight into the future, unveiling the creative campaign for the 2017 festival - VIVE LE PUNK!

ADL Film Fest 2017 is set to celebrate the punk movement’s 40th birthday, featuring people who embody the disruptive spirit of punk, including street art legend KAB101 with whom we collaborated to create the campaign.

More than just a music genre or high street aesthetic, punk became a way-of-life for artists across the world in 1977. And punk’s not dead. Its spirit of independence, rebellion and courage is alive and kicking today. As always, we’re curating works from stylistic and technological innovators and instigators.

From arthouse to hard core, 2017 ADL Film Fest Vive Le Punk features premieres and retrospectives of Australian and international films and and new work from the incomparable ADL Film Fest Fund. Punk thrives on invention, which opens the program up to explore a plethora of platforms and screen storytelling.

This is a carnival of creative freedom. We love the old guard, the vanguard, and the vibrant visionaries in between. Life begins at 40 – Vive Le Punk!

Before we went punk, we went Rogue.

The 2016 World and Australian Premieres of three ADL Film Fest Fund projects at the Adelaide Film Festival Goes Rogue events reinforced the fund as one of Australia’s most successful funding screen initiatives. The Fund has seen films off to Cannes, Berlin, Sundance, Venice and beyond, and helped give the world films like 52 Tuesdays, Charlie’s Country, Girl Asleep, Spear, Sam Klemke’s Time Machine, Samson and Delilah, Snowtown, Tracks, Mrs Carey’s Concert and Look Both Ways.

ADL Film Fest CEO and Artistic Director Amanda Duthie said , "The Adelaide Film Festival Fund is so privileged to be able to support such incredible screen talent. The fund was the first investor on Ali’s Wedding, a compelling and vibrant story to be telling on our screens. David Stratton’s Stories of Australian Cinema is a landmark feature and TV series, and for the ADL Film Fest Fund to partner on such a significance project is an honour. We are so proud to have commissioned Lynette Wallworth’s stunning and groundbreaking VR work Collisions alongside the Sundance Institute, where Lynette was the inaugural artist in residence.”

The Australian Premiere of Lynette Walworth’s Collisions at the Art Gallery of South Australia was booked out daily and saw nearly 2000 viewings of this incredibly unique and immersive screen experience. The ADL Film Fest Fund invested in Collisions as the first major VR work to come out of Australia, and one that has already seen phenomenal global success.

The World Premiere of ADL Film Fest Fund feature Ali's Wedding was a joyous event that made cinematic history as the country’s first ever Muslim rom-com. The film’s creator Osamah Sami, actor Don Hany (Offspring, Healing), co-writer Andrew Knight (Rake, Hacksaw Ridge) and all of the main cast and creatives were in attendance to experience their first standing ovation in the debut feature film from producer Sheila Jayadev and director Jeffrey Walker (Modern Family, Dance Academy).

Audiences were treated to screen legend David Stratton sitting on the filmmaker side of a film discussion! Unveiling a special Gala work-in-progress screening of David Stratton’s Stories of Australian Cinema, audiences were treated to a personal journey through Australian cinema, with special festival guest Fred Schepisi joining David Stratton, director Sally Aitken and producer Jo-anne McGowan for a memorable Q&A event.

Completing ADL Film Fest’s Rogue October event line-up, the inaugural recipient of the Jim Bettison and Helen James Award, Greg Mackie OAM delivered his oration at the Adelaide Festival of Ideas, and ADL Film Fest announced the 2016 recipients of the annual Award - adventurer and environmental scientist Tim Jarvis and leading Australian dancer and creative Meryl Tankard. ADL Film Fest is working with the Jim Bettison and Helen James Foundation and Perpetual Trustees to administer this prestigious award which recognises individuals who have contributed exemplary and inspiring work.

ADL Film Fest Goes Rogue partners for the 2016 events were Arts South Australia, Principal Partner Channel 9 and Screen Australia.

Do you feel lucky, PUNK? See you in Adelaide, October 2017.