The Babadook
''The Babadook'' is a 2014 Australian supernatural horror film written and directed by Jennifer Kent in her directorial debut, and produced by Kristina Ceyton and Kristian Moliere. The film stars Essie Davis, Noah Wiseman, Daniel Henshall, Hayley McElhinney, Barbara West, and Ben Winspear. It is based on Kent's 2005 short film ''Monster'', which follows a single mother who must confront her son's fear of a monster in their home. Kent began developing the screenplay in 2009, intending to explore parenting and fear of madness in the film's story. Financing was secured through Australian government grants and partly through crowdfunding. Filming took place in Adelaide, where Kent drew from experiences as a production assistant on Lars von Trier's ''Dogville''. During filming, the crew worked to ensure six-year-old Wiseman was protected from the challenging subject matter of the film. The titular monster and special effects were created with stop motion and handmade practical eff ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Jennifer Kent
Jennifer Kent (born 5 March 1969) is an Australian actress, writer and director, best known for her directorial debut, the horror film ''The Babadook'' (2014). Her second film, '' The Nightingale'' (2018), premiered at the 75th Venice International Film Festival and was released in the United States on 2 August 2019. Early life Kent was born in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. She says that she put on her first play when she was seven and also wrote stories. In her late teens, she chose acting as she "wasn't really aware at that stage that women could direct films". She graduated in 1991 from the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) in Performing Arts (Acting). In a promotional interview for Kent's 2014 film, ''The Babadook'', lead actress, Essie Davis, explained that Kent was in the year above her at NIDA and was " neerily phenomenal actress ... the girl that was obviously the best girl at the whole school." Career Acting Kent began her career as an actress, working prim ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Film And Television Financing In Australia
Film and TV financing in Australia refers to government assistance to TV and cinema in Australia. Over the past 30 years, government assistance has involved a mixture of government support, distributor/ broadcaster involvement and private investment. To a significant extent, government policies have shaped the form and scale of financing. Since 1995/96, 25-30% of funding for Film Finance Corporation (FFC), until 2008 when the FFC merged with the Australian Film Commission and Film Australia to become Screen Australia. However, this group includes a number of films, such as ''Moulin Rouge!, Moulin Rouge'' (2001) and ''Happy Feet'' (2006), that were substantially financed by Hollywood studios. For independent Australian films, the proportion of government support is much higher. Meanwhile, TV drama has received about half of its financing from the industry itself and about 15% from government sources, while foreign investment has also been significant, reaching a peak of 49% in ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cult Film
A cult film or cult movie, also commonly referred to as a cult classic, is a film that has acquired a cult following. Cult films are known for their dedicated, passionate fanbase which forms an elaborate subculture, members of which engage in repeated viewings, dialogue-quoting, and audience participation. Inclusive definitions allow for major studio productions, especially box-office bombs, while exclusive definitions focus more on obscure, transgressive films shunned by the mainstream. The difficulty in defining the term and subjectivity of what qualifies as a cult film mirror classificatory disputes about art. The term ''cult film'' itself was first used in the 1970s to describe the culture that surrounded underground films and midnight movies, though ''cult'' was in common use in film analysis for decades prior to that. Cult films trace their origin back to controversial and suppressed films kept alive by dedicated fans. In some cases, reclaimed or rediscovered films ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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AACTA Award For Best Film
The AACTA Award for Best Film is an award presented by the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA), a non-profit organisation whose aim is to "identify, award, promote, and celebrate Australia's greatest achievements in film and television". The award is presented at the annual AACTA Awards, which hand out accolades for achievements in feature film, television, documentaries and short films. From 1969 to 2010, the category was presented by the Australian Film Institute (AFI), the Academy's parent organisation, at the annual Australian Film Institute Awards (known as the AFI Awards). When the AFI launched the Academy in 2011, it changed the annual ceremony to the AACTA Awards, with the current award being a continuum of the AFI Award for Best Film. From 1969 to 1975, the award was presented as a gold, silver, bronze or grand prix prize, or in some years, a cash prize. The first winner, '' Jack and Jill: A Postscript'', was nominated in the "general" category of th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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AACTA Awards
The Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards, known as the AACTA Awards, are presented annually by the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA). The awards recognise excellence in the film and television industry, both locally and internationally, including the producers, directors, actors, writers, and cinematographers. It is the most prestigious awards ceremony for the Australian film and television industry. They are generally considered to be the Australian counterpart of the Academy Awards for the U.S. and the BAFTA Awards for the U.K. The awards, previously called Australian Film Institute Awards or AFI Awards, began in 1958, and involved 30 nominations across six categories. They expanded in 1986 to cover television as well as film. The AACTA Awards were instituted in 2011. The AACTA International Awards, inaugurated on 27 January 2012, are presented every January in Los Angeles. History 1958–2010: AFI Awards The awards were presented ann ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Grief
Grief is the response to loss, particularly to the loss of someone or some living thing that has died, to which a bond or affection was formed. Although conventionally focused on the emotional response to loss, grief also has physical, cognitive, behavioral, social, cultural, spiritual and philosophical dimensions. While the terms are often used interchangeably, bereavement refers to the state of loss, while grief is the reaction to that loss. The grief associated with death is familiar to most people, but individuals grieve in connection with a variety of losses throughout their lives, such as unemployment, ill health or the end of a relationship. Loss can be categorized as either physical or abstract; physical loss is related to something that the individual can touch or measure, such as losing a spouse through death, while other types of loss are more abstract, possibly relating to aspects of a person's social interactions. Grieving process Between 1996 and 2006, ther ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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2014 In Film
The following is an overview of the events of 2014 in film, including the highest-grossing films, award ceremonies, festivals, and a list of films released and notable deaths. Evaluation of the year In his article highlighting the best films of 2014, Richard Brody of ''The New Yorker'' stated, "The great surge in American filmmaking in the past ten years is due to independent financing at all levels. The American independent cinema is right now the flower of the world, but independence isn't in itself a merit badge. Artistically, the films in question range from the majestic to the meretricious. Independent financing has set truly imaginative directors into free flight. This is a moment of extraordinary cinematic invention—of filmmakers, working at a wide range of budget levels, coming up with original and personal ideas about movies and how to make them. On the other hand, this independent surge has also created a new class of culturally respectable directors and films, an oste ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Art Film
An art film (or arthouse film) is typically an independent film, aimed at a niche market rather than a mass market audience. It is "intended to be a serious, artistic work, often experimental and not designed for mass appeal", "made primarily for aesthetic reasons rather than commercial profit", containing "unconventional or highly symbolic content". Film critics and film studies scholars typically define an art film as possessing "formal qualities that mark them as different from mainstream Hollywood films". These qualities can include (among other elements): a sense of social realism; an emphasis on the authorial expressiveness of the director; and a focus on the thoughts, dreams, or motivations of characters, as opposed to the unfolding of a clear, goal-driven story. Film scholar David Bordwell describes art cinema as "a film genre, with its own distinct conventions". Art film producers usually present their films at special theaters ( repertory cinemas or, in the U.S., art- ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Stop Motion
Stop motion is an animated filmmaking technique in which objects are physically manipulated in small increments between individually photographed frames so that they will appear to exhibit independent motion or change when the series of frames is played back. Any kind of object can thus be animated, but puppets with movable joints (puppet animation) or plasticine figures (''clay animation'' or claymation) are most commonly used. Puppets, models or clay figures built around an armature are used in model animation. Stop motion with live actors is often referred to as pixilation. Stop motion of flat materials such as paper, fabrics or photographs is usually called cutout animation. Terminology The term "stop motion", relating to the animation technique, is often spelled with a hyphen as "stop-motion". Both orthographical variants, with and without the hyphen, are correct, but the hyphenated one has a second meaning that is unrelated to animation or cinema: "a device for automatical ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Child Protection
Child protection is the safeguarding of children from violence, exploitation, abuse, and neglect. Article 19 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child provides for the protection of children in and out of the home. One of the ways to ensure this is by giving them Sustainable Development Goal 4, quality education, the fourth of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, in addition to other child protection systems. Child protection systems are a set of usually government-run services designed to protect children and young people who are underage and to encourage family stability. UNICEF defines a 'child protection system' as: Encountered problems Child labour Due to economic reasons, especially in poor countries, children are forced to work in order to survive. Child labour often happens in difficult conditions, which are dangerous and impair the education of the future citizens and increase vulnerability to adults. It is hard to know exactly the age and numb ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Dogville
''Dogville'' is a 2003 avant-garde drama film written and directed by Lars von Trier, and starring an ensemble cast led by Nicole Kidman, Lauren Bacall, Paul Bettany, Chloë Sevigny, Stellan Skarsgård, Udo Kier, Ben Gazzara, Harriet Andersson, and James Caan with John Hurt narrating. It is a parable that uses an extremely minimal, stage-like set to tell the story of Grace Mulligan (Kidman), a woman hiding from mobsters, who arrives in the small mountain town of Dogville, Colorado, and is provided refuge in return for physical labor. The film is the first in von Trier's incomplete ''USA – Land of Opportunities'' trilogy, which was followed by ''Manderlay'' (2005) and is projected to be completed with ''Wasington''. The film was in competition for the Palme d'Or at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival but Gus Van Sant's ''Elephant'' won the award. It was screened at various film festivals before receiving a limited release in the US on 26 March 2004. ''Dogville'' opened to pola ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |