When it comes to independent filmmaking there isn’t much that Australian director Bill Mousoulis hasn’t down. He has a mountain of films under his belt, including the one of the best films ever made in Australia – A Nocturne – and has spent the last few years making films in Europe and working at some of the world’s biggest film festivals.
Now Bill has returned to Australia and has decide to curate The Australian New Wave – a series of independent Australian films which will screen at the Thornbury Theatre throughout September. HEAVY Cinema recently sat down and chatted to Bill to find out what film are screening and why he has set out to promote independent Australian cinema in this way.
“Basically I have called it The Australian New Wave and there is a bit of provocation suggesting that it is a group of younger filmmakers coming through with their first features,” explains Mousoulis. “But it can also just be those that don’t fit with the mainstream and the main flow of things. I just noticed that a few years ago that festivals like the Melbourne International Film Festival and other major film festivals in Australia were not really programming no-budget feature films – you know films without funding and without distributors – that kind of thing.”
“A couple of years ago I started to watch some of these films and I started to find myself thinking ‘wow these are really good works,’” Mousoulis continues. “But they had been rejected by these festivals. So I thought I better do something about this, so this basically started last year when I had a showcase in Adelaide and one in Melbourne. But this year yes there is a showcase of three of these more radical no-budget features playing at the Thornbury Picture House in Melbourne.”
For the full interview check out our Spotify interview above.
For a full schedule of the films showing please check out www.pureshitauscinema.com
