Oh, MIFF 2024, how I’ll miss you.
Pictured top: Shane Jones and I on the red carpet at our beloved Forum Cinema - two interlopers standing in the spot ordinarily reserved for visiting dignitaries. (On the other hand, if a lifelong love of film - and seeing it in the cinema, as it should be seen - is also a pre-requisite, then hell, we couldn’t be in a more appropriate setting).
Pictured below: interior views of the Forum, the Capitol Cinema and three snapshots taken at the screening of the documentary Dory Previn: On My Way to Where at the Kino Cinema.
On the mezzanine of the Forum Cinema, Shane checks his MIFF sessions
All in all, Shane and I saw 20 films at MIFF 24. I won’t list them all, but my personal favourites, in no particular order, were: Close Your Eyes (dir. Víctor Erice), My Favourite Cake (dir. Maryam Moghadam and Behtash Sanaeeha), Tuesday (dir. Daina O. Pusić), Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger (dir. David Hinton), Dory Previn: On My Way to Where (dir. Julia Greenberg and Dianna Dilworth), Most Precious of Cargoes (dir. Michel Hazanavicius), All Shall Be Well (Dir. Ray Yeung), and last, but very far from least, Flow, (dir. Gints Zilbalodis), which I was thrilled to learn has just been awarded the Bright Horizons Special Jury Award:
Bright Horizons Special Jury Award
We would also like to recognise a movie that not only had a profound impact on us as jury members, but which through its grace, empathy and universality will leave a mark on cinema and the world at large.” – 2024 MIFF Awards Jury
(MIFF 2024 newsletter, Sunday August 25 2024).
My greatest personal MIFF highlight was meeting Julia Greenberg and Dianna Dilworth, co-directors of Dory Previn: On My Way to Where at the Kino Cinema bar after the Q&A that followed a screening of their film.
The music and lyrics of Dory Previn have been a hugely significant part of my life since I first discovered her work in the early 1970s. I was well aware of this recently completed crowd-funded documentary, but was beginning to despair of ever having an opportunity to view it. Imagine my surprise and delight to discover it was included in the Music on Film category at this year’s MIFF.
Over the years I’ve been saddened to see Dory Previn’s unique, deeply personal, yet in so many ways, universal and infinitely relatable work, slip into relative obscurity. The primary aim of Dory Previn: On My Way to Where is to rectify this. I can’t begin to thank the filmmakers enough, and thanks to MIFF 24, was able to tell them so myself.
Melbourne International Film Festival ran from 8-25 August.
