Perth filmmaker Yu-Hsiu Camille Chen experienced "la dolce vita" when her debut feature Little Sparrows received a standing ovation at the Rome International Film Festival on Wednesday evening.
An excited Chen said the Roman audience and other foreign guests were moved to tears by her family drama about three sisters taken on a wrenching, life-changing emotional journey by their dying mother.
"It was an extraordinary premiere and the response from both audiences and international media has been overwhelming at say the least," Chen said from Rome, where she is basking in the warm glow of Italian hospitality and star treatment.
Chen was joined on the red carpet by her stars, Perth actors Nicola Bartlett, James Hagan, Melanie Munt and Nina Deasley, and cinematographer Jason Thomas, whose gleaming HD images will no doubt have caught the attention of producers who travelled to Rome for an event that has been attended by the likes of Martin Scorsese, Keira Knightley, Eva Mendes and Bruce Springsteen.
Perhaps even bigger news is that Little Sparrows has been picked up by a US distributor, which means Chen's privately financed debut feature will be screened in North America.
Little Sparrows is competing with 16 other features in the main competition, a quality line-up which festival organisers have described as "glittering international premieres, masterful auteur pictures, cutting-edge discoveries, and spectacular event movies".
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THE humble Australian film that could, Little Sparrows, has attracted heady plaudits at the International Rome Film Festival.
And the independent Perth film has picked up a distributor for screening in North America but cannot find one in Australia.
"I'm not sad, it's just the way of the industry, it's a business," director and producer Yu-Hsiu Camille Chen says from Rome.
"I hope independent art-house lovers will be able to see the film soon though."
The emotional drama filmed in 19 days last December using friends' houses and their local Perth coffee shop has played the Melbourne and Sydney film festivals and is about to screen at Brisbane's but cannot win a commercial release here due to its unknown cast and narrative about the last Christmas for a mother and her three daughters.
"I'm really encouraged by the success in Rome though," Chen says.
The Taiwan-born Perth resident is still a little shocked by the response to her film at a festival also screening new films in competition featuring Nicole Kidman and Sam Worthington, as well as a feature version of Martin Scorsese's television series Boardwalk Empire.
She said the reaction was "very affirming" given its humble source and cast. "Someone nearby stood up and faced me and started to clap and it just grew and grew. I didn't want to leave, it was so emotional."
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The independent Perth film Little Sparrows has been selected for official competition against Jim Loach's Australian-British co-production, Oranges and Sunshine, starring Emily Watson, Hugo Weaving and David Wenham. David Michod's Animal Kingdom will screen in the official selection out of competition, as will a feature-length episode of Martin Scorsese's HBO TV drama, Boardwalk Empire. Also in competition are new films starring Sam Worthington (Massy Tadjedin's Last Night, also starring Keira Knightley and Eva Mendes) and Nicole Kidman (John Cameron Mitchell's Rabbit Hole).
Yu-Hsiu Camille Chen's Little Sparrows is the story of a family torn apart by breast cancer. Despite having no Australian distributor, it continues a strong festival run worldwide.
The festival, established in 2005 by Walter Veltroni, the then mayor of Rome and a film enthusiast, runs from October 28 to November 5.
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Independent WA film Little Sparrows is about to take flight after being selected for the International Rome Film Festival.
The film, written and directed by West Australian Yu-Hsiu Camille Chen, is one of just 16 to be included in the Official Selection.
Featuring a local cast led by Nicola Bartlett, James Hagan, Arielle Gray and Christie Sistrunk, the film had it's WA premiere at CinefestOZ in Busselton in August.
Little Sparrows was also selected as part of the Sydney Film Festival, the Melbourne International Film Festival and will screen at the Brisbane International Film Festival in November.
Chen told PerthNow she was thrilled Little Sparrows was getting international recognition.
"How do I feel about the film being selected into the International Rome Film Festival 2010? Excited, of course, bloody excited, because we absolutely deserve the recognition and we are all so proud of it," she said.
"It is satisfying and encouraging. We are proud to say that Little Sparrows is 100 per cent made in WA. Mostly shot in Subiaco, to be exact."
Little Sparrows is a nuanced family drama about three sisters who begin to re-evaluate their lives and decisions when their mother's breast cancer returns.
"Little Sparrows is a film made not only with heart, but also a lot of guts," Chen said. "On a ridiculously small, shoe-string or magic micro budget as I like to call it, we were able to produce a high-quality feature film product that stands side-by-side with multimillion-dollar productions."
"The audience reaction to the film has not only been overwhelmingly positive, but also passionate."
Sydney Film Festival Director Clare Stewart said she was suitably impressed by Little Sparrows.
"Simple and sincere, this intelligently conceived film exhibits a depth and attentiveness that mark West Australian director Yu-Hsiu Camille Chen as a talent on the rise."
Little Sparrows is just one of a stream of WA feature films, including The Tree, Blame and Wasted on the Young, which are wowing critics and audiences in Australia and beyond.
"Like the mining and resource industry here in WA - the film industry is high-risk and yet highly rewarding. Right now WA is going through a film production boom," Chen said.
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The list of elements needed to make a great movie are familiar: a strong story and powerful screenplay, financiers with deep pockets, talented director and actors and, according to Woody Allen, plain good luck.
However, after talking to Perth filmmaker Camille Chen, you begin to realise there's an ingredient that overwhelms all others - passion.
A Taiwan-born livewire in her mid-30s who has already packed in several lives - immigration, cinema studies, managing businesses, marriage and motherhood - Chen can barely contain her excitement while talking about her debut feature, Little Sparrows.
And she has every right to be excited. Even though Chen is still putting the finishing touches on the film, a family drama centred on a mother battling cancer, her film has been selected for the Sydney Film Festival this weekend.
"We are just sorting out a couple of problems with the sound - I'm a perfectionist," giggles Chen over the line from a Perth post-production. "Then I'm hopping on a plane and taking the tape with me to Sydney."
Such is Chen's enthusiasm, self-belief and confidence she has written and directed a fantastic film that she was disappointed at missing out on securing one of the prestige spots at the recent Cannes Film Festival.
"I've been told we came very close," she says.
But that letdown didn't last long. While still honing her film, Chen received a call from Sydney Film Festival director Clare Stewart who was so impressed by her film she stopped the program from being printed in order to add it to this year's line-up.
"It's a crazy story," says Chen. "I didn't submit the film until late April and I didn't hear anything back so my depression was profound. Then Claire rang and told me I had made a beautiful film. She liked it so much she held the program back from being sent for printing."
It is remarkable Chen was even in the position to submit her film for any festival. After a trip to Paris with her business partner Peter Thomas, a senior executive at Fortescue Metals, Chen vowed to put aside her bread-and-butter work making television commercials and make her first feature film.
Despite the last minute promised financing of up to $1 million falling through, Chen retained an overwhelming desire to turn her story of a mother (played by Nicola Bartlett) working through her cancer with her husband (James Hagan) and three daughters into a feature film.
"I was exploding with this desire to create," says Chen. "So I rewrote the script to set it in Perth and told everyone I would begin shooting the film on December 1.
"People always say they are going to start on such and such a date and never do but when I say something I mean it. Things weren't in place a couple of days before shooting and people were getting nervous but I said 'no, we are going to make this film and we're going to commence on this day'."
Indeed, the rush into production without all the elements being in place meant Chen used a Mike Leigh-style approach to rehearsal and scripting, with the actors contributing to the development of their characters.
"It gave the film a naturalism, freshness and sincerity you'd struggle to achieve from a conventional approach to filmmaking." Such was Chen's anxiety to make her movie she could not wait to go through the always stretched-out process of applying for and receiving assistance from government agencies.
"I approached ScreenWest but they said it would take seven to nine months for the project to go through the various panels before it got approval. I wanted to shoot in December (two months away).
"I was so ready to tell this specific story that I could not wait."
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French outfit UMedia has picked up two new films to add to its lineup. Little Sparrows, directed by Yu-Hsiu Camille Chen is a first feature from Australia. The story unveils three sisters and their emotional relationships with their mother during a period of family crisis.
The company also added the third film from Yannis Economides, Knifer. The black and white film looks at Greek decadence today and the struggle for power.
UMedia is representing Un Certain Regard title Octubre from brothers Daniel and Diego Vega.
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Little Sparrows takes flight with confirmation of its world premiere in Sydney.
After generating much international interest amongst several high-profile sales agents, Bolderpictures today announced that it has granted Urban Media International (Umedia) worldwide sales rights - outside Australia/New Zealand - for its debut feature, Little Sparrows.
Bolderpictures is also proud to announce that Little Sparrows will make its world premiere next month at the Sydney Film Festival.
Festival Director Clare Stewart says she has welcomed Little Sparrows inclusion in the Sydney Film Festivals Love Me pathway, calling it a beautifully nuanced film.
Simple and sincere, this intelligently conceived film exhibits a depth and attentiveness that mark West Australian director Yu-Hsiu Camille Chen as a talent on the rise, said Stewart.
Umedia is a leading international sales agent that specialises in arthouse cinema from around the world. The Paris-based company acquires only seven new films each year and Little Sparrows is the first Australian film to ever catch the attention of the companys managing director and founder, Frédéric Corvez.
According to Corvez, Little Sparrows is an impressive debut feature film.
Little Sparrows is sensitive, smart, and respectful. The actors are amazing and the distance of the camera is just perfect. It is definitely a feminine film, and as a director, Camille shows an obvious respect and love for her characters. It is all the more appreciable as it is not the trend in arthouse cinema nowadays," said Corvez.
Umedia plans to launch the film on the international market this fall. Formerly known as Façade, Little Sparrows ) tells the story of Susan, her three daughters and the choices they confront as Susans breast cancer spreads. It is a truthful and affective drama shedding light on both the fears and desires of men and women as they find the need to love and be loved.
With offices in Australia and China, Bolderpictures is an independent film production company that brings together the best filmmaking resources the region has to offer with the aim of producing quality feature films that appeal to both Western and Asian markets.
According to Director and Producer, Yu-Hsiu Camille Chen, the name change was a natural development.
As the story was shaped in the editing process, it became apparent that Little Sparrows was a more appropriate title. The theme of façades has now transpired into an even stronger message of compassion, understanding and individual freedom under the new title.
The outcome is a leaner, more lucid and precise film than the one I set out to make, and I am confident that the integrity of film remains something which, in my opinion, is the utmost responsibility of any filmmaker. I cannot wait for audiences to experience the film in movie theatres, said Ms Chen.
Little Sparrows features a number of stage and screen veterans James Hagan (Phantom of the Opera, Francis Ford Coppelas Wind, All Saints, GP, Police Rescue, The Dodger, Stark, Backburner; Headstart); Simon Lockwood (Ron Howards The Da Vinci Code, Two Fists, One Heart, 24 Hours in London, The Bill, Eastenders, video clips for Basement Jaxx); Nicola Bartlett (Ship To Shore II, The Gift, Parallax, Rapture of the Deep); Melanie Munt (The Directors Cut, Esoterica, Alex, Sea Patrol, All Saints, Lockie Leonard); Scott Jackson (Air Australia, 3 Acts of Murder, Bitter Art); as well as a up-and-coming stars, Arielle Gray (Esoterica); Nina Deasley; Whitney Richards; and Nick Candy.
It was shot entirely in Western Australia on RED ONE format.
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Filmink spoke to Aussie director Camille Chen about her debut feature which will screen at this years Sydney Film Festival
When FILMINK last spoke to Camille Chen in December 2009, the West Australian director was just about to commence shooting her debut feature film, Little Sparrows (formerly titled Façade).
Six months later, Chen's film has wrapped and was recently selected to screen at the Sydney Film Festival as part of the Love Me' pathway with Festival Director Clare Stewart describing the film as "beautifully nuanced."
Little Sparrows traces the emotional lives of three sisters whose mother Susan (Nicola Bartlett) is dying of breast cancer. A Christmas lunch in the middle of an Australian summer is the pivotal event around which the film's elliptical structure revolves, shifting between the interior journeys of the three daughters and Susan's own reconciliation with the life she has lived and her impending death.
The eldest daughter Nina (Nina Deasley) is widowed with two young children, Anna (Melanie Munt) is an actress married to a filmmaker and Christine (Arielle Gray) is a medical student. All three struggle to define themselves, their relationships with each other, their loves, and their detached actor father (James Hagan).
The film is a truthful and affective drama shedding light on both the fears and desires of men and women as they find the need to love and be loved.
When asked the extent to which the film mirrored experiences from her own life, Chen says, "the starting point did come from a place dear in my heart." She goes on to say, "Little Sparrows is about change. It's about the desire and journey for that change to be someone truer and stronger. That person is me, as a filmmaker, a mother and a woman.
"I look back on my life, my choices and my faults, people I loved and fell out of love with and things I cherished and lost. I look back and I realise that I have taken a few steps forward and I want to mark that awareness and reflection. I feel like that is what I have done with Little Sparrows," she says thoughtfully.
Shot over 19 days in December, Chen actually found herself revelling in the film's restrictive time frame. "It is scary, risky and very demanding," she admits. "However there is something to be said about making a movie so quickly because it forces you to be extremely focused, precise and intuitive.
"I had to make choices on set very quickly and stick to my choices," Chen says. "Sometimes I would choose to shoot a scene a certain way that I couldn't fully explain why but I felt right about it. The crew was extremely adaptable and could work with me under those highly demanding conditions. It was only when I started editing that I finally understood why I made those specific choices."
After generating international interest amongst a number of several high-profile sales agents, Bolderpictures - the production company which Chen established and manages with her partner - recently announced that it has granted Urban Media International (Umedia) worldwide sales rights for the film.
Umedia plans to launch the film on the international market.
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